Martin: Green Hysteria Slowing Progress of PBMR, Other New Designs

From the Times (U.K.):

ENVIRONMENTAL groups are setting back the fight against global warming with misguided and irrational objections to nuclear power, according to Britain'’s leading thinker about the future.

Climate change will be the greatest of many significant challenges for humanity over the next century, and every tool available, including nuclear energy, will be needed to prevent it wrecking the planet, James Martin told The Times.

While the anti-nuclear campaign is well-intentioned, it fundamentally misunderstands the safety of the latest generation of reactors and threatens to hold back a technology that could be critical to the world'’s future, he said.

The criticism of groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth by Dr Martin, a computer scientist and physicist, will be keenly felt as he is himself a prominent green who has spent much of his large IT and publishing fortune on research into global warming and environmental science.

Martin isn't afraid to name names, and says that if it wasn't for Greenpeace, South Africa would already have a Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) up and running. Glad to see more folks coming around to this line of thinking.

For more on Martin and his work, visit the James Martin Institute. Thanks to The Moderate Voice for the pointer.

UPDATE: More from We Support Lee.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Energy, Technology, Environment, Electricity, GHG, Climate Change, Greenpeace