Gwyneth Cravens on Palo Verde and Nuclear Power Plant Security

Gwyneth Cravens, author of Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy, recently took a tour of the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant:

By the end of the tour it became obvious to me that the slightest incident at a nuclear plant, even if it occurs far from any reactor and poses no risk to the public, is usually given three-alarm treatment by the media, whereas the large-scale, relentless, ongoing risks from fossil fuel combustion are ignored. Our biggest reliable sources of our basic electricity supply are fossil fuel plants and nuclear plants. There is nothing speculative about the fact that as coal combustion provides half of our electricity it causes the premature deaths of more than 24,000 Americans a year in addition to hundreds of thousands of cases of lung and heart disease. Is this acceptable?

Nuclear power, while providing one-fifth of our electricity and three-quarters of our emissions-free electricity, has never caused a single death to a member of the American public.

For the rest of our archive on Cravens, click here. Thanks to Rod Adams for the pointer.