Caldicott on nukes, again.

[GliderGuider]

SWMBO forwarded me this link. She and I disagree on nuclear power.

Helen Caldicott links nuclear power to global warming

A couple of excerpts:

Monica Trauzzi: We recently had Christie Todd Whitman on the show, and she just founded CASEnergy with Greenpeace founder, Patrick Moore. CASE stands for "clean and safe." Basically, they're contending that nuclear energy is environmentally safe and secure, and it's safe for humans. Are they wrong? And are they part of this propaganda wave that you ...

Helen Caldicott: They are. Patrick Moore, I had it in my conference called "Nuclear Power and Global Warming." He's paid for by the nuclear industry. I don't know about Christie, but I know that he is. So that I'm an independent physician ...

Monica Trauzzi: But he is a well-known environmentalist.

Helen Caldicott: Well, yeah, but he's changed, hasn't he? He works for the nuclear industry, so he's not unbiased. He's totally biased. He's employed by them to push nuclear power and he's wrong! He's absolutely wrong. But I invite you to read my book and question everything I say, be skeptical, look at all the references, discuss, argue, but I tell you what, out of that discussion and debate will come the truth. And you'll come down totally opposed to nuclear power, from a medical perspective, let alone greenhouse warming or the expense. It's actually a socialized industry. They can't exist without massive government profits. It's the only electricity production that's socialized.

and

Monica Trauzzi: The Nuclear Energy Institute has started a new ad campaign, which basically talks about how nuclear energy helps support the environment and helps promote energy security. What's your reaction to the latest ad campaign? It's basically all over the nation, all over TV and print.

Helen Caldicott: I know. They've been doing it for a couple of years, to the tune of $200 million. I wish I had that sort of money. I mean that makes me cross. And you open the New Yorker or Scientific American, beautiful full-page ads, color, children using their computer, saying they need electricity and the like, full of fallacious lies. They are attacking me at the moment, the Nuclear Energy Institute, on their Web page. They're going through my book, chapter by chapter, criticizing it. Do you know what? That's like being on Nixon's blacklist. That means I'm being influential, that I'm worrying them, and that's very good, Monica.

Monica Trauzzi: Are you afraid at all that their ad campaign will affect what you're trying to do?

Helen Caldicott: They've been doing it for two years, they already have affected the majority of the population who say, well, I think nuclear is the right thing. But you know what? If there's a meltdown in this country, and it's not if, but when, there's a sort of thing called body knowledge or wisdom, and people know that radiation is incredibly dangerous. And I've got a study describing a meltdown at Indian Point and what the people living there would experience, and in Manhattan. They'd never escape and there'd be 700,000 people dying acutely of cancer over the long-term. Now I've forgotten my question. You're going to have to go back. What was the question again?

Looks to me like there's enough propaganda on both sides of this debate to keep advertising agencies in business for years.

[shance]

1. The truth is never propaganda and it never has to be sold. Nuclear Energy is toxic energy.

That's really the bottom line.

[GliderGuider]

2. Kewl. My irony-meter just exploded.

"Nuclear Energy is toxic energy" sounds a lot like propaganda to me. What exactly elevates that simple sentiment to the level of Truth?