Elizabeth Crum

This paper is the best, most concise argument for nuclear power I’ve read yet.  If you are against or on the fence on nuclear energy, you should read it and consider the facts.  If you are already in favor, you’ll be delighted and probably learn a few things.

 Be assured, this is not some partisan policy paper.  It’s full of hard data and as such is very compelling.  It has been entered into the Congressional Record twice (once during Senate testimony for the budget for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, once during a House hearing on environmental benefits of nuclear power). 

 The paper states that nuclear waste disposal “is a political problem in the United States because of widespread fear disproportionate to the reality of risk” and contends and concludes that nuclear power is in fact “environmentally safe, practical, and affordable.”

 It includes facts and citations from the British Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering, the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Internationl Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Energy Council, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Geological Survey, MIT, the Harvard School of Public Health, Houston’s Institute for Energy Research, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).

 One of the authors, Dr. Denis Beller, recently completed a sabbatical from Los Alamos National Laboratory to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he coordinated university participation for UNLV’s Transmutation Research Program for reducing, reusing, and recycling spent nuclear fuel.  Beller is now a Research Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UNLV and a Visiting Research Professor at Idaho State University.

 The other author, Richard Rhodes, is a journalist, historian and author.  He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), and most recently penned Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (2007). Rhodes has been awarded grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and frequently gives lectures and talks, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.