Go Nukes

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What brings together a former director of Greenpeace and the Republican ex-director of the Environmental Protection Agency? Answer: PR firm billings and promoting a new public radiance for the nuclear power industry. Christine Todd Whitman, the first EPA director under President George W. Bush, and Patrick Moore, who was "on the boat" at Greenpeace's famous founding float to protest nuclear weapons, now boast their own PR firms and a common interest in "grass roots" advocacy for nuclear power. Look for the new nuclear astroturf group, the "Clean and Safe Energy Coalition" in a PR spot near you. All financing for the group, which currently has 58 companies and 10 individual members, comes from the Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents reactor operators. The announcement coincided with a report (PDF) by Greenpeace (which Moore departed in 1986) which describes "near misses" worldwide since the Chernobyl explosion in the Soviet Union twenty years ago.