They Call This Push Back

There are lots of things that can keep you up at night - a possible recession, providing for a family, what Cowboy fans are going to do with their TO jerseys - and anti-nuclear activists are trying to add something else to the list.

As they shift from one reason to the next as to why reactors in America should be shut down, Jack Spencer of the Heritage Foundation, takes them to task in today's Washington Post. Nuclear power produces virtually zero greenhouse gas emissions, and is the only source of energy we have that can make such a claim while producing electricity on a large scale.

While some environmentalists choose to brush that aside as a detail, others now elevate the issues of safety and security. While safety should be paramount, here are a few inconvenient truths about the history of nuclear energy,

The unfortunate thing is that there are great, newsworthy stories to be written about nuclear power: No one has ever died as a result of commercial nuclear power in the U.S.; terrorists have never attacked a nuclear power plant; nuclear power is clean, affordable and emits nothing into the atmosphere. The list goes on.

Our foreign competitors were turning to nuclear power long before global warming became political topic numero uno. Meanwhile, the United States has not had a new generator come online in a generation. New Jersey already has 51.8% of its electricity generated by nuclear power, and it's time to relicense Oyster Creek and to let the industry grow.