More Nuclear Spin, in the U.S. and UK

"If we are going to seriously address our energy needs as well as our concerns about global climate change, one source stands out -- nuclear," writes Christine Todd Whitman in the San Francisco Chronicle. It's one of two recent op/eds by the former EPA administrator (the other was in BusinessWeek) that fail to disclose that Whitman is a paid consultant for the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). Patrick Moore, Whitman's co-chair of the NEI-funded "Clean and Safe Energy Coalition," has also been busy, promoting nuclear power in Michigan. "Nuclear energy is the key," Moore told a Grand Rapids audience. Meanwhile, in Britain, environmental groups have dismissed a public consultation on nuclear power as a "public relations stitch-up" by the pro-nuclear government. This is the second consultation on the issue; Greenpeace won a legal challenge against the first. Liberal Democrat Sir Menzies Campbell accused the UK government of "making up its mind on nuclear power long before this latest consultation had even begun," reports the BBC.