The French Disconnection

Once again Patrick Moore, a former Greenpeace activist, has been promoting nuclear power as a solution to global warming without disclosing that he is a consultant to the Nuclear Energy Institute's front group, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. In a letter to the editor of the Toronto Star, Moore railed against the ability of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind to replace "existing nuclear and coal-fired" power stations. "The fact of the matter is these renewables are intermittent power sources that can supplement (but not supplant) 'always on' baseload power sources such as nuclear energy," he wrote. However, the Financial Times reported that France, which relies on nuclear power for approximately 80 percent of its electricity, "is being forced to import electricity from Britain to cope with a summer heatwave that has helped to put a third of its nuclear power stations out of action."