Nuclear Power

"The once-moribund nuclear power business is undergoing a revival that is having a profound impact on academia and industry," reports the Chicago Tribune. Existing nuclear engineering programs are expanding, and new programs have been announced at three universities.

During a speech to the Nuclear Energy Institute, U.S.

University of Texas professor Sheldon Landsberger has admitted that a pro-nuclear column he submitted under his own name to the Austin American-Statesman was actually written by the Potomac Communications Group, a Washington PR firm that works for the nuclear power industry. "For at least 25 years," reports William Adler, an employee of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee named Theodore M. Besmann (who moonlights for Potomac Communications) "has had published nuclear love songs in newspapers across the country, under his own or others' names."

"A quarter century ago this week, a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island [in Pennsylvania] underwent a partial meltdown... Since that time, no American utility has dared to build a brand new nuclear power plant... [But] power blackouts, rising natural-gas prices, and concerns about greenhouse gases have changed public attitudes," writes David Francis.