Greenpeace's co-founder now a proponent of nuclear energy

Patrick Moore was a self-described hippie who grew up in a small Canadian fishing village and sailed to the Aleutian Islands to protest nuclear tests taking place there.

His voyage was the maiden trip for Greenpeace, an environmental organization he co-founded in 1971. For 15 years, he fought against the slaughter of whales, nuclear-weapons testing and killing seals.

But after a string of disagreements with the organization, including a fierce one concerning nuclear energy, Moore left the organization in 1986.

Threats of the escalating Cold War between the now-defunct Soviet Union and the United States put Greenpeace "categorically opposed to nuclear energy," Moore said. The fear was that nuclear power plants would mean more nuclear weapons. At the time, Moore agreed. But his view changed as he saw the Cold War dissolve and the need grow for more energy sources.

Now, he travels the country drumming up support for nuclear energy as co-chairman of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, or CASEnergy, a national effort funded by the nuclear industry.

Moore made a string of stops Thursday in Beaufort County to build statewide support for more nuclear power plants in the Palmetto State. He talked with business leaders, educators, public officials and the public about nuclear energy's benefits.

"We did a lot of things right at Greenpeace, a lot of things I'm proud of," he said. "But we made one serious error, and that was stopping nuclear energy."

On its website, Greenpeace says the risks from nuclear energy are "real, inherent and long lasting." It says developing enough nuclear power to make a meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions "would cost trillions of dollars; create tens of thousands of tons of lethal, high-level radioactive waste; contribute to further proliferation of nuclear weapons materials; and result in a Chernobyl-scale accident once every decade."

But Moore, 63, says nuclear energy is clean, safe, reliable and cost-efficient. If handled properly, nuclear energy shouldn't harm workers, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide a continuous source of energy while reducing America's dependency on coal plants.

Moore's statistics show about 50 percent of the United States' energy is coal-based while 20 percent is nuclear.

"My goal is to turn those percentages around, where 50 percent is nuclear and 20 percent is coal-based," he said. "But that's a long time down the line."

A Rasmussen poll in May shows 49 percent of Americans want more nuclear energy plants, while 27 percent are opposed to the idea, and 24 percent are undecided.

Moore said he wants 20 to 30 more nuclear energy plants within the next few years.

"It's fantastic how quickly this issue has moved," he said. "Everywhere we go, people are positive about nuclear energy and we get a pretty strong reaction."