Today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel features a letter to the editor by Michael Corradini, Chair of the Engineering Physics Dept. at the Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison. Corradini is writing in support of Wisconsin Energy Corp. CEO Gale Klappa's call for lifting the nuclear power moratorium here in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin readers should know that the Engineering Physics Dept. includes the Nuclear Engineering program. What's more, Corradini is a research specialist in nuclear energy and director of the Wisconsin Institute of Nuclear Systems , essentially a university-created nuclear power research and education organization that receives funding and other assistance, according to its website, from many pro-nuclear government and corporate sources, including the Dept. of Energy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Westinghouse Electric, and-- you knew it was coming-- Wisconsin Energy Corporation.
Corradini writes that "the intermittent nature" of wind and solar power make them impractical as replacements for nuclear power plants. What he neglects to say is that there is much promising work going on to achieve efficient storage of wind and solar generated electricity, including the Iowa Stored Energy Park and the storing of wind and solar power through natural gas.
The great expense and risk of nuclear power, the long-term dangers of its radioactive waste are not in the public interest nor the ecological interest, and yet our state-supported university is being used to help private, profit-oriented energy industries perpetuate a form of energy production that is no more cheap and clean than coal.