March, 05 2013, 03:24pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
"Obama's Department of Fracking and Nukes"
WASHINGTON
KARL GROSSMAN, [email]
Author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power, Grossman just wrote the piece "Obama's Department of Fracking and Nukes," which states: "With the nomination of Ernest Moniz to be the next U.S. Secretary of Energy, President Barack Obama has selected a man who is not only a booster of nuclear power but a big proponent of fracking, too. ...
"Moniz, a physicist and director of the MIT Energy Initiative, which is heavily financed by energy industry giants including BP and Chevron, has long advocated nuclear power. He has continued arguing for it despite the multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant complex, maintaining that the disaster in Japan should not cause a stop in nuclear power development. ...
"Obama's stance as president on nuclear power has been a change from his position as candidate Obama. 'I start off with the premise that nuclear energy is not optimal and so I am not a nuclear energy proponent,' Obama said campaigning in Iowa on 2007. He went on that unless the 'nuclear industry can show that they can produce clean, safe energy without enormous subsidies from the U.S. government, I don't think that's the best option. I am much more interested in solar and wind and bio-diesel and strategies [for] alternative fuels.' As he told the editorial board of the Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire that year: 'I don't think there's anything that we inevitably dislike about nuclear power. We just dislike the fact that it might blow up and irradiate us and kill us. That's the problem.'"
Grossman said today: "It is outrageous that President Obama has selected Moniz -- who despite the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters is still zealously promoting nuclear power while pushing the toxic process of fracking as well -- as energy secretary. And this a week before the second anniversary of the Fukushima catastrophe. What happened to Obama's call in his recent State of the Union address for 'clean' energy?"
See Grossman's TV program "Chernobyl: A Million Casualties" and his Huffington Post piece, "Fracking and Radium, the Silvery-White Monster," Grossman is the host of the TV program "Enviro Close-Up," a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, and the recipient of numerous awards for journalism, including the George Polk Award.
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
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