A widely heralded view holds that nuclear power is experiencing a dramatic worldwide revival and vibrant growth, because it’s competitive, necessary, reliable, secure, and vital for fuel security and climate protection. That’s all false. In fact, nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete—so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe; it weakens electric reliability and national security; and it worsens climate change compared with devoting the same money and time to more effective options.

Power corrupts, but we want energy.

[to the Iranians] You want to be wiped out? [...] Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development. You want to be peaceful? Just reverse it all, and we will guarantee you that you can have a nuclear power plant for electricity purposes, energy purposes.

As I said, there is some merit in these views [that nuclear power is the "only way to save the planet from cooking"]. More accurately, there would be if limited and short-term reliance on nuclear energy, with all of its extreme hazards and unsolved problems — like waste disposal — was taken as an opportunity for rapid and extensive development of sustainable energy. That should be the highest priority, and very quickly, because severe threats of environmental catastrophe are not remote.

We also need an energy policy. War is not an acceptable energy policy. But certainly, if Canada can satisfy all of their space heating needs with solar energy, then so, too, can we. And I’d love to see the old buildings that have been abandoned in community after community across this country become teeming centers of employment so that people are actually able to manufacture the green technology that this country needs in order to relieve us of our dependence on oil. We don’t need to drill.

I must furnish those, who would protect or save life, with an energy source, which produces energy so cheaply that nuclear fission will not only be uneconomical, but ridiculous. This is the task I have set myself in what little life I have left.

Deploying today’s renewables and improving transmission couldn’t be more important. . . . Unless we use large amounts of nuclear energy . . . every path to zero in the United States will require us to install as much wind and solar power as we can build and find room for. . . . [M]ost countries aren’t as lucky as the United States when it comes to solar and wind resources. . . . That’s why, even as we deploy, deploy, deploy solar and wind, the world is going to need some new clean electricity inventions too.

Why is “energy independence” mentioned so often as a justification for environmentally risky nuclear power plants or offshore drilling—but so rarely to justify insulation, efficient cars, or wind and solar energy?

As a military man who has given half a century of active service I say in all sincerity that the nuclear arms race has no military purpose. Wars cannot be fought with nuclear weapons. Their existence only adds to our perils because of the illusions which they have generated. There are powerful voices around the world who still give credence to the old Roman precept—if you desire peace prepare for war. This is absolute nuclear nonsense.

What is the present outlook in the field of energy generation? One word suffices - catastrophic! Through over-illumination and overheating of the media of earth, water and air in Nature's household, a short circuit - 'cold fire' - and the development of cancer has been triggered off. With a conflagration was kindled, whose ashes and slag residues alone will extinguish all life. Thus a reporter stated recently, "For the time being this radiating thing is there and with it the attendant worries as to how we can protect ourselves against these lethal rays, which penetrate even the thickest lead shields." The sheer lunacy of using nuclear power for peaceful purposes will be just as short-lived as the subsequent remorse will be long.

I'll be philosophical. Until about two billion years ago, it was impossible to have any life on earth; that is, there was so much radiation on earth you couldn't have any life — fish or anything. Gradually, about two billion years ago, the amount of radiation on this planet—and probably in the entire system—reduced and made it possible for some form of life to begin... Now when we go back to using nuclear power, we are creating something which nature tried to destroy to make life possible... Every time you produce radiation, you produce something that has a certain half-life, in some cases for billions of years. I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it is important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it... I do not believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me why do I have nuclear powered ships. That is a necessary evil. I would sink them all. Have I given you an answer to your question?

If we are to survive, we must not accept the official indoctrination of the purpose of nuclear 'power' stations, radiation health risks, the 'need' for further nuclear weapons and the reality of nuclear war.

I have talked about our efforts to combat the misuse of nuclear energy. Let me now tell you how this very same energy is used for the benefit of humankind.
At the IAEA, we work daily on every continent to put nuclear and radiation techniques in the service of humankind. In Vietnam, farmers plant rice with greater nutritional value that was developed with IAEA assistance. Throughout Latin America, nuclear technology is being used to map underground aquifers, so that water supplies can be managed sustainably. In Ghana, a new radiotherapy machine is offering cancer treatment to thousands of patients. In the South Pacific, Japanese scientists are using nuclear techniques to study climate change. In India, eight new nuclear plants are under construction, to provide clean electricity for a growing nation — a case in point of the rising expectation for a surge in the use of nuclear energy worldwide.
These projects, and a thousand others, exemplify the IAEA ideal: Atoms for Peace.
But the expanding use of nuclear energy and technology also makes it crucial that nuclear safety and security are maintained at the highest level.

Thus, the words "nuclear energy" have many interpretations. As they bring to mind the terrifying spectre of a war of exploding A-bombs and H-bombs, they are horrible words. Yet those same words, used to describe the many uses of the atom for man's peaceful progress -- in medicine, agriculture, biology, industry and the production of electric power -- bear no relation of association to the uncontrolled fury of the atom as it might be employed in war. And finally, the words "nuclear energy" as they relate to the controlled testing of nuclear weapons so that we may be assured of the means of defending ourselves, ought not to be confused with the unrestrained use of large numbers of such weapons in actual warfare.