Alec Baldwin, Emmy-award winning star of NBC’s comedy show 30 Rock, says safety problems at nuclear power plants — if known publicly — would kill any chance of an industry revival.

President Obama called last month for a “new generation” of nuclear power plants and approved $8.3 billion in loan guarantees last week for two new reactors in Georgia, which would be the first such nuclear construction in three decades.

Actor Alec Baldwin, star of NBC’s comedy show
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By Robyn Beck, AFP/Getty Images
Baldwin doesn’t mention Obama, but in a commentary today on The Huffington Post, he recounts safety problems at various nuclear power plants. He says he’s studied them since 1996 with the Radiation and Public Health Project, which he continues to support. He writes:

We gathered information about Indian Point, and worried about implications of a containment breach there long before 9/11 heightened that risk. We gathered information about Oak Ridge, Tennessee, The Gaseous Diffusion plant in Piketon, Ohio. The problems with operations at Dresden, Illinois. At Turkey Point in Florida. And we immersed ourselves in the problems surrounding the Oyster Creek facility in Tom’s River, New Jersey.

I started going down to Oyster Creek in 1996. I returned there with a 60 Minutes camera crew a couple of years ago. I have a strong and abiding belief that true knowledge of what does and does not go on in Tom’s River, as well as in both Trenton and Washington, combined with unbiased knowledge about nuclear power in utility reactors could kill any of the talk about reviving this industry.

Filed under: Article 9 on February 23rd, 2010