Pat gets a glowing no-prize for bringing us yet another op-ed in favor of nuclear energy:

For decades before Chernobyl, the public had been assured that nuclear reactors could not explode like bombs and that the association of reactors with nuclear weapons was essentially false. By calling those claims into question, the accident, together with the disappointing performance of atomic power plants during the 1970's and 1980's, pretty much guaranteed that no reactor projects would be initiated for the remainder of the century.

And yet, though it went unnoticed at the time and has been inadequately appreciated since, Chernobyl also cast into relief the positive features of the reactors used in the United States and most other advanced industrial countries.

It's pretty self-evident that global warming is happening*. It's equally self-evident that the only viable option to stop large-scale greenhouse gas emissions is nuclear energy. That greenies continue to ignore or attempt to explain away these simple facts makes it quite clear their politics has gotten far out ahead of their science. Or rationality.

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* Happening, yes. On the verge of causing an imminent global catastrophe? Well, that's a different boiled egg altogether.