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"How do wars begin? With a "master illusion", according to Ralph McGehee, one of the CIA's pioneers in "black propaganda", known today as "news management". In 1983, he described to me how the CIA had faked an "incident" that became the "conclusive proof of North Vietnam's aggression". This followed a claim, also fake, that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964. "The CIA," he said, "loaded up a junk, a North Vietnamese junk, with communist weapons-the Agency maintains communist arsenals in the United States and around the world. They floated this junk off the coast of central Vietnam. Then they shot it up and made it look like a fire fight had taken place, and they brought in the American press. Based on this evidence, two Marine landing teams went into Danang and a week after that the American air force began regular bombing of North Vietnam." An invasion that took three million lives was under way."

"Nearly three-quarters of opinion formers in Britain think the government should either scrap the country's nuclear weapons or look for a cheaper alternative, according to a poll published on Tuesday. Just under a third of business leaders, politicians, academics and journalists polled by YouGov for the Chatham House think tank said Britain should abandon its nuclear deterrent after it expires in 2024. This is higher than a fifth of ordinary voters polled by YouGov who want to scrap it. The replacement of Britain's submarine-launched Trident missile system is expected to cost at least 20 billion pounds, a sum critics say is unthinkable at a time of drastic spending cuts pushed by Prime Minister David Cameron."

"We are now confronting the problems of nuclear power - the waste generated and the radioactivity of the reactor generators that need to be "decommissioned." Bruce Power will pay Studsvik $1 million for each of the planned 17 generators to be "cleansed" in Sweden. Normally an intelligent country, Sweden is embarking on a process that will harm its workers and proliferate the material throughout its industries. Of course the ship may not run into trouble on its journey through the Great Lakes and across the Atlantic. Retrieving the behemoth from the bottom of the Atlantic would be difficult. It would probably be left there along with the sunken nuclear submarines corroding away."

"Over the last half century, the government has repeatedly kept information secret because it would be embarrassing. President Obama wants the federal bureaucracy to reform this harmful tradition. The Department of Energy website proclaims, "From his first day in office, President Obama has pushed to make the federal government more open and more accessible to the American people. The Department of Energy is proud to be doing our part." But DOE's definition of "doing our part" seems to entail subverting the President's directive. The agency is pulling a cloak of secrecy over complex government financial transactions already lacking in transparency. The federal government has offered taxpayer funded loan guarantees for new nuclear reactor construction. These guarantees mean that you and I will repay the lender if the project developers cannot. The first guarantee, for $8.3 billion, has been conditionally offered for two Georgia reactors. More guarantees are proposed -- at a total of $54.5 billion -- which would amount to more than $500 for every American family. Some in Congress want unlimited nuclear loan guarantees, which would translate to unlimited taxpayer exposure. But will those American families know the criteria for issuing these loan guarantees? Not on your life. They won't even be told what fee is being charged to compensate them for taking on the default risk."

"Words have precise meanings. The French word "renaissance" is made up of two parts -- "re" to repeat and "naissance" birth. It achieved wide use in the medieval times to describe Western Europe's rediscovery of Greek and Roman art, literature and architecture. Note the word involves three stages, a time of greatness, followed by a loss and then a revival. In no way can the word be used to describe things nuclear. Thanks to the diligence by the media, there never has been an initial time of nuclear greatness. Instead, we have an easy to remember list of disasters and dangers: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Bikini atoll, Nevada desert, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Sellafield-Windscale, and Chalk River."

"The U.S. Senate is working on new comprehensive energy legislation. One element of such a plan would be a renewed push for more nuclear power, which advocates say is an underused clean energy source. Critics worry it could lead to environmental disaster."

"Thirty years ago, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board selected Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the nation's only permanent storage site for the radioactive waste from our nuclear power plants. Work proceeded during this period to secure walls and ceilings from possible earthquakes, paving interior roads and installing more extensive infrastructure. All of this added up to expenditures of $10 billion. This past March, the U.S. Energy Department notified the board they intended to abandon the Yucca site because it was "too small." This must be government at its worst. An Energy Department spokeswoman said that the president was establishing a blue-ribbon commission to find a "safe, long term solution" within 18 months."

In the 1980s, climate scientists in Russia and the U.S. theorized that all-out nuclear war between the superpowers would result in a "nuclear winter," as smoke from the atomic explosions blackened the sky and sent summer temperatures plummeting below freezing - killing crops and eventually starving all those who survived the initial explosions. Now that the risks of an all-out U.S.-Russian exchange have diminished, scientists are looking at the climactic effects of regional nuclear war - and the predictions are still sobering.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the international community to build on the momentum generated by recent progress made towards disarmament to rid the world of nuclear weapons. "The UN and the Conference on Disarmament should seize this moment and be in the vanguard of efforts towards a world free of nuclear weapons," Ban said pointing to the "promising signs" made in the past few months, including initiatives by the US, the UK, France, China, Russia, the European Union, non-aligned countries and other governments.

Did you know that the Ontario government intends to sign a contract worth more than $26 billion for the building of two new reactors at the Darlington nuclear station? This project alone will cost more than the Ontario Power Authority has budgeted for its entire nuclear program for the next 20 years. Spending $26 billion on this project will mean there is less government money for grants to find sustainable ways to get the power we need for Ontario's residents. Sustainable energy sources that are better, cheaper and cleaner than nuclear energy. We can keep the lights on in Ontario without going further into debt by feeding the nuclear vampire.

Three cheers to Sen. Dianne Feinstein for her statesmanlike proposal to President-elect Barack Obama to declare at his inauguration the goal of a world free of nuclear arms ("Let's Commit to a Nuclear-Free World," op-ed, Jan. 3). As she points out, moving toward that goal, so important to mankind, would require U.S. leadership and major changes in U.S. foreign policy. Alarmingly, partly as a result of U.S. actions and partly because of the growth of terrorism, the world has been moving in the wrong direction. We are now more vulnerable to a nuclear catastrophe than we were 10 years ago.

Ten percent of 20 is two. Five percent is one. To make the deal go down at the Public Service Board level 1 percent of the 20 percent uprated Vermont Yankee power (in 2006 it went from a 540 Megawatt ((Mw)) to a 650 Mw. reactor) was sold to a small utility up north in Vermont at below-market rates. As a result of the uprate decision at the PSB, Entergy must pay taxes to Vermont on all power from the uprate sold out of state. Translated, this means that Entergy must pay taxes on 19 of the uprated 20 percent of the power sold. This is money to the state coffers. The PSB makes decisions based primarily on economics. The PSB will decide to continue Yankee past 2012. The PSB will play their quasijudicial role as arbiter and Entergy will sweeten the deal for the supposed ratepayer advocate Department of Public Service (read: governor's right-and team) in a Memorandum of Understanding just before the PSB decision.

"Unwittingly and without prior consent or vote of acceptance by the people ... we have become the outhouse of the Eastern Seaboard for dumping ... tons of ... wastes. State law should not have allowed this to happen to us, and it shouldn't ever again allow it to happen to anyone." THE LETTER COULD have been written by someone from Lee, Union or Anderson County. If we don't do something to change our burgeoning status as the solid-waste destination, it could be written soon by someone from Williamsburg, Cherokee or Marlboro County - all eyed by out-of-state waste-hauling companies looking to expand the growing list of rural S.C. homes to megadumps designed with the nation in mind.

In his inaugural address, President Obama gave many reasons why our nation is "in the midst of crisis," concluding with "and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet." He continued with "….our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed." Among the bold, swift actions he proposed "not only to create new jobs, but (to) lay a new foundation for growth" was this resolve: "We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories." Wow! A leader who gets it! One who sees that our energy future lies in renewable, sustainable, earth-friendly sources. Here in Vermont, we have an opportunity to make a huge leap in that direction. Hopefully our state legislators are as wise as our president. Hopefully they understand, and will acknowledge with their votes against its relicensing, that the aging, obsolete Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station is no longer acceptable as it poses serious risks to the public's health and safety, and to the environment.

Veterans from New Zealand, Britain, Australia and Fiji, are locked in a court battle in London, claiming they were used as guinea pigs during Britain's nuclear bomb tests in the Indian and Pacific oceans in the 1950s. All have suffered a variety of illnesses since they were told to face the bomb without their masks as part of a study to see the effects of radiation fallout. The 800 veterans want compensation. But lawyers acting for the British government have told the court that there is no solid evidence to prove that their health problems were caused by the radioactive blasts.

The Energy Department has recommended expanding the amount of nuclear waste that could be stored in an underground repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada to avoid the need for a second dump. It is a sensible proposal that also is an urgent reminder of how little progress has been made in solving one of the most vexing problems of the nuclear age. Tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel and military waste have been piling up at temporary storage sites around the country while the federal government has struggled, unsuccessfully, to find a long-term solution.

"The Energy Debates" is a LiveScience series about the pros, cons, policy debates, myths and facts related to various alternative energy ideas. We invite you to join the debate by commenting directly on each article.

We all have heard the expression that some simple technological matter is not "rocket science." The commercial production of electricity by use of nuclear energy in a nuclear power plant is not rocket science, either. In principle it could not be much simpler. Put simply, radioactive decay produces heat. We can capture this heat and use it to turn water into steam that turns a turbine and produces electricity.

The Tennessee Valley Authority continues its way on a troubling path of the unknown with nuclear power plants. Given all the potential ramifications of flaws at any nuclear power facility, the public has good reason to question the path taken by TVA. Among the most recent concerns about TVA operations are questions about the design for potential new nuclear reactors at the Bellefonte nuclear power site near Huntsville, Ala. TVA is seeking a license to build a plant based on a new design, the AP-1000 Westinghouse, but environmental groups say while the licensing process goes forward changes are being made to the design. Advertisement TVA insists the changes in the design are only peripheral to the basic plan. Design changes include changes to the pressurizer; changes in the seismic analysis involving rock and soil conditions; changes in instruments and a redesign of fuel racks. Advocates of the licensing process say the design changes at issue are only the kinds of items that can be carried easily on a parallel track with the application process. The basic design is said to be a simpler version of a nuclear reactor. The design is significant because if and when it is approved for Bellefonte, it streamlines the process for other plant sites that might want to build on a Bellefonte model.

This year, the Vermont state Legislature may cast a binding vote on the continued operation of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power station beyond 2012. I live six miles from Yankee. I am deeply concerned that successful evacuation in the event of an accident is impossible. I fear a "Katrina effect" where-low income, disabled and elderly people fare the worst. Vermont Yankee was licensed to operate for 40 years. It has operated the past three years in "uprate mode," generating 120 percent of its original capacity. Yankee has a relatively poor safety record, including the spectacular collapse of a cooling tower just last year.