now, most specialists are satisfied with the safety record of nuclear power.
So argues University of Pittsburgh physicist Bernard L. Cohen in Before It's Too Late: A Scientist's Case for Nuclear Energy (Plenum, 1983). He cites polls showing that 89 percent of scientists (and 95 percent of those in energy-related fields) favor atomic power. Yet many laymen still rank the atom as a worse hazard than auto accidents and cigarette smoking. They are, Cohen says, "misinformed."
A study directed...