“For What It’s Worth,” No Nukes Reunite After Thirty Years

By Daniel Kreps, Rolling Stone

After almost three decades of near inactivity in the atomic sector, a bill has been sent to the U.S. government to loan $50 billion dollars to the nuclear power industry to kick-start stalled plant plans. In a protest against the proposed loan, members of the famed “No Nukes” group, namely Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and Graham Nash, have filmed a YouTube video for the Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth.” The “No Nukes” group — which once featured Magic man Bruce Springsteen and performed a series of concerts including a famous one at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1979 — now boasts appearances by Ben Harper and Keb’ Mo’.

Since the late-Seventies, and the Three Mile Island incident, the nuke industry has been dormant, but in the wake of global warming and An Inconvenient Truth, the government has been seeking alternative power sources to greenhouse-gas-chewing fossil fuel plants. But Nash claims, “The nuclear power industry is raising its head once more under the guise that it can help global warming. It’s a lot more complex than that. Nothing is ever easy about nuclear power.” Raitt also insists that nuclear plants provide an easy bulls-eye for terrorists when planning a target. Nuclear Energy Institute spokesperson Mitchell Singer, who ironically enough owns and enjoys the No Nukes album, counters that “the upside of nuclear power is so big and so positive that we can deal with these issues.”