Climate scientist James Hansen and colleagues argue that "U.S. reactors have been staving off another global challenge: climate change. The low-carbon electricity produced by such reactors provides 20 percent of the nation's power and avoided 64 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution. They also avoided spewing soot and other air pollution like coal-fired power plants do. Nuclear power is a key energy technology to fend off catastrophic climate change. "We can't burn all these fossil fuels," Hansen told a group of reporters on December 3, noting that as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy source they will continue to be burned." (Quoted from article)