JEFFERSON CITY, MO. -- A former environmental activist said nuclear power is safe, clean, and critical to the nation's energy future. 

Dr. Patrick Moore was co-founder and a former director of Greenpeace, an environment watchdog organization with a worldwide profile.

Thursday, Moore told a Jefferson City audience he left Greenpeace 25 years ago.

"I found myself the only international director with a formal education in science,” Moore said.  “And I felt it was becoming too sensationalist and political in nature, rather than science-based and logic-based."

Now, Moore is the co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, an organization that promotes nuclear energy a dependable source of power.

"Even with Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima, nuclear energy is still, by far, the safest of the major energy- generating technologies,” Moore said.  “It's safer than wind, in terms of fatalities, in its full history of life.  It's way safer than coal."

Moore said the problems at the Fukushima plant were not the result of having radioactive fuel, but of having no back-up power to run the cooling system.

He said U.S. nuclear plants like Callaway have redundant power systems well beyond what is necessary.