The Compromising Cure
Not far from where I write, some 55 miles west as the Idaho Mountain Bluebird flies, contracted by Nuscale Power of Tigard, Oregon, the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is building Nuscale’s Small Modular Reactor (SMR).
This may prove to be the first step in the large scale production of a modular nuclear power plant where components can be manufactured in a factory environment and shipped to a power site for assembly. This design reduces the normal lengthy time at the construction site and, as well, additional modules can be added as greater energy needs arise.
SMR’s are designed to efficiently replace old fossil fuel power plants or for additional energy to support growing demands. Further, more units can be installed to strengthen grid stability and thereby reducing the intermittency of any renewable power sources.
These units have the advantage of known safeguards and security requirements and can withstand any aircraft crash scenarios. As well, of significant benefit to environmental concerns, is that nuclear energy is totally free of any carbon dioxide emissions. Nuclear energy abandons the need for massive battery storage and requires no change in the electrical grid.
So we have a safe, viable, reliable, non-intermittent energy source that removes the climate change activists CO2 concerns. What could possible go wrong?
Naturally those environmentally obsessed will loudly chant the dangers of nuclear, irrespective of any and all safe guards applied to the design. Furthermore they will scream about the inherent dangers of storing spent fuel. I already see these objections in localized newscasts.
In every respect, the eco-politicians, the green bureaucrats and gravy-train scientists want no such resolution. They command the radical climate campaigners to adamantly combat all nuclear energy. With a dependable, steadfast solution, the ability to save society no longer belongs to the political left and the masses of funding for advocate scientists will all dry up and they will be forced to invent other unscientific deceptions.
For years, I have been encouraging energy science to explore and use thorium rather than uranium. Thorium has the same radioactive properties, but is much more plentiful than uranium. While nuclear energy is already very safe, thorium cannot be enriched to make nuclear weapons and the disposal and endangerment of radioactive waste is nullified. Around Lemhi County, Idaho, it is estimated there are 10,000 years worth of the material.
Climate change has always been a conduit for votes exhorted by panic and fear, as well as an avenue for subsidizing partisan serving scientists. This compromising cure has always been at hand, but neglected at all costs.
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