What We Really Need
How about the country of France who uses 75% nuclear produced electricity. They have had only 12 events in over 40 years of nuclear power production, none of them major. They inacted their nuclear plan back in the 70’s based on the oil crisis, and therefore are so far ahead of the curve, that they eventually plan to be 100% nuclear, and therefore free of the constraints of fossil fuel imports.
How about a little company funded by private investors like Bill Gates called TerraPower who has developed a reactor that not only can be buried (for safety), but uses nuclear waste as fuel? You read that right, they’ve developed a Traveling Wave Reactor that runs off of what other power plants throw away. Currently there is about 700,000 tons of nuclear waste in storage. 80 tons of it in ONE of TerraPower’s reactors could power 25 million homes. For 100 years. With absolutely no waste.
Why are programs and companies like TerraPower not household names? These are the people that are providing real answers to real questions. Yet, Greenpeace, an organization that effectively does nothing but spend money and take hippies on boat rides, gets 1000 times more publicity. And for what? For agreeing that there is a problem and then condemning all the potential answers that don’t fit their twisted keyhole agenda? How does that get anything done?
People need to start thinking past their noses …
“Oh, I am buying an electric car that is emission free, look how green I am!!”
Guess where the electricity to charge it comes from? Power plants that emit 2000 times the greenhouse gasses in a day than your old Honda did in it’s lifetime.
“Oh, ok, then I will wait for hydrogen powered vehicles, they are emission free too. Then I’ll be green!”
Guess where 68% of the electricity to refine the hydrogen comes from? Yep fossil fuel burning, carbon emitting, greenhouse-gassing power plants.
What we really need are the 50% of people, who in recent polls, said they favored building more nuclear power facilities to speak up. We need our legislators to look a little further down the road than their next election race, and focus on what needs to be done now. Our nation’s power needs are only going to increase, and at the rate we are going now, we cannot sustain it. I won’t sit here and say that nuclear power is the perfect solution, but it’s a big step in the right direction. Assuming it doesn’t get hamstrung by outdated ideals and old rhetoric.
It’s time to let the awkward kid shine, and replace the cliché “cool kids” with something useful beyond creating tons of the pollution that everyone agrees is bad. Sure, he is a little different and doesn’t have the reputation of the cool kids, but he’s getting things done.