Energy Shortage?

[Martin Hash]

Electric cars are almost here, thank goodness. Burning up incredibly valuable and irreplaceable petroleum just to move our overweight butts around borders on criminal. We need petroleum for so much more important things, such as plastics, chemicals, lubricants, asphalt, and fertilizers; not to mention the environment damage of releasing all those hydro-carbons into the environment. However, increasing electricity demand needs increasing electricity production. Coal-for-oil is not a desirable tradeoff; damming rivers is out, and; geothermal, wind, wave, and solar all offer a pittance of power. When our generation, the Baby-Boomers, finally passes from the scene, nuclear power will re-emerge as the electricity source of choice. Unfortunately, the abandonment of nuclear power was a side-effect of the Cold War, but the generation that will soon be assuming political office, and the voters who select them, will not have the same irrational fear of the word "nuclear."

With nuclear power, there is no energy shortage! Nuclear-generated electricity is almost free, and new reactor technologies are now emerging from companies such as NuScale, Hyperion, mPower, and Toshiba. These reactors are all small, truck transportable, safe from terrorists, and produce minimal amounts of radioactivity and waste. It seems probably that a decade or two from now we will see full utilization of this unlimited energy source. It only takes political will and the passing-on of the “no” generation.