In may ways that diatribe seems to have merit in that none of the other sources of energy will ever scale up and sure as hell, nucs can pump out the power. No doubt about it. Presently 20% of our electricity comes from 100 or so plants driven by various radio active elements.
So it is easy to say, ya, we gotta get those babies going if we want to juice-up in the future. It is no secret that there have been a few problems with nucs as Fuckashima and Chernobyl have demonstrated but Rand implied that was just a price we had to pay, collateral damage of sort, and that we will get through it by making better atomic plants.
All well in good, a nice idea if BAU is your motivation. So what happens in my daily reading of the news? I get this headline in the local Gannet paper. California plant closing do to being worn out and too hard to repair. Reading down the article a note is made of the fact that right here in Wisconsin two (2) reactors are going to be closed because no one will buy them and keep them running. The reason given is they are too expensive to run and while it is not said, my guess would be no one wants to sit on the liability exposure.
A touch more reading and it is not hard to notice there has not been one of these things built in over 30 years. Golly gee, it seems we have a ways to go on this one. When we are being told by independent oil experts (that does not include the idiots in our mainstream news) that oil will soon go into decline as the fracking plays quickly dissipate, it would seem we have a bit of a pinch. Sadly, the vested interests are blabbing we have so much energy we will be independent of the oil states soon even though we are still importing 9 million barrels a day, NOW.The fracking to date, after thousands of wells, has only increased our over all production by 750K/b/d.
Oh boy. This sustainable revolution is sure having hard time getting going. Nice if we could be told a little truth now and then.
No comments:
Post a Comment