Nuclear power and the resulting melt-downs...

...when it's proposed as a clean energy source

With 2024 less than a week away, two things on the minds of tyrants governments and their climate catastrophists citizens are energy production and climate change. Neither can be addressed without considering the other. They scream at the sky (literally) clamoring about man’s infinitesimal impact on the climate, and then tilt at windmills to develop a clean green™ solution to their imagined issue. The problem is, the proposed solutions are scarcely solutions at all.

Solar and wind, which claim to be climate friendly are in use and being expanded, but neither has the capacity for energy production to meet the world’s needs. This is nary a worry for the climate cultists. They don’t care (or are willfully ignorant) that these options will disburden people (including themselves) of the many advancements and luxuries developed even over the past century or so, such as the Internet and electric cars (wait, aren’t those supposedly green™ too?), or more simple things like light, heat, air conditioning, and the electric stoves that so many are insisting be installed in place of gas stoves to make homes more green™ . To put it plainly, as far as they’re concerned, we all can go back to living in the early 1800s, so long as their Gaian goddess is appeased.

If they truly wanted a solution, there is one that they often overlook vilify as disastrous but that has the potential not only to meet all our energy needs, but to also do so in a way that would be far cleaner than any other debatably clean green™ source - that option is nuclear. The greenies angrily calumniate about the devastation nuclear will inflict, but nuclear power plants are far cleaner than any current source, and they are able to reliably generate orders of magnitude more electricity per square foot than solar, coal and wind combined.

Solar farms fields have serious limitations with regard to production, storage, and space. A solar panel can capture and convert only so much energy from the sun; a few clouds can diminish capacity and night reduces capacity to zero. The only way to provide solar power at night is if Brobdingnagian battery banks are employed (oh the horror…manufacturing solar storage cells has huge environmental implications). Of course, if a solar farm field cannot meet daytime demands, none will be stored for night. Over time, panels suffer degradation in efficiency leading to replacement, and replaced panels end up in landfills where they remain for decades centuries. We’ll talk momentarily about the space required for solar, but it is already clear that solar is not so green™ after all.

Wind suffers similar reliability issues. Wind farms only produce power when there is ample wind to turn the turbines. While it may be available day or night, wind is unpredictable and may subside for long periods of time. There is also only so much efficiency to be extracted from turbines, which is far less than that of other sources. Maintenance required to keep turbines operating at peak capacity and efficiency can be costly, and they require a lot of oil for lubrication. Like solar panels, the blades on windmills degrade over time and must be replaced. These prodigious propellers are made from materials that, like solar panels, do not break down quickly; thus bountiful bundles of blades will be layered in landfills for many generations to come. How green™ is that?

Unlike solar and wind, nuclear produces power 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Nuclear plants don’t depend upon unpredictable natural phenomena. So long as a suitable amount of uranium-based fuel is provided, power is produced making nuclear far more reliable than other green™ options.

One of the predominant points made with regard to the dangers of nuclear power is waste; however, newer nuclear plants are able to recycle their waste, deriving further energy from it rather than simply discarding it. New processes also make it less harmful and allow it to degrade over a shorter span. This means less space to store less waste.

But this type of data is hidden from the low-info consumers of climate choler. You’ll never hear Al Gore tell you that all of the used nuclear fuel produced by the U.S. nuclear energy industry over the last 60 years could fit on a football field at a depth of less than 10 yards, or that waste can also be reprocessed and recycled, though the United States does not currently do this. No. Nuclear bad - solar and wind good.

Speaking of space... The more land a given power generation method requires, the more impact it has on the environment. According to the U.S. Office of Nuclear Energy, nuclear has a substantial space-based superiority over green™ competitors:

A typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear facility in the United States needs a little more than 1 square mile to operate. NEI says wind farms require 360 times more land area to produce the same amount of electricity and solar photovoltaic plants require 75 times more space.

U.S. Office of Nuclear Energy

So, to produce 1,000 megawatts of electricity, a wind farm requires 360 square miles (230,400 acres)! A solar farm field of the same capacity would require 75 square miles/48,000 acres! Putting that in perspective, the city of Manhattan comprises all of 22.83 square miles and uses 51,000 gigawatts (1 gigawatt = 1000 megawatts) of electricity per year. Do the math: using such large swaths of land is neither green™ nor realistic.

Perhaps the most desperately disparaged derivative of breathing energy production purportedly promoting climate change is carbon dioxide. Eliminating this emission is allegedly the main goal of alternative energy. Well, nuclear produces energy carbon-free.

The only thing green about so-called green™ energy solutions is the money that despotic dilettantes governments will bilk from their subjects citizens in the name of Science™. Instead of having a melt-down at the mere mention of nuclear, climate zealots ought to consider their sources. The soil sycophants and dirt devotees are falling prey to Jim Jones-like litanies of lies, and like those who sipped his cyanide soft drink, they will find that their fealty to these fabulists renders similar results.

So, instead of decommissioning nuclear plants, we should be building more. Not only would erecting new facilities provide all the power we need while limiting the environmental impact of its current counterparts, doing so would create jobs as well. All of this from one type of energy that is safer and cleaner than the rest.