176 Nuclear Energy

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">My generation of Americans was absolutely traumatized by the word “nuclear.” As a grade-schooler in Nevada, we practiced “duck-and-cover” several times a year which was supposed to protect us from earthquakes and atomic bombs. Even though our teachers reassured us the possibility of either was remote, impressionable young children cannot make such sophisticated distinctions, so we lived in constant fear of dying a horrible death from invisible rays that rotted our bodies from the inside. Consequently, my generation has an instilled fear of anything nuclear clear out of rational perspective of the facts. The ridiculous result is that we would rather burn our natural resources, pouring millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, leading to a nightmare scenario very similar to the one we feared as children from nuclear.</p> <p>Large power grids of wires running across the countryside seem so 20th Century. When the crunch comes, Middle Class people will spend what it takes to create & store their own power, probably via solar, but what about all the people in the cities, and those who can't afford to be their own energy barons? If the Climate Change alarmists are right, burning hydrocarbons is no longer a solution, but third-generation small, buried, single-purpose degradable nuclear reactors certainly are. As it stands, we can't even have the discussion even though it's the perfect solution for developing nations, and even though advanced nations like France have already been successful with old-style nukes. Nuclear-fearmongers seem to have a lot in common with terrorism-fearmongers, and both ill serve the nation & the World.</p>