Nuclear power is the clean energy answer
Toni Oplt’s call to speak up for clean air cannot be accomplished by renewable energy. The sad news environmentalists will not accept is that it can only be done with nuclear energy, never with wind and solar. She needs to read professor Joshua Goldstein’s “A Bright Future.” There is simply no other way to get the clean air being sought. When the wind does not blow or sun does not shine, batteries cannot store the electricity. Bill Gates invested $1 billion on renewables and he says “there is no battery technology even close …”
The math simply does not work for solar and wind. The clean energy being sought by mid-century is 100 trillion kilowatt hours per year, which is equivalent to the entire yearly fossil fuel usage. That need is for 3.3 trillion kilowatt hours per year. Germany, where there is technology and resources, made an effort to switch to renewables and added 0.7 trillion kilowatt hours before they abandoned it for gas. At that rate, it will take 150 years to meet the goal, to say nothing of the vast farm and forest lands it would require. Wind and solar make a footprint 100 times larger than fossil fuel or nuclear plants.
Nuclear energy can meet the world’s needs for clean energy. Yet environmentalists cry the threat of radiation, which is false and ignorant of science. All the spent nuclear fuel generated in our 60 years can be stored on a football field 20 feet deep. But that waste is now stored on the reactor site in concrete vaults. Radiation cannot escape concrete. Better yet, modern reactors will recycle it totally.
