Nuclear reactors, indeed. Just maybe they are the answer, after all. Now, we've already got them scattered across our land -- 96 of them, if you want to count them.
And now, a new one -- a new and much improved one -- this one brought to you courtesy of Bill Gates and his company, TerraPower. This one has been in the works 15 years -- ever since Gates retired from Microsoft. You thought he retired-retired. But maybe this is his next big thing.
He's building it in Kemmerer, Wyoming, and it isn't your mom and pop's nuke plant. This one enters the modern age, the Twenty-first Century. Mom and pop used to always use water to cool their systems. Tht was their generation. Now, along comes Gates and TerraPower, and they say, Let's try a change up. Let's use liquid sodium to cool our plant.
Liquid sodium absorbs a lot more heat. It's boiling point is eight times that of water. And, you don't need to pump it and recycle it back into the reactor like you do water.
Safer. Better. Nicer.
Gates' Kemmerer reactor won't come online until 2030, but is that so far away? And, who knows how quickly he will follow Kemmerer with reactors in such places as Huntington and Hunter, Utah.
As we move toward nuclear energy, we should not drop all our concerns about safety, nor about health. One check might be to talk to hospitals in the areas where the existing 96 plants are. How many of their cancer patients are nuclear plant workers?
Just a check. Just check everyway and everywhere you can.
Another even smaller check, but one I wonder about: If coal plants and nuclear plants lose two-thirds of their heat into the air, does that affect global warming? I would guess not, but if you are heating the air, there might be a little effect. Check that along with the other checks.
And, when you've gone check-check-check, power up.
(Index -- Climate change info)
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