Not the End of the World

David Cavena19 May, 2023 2 Min Read
Green as it gets.

If you find yourself wondering about the future of energy supplies across Europe (which will be a testing ground for the U.S.), here are a couple of eye-openers you won’t find mentioned in the America media:

And while the plant’s production is still in its early days, its launch has had a considerable effect on Finland’s energy prices, lowering the electricity spot price in the country from €245.98 per megawatt-hour (MWh) in December to €60.55 per MWh in April, a reduction of more than 75 percent.

  • Poland is building a network of small modular nuclear reactors. This energy is 30 percent cheaper than gas-fired plants… The energy transformation cannot be stopped. We will not stop technology. There is no way to maintain the green energy system without nuclear power.

The Germans, of course, stand opposed to Poland and Hungary's nuclear ambitions, and delays are expected to occur due to their opposition. Why, you might ask, would Germany oppose its neighbors' plans for to access to inexpensive, inexhaustible, and ultra-low carbon energy supplies? One answer is that Germany's ill-considered environmentalist program, die Energiewende, has brought about sky-high electricity rates in their own country. It would be awkward for them if their citizens could just look across their eastern border and see rates that were substantially lower. And, relatedly, they're concerned about their manufacturing sector having to compete with countries who aren't paying so much for energy.

Still, since successive German governments have insisted that "saving the planet" is priority numero uno (er, that is, nummer eins), and infinitely more important than trifling economic concerns, you'd think that they would applaud the expansion of the one true green energy throughout Eastern Europe, nuclear power. Except that, as you probably know, the most notable result of die Energiewende has been the decommissioning of Germany's own nuclear reactors, which have been replaced, largely, by carbon-intensive coal.

This, coupled with the fact that the media steadfastly refuse to celebrate Poland, Hungary, and Finland's nuclear transition, clearly demonstrates that all the fuss over "climate change" this has never been about the climate.

If the "climate change" case were fact-based, the arguments for it wouldn't rest so heavily on emotional appeals. Instead of global temperature data sets (unaltered by NASA or East Anglia) supporting a theory of “unsustainable warming,” which in fact doesn’t exist, we see apocalyptic fantasy movies and politicians who really ought to know better whining “we’re all gonna die in twelve years!”

As we’ve noted here often, the only solution going forward to provide inexpensive base-load electricity at scale, reducing the costs of everything in the modern world while protecting -- or increasing -- employment levels, and reducing any impacts of fossil fuels, is nuclear.

The new small modular reactors now being licensed are safe, efficient, and an inexpensive way to generate essentially inexhaustible amounts of electricity without killing birds and whales, nor deforesting millions of acres, and not destroying large tracts of land for the toxic promise of lithium batteries or huge landfills already filling with used-up turbine blades, toxic, used-up solar panels and lightly-scratched E.V. batteries.

Nothing about wind or solar is “Green,” once one delves into it. If we want a prosperous world full of modern conveniences, going forward, nuclear is key. Good to see that at least some of the world's leaders are finally recognizing it.

David Cavena is a native southern Californian exfiltrated to Arizona. An IT professional for 40 years, he has pushed cows in California, dudes and horses in Wyoming, and programmers in Los Angeles and Phoenix. An avid outdoorsman – skier, backpacker, water skier and scuba diver – David writes from Arizona.

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4 comments on “Not the End of the World”

  1. Back in the 1970's it was Global Cooling and aa New Ice Age was coming both Time and Newsweek was giving it top Coverage and 1978 episode of In Search Of w as all about the hard winter of 1976/77 in Buffalo New York

  2. This isn't about "climate change/global warming" and never has been.

    It's about population reduction.

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