Nuclear energy is the best solution for climate change

The Tennessean, Your Turn, Natalia M. Best, Guest columnist, Sunday, Jan. 2, 2022-  ...  I’m

very proud of my home state’s contributions to clean energy. Tennessee is the home of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory ... outstanding institutions of higher education ... leading the way to create sustainable, zero emission ...

... Climate Change Conference, COP26, in Glasgow. The U.N. Secretary-General admitted that nuclear power will be a part of the solution. The White House and State Department delivered other announcements that strongly support nuclear energy’s value in fighting climate change.

If nations and states do not increasingly commit to resilient, zero emissions energy alternatives like nuclear fission, extreme weather events like these could become more frequent, more severe or both.

While California and New York close and dismantle their nuclear power plants and increasingly turn to fragile, less reliable and less sustainable forms of clean energy like solar and wind, Tennessee’s two nuclear plants contributed 47% of the state’s electricity in 2020. This enabled the state to increasingly phase out other forms of energy with high carbon emissions

... when compared with all the existing clean energy alternatives, nuclear is the best, the most reliable and the safest large-scale clean energy solution we have for now. ... Given nuclear energy’s overdue recognition coming out of COP26, I’m hopeful more states will follow Tennessee’s lead by prioritizing and incorporating nuclear energy into their electric grids. (read it all if you have a subscription)

Rod's Comment: It may not be possible to significantly slow global warming, but if we continue doing what we have been doing for the last 55 years, it is certain we will not slow it.  The world is producing more greenhouse gases; not less. The world is still warming.

Unfortunately, climate-warrior-romantic-environmentalists have been setting climate change policy and have set the US and the world on a course of more global warming. Dirty coal-burning power plants could be replaced by cleaner natural gas-powered power plants if not for "environmentalist" blocking of fracking. 

Nuclear is the most promising means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but "environmentalists" oppose nuclear and stop the building of nuclear plants that could replace coal-fired power plants.  What so-called environmentalists do that is not counterproductive is simply symbolic and ineffective and does nothing to slow greenhouse gas emissions, an example being stopping the keystone pipeline.  It is time that realist set policies that will actually slow global warming instead of leaving global warming policy to climate warrior enthusiast and romantics.

For more of my views on climate change follow this link. 

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