As a public service announcement, I have it on good faith that we will have a few of the folks behind the Atomic City Education Society at Starbucks in Oak Ridge this Thursday, sipping lattes and handing out stickers and high fives.
They’ll show up around 7ish.
Hey, we might even have some Atomictumor staff there, just for the helluvit!
So, I read in the Knoxville papers that the Oak Ridge city council is playing with the idea of courting a DOE facility to treat spent radioactive fuel to turn it into “useful products” (hair gel, portable electronics, fungicides, etc). They’re meeting in September to try to hash it out.
You know, something thats always bugged me about the times we live in is seeing the drop into complacancy the western world has fallen. During the first half, maybe even the first 2/3rds of the century we saw people bravely moving forward, hurdles jumped, techniques and technologies pioneered, and the world changed because of it.
Nuclear power is an example.
These days, most people think of Chernobyl, of death clouds and cooking from the inside out when they think of nuclear power. Thats unfortunate, considering that using fossil fuels for power is resulting in death squads and freaky cults having way too much power.
Fact is, we have to get off fossil fuels. Global warming and peak oil theories notwithstanding, we’re going to keep paying for the RPGs and IEDs blowing legs off the soldiers in the desert, or at the very least we’re going to keep propping up the kind of governments that aren’t ideally democratic or neighborly.
If America had the kind of drive that got people on the moon in a tin can, and applied it to getting a renewable, or at least sustainable energy source, where would we be? Would it have happened, or would we still be excited about gas prices dropping to $2.54?
Anyway, point is, bring it on, Oak Ridge. Lets get back on the nuclear train, because its the best bet we have. Solar and Wind energy is a pipe dream, and hydro obviously isn’t enough, but we need to get rid of the fossil fuels.