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Mother Nature Does Nuclear Power
wjwlsn writes "Back in the day (2 billion years ago), even before the time of iron men and wooden reactors, Mother Nature had mastered nuclear power. She built a passively safe system at Oklo that had fully automatic control and built-in waste containment, and operated it safely for about 150 million years. Now researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have deduced the operational characteristics by examining the isotopic composition of xenon contained in rock samples taken from the reactor site. More details at Eurekalert."
Safe nukes (employ ex-sub engineers as operators at $120K/yr and run by military rules) are the best option in the long run.
Short run, we have lots of alternatives.
Whats killing people today is not nuclear power. Its not using nuclear power thats killing people. Consider that a 2.7 mpg increase in the fuel efficiency of automobiles would eliminate the need for foreign oil. Considering that the average car has a fuel efficiency of about 22 mpg, and that oil accounts for about 7% of US energy production, if all the oil that was being used for electricity was nuclear instead, we would be independent of foreign oil. If that were the case, our interest in the Middle East would decline. Events like the first and second Iraqi war would not have occured. Instead, rabid environmentalists are causing people to be indirectly killed because of their failure to understand science and irrational fear of technologies that they don't control.
The importance of energy independence to national security cannot be underestimated.