Electricity is needed for all infrastructures, starting with water filtration and sanitation.
Ronald Stein, P.E. is an engineer, columnist on energy literacy at America Out Loud NEWS, and advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.”
Oliver Hemmers has aDoctorate in Physics from the Institute of Radiation and Nuclear Physics at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. He was a Researcher in Physics, the Executive Director of UNLV’s Harry Reid Center and C- level executive.
Steve Curtis has a Master’s degree in Health Physics from UNLV. He has spent decades studying spent fuel issues in Nevada and worked as a technical field team leader for nuclear search and characterization missions for the Department of Energy. He is currently engaged in education, speaking, and writing in favor of nuclear power returning to the United States, especially from recycling spent nuclear fuel in fast reactors.
Co-authored by Ronald Stein, Oliver Hemmers, andSteve Curtis
Published October 29, 2024, in America Out Loud NEWS
https://www.americaoutloud.news/affordable-electricity-can-resolve-worldwide-poverty/
The poorest American is richer than 75 percent of humanity, and about 4.56 billion people on this planet are living on less than $10 a day, and billions are living with little to no access to electricity.
Most everyone in the United States has access to electric power that is required by water filtration, sanitation, airports, hospitals, medical equipment, appliances, electronics, communications systems, heating and ventilating, space programs, and militaries.
However, several billion people in the rest of the world do not have any access to the infrastructures being enjoyed in wealthier developed countries. This is something most Americans find hard to believe.
Yet, the solution is simple. Getting Government to quit “helping”, as it is the job of the American people and free enterprise to innovate products people like, not the Government. Again, the basic solution is anchored in the basic economic principle of free enterprise, unencumbered by Government “help”.
The most pronounced factor in poverty, or basic quality of life, is affordable electricity in our modern world. We find it difficult to operate any of our machines without it. Yet 120 years ago, almost nobody had electricity. Such is the magic of modern innovation. Access, however, is not enough. Electricity must be dirt cheap or almost free. Don’t laugh. Thanks to free enterprise, we can now make all the long-distance phone calls we want for one low monthly cell phone fee.
The solution to affordable electricity is within the grasp of “we the people” more than you think. Technology exists, now all we need is political will. Two factors have accentuated the need for more clean electricity in the last few years: More concern about clean air, and a massive increase in electricity demand projected to double or triple in the coming decades, driven by the sudden popularity of Artificial Intelligence, Datacenters, and EV charging.
Sitting on the sites of all our nuclear power plants are already-mined, already formed pellets, for future affordable electricity. There are 90,000 tons of energy worth its weight in gold (at 1 cent/kWh) just sitting there. Some call this “nuclear waste” and are trying to spend tax dollars to bury it forever. Fortunately, the anti-nuclear lobbying has prevented this from happening. It turns out that recycling this material in fast reactors can extract all the hidden energy in uranium, not just 3% of it as is common in today’s reactors.
The major impediment, ironically, is that the United States has not defined a disposition plan for this “waste” material and a great many people, with good reason, regard this as detrimental to placing trust in a nuclear power industry. If this problem cannot be solved, how can nuclear power be good? It turns out that the nuclear power industry had the solution decades ago and, through the “magic” of Government “help”, that solution was legally stopped.
So, the Slightly Used Nuclear Fuel (SUNF) piled up. Being called “waste” has poisoned the public perception. However, with the new name, SUNF, there may be a way to see a bright new world ahead in plentiful, safe, clean, reliable, robust, and, best of all, cheap electricity. All we must do is get the Government to stop regulating it out of affordability.
To put this so-called “waste” into perspective, the amount of electricity contained in just the so-called “waste” material, we have is the equivalent of 270 years of our current electricity consumption in the US by itself, and we are creating 2,000 tons of additional SUNF per year. There is enough to power for our ramping demands for Artificial Intelligence, datacenters, and EV chargers and still have enough to export to those in adjoining states who do not have sufficient electricity.
If we could see our way of transitioning this production of electricity to private enterprise and allow companies to compete for your electricity business, it is not difficult to see the possibilities. Consider that, if disposition of this material is, indeed, a top priority, then the faster we dispose of it, the better, right? So, people would be encouraged to use electricity as fast as they can.
With affordable electricity, unlimited clean water, unlimited hydrogen, unlimited electricity for billions around the world would be realized. In fact, using proven nuclear generated electricity technology, power at one cent per kWh (it is well more than ten cents now) would be profitable. So, one low monthly price for electricity could not be far behind.
In fact, the US military is looking to power their bases with their own individual nuclear power plants as “micro-grids”, all owned by the individual base and not needing any power from external sources. As the competition ramps up for better and better reactors and the availability of power skyrockets, the American people finally get the advantage in the marketplace. Best of all, technology exists today to make all this possible. So, what are we waiting for?
It looks like we will need a Governor of a state to see the vision and develop this idea for their own state. The lucky state that seizes this opportunity could be the nucleus of the next electricity production revolution. Leveraging the existing Congressional Nuclear Waste fund for start-up costs in return for reduced regulations and some initial facilities, the state would benefit, the US Government would benefit, and, best of all, electricity customers would benefit. However, the overwhelming support of the public is needed for this to happen. Our US Government works for you, so you can make your desires known to a State Governor who can make the proposal to the US Government.
Since the nuclear power industry has proven to be the safest industry in the world for over 7 decades, regulations could easily be reduced to allow such a beneficial industry to thrive in free enterprise nirvana.
It would not take a lot of imagination to see free enterprise vs. government regulations spreading to the world. Running water, sanitation, and modern appliances would find their way into the poverty centers in South Asia, Africa, and the Pacific and East Asia. It just takes leadership.
Please share this information with teachers, students, and friends to encourage Energy Literacy conversations at the family dinner table.
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Critical infrastructure needs to be in the hands of the public, not the free market. Nuclear wouldn’t exist without massive government support in first place. It never will exist without it.
Yep, it’s called renewables.
I’ve heard about enough cases that I don’t need to imagine it. I’m glad to live in a place where all critical infrastructure is owned and maintained by the state in a non-profit manner.
“I’m glad to live in a place where all critical infrastructure is owned and maintained by the state in a non-profit manner.” How’s your electrical bills been lately?
Better. Prices going down, stable supply and my money is spend on building more renewables for energy independence.
Prices going down
Where? On Mars?
I suspect New Zealand.
Ah the ONE country in the world which is sufficiently empty that people do not get worked up about the massive dams that provide the only sort of stored energy renewables can produce.
If “energy independence” is your desired destiny, you shouldn’t be riding that hobbled donkey called “Renewables”.
Instead, buy a steed called “Diesel Generator”.
You can NEVER get energy independence with just wind and solar.
You are in your little la-la fantasy land again, luser.
Roads are government owned and it works pretty good except for when it doesn’t make sense. Same for big government owned airports. $50 to land at MKE. Oops always look thins up before you post it’s $99 now.
Oof. Did Verizon let you post that?
Ruinables have a very short intermittent life.
They are totally useless for modern society even with 100% back-up from reliable electricity supplies.
Why pay for something that is totally useless when you have to build the reliable supply anyway. !
The free market is in the hands of the public. How do you figure otherwise?
User. Based on Copilot/Bing/Microsoft, here in the U.S your wind and solar costs 6 times more than CCGT generated electricity when the required battery storage and overbuild is honestly accounted for (not to mention imposed costs for forcing CCGT down to 65% utilization for start/stop/hot & cold standby from 90%.which would be available if not required to accommodate nuisance W &S.
copy
Total Costs (50/50 wind/solar)
Compare to Conventional Power
Natural Gas (CCGT)
You forgot to adding the necessary replacement cost of the wind and solar over a 30 year period. At least once.. maybe twice.
\ I remembered it but I didn’t want to be too “alarmist”. I have a more damaging scenario on my hard drive for rebuttal if I get any push back.
Like Cuba yea right
Nick Stokes programs bots! Who knew? Proof positive that willful ignorance trumps machine intelligence every time.
As long as the MSM controls the narrative nuclear energy will be viewed as a problem, not a solution.
Does MSM control the narrative?
“Netflix has the highest penetration rate in Australia – 65%. The United Kingdom and the United States follow with a penetration rate of 57% and 53% respectively. Although Netflix’s largest market is the United States, it enjoys only the third position in terms of penetration.” I don’t know whether NF counts as MSM… going to google for a definition of MSM.
“Mainstream media. In journalism, mainstream media (MSM) is a term and abbreviation used to refer collectively to the various large mass news media that influence many people and both reflect and shape prevailing currents of thought. The term is used to contrast with alternative media.”
MSM, if used in the politically neutral sense, becomes whatever a large audience watches. Thus Netflix has become MSM. WUWT as a leading webpage for AGW info could meet some valid definitions of MSM. The logic becomes circular where whoever becomes the MSM is the narrative, and therefore mleskovarsocalrrcom’s condition must be permanent. The result of the condition “nuclear energy will be viewed as a problem, not a solution” seems provably false unless one argues that MSM did not exist before the mid seventies. I was not alive, but reading from pre China Syndrome reveals a lot of MSM pro-nuke cheerleading.
Too many replies, but thanks for something to think through.
There may be change in the winds as far as the MSM is concerned. Twice in as many weeks there have been nuclear stories on NPR that, while not pro-nuclear, start to signal tolerance. As NPR usually leads with the narrative stories, I thought this might signal the start of a new education campaign. Have a read. The story even acknowledges the limitations of wind/solar.
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/29/nx-s1-5161411/tech-companies-look-to-renewable-energy-to-power-ai
Mention of “space programs” often indicates authors whose cultural reference points were formed before the 1970s. More recent reference points involve cell phones and their aps, which the authors would react to by pointing out “communications systems”. That correct observation lands in the same bin as the words “Our US Government works for you”. Hierarchical, militaristic, gerontocratic, argument that will please those who already agree.
More recent reference points involve cell phones
And now exploding pagers
Article headline correction:
Author of Article Thinks They Have Found the Cure For POVERTY: Just Make Electricity Cheaper!
WHO, UN, UNESCO and Nobel Committee All Simultaneously Offer Authors Rewards and Jobs within their Organizations.
Globalists Balk at Plan to Undermine Their Grift.
Mother Theresa Posthumously Seethes with Jealousy.
Read the full article at the Enquirer….
Affordable electricity can resolve worldwide poverty.
But…
In fact, giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. – Paul Ehrlich
There is no desire on the part of the elites to really resolve anything – that keeps them in power.
A great location for processing SUNF into fast neutron breeder reactor fuel is next door to the Yucca Mountain Storage Facility.
We have a totally safe world class partially spent nuclear (slightly used nuclear fuel) storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Opening it has nothing to do with safety, it’s entirely politics. No state or community should be forced to accept any complex technological facility. Nearly every other major facility is won by the state and community that makes the facility most welcome. States and communities compete to get the tax base and jobs.
An EIS process for alternate sites would require more than 10 years. We’re locked into Yucca Mountain. Nuclear storage siting should have been handled the same competitive way that other major projects are awarded, but that’s history.
How to get a state and community to want a nuclear storage site? First off, no property taxes for perpetuity within a 50-mile radius. Secondly, a negotiated fee for every pound shipped to the facility paid into the state coffers. It’s in the best economic interest of the USA to maximize nuclear energy so the property tax and storage fees should be paid by the Federal Treasury not the nuclear generating station owners.
Nothing is “totally safe“.
“Mostly harmless”
The “Narrative”
Slightly used 70 year old nuclear fuel is a bad thing that must be prevented for health reasons. You are going to die if it is next to you.
Slightly used 10 year old lithium batteries are a good thing. They will “Save the Earth” and lower all your energy costs.
SUNF does not have to be processed in a fast breeder reactor as proposed here. MIT spinout TransAtomic had a well thought out inherently safe molton salt reactor design that could be fueled mostly by spent conventional uranium fuel rod jpellets. Their discussion of the remaining engineering uncertainties indicated no show stoppers, as there were several possible solutions to each remaining issue, such as actinide removal. Wrote about it in essay Going Nuclear in ebook Blowing Smoke.
I’ll be a fan when they get a working prototype.
Midweek weirdness
‘You can’t shoot climate change’: Richard Seymour on how far right exploits environmental crisis
Like a lot of people, Richard Seymour, 47, was trying to quietly ignore the climate crisis and get on with his life. As a prolific Marxist intellectual, this meant industriously writing about a range of subjects
…
Walking in a local park on Christmas Day, he couldn’t ignore how noticeably warm it was.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/30/richard-seymour-on-far-right-environmental-crisis-disaster-nationalism
To the Authors.
It does not matter if the electricity is affordable, if it is not RELIABLE as well !
Maybe put “reliable and affordable” in the heading.
Renewables are neither affordable nor reliable. Something the likes of Al Gore, Joe Biden, AOC cannot seem to understand.
Yep, as soon as you put the “reliable” in the heading…
… wind and solar need not even apply for the job !
“are neither affordable nor reliable.”
…nor endlessly renewable, nor carbon free, nor non-polluting, nor safe, nor environmentally sound, nor recyclable… But they make a lot of money for a few, at the expense of many more.
“seem to understand” is a canard. These are political profiteers, and understand perfectly well that they can pull in cash for this quackery.
What will we say when the whirligigs strip enough useless energy from the atmosphere that if affects the total climate? Has anyone estimated? I mean, if a butterfly’s wings can start a hurricane, then what about a windmill?
Very important information.
“Thanks to free enterprise, we can now make all the long-distance phone calls we want for one low monthly cell phone fee”
Pretty funny. Cell phones way more $$ than the old ATT.
Even when adjusted for real inflation.
However, my land line also has free long distance at a lower inflation adjusted cost than 30 years ago.
“Click this Link to Sign up for Energy Literacy from Ronald Stein” appears broken. Opens an empty tab on my mobile.
There is a major barrier not mentioned here. Currently costs are high. That money is not being offered to the gods. Some segments of society, insurance companies, lawyers, regulatory bureaucrats, to mention a few, benefit greatly from the things that currently make costs so high. Having much more political power than the average anti-nuclear nut, they can stay behind the scenes while preventing any and all changes that might reduce their interests.
“…it is the job of the American people and free enterprise to innovate products people like, not the Government.”
“free enterprise”, as in Saudi Princes, Russian Oligarchs, and various giant multinationals? “American people” as in the Americans living in Puerto Rico? “Free enterprise” replaced innovating products people like with products people could be addicted to decades ago. And how well are the Puerto Rican Americans doing in this regard, being umburdened by any effective governmental support? How is free enterprise helping them out of their misery?
Real poverty and real riches has almost nothing to do with how many dollars you have to spend when there is lttle to buy but products designed to fail, food and medecine that poison you, and services that enslave you.
What IS the job of GOVERNMENT then? It appears to be to tax the poor and powerless in favour of the rich and powerful. But this is not the essence of government. It’s the essence of bad government jumping to the tune of an oligarchy, while quietly taking the blame and, under the table, the rewards, for this betrayal of the public’s trust.
Let’s remember that none of these entities, free enterprise, government, and the American people, are anything more than a conglomartion of individual people.
What’s essentially wrong with American society, and the rest of Western society, is an addiction to secrecy, hypocrisy, and deceit, with the best liars ruling the roost, and the majority in the galleys helping to keep them there by their penchant for self-deception.
Please share this information with teachers, students, and friends to encourage Energy Literacy conversations at the family dinner table.
Well even with an abundance of cheap dispatchable energy poverty comes in various shades as well as childhood recollections of the family dinner table I note-
“I Had My Childhood Stolen From Me” Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts On The New Stolen Generation
While we can all appreciate the need for happy families with mum and dad and plenty of positive energy that’s not always the case. Still it does afford more of a helping hand and perhaps the case worker can smile a little bit with that-
Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts Profile | University of Technology Sydney
Stolen or saved that is the question Vanessa and it’s now the productivity of fossil fuels that keeps you in the manner to which you’re accustomed.
If only it were as simple as they state it.
Do not misunderstand. Cheap electricity is good. Poverty is bad. But it will take more than talking about it to get it done.
The government investments in the US are heading down the wrong path (IMHO), but nothing will change until that house of cards falls. The serious question needs to be, once that fall occurs, will we have the means to bootstrap?
One scenario is a failed grid leaving hundreds of millions of people unable to charge EVs and become immobilized. Food? Water? Communications? All things we in the US more or less take for granted will be blacked out.