Its like what happened at Chernobyl. The clown in charge just did a lot of things he didn’t understand and he blew the reactor up. He knew that blowing the plant up wasn’t possible. Its just like that. It just isn’t possible that changing the composition of the atmosphere can have any great effect we might want to avoid. I’m so glad you’ve told me that climate change at the pace and scale we are being warned about can’t possibly be as dangerous as what the top climatologists in the US, China, Russia, Germany, Japan, the UK, France, India, etc. say.

Just because the leaders of the most prestigious scientific organizations on the planet, i.e. the President of the National Academy of Sciences, and every other head of every other comparable scientific society in every country the developed world, and many in the developing world, have all come together signing a formal statement warning civilization that it must decarbonize its energy supply as soon as possible to try to limit the effects of climate change means absolutely nothing. These people are morons. The only way to get to be the President of the National Academy of Sciences it to be a moron. They’ve only got 200 Nobel winners, i.e. almost 10% of the membership. That’s all. Its preposterous. They have no clue. Science itself is all BS. Everyone knows that.

My first contact with the Columbia Generating Station didn’t work out that well. The PR contact explained to me that they don’t have a budget for tours. I mentioned this to a pro nuke I had corresponded with, and the next thing I knew he had contacted the plant himself. I then asked the contact person he told me to write and the tour suddenly became possible.

I have been a climate guy. If you study until you understand the state of the art in climate science it is horrifying, and the politics around it is not fun at all.

In contrast, learning about nuclear power has lifted some of the darkness for me.

I had a great time visiting an operating reactor recently. My wife and I visited the Columbia Generating Station in Washington State. If you can get in, its a bit of a social thing. I wouldn’t mind seeing the people who showed us around again at all. They had four people escort us around the whole plant.

We had to do some pretty silly things, like go through security again and again, or stand in front of and stick our hands into weird radiation detecting machines, or activate a door by waving a badge in front of a sensor and then having to open it fast on pain of causing an enormous problem involving security. There weren’t any potlucks.

But it was fascinating to stand on top of the refueling floor and see how small the reactor core must be and to think about how much energy was coming out of this plant. I really enjoyed talking to the reactor operators about TMI and wandering around the control room. These were serious people doing an important job they were proud of. The dry cask storage was fantastic – there were just this tiny number of concrete things sitting peacefully in a lot in the back of the plant. This was the “waste” problem that NPR assures me is “piling up” “unsolved”. Its a joke.

This is the solution to the climate problem. At least this is obvious to me.

Learning about the solution is a lot more fun than studying how bad the climate problem is.

“Nearly all nuclear plants planned or proposed are light water reactors that rely upon finite quantities of uranium that will peak in a few decades just like coal. ”

Your term “finite quantities” describes the whole universe. There are finite quantities of everything. The question is is there enough to consume until a good alternate is in place – like a Liquid Floride Thorium reactor (LFTR). The answer to that is YES, there is more than enough uranium to power our reactors until new designs come on line.

“The world has likely already passed the point of peak oil, which is destabilizing the financial system and causing chaos to erupt around the globe.”

Perhaps, I am not sure that we have passed “peak oil” or if the artificial limits on its use have caused a bubble. However, moving to a nuclear future would make sure that we are able to power our civilization for thousands of years more. It makes sense to move in that direction.

“The use of so-called breeder reactors could extend the horizon of obtainable electricity from nuclear power further into the future.”

Breeder reactors are not “so-called” they are breeder reactors. They produce either U233 and some U232 from Thorium or PL 239 and 240 from Uranium. Both U233/2 and PL 239/240 are FUEL that has vast energy potential and can be totally consumed in a properly designed reactor. U233 has the best potential. Thus, as Rod Adams has said, currently we are burning the bark and throwing the logs away. Moving to breeder reactors is a wise move and will greatly increase our energy resources. The PL can be monitored, stored and burned safely.

“But then we would be using plutonium, which may prove to be too dangerous for the society we are apt to become. ”

I am not sure what you mean by “may prove too dangerous” but PL from a power reactor cannot be used to build a military weapon and is carefully tracked at all times so that we know exactly where it is. If used as a fuel it can be transmuted into other elements that are highly useful.

“Nevertheless, nuclear power may be all that stands between what we identify as civilization and its alternatives.”

Yes, all other power sources are far inferior. I am a strong fan of the LFTR but every nuclear power plant designed in the west is safer and more reliable than any other alternative.

So the next question becomes, what can we do to improve our platform to get the real message across to the public? More and more regular people are going to become more inquisitive about nuclear energy and that is what makes it of vital importance that they find their information from the nukes with the facts.