Reasons to be thankful in a world gone right

Special Dispatch #1 Thanksgiving, 2008

I couldn’t find the time the last couple of weeks to do a whole Better
All the Time roundup, so I’m going to do this one in pieces throughout the
Thanksgiving weekend. This is like one of those Thanksgiving marathons they
run on the cable channels– Andy Griffith or whatever — only with good news
stories!

Item 1

Mini
nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000
homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the
US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material,
have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will
be encased in concrete and buried underground.

Other companies are known to be designing micro-reactors. Toshiba has been
testing 200KW reactors measuring roughly six metres by two metres. Designed
to fuel smaller numbers of homes for longer, they could power a single building
for up to 40 years.

The Good News

Cheap, clean, and virtually limitless energy was the vision that originally
sold the world on nuclear power more than half a century ago. While safety concerns
have slowed the adoption and use of nuclear fission in the US to a fraction
of what it was expected to be by now, other countries have made rapid progress–
notably France Ukraine, Sweden, Slovakia, and Belgium, all of which derive more
than 50% of their electricity from nuclear. France leads the world, deriving
77% of its power from nuclear.

Now the US has the opportunity to turn things around by leapfrogging earlier
models of nuclear power production in favor of newer models that offer greater
efficiency and safety. These miniature plants are one possible approach, making
small-scale distribution of nuclear power available for the first time.

Live to see it!