Sweden is making a major move into nuclear energy:
Uranium mining is set to return to mainland Europe as the region seeks alternatives to Russian nuclear fuel and Sweden pushes to treble its atomic energy capacity, the country’s climate minister has said.
Sweden has lots of uranium:
Romina Pourmokhtari, who last year became the youngest cabinet minister in Swedish history at the age of 26, said there was a parliamentary majority behind lifting Sweden’s ban on uranium extraction and opening up by far the largest deposits in the European Union.
As we have been saying for a long time, if you are serious about considering carbon dioxide a threat (I’m not), then the only alternative is nuclear energy:
Nearly 40 years after the completion of the country’s last new nuclear power plant, Pourmokhtari has announced plans to build at least ten large reactors to meet an anticipated surge in demand for zero-carbon power.
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“The government is aiming at doubling electricity production in 20 years,” Pourmokhtari said. “For our clean power system to function, a large part of this has to be dispatchable [i.e., reliable] where nuclear power is the only non-fossil option. Nuclear power also has a reduced environmental footprint and requires limited resources in comparison with most energy sources.”
In recent years, Sweden has led the way on several issues. But why don’t environmentalists in the U.S. turn to nuclear power? Because their real aim is not to reduce CO2 emissions, it is to funnel trillions of dollars away from industries that generally don’t support the Democratic Party, toward industries–wind, solar, and utilities that put profit above their ratepayers’ interests–that do support the Democratic Party. Our mad drive toward “green” energy will impoverish the middle class, but that is OK, since the middle class doesn’t vote Democratic anyway. And people will die, but since when is that a concern?
Whether the American Left’s refusal to embrace nuclear energy is irrational depends on what you assume their objectives are.
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