"One of the most remarkable chapters of your book has to do with something called Project Rulison in 1969, just, like, three weeks after Woodstock, when a nuclear weapon with more than twice the power of the Hiroshima bomb was used in a test to see if nuclear devices could be used basically for fracking, to break up rock and - you know, and release natural gas. How did you find out about this?"
Nuclear is a dying beast. So are fossil plants.
But fossil plants still have a future foreseeable future -- if they can be load following or peaking. Certainly the demand for load following and peaking plants is going to grow as renewables grow in the market at a rate faster then storage and frequency regulating devices.
"Federal regulators killed a rigorous examination of cancer in millions of Americans living near nuclear plants because they were convinced the study couldn’t link reactors to disease and would be too costly, newly released records show."
"Doubts over the study’s usefulness ran deep at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency overseeing America’s aging fleet of nuclear plants. But some study skeptics pushed to save it nonetheless, arguing that modern science could help address public concerns over possible health risks related to the plants. They couldn’t convince their bosses, however, who concluded that the $8 million price tag for the pilot study — which would have examined San Onofre and six other sites — couldn’t be justified."
"The previously unreported rift is captured in more than 1,000 pages of NRC documents obtained by Southern California News Group under the Freedom of Information Act. Some officials worried that killing the study would be “a PR fiasco,” reigniting questions about the demise of what some saw as the most significant federal examination of nuclear plant safety in a generation."
"The thrill of theoretical experimentation in the laboratory may be exciting for young engineers. But they shouldn’t get our money. Nor should we hand these aspiring atomic alchemists the mandate to cure climate change. That race is already being won by renewable energy research and implementation. It is in this field where the real “innovation” lies and where Congress should be directing their mandate and funding dollars."