America finds herself beset with two fossil fuel concerns. We worry that we are damaging the environment by using too much fossil fuel; we worry that there is not enough fossil fuel to use.
There are alternatives, including one we have foolishly ignored. America began the atomic age, but she has since abandoned a committed program of nuclear power that would produce abundant, cheap, clean electricity.
It was a huge mistake for America to turn away from nuclear energy at home to rely on foreign oil. We do not rely merely on foreign oil – we rely on expensive foreign oil from despotic foreign regimes.
Nuclear power has been, and could be again, evidence of our skill and ingenuity. The technology is cleaner, safer, and more needed than ever before.
If there were ever a proposal to construct a nuclear power plant in Whitewater, I would be that proposal’s strongest proponent.
I have even researched the idea. The average nuclear power plant in America would offer many benefits for Whitewater: four to seven hundred permanent jobs, over a thousand jobs during construction, over $430 million dollars in annual goods and services sales, and state and local tax revenue of almost $20 million dollars per year.
All this for a reactor core, main building, cooling towers, and control facility.
Woo Hoo!
We easily have that much space in Whitewater – we have land to spare.
Other communities would love to have their own clean, efficient reactor. We’d face stiff competition for the site of any power plant. The hundreds of workers needed to staff the plant would require housing, parking, etc.
One must, in a case like this, carefully review a map of the city, and consider all the possible locations for a fission nuclear reactor. That’s exactly what super-smart, well-dressed planning consultants would do.
I may lack a consultant’s keen insight and sophisticated demeanor, but I more than make up for it in my unbridled love of planning.
After careful consideration of every possible location in the city, I have determined that the best location for the reactor’s core is 42°49’55.52″N, 88°43’59.15″W.
Those unfamiliar with terrestrial coordinates likely know the location better as 312 W. Whitewater Street, the current location of our municipal building.
The shortsighted among us will say that placing the reactor at 312 W. Whitewater means that we’ll have no place for local political meetings.
Why, why are some among us so lacking in vision?
When you have a nuclear reactor in your town, you don’t need local politics.
Anyone who had studied the archives of the Fox TV Network would know that in the Simpsons’ Springfield, it’s the nuclear plant owner Mr. Burns, and not Mayor Quimby, who calls the shots.
That happens in different forms in different places. For example, in Whitewater, it’s Chief Coan, and not City Manager Brunner, who runs the town. (Runs it right into the ground, actually…)
Far as I know, Coan has no background in applied nuclear physics. The adverbial Chief Coan may yet say, however, that his senior officers are completely, thoroughly, amazingly, courageously, valiantly prepared to staff the reactor.
Go nuclear!