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1 Support of Nuclear Energy

Because of some scary nuclear reactor accidents, such a Chernobyl, Three-mile Island and Fukushima-Daiichi, many people are justifiably afraid of nuclear power. This was such a problem for some governments that all the nuclear power plants in Germany were shut down and the building of new reactors in the U.S., has come to a stand still.

Ironically, if Dr. Arvin Weinberg, the Director of the Oak Ridge Laboratory in the 1950s and 1960's, had been allowed to continue the development of Molten Salt Reactors and had this technology, rather than the Cold Water Reactors (CWR) become the choice of nuclear power companies,
none of these accidents would have occurred. This is because a Molten Salt Reactor is super safe and cannot suffer a melt down because it is in a constant melt down state, which is an inherent part of its operation. If an earthquake or tsunami occurs, if all the operators die, if all the electricity stops, and other ifs, a freeze plug melts and the molten salt drains to underground holding tanks and the reactor stops. In addition, nuclear waste is a fraction of that of CWRs. The following pages outline this story and this technology.

It could also be argued that if MSRs rather than CWRs were used for the production of electrical power, their inherent safety, lower cost and modularity would have resulted in the rapid replacement of coal powered electricity and the rapid accumulation of global warming CO2 would not be happening.

The following figure shows just how important it is to replace coal generated electricity with a carbon negative source such as nuclear.

Source of CO2 800