Al Gore has made hundreds of millions of dollars during the last eight years scolding the human race and warning of imminent climate catastrophe, according to Fast Company Magazine.
Carbon dioxide is Satan, and we’re damned if we don’t stop making it — don’t hold your breath, literally.
His dream world is the one in which we completely stop energy sources that release CO2 into the atmosphere. Sounds great, but it would require every one of the 6.8 billion people on earth change his or her way of life
Realistic, I know.
Instead of dissent to the utterly necessary means of our existence, he might consider promoting an excellent source of environmental relief: hamster generators. I mean nuclear power plants.
No, power plants aren’t as cute as a warehouse full of furry, scurrying rodents, but they’re realistically efficient at producing energy.
A piece of uranium the size of the last joint on your index finger contains the same amount of energy contained in Mike the Tiger’s cage. Releasing that energy produces 0.00 percent of the CO2 emissions released by that coal.
All that energy with none of the atmospheric devastation? There has to be a catch. There’s always a catch, right?
Of course there is. Well, if you ask Al, there’s a catch. He claims nuclear energy is too dirty, too expensive, too unsafe, and it poses a security threat to the world.
I call shenanigans on Mr. Gore.
Dirty — I don’t even know what he could mean by that. The  radioactive water that comes in contact with the reactor is never released into the environment. The emissions are virtually nothing. The only thing that gets released into the atmosphere is steam, which is water just like that stuff that falls out of the sky sometimes. The steam is made from water that is circulated independent of the radioactive water.
Al says nuclear is expensive — he’s almost as funny as his imposter on “SNL.” But he’s being serious, so he’s just lying. The World Nuclear Association provides data stating nuclear energy is not only cost-competitive. It is in several cases cheaper than coal, fossil fuel, natural gas and renewable sources.
Safety is, has and always will be a concern when considering nuclear energy. Fear seems to be an appropriate emotion with incidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
Chernobyl is the only nuclear accident to have caused fatalities on site of a nuclear reactor. Three Mile Island happened before technology and science could understand exactly what was happening. Science has come a long way in the last 20 years — Mr. Gore even invented the Internet since then.
As for the waste, you should consider looking at how they store the nuclear “waste” — waste that still has 95 percent of its original energy. Uranium is considered waste after using 5 percent of its energy. It’s then stored in casks.
The design of the casks is pretty hush-hush, but it has a lot of cement and metal shaped in a cylinder around the waste. You can fly an F4 fighter jet into these things, and they’re just peachy — it’s awesome and on YouTube.
If we can keep our nuclear warheads safe, I think the nuclear waste is pretty safe — not to mention the power plants have plenty of armed security guards tested yearly by Army Special Forces.
The waste is nowhere close to ready to be used as a nuclear weapon. Not even George Clooney could steal nuclear waste and use it as a weapon.
Everything aside, I don’t blame Mr. Gore for criticizing nuclear energy. As long as there is no perfect source of energy — something the second law of thermodynamics prohibits — he has a hefty paycheck with his name on it.
If you could make hundreds of millions criticizing solutions, would you ever promote a good one?
Matt Lousteau is a 20-year-old mechanical engineering junior from Laplace. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_mlousteau.—-Contact Matthew Lousteau at [email protected]