coal – How Would You Do It?

I listen to PBS in the mornings and this morning, I heard an entire show looking into the new nuclear power plants. Are we finally going to admit that nuke power has a strategic place in managing our chaotic climate? As noted in recent posts, I joined the US Navy nuclear machinist program in my teens!

I live in the most beautiful yet most filthy state in the US: Kentucky. The birds, trees, flowers, rivers, the entire state could be a natural haven. Except that for over a hundred years Kentucky has jabbed and stabbed nature with deep coal mines and worse, the open strip mines where gigantic monster bulldozers scrape entire forests and the wildlife away to get to that coal. This is all over the state, not just the eastern Appalachian part.

Where I live in western Ky between Owensboro and Bowling Green there were two strip mines that were much too close; I passed them going to college, the store. One in Hartford, one in Paradise. Remember the song? “Daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County, down by the Green River where Paradise lay? I’m sorry my son, you’re too late in asking; Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.” – John Prine. He gets into gory details, too.

The nuke power we know was based on the US Navy Admiral Rickover’s new submarines that could stay out for months at a time without refueling, submarines that went under the Arctic ice cap. That was revolutionary for our military.

I got out and worked at San Onofre, the three-reactor site in San Luis Obispo, California. I worked in the reactor compartments, around the waste, doing repairs, I wrote in the newsletter, planned high radiation jobs. I got an award for my high rad work planning article in the Nuclear News, the industry magazine. I worked in on-site drills for nuke safety with four area hospital emergency rooms.

Waste was the biggest issue. Now the tech is ready to not only make a TMI event impossible but also not add to the hidden piles of high rad waste deep in the Rockies and elsewhere. In my Elise t’Hoot Galactic Adventure series, the colony planet of Tenembras would not have survived without the nuke plant that made the oxygen for them to breathe as the planet was populated with no live ecology. Dissidents were dumped there to die but the nuke plant was integral not only for O₂ production but in getting galactic aide as well. Here’s a coffee cup I designed and had made at Zazzle back then:

Nuke power was dangerous but I worked it anyway. The new tech is not. Let the new tech nuke power team up with the solar, wind, hydro and other accepted power sources that cannot provide the amount of energy the new nukes can. The new nukes need to be part of the future’s energy mix.

A friend of mind urged me to share why I don’t heat or cool my house. The cabin here looks rough on the outside, but it is nice inside with four pairs of skylights, lots of room, a huge library, a two car garage, two stories and a full basement. It also has a nice heat pump. I leave the heat on ‘frost watch’ (about 40 F) and don’t use the cooling at all.

You may think Kentucky isn’t that far north or south and it doesn’t matter, but 40 F in the house all winter needs to be experienced. Toothpaste doesn’t want to come out. Bread won’t rise. No brewing until late spring. The microwave fogs up when I heat something. The refrigerator won’t come on because it is set at 40F and when it doesn’t run, the freezer compartment doesn’t stay cold. The cats get VERY friendly, wanting to snuggle all the time. I have to leave the radio on all the time (standby) because if I turn it off, the circuits get condensation and I can’t turn it back on for a day or two. I have a wood stove in case the electric goes out.

Why? Because I think people, certainly Americans, are crazy about constantly either heating or cooling to get a perfect temperature. Is all of that energy consumption really worth you personal comfort? Do you wonder how much pollution and CO2 is associated with your demand for being able to wear a t-shirt inside all of the time? How much coal do you need ripped from the Kentucky countryside in order never have to wear a sweater?

I go home from work and , if it’s cold enough, change into my long johns and add a sweater or sweat shirt and sweat pants. If it’s colder than that, I add a hip-length super-fleece jacket and pants. By layering as needed, I can stay cozy all the time, especially since I have a thermal blanket at the ready by my easy chair. In the summer I unlayer, usually ending up in a tank top and loose skirt. I have one window fan and lots of screened windows. The full basement helps moderate temperatures.

“I can’t do that, I have kids.” Right. You are teaching your kids that a constant, narrow range of comfort is normal and good. I was raised in a house heated by a Warm Morning coal store that sat in the kitchen. My job in the winter was to go outside to the coal pile and chip some from the ice and snow so Ma could start the stove up. My sisters, brother and I have few colds or other sicknesses and we know for a fact that winter is cold and summer is hot.

“I have a medical condition.” Do what your doctor says, I’m only trying to make you think. Thinking includes making an informed decision whether messing with the thermostat is proper for you or your family.

“I have a right to slurp up as much energy as I can pay for and don’t care about how much of the poisonous residue ends up in the air for little children to breathe.” I have nothing polite to say to folks like that.