I've been to mountain top: As life winds down, the opening sentence of this paper lifts me.

[NNadir]

The paper in question is this one: Carbon Dots@Ti3C2Tx-MXene 0D/2D Hybrid Composites toward High-Performance Lubricating Additives under Varying Temperatures Junhai Wang, Yu Kan, Tingting Yan, Wenfeng Liang, Lixiu Zhang, Xinran Li, and Siyang Gao ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering 2024 12 (1), 96-110.

The sentence is this one:

With the advancements in industries such as nuclear power, aerospace, and aviation, mechanical components are inevitably exposed to increasingly challenging work conditions, including high temperatures, heavy loads, slow velocities, and high vacuum environments, often result in friction and wear of the components. (1?3)

Since Chernobyl, by demonstrating the worst case, made me pronuclear, my life has been filled with nuclear dreams and nuclear sighs, the latter about what could have, should have been. The planet would not have been in flames, should not have been in flames.

Trust me, a sentence like this one to open a paper on tribology would have been absolutely startling to see just ten years ago. But here it is the first thing mentioned as a high technology is what I have bolded, nuclear power, before aerospace and aviation.

The best time to have done this, to have gone nuclear to save the environment, would have been 30 years ago. The next best time is now.

I will not live to see the world saved, if it is saved, but this sentence alone gives me hope for a future I will not see.

I've been to the mountain top.

[EYESORE 9001]

1. I too am a proponent of nuclear power

Two issues must be addressed, however: spent fuel storage and proper maintenance of facilities. Both get swept under the rug, unfortunately. I did a brief stint with a company that made components for nuclear reactors, and I can attest to the most rigorous of engineering, Quality, and safety testing and evaluation on the face of the earth. I have absolute confidence in the components that go into a nuclear reactor and auxiliary systems. The private companies who cut corners at every opportunity? Not so much.

[NNadir]

2. The focus on "spent" nuclear fuel as if it was a real problem is a absurd.

The "problem" is purely the result of selective attention, selective attention that is proving quite deadly.

Today, 19,000 people will die from spent combustible fuel, also know as "air pollution." That is even without considering the cost of climate change.

I've been hearing this crap about so called "nuclear waste" for thirty years, but what I haven't heard is a case where the storage of used nuclear fuel over the nearly 70 year history of commercial nuclear power has killed as many people as will die in the next 12 hours from air pollution.

Used nuclear fuel is a valuable resource which is critical to the survival of civilization. As long as we carry on as if it is a problem, the only energy problem that matters, rather than a resource, the more we will continue to make the state of affairs with things that do matter worse.

The state of affairs to which I refer is the fact that the planet is in flames, and yet...and yet...I find myself talking about used nuclear fuel which has a spectacular record of safe handling.

It is nothing if not absurd.

[EYESORE 9001]

3. Yucca Mountain

I’ll say no more.

[NNadir]

4. Would this be in lieu of saying something meaningful.

No one has ever proposed a "Yucca Mountain" for dangerous fossil fuel waste which kills 7 million people per year.

Yucca Mountain was always a dumb idea because it was a paean to the waste mentality of the 20th century.

If one takes the position that public stupidity should determine infrastructure choices, one is engaging in enthusiasm for, well, public stupidity.

I understand used nuclear fuel on a profound level and so I know that Yucca Mountain was simply an exercise in bad thinking. That anyone still carries on about it is a reflection of the elevation of ignorance as a virtue, in other words, an appalling and dangerous attack on the future.

Whenever I ask antinukes to show that in the 70 year history of commercial nuclear energy it gas killed as many people as will die from air pollution in the next six hours, using a reputable source, they change the subject or mutter something insipid.

Antinukes are very much like antivaxxers with the caveat that antivaxxers have not come close to killing as many people. Covid never killed 19,000 people in a single day and Covid was killing for a couple of years.

Antinuke fear and ignorance has been killing people at that rate for many decades.

Have a nice day.

[EYESORE 9001]

5. Ok, one more thing

Goodbye

[NNadir]

6. Good idea. Clear thinking can be upsetting.

This is, in my opinion, why the planet is in flames, avoidance of clear thinking.