...ignorance of its critics.
My son, I'm pleased to say, not being a moron, is on the front lines of developments in the field.
I'm very, very, very proud of him. I sat him down over the thanksgiving break to remind him - not that I had to - that it his responsibility to work as hard, not for personal profit, but for humanity, to address the coming hard times given all of the outstanding educational resources he has enjoyed. He assured me he understood, and promised to honor what I've personally taught him after I am gone.
He's in additive manufacture right now; but I advised him that he will be required to think far beyond his graduate training, and we exchanged ideas about his girlfriend's favorite element in the periodic table - she is also a highly educated nuclear engineer - americium, its critical mass and its fission neutron multiplicity over the fast spectrum and the properties of the 242mAm isotope which can be obtained from 241Am recovered for the benefit of humanity - whining destructive ignoramuses be damned - from used nuclear fuel, particularly if we recover the isolated aged reactor grade plutonium stockpiles in the UK to accelerate breeding for more rapid scale up.
Of course, the assholes who have functioned as arsonists complaining about forest fires, who did everything in their dumb shit power like to sit on their asses, parrot university press releases to hype trivial junk as if they were just about to be industrialized on a massive scale, are not satisfied with the rate of recovery from the extreme ignorance they so readily embraced, the willful destruction of nuclear intellectual, physical and manufacturing infrastructure.
We are recovering however - certainly too little to late. Worldwide right now, there are 64 nuclear reactors under construction, as reported by Dr Sama Bilbao y León, Director General of the World Nuclear Association. I assure you that her role as a scientist and engineer goes far beyond picking lint out of her navel to credulously report wishful thinking based on university press releases. She's on the front line of trying to save the world.
I'm pleased to report that people like my son, and many thousands of other highly educated, highly trained engineers are pushing back to confront and perhaps overcome the ignorance and stupidity that prevented nuclear energy from doing what it might have done. It's not an easy task, of course. As we've seen in politics, and certainly in the field of energy, ignorance is extremely powerful, but I'm pleased that there are people like my son, his colleagues, and educated people trained for nuclear energy across the whole world, who are confronting that ignorance and working to move the world beyond it.
Thanks for asking.
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