If greenies really wanted to eradicate pollution, greenhouse gases, etc... they would be cheering on advances in safe new nuclear power generation. Imagine LA getting cheap fresh water from de-salinated saltwater thus freeing up the Owens Valley water for agricultural uses. Same for Sacramento valley, if cheap desalination became feasible, agriculture could still hum along without threatening Delta smelt.
Cheap electricity could also bring back various metal industries. Oregon used to be a big leader in aluminum and exotic alloys until the formerly cheap hydroelectric power became too expensive. Now thousand of jobs that paid VERY well are gone.
With cheap electricity thermal depolymerization of landfills becomes possible. Mine old landfills for metals and then depolymerize the rest to create synthetic oil. Not only do we get rid of old landfills, we get energy and recyclable materials out of the deal.
agree’
Thermal depolymerization was an interesting idea that didn’t work out for various reasons. I’m not sure that one of the reported reasons was the electricity costs. but judging by the designs I recall—electricity would have played a big role in costs.anyhow it was a idea that got batted around 5-6 years ago and yielded a demo plant in philadelphia and a turkey evisceration plant somewhere out in the midwest.
Seems to me they caught a couple of bad breaks.