To the Editor:
I read Bill McKibben’s Fossil-Free USA in the March 5 issue of The Nation and I agree with the good work being done to prevent more fossil fuel from being dug and sucked out of the planet. I do not agree however with wind and solar being the complete and only solution to the U.S. and world future energy requirements. The immediate future will need electricity/electrons to charge all the world’s vehicles, heat and air condition every home and building, keep the manufacturing sector going, produce synthetic jet fuels from sequestered CO2 for air travel, keep the lights on and run appliances, etc.
Wind and solar would be a small Band-Aid and will require massive land areas and other caveats like battery storage, fossil fuel backup and line transmission losses. Thorium Molten Salt Reactors (LIFTRS) are the answer. These new reactors are 100 percent safe, use 97 percent of the nuclear energy, can be made small, trailer truck size, have little benign waste, do not need emergency water cooling like ocean, river or lakes, they can desalinate water and produce synthetic jet fuel from sequestered CO2.
The element thorium can be found in every country on the planet and is four-times as abundant as uranium with enough energy for thousands of years. China, India, and the Netherlands are currently building demonstrator LIFTRS we should be too! Please check out YouTube: Roadmap to Nowhere by Conley & Maloney and Thorium Kirt Sorenson.
PS: I have no agenda. I just love this spaceship, planet Earth.
Joel Aronie
Chilmark
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