On this show, Paul interviews Larry Behrens. Larry is Western States Director with the group Power The Future. The group is fighting against both the national and New Mexico versions of the “Green New Deal” and recently co-produced a study with the Competitive Enterprise Institute which found that the national plan would cost every New Mexico household more than $70,000 in its first year of implementation.
Paul and Larry further discuss New Mexico’s “Energy Transition Act” and the many well-funded forces arrayed against energy freedom and economic prosperity.
Power the Future needs to include nuclear fuel production here in New Mexico. This needs to include URENCO enrichment. Also, the stored nuclear fuel (SNF) that is being proposed for HI-STORE CISF can be converted from solid uranium to liquid fuel for advance molten salt fuel and the future molten chloride salt fast reactors (MCSFR).
Also, all the depleted uranium (DU) at stored at URENCO, as the by product of the enrichment process, can also be liquefied for the MCSFR.
So the reality is that NM could become the number one provider of nuclear fuel for the future molten salt reactor (MSR) commercial fleet in the US and even other countries (export).
Xochitl Torres Small has a very open mine and I am working with her on a nuclear future for NM. She seems to understand how important energy is to the environment. Hopefully she supports HI-STORE CISF in her district.
Clean Energy Transition is not ever going to work in NM. The law is more about PNM recovering from coal decommissions. This law does not represent the general population of the state. Xcel is building the state’s largest wind farm northeast of Roswell and they happen to also be a supporter of nuclear energy and the HI-STORE CISF project.
Here is my latest article about the CETA of NM:
Beyond nuclear is a fallacy:
The year is 2050 and New Mexico is supposed to be completely decarbonized according to the 2019 law to implement the Clean Energy Transition Act (CETA) on the electrical grid. Back in 2019, Governor Michelle Lujan-Grisham was absolutely convinced that New Mexico could lead the charge to remove O&G emissions from our air and water. I can confidently predict that this scenario will never come to reality after spending billions of dollar on the least dense energy source of those available to generate electricity.
This is worth repeating from my last letter: resource-intensive and land-intensive renewable solar farms take 450 times more land than nuclear plants, and wind farms take 700 times more land than natural gas wells, to produce the same amount of energy.
Stored uranium and natural gas are the two highest energy dense sources of fuel while wind and solar are the least dense energy source. In fact, W/S are not even fuels according to the science of physics. A battery is a form of stored energy and can be considered a fuel source. Can you just imagine the physics of batteries being even more resource-intensive and land-intensive then wind and solar capture hardware.
To even think the industrial world could prosper, yet survive, on wind and solar has already been proven to require either natural gas or nuclear for back-end load base electricity to provide 24×7 usage. Then there is the ever expanding overhead on the electrical grid with all it’s towers and land easements across the fruited plains, with recent demands to bury them (NIMBY). And yet, there is a contingent of people around the world and especially here in New Mexico that believe there will be a future society some day without fission and fossil energy sources. That is an illusion just like the Green New Deal, the model for NM’s Clean Energy Transition law.
Speaking of beyond nuclear, there is an activist group by that name using the court system to hinder the decommissioning of shuttered nuclear power plants and the relocation of the stored nuclear fuel. They are suing every public agency and private business trying to solve the issue of the alleged nuclear waste myths, by locking horns with HI-STORE CISF in court.
You guys should be checking out my weekly blog on energy in NM (see link below). According to my stats, no one is reading them.
Larry, we need to talk. I can tell you every thing about HI-STORE CISF and nuclear energy in general. Come to Roswell and we can have a lot of coffee discussing energy in NM. Read my blog – link below.
Very good point on “out of state” money. In political terms, NM is a very economical place for the env. groups to work in. Plus NM has lots of energy resources. If those can be impaired, the enviros will win a major victory.