Some climates never change

Oh boy, here we go again. They're pushing a new nuclear power plant on the banks of the Columbia River at Hanford. Yes, that Hanford, already one of the worst nuclear waste disaster zones in the world.

But this time it's going to be different, they say. It will be safe. It will be clean. And the deadly waste? Um, they'll figure out something.

Who's "they"?

These efforts have gained support in the nation’s capital where many Democrats eager to make progress on climate change have joined with Republicans to funnel money into development. The federal Energy Department has received $160 million to help fund X-energy, and the infrastructure bill that cleared Congress on Friday ups that amount to cover almost half the projected $2.2 billion cost of the Washington reactor project....

X-energy, along with Bellevue-based TerraPower, founded by Bill Gates, and Portland-based NuScale, proposes reactors that can ramp up and down their electrical output much more rapidly than the large reactors now operating. This agility could help keep electrical grids in balance as more wind and solar power comes online.

TerraPower plans to build its project at the site of a Wyoming coal plant in a partnership with a subsidiary of PacifiCorp, a private utility. NuScale is proposing a project in Idaho and has considered eventually locating a unit in Washington state.

It was just a matter of time before it came to this. The nuke knuckleheads are going to use global warming to their maximum political advantage. They've already crapped up the region pretty badly, but they're not done. Far from it.

They don't have a solution for the waste. They never have, and they never will. Even if the plants completely contain all radioactivity – unlikely – the waste will sit next to Columbia, or ooze into it, for thousands of years.