The United States is behind the curve on clean, affordable sources of electricity. It's time to modernize our antiquated electrical grid and advanced nuclear power generation capabilities.
Connecting the Dots Video
Guest: Randal Pinocci is Montana’s Public Service Commissioner for District 1, representing north-central and eastern Montana. A longtime conservative leader, Pinocci has served in the Montana Legislature, worked on statewide campaigns, and has been deeply involved in energy policy, infrastructure oversight, and constitutional governance. He brings firsthand experience from inside the regulatory system and a strong emphasis on free-market solutions to energy reliability and grid modernization.
Guet: Dr. Robert Zubrin is a nuclear engineer, aerospace innovator, and one of the most outspoken advocates for advanced nuclear energy and technological progress. He is the founder and president of the Mars Society and Pioneer Astronautics, holds multiple patents, and has authored more than a dozen books on science, energy, and human innovation. Zubrin is a leading voice against energy scarcity narratives and in defense of free-market technological advancement.
Guest: Dr. Zongjie Wang is an electrical and power systems engineer specializing in grid modernization, resilience, and energy infrastructure reliability. She serves as Director of the Grid Modernization Initiative at Colorado State University and has led multiple Department of Energy–funded projects focused on strengthening transmission systems and protecting against grid failures. Her work bridges advanced engineering with real-world energy security challenges facing the U.S. power grid.
Modern industrial societies are dependent on inexpensive and reliable sources of energy to power the ever expanding list of 21st Century technologies that promise a bright future and economic prosperity for mankind. The industrial age with steam power, internal combustion engines and carbon based fuel sources for power generation and transportation allowed humankind to progress in ways inconceivable to earlier generations.
However; times have changed, and newer technologies have evolved that provide cleaner energy options while remaining affordable. No, I'm not talking current solar and wind technologies that are far from providing consistent, reliable and affordable energy without massive taxpayer funded subsidies and endless economic incentives to entice producers. I'm talking about 21st Century, clean, affordable, nuclear energy with ZERO radioactive residual nuclear waste and 99.999% safety and reliability.
Although the United States pioneered the use of nuclear energy, we have fallen behind many other countries in modernizing our nuclear power infrastructure because of political and radical environmental intransigence on the subject, and an almost hysterical dedication to infinitely more expensive and environmentally destructive “zero carbon” power generation schemes being forced on rate payers while simultaneously dismantling some of our most reliable sources of electrical power.
Moreover, we are dealing with an aging power grid that was designed and built nearly 70 years ago with technologies that have long since outlived their useful life. Steel core and copper transmission lines encompass nearly our entire electrical grid infrastructure, despite repeated grid failures and catastrophic fires caused by downed power lines.
Much newer and superior technologies such as carbon fiber primary power conductors exist, but are resisted by utility providers despite clear evidence that they will reduce line loss and provide vastly superior performance and value over time.
Additionally, we must address the problem of solar storms like the 1859 Carrington Event or man made EMP (electro magnetic pulse) weapons that might bring down our entire electrical grid for months, possibly years, if not sufficiently mitigated with available and affordable safeguards. These are concerns that must be addressed in an increasingly polarized world.
Although many of our elected leaders refuse to accept this reality, our increasingly interventionist foreign policies of the past 125 years have created many covert and overt enemies that would relish dislodging the U.S. as the reigning global super power.
They know that destruction of our power grid would bring our civil society to it's knees. A few days without electricity nationwide would be enormously difficult, but weeks or months would be catastrophic considering how totally dependent we have become on electricity for heat, lights, refrigeration, communication, transportation; literally everything we need to sustain daily life.
Power failures, brownouts and blackouts routinely cause temporary grid disruptions within our 70 year old electrical infrastructure, but are only a glimpse of what might happen on a much larger scale if massive solar storms or deliberate EMP attacks by our enemies were to occur.
The logic follows that anyone wanting to bring down our modern industrial economy would target our power generation and distribution systems as the quickest and easiest way to destroy the economy and the thin veneer of civilization we currently enjoy.
Americans should all seek a clean and healthy natural environment. The most logical approach to accomplish that is with free markets and free market thinkers that understand supply/demand economic theories. Socialists and totalitarian ideologues see life as a zero sum game.
According to them; profit for some can only come at the expense of the many. Command/control economists see the world through the prism of finitely limited resources and have no concept of limitless human ingenuity.
The United States has led the world in technical innovation, while simultaneously improving the natural environment. This could not have happened without the profits that come from free market economics and a sense of conservation stewardship thru personal responsibility.
Safe, affordable, and reliable energy sources are essential for modern industrial society. Clean, environmentally responsible energy is best produced with a combination of free market economics and resource conservation stewardship that weighs costs and benefits, with an eye on continual improvement based on new ideas and technologies.
We must protect and improve what we know as proven technology until better and cleaner sources are made available. The brownouts and grid failures of the past several years bring that into sharp focus…….we can't afford to phase out what works until we have something better to replace it.
Radical environmentalists have an unnatural fear of the nuclear power option………………one of the few rational alternatives to power a rejuvinated industrial economy and the 1,500+ AI Data Centers proposed for construction over the next decade. Without clean, reliable new sources of power generation, utility rates will soar beyond the ability of many rate payers, especially the poor and elderly living on fixed incomes. We must consider all options and make our decisions based on free market principles and our ability to adapt to the needs of the future with an eye on cost effective technologies that reduce the cost of energy and provide increased reliability for everyone. The right choice will be a win/win solution for all.
