The failed Tenaska energy project in Brownsville isn’t the first such endeavor in the Rio GrandeValley to be announced and never realized. Other energy companies in the past have announced plans to build South Texas generating plants and never built them. Other generators have been built and power sources expanded, especially through wind farms north of the Valley, but canceled projects have left local officials and residents wondering if our energy sources will be able to keep up with the demands of a rapidly growing population. McAllen Economic Development Corp. President Keith Partridge has warned that recent problems with Texas’ electrical grid and COVID-19-related supply chain limitations have raised concerns about the Valley’s future energy supplies. State Rep. Bobby Guerra, D-Mission, has offered bills in the current state legislative session to increase investment in geothermal energy as another source of electricity production.
Discussions about energy supplies usually focus on traditional fossil-fuel-based generation versus renewable options such as wind and solar power. Texas leads the way in such development — wind turbines already provide nearly a fourth of the state’s total electricity and solar another 4%. The rest of the country still gets 80% or more of its energy by burning coal, gas and oil.
Wind and solar systems are limited, however. Solar panels don’t work when it’s dark and wind turbines don’t turn on calm days. Nuclear power usually is an afterthought, although the reactors at Glen Rose and Bay City generate 10% of the state’s total power. Each facility can meet the energy needs of 12 million-15 million homes.
Those power plants seem perfect on paper, providing massive amounts of energy at rapidly declining cost with zero environmental impact. Moreover, advancements in nuclear fusion — generating energy by combining atoms rather than the current method of splitting them — have opened a whole new world of possibilities.
Nuclear energy has found renewed interest as production costs have dropped and more people want green energy. European countries have gone on a nuke-building binge since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and retaliatory sanctions, have affected their fuel supplies. Unlike the massive compounds built in the past, the new plants are smaller and more localized.
And with no combustion and moving parts, the reactors are more efficient, reliable and even safer than other power plants. Atoms now power most military submarines and many cargo ships.
When things go wrong, however, the problems can be great, and that scares a lot of people. The effects of accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima are still being felt decades later; two single atom bombs in 1945 caused enough devastation to force Japan’s surrender and end World War II.
Will we ever decide that our energy needs are so great that the rare but large risks are acceptable? After all, we take greater risks every time we get in a car or board an airplane.
Major investors, including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, already are betting on the future of nuclear energy. Now they just have to convince the people who turn on the switches.
