News & Events

(Visual: NASA map of night sky, labeled 2000. As Don Hintz begins to speak, the map changes to a label of 2010, then 2020, 2030, 2040 and finally, 2050.  As the map changes, more lights glow—in the industrialized world, where we would expect, but more and more in Africa and other parts of the third world, until by 2050, Africa, Asia and South America have as many lights as North America and Europe).

The year is 2053. The population of the world is 10 billion. Many of the problems of drought, poverty and disease that blighted the last century are either gone or dramatically lessened.

And the global climate catastrophe forecast at the end of the last century never happened. The North Polar and Antarctic icecaps are intact, and the low-lying areas of the global land masses—like Santa Monica, California—remain above water.

A new advanced-design modular reactor has just come on line in Africa. It is the 100th reactor on the no-longer-dark continent. Around the world, five U.S. companies now each own and operate 100 or more of the 1,500-plus reactors in operation in this centennial year of the U.S. commercial nuclear industry.

The new reactor in Africa is producing hydrogen, as well as power, and is helping to drive some of the last hybrid gas and electric automobiles in Africa into retirement—they’ve long been relegated to the junkyards of North America, Europe and other parts of the globe.