Nationally, we’ve got a government that won’t release the Epstein Files. They won’t name the wealthy pedophiles, much less prosecute them.
Who are they? Are they still in office? Sitting in the rooms where laws get made? And the question that gnaws me the most…could any be living right here in Virginia or in YOUR state?
That’s not paranoia. That’s common sense in a country where the rich and connected slip past justice while ordinary people don’t.
And while that’s hanging over us, here in my neck of the woods in Southwest Virginia, politicians want to park SMRs…small modular nuclear reactors…near our children.
Let me say it again: nuclear reactors, near our children.
My people have been in the Coalfields for five generations. My great-grandmother’s people, fresh from southern Scotland and northern Wales, had a saying: Never trust a politician or a stranger.
When I hear them swear SMRs are “completely safe,” no danger from nuclear waste or radiation, I hear her voice plain as day. These same politicians, taking campaign donations from energy corporations, tell us: Trust us with your children. Look at these studies done by strangers. Trust them with your children.
Here’s what they don’t say: they want our Coalfields to be the test site, the first place in the country to run these reactors commercially. “Test model.” “First application.” “New technology.” Those words should make anyone nervous.
I’m not against new technology. Nuclear power has a place in moving away from fossil fuels. But why not follow Chesterfield County’s lead with cold fusion, no radiation, no nuclear waste…instead of gambling on experimental reactors with radiation, where our kids live and play?
Any farmer will tell you: don’t buy the first model of a truck or tractor. You let somebody else take it home first, run it for a season, and see what breaks. Because every “new” model has bugs.
When a new truck’s got a bug, you open the hood, grab a wrench, and fix it. When a “new” Small Module Nuclear Reactor has a bug, you don’t fix it with a wrench. You evacuate a town. Maybe a county. You risk drinking water ruined for generations. That’s not a bug. That’s a catastrophe.
And we’ve been here before. In the early 1900s, coal companies promised steady work and a better life. What they delivered were broken bodies, black lung, and fathers dead before fifty. And they sent kids—yes, kids—into the mines before they were teenagers.
This was before the United Mine Workers fought for safety laws and child labor laws. Back then, there were no hard hats, no ventilation standards, no inspectors. Children carried picks and lunch buckets into the shafts while company men counted profits.
That history ought to matter now. We’ve been the testing ground before. We’ve been expendable before. And here we are again, only this time the danger isn’t a cave-in or an explosion. It’s radiation and nuclear waste.
Their pitch hasn’t changed: jobs, progress, a brighter future. The truth hasn’t changed either: money comes first, people second.
The Epstein Files show one kind of rot…the kind that protects wealthy predators from justice. SMRs show another…the kind that treats communities like experiments. Different evils, same result: our kids aren’t the priority.
And make no mistake, the danger isn’t hiding in dark alleys. It’s in boardrooms and political offices, tucked into contracts the public never gets to read.
This isn’t fear-mongering. Fear is what keeps a farmer off a metal roof in a lightning storm. It’s what keeps a child from the edge of a high cliff. And it ought to keep us from letting politicians and corporations gamble with our children’s future.
Trust has already been broken…nationally, when those files were locked away to shield the rich; locally, when leaders asked us to take the first leap of faith on an unproven nuclear technology.
Because politicians can be bought, companies can mislead you, and experts can be wrong on purpose. But a parent’s job doesn’t change—protect your children.
That means more now than locking the doors at night. It means knowing what’s coming before it arrives. It means reading between the lines and asking the one question that matters:
Is this safe for my kids?
If the answer isn’t a loud, honest, proven yes—then it’s no.
These are INDEED scary times to be raising kids. And the scariest part is how many in power either can’t see it…or see it just fine and DON’T CARE.
*Research credit to: Adam Malle & Chris Brooks
(Member of the National Writers Union)
John W. Peace II is a fifth-generation farmer from Big Stone Gap, Virginia, where he grew up on his family’s dairy, Clinch Haven Farms, and still lives today with the farm producing hay. He’s a proud father to Trey and Shelby Peace, and partner in life to Cathy Swinney. A Virginia Tech graduate with graduate studies at Penn State, he served as the youngest Chair of the Wise County Board of Supervisors (2004–2008). John co-owns SafeHavenServices.co and urTOPIX LLC (urTopixLLC.com), a Democratic campaign consulting firm focused on reaching rural voters that is sponsored by www.RuralAmericaRising.com PAC. He’s also a two-time Amazon bestselling author. Learn more at www.JohnWPeace.com.