Many years ago, I read an SF short story entitled "On the Feasibility of Coal-Powered Reactors". Forgive me, but I do not recall where it appeared, or who the author was. It was tongue-in-cheek, humorous fiction written in the style of an op-ed piece or a scholarly article. The conceit employed was of a far distant future, when Uranium is becoming scarce, a new energy crisis is looming, and new mining techniques are revealing vast beds of coal under the Antarctic icecap accessible to the extractive technology of that era. Coal beds on the rest of the planet have been pretty much worked out, and the mineral is only a useless curiosity, but the imaginary author of this tome suggest the possiblity of switching from nuclear to coal to generate electricity. The earlier use of fossil fuels to generate power has appaently been forgotten by this future society, except for a few arcane historical references which are no longer taken very seriously.

As I recall, the writer begins with a brief technical description of how the combustion of coal can be used to generate steam, just as fission reactors do, and from that point on, the electrical generating process proceeds in a way his readers are already familiar with. He goes on from there to discuss the benefits of this new source of energy, and how to go about implementing it technically and economically. It's obviously a gentle satire on the public relations pieces coming out of the nuclear industry in the 60s and 70s, although I don't recall if he mentions concerns over the environmental pros and cons of either fossil or fission technology. Those were issues that, in those days, had simply not occurred to anyone.

Does anyone remember this historical oddity? It might be a real hoot reviewing it, in the light of what we know now.