that before you spend the huge amounts of money on the nuclear power plants, you suck up as much of the load as possible with the alternative methods.

Even if solar cells and windmills can't do it all, they certainly can slow the bleeding and at considerably less cost and risk. There are some new solar cell production methods in final evaluation right now that promise to drop the prices considerably.

Now I believe in nuclear power as a component of our entire power grid but the costs associated with building, maintaining, insuring, and running them are astronomical. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be thinking about building more of them. It simply means they should be a last resort after you've done everything else.

Wind and solar are very limited but part of that limitation is the extreme inefficiency we have in using energy. For a fraction of the cost of a nuclear power plant we could increase the insulation R-rating in a huge number of houses and commercial structures and replace old and inefficient appliances. I've read studies where just that act alone would eliminate the need for most new power plants.

I'm curious why this is the only energy solution you always promote. In your defense you've not castigated others that have pushed for other forms of energy production and conservation but I don't remember a single time you've begun a post about their advantages.

Tom, my power at my home comes from the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station so I certainly understand its advantages. I really appreciate that my air is not polluted by some coal-fired plant spewing sulfur dioxide into the air. I also was a nuclear engineer in the Navy so I fully understand the implications of making it all work as well as the complexities, costs, and dangers. It's not simplistic work. The paperwork and oversight is enormous and a simple procedure you could perform on a piece of equipment in a conventional plant is ten times as complex and expensive. A simple switch, no better than one you could buy for $2.00 at Radio Shack ends up costing hundreds of dollars because it carries a nuclear plant rating.

The workload is oppressive and you always have someone watching over your back. This all works on human nature. In some cases the fear of failure is a motivator. In other cases it motivates the workers to cover their asses by not reporting abnormalities because it will so increase their workload. I saw people "radio" their watch logs, marking off that they had done the hundreds of valve checks so they could get off early. Even the most cleverly designed system cannot alleviate this situation. It's a Catch 22 and one of the reasons I chose not to stay in the profession.

Now the current designs do greatly limit the damages in even a worst-case accident. You'll never see a plant blow up in a mushroom cloud or release huge amounts of highly radioactive material out into the public. However there could be small releases and the problem doesn't lie so much in the actual threat to the public. It lies in the idiocy of that public to overreact and create something much worse based on panic. I'm sure the lawyers are lying in wait to reap the huge profits of going after the deep pockets that will be behind these plants.

I won't even get into waste because obviously other countries that rely heavily on nuclear power have found a way of dealing with it. It always remains a problem though and probably an expensive and polarizing one.

This response was not a dig. If the US slowly resumes production of nuclear power plants I'm not threatened by it. Having lots of diversity in your power grid is a must for national security. I would hope though that you would spend as much time and energy on convincing your peers that huge strides can be made in energy conservation and alternative sources of energy at the same time.

Art