Our brilliant president has called for 25 percent of our energy from "renewable" sources in 16 years. That's three times the percentage currently covered by nuclear power.

In 2007, we got 7 percent of our energy from renewable sources. Of that 7 percent, 36 percent was hydroelectric, 5 percent was geothermal, and 53 percent was biomass. 6 percent of that 7 percent was wind and solar, or about 0.4 percent of the overall total.

Nobody's going to be building any more dams, and in fact, the environmentalists are trying to tear down the ones we've got. So we're down to biomass, solar, wind and geothermal--running at about 4 percent of our output now--to pick up 25 percent of the load in 16 years. And somehow this is more realistic than building more of an existing technology?

8 percent of our power is generated by 104 nuclear reactors totalling about 98,000 MW(e), an average of about 937 MW per reactor. Building (off the cuff) about 300 additional reactors would cover that additional 25 percent and then some, with power that would be there day and night, wind or no wind.

The largest solar plant under development, the Solana plant at Gila Bend, generates about 280 MW, less than a third of one nuclear reactor. When the sun is shining. Projected cost is about $1 billion, not that much less than the cost of a nuclear plant, particularly if the plants are manufactured to a common design like France does.