Yes, sportsfans, more power outages nipping at the flanks of California power consumers.
In my mindless, netscape, keep the computer dweebs informed, screen this morning, I see the banner headlines regarding this issue and the second sentence reads something like....."vice president suggests FRESH look at nuclear power..." (emphasis mine).
I would think it a bit early in the normal American, "drag your feet until the last second" mentality to be recommending something like this. But I hope Dick Cheney lives long enough to see this thing get crankin' again. I am sure he had no thoughts or illusions here about really hooking up to fusion energy, but instead, with the typical pragmatism of the conservative mindset is thinking fission. Something mature, inplace, and working NOW for a solution NOW. Nothing succeeds like success.
If we start to ramp up fission power again, we will still be riding on the backs of the brain power assembled in the Manhattan project of the forties and the engineering efforts of our "silent generation" dads in the fifties.
I think trying to put up a fresh, shiney new nuke plant in California will be the tie breaker. If they go in there, the pendulum will swing rapidily and fission may yet fullfill Ike's promise of the "Atoms for Peace" goal.
Fusion, if it can be turned to man's use, will ultimately supplant fission provided the return on investment and power per watt chases fission from the field.
Cleaner? Not really that much. Safer, most definitely. That is why fusion is a must do project, albeit a long term one.
I am waiting for Cheney to be forced to retract his musings in a storm of protest. Americans are always willing to allow things to get much, much worse before any real directed action is taken. Cheney's musings, I fear, are too radical and too soon for the bleeding heart enviro-nazis, anti-nuke crowd, and live off the landers who still feel a log cabin with bears and deer frolicing in the back yard is sublime.
We will, ultimately, probably all live to see how it shakes out. I really hope some bozo in his basement stumbles on some totally unexpected and unappreciated aspect of physics or chemistry which ends all this fission/fusion stuff, but that is hope and it "springs eternal", but doesn't put a watt on th' grid.
Richard Hull
Created on Wednesday, May 09, 2001 10:45 AM EDT by Richard Hull