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["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

 On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 9:56 PM, Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com> wrote:
 >>> http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/05/17/wind_power/
>
> And thanks again. That is information that actually gives hope.
> Impressive numbers.

I'm hopeful too that non-nuclear technology is really so far advanced
that it may end up pulling us out of this mess.

I have mixed feelings about nuclear. A few years back, I made a tidy
income editing documents related to site nuclear disposal site and
licensing various things nuclear. Almost every nuclear engineer I
worked with had gotten into the field because they were trying to do
something positive for the environment. Clearly, it hasn't worked out
that way. In my personal opinion, Yucca Mountain, whether storage or
disposal, would be a whole hell of a lot safer than leaving the
high-level waste all over the country in pools of water, but reason
doesn't prevail much these days, does it?

For all kinds of reasons, it's time to concentrate money and resources
on non-hydrocarbon energy that isn't nuclear.

We never believe in a technology until it's up and running and cheap,
but both solar and wind appear to be quite viable. I'd like to see
systems that didn't have to be centralized. This will require
sophisticated storage batteries. Those already exist. A couple I know
moved to the ends of the earth in New Mexico into a house that was
fully solar powered (being on the grid was not an option). As they've
described it, it takes some high tech skills to keep the whole system
running, but they've managed all this time. It's been a while since
I've talked to them about the storage batteries (duh!), but IIRC there
were at least two, each about the size of a refrigerator. Surely, in
the last 15 to 20 years something better has been invented.

Marie