Meaningful action the common person can take: Get a new attitude on nuclear
power because nuclear power is King Coal’s only meaningful competitor.
Every time you dis nuclear, you are working for the coal industry and shooting yourself in the foot. What the coal companies know that most people don’t:

As long as you keep messing around with wind, solar, geothermal and wave power, the coal industry is safe. There is no way wind, solar, geothermal and wave power can replace coal, and they know it. Hydrogen fusion could, if it worked. Hydrogen fusion has been “hopeful” for half a century so far. I don’t expect that to change any time soon.

If you quit being afraid of nuclear, the coal industry is doomed. Every time you argue in favor of wind, solar, geothermal and wave power, or against nuclear, King Coal is happy. ONLY nuclear power can put coal out of business. Nuclear power HAS put coal out of business in France. France uses 30 year old American technology. So here is the deal: Keep being afraid of all things nuclear and die either when [not if] civilization collapses or when H2S comes out of the ocean and Homo “Sapiens” goes extinct. OR: Get over your paranoia and kick the coal habit and live. Which do you choose? I put quotation marks around “Sapiens” because it is not clear that most of us have enough brains to avoid extinction when it is clearly predicted and the safe path has been pointed out. Nuclear is the safe path.

PS: Nuclear is the cheapest and safest source of electricity. Nuclear life cycle CO2 output is the lowest per kilowatt hour because it takes a huge number of windmills or solar collectors or wave machines or whatever to produce the same power as a nuclear power plant. All of those windmills or whatever have manufacturing processes that make CO2. Hydro power requires an enormous amount of concrete. The first step in making concrete is heating limestone to drive off the CO2. That is one of the sources of CO2 from hydro power. The price for electricity for the various sources of power include the total life cycle costs. The cost to build the reactor is not much different from the cost to build a coal fired power plant and the money comes from the same source. See the next post of mine. Whoever would pay for the reactor is the same person who would pay for the coal burner. LOOK at the price for the electricity. It is the total life cycle cost. Nuclear is the cheapest and the only full time replacement for coal. Nuclear power would be much cheaper than it is if nuclear were allowed to be as unsafe as the other sources of power. Nuclear power plants are self-insured. Tax money is NOT involved and would not be mentioned if it were not for the civil disturbances caused by coal company shills, alias protesters. The nuclear industry needs and deserves protection from people who are obviously very misinformed. When tax money is mentioned with respect to nuclear power, the money is the extra money that is wasted because of pointless protests.

I DO NOT work for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I am a retired Department of the Army scientist and engineer. I have never worked for the nuclear power industry.

There is NO SUCH THING as nuclear waste because nuclear fuel is recyclable. There is fuel that is being wasted for political reasons and because the coal industry has driven you paranoid. The coal industry’s reason for doing so is the $100 Billion per year cash flow they receive as long as you remain afraid of nuclear. If you remain afraid of nuclear and prevent the conversion from coal to nuclear, we all die. The cure is for you to go to start acting like the French people with respect to nuclear power.

I know way too much evolutionary behavioral psychology for own good, but this is the MOST important statement in Part 2. The biggest hurdle that we face in the US right now is we don’t have a good model for a sustainable city. This means that nobody has the exposure needed for sustainable communities to propagate. The evolution of group behaviors comes into play at this point, and the efficient mechanism for the propagation of a better behavior is for one distinct group to adopt it in such a manner that the other groups they interact with will recognize the novel behavior and be able to attribute the successes of that group to this behavior (warranted or not.) To really get this going, we will need the help of a top-down initiative to redevelop existing cities into sustainable cities. That said, these cities must also be heavily invested in its community organizations such that they are willing to play a role in spreading the sustainability message. We know darn well that local governments are going to be hesitant, rightfully so, to try and demand sustainability. However, they should demand green building codes, an enabling infrastructure, and incentives for adoption of sustainable behaviors. Once we have in place example sustainable communities, it will come easier to others. Also, within the example community, I think that sustainable neighborhoods will be vital to the propagation of sustainability to other parts of the community.

On review all the oil left under its jurisdiction is going to be extracted. I hope BO has the steel to overcome this tendency.

It’s a so-called green Budget, but with a coating of crude oil
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/ tol/ business/ economics/ budget/ article6150867.ece
….
The tax concessions for the North Sea oil and gas industry are likely to dwarf any of the green incentives.

The Government said that it wanted to ensure the extraction of an extra two billion barrels of oil that would otherwise be left under the seabed.