Efficient: Nuclear power is millions of times more dense and efficient than any other form of energy. It revolves around the splitting of neutrons instead of burning electrons in a chemical reaction. That is why only 104 reactors can produce 20% of our near-zero emission electricity each year.

Reliable: Not dependent on wind, sunshine, tides or any other outside, variable condition. Available whenever you flick the switch, day or night, on-demand

Safety: With any complex industrial entity, there is a risk of accident and death. At Three Mile Island, no one died, no demonstrable increase in radiation leakage was detected, no increase in illness caused by the partial-meltdown of the containment vessel occurred. The accident was used to improve safety measures for future reactors – as is prudent of any industry to learn from its mistakes. Chernobyl was a lousy, Russian design with no containment vessel. Approximately 50 workers died as a result of the fire.

Comparatively, nuclear power plants are among the safest industrial environments in which to work. The NRC has more rigorous standards to which no other power-generating system is subject.

Cost: All costs – from construction, fuel usage for 60 years, infrastructure, spent fuel storage and decommissioning are all included in the original estimate of building. Coal-burning power plants do not include their "external costs" – air pollution, particulate-causing illnesses – in their overall costs.

Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF): Has been safely stored for 40 years on-site. No reason to believe that can't continue until Gen IV or Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) or IFRs become available. Then just burn the SNF down to 1% of its current volume and store the remainder – safely.

Proliferation: No nuclear power plant has been attacked in the past 30 years by terrorists or other ne'r-do-wells. There's lower hanging fruit elsewhere.

Land-use footprint: Go to http://www.cleanenergyinsight.org to see the map of comparative land-use (10 Aug 2009 post). Hold onto your hat!

Technology: For solar, unfortunately, Moore's Law does not apply here for conversion of photons into electrons via semiconductor chips.

Is there a place for wind and solar? Yes, as Tim from AZ points out – but it is limited due to the inherent diffuse nature and unreliability of the source. It is "Boutique" power.

Push for solar subsidies on each HOME or business. Let consumers have the sun generated free electricity, free for themselves & not for utility companies we've had to taxpayer subsidize so they could make even more profits. Subsidize citizens, not companies first on this particular issue. That would reduce energy costs to average consumers & help them have money in their pockets & not be putting money in the pockets of fat cats, which was subsidized by consumers or taxpayers in the first place!

Mark Levin, in his latest book, "Liberty and Tyranny" devotes an entire chapter called "On the Free Market" where the issue of oil profits is discussed. I can answer you best by quoting Mark:

"And what of those oil industry profits? Much reporting on oil company revenues with headlines shouting "oil companies made record profits" is sophomoric and misleading. Rather than serving as watchdogs of the government, too many in the media give voice to the most demagogic statists. In 2007, the oil companies earned between eight and nine cents for every dollar of gasoline sales.

Investors Business Daily summed up the situation this way, "From 1977 to 2004, according to Tax Foundation Data, oil companies cleared $630 billion after taxes while paying $518 billion in federal and state corporate taxes at an average rate of 45%. Over the same period, an additional 1.34 trillion in excise fuel taxes was collected from consumers by the oil companies and turned over to various governments."

Government, not the oil industry, is the biggest "profiteer" from oil. And it uses the tax revenue to expand its own authority over the expense of the indivividual, as it does with a number of other industries.

Ethanol has been around since the 1800s. If it were a viable alternative or additive to gasoline, which supposedly would reduce oil use, gas prices, and auto emissions, the free market would have responded positively. For years, large agricultural corporations and environmental groups have lobbied to promote ethanol production and use. Having already severely damaged the supply of domestic oil, the statist responded to the lobbying efforts by using tax dollars to heavily subsidize ethanol production, imposing tariffs on the importation of ethanol, forcing the auto industry to build more ethanol-friendly vehicles, and setting mandates on domestic ethanol production and use levels — 15% of American cars are to run on ethanol by 2017.

As ethanol and other biofuels require corn, sugarcane, and additional crops to produce blends of gasoline, these essential crops are diverted from food production to energy production. As demand for corn and sugarcane increases, more farmers around the world respond by converting their fields from rice, wheat, and soy, to the more profitable crops used in biofuels. Government policy played a significant role in driving up demand and prices not only for fuel, but food, contributing mightily to severe food shortages and even famine in the Third World.

As demand for corn increased in the US, and since corn is fed to most livestock, the price of beef, fowl, and dairy products went up as well. A ripple effect occurs across the economic and global landscape.

And what of the supposed environmental benefits of ethanol? The AP reported: " Ethanol is much less efficient than gas especially when it is made from corn. Just growing corn requires expending energy – plowing, planting, fertilizing, and harvesting all require machinery that burns fossil fuel. Modern agriculture requires large amounts of fertilizer and pesticides, both produced by methods that consume fossil fuels. Then there's the cost of transporting the corn to an ethanol plant where the fermentation and distillation consume yet more fossil fuels. And finally, the cost of transporting this fuel to filling stations. Because ethanol is more corrosive than gasoline, it can't be pumped through relatively efficiently pipelines, but must be transported by rail or tanker truck. In the end, even the most generous analysts estimate that it takes the energy equivalent of 3 gallons of gasoline to make 4 gallons of the stuff…..

To StepintoTheLight, Michigan Nuclear technology may have improved but that doesn't make it flawless, nor does it prevent it from being subject to human error, mechanical failure, or deliberate sabotage. I notice you didn't offer any viable suggestions on what to do with the byproduct. Is it magically going to evaporate?

Jeff Jones, natural fuel sources are viable and if you go back and read my first comments, there's a qualifier there, "recovery systems" or scrubbers to reduce or eliminate the bulk of the emissions. Also, keeping an eye to eventually phasing them out in lieu of wind, solar, and hydro as those technologies continue to develop.

Many seem to think I'm for putting the entire population ON some kind of community solar/wind grid to provide for everyone. I'm not. I'm saying that the sun, wind, and even water naturally are inexhaustible sources of energy production. We need to supplement the grid with these power sources but we need to move to homes and business structures that are nearly, if not completely, independent of a national power grid. A national grid then would become a backup, not a primary source of all power. We have to get out of the "all or nothing" mentality and find balanced solutions with an eye toward transitioning over the longer term. The question is, can we make the personal sacrifices, i.e. in potentially limited use of our electronic conveniences for a sufficient amount of time to let these technologies develop and be proven?

Battery technology certainly needs to develop and there are disposal and recycling issues to be addressed with those as well. I'm hopeful that our sceintists can, as they have done in the past, find a solution to storing the energy collected from wind and solar in some other way than batteries. The answer is there somewhere. Can we find it?

There are more people everyday making it their personal responsibility to get off the grid. They're making sacrifices necessary to make that a reality. I commend them and trust that their successes will make it more attractive and feasible for others to do the same in the future. A nation not entirely dependent on a single power grid, or a network of grids, is more secure as well. Sort of that "not putting all your eggs in one basket," principle at work. It would be far easier for an enemy to subvert one grid or a network of grids powering millions of homes than it would be to subvert 280 million homes with individual power sources.

For $75 you can convert your car (any kind of gasoline engine, its the carburetor that needs the converter) to run on methane, safely and efficiently produced from livestock manure very cheaply. Your car will run better. You will reduce greenhouse gasses and all toxic emissions more than ethanol, which is expensive to produce and takes energy to produce, and is made from food for humans and animals. But the 2008 Farm Bill, and the 2009 Energy Bill, and the 2009 Economic Recovery Act (Stimulus) contained billions in tax subsidies for ethanol. The U.S.A. has outproduced Brazil (been the #1 EXPORTER) of ethanol since 2005. The cost run-up on all grains worldwide caused by doing this to the American "breadbasket to the world" has been devastating. The nearly 100% taxpayer subsidized ethanol industry is paying shareholder profits, then the companies proceed to declare bankruptcy. 50% of them did so this last year. The same crooks just form new companies.

I think a some smart enterprising veteran who is a federal IRS contractor with access to all our addresses should just buy wholesale enough methane converters to get the bulk buy price down to $20 for every car in America and mail them to every taxpayer with a coupon for installation at any auto repair shop worth $200, and send the installation steps to every auto repair shop (they have the business addresses.) The contractor would be reimbursed on the "honor system" via a Lockbox account by all the grateful Americans who saved $275 in gas over a year.

He would also be honored by the methane producers who would be busily cleaning up all our livestock waste for our dairy and hog and chicken farmers and our cattle feedlots. They would send him some percentage of their income they felt was fair for creating the market.

The government loss of gasoline taxes and oil corporation taxes (all paid on ethanol) would be staggering. These losses would be recouped by discontinuing government subsidies to corn ethanol first, then wind, then solar. Wind and solar can putter right along as cottage industries and in Bill Gates type garages until they can come up with something big enough. Oil companies can keep researching algae ethanol and hydrogen and producing propane, natural gas, and the oil needed for large electrical plants that can't use hydro-electric or nuclear sources. So they will still pay some taxes,just not from the jugular for the government as they have been.

But the people and the animals and the planet would be happy, healthy, and wealthy and the environmental nazis ruining our economy and jeopardizing millions of Third World dependents wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

We would have the judge commute his sentence for personal use of the federal database (okay, and reduce David Axelrod's out of generosity) and then we would create a prize in his name similar to the Nobel to honor all innovators who cut through the fog of such connundrums as "the Energy/Environment Crisis" with solutions as simple as paperclips or sticky notes.

The really sad thing about all this environmental justice and redistribution and health care for all stuff is that a bankrupt economy and an utterly demoralized de-incentivized workforce will not produce its way out of the "revolution" on the other side. Yup, the government will take care of you from cradle to grave, but guess what? As a poorer, more controlled victim than you were before the revolution when SOME people actually created stuff of value. Let's see: reparations will make up for slavery by making everybody slaves, not of a possibly kind master you know, but of an anonymous bureaucratic government machine you don't know, and everybody equally poor. That sure would make us all feel better, wouldn't it? If everyone in America was just as poor as the poorest in Kenya, that would sure set things right!! Hopey change, hopey change, hopey change.