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Our nation has a continued dysfunction in regard to paying attention to and solving real problems. Tunnel vision and osmosis must be the source of some of our nation’s prioritization because all of the problems that get attention have the same attributes. They are within arms reach or are right in front of our collective faces. This is the only way I can explain the reason why the vast majority of regulation and laws passed for air pollution control up to this point are for automotive emissions. All this attention when only 20 percent of our nation’s air pollution is from car exhaust and 80 percent of air pollution comes from electricity generation by fossil fuels.
I’m not particularly for or against car exhaust regulation, I’m just puzzled by our nation’s constant attention being drawn to it just because we are around cars all of the time. Are we unable to use data to make decisions anymore? Do we really have an attention span that short or is our congress that dense?
Our nation has real problems in many areas, some we can see with data and some we see because we are staring at it every day. I think our nation needs a better ability to prioritize problems on an absolute scale. It is no secret that Clean Energy Insight is for nuclear electricity generation because it solves the 80% part of the air pollution problem while simultaneously creating jobs here in the USA.
Congress appears to have renewed some attention to the climate bill this week. Let me make a few suggestions that may help reduce the tension in the air. Number one, if you don’t want any more coal plants to be built then just write a law that says that (or restricts it to a small number) and stop this increase in costs of production nonsense that would be immediately passed onto the citizens. Number two, make nuclear power the preferred source of base load power and pass loan guarantees for about $20 billion per year over the next 15 or so years. This creates many thousands of jobs, solves the clean energy problem, and does not spend any federal money (just co-signing the loans). Number three, put any other kind of non-base load renewable feel good power generation in there you want. We all know solar, wind et al. won’t make a difference to the big picture overall power consumed, but apparently we have to spend money on it to feel good about ourselves.
Let’s get smart America and use data to solve the right problems the best way and reject the continued dysfunctional short attention span that is spending us into the poor house, gaining us little progress on pollution control, and no job creation during the worst recession in 75 years.
Now take a deep breath and sigh admittedly to yourself…..”nuclear is the solution”.
A long slow recovery of the economy with job growth tentatively scheduled on the back end has caused our government to spend nearly a trillion dollars on “stimulus.” Job creation is supposed to be at the heart of this spending and the results are 
We need to solve the problem with nuclear waste. As we all know nuclear fuel is recyclable with only 4% of each fuel assembly being actual waste that can’t be re-used and the other 96% can be recycled and used again. As the government technically owns the fuel it also owns the problem of disposal, and the government must provide the solution. The problem is that we know who runs the government and their ability to make a coherent, timely, or realistic solution. I’m not sure how many blue ribbon panels will be formed to study this issue before they come to a recommended solution that will likely not be followed.
I am sadly terrified that our Government does not employ engineers at the highest levels of government. Why this is, I do not know. The rest of us engineers stand in astonishment when we look at how much power our country needs, along with the ability of solar and wind power to provide that power—as these are apparently the only form of power that the President recognizes.
