Now Oregon residents must suffer the construction of many windmills devastating the natural views. They don't allow bill boards; why should they allow the advertising of the fact that California residents refuse to generate, in their own state, the power that they use? Of course there is no need for additional transmission lines to California because they put super large ones in, both AC and DC, years ago and have upgraded them recently, so that they can suck all of the hydropower from Oregon and Washington. Water that fell as rain in Canada is used to supply power for Los Angeles.

Also the wind machines seldom generate their rated windpower, but when they do the local small transmission lines are overloaded. A special underground DC circuit had to be built on one island with several windmills where there was no demand for power.

If the people of California are so smart, they should develop a means of coping with the used fuel rods of nuclear power plants that sastifies a majority of the people of the state, and build nuclear power plants that are the cheapest lowest CO2 producing method of generating power and replace all use of fossil fuels and all hydro or renewable power from out of state.

First of all it must be clearly said to all people of California: You cannot survive, nor has any life form ever survived, without ingesting radio-active potassium. There is no non radio-active potassium to be found in any food, nor has there ever been. Read about potassium in WIKIPEDIA or in physics handbooks.

You and all of your ancestors have always been radio-active. You also will be un-avoidably exposed to radio-activity from earth and stars, including the sun. By living close to sea level you can reduce the radio-active exposure to stars by half sometimes. Do not move to Denver or you will double your star radio-activity.

The radio-active exposure from all the nuclear power plants, needed to supply all of California's power, would not increase a person's exposure by a measurable fraction of one percent. It would actually reduce the exposure because the natural gas fired power plants are releasing Radon in measurable quantities. This is still less radio-activity than is in cows milk from organic farms.

There is no difference between the radio-activity of uranium that you can find in the soil of every lawn and that of the uranium left unmodified in fuel rods, but there are also new atoms created from split uranium atoms in the reactor and these decay much faster than uranium so that the heat and radio-activity is temporarily increased.

A big enough collection of the radio-active potassium in live creatures or the ocean could put out as much heat and radio-activity as a used fuel rod. Just like sunlight, if you don't expose yourself to too much of it in a short period of time, you will live for many years. Just like light, nuclear radiation comes in many colours and some is even high speed particles like much of the radiation from space. High speed particles from atoms are stopped by thin paper or skin. The radiation from the potassium in your cells is more active than that from most X-rays but there is much less of it. The radiation from modern glowing watch dials is less active than most big TV tubes. The radium dials had very active rays comming from them.

Ordinary light cannot cause major chemical changes, and coloured materials are mostly bleached by the sun because of the ultraviolet rays. But almost all nuclear rays are more energetic than UV rays. But all of them are eventually stopped by about six feet of water and a few inches a lead and fewer inches of uranium or gold.

US nuclear power reactors have no graphite in them so they cannot burn like Chernobyl. The China syndrome is immaginary because the fuel rods must be individually surrounded by light water not molten iron or uranium for a chain reaction to persist. Power reactors have been in operation for over fifty years in the US and not one person has been killed by a power reactor accident. Many people have been killed by eating at fast food places. Life is risky, but statistically nuclear power is less risky than any other form.

Used fuel rod bundles can each be thrown down random abandoned oil wells after they are partially filled with clay and then they can be completely filled with clay and concrete, and they won't be worth anyone's time to try to find or extract.

There is much radio-active minerals spread over the face of the earth by nature so there is no reason to take more care per atom of human made radio-active materials than of natural materials if the average resultant radiation is about the same or even slighly less. Humans have actually destroyed far more pounds of radio-active atoms than he has created. Only when the fusion reactor is successful can, humans make more radio-active atoms in large quantity.

Nobody ever was not radio-active through out history. Now get on with creating all of the heat and electrical energy that you want with the only economical working source: Nuclear reactors. All other forms of energy require much more capital, including land. Not all people are women. Not all people will agree on the best way to do anything. Cars are not used by some groups, but that does not mean that all Californians must give up cars.

Nuclear power is cheap enough, if done right, to provide all the hydrogen, anybody wants, at prices lower than that of gasoline for the same amount of energy. And that hydrogen can be formed with recycled CO2 into methanol that any car on the road can be adapted to use. But PHEVs can use the electricity with twice the efficiency of fuel cells. ..HG..

Nuclear energy as a technology is usefull but this rant for it isn't.

Wind energy is an economic source of low carbon energy. Life cycle costs make wind economical in many different factors. Large numbers of wind farms are just as reliable as a source of electricity as anything out there according to a recent Princeton study. From the EIA, the levelized cost of wind is lower than the cost of nuclear.

Nuclear energy isn't the be all end all, technical marvel that will solve everything. Neither is wind. There are many shortcomings to nuclear that are not resolved and are not even close to being resolved. There are problems with wind. Given the costs and the liabilities, wind projects like this one will contribute to bring down the future costs of wind power, in a meaningful and useful way without adding to the very real and present liabilities that a nuclear plant would bring.

Nuclear power was not cheap, is not cheap, and with more internalizations such as recycling, becomes even less cheap. Read the Congression reports about nuclear power. The MIT Future of nuclear power 2006. Scientific American future of nuclear recycling.