thetatiana

Mr. President, you want me to support your clean energy initiatives. I'm in favor of clean energy if Nuclear is included as clean energy. As you're aware, there are many inherent difficulties in launching solar, wind, waves, and geothermal power including high expense, environmental impact, availability only at odd times and a few places, meaning the infrastructure to move it to where it's needed (cities) is expensive, and the infrastructure to handle peak loads must be provided (expensive) even though average loads are around 10% of peak, etc. etc.

Most people, unlike you and me, don't even understand that electricity must be generated moment by moment as demand calls for it. Batteries are toxic, expensive, and short-lived, and don't handle the sort of power loads that cities require. They're for hand-held electronics up to golf carts, not for refrigeration, elevators, and the millions of electric motors that power the factories and offices that are our economic engines in the US.

So Nuclear is the very best clean energy option that exists. As you know, It's clean, emits no CO2, unlike wind or sun can be turned off or on to suit demand (though most nuclear plants are run as baseload units, simply because the cost of generation is miniscule compared to that of fossil plants, and of course compared to the very pricey green energy technologies you cite.)

I want clean energy, and independence from Saudi Arabia, but I don't want to pay 3 or 4 times on my power bill what I'm currently spending. So I see you approved the loan guarantees for Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4 in Georgia. That's great. I know that your political base is ambivalent, at best, about nuclear power plants. Some of those very misguided environmentalists in the 60s and 70s are the reason our nuclear industry today is having to struggle to come back from decades of no new nuclear plants. As an engineer both in nuclear tech and in ordinary industrial technology, I can tell you that the current nuclear plants are extremely out of date in their control technology. That 30 year hiatus wasn't a good thing, and I think many intelligent environmentalists realize now that they made a mistake. Others are just as adamant about no new nukes as ever, an attitude that will leave us with high high energy bills and not at all safer.

So I understand you have to downplay somewhat the nuclear angle for your constituency. However, please make no mistake, nuclear is necessary, and future generations of new reactors will be extremely important in our energy mix. The best thing we can possibly do to become energy independent is to adopt the fast-neutron reactor technology that allows us to use uranium mine-tailings and reprocessed spent-fuel to power the US for the next several hundred years using the most pessimistic projections. It's fantastic that Yucca Mountain was never opened, because that spent fuel in dry-casks and pools at all the reactors in the nation has only some 5% of the energy used up. Glassifying it and burying would have destroyed its utility. As it is, we have the fuel we need to power the country for many decades even using the wildest growth scenarios out there.

So, 1) restart the research projects into the next generation of fast-neutron reactors. 2) Step up the construction and streamline the regulation of the current new generation of thermal reactors (with the built-in failsafes), 3) continue to foster safe operation of the existing generation of 1970s design era reactors in service today. Then 4) by all means keep encouraging the use of other green options, particularly smart buildings, and efficiencies that pay off enormously over the life of the building, but which cost more up front. We need to fix the skewed economics that encourages builders to scrimp on up-front costs because they aren't the tenants who will pay the price down the line. Legislation to encourage building in efficiencies into everything under the sun will be useful.

Dictating exact design parameters, though, is not smart. Witness the low-flow toilet, which we all know must be flushed multiple times to work. No water is being saved thereby. All design trade-offs have costs. The market should be allowed to fix these things to the extent that it will. When the market goes wrong, as it does in the case of externalities and builder/tenant discrepancies, then legislation should be designed to fix things in a way that allows a new optimal solution to be settled upon by designers and users, rather than being dictated by legislators.

You said once that our country needs more engineers and fewer lawyers. Coming to an engineer from a lawyer, this struck me deeply. I know you have many experts who advise you on all these things. But listen to a practical country girl who knows how things work. From years of working in industry, and reading widely, I know whereof I speak.

It may seem silly for me to be answering your email with mine, but I heard you read 10 letters a day, and so there's a 10/300 million * 8 years * 365.25 days/year, which is about a 1 in 10k chance that you will eventually read one of mine. =) Assuming only one in a hundred people care as much about public policy and our energy future as I do, that gives me a 1 in 100 chance of getting through to you at some point in your administration, which I find to be pretty good odds.

Thanks for being such a good president. My response has been engendered by how hopeful your presidency has made me for the future of politics in the US. Prior to your election, I didn't know we could have such good leadership, and I thank you for undisillusioning me, (reillusioning me? no... that's not the word I meant ... how about polishing the stars in my eyes?... rekindling my enthusiasm and idealism?) Yes, thank you for that very much.