Hi Chuck --
You are my state legislator; I oppose both of these bills on the grounds that dumping an extremely toxic waste byproduct is unsafe for the environment for centuries to come. Clean energy now, a toxic earth later. But I will take a wild guess and say it doesn't sway you.

Hey Chuck, did you see the article on nuclear power in the March issue of GQ? If not, read it--rather enlightening...

I don't know how conservatives can vote for nuclear power, when we know how unsafe it is and how long nuclear waste remains, tens of thousands of years. Why should we take this kind of risk and saddle our future generations with thousands of years of toxic material? Before nuclear energy is seriously considered, the safety issues have to be put to rest. As of now, the safety test is not being met.

Since the ban on nuclear power in California concerns the failure to find a solution to the waste burden, I have thought for a while that one solution is the use of Thorium fuel designs. These designs produce vastly less waste by mass and the isotopes that are produced have short half lives relative to those produced by Uranium fuel cycles. Therefore it may be possible that Thorium based fuel cycles, once proven, would fit within the restrictions of the current ban on new nuclear power in the state.

Ken -- if we're going to go down that path, why not further R&D for solar power. We get 330 snny days a year in SoCal; the sun is going to be working for, oh, until the end of time, and there is no waste byproduct that will kill anyone. Yes, solar power is a little more expensive, but its still a lot cheaper than building new nuke plants.

Dan, Dan, Dan, you are so 70s, peddling your old fears about nuclear power. In the 1970s you were likely wearing polyester and a computer as powerful as the one in your house was almost as big as your house.

Modern nuclear power is safe and carbon-free. The French recycle their old nuclear fuel into new nuclear fuel, eliminating the need for long-term storage into the thousands of years.

Furthermore, did you know that about 300 people die every year in roofing accidents in America? A simple analysis shows that installing a million solar roofs would cause about 30 people to die. Worldwide, about 1.5 million solar roofs have been installed so far, resulting in the deaths of about 50 people – or as many people as died in the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 according to the World Health Organization. So, as many people have died installing solar roofs that generate a fraction of the total power output as who died at Chernobyl over the past 20 years.

The moral of the story? All forms of energy come with costs and risks.

Patrick Moore, cofounder of anti-nuclear Greenpeace is now a nuclear advocate. Even long-time nuclear critic Sen. Barbara Boxer, is now grudgingly acknowledging that there may be a role for nuclear power in the fight against global warming.

Barbara Boxer and Patrick Moore, Dan, you think you’d want me on their side, no?

All the best,

Chuck DeVore
California State Assemblyman, 70th District
www.ChuckDeVore.com

For the foreseeable future, Solar will not provide baseload power generation and only works well during specific times of day. The great thing about this time period is that it is when electrical demand peaks. I could be wrong, and I'm probably not, but this means that the best use of solar is to blunt the effect of peak demand and keep gas fired peaking generators silent by generating power that is used at the site where it is used. For baseload generation the real choices are coal, oil, natural gas, hydro-electric, geothermal and nuclear. Coal is the absolute least acceptable on this list. Damning rivers is not the best solution either. Oil and gas are very expensive. This leaves Nuclear as one of the only real options. California has routine brown outs, it needs more baseload capacity. An AP1000 will turn out 1.1 GW of constant current. It produces far less waste than the generation I and II reactors we have in the US and it is safer and easier to operate. The current generation III+ reactors are not your grand dad's nuclear reactors, we have hundreds of reactor years experience now and understand how to squeeze more power out of every gram of fuel. A coal fired plant requires 120 million tons of coal a year. Coal burning releases 40% of the mercury found in the environment, along with other heavy metals such as Uranium and Thorium, more than 100 times the amount of radiation released by a nuclear plant. Then there is acid rain components and carbon dioxide. By comparison, a nuclear plant produces 20 tons of "waste" a year, this mass includes more than the fuel, the entire core has to be handled as waste. It sits in a cooling pool for a couple years and then it is put into dry storage in a cask. It's maintained intact, because we don't reprocess it. The Waste is a dry fuel rod assembly sitting in a warehouse. It's not noxious and deadly elements and chemicals thrown into the atmosphere to land in the oceans and then your kids can of tuna.

As far as Thorium fuel is concerned, the research is very nearly complete on a fuel design that will go into current PWRs. All that needs to be done is lead test assembly and some more ampule testing to cap off the 13 years of research to bring it too life as a part of the megatons to megawatts program in Russia by a US company based in Va. This design is a seed and blanket design, Thorium is breed to uranium 233 which is burned in situ in the blanket. The seed is made of reactor waste or weapons grade plutonium, which is incinerated in the process. This disposal method is three times faster than MOX and unlike this method doesn't produce new plutonium. When U233 is split, its breakdown products are shorter lived than the products of 235 fusion/238 irradiation. A majority of the products are decayed within 50 years, most of the remaining are decayed in 500, there would be U233 left over, which should actually be recovered and used instead of being disposed of, the Indians are perfecting U233 recovery as we speak. I'm sure that with the clock set to expire in 500 years, there is some place this can be safely buried with a lot less problems than we have had with Yukka Mtn, or just put it there. How many different ways can you produce a container that will last 500 years? The blanket stays in the reactor for 12 years, the seed for 3 years. Normally you have to turn the core over every year, so this design also produces much less waste by mass. There are thousands of tons of purified thorium buried by the Federal government in Nevada. They collected it because the thought it would be eventually used as a reactor fuel. However, Uranium was so cheap that no one bothered developing the fuel for it until now. I think its time has come.

"odern nuclear power is safe and carbon-free. The French recycle their old nuclear fuel into new nuclear fuel, eliminating the need for long-term storage into the thousands of years."

Except the French don't always run their nuclear facilities when the Ocean water is too warm to be an effective coolant.

Roofing accidents? Oh Chuck, how quait. And tens of thousands of people are killed in auto accidents every year; and some people choke to death on pretzels; and still others drown in the ocean despite being strong swimmers. Life is full of risks, isn't it.

When nuclear waste is 100 percent non-leathal, come talk to me. Until then, I am doing what you asked me to do Assmeblyman. I am writing to you telling you I oppose your bills on nuclear power. And from the other comments on the string, I am not alone. And I'm going to guess that if every voter in your assembly district wrote you to oppose this bill, you'd still offer it up anyways.

Dan, Sen. Barbara Boxer... The French… The Chinese…

The California Republican Party unanimously endorsed my nuclear initiative last year.

“When nuclear waste is 100 percent non-leathal, come talk to me.” Please. How about when any form of energy is 100 percent non-lethal come talk to you… Coal miner deaths? Refinery deaths? Coal spews forth most of the manmade mercury in our environment. Coal burning is thousands of times more radioactive in America than the entire history of the U.S. commercial nuclear industry due to release of radioactive particles in the ash fly… Dan, your comments betray an old 70s polyester-era fear of nuclear power that is not backed up by cold, hard fact.

I’m proud to be a leader on this issue and delighted that Gov. Schwarzenegger is now in agreement. The train is leaving the station with you standing there in your polyester suit.

All the best,

Chuck DeVore
State Assemblyman, 70th District

Chuck, how many of the roofing deaths occurred in the installation of solar power units? And please, the toxic waste storage is down to 500 years? What was the earth like 500 years ago? We are in the dark ages when it comes to nuclear power and not the time to embrace expensive technology that is likely to be obsolete in 50 years. We should be doing what is the most logical: develop and implement solar technology, because the energy from the sun will always be there for free. I have friends who are living oil free. Their rooftop solar photovoltaic units are powering their electric cars. The solar energy goes into the grid at peak power demand times, while the cars are charging overnight at low demand times. Create a bill to allow individual homeowners to sell the electricity they produce by their solar units to the utilities. Each of us can then be a small business supplying electricity to the grid. If this were possible, I'll bet a lot of individuals would have the incentive to putting solar on their roofs, so they can make a profit. Good old American capitalism.

Jan, here's the big problem with your line of thought: what do we do for power at night or in the winter? Even in sunny California, we use about half as much electricity at night as we do during the day. Storing electricity on a large scale is still not possible. Further, solar power, both PV and thermal, is highly expensive and will certainly remain more expensive than hydro, coal, nuclear or oil. Further, solar generates far more CO2 on a lifecycle basis than does nuclear since solar generates only a small amount of power compared to the amount of materials and labor it takes to make and maintain it. Solar is fine for peaking power use on a hot day, but what do we do for nighttime power today -- not 50 years from now.

Did you see the Orange County Register Editorial: Nuke the energy crisis?http://www.ocregister.com/articles/nuclear-power-energy-2001597-percent-california

All the best,

Chuck DeVore
State Assemblyman, 70th District