Well, if words could produce electricity, we'd be in good shape this week. 

On Monday, the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources killed AB 1776 (designed to improve our energy independence by lifting the state ban on building new nuclear reactors) and AB 2788 (lifting the state ban to allow one modern nuclear reactor to be built in California).

The same day, U.C. Berkeley published a scholarly piece they invited me to write on nuclear power. 

Today, the Orange County Register's lead editorial was in support of my effort to revive nuclear power in California. 

How the Berkeley piece came about was interesting.  A few months ago I was approached by the UC Berkeley School of Law to contribute a scholarly piece on nuclear power as a solution to global warming.  The piece entitled, "Relative Risk: Global Warming and Imported Fossil Fuels vs. Nuclear Power," is in the inaugural edition of the "Ecology Law Currents" publication which may be seen at: http://www.boalt.org/elq/index.php.

After more than a year of intense advocacy on behalf of modern nuclear power, writing the piece itself was not all that difficult - getting the footnotes in order was a different story as the last time I wrote a footnoted research paper was for the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College some six year ago. 

My piece concludes by noting, "California is not an island. When we act to increase the cost of doing business here, whether through higher taxes or more burdensome regulations, capital and labor have the choice to move elsewhere. California is the most electrically efficient state in America and the third most energy efficient state overall... ...making California less competitive has the unintended impact of moving economic activity to other states or nations with less environmentally friendly economies. Any production of goods or services lost to Nevada or Arizona sets us back in the struggle to reduce global (greenhouse gas) emissions - and a loss to coal-fired China or India is far, far worse."

The full paper and link are included below.

Relative Risk: Global Warming and Imported Fossil Fuels vs. Nuclear Power.