Energy Demands Nuclear

Last month’s energy bills for California residents should serve as a wake-up call for our politicians that our current energy path is misguided.

Over-reliance on intermittent and unreliable solar and wind power during winters weather means that consumers have to compete for natural gas with SoCal Gas, which has no choice but to run gas turbines to keep our lights on. Until we make a breakthrough in large scale storage, which may be as elusive as commercial fusion energy, we need a reliable, carbon-free base load source. The only one available is nuclear power. Not pursuing nuclear would be an ideological, not a technical, choice.

We need solar, wind, and nuclear if we want reliable and sustainable low emission electricity. In the words of James Hansen, the NASA scientist who first alerted us to the danger of global warming in 1988, “I don’t see a way forward without nuclear power. Nuclear will make the difference between the world missing crucial climate targets or achieving them.”