Re: Global Energy etc.

[Larry Woolf <larry.woolf@GAT.COM>]

In California, we have a number of wind farms.  There are undesired
side-effects - visual pollution.  The windy valleys are some of the most
beautiful areas - the wind generators are large and ugly, scarring the
hills.  There would be much opposition to the siting of millions of them.
Plus I think they can be noisy.

Re: Nuclear energy.  The nuclear industry made a number of serious errors.
They did not standardize on a single modular design; instead they custom
made every facility.   This lead to large cost overruns.  Second, they did
not an accident rate of 0% that they needed - Three Mile Island and
Chernobyl will take a long time for the public to forget.  Nevertheless,
work is continuing (slowly) on the development of inherently safe (like the
General Atomics TRIGA reactor) and modular nuclear energy - such as the
modular high temperature gas-cooled reactor.  At General Atomics, we are
also involved in the large DOE funded fusion program.


> Is not the harnessing of the wind in many ways akin to the harnessing of
> flowing water, as in hydroelectric power plants?  I think in both cases
> there may be undesired side-effects.

Dr. Lawrence D. Woolf; Phone: (858)-455-4475; www.sci-ed-ga.org
General Atomics; 3550 General Atomics Court; San Diego CA 92121-1194