Similarly, anti-nuclear forces have unnecessarily delayed the construction of repositories for nuclear wastes. The electricity trap in which California now finds itself is a consequence of the national trends coming together this winter. Weather has increased demand in all the Western US, so California cannot depend on low cost electricity purchases from neighboring states. The recent electricity problems in California make it clear that we must take action to prevent future energy disasters. The one available solution is a major increase in the utilization of nuclear energy.
Nuclear energy can provide an essentially unlimited supply of economic energy.
Anti-nuclear activists frighten the public about nuclear wastes thousands of years out. The near term expansion of nuclear energy will allow us to mitigate global warming, and to lengthen the availability of specially needed fossil fuels. Although long term nuclear wastes can be safely accommodated, advanced nuclear plant designs will allow us to modify the nuclear wastes so that they lose their radioactivity in just a few hundred years. Today we are having very disturbing, but relatively mild, energy problems due to our lack of preparation. We must work to solve this near term problem.