Our representative, Jay Inslee, wants to install more “alternative energy sources,” such as windmills and solar panels, as do Sens. Murray and Cantwell and President Obama.
After spending $2 billion on 687 giant wind turbines, T. Boone Pickens has quit his quest to build a wind farm in the Texas Panhandle. Not economically feasible, he said.
American energy imports currently cost about $1 billion per day. That is 30 percent of our total energy use.
Hoover Dam is one of the wonders of the world. It produces enough electrical power for the city of Los Angeles.
The Palo Verde nuclear facility in Phoenix, Ariz., began operating in 1988. It produces six times the electrical energy of Hoover Dam.
Today, the replacement cost of these reactors would be about $6 billion, leaving out government costs. Based on output, the cost to replace one Hoover Dam with a comparable nuclear facility would be billion.
If one 10-reactor Palo Verde nuclear power station were built in each of the 50 states, the United States could be a net exporter of $200 billion per year of energy, rather than a net importer of $300 billion per year.
Every 24 hours, the energy policies imposed by Washington destroy an amount of capital that could build the electrical generating capacity of one complete Hoover Dam.
The people of the United States have a clear choice — either continue to destroy the capital equivalent of Hoover Dam every day, or get rid of the politicians in Washington who have caused and continue to cause this destruction.
To force our engineers and industrialists to make useful energy without hydrocarbons and uranium is the modern equivalent of Pharaoh telling ancient Egyptian slaves to make bricks without straw. If we continue to allow this, we will have less energy and less prosperity.
Jack Leicester
Shoreline
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