You have to wonder what our Congress has been thinking regarding energy over the past few decades.

     

We have a huge Department of Energy (DOE) with a budget large enough to feed half of the third world countries. They spend nearly $25 billion annually, have 100,000 employees and some very nice offices.

     

However, this department of energy doesn’t produce any energy and from what can be observed they really don’t have any plans to do that.

     

If you should visit their website you will note they have done a marvelous job at identifying traditional sources of energy and have some excellent tips on conservation obviously written by a few graduates of the “Are you smarter than a fifth grader” TV show.

     

America has developed some most unusual beliefs about energy. While oil drives 99% of our cars, trucks and trains it also supplies 40% of the fuel for our power plants and other energy needs.

     

Since the Three Mile Island nuclear melt-down in 1979 you will notice that we have not built any nuclear power plants in the United States; neither have we built any new oil refineries in that period of time and we eliminated off shore drilling.

     

Interesting that just outside of our Continental boundaries off shore that numerous other countries are sucking up our oil and selling it back to us.

     

As usual, our populous, Congress and lawmakers over reacted and our energy sources went South.

     

An interesting observation about Three Mile Island was there were no injuries and no adverse health hazards which resulted from that accident, yet anti-nuclear hysteria reigned.

     

Meantime, the rest of the world rolled full steam ahead creating new and advanced technologies for nuclear power. England now produces over 20% of their energy from nuclear as does Germany. France produces a whopping 76% of their electricity from nuclear energy.

     

Santa Clara obtains about 1% of their energy from nuclear sources.

     

Even China is on a fast paced track to move nuclear energy to the front in their economic plans with fifteen plants now under construction.

     

So, while we went green and environmental, the rest of the industrialized world has been driving ahead resolving their energy needs using advanced engineering.

     

Yes, but what about the safety factor? Isn’t nuclear energy dangerous?

     

Folks, we now have over 450 ships sailing the world powered by nuclear fuel. France has nearly 60 nuclear power plants generating the majority of their electricity.

     

The safety record for these vessels and plants is rather remarkable.

     

It is time the U.S. moved into the 21^st century.

     

To get us started, we could begin by using the DOE budget to build about a dozen nuclear plants that actually produce energy rather than hot air.