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twitterLETTER FROM WASHINGTON:
Despite Obama’s opposition, Congress tangles over Yucca
Sunday, July 19, 2009 | 2 a.m.
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Washington — President Barack Obama’s plan to terminate the Yucca Mountain project has not stopped pro-dump lawmakers from trying to resurrect the nuclear waste repository north of Las Vegas.
No fewer than six amendments to the House Energy and Water Appropriations bill were offered last week by Republicans to keep Yucca Mountain alive. They sought to restore funding Obama slashed or prevent a shutdown. One Republican measure sought to cut Yucca funding altogether — to force the issue and prove a point that the dump still has support.
None survived.
However, what did remain intact is a single sentence in the accompanying bill report that worries the dump’s foes.
The language attaches a condition to the $5 million Obama is seeking to establish a commission that would look into alternatives to the dump in the desert.
It reads: “The Committee makes the $5 million for the Blue Ribbon Commission available provided that Yucca Mountain is considered in the review.”
The whole point of the commission is to consider alternatives to Yucca Mountain, not to breathe new life into the nuclear waste dump plan.
The commission was the brainchild of Nevada’s senators, Harry Reid and John Ensign, and was meant to answer what comes next after Yucca Mountain is shut down.
Bruce Breslow, executive director of Nevada’s Nuclear Projects Agency, which is fighting the dump, called the report language “a masterful attaching of strings … that would hurt Nevada.”
Breslow thinks the troubling language should give Nevada’s lawmakers pause. But he also expects the line will not survive in the final bill in the Senate.
Nevada’s Democratic lawmakers in the House supported the spending bill, even with the loathsome line.
A spokesman for Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley said the language is nonbinding and likely to be withdrawn. “It’s one last gasp on the part of the people who want nuclear waste to go to Nevada,” the spokesman said.
Democratic Rep. Dina Titus is confident the commission will decide against storing waste in Nevada, her spokesman said. Republican Rep. Dean Heller joined half of his Republican colleagues in voting against the bill.
Under the bill, the Energy Department would receive the $196.8 million Obama requested for the Yucca Mountain project in fiscal 2010 — a minimal amount to allow the licensing process to continue before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Obama has pledged to end Yucca Mountain, but skeptics who oppose the waste repository worry that the administration is playing with fire by providing enough funding to continue the review. Many think the review is proceeding to prevent industry lawsuits.
As the bill heads to the Senate, it offers a reminder of the power the small state of Nevada wields with Reid as the majority leader.
Yucca Mountain was approved in 1987, Reid’s first year in the Senate. As Reid’s profile rose, he engineered budget cuts that have crippled the project. This year is no different.
Yucca’s supporters in Nevada despise Reid for this role. But its opponents rely on Reid’s prowess as their last line of defense.
Although the Senate version allows Obama’s request to proceed, Reid has slashed $24 million from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, limiting its ability to process the Yucca Mountain license. That’s about a 13 percent reduction.
As for the House language insisting that Obama’s new commission include Yucca Mountain, Reid’s office calls it irrelevant.
Even the Nuclear Energy Institute, the main industry lobby, seemed less interested in studying Yucca Mountain than studying something else. “Our greater concern is DOE getting on with the formation … of the panel so the nation can determine the path forward.”
Discussion: 28 comments so far…
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We need to accept the location of the nuclear fuel depot at Yucca and turn it into a positive for the area. Jobs would be nice. New power plants near the site would be even better.
Science has found the site safe and $9 billion spent to build the site is too much to throw away out of unrealistic fear.
As noted in the House Budget Committee meeting this week, the decision to TRY to abandon Yucca Mountain by Obama was made without any scientific input, federal record of decision, environmental impact analysis, or consultation with the nation's designated federal nuclear waste leadership. It was purely a short term political decision to pay back Reid for helping Obama get elected.
Further, as one of the proposed changes to abolish Yucca Mountain showed, 388 vs 33 Representatives voted to keep the funding.
Neither Reid nor Obama will be around in a 8 years. No matter what the blue ribbon commission decides, Yucca Mountain will be back by 2020 as this vote shows.
Nevada could be receiving billions of dollars in critically needed jobs and infrastructure improvements. A four lane highway could connect Reno and Las Vegas. New railroad lines could be constructed to transport commerce. Emergency response centers every 50 miles could be built that could also be used for rural health care. Twenty plus years of employment for thousands of construction and manufacturing jobs could repower Nevada's economy during this extreme recession. All of this would also help the housing market across the state.
Instead, our elected leaders reject all of this and leave unemployment in Nevada climbing above 12% to record highs. The citizens of Nevada should be asking hard questions as to why. Instead of turning down the repository, our leaders should be demanding upmost safety to their satisfaction and let the project proceed.
It reads: "The Committee makes the $5 million for the Blue Ribbon Commission available provided that Yucca Mountain is considered in the review."
The whole point of the commission is to consider alternatives to Yucca Mountain, not to breathe new life into the nuclear waste dump plan."
No No No No - the whole purpose should be to come up solution to the nuclear waste disposal.
The Reid/Chu solution is only to support Reid's 2010 reelection
$5 million for a commission to study alternatives! Aren't these people already getting pay for their jobs? Unless of course part of the study requires several visits to the Bahamas, and in dirty Harry's case, desperately needed re-election funds.
I wonder what it will cost, and who will pay to maintain and guard the site for the next 50,000 years.
Are the nuclear power companies going to foot the bill or are they just going to stick the taxpayers with the cost of the waste, now that they've take their profits?
@Mia Kulper,
If you could do even three minutes of research, you would know that homes and businesses which use nuclear-generated electricity have by law been paying for Yucca Mountain since 1983. Their fees plus interest now total nearly $30 billion dollars, and this fund grows by more than $1 billion every year.
Thanks to Harry Reid, those people now have nothing to show for their money-- yet they are STILL paying to this day. Their fees would pay for about 85% of Yucca Mountain. Tax dollars pay the rest, to dispose of nuclear submarine fuel and other defense waste, which is fair.
Google the Nuclear Waste Fund and see for yourself.
Your second question is easily answered as well. The Department of Energy estimates Yucca Mountain will cost about $98 billion dollars (2002 dollars) during its approximately 150-year operating lifetime.
Final note: that Reid and Obama would squash Yucca Mountain before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's scientific review is complete, is patently offensive and quite likely illegal.
While I understand that Nevadans feel Yucca Mountain is itself offensive, the rest of the country, via Congress, does not. If people don't like Yucca, CHANGE THE LAW. You saw the result of that vote.
The amendment mentioned in this story is the only bit of common sense to come to this program since the November election.
Former,
excellent, excellent and excellent.
The "sky is falling crowd" are too busy running around spewing falsehoods and lies to understand even the fundamentals of Yucca or Nuclear Storage.
Harry and his braindead ilk have to be stopped.
One more in a growing list of blunders for Obama.
Wow. Thank goodness Obama won last fall, and thank goodness for Harry Reid. Otherwise, these right-wingers would be getting their way and we could have all been nuking ourselves to death.
I guess this is what happens when the nuclear industry's PR goes unchallenged for far too long. Nuclear power is not "safe", not "clean", and not worthy of our energy future. I hope President Obama doesn't buckle under GOP pressure here. Nevada doesn't need all those tons of toxic nuclear waste, and America doesn't need any more dirty nuclear power.
Thanks for the info, former_yucca_insider.
But why are they only projecting the cost for 150 years, since most of that nuclear waste is extremely volatile and highly lethal for thousands of years?
Are they going to be levying the charges on future generations of current ratepayers too?
@Mia Kulper,
Second question first: Under the current law, future generations will pay the disposal fees for the power THEY purchase, not our spent fuel. At this point, there more interest being generated in the Nuclear Waste Fund than actual fees being collected... fees total about $750 million per year, interest has been more than $1 billion per year.
Your first question: the 150 year figure starts at 1982 (passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act) and ends when Yucca Mountain's current disposal limit is reached: about 77,000 tons, plus a monitoring period.
Once the disposal limit is reached, Congress must decide whether to expand Yucca or build a second repository.
By law, the waste must be retrievable for as long as the repository is open, in case technology advances for recycling the fuel. (Some of that technology exists today, but the US has decided not to pursue it because it separates out plutonium, which can be used in bombs-- if enough is present and it's shaped in the correct way.)
Spent fuel is not "volatile." It cannot explode nor fuel a fire. It can cause cancer if it dissolves and gets into groundwater. That's why it must eventually be removed from cities and seacoasts, where it is now.
The point of a repository is to keep the material isolated, remote, and away from groundwater while the radioactivity decays to natural levels.
A long half-life is NOT a bad thing-- generally the longer the half-life, the less radiation is emitted. Natural uranium has a half-life of 4 billion years.
An interesting aside-- waste products from solar panels and batteries never decay. They're toxic forever. That's not to say we should not pursue solar, I'm just saying every power generation technology, from burning wood to nuclear fusion, has its plusses and minuses.
former_yucca_insider writes: "Spent fuel is not "volatile." It cannot explode nor fuel a fire."
"Volatile" doesn't only mean flamable or explosive, but I'm sure I don't have to explain that to a former_yucca_insider.
Radioactive fuel waste is highly volatile; some of the extremely radioactive elements in spent nuclear fuel change from solids to gasses and to liquids as their elements decay and are transmuted into other radioactive elements in the peiodic table. But you know that already.
former_yucca_insider writes: "It can cause cancer if it dissolves and gets into groundwater. That's why it must eventually be removed from cities and seacoasts, where it is now."
Yes, because of nuclear power we've really got a huge and expensive mess on our hands, I'll grant you that.
@Mia, in terms of effects on human health and the environment, those from coal powered plants are FAR huger and messier.
Coal emissions kill thousands of people every year and produce permanent poisons-- mercury to name one-- yet the ratio of fear and hysteria (not much) when compared to nuclear is painfully out of whack.
Let's put our attention where it really belongs, and base our concerns on facts rather than fear.
I would much rather store the relatively small waste products of nuclear generation in a remote mountain, with the possibility of recycling, than store the relatively immense waste products of coal in our lungs and the atmosphere.
Besides, even if you shut off every nuclear plant today, you still have around 55,000 tons of spent fuel to deal with safely.
Not to mention find some way to replace 20% of your daily electricity-- probably much more in Vegas in late July.
@Mia, I have heard of tiny amounts of gas inside spent fuel rods, but spent fuel does not "evaporate rapidly'" (the first listed definition of volatile at dictionary.com) nor does it explode (the second listed definition). Your comment was a rrrreeeeeeeaaaaaallll stretch.
@atdleft,
"Nuking" ourselves to death?
Number killed by coal plant emissions last year: around 25,000
Number killed by nuclear plant emissions last year: 0
Number killed in a radiation accident worldwide last year: 0
Number killed in a radiation accident in a U.S. plant EVER: 0
Go ahead and add Chernobyl if you want. Historically, combustion of fossil fuels for electricity still wins the death count by a VAST landslide.
Time for current and former Yucca insiders to face the fact that the dump is dying. Debate the inside baseball all you want, but when you charge that Reid and Obama are using politics to kill the nuke dump planned for Yucca Mountain, remember how Nevada came to be targeted in the first place. That's right. It was politics.
As for what a nuke dump would do for Nevada's economy, check out Clark County's research on how it would further depress local property values. Just the perception of Las Vegas as the gateway to the nation's nuclear waste dump and even the threat of an accident would far outweigh the handful of jobs this thing could ever claim to create. See: http://www.uerlv.com/ccmpcs/UER_MONITORI...
"Approximately 87% percent of respondents indicated an expectation that having a high-level nuclear waste transportation route near residential housing would have a negative impact on property values. This figure remained unchanged from Winter 2007..."
former_yucca_insider writes: "in terms of effects on human health and the environment, those from coal powered plants are FAR huger and messier."
We agree that coal power is very toxic, but arguing which is better or worse is like recommending diabetes over over cancer; neither is a good thing.
former_yucca_insider writes: "Besides, even if you shut off every nuclear plant today, you still have around 55,000 tons of spent fuel to deal with safely."
Let's send it to France! The nuclear plant owners can get it off their hands and pass it off onto the French. They like nuclear power in France.
former_yucca_insider writes: "I have heard of tiny amounts of gas inside spent fuel rods, but spent fuel does not "evaporate rapidly'" (the first listed definition of volatile at dictionary.com) nor does it explode (the second listed definition). Your comment was a rrrreeeeeeeaaaaaallll stretch."
You can stretch it all you like but you overlooked "changeable," "transient" and "unstable" as other definitions for "volatile."
Use those.
@Mia... You cannot be serious about your "Let's send it to France" solution. I can't wait to see what former_yucca_insider has to say about that.
Wait, wait... let me get my popcorn and Coke ready. Okay, now, former_yucca_insider, go ahead.
P.S. I will take diabetes over cancer in a heartbeat. Just because neither is good doesn't mean one isn't worse. Cancer is worse.
atdleft,
So I assume you mean that Las Vegas that receives 16% of its electricity from nuclear power should shut it off immediately. And that the nuclear weapons at Nellis as well as the nuclear Navy should protect the other 49 states and not Nevada? And that nuclear power across the nation that provides 20% of its electricity at low cost enabling competitive product production and millions of jobs should be shut down so that there is no excess money for gambling in Nevada.
Sounds like Nevada wants to be taken over by foreign invaders as well as have zero casino jobs.
Do you really believe what you write? If so, you need to do more research to understand that Nevada benefited more than any other city in the world from nuclear power in the 1990s and early 2000s. To become a primary vacation destination again means that nuclear power around the world must be built as fast as possible. Nevada should also build nuclear power plants as well as be part of the nation by disposing of nuclear waste that helped it create in a place 100 miles from the nearest city next to 1000 nuclear bomb explosions.
Get real people and realize that Nevada does not exist in a vacuum. It depends upon the rest of the country and the world to support it. Nuclear power makes it possible.
@GM,
All laws are politics. They're still laws, and if you don't like them, you change them. This has not happened (yet) with regard to Yucca. When it does happen, I'll gladly shut up.
@Mia, We MUST argue which is better, coal vs nuclear, unless your goal is to return us to an agrarian or hunter-gatherer society. We make risk-reward decisions dozens of times each day, and to reduce energy production to an "it's all bad" argument us immature, impractical, and specious.
Your comment about sending spent fuel to France indicates a true lack of understanding on your part, or any inclination to truly engage in a discussion about it.
France, by the way, has the cleanest air in Europe because nearly 80% of its electricity comes from nuclear.
We should be like France?
GM:
O boy, O boy! So much to discuss in your, um, fertile post.
Let's see: first, you glibly provide a link to a study "conducted by" Clark County that (surprise, surprise) reaches the conclusion that the proposed repository would hurt the robust and well-diversified Nevada economy. Wow, there's a stretch: A study commissioned by a Nevada agency reaches a conclusion that the repository would be a bad thing for the state. Gee, I wonder how many other such state-sponsored studies, most of them farmed out to research mills in other states, and compiled by researchers with well-established biases, have reached that same conclusion. Answer: Virtually all of them, which is what you get when you pay for the services of known anti-nuke environmentalist research firms.
And even better, the study is based on POLLING DATA, that venerable instrument of sociological and socioeconomic truth. What was the study sample? Something like 600 people? And on the basis of this relatively small sample we are supposed to accept the conclusion that a repository should not be built under a nondescript volcanic ridge in the middle of the desert on land that happens to be part of a test site where they conducted something like 900 belowground and aboveground nuclear weapons tests?
My question illustrates the methodology and "truth value" of the study you cite, ostensibly as some kind of "proof" that the repository at Yucca Mountain should be scrapped. That is, only a polling group that was kept fatuously ignorant of the actual facts of the case, with visions of 55-gallon drums with glowing green liquid sloshing around in them, right out of "The Simpsons" or some such cartoon--only such people could be reasonably expected to offer the opinions on which your vaunted study was based, for this was the conclusion the study set out to reach in the first place, and that bias was built into the methodology.
You can say that perception is reality, at least where political decisions and policymaking are concerned. There you are on solid ground. But, please, don't trundle out some pathetic and fatally biased socioeconomic study and expect anyone who has bothered to study the scientific, legal, and regulatory case to take your suggestion seriously. All you have done is illustrate your thesis, which is that the policy with respect to Yucca Mountain lately is the product of pure politics and the management of perception.
Mia Kulper:
You may have set some kind of new record for the rate at which an obvious repository opponent dropped the pretense of reasoned argument when confronted by simple scientific facts available to anyone willing to click a mouse a few times.
But then, you also revealed that you quite possibly lack a basic appreciation of those facts, which in my experience has always betrayed a corresponding lack of basic understanding of those facts.
Be that as it may, if you're content to argue semantics and quibble over the meaning of "volatile," I'll leave you to it. Perhaps you are more comfortable there. If, on the other hand, you're actually interested in learning about the size and nature of the spent fuel and high-level waste inventory intended for storage at Yucca Mountain, there are plenty of publicly available studies you can consult. These studies were performed by our national labs under strict quality assurance guidelines; they have been "vetted" through peer review in many cases, and have had to answer to a "higher authority" in terms of establishing their "truth value" (i.e., they use math and science and otherwise independently verifiable evidence, as opposed to poll-based socioeconomic studies sponsored by the State). Typically, such studies will address the waste inventory in great detail, including decay rates, radionuclide evolution, potential corrosion products, thermal output, and, yes, even the alleged "volatility" you seem so preoccupied with, however much you may be overstating the case and ignoring the actual context (i.e., spent fuel of a specific composition in a specific environment -- thermal, metallurgical, chemical, hydrological, geological, etc. -- and the potential interactions that arise therein).
The simple truth is this: You appear to have been soundly rebutted by former_Yucca_insider, who has a talent for such things, on virtually every point, possibly because you are ignorant of the facts. If this is the case, whether the ignorance is willful is not a matter that can be determined in this forum, and nor is it relevant.
What's relevant is that you responded to facts with semantics (and also with snark vis-a-vis your silly comment about shipping our nuclear waste to France). You waste our time when you take refuge in these semantics or, even worse, in amateur environmentalism, which is long on outrage and self-righteousness but pathetically short on facts and the Reality Principle.
So, please, do us all a favor and go back to the onscreen persona that was willing to use terms like "periodic table," and drop the smug persona that orders other people to join in some masturbatory semantic exercise or advocate clearly implausible policy shifts like shipping waste to Aix-en-Provence.
Here are some economic facts that Yucca Mountain opponents never seem to mention, even while they enthuse wildly and celebrate the alleged demise of their favorite cartoon villain, the proposed repository for high-level nuclear waste.
First, as made clear in testimony before the House budget committee on July 16th, Harry Reid's "victory" over Big Government's plan to build an "unsafe" and "unsound" nuclear repository 90 miles outside of Las Vegas will be a costly victory indeed -- for all Americans.
Because the decision to build a repository at Yucca Mountain is settled law (the Nuclear Waste Policy Act), and because that settled law includes a contract with nuclear utilities for the DOE to take nuclear waste off of their hands, the government stands in breach of contract (since 1998) and must pay damages to said utilities.
According to the Justice Department official testifying before the House committee, the nuclear utilities have brought over 70 suits as a result of this breach. To date, $565 million has been paid out by the government to settle these suits, 51 of which are still pending. Of those 51, thirteen cases have passed through the judgment phase and additional settlements are forthcoming. Which means, at this point in time, the government is on the hook for $1.3 billion in damages.
Moving forward, DOE has estimated that the final tally for settlement costs will reach approximately $12 billion -- if the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain opens by 2020 and permits the government to fulfill its contractual obligation with the nuclear utilities.
In the meantime, the Department of Justice has expended vast sums of money just to litigate the 20 or so cases that have come before the courts: $24 million in attorney costs, $91 million for expert testimony, and $39 million in litigation support costs. And until a remedy is found that settles the breach of contract issue, the Justice Department expects that the liability will only increase -- that is, that the legal costs and damages will be comparable or likely exceed what we've already witnessed, into the foreseeable future.
The Yucca Mountain scenario, of course, has been taken "off the table" by the Obama administration and DOE Secretary Stephen Chu, so that estimate will likely rise. (The nuclear industry itself had estimated that the final settlement amount would be closer to $50 billion.)
So, to recap: $565 million paid in settlements for the 1998-2007 period, with an additional $150 million paid in litigation expenses. And we can expect to pay this amount and likely much more for each ensuing decade that passes without a solution to the nuclear waste problem.
And here's the real kicker: This burden is shouldered by taxpayers like you and me. Every dime for settlements and legal costs comes out of the Justice Fund, which the government uses to pay for its liabilities and funds with our taxpayer dollars.
GM:
Here are some survey questions I would like to have seen in the poll-based study commissioned by Clark County:
(1) Do you find it troubling that policy makers would rely on a poll of 600 people to determine whether or not nuclear waste should be stored primarily in a remote, largely uninhabited location or should remain within 60 miles of over 160 million fellow Americans and near every major body of water in the country? (Note: Not a single one of the 160 million Americans who live within 60 miles of an existing nuclear facility was surveyed in the abovementioned poll.)
(2) Would you be willing, in exchange for rejecting a proposed nuclear waste repository in your state, to surrender that portion of your electricity generated by nuclear power? For example, in the state of Nevada, approximately 16% of electricity comes from nuclear power generated outside the state (for example, at the Palo Verde nuclear plant 40 miles outside of Phoenix, AZ). If you were a Nevadan, would you be willing to relinquish this portion of the electricity supply, whatever the consequences (i.e., in terms of shortages, brownouts, rate increases, etc.)?
(3) On what do you base your disapproval of the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain: (a) scientific evidence, (b) political convictions, (c) what I've heard from politicians and local media, (d) personal opinions with respect to nuclear energy.
atdleft,
Nuclear is dirty??!! Man, have another swig of the green kool-aid. Why don't you look into the chemicals used to make photovoltaic cells. Why don't you try and ease your brain from the pollution that coal spews or maybe the needless deaths of the migrant birds due to wind power.
It is OK for the rest of the world to have nuclear, just not the US.
Our country has been hi-jacked by the eco-nuts and is headed of a cliff.
To Ardent:
Ok, you got me. Yes, I'm opposed to nuclear power in its present form and I guess that's clouded my opinion with regard to the Yucca Mountain repository.
And I don't live in Nevada so I don't even have a NIMBY argument to make in opposition to the repository.
It's true that we've got a real mess on our hands, spread all across the country in the form of highly radioactive and toxic spent nuclear fuel in temporary storage but it does seem to make sense to consolidate it into one location like the Yucca Mountain repository. All providing that it's done as safely as possible.
But I believe that as a nation we're flirting with disaster with nuclear power in its present form and I also believe that Americans are going to be getting the shaft as we take all the radioactive waste off the hands of the nuclear power plant owners, but the Yucca Mountain repository is the least bad of the bad choices now available to us.
Like it or not, I have to admit that it's better choice than what we're doing now.
Ms. Mascaro,
Your title to this story is amazing - afterall Yucca Mountain is a project of Congress and the states, and it is the national federal law. To state that "Despite Obama's opposition", Congress [dares] to try to keep Yucca smacks of a dictatorship like position for Obama as President. No President prior to Obama ignored the law. What law will he dictate is invalid in the future? All this is very disturbing to the American political system where the President is supposed to uphold and enforce the laws, not declare that he won't follow it. OK, so the Sun and its owner is against the repository. But one would think that the press had a higher calling to uphold American ideals, and not sell out for local issues.
Being a Democrat, I voted for Barack Obama. I listened to him before the election on his view regarding Yucca Mountain and about nuclear energy and felt he was not very educated on either and I had a gut feeling that he would go against Yucca Mountain because of his ties to Senator Reid. I feel that the funding for the YM project should have continued as scheduled and that cutting the funding is a big mistake, which is going to continue to cost U.S. taxpayers even more money. The storage of the HLW at the power plants, as is being done now, not only is a security issue, but is very expensive because of the lawsuits from the plants themselves have cost millions of dollars which is in turn being passed on to the customer of the utility. The site that was selected in Nevada (Yucca Mtn.) was chosen by qualified scientists because it was the safest site within the U.S. to put the HLW. There were three sites that were ultimately considered in the study (the study itself cost a great deal of money - which we all paid for).
So, now Sen. Reid wants to start the whole process over and select a new location or another way to store the HLW and spend more money! Where is this money going to come from? How many more years is this going to take? Solve the problem - Don't Defer this issue because the people of Nevada do not want the Nuclear Waste in their state. Yucca Mountain is Safe. I have read the Scientific Study regarding YM and it can safely store the waste for 10 million years. Furthermore, the U.S. should be building more nuclear power plants. I also feel that we should be reprocessing our high-level nuclear waste like France does, then we would not have to worry about the high-level waste storage issue. Something the U.S. should consider. Alternative energy is a great idea, but will not support the U.S.'s demand for energy. Also some forms of alternative energy is very expensive to build. Do your research. Don't listen to what everyone is telling you. The transmission lines, for example, for wind energy are VERY expensive and unsightly.