Chaoslillith, maybe you need to define what you would call "plenty of businesses", Its basic economics that are causing both people AND BUSINESSES to leave California in RECORD NUMBERS, California tax revenues, and tax records being proof of that (the interesting thing is most of the businesses and people leaving California are heading to Texas, it currently holds 5 of the top 10 fastest growing cities in America, due to lower taxes, cheaper power, and non-destructive business laws, and affordable housing) also, if you are thinking Western Europes economies are healthy.. I think you will find they are not if you check into them.. France is currently having riots than have numbered in some est. 1 MILLION rioters nation wide over labor, Germany has had more than a few riots and problems in regards to employment, Germany's last elections adding even more proof to the existence of those problems.. and our English brothers have employment problems as well, and a heavy regressive taxes, Green Energy is NOT cost effective as of yet.. For power, Nuke power is currently the most cost effective means of producing power.
Windmill Farms kill more birds of prey to the point of whole species in the areas of windmill farms in great decline and endangered. The maintenance costs of the windmill farms are very high. Planting trees does little to improve air quality, the primary producer of oxygen is the oceans, in fact there are numerous trees that produce green house gasses in levels that are rather surprising (why would plants produce green house gases if they are "destructive to plants"?)
There are several reliable recent comparative studies place nuclear electricity generation solidly as th e lowest-cost producer, often by serious margins. Studies by eg. IEA AND OECD-NEA (2005), MIT (2003), DGEMP France (2003), TARJANNE & LUOSTARINEN Finland (2003), ROYAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING UK (2004), UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO (2004), CERI Canada (2004) are surveyed at
http://www.world-nuclear.org/economics.pdf Most accept an "overnite" capital cost of about $1300 to $1500 / kw, butvary on rates of interest etc.
BOTH solar thermal concentration (very soon, eg. alread y in California (but not cost effective yet), see the 0.5 to .8 Gw Stirling dish generated power purchase agreement by San Francisco utility
http://www.stirlingenergy.com/breaking_news.htm) and PV (somewhat later, depending on how quickly commercialization of Optical Rectenna is done) (
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy03osti/33263.pdf is a bit old, (yes I know Morgan its old, and no longer reliable, btw, how old are you, are you by chance pre-personal PC??) dont expect NREL to move quickly on something like this which could upset a LOT of vested interests with conversion efficiencies above 50% and no crystal silicon processing required), it's about economics folks, so I guess we need to hurry up and wait.
