[Physicist]

I certainly think that the U.S. should immediately undertake a radical effort to build fission reactors. Commercial fusion is decades away, and something must fill the gap until then. But everything I've read indicates that, while the U.S. has a "lot" of fissionable materials in the ground, it just isn't enough for the U.S. to achieve energy independence over the long term. (Likewise, the U.S. has a "lot" of oil reserves.) If you can point me to a credible source that says otherwise, do so.

It may be expensive to extract deuterium from seawater; the issue is that we won't have to buy the deuterium from another country. Oceans we got.

There is no technical reason why the U.S. must be energy-independent, and certainly the economic reasons are all against it. The politics of not being energy-independent, however, have become intolerable. The key to making peace in the Middle East is to make oil worthless. (Fusion, or fission for that matter, is only half of that battle, I might add.)

[Southack]

I think that I can agree with most of what you are saying above. I'm unclear about the validity of your claim that uranium in the U.S. isn't enough for our energy independence, but I'll suspend my disbelief for the moment.

Certainly we should be building fission plants today. The West needs desalination and we all need the electricity. I'm aware of no state other than my own in which any such nuclear plants are even on the drawing board, however...and we're just looking at building one in the next ten years.

If what you say is accurate, however, then we do need to pursue fusion research for that point in our future in which you show that our uranium runs out.

But do we have to perform such research with France and China?? That leaves a bad taste in my mouth...

5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires

[RightWhale]

The key to making peace in the Middle East is to make oil worthless.

Columbus' goal was to find a trade route to India and/or China that didn't have to go through the ME. The ME was rendered irrelevant as a result, although the trade route he was looking for turned out to be blocked by a land mass. Let the region be irrelevant again.