Powering down before we need to

Which two disasters in this year and last inspired the most fear or anger? For me, the two events were the BP Oil spill and Japan's post-tsunami disaster at its four nuclear plants. Both threaten to poison our oceans and us who depend on it for some of our food supply. What do these disasters have in common? Both are related to:

• our ever-increasing consumption of energy in whatever form works for us, and
  
• the difficulty of maintaining (never mind increasing) our energy supplies.
  

With two in a row, it is likely that next year there will be another disaster, and the year after, etc. All the while, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are increasing their energy use. Saudi Arabia is itself consuming more of its fossil fuels each year. And why shouldn't they all do this, since they can now afford it and deserve it as much as we do. How do we avoid the oncoming energy disasters and ever-increasing price spirals? Live with less, and learn to live entirely without the one that is increasingly being swamped both by demand while its supply diminishes, inexorably. That one would be petroleum. That process of increasing energy frugality is what others, especially Richard Heinberg, call "powering down."

Nuclear

We in the US generate 20% of our total electric energy from nuclear, and –in spite of the 3 Mile Island disaster—nobody has been hurt and the possible environmental disaster was averted. Still, we continue to store spent fuel, with a half-life of thousands of years, in containers at each nuclear site. These sites were not designed to house the spent fuel. In fact, we spent upwards of $15 billion on studies to select a storage site, then in setting it up. It was only until Barack Obama shut the Yucca Mountain facility down –in deference to Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader from Nevada—that we lost the possibility of storing this in a controlled manner. (to be continued.)