Can Tucsonans afford greener power?

According to the latest decision of the Arizona Corporation Commission, effective Jan 1, 2009 TEP customers will pay nearly $5 a month extra just to get 2% of our electricity to be produced by renewable sources...... at this rate, it will cost ratepayers an extra $35 a month when it gets up to 15% renewable in a decade or so, a goal that is set in law.

I can afford that type of increase, but how about those on fixed incomes or the poor families?

Renewable energy may be a laudatory goal to many people, but APS can't find financing for its slated solar-thermal plant near Gila Bend, and we're not a great state for wind energy, either according to the wind power folks' own studies. Given our low rainfall and ongoing drought, even small-scale hydroelectric (no dams, just diversion of water in the stream to turbines) isn't very feasible

Arizona's cheapest electricity already comes from nuclear power. It doesn't pollute the air, and even those people alarmed about global warming see nuclear power as a good alternative to fossil fuels.

I think Arizona should expand its use. We have plenty of empty rural counties that could use the economic benefit of such plants, and nuclear power plants are a proven technology, a safe technology, and can be depended on 24/7. Nuclear power plants in the US have the best utilization rate of any electricity generation source - on-line and producing power 92% of the time. In contrast, wind is about 30% and solar around 50% or less.

As for the nuclear waste issue, there's two answers: 1/ The new president and the Congress need to stop stalling and get the repository at Yucca Flats in Nevada open and accepting shipments and 2/ We need to terminate the wrong-headed policy passed by Pres. Carter in 1977 of bannign the reprocessing of nuclear fuel. Reprocessing using new methods can prevent nuclear waste from being able to be used in weapons, plus it keeps the US from having to mine or import more uranium through being able to use the reprocessed fuel in nuclear power plants.