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Anyone with any kind of common sense knows that the only facility safe in tornado alley is built underground.

Right. That's why there are no nuclear powerplants anywhere in tornado alley.

We have that now in Illinois.

http://www.exeloncorp.com/ComedCare_Main/ComedCare/learn/RealTimePricingPrg/

It's pretty cool.

ComEd in Illinois offers this on a voluntary basis - and they give you a monthly credit for doing so. http://www.exeloncorp.com/ourcompanies/comed/comedres/save_energy_money/energy_savings_program_with_comed.htm They hook up something to the air conditioner (outside the house) and this allows them to cycle the loads in a given region. They have well-detailed arrangements for how much time the air conditioner can be off at a single time and during which hours it can occur. It seems like a very good way to minimize the system load and they pass some of their savings on to the consumer. My friend has been using this for a few years and they have only need to activate the thing a couple times. It's especially useful for people that have an empty house during the day.

During off peak times they use excess electrical capacity to pump water out of the river into a reservoir. During peak periods they let the water flow back into the river, using the pumps as generators. The reservoir is the "battery".

I used to inline skate around Raccoon Mountain. The first time I ever got my brake smoking was a descent on that loop...

But I digress. Just wanted to say that Raccoon Mountain isn't unique, there are quite a few pumped storage facilities around the world. A quick search turns up Blenheim-Gilboa in the Catskills, Muddy Run in Pennsylvania, Bear Swamp in Massachusetts, Alta Mesa in Southern California... Lots and lots.

...the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ordered inspections of all nuclear plants in Illinois (11, the most of any U.S. state) following an "emergency" at an an Exelon-owned plant on Monday along with several tritium leaks at more than one plant in past months. Of course, Exelon's flacks downplay the chances of public danger in all these cases.

Yeah, we periodically hear of the big breakthrough that will reduce the cost of PV cells. This has been happening for decades, but PV sales are still overwhelmingly conventional silicon (and may be getting more expensive now that PV production has exhausted the surplus Si byproduct feed from fabs.) So don't be credulous about the latest claim; judging by history it will very likely go nowhere.

Nuclear has gotten a lot of money from the government, but then nuclear has provided a lot in return to the government, like bombs and nuclear propulsion for warships and subs.

Uranium is quite a bit more abundant than is often depicted; remember that at today's U price the cost of the natural uranium itself is a very small part of the cost of nuclear energy, so its price could go up a lot without significant impact. When and if that happens, we can build powerplants with improved breeding to extend the resource even more.

If you can dispute that, please provide a reference for your pesonal residential grid electric supplier you use -a URL is fine- and what the contract terms are

This is the Chicago are; we're supplied by ComEd. Residential rates are 8.75 cents/kWh (plus a fixed service fee of $7.13/month). There are also taxes, IIRC, but I don't remember what they are.

According to this page, PV electricity is still about 30 cents/kWh in the sunniest locations. Chicago is far from the sunniest location; let's say 50 cents/kWh here. So solar is not competitive with grid power for my by about a factor of five.

Many green energy solutions can be implemented in a decentralized manner, instead of in huge projects like you mention. Installing them in this manner could make use of space that could not otherwise be used for energy generation.

Covering your house's shingles with solar panels would be expensive, but this could provide for much of the electrical needs of your household. For about $14,000, you can buy 24 165w Sharp 1575mm x 826mm solar panels, and save about $500 a year on electricity.

A 20m tower with a 7m diameter wind turbine could be installed in even a very small inner-city house lot. If you live in a reasonably windy climate, this could generate all the electricity you need for about $25,000.

I know these are expensive solutions, but certainly not impossible. The prices will come down.

If it costs you 5 bucks a kilowatt hour to buy the power, you can only charge your customers 1 buck per kilowatt hour!

I suspect you're illustrating a point, but let's pretend you aren't. Sorry if this is offtopic, but sometimes I need to respond to an inaccurate post with real data. Either either your numbers are off, or your units are.

Here in Illinois, we get power from Commonwealth Edison. The summer rates are (direct link HERE):
Summer Months (June 15th to Sept. 15th):
For all kilowatt-hours: 8.275 cents
Other Months :
For the first 400 kilowatt-hours: 8.275 cents
For all over 400 kilowatt-hours: 6.208 cents

SO: 5 BUCKS per kilowatt hour is a bit steep, as is 1 buck.

But, a Megawatt hour is 1000 * .008275 = $8.275.
A $1 / MWh rate is way-way-way cheap !

I heard on NPR that the Enron fscks were charging Calif. consumers up to $250 per megawatt hour. That's about 25 times more expensive than here in Illinois.

This is a strong argument for well-managed deregulation; let some real economists work on this. I believe The Economist might have some good opinions about how to make this regulatory mess work. Regulation of monopolies (like power and SBC DSL / Voice) is always an exercise in big-dog-fight scepticism.

So, California: Good luck with that. I hope you succeed, since we have SBC Ameritech here in Illinois, too, and I hate the fsckers monopolistic arguably anti-competitive practices here just as much as y'all probably do.

If it costs you 5 bucks a kilowatt hour to buy the power, you can only charge your customers 1 buck per kilowatt hour!

I suspect you're illustrating a point, but let's pretend you aren't. Sorry if this is offtopic, but sometimes I need to respond to an inaccurate post with real data. Either either your numbers are off, or your units are.

Here in Illinois, we get power from Commonwealth Edison. The summer rates are (direct link HERE):
Summer Months (June 15th to Sept. 15th):
For all kilowatt-hours: 8.275 cents
Other Months :
For the first 400 kilowatt-hours: 8.275 cents
For all over 400 kilowatt-hours: 6.208 cents

SO: 5 BUCKS per kilowatt hour is a bit steep, as is 1 buck.

But, a Megawatt hour is 1000 * .008275 = $8.275.
A $1 / MWh rate is way-way-way cheap !

I heard on NPR that the Enron fscks were charging Calif. consumers up to $250 per megawatt hour. That's about 25 times more expensive than here in Illinois.

This is a strong argument for well-managed deregulation; let some real economists work on this. I believe The Economist might have some good opinions about how to make this regulatory mess work. Regulation of monopolies (like power and SBC DSL / Voice) is always an exercise in big-dog-fight scepticism.

So, California: Good luck with that. I hope you succeed, since we have SBC Ameritech here in Illinois, too, and I hate the fsckers monopolistic arguably anti-competitive practices here just as much as y'all probably do.