KB Homes, having offered solar panels as an option on new homes, is now making solar standard

You mean like the 1,000 of acres of Vegas Golf courses? Oh THAT'll happen. Even fake grass is an improvement . . . especially on desert homes.

I spoke last week with a "just retired with 35 years" utility employee who'd been working the San Onofre Nuke facility. He said his fear isn't the lack of height of its sea wall ... or the back up power to run cooling during a catastrophic tsunami ... his concern is the spent fuel rods STILL languishing on site, that NEVER get taken off to be buried in some AZ salt mine, as was the original plan. His concern is that this is the real disaster waiting to happen ... when these babys end up on the bottom of the ocean, scattered around for miles & miles, as well as end up who knows how far inland. Baaah . . . . what are the odds.

 

Foruntaly for CA, the tsunami threat is low. There are loads of faults, but they're transform faults, not thrust faults. It's convergent plate boundaries that carry the high risk. Still, it's a concern to be sure.

 

That's my real issue. Great engineering can be destroyed with bad policy...and that's what we have here. There is another potential nasty surprise. Once a trillion dollar solution is eventually figured out to clear out all these local toxic waste dumps around every reactor site, the utility customers will be hammered with the trillion dollar cost long after the plants shut down. (Hint, if a nuke plant shuts down now, where does the money come from to man the decommissioned site with all the spend rods?)

 

We have decommissioned many power plants. The later numbers seem to be around $1B/GW, but these costs will only go up, and these sites will need additional attention. The local anti-nuclear group, "solar si, nuclear no", estimates that the new south texas reactors total costs will end up being about $26B/GW over the 40-60 year life. Note these are probably pessimistic figures on one of the better designed better run power plants in the united states. The original 2 reactors cost 6x their original estimates. At these prices solar is cheaper and wind and gas much cheaper.

 

KB Home Sucks, just Google it. You have no clue and don't own a KB Home. The media you don't have a clue either. My energy/green (NOT) efficient KB Home uses over 900% more energy than other builders, why? the non documented workers KB Home uses to install systems never have before. Wrong transformers, installed in the wrong place, causing first degree burns. The computer that controls the HVAC systems blow out due to voltage surges. The dampers to control the air flow were never hooked up to power? All the solar panels in the world can't keep up with KB Home and the hiring pool who does not have a clue of what they are doing. Just Google KB Home Sucks to see the horror stories of owning a KB Home. So many construction defects KB Home can't fix them, after awhile KB Home ignores you and gives up, your still stuck with their Lemon. Mezger their CEO is lazy and couldn't care less about their reputation. They are still under a FTC Consent order for over 30 years for shoddy construction and fake advertising. Hear my warning, do your homework before you sign any contract to any new homebuilder-lies and non disclosure, anything to sell you, then your stuck in a 30 year mortgage with no RIGHTS.