"I know back then they were all full of confidence ... but it's no closer to solved than it was."

Radioactive waste is a "very bad present to leave to the future generations," she said. "It is morally wrong to create waste that we don't know how to dispose of and to leave that for future generations because we are incapable of controlling our appetite for energy."

She cited the release last week of radiation from a Japanese nuclear power plant following an earthquake. Japan, with its experience with nuclear power and its reputation for technological skills, has problems with the technology "day after day, year after year."

She pointed to the widespread death and disease that followed the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine. "It made it so that the reindeer were unsafe to eat in the north of Finland," she added.

With nuclear power, "the consequences of errors are huge."

She's also skeptical about carbon sequestration.

Van Dame worries that the carbon dioxide would be released by an earthquake. Highly concentrated gas would be poisonous, as it was in Africa.

"It's just such a huge volume of it, it's really hard to imagine we could sequester enough of it to make a big difference," she added.

"I think it's another silver bullet, and I don't think that the situation we're in will respond to a silver bullet."

So what's the answer?

"My dream is that we will harvest the energy off our structures that will have photovoltaics (solar power) on the roofs, that each structure will have a significant battery that will charge up our plug-in hybrids," she said. Hybrids are cars that run both on liquid fuel and electricity.

Also, she said, she dreams "that the utilities, rather than being the central large source of generation, will run the balancing grid." That power grid is where excess electricity can be sold and backup power purchased when needed. Maybe the ground under homes can be used for thermal storage, she added.

Walje, president of the biggest power grid in Utah, does not fault that dream.

"There is nothing in regulation or the way our system works today to prevent people from doing that," he said. "But the main reason that does not happen is that it's not cost effective."

If the time comes when other power sources are much more expensive, Walje added, Van Dame's approach could increase in popularity. "The only way that truly becomes economically feasible is if all these other costs go up."

When people calculate how long they need to be generating their own power in order to pay for the initial costs, he added, "those paybacks are 15 or 20 years, and most people choose to stay on the grid, so to speak."

The bottom line