Steve Kirsch invented and owns a patent on an early version of the optical mouse. After bringing multiple successful startup companies through IPO and corporate buy-out, he set up a $75M charitable fund and became a philanthropist. In 2003, Hillary Clinton presented Kirsch with a National Caring Award from the Caring Institute in Washington DC.
Mr. Kirsch founded Mouse Systems Corporation in 1982. After he left the company, he co-founded Frame Technology Corp. in 1986 to market the FrameMaker publishing software. After Frame was acquired by Adobe Systems, he founded a Web portal company, Infoseek Corporation, in 1994. After Infoseek was acquired by Disney, he founded Propel Software Corporation in 1999. As of 2007, he was leading Abaca Technology Corp., which makes a spam filter that is reported to achieve very high levels of accuracy.
Steve has written much about the Integral Fast Reactor and its ability to solve the world's dire problems.
Steve's Article on the IFR
http://www.skirsch.com/politics/globalwarming/ifr.htm
Google spent $250M to research whether aggressive adoption of renewable energy would be sufficient to halt global warming.
Their conclusion was simple: Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK'
As noted in Google Engineers Explain Why They Stopped R&D in Renewable Energy,
"Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work;
we need a fundamentally different approach," wrote Google's Ross Koningstein and David Fork in a piece published yesterday in IEEE's Spectrum.
This means we need a power technology that can produce carbon free power on a reliable basis (24x7) that is not "renewable." There is only one option left on the table: nuclear energy.
Advanced nuclear designs such as the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) are passively safe and use our existing nuclear waste for fuel. The small amount of waste product produced from these reactors is easily sequestered.
Unfortunately, after 30 years of flawless operation, President Clinton pulled the plug on these reactors telling Congress that the clean power from these reactors was no longer needed.
The fact remains that nuclear power is the safest form of power ever created (least number of deaths per kwH for any power technology). In the US for example, coal kills 20,000 people per year while there have been no deaths attributed to nuclear power in its entire history in the US.
So why aren't we spending billions of dollars to perfect and cost reduce these advanced reactors and supplying them to China and other emerging economies?
We have no other option left on the table. If there is a better option, what is it?
The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) is a fourth-generation fast nuclear reactor design that offers more efficiency and safety, while generating 1,000 times less waste than current light-water reactors, the predominant designs used in the US. It uses existing nuclear waste for fuel. The energy needs of the US can be supplied for over 1,000 years just using the existing nuclear waste now in storage.
Dear Secretary Chu:
We strongly agree with President Obama that the US needs to be the leader in clean energy technology. Unless we can quickly develop an economically attractive alternative to fossil fuel as the main source of our energy, our fossil reserves will continue to be depleted, and emissions of noxious pollutants will continue to grow.
Dr. R.K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that “nuclear energy is the best option to curb carbon emissions.”
Realistically, the only candidate source of the bulk of the energy that will be needed in the future is nuclear fission. Sadly, the United States is no longer a leading force in the safe evolution of that technology.
Huffington Post, August 26, 2009
Yesterday, on August 25, 2009, the UN's top climate scientist has, for the first time, backed ambitious goals for slashing greenhouse gas emissions that many climate negotiators say are beyond reach.
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, said clearly and unequivocally that 350 is the number.
You'd think that after all the press coverage that global warming has received that the public would be pretty well educated on exactly how fast we need to install clean power to avert an irreversible climate disaster. But the public has no clue.