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100 more years?

Linda DeLaMarc thinks God is on her side.

She should know that Osama et al, think her God is an infidel. Their God is the only real one.

John McCain is correct. Religious wars can last 100 years. Is Linda ready to kill Americans for 100 years?

KEVIN DOYLE

U.S. Navy (retired)

What stop signs?

I've lived here going on 18 years and finally they chip-seal the roads from Meier Drive to State Route 372. How nice it was to drive without all the dust.

Now they have wasted six, yes six, stop signs between Meier Drive and 372.

There are almost no residences, except a few, and no traffic to speak of. Why then are our taxes being wasted on such a bad decision to place these signs?

It must have cost us taxpayers thousands of dollars.

Every curve has a stop sign in each direction, how wasteful is that? I could think of a lot more deserving places to put them, especially Blagg and Calvada Boulevard.

Do you really think the wonderful drivers of Pahrump will stop at them? I've watched the intersection of Flamingo and Meier drives for years and there is an old saying, "No cop, no stop," and believe me it's true.

I just wanted to thank the mastermind who approved this waste of time and our money.

JIM CORNELL

Excessive bail

Last week in Clark County a man was arrested for engaging in a road rage incident. He is now facing charges of attempted murder (shooting and wounding a passenger in the other car), battery with substantial bodily harm, assault with a deadly weapon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

For this, bail has been set at $26,000.

Compare this with Sheri Allen's case where Nye County authorities impounded her animals and initially leveled 132 counts of animal cruelty, in spite of evidence and statements from veterinarians that Sheri's animals were well taken care of.

These charges were reduced to 13 misdemeanors, 11 of which were for cats with upper respiratory infections.

Sheri's bail was set at $79,000 and has not been reduced.

The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution specifically forbids excessive bail or fines. Nevada's Constitution also has this protection against excessive bail.

Sheri Allen owns and operates a successful business in Pahrump. She also owns other property there and was certainly not a flight risk. No bail should have been required.

Sheri's civil rights under both federal and state law have been clearly violated by Nye County in setting this exorbitant bail.

If having animals with an upper respiratory infection is a misdemeanor, thousands of pet owners in this country should be cited every day.

The remaining two charges against Sheri would be laughable if it were not for the heartbreak and tragedy of seeing the animals she loved and cared for being stacked helter-skelter on an open truck and hauled away.

JUDITH RUIZ

Henderson

New methods for electricity

About 15 percent of Canadian and 20 percent of the U.S.A. electric energy is generated from heat produced by nuclear fission reactions. (Fission is the process that splits atoms apart.)

There are 104 operating nuclear power reactors in the U.S.A. and 22 reactors in Canada. Power companies in the U.S.A. have applied for licenses for an additional 33 new reactors.

Only 14 of the new reactors are presently scheduled to use certified designs. The designs for the remaining 19 reactors have not yet been determined.

All nuclear reactors generate electric power without adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. However, fission nuclear power plants generate radioactive waste, which could be used to make weapons of mass destruction.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagon and Russian Premier Mikhail Gorbachev sponsored a project to build an international thermonuclear experimental reactor (ITER) to develop the technology required to generate electricity from the energy released from the fusion of deuterium-tritium atoms when they are heated to about 300 million degrees.

Nuclear fusion reactions have the potential to generate electric power without producing a lot of high-level radioactive waste.

Nuclear fusion is the process of combining two elements to form a different element. (The old alchemist's dream.) The multi-billion dollar ITER is being built in Cadarache, France, and is scheduled to start research projects in 2015.

It is estimated that an electric power plant that uses ITER technology will be designed to produce more than 1000 megawatts (MW) of electricity per day.

Recent research has proven that the nuclear fusion of boron-hydrogen gas to helium will produce more energy than is required to trigger the reaction. Two companies have filed patent applications to produce electricity directly from boron-hydrogen fusion energy without using steam-driven generators.

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Inc. and the Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission have formed a three-year joint venture to develop a 5 MW electric power plant using the energy from the nuclear fusion of boron-hydrogen.

In the "focus fusion" process, a pulse of electricity from a bank of capacitors is discharged between concentric electrodes in a partial vacuum.

The intense current flows through the boron-hydrogen gas in a thin sheath of hot electricity conducting plasma. The collapse of the magnetic fields created by the current induces an electric field, which causes a beam of electrons to flow in one direction and a beam of ions (atoms which have lost electrons) to flow in the other.

The electron beam heats the plasma to temperatures equivalent to billions of degrees C, and causes a fusion reaction in the boron-hydrogen gas.

This fusion reaction produces helium gas and ion beams. The ion beams induce direct current (DC) in the adjacent coils, which withdraw about 98 percent of the ion-beam energy.

Some of the DC current is sent back to recharge the bank of capacitors for the next current pulse to the electrodes. (The pulse cycle can occur about 1,000 times per second.)

The balance of the DC output electricity is sent to an inverter to be changed into AC power for distribution.

The second company, Electron Power Systems Inc. (EPS) has discovered and patented a "plasma toroid" that remains stable using background gas pressure for confinement instead of magnetic fields.

EPS is working on a three-year project to build a prototype six-kilowatt (KW) nuclear fusion power supply using hydrogen-boron fuel.

If any system to generate electricity directly from energy produced by the boron-hydrogen fusion reaction proves to be economically successful, we can almost guarantee that there will be cries from competing technologies to compel changes in the fusion reactor's design, construction and operations, and to restrict licenses so that the cost of electricity to the ultimate consumer will be increased.

Federal, state and local governments can encourage entrepreneurs and electric power companies to develop low-cost environmental friendly electricity by:

- removing unnecessary operating restrictions;

- revising laws to enable small electric power producers to connect to the grid;

- providing assistance to electric companies to obtain dedicated transmission and distribution corridors.

Government research information about direct production of electricity by charged particles should be freely available to individuals and small companies.

When you talk or write to your lawmakers, please mention these needs.

CALVIN MORRISON

Unacceptable behavior

I manage the two Rebel stores here in Pahrump.

On April 10, at approximately 7:45, two officers observed a child left alone in a car at one of my pumps.

They waited for the parent to exit the store and then gave her a stern oral warning, which I hope will work for her in the future.

This letter is an F.Y.I. to our customers at Rebel: My employees have been instructed to notify the sheriff's department immediately if they see children left in a vehicle unattended.

I hope future laws will exist that the parent receives a ticket for neglect.

As a mom and a grandma, I find this behavior inexcusable.

CINDY WILLIAMS