It hasn’t.

Decommissioning old worn-out nuclear power stations remains a dangerous, nasty, unavoidable and horrifically expensive long-term fact that the pro-nuclear lobby cannot now just ignore & avoid.
Just like the rest of us now stuck with paying the enormous on-going bills for it.

What on earth is “extreme” about recognising the whole life-span cost of nuclear power?!

The truth is that those whole life-span costs were kept from the people at the time.

Had we know back then the legacy of the dangerous filth and security risk we were leaving to our kids and grandchildren (and beyond) ‘we the people’ would most likely have never gone along with the idea of largescale nuclear power in the first place.

Nuclear power? No thanks.

If we wouldn’t have gotten side tracked by the China Syndrome and environmental extremists and had the 30 years of development in the technology we would be better off.

Algae can be grown where regular food plants can’t and both livestock and people can eat it both before and after the oil is squeezed out.

Algae oil seperates from water on its own while ethanol has to be boiled out. The algae oil yields high grade diesel & jet fuel that works in existing trucks, aircraft & generators. It can also be used to make plastics with existing technology.

Algae oil has more energy per gallon than gasoline while ethanol, methanol & hydrogen have less. Hydrogen has more energy per mass but per volume it’s 1/3 the energy of gasoline. Once you include the fuel cell hydrogen systems have less energy density than existing batteries.

Algae oil can be produced most places in the world – even in floating ocean bins. That means economic freedom and increased standard of living for everyone.

http://www.firstcapital.com/blogs/mark_sunshine/?p=217

I read a blog this morning that suggested “minimum energy prices” which could fuel longer-lasting conservation efforts and alternative energy projects.

http://www.firstcapital.com/blogs/mark_sunshine/?p=217

The question goes beyond just biofuels as to whether any alternative fuels are economically-feasible when oil prices fluctuate so much. And who says we only have to have one source of energy, anyway? But we have to give the alternatives a chance and not just during the times when oil prices spike.

(and then there’s the ultra high security installation for all the most dangerous by-products which you’ll be committed to keeping secure for several hundred years)

Like I said, not cheap, not clean and certainly not environmentally friendly.

If you only focus on the day to day (safe) running it is but that takes no account of the huge CO2 output in their
- construction (they are hugely expensive & complex installations),
- fuelling (despite the illusory fast-breeder plutonium claims – a cover for justifying weapon materials production – most still use imported uranium) ,
- waste management (a hugely expensive, complex & CO2 intensive ‘industry’ in itself)
- and lastly but probably most significantly (and the one element some nuclear countries are now encountering) their decommissioning is an enormously expensive & extremely protracted process.

Nuclear is far from a sensible option when all the elements to it’s operation over it’s entire life-cycle are taken into account.

Yup, that’s all true plus the added benefits of barely reducing emissions when you consider the entire biofuel manufacturing process.

@ari-freedom

That’s crap! Beyond the bad idea of switiching to a new finite resource, beyond the massive amount of pollution, beyond the questionable health hazards, and beyond all the emissions associated with plant manufacturing and waste disposal, nuclear isn’t even the cheapest alternative. If anyone is serious about the crisis – and most aren’t, they’re only looking for profits – solar, geothermal, and wind would be the new sources of energy.

It wouldn’t even be that tough, these things could produce power on par with oil in a matter of years, and the investment would have innumerable positive consequences.

Biofuels… what a fucking demonstration in propaganda.