Many countries in Europe are on nuclear power and ARE
reprocessing the rods. We are so nuclear-phobic in this country that we
are afraid to use the process. In CA, some folks are
particularly against ANYTHING that "might" damage the environment.
Yet they use everything that all the rest of us use...oil-based gasoline, et
al...all the while demanding that producers of various necessities, including
foods, use relatively useless methods for controlling weeds, bugs, you name
it. This is all in the name of "saving" the environment. If we
wanted to save the environment, we shouldn't have invented so many machines to
ease our workload or increased the population to such an over-burdening
number. We can't go back, so we'd better try to figure out a way to
produce all the things we need in the least damaging way, without, I might add,
putting so many people out of business. The onerous restrictions on many
agricultural industries are so bad, some people have been forced out of
business, and others are struggling. The government in CA is a
fright. Many agencies make a living just controlling the producers of
our basic necessities. They are too well fed.
From what I've read, nukes and wind are energy
positive - that is, they produce more energy than it takes to start the
process. Ethanol is about energy neutral - it takes as much energy from
fossil fuels to make the same amount of energy as ethanol. Ethanol is
not as efficient as gasoline - your miles per gallon goes down - plus you have
the cost of the tilling, harvesting, transporting and processing.
Obviously, oil has some of the same expenses, but not as much. The
government likes ethanol because the delivery system is in place, via the
existing oil companies, so it can be taxed and monitored without
difficulty. If I were power hungry enough to want to be president,
I'd build a nuke plant every 100 miles, and reprocess the rods just like the
rest of the world does, instead of throwing them away and having tons of
radioactivity to deal with instead of pounds. Maybe I'd better go pet my
horse (who's value is now about $200, until they close the last of the
slaughter plants).
