My 4kW Uni-Solar system will keep me OK during the day after the hurricane as there is always rapid clearing after a fast moving front, and thus pretty sunny, the 17.5 kw gas generator will keep everything fine at night. It would be nice though if someone invented a generator to attach to the 3 pt hitch of my John Deere diesel tractor so I could get rid of that 17.5 kW beast. It's got plenty of torque.

If we had been reprocessing fuel rods like we were suppossed to, we wouldn't be having the problem in Japan right now either worrying about cooling spent fuel, but it would have been reprocessed, off site, and not needed to be cooled, reused and the "real" waste vitrified. Do you not think the same reaction takes place in nature? Don't fault Nuclear power for bad decisions by stupid engineers. What id10t would build a reactor on a fault line anyway, or anyplace where a tsunami would hit it. Hopefully new plants will have some sort of seismic detector that when a certain level is reached, the control rods drop to stop the chain reaction.

HarveyD, Ashland owns Valvoline. I don't know who owns Ashland.

Kelly, Give me a list of all the jobs you've gotten from poor people

Kelly, Gas doesn't have to cost $4.00 per gallon. We have plenty of oil here. Let energy companies use our resources, but use them cleanly. The technology exists. SUV's were built because that's what the consumer wanted. If we had 500 nuclear power plants and virtually limitless clean cheap electricity, they'd be building electric cars that got over 200 miles per charge like the Tesla, quick recharge stations, and people would be buying them left and right because they're cheaper to operate. The mideast's best export then would be sand. In the mean time, until the greenies realize nuclear is clean, we have to use our own sources of energy such as coal, ANWR, F-T diesel from coal, tar sands, shale oil, etc. Keep the money in America.

HD, Statistics are for liars. Why didn't you use the tons/year/GNP statistic where you will find we are among the least polluters. Any statistic where you compare per capita you will find we are high, but our per capita produces at a exponential level of efficiency higher than the Chinese or any other nations per capita. You didn't see the United States have to stop traffic in an Olympic host city 6 weeks before a the event or seed clouds to clean the air. I don't have a problem with efficiency or cleanliness, after all I do have a 9kW solar PV system and am putting in solar hot water even as we speak, but a blanket rule to make any vehicle go 4 miles on battery alone is over-regulating. Just the size of the battery to make an 18 wheeler thats fully loaded to 60-80,000 lbs. go 4 miles battery only is unrealistic and probably unaffordable to the fleet operator and will make one of the most efficient transporters of our cargo go out of business or have rates for cargo delivery rise dramatically. (Unattended consequence nobody thinks about when proposing these ridiculous regulations) I personally do not want to "neuter" my car to only go at 30 miles per hour for some unrealistic standard some greenie is shoving down my throat. I can guarantee if any automaker produces a decent plug-in diesel or gas hybrid that's even remotely affordable, I'd buy one. At $40+ thousand, the Volt isn't it, despite any bribes the govt gives me from my own pocket. In the mean time, I'll keep my 40+ mpg at 80 mph Passat diesel until they do. I think that would be better than an SUV that gets 20 mpg, but can go 4 miles on electric only when "neutered" at 30 mph.

Since these guys are scientists, it would be nice if they would use the correct nomenclature. Isobutanol can be interprested in several different ways. Iso is used to refer to a compound that has the same chemical formula as another but the structure is different...thus the atoms are arranged differently in space. Thus the compound we are discussing could be 2-butanol, 2-methyl 1-propanol, or 2-methyl 2-propanol. All have the same chemical formula. It would be nice to know which chemical we are discussing so some of us could see the pathway where they may come up with the compound, or possibly even see a better way to do it as most of the people here seem to be very educated, even though we may differ on ways and means to an end.

Greenplease, I have a better idea. How about we get the government out of CAFE regulation and let the consumer decide what is the best for them. People that can afford a big vehicle, or need a big vehicle can decide for themselves whether or not they can afford the fuel. If they can, they can buy whatever they want. In rural areas, I've never seen a Prius haul a cattle trailer, and can't see having a Class 8 truck have to pull an 80,000 pound trailer 4 miles on battery power alone. I personally would buy a some type of diesel hybrid plug in that could charge from my 9kW solar array. I have the panels, and an organic chemistry degree so I can do the simple transesterification of fats to make my own diesel fuel if economically feasable at the time. Others may not have that advantage. I just don't want a bunch of overpaid government bureaucrats being hired to go around wasting taxpayer money to make sure this car company does this or that other than some standardization issues, like all manufacturers using the same plug design for their charging adapter. The business of energy companies is to deliver energy, lets get out of their way and let them do it. The US does it cleaner and better than everyone else in the world. I want the US making fuel cleanly from their coal, drilling in ANWR, drilling wherever cleanly. I live near west central Florida beaches, and not one drop of the BP spill hit the shores of my county. Why is it OK for the Venezulans/Iranians to use their carbon, but not us? Additionally, I really don't want my car "neutered" for any reason, I don't want to drive at 30 mph where the speed limit is 55 or higher. It would tick off everybody behind me. I would take your bet about the prices being lower too. All regulation does is add to the price. While some regulation is necessary, going overboard with it is not.

There was a nuclear powered merchant ship, the NS Savannah, that I toured (In Savannah) when I was 5 in 1960. It wasn't built to be profitable and was more like a yacht. It was a feasability study to see if nukes could power container ships. The Savannah wasn't built to be a container/cargo ship, but was a pretty neat looking vessel. They would just have to redo the reactor, and redisgn the vessel. Security concerns aside, someone could probably make it work.

These should stand on their own merit. If they work, the truck/fleet operator will buy them. If they don't work, they won't. Taxes should be left completely out of this equation.

Harvey, You must have meant this comment for a different article.

EP, True, but wherever it is used I would prefer there be a lot of smart people around, not the everyday person who is going to dig up the line accidentally with a backhoe. Why even bother with Sodium despite it's abundance, as aluminium, which is almost as abundant is more conductive, and a lot less reactive.

HG, Sodium, really??? No matter what the metallic sodium is clad in, that would be a really bad idea. A home mechanic just clipping a wire could be disastrous, maybe not immediately, but a little bit later when there is enough moisture, then you have a fire, then a bigger fire. I can see sodium in a nuclear reactor where at least the people operating it have some sense, but in the car or a home, hardly.

Danm, Obviously you have never heard of tropicana products where none of the orange goes to waste. After juice extraction, the remaining pulp and rind are mixed with water to remove remaining sugars and concentrated to make food quality ingredients. The orange oil from this concentration, as well as other orange essences and is either sold to chemical companies or the essences added to their concentrates they sell. That is why Tropicana orange juice (even the concentrate) is best OJ on the planet. After the extraction of the extra sugar from the squeezed orange (called pulpwash) the rind is sent to a feed mill where it is turned into cattle feed. The results of the cattle feed, are definitely returnable to the soil. No decent orange processor has dumped rind onto fields in decades. Before joinging the AF as a pilot I was a chemist in processing at Tropicana and after the AF, worked for the USDA inspecting their product. Believe me, there is NO waste.

My 2005 Passat TDI gets 40 mpg at 80 mph on the highway. In the city I average between 34-36 mpg. When I drove it back from Louisiana after buying it on e-bay it got 44.4 mpg. The car is wonderful, and there is nothing wrong with the styling. Now they just need to make a light diesel truck.

EP, Are you thinking about making a stronger beer;)

Henry I think using ammonia as an everyday fuel is just about as ridiculous as NASA scientists initially wanting to use Hydrogen Fluoride as a fuel in their rockets. Fuel release in an accident would be devastating. I remember when working at Tropicana Products in Bradenton Florida before they went to a glycol refrigerant system thinking that if they had a catastrophic ammonia leak, everyone up to Tampa (N) or Ft Myers (S) would be either dead or have extensive lung damage. They used a LOT of ammonia. Using ammonia would then have people complaining about the N02 being released instead of the CO2. Leaving off the Hydrocarbon or the Nitrogen and just using the Hydrogen would make much more sense. Yeah they all can explode, but at least the Hydrogen would dissipate faster and less hazardously than the Ammonia or the Hydrocarbons

I love my Passat TDI and get 40 mpg most of the time. I would also love the 3.0 TDI.

Healthy Breeze, I hate to break it to you, but corporations do not pay income taxes. They are passed onto consumers, so in reality your "corporate" 0.25% income tax would be an individual 0.25% income tax.

ejj, Well said. Yucca mountain can easily store all of our high level waste after the reprocessing and recovery of still usable transuranics. There needs to be a massive building of nuclear reactors in this country. I'm talking about a 1000 or more. Place them near other facilities that can use the waste heat, such as refining facilities for ethanol, or other industries. For cooling you can pump water through a R/O filter to get clean drinking water and use the brine waste to cool the plant's closed circuit cooling system and then either extract concentrated minerals from the brine (before or after cooling)or pump it 50 miles out to sea. Have a problem with earthquakes in California and don't want a nuke plant on a fault, gret, stick it on a boat, the navy's been doing it for 60 years. There should be ways for a boat to pull up to a port, plug directly into the grid and water supply and start making all three, power, hot water, and fresh water.

ejj,

I hate it when they do not use the correct method of naming the chemicals. Isopentanol could be either of the following chemicals, 2-pentanol, 3-pentanol, 2 methyl 1-butanol, or 3 methyl 1-butanol. Is it just one of these or a combination. Googleing (sp?) Isopentanol shows it to be 3-methyl 1-butanol. All organic chemists would prefer using the proper name rather than an ambiguous one to insure you are dealing with the same compound. The iso prefix just means that something is not bonded at the end carbon. Is it the OH group, a -CH3 group. I prefer to avoid confusion.

Is the removal of the two oxygen atoms from the ester in biodiesel really worth the extra work. Is there that much of an energy increase with the alkane vs the ester?

Our 2005 Passat TDI gets 40+ mpg at 80mph on I-75 between Manatee County Fl, and Gainesville, Fl on the way to Gator home games. It is a truely awesome vehicle. My next vehicle will be a VW desel. As far as repairs go, we've gone to 100,000 miles with no major repairs. we do however keep up with most recommended preventative reapirs. Truely an awesome car.

TxGeologist, you're incorrect. Nuclear power can do this and more. The extra heat can be used by nearby industries that require heat, the water pumped to cool the plant could first be put through a reverse osmosis water plant and use the waste stream to cool the plant before being pumped 50 miles out in the Gulf, Atlantic, or Pacific. Problem with geographic faults? Great, put the reactors on boats, the US Navy has done it since the 1950's. I believe the Nimitz class carriers have 4 reactors each. This nuclear reaction goes on anyway when uranium decays in nature, we just concentrate it and use the heat. There, your energy, and water problem solved at once. I think 1000 reactors on ships could do it. Puts the shipbuilder, steel worker, and others back to work and not have us sending our money to terrorists. Let's not pull any "reduce the coolant stunts" like Chernybol and Three mile island.