Nuclear power is the way to go, in my opinion.. for cleaner air, cheaper and more efficient power generation.
But the 'not in my backyard' folks, backed by the very strong railroad and coal industry keep new nuke plants from going up.
It all falls back on the 'technology and new ideas are great, so long as they don't negatively impact my bottom line' mentality of big corporations.
Somewhat back on the subject of fuel economy, the Diesel engine was originally designed to run on vegetable oil. In fact, the guy who invented the Diesel engine, Mr. Rudolf Diesel said:
The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time.
Interestingly enough.. after his mysterious death, the Diesel engine was marketed as only running on "petroleum based fuels".
Today, used vegetable oil is pretty easy to get ahold of.. restaurants across the U.S. actually
pay millions of dollars a year for people to take it away.
This isn't some new found technology or ground breaking recent discovery of how to run a Diesel engine on vegetable oil.. the engine was patented in 1892, and had a working, 1 cylinder engine producing 13 horsepower by 1894.. thats 113 YEARS AGO!
But for some reason, it's only been in the last few years that anybody bothered to mention it.
