Look Out, OPEC: Japan Beginning Work On 300-Mile Battery for Electric Cars

"The consortium's ultimate goal is a new type of battery, or an incredibly advanced li-ion chemistry, that would enable a conventional passenger car to travel more than 3000 miles on a single charge."

3000 miles? I'm guessing that's a typo.

300 miles is a good goal but is only the 1st part of the solution. The batteries also have to much lighter and much cheaper.

We'll worry about where all this electricity will come from later.

Nuclear power!

Nuclear waste is the ultimate pollution.

"Nuclear waste is the ultimate pollution."

No it isn't.

http://russp.org/nucfacts.html

Wow, that is the most misleading bias "opinion" I have ever seen.

To argue the coal ash is more radioactive the nuclear waste because of volume shows a compete lack of understand of the harm of radiation.

Don't believe me? OK. How about we have someone dump a truck load of coal ash in my yard and a few pounds of radioactive waste in yours. The only thing that will die at my house is the lawn.

Ever heard of a dirty bomb? Someone gets hold of some radiactive waste and combines it with high explosive to spread radiation over a large area.

Enormous precautions have been taken to safegard reactors and waste because they are enormously dangerous.

Accidents are rare but they happen. The one thing they all have in common is everyone said "they can't happen" before they do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Disaster

The area within 1.5 miles of the reactor will not be safe for 200 years, the reactor itself for 20,000 years.

And this was an accident where every effort was taken to stop it form geting worse. Imagine if it were an attack where every effort were taken to make the damage as bad as possible?

I'm not saying coal is safe either. Every effort should be underway to replace it.

Nuclear is not the answer either.

"To argue the coal ash is more radioactive the nuclear waste because of volume shows a compete lack of understand of the harm of radiation." You might want to do a little research before making such a claim.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

"Don't believe me? OK. How about we have someone dump a truck load of coal ash in my yard and a few pounds of radioactive waste in yours. The only thing that will die at my house is the lawn."

Oh yeah? I think you're forgetting the fact that the ash will carry in the wind into nearby drinking supplies and soil, affecting cropland and, in turn, food - not to mention the air that you breathe. You're not far off though because that's how coal ash is actually "contained"; it's merely dumped into old coal mines and landfills.

As for the radioactive waste you and I both know that's not how it's contained. A pound of solid waste is vastly easier to control and contain than tons of radioactive particulates.

What matters is how much radioactivity is leaked into the environment and coal waste as typically stored emits more radiation than radioactive material as typically stored.

"Ever heard of a dirty bomb? Someone gets hold of some radiactive waste and combines it with high explosive to spread radiation over a large area."

So nuclear waste has military applications. Nothing shocking there. Should we also stop producing industrial explosives because suicide bombers and terrorists use them?

"Enormous precautions have been taken to safegard reactors and waste because they are enormously dangerous." The same can be said of chemical plants. Should we avoid them too? This may be news to you but coal ash landfills are enormously dangerous as well - a storm, or some other disrupting event occurred the ash will spill out and lay waste to the entire area. Due to the volume that coal ash is produced, it is a statistical impossibility for it to be kept under secure guard. In fact, the government keeps their locations secret in the hopes that no one finds out where they are.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31327223/ns/us_news-environment/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/12/coal-ash-spills-too-dange_n_214739.html

"Accidents are rare but they happen. The one thing they all have in common is everyone said "they can't happen" before they do." When was the last nuclear accident within the United States? Three Mile Island? Isn't that the one where no one died or was exposed to dangerous amounts of radiation?

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html

If you're going to be afraid of accidents you might as well argue that we should shut down all industrial activities and return to an agrarian society. Industrial activity is inherently dangerous and they all have their fair share of spills and contamination - whether it be oil refinement, chemical processing, waste treatment, or coal burning. The solution isn't to shut them down but to improve safety controls as to minimize the impact of accidents when they occur.

"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Disaster And this was an accident where every effort was taken to stop it form geting worse. Imagine if it were an attack where every effort were taken to make the damage as bad as possible?"

An inept and failing communist regime was unable to maintain a nuclear facility? Should I be surprised? Every effort was taken to stop it from getting worse? Yeah sure...

"The reactor had many safety measures built-in, but they could easily be shut off or circumvented. The Chernobyl scientists had too much faith in the reactor and wanted to proceed with their experiment at all costs, so they disabled many security features, believing that a major incident would not occur. Among the systems that were disabled were: ECCS (Emergency Core Cooling System), LAR (Local Automatic control system), and AZ (emergency power reduction system).[21]"

Rather than citing a failed Soviet facility you should look closer to home. The coal ash spill a couple of months back in Tennessee would be a good choice. Perhaps you'd like to tell them that they only have their lawns to worry about?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/us/25sludge.html

Every year 38,000 heart attacks occur because of pollution from coal-fired power plants. Every year 12,000 hospital admissions and 550,000 people suffering asthma attacks result from the same pollution.

"Nuclear waste is the ultimate pollution."

No it isn't.

How do they know it's because of coal pollution and not other types of pollution?

It doesn't matter anyhow. You're not saying Nuclear is safe, you're arguing coal ash is dangerous.... and you're right.

Both should be phased out.