Whilst many people think that synthetic fuels will release more CO2 to the air than the use of ordinary petroleum, there are no good records of what the energy expenditures are for the production and processing of ordinary crude in foreign countries.

Some people argue that the continuous use of US troops in Afganistan and Irag are related to the fact that this is an oil producing area. Certainly the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq was releated to the oil possesions of both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The sectarian violence that continues in Iraq is about which sect will control the oil wealth and power of the country. The CO2 cost of this conflict is not well studied but reaches far back into the US itself.

The major issue is; however, the cost of energy. All of the political infighting in the US is about taxes and deficits. The Republicans there have successfully turned the blame of the bad economy away from the lax and failed monetary control of the Bush administration, its failure to control hording and speculation in the oil and other industries and the subsequent world monetary collapse. The cost of high priced oil energy to the economy of the US is much more than the deficits that the anti tax people, who supported Bush in his lack of control of energy and commodities speculation, complain about.

The continued costs of oil energy to the world is an unsustainable drain on the world economy.

The immediate implementation of small pebble-bed nuclear reactors according to the German designs can supply heat energy, at very low CO2 releases, to the fuel industry. The Bitumen in Canada and the oil shale in the US as well as coal to liquid facilities can use this nuclear heat at low cost because there is no need for expensive high pressure steam production and electrical equipment which is the major capital cost of nuclear electric plants. The Centrifuges are now able to prepare the proper fuels for such reactors now at far lower costs. The cost of the raw fuel is actually not a major part of the cost of producing nuclear electricity or heat.

France is wasting power by continuing to use diffusion concentration. Efficient neutron capture in thorium can result in a slight net fissile fuel production from even a pebble bed reactor. The mix of plutonium isotopes that remain in used light water reactor and even heavy water reactor fuel are not at all suited for diversion for weapons which can now be implemented easier and cheaper with centrifuges. This plutonium isotope mix is far different than the nearly pure plutonium 239 that is needed for effective nuclear weapons. This mix combined with thorium or uranium of any kind does make a working pebble bed reactor fuel.

The use of thorium will multiple the availability of nuclear fuel to last for thousands if not millions of years, and the energy from uranium in the ocean can be obtained at a cost lower than is paid now for oil or natural gas and will last for the life of the earth. Most of the Uranium 235 that was available on the earth at first has now changed to lead, but we may as well use the rest of it as well as the U238 that takes far longer to change to Lead.

Both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl failed because of faulty human actions combined with steam at high pressure, but this is not possible where there is no high pressure water in a pebble bed reactor.

A thousand times more people, including people in their own homes were killed by ordinary weapons and other results of WWII than were killed by the Nuclear bombs. Far more civilians were killed in China by the invading troops from Japan than were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and perhaps Tokio combined.

Fritz Haber, who invented a way of making explosives and ammunition from coal and air and also invented and directed the use of several poisonous gases during WWI, caused thousands of times more deaths through his inventions than the inventors of nuclear weapons. But every bit of corn ethanol produced in the US also relies on his invention. Someone else would have discovered the identical or a similar process in a year or so anyway.

At first, it does not matter if nuclear reactors can make hydrogen for fuel because they will allow the diversion of natural gas and even coal from making electricity to making liquid fuels. They will also allow the diversion of natural gas from heating New York to producing gasoline.

Even if a Chernobyl type reactor were built in a cavern 100 feet deep under Broadway, and it exploded as it did at Chernobyl, not a single person on the street above would be diverted from his path nor would there be any significant additional danger to the people of the city, so it could serve as an artificial geothermal heat source for much of the city. Remember every person or large dog has several thousand nuclear explosions inside them every second. Bananas have only a few tens of them and always will have. ..HG..