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Right now the only viable replacement for nuclear power is coal.

Global Resource Corporation [GRC] has a neat technology that uses specific microwave frequencies to release liquid (diesel) & gaseous (propane/butane) hydrocarbons from solids like used tires, plastics, and coal.

But they haven't managed their company right (or they ran out of money), and haven't gotten past the prototype stage. Perhaps they're going to fold, or maybe Exxon-Mobil will buy up the patents to kill the technology. Or maybe GRC was infiltrated by big oil. Who knows.

There are energy options that are better than nuclear, they're just not profitable for the financiers & utility barons. Raphial Morgado says in one of the YouTube videos (one of these: SJSU demonstration) that his "Mighty Pump" is disruptive technology, because it makes every internal combustion engine everywhere obsolete. Nothing's safe with disruptive technology: every turbine, and every water pump is now obsolete too, and whatever will JP Morgan do when all those utility companies start defaulting on their loans (when their power infrastructure, bought on time, becomes unprofitable because of Mr. Morgado's pump)?

(Plug: I mentioned the Mighty Pump in my recent post that advocates having dedicated disaster response ships)

I've been watching GRC for a while now... Last I heard their prototype microwave was functional, and they were taking orders. The prototype uses a vacuum chamber: fill the chamber with used tires, apply vacuum, turn on the microwave, and *poof*, out comes the hydrocarbons.

Every 20lb tire yields a gallon of diesel fuel, ~50 cubic feet of "propane" (butane and... something else), recyclable steel, and carbon black. Haven't seen anything recently, just a new patent for using microwaves to desalinate seawater...

This thing looks useful too - there's a ton of plastic warehoused in the world's garbage dumps, and it won't be long until they start getting mined.

I've been watching GRC for a while now... Last I heard their prototype microwave was functional, and they were taking orders. The prototype uses a vacuum chamber: fill the chamber with used tires, apply vacuum, turn on the microwave, and *poof*, out comes the hydrocarbons.

Every 20lb tire yields a gallon of diesel fuel, ~50 cubic feet of "propane" (butane and... something else), recyclable steel, and carbon black. Haven't seen anything recently, just a new patent for using microwaves to desalinate seawater...

This thing looks useful too - there's a ton of plastic warehoused in the world's garbage dumps, and it won't be long until they start getting mined.

GRC's Microwave turns solid hydrocarbons into diesel, propane and butane. The prototype works on tires, and the website gives a bunch of other uses - oil sands, coal, tar sands, soil cleanup, etc. A 20lb tire turns into 1 gallon of diesel, 50cuF of propane/butane, some carbon black, and some steel.

It also solves the problem with getting the coal out of the ground. Instead of taking off the top of a mountain (or sending miners into tunnels in the earth), you can drill a hole, drop the microwave down, cap your drill hole and apply a vacuum.

There is much better technology coming down the pipe, but GRC's microwave is a nice tool to get us through the next couple years.

Plastic is a petroleum product. Can the conversion process be reversed?

This is what Global Resource Corporation's microwave does. Right now they are fine-tuning their prototype on used tires. One 20-pound tire yields 1 gallon of diesel oil, 50 cubic feet of propane/butane, some carbon black and some steel.

The device uses a vacuum chamber to reclaim the hydrocarbons after they've been released from the solid.

There is a company http://www.globalresourcecorp.com/ thats doing this. At $3.20 a gallon for diesel I want one.