Europe Warms to Nuclear Power 706
FleaPlus writes "The CS Monitor reports that for the first time in 15 years a European nation has started building a nuclear reactor, with six more likely to be built in the next decade. France is also planning to develop a safer and more efficient "fourth generation" reactor by 2020. This is in light of rising fossil fuel prices and a desire to reduce CO2 emissions. Still, a majority of EU citizens are opposed to nuclear energy, primarily for environmental reasons, even though nuclear power releases less radioactive material than burning coal."
Nuclear Power and Hydrogen - The Way of the Future (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear Power and Hydrogen - The Way of the Fut (Score:5, Insightful)
Europeans (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Disaster. Nuclear engineers say that the chance of a meltdown is very small, but this argument is worthless after Harrisburg and Chernobyl. People in general are mathematically clueless, but they do know that the risk is real and not small after these two events.
2. Waste storage. Where do we put the waste products after burning it? People are afraid it might pollute the environment, perhaps not now but for furure generations. It will have to be stored for thousands of years. Shooting it out in space is not an option to most, having pictures of an explosing Columbia in the mind.
Attitudes are changing now because people have to choose between a rock and a hard place, in the light of tough economic times and rising energy prices, and nuclear power is thus the pragmatic way to go. People will still be afraid of it, though.
Containing a catastrophic failure is the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Generally anyway, when things work as they are supposed to. But things happen. People worry about a catastrophic failure of a nuclear plant. A catastrophic failure of a coal-fired electric plant would result in minimal environmental damage and could be easily cleaned up. A catastrophic failure of a nuclear power plant on the other hand ...
They Aren't Alone (Score:5, Insightful)
(We worry about things like the increasing amounts of radioactive waste in our dumps, possible indications of higher incidences of leukemia and cancer in areas like Sellafield, and risks of a serious accident.)
Re:Nuclear Power and Hydrogen - The Way of the Fut (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear power has promise, though. Especially if we can get IFR reactors going. There is sufficient fuel to power IFR type facilities for many many years. This results because the IFR is a breeder reactor which can utilize uranium 238 and damn near anything else that's densely radioactive. There isn't much of a future for standard fission reactors, and fast breeders are politically insane - but Integral Fast Reactors could really be the ticket for quite some time.
Or, at least until the oil gets so expensive we can't build computers to control the reactors...
RS
Nuke power safety (Score:2, Insightful)
1) It's not cost efficient, even when compared to wind.
2) It's dangerous [disinfo.com]. (That's a really good article, by the way. It should be required reading for anyone commenting on this Slashdot story.)
We really need to look toward alternatives (wind, solar-thermal, solar tower, wave, tidal, biomass...) if we intend to keep consuming power at current rates. (alternatives are also great for generating hydrogen, because the hydrogen can be a storage medium to account for the unreliability of sources like wind.)
-Daniel
Re:Europeans (Score:4, Insightful)
That was made a lot worse by proponents greatly overstating their case, effectively arguing that any accident is utterly theoretic and could never, ever happen in reality. When it did - two larger accidents, in Three-Mile Island and in Chernobyl, and numerous smaller incidents (like the Darwin Award winners in a Japanese plant that carted radioactive materials in ordinary buckets) - that effectively destroyed the credibility of the nuclear industry.
When people today say that 1. "Current reactor designs are a lot safer than the 30+ ones we use now"; and 2. "The risk is very, very small", people will say that 3. "You lied through your teeth to get us where you wanted the last time, and we bet you're doing the same this time around"
The russians are partly to blame (Score:4, Insightful)
In the European union there is now a debate going on each country having to produce more of its own energy. also the need to form a Musketeer agreement to stand against potential energy-blackmailing or catastrophes. Nuclear power is for most of the larger European countries a very viable sollution. that will greatly reduce the dependency of other countries.
And the winner is.. (Score:2, Insightful)
My two $ 0.02 (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, so, then a disaster happens. Well, chances are very slim for a disaster. Today, we have a higher safety regulation for operating of nuclear power plants, and we are not competing on who gets to restart the turbines faster (check this [stanford.edu]) without using safety measures.
Besides disaster possibility, the problem is also waste dispossal as a poster pointed out before me. Where to put it. You simply cannot dissolve the waste, or this is to expensive. And I don't think the problem with space dumping is the image of Columbia blowing up. Waste baskets can be made that whitstand such blasts. It's more of the awarness that we can't already pollute the space, since we fuc*** up mother Earth. And it's becoming an increasing security concern too with all the terrorists roaming around. Imagine a break-in into the waste storage facility. It's easy to make a dirty bomb [howstuffworks.com]. Breaking into the plant itself is much harder, although it's still a possibility.
In conclusion, I think we have to accept the risks of possible danger (we fly with airlens, but those also crash don't they?) if in turn, we get back a possibility for a cleaner environment. And until we develop things than can use all the free enegry [amasci.com] just lying around and as long as we use things that rely on our supply of power (computers among other things
Re:Time to reduce consumption (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Europeans (Score:3, Insightful)
It's interesting you'd bring up Harrisburg as support for your statement. Three Mile Island was a non-event. Despite the operators shutting off safety systems, ignorning warning signs, and basically doing everything they could do to screw things up, nothing happened. The reactor died, and the structure contained nearly all the dangerous material (there was a small release of slightly radioactive steam IIRC), as it was designed to do. TMI is a testament to how well the safety systems built into nuclear reactors worked despite the onslaught of human stupidity. Yes there was a lot of worrying about what might happen at the time. Engineers are like that - we like to err on the side of caution and think of worst case scenarios and plan around them. But most often (as in TMI) the worst case scenario never happens.
Citing Chernobyl as a reason against nuclear power is like citing the Hindenburg as a reason against aircraft. The technology is so outmoded the comparison is ludicrous.
The waste issue is the real problem. The safety issue is way overblown, just like people worry about dying in plane crashes and take a car instead (they're about 10x more likely to die in a car crash per distance traveled).
Nuclear Fusion (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:this is a longterm stop-gap (Score:5, Insightful)
Like it or not, we throw most of our energy away needlessly. People make no effort to save energy, and the energy consumption is rarely a factpr is purchase deicisons for consumer devices. This needs to change, and the best way to do this is to shift more of the tax burden onto energy by means of a carbon tax.
Building nuclear power so we can keep on throwing energy away is madness. Lets do the sensible thing and clamp down more on our wastefull consumption of the stuff.
Re:Nuclear Power and Hydrogen - The Way of the Fut (Score:5, Insightful)
>more energy to make H than what you get from burning it. Therefore it is an
>energy sink, esp. if you get it from cracking H2O. It's better to simply use the
>electricity you make to crack the water As Electricity to Do Work than to blow it
>on H.
Hydrogen has the potential of being a way of tapping resources that are otherwise not easy to exploit. Iceland, for example, has huge geothermal potential but it isn't exactly easy to export that electricity out of the middle of the atlantic. Making H could be a decent way of doing so.
Re:Europeans (Score:2, Insightful)
if people thought the way you do, then what in a few thousand years? and how long do you have to store it untill its safe to dump somewhere? if hear it might take thousands of years to properly become disposable, untill then, each generation will add more and more to that 1 warehouse, untill it becomes a city, a county, a nation, a continate
in the end, untill you can dispose of the waste in a way that wont harm or burden future generations, then nuclear power just aint safe. What if civilization falls, and no one is left to maintain these waste dumps? many say nuclear power is safer, but i dont think radioactive waste is safer then some CO2, just wait a few thousand years and CO2 will go back to normal after people stop spiting more out, but radioactive waste seems like it will last a lot longer, and seems to actually be very deadly to people.
Re:Europeans (Score:2, Insightful)
That counts as "waste" in my view and is a huge problem.
Re:Europeans (Score:5, Insightful)
At the same time, we have an energy source right in our vicinity which is, for all practical purposes, non-depletable and delivers several thousand times more energy [wikipedia.org] to our planet in every second than we are currently using. It would be the most logical thing to switch everything over to that energy source as quickly as possible -- since before long, we'll have to do that anyway.
Re:Solar panels are no good either. (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.ecotopia.com/apollo2/pvpayback.htm [ecotopia.com]
More modern cells are even better, typical payback of a couple of years depending on location.
On the other had financially speaking you are talking about 25 years to recoup the cost of installation, which is why adoption has to be promoted by governments as very few people are prepared to think that far ahead!.
Re:Nuclear Power and Hydrogen - The Way of the Fut (Score:3, Insightful)
-matthew
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ohh puhlease... (Score:3, Insightful)
Orwell was just 20 years early in his predictions...
This is insane. All resources that better be spent on combatting ordinary crime are spent on this invisible "terrorism" thing.
What has the average Dutch citizen seen of terrorism? Nothing. The killing of Theo van Gogh? Describing that as an act of terrorism is just bending the definition to force a fit.
Meanwhile, people are robbed on the street, burglars break into houses, bikes and cars are stolen, cash is collected for goods sold on Internet and never delivered, and nothing is being done because "it is not a priority" or "it is too difficult to research".
You are right, when they really wanted to avoid terrorism there would be much easier and cheaper ways to do it. Like not sending troops to countries where they are unwelcome. And investigating what those terrorists have against us, gaining the insight that they too have a point.
Re:O well-named one... just south of here, (Score:3, Insightful)
But hey, coal sucks, too, no doubt about it. The primary solution to the energy problem is using a lot less energy, not hoping for a way for it to be produced cleanly.
Re:Limitless energie (Score:2, Insightful)
Except that Uranium comes if far, far smaller quantities than oil, last far longer, and also comes from more stable regions of the world.
Stable regions likeAt the moment the supply of uranium seems secure, as the supply of oil for the US was no problem as long as Texas had enough of it. But how long will it take till uranium gets scarce or political trouble will get in the way?
Re:get rid of waste (Score:4, Insightful)
This seems a little extreme, especially considering that enriched uranium waste becomes only as radioactive as natural uranium in only 100 years. Which is a fraction of the time it takes for material to sink into the mantle.
Re:Europeans (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, the problem is that you have to store it for some 10,000 years. That's 2500 warehouses of pretty dangerous stuff, that you have to protect for a very long time. Protect it from criminals, terrorists, natural disasters. Again for 10,000 years!
And that's only the dangers we think of at the moment. Are you really so sure we will have a stable enough government for 10,000 years to come to guarantee just the basic protection of the waste storage sites?
It is beyond me to estimate the dangers of running a nuclear power plant, whether it is worth the risk. But the nuclear waste problem is what makes me want to get rid of nuclear power.
(But then, I am from Germany, probably the country most critical of nuclear power all over Europe.)
Re:nuclear power vs. burning coal (Score:1, Insightful)
How much energy can you get out of a windturbine? About 3.5MW at most.
You can't build hydroelectric plants everywhere. There just isn't enough elevation. And they take up space. (See arable land below)
Solar is unreliable, and doesn't scale unless you have half the Sahara put to it. And last time I checked making photovoltaic circuitry was a highly polluting process.
Not to mention the energy storage problems with the above two.
There are many landlocked countries so tide power isn't an option everywhere.
Biomass? When many countries don't even produce enough food to sustain themselves? Arable land is luxury. You have to consider very carefully what you are going to use it for.
Scalability, power density, life-cycle analyses.
Energy costs. The price has to be paid one way or another.
Each country chooses according to their options. China will most certainly opt for nuclear. They don't have enough arable land, their people already suffer because of fossile fuels, and they need an immense amount of power.
Someone cares to caculate how much space would it use to generate that 300GW of power the Chinese plan on generating in nuclear power plants using non-fossile based alternative methods?
Re:Nuclear Power and Hydrogen - The Way of the Fut (Score:2, Insightful)
Supplement that with wind, and nuclear to fill your power budget and you've reduced your reliance on the politics of oil-producing nations.
As for transportation, imagine the above power sources pumping electricity into a transport system where the vehicles pick up energy from the infrastructure. You've just imagined electric railways. Get lots of rail infrastructure, get the bulk of the freight onto rail, get more passengers on the railways.
Now all we need is someone to produce some sort of industrial complex that *produces* natural gas in a clean and efficient way, and we'll all be mostly happy when the oil and gas runs out.
Re:Renewables cannot replace baseload (Score:3, Insightful)
Solar towers are more pie-in-the-sky dreaming. Sure it might work in some places in the world, at fantastic cost; but not useful for 99% of the worlds population.
The supply of oil and gas is a huge factor- the price is about to rocket upwards as the supply gets tight, this is the reason new nukes are crucially necessary. The green movement with its cold-war-era anti-nuke stupidity is starting a movement alright- to coal and runaway global warming. Supreme irony that.
Keep reeding... (Score:4, Insightful)
As a bonus, breeder reactors are much safer since the core can't achieve cain reaction on it's own and therefore can't cause a melt down.
Re:Dear Editor ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dear Editor ... (Score:3, Insightful)
jumping up and down to fit those filters and buy expensive "clean" coal as
soon as the russians retreated.
Get a clue.
Its hobsons choice (Score:2, Insightful)
A) Do you want to take the small risk of radioactive waste leaking into the
enviroment in a few hundred years time which with an extra few centuries
of technology our descendents probably won't have an issue cleaning up anyway?
or
B) Do you want to take the very large risk of continuing using fossil fuels
creating CO2 and sending the climate on a rollercoaster to hell and us along
with it?
Seems to me its a fairly simple choice.
Re:And the winner is.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Being a Finn myself I'd like to make a few comments...
1) Finland is currently a net importer of energy - mostly from Russia. Guess how the Russians produce the electrcity. That's right. Nuclear power - but, hey at least the safety over there is great (rolls eyes).
2) Finland is relatively flat, which means hydro power is limited. Furthermore we have no fossile fuel resources. The only options left that doesn't leave the country hopelessly dependant on others (a bad thing in a crisis) are Nuclear-, Bio-, and Wind-energy. Bioenergy is being developed, but is insufficient by itself, and wind is pretty much a joke. This leaves nuclear.
Oh. A lot of people will probably deny my claim that wind power is a joke, but at least here it hasn't and probably won't be a success. One reason seems to be that finding people who want a windmill as a neighbor is about as easy as finding people who want a nuclear powerplant as a neighbor. The windmills are percieved as hideously ugly, and above all noisy. Any estate in close proximity to one will drop dramatically in value, and placing these things in unpopulated areas is met with resitance because they're seen as an eyesore in the midst of our beautiful nature. Then there are of course the usual arguments about lack of continuity, numbers needed to have any real impact, etc.
3) (BTW) Why is this posted as news? The decision was made years ago.
Re:The Windscale pipeline (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear Power and Hydrogen - The Way of the Fut (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, they *sound* nice and clean, but for hydroelectric power you need a large valley with nothing in it that you particularly want to keep. Huge areas of Scotland were submerged in the 1950s and 1960s to form hydro-electric dams. No-one knows what may have been lost, because the areas weren't particularly closely surveyed.
For a lot of people the jury is still out on tidal and wave power. It works, and it works well, but what are the effects of absorbing that much energy from the sea? Don't forget - the energy has to come from somewhere. Wind power has the same problem, where the airflow downwind of a windfarm is colder, slower and more turbulent. That shows it has a very direct effect on the atmosphere. Whether it's a good one or not, we don't know.
No surprise. Nuclear safety, sea water... (Score:2, Insightful)
From the article: He [Chirac] said the government will set up this year an independent authority to oversee the safety and security of France's nuclear power industry.
Probably a little off-topic but...
Europe warms to Nuke ? C'mon who's surprised ?That we are all gonna rely on nuclear power is no news, no surprise because simply said we (western folks) are too energy greedy to have any alternative providing sufficient power. This last statement is exemplified by Germany position: one of the most radical decision was made about getting rid of all nuclear power plant by 2020. Here we are (2006): there is no choice but to have nuclear, because it is today the only way to satisfy our sick demand. And Germany says "well maybe..."
The hijacking toward weapons... Chirac's statement is IMO *the* thing to be noticed because it relates to nuclear safety. Indeed today the main problem with nuclear power plant is human hijacking with goals of producing nuclear weapons. Mr. Charpak (physics Nobel price), Garwin and Journé explains well that the priority for now (I mean Monday 9 Jan 2006) is to set up an independent international authority with all powers: zero delay, unplanned inspections in all plants; no exceptions in every country. The priority is really to control precisely what happens with all nuclear fuel materials as well as waist materials.
Mr. Chirac wants to create a national authority ? Good. Not enough. Let's go for this international one which so much needed.
Go and read this book De Techernobyl en Tchernobyls (fr) (ref below). Pretty amazing things to be learned. To get a picture of how serious the problem is see the old The Russell-Einstein Manifesto [pugwash.org]. BTW discover the little known Pugwash organisation.
About availability of nuclear fuel. In the same book it is explained that sea water contains uranium. Precisely (page 195): Estimated 2.10^9 tones are available in sea water. By 1998 the Japanese estimated extraction cost at 100 USD per Kg. That could supply 2000 traditional nuclear power plant for 5000 years. So... it seams there is some FUD about fuel availability.
Reference: (fr) - "De Techernobyl en Tchernobyls" - September 2005 - G. Charpak, R.L Garwin, V. Journé - Edition Odile Jacob - ISBN 2-7381-1374-5 [wikipedia.org].
Bye. Z.
Energy Efficiency = More Capacity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear Power and Hydrogen - The Way of the Fut (Score:5, Insightful)
While they don't release toxic gasses into the atmosphere directly, the contribute to vast water pollution problems by blocking the natural flow and aeration of rivers. A quickly flowing river is like a sewage treatment plant -- you can dump quite a bit of organic waste into it upstream, and it will be clean by the time it runs into the ocean. However if you dam that river and make long stretches of it stagnant, the water flowing downstream of the dam will be much more polluted.
This is a significant problem in Maine, which has high amounts of organic waste from paper mills. This wouldn't be a big problem, and is not in excess of what could be handled by many rivers (e.g. the Androscoggin) except that hydropower projects have removed many rapids on the river and cause the pollution to remain. There are experiments to artifically aerate the water behind dams, just as you'd do in a fish tank, by pumping air down to the bottom and allowing it to bubble up, but they're not nearly as effective as rapids used to be. And of course you pretty much kill the native fish population overnight, if they are one of the species that swims upstream to spawn.
I can imagine in other areas that organophosphate pollution from fertilizers is a similar problem when you dam a river. Plus regular old sewage effluent can be problematic if the river isn't flowing quickly.
There is a public perception that dams are "clean energy" but in reality this isn't precisely true. There are huge ecological downsides to hydropower projects, which are not normally considered (and definitely weren't considered when many of them were constructed, in their defense). Arguing against nuclear power by saying "build more hydro dams!" isn't a particularly useful response.
To be perfectly honest, although nobody wants any sort of power generation facility in their back yard, I'd much prefer to have a nuclear power plant in my neighborhood, than to have my neighborhood be under 20' of polluted water.
Re:Nuclear Power and Hydrogen - The Way of the Fut (Score:3, Insightful)
Right now we use Uranium pretty much like we use oil: we put it in a power plant, split it into some waste components, extract a little energy from it, and throw away everything else. It's totally non-renewable, totally wasteful. It's nothing like the system that was envisioned for nuclear power back 50 years ago.
Frankly I think it's a mistake to build any new nuclear plants right now, when they would probably be of the old type. All we're doing is using up a finite resource (uranium) in a hideously inefficient way. It would be better for our civilization in the long run if we waited until we were really desparate and willing to break down the political barriers to the full fuel cycle before building new plants -- that way we wouldn't waste nuclear fuels in the same way that we wasted fossil ones.
Years from now, maybe generations from now, people are going to look back at the reactors currently operating for commercial power generation in the U.S. and cringe. The wasted potential energy in the fuels that they consume is just enormous, and some day, we're going to wish we hadn't squandered it.
Re:Nuclear Power and Hydrogen - The Way of the Fut (Score:3, Insightful)
I think one of the problems with these nabobs is they just don't have any idea of scale. The oceans are really, really huge. So is the Sun. It would take tidal powered installations many orders of magnitude larger than what could be built in the next hundred years to make any difference.
Wind power does have its drawbacks, but where it is used well it is quite useful. Off of Cape Cod, for instance, is a great place for wind turbines. I think Kerguelen would be even better, if it wer enot so remote.
What I am trying to say is we need to diversify our energy harvesting and distribution: oil, coal, wood, gas, nuclear, wind, tidal, solar, biogas as harvesting and electric, octane (gasoline), vegetable oils, biodiesel, hydrogen, organic gases, lithium, water, interia as storage and distribution. Probably more I've missed. Nuclear fission is a part of this: we need consistent and concentrated heat to do such things as smelt metals, and nuclear fission can do this with less pollution than the alternatives of coil and petroleum.
Re:Europeans (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tired old canard (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact I sat on the Berkeley decommissioning panel for a time. You seem to think there are great tasks involved in decommissioning but in fact most of it is a standard industrial demolition job. The high level waste (mostly the spent fuel) has long gone. The reason for the long time scales you mention is *not* because the tasks are huge or difficult, but to allow radiation levels of the components in the core to decay so the guys don't have to work in radiation suits. Not that it would hurt anyone to work for a time without suits now, but with guys having to work for months their dose would build up to non-permissible levels. There are also political reasons for the slow progess - local consultation, government indecision etc which we engineers find frustrating.
You seem to refer to what is called the "Safestore" scheme to cover the reactor core buildings with a tumulii and leave them for 140 years before final dismantling by which time there would be little radiation left to worry about. An alternative is to dismantle in the near future to a "green field". The decision is not yet made.
The BBC is not an authority on the costs. As I said there is no particular difficulty with dismantling but unfortunately both "sides" in this debate have an interest in talking up the costs. Nuclear opponents like yourself want to say "it's not worth it" and OTOH the nuclear industry wants as much as it can get from government for doing the decommissioning job. Don't quote me on that. In reality some of the figures quoted are absurd - as an engineer I do not know how I could begin to spend such money on a heap of iron and concrete.
And Oh! that concrete. Hard stuff to get rid of *if* they insist on a green field site. But nuclear power stations aren't special. Ever seen any estimates on what it would cost to get a motorway junction, hospital or airport back to a green field site? They won't last for ever either, but no-one seems interested in those costs.
The "tired old canard" : "nuclear power releases less radioactive material than burning coal" is perfectly relevant in the context of comparing normal operational background emissions from the plant, for example as ingested by a member of the public 15 miles away. Berkeley power station never created more than normal operational emmissions in its existence, and now it never will.
OK, here's the new rule (Score:3, Insightful)
That's completely ridiculous of course and so are most of the arguments against developing nuclear power it's interesting to note that more people were killed on 9/11 than at Chernobyl and unlike the Chernobyl figures, which have been spun into fantasy by anti-nuclear environmental groups we can actually say that around 3000 people died on 9/11 because we found dead bodies or pieces thereof unlike Chernobyl where most of the body counts are the result of statistical extrapolations. But enviros haven't called for a cessation of air travel, probably because so many of them are rich and white and like to fly to places like Costa Rica for their vacations.
Re:this is a longterm stop-gap (Score:2, Insightful)
Raise the taxes on something to get the alternative to look better? Thats your "solution"???
Raise the price so folks will turnoff the PCs at night. Well if most are running intel machines, boot time is prime failure time. If this procedure raised the annual failure rate by couple percent, you have ruined your case. The energy required to make a new PC and dispose of the old one will be greather than it used on all those nights.
How will you feel when you find out the YOUR "GREEN" solutions killed off a migratory breed of birds or some other ecological disaster?
Let the markets sort it out. Remove taxes and tax subsides, lower the amount of redundant paperwork and let the markets work.
If, some CEO does break the law, hold him personaly responsible and have his ass in the lake picking up dead fish.
Re:this is a longterm stop-gap (Score:3, Insightful)
You're reacting as if energy were scarce. It isn't. If more would be useful, build more power stations.
BTW, if I haven't made it clear, your arrogant use of first-person-plural disgusts me. Allow me to bring to your attention the important question: whose property is this energy? And the important answer: not yours. So who are you to be telling people what to do with it? Let alone what some unspecified "we" should impose! You're a would-be tyrant hiding behind a sock-puppet collective. Go to hell!
Efficiency (Score:3, Insightful)
From what I understand, current methods are remarkably inefficient.
Re:Nuclear Power and Hydrogen - The Way of the Fut (Score:3, Insightful)
How much are people willing to pay for Gas? 'Cause finding it, drilling it, pumping it, transporting it, refining it, transporting it again, then pumping it into your car is expensive too. I'm not sure how Hydrogen would be much more wasteful than Gasoline. As for the compression required, that all depends on the setup. Assuming we can measure the gas acurately enough, just having a highly compressed source in the gas station tanks, and a gas tank with little compression, should supply a large ammount of compressed hydrogen for a full tank. Put a valve in the car or gas station pump that keeps the car tank pressure from getting too high and you can have the gas station tank compressed at a much higher pressure than the car gas tank.
The only issue here is how much it will cost. Given that Hydrogen vehicles don't have to be piston based and could be turbine based, they can be more efficient (reducing effective cost). Couple this with electric vehicles as a generator (in addition to a battery) and you have a possible replacement for petrol engines.