re: wasting money
So how many acres of olive trees will it take to produce 1000 megawatts of power around the clock for years?
There's nothing wrong with exotic alternative energy sources--every watt that comes from renewable sources is a watt that a power plant doesn't have to generate--but we also need some major sources for our power needs. Nuclear fills the bill, and generates no CO2. Waste problems are managable with some good sense thrown in.
Coal and oil burning generate toxic wastes, too, not to mention the coal mining. I suspect the mortality count from these sources far outweighs that from the history of nuclear power generation.