You are certainly entitled to your opinion and the right to express it - despite the preponderance of information that disagrees with you.

A quick search yields: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nuclear-waste11-2009mar11,0,6987225.story You may try to hide from the truth, but you can't ignore it forever.

I must disagree with you. First of all a significant amount of waste is not being stored above ground. A significant amount is being stored underground or is planned to - as soon or if they can figure out a way to stabilize it for 10's of thousands of years. France is into breeder reactors. The problem is they have bred so much they don't know what to do with it. They are running out of storage capacity. So naturally they are encouraging others to build fission reactors as well - which will help them get rid of their surplus. Of course this can snowball. As more breeders are built more excess starts building up. Eventually you land up with a huge pile of waste. That is the nature of fission. Millions are being spent right now to figure out how to handle it but no long term solution exists. Projects include condensing it down and incorporating into synthetic rock. They know that drum storage simply will not last. There is even a signage project to figure out how to mark radioactive dump sites to warn future generations. Additionally nuclear waste sites are a 'candy store' for terrorists. It is time we started thinking about serious long term solutions instead of wasting time and money on quick fixes.

And everyone you mentioned is either unreliable, not cost effective, is dependent on random events, or is costly to maintain. You seem to lump all nuclear together. I am absolutely opposed to nuclear power by fission. Fission creates byproducts that potentially spell disaster for future generations or terrific opportunities for terrorism. I couldn't agree with you more in respect to fission. Nuclear Fission is an absolutely horrible short sighted solution. Fusion on the other hand virtually eliminates all of these problems. Its current problems right now are designing the proper containment vessel and sustaining the reaction. Sooner or later these issues will be resolved and the world will switch to fusion given its cost of operation and virtual elimination of hazardous byproducts. Why not now instead of later? Why waste money on already limited or obsolete technologies instead of committing to an emerging technology that promises to produce virtually unlimited, cheap, and green power?

The only long term exit from fossil fuels on the horizon is Fuson. -Solar:unreliable (rain & night); materials are exotic, costly, and manufacturing creates toxic waste or environmental damage -Wind: unreliable and takes up a lot of space. -Fission: byproducts are highly toxic and waste management is a nightmare. -Fusion: Fuel is extracted tritium (H3) gas or heavy water; waste is hydrogen gas or water. Abundance of fuel-virtually unlimited. If fusion goes on-line it will be so plentiful and cheap that meters may be abandoned for a nominal monthly charge for all the electricity you want to use. The only limitation will be the ability of the power grid to supply it.

There are two parts involved with a disk replacement: The cost of the drive and the cost of labor. Both are incorporated into the final cost of the replacement. Since I have never had Apple replace a drive, I am not sure as to how they price it out. However Apple has historically charged a premium price for a drive. That is why, at least with towers, and other Mac's with easy accessible drives, most customers 'in the know' buy the minimum disk with the product and either 'throw it away' (perhaps by reselling it on Craig's List), or using as an auxiliary drive after replacing it with a better and less expensive unit(s). In any case, if the repair is replaced under Applecare, your screwed, as you pay only for AppleCare and not for the repair or parts. Under its policy, Apple can do just about anything it wants to, so long as they return a working machine. However if it is outside of warranty, then you should have some negotiation room. If they are charging you their going price for a drive and a fee to put it in, they they should be either returning the bad drive to you or refunding back a 'shell' fee if they insist on keeping the drive, After all it is your drive, not theirs. You should be informed of this in advance or at least it should be indicated in the fine print. If you don't bother to read the fine print, they one can argue that it is your fault. However with the way companies bury important consumer info in legal gibberish on purpose to get away with things (when did you last fully read a EULA) and shaft the consumer, you still might have a valid complaint, if the company (i.e. Apple) did not clearly state the disposition of your drive in plain obvious English. In any case if it happened to me I would seriously consider filing a complaint with my State Consumer Protection Agency and the local BBB. In any case if I was paying for the repair and drive, through Apple, and they refused to guarantee that I would have my original drive returned, (I would have recorded the SN from Apple Profiler), I would find someone else to fix it. Unfortunately large companies are not generally known for insuring that their customers personal info is protected. One of the 'scare tactics' used by companies like Apple is to put the fear of God into you by warning you that if you get an unauthorized repair done, your warranty or Applecare agreement will be voided. However if you are paying for the repair, then there is no warranty or Applecare agreement involved and they are making a useless, empty threat which you can comfortably ignore while you laugh at it. So if you are in this situation, I suggest using common sense and try and work something out with the representative before you agree to the repair. Many times you can negotiate a win-win situation. Otherwise find someone that will do the work the way you want it done. Remember it is your machine, your drive and you are the customer that is paying for it. In regards to drive costs, I bought retail 2 -500GB SATA drives for under $200 and just plugged them in to one of my MacPro's. I RAIDed them together for 1TB of space for Time Machine. If you are buying a new custom MacPro, I suggest you compare that to Apple's installed price for additional 500MB drives.