Prius construction damages environment?

Hi Mario,

There have been a few yellow journalism articles regarding the Sudbury, Ontario Canada Nickel mine where Nickel for the Prius battery is mined. They showed pictures of enviormnetal damage from before the Prius was even designed, let alone in production. The mine is 100 years old. In recent years the mine has won awards for ecological cleanup.

The mine provides nickel for the Prius battery, like I said, but nickel is a common material throughout modern society. Most people eat food with stainless-steel utensils in the USA. Stainless Steel is the largest use of nickel. Aircraft engines use super alloys for the turbine blades, which are pirmarily nickel. Nickel plating is common on electronic connectors, such as the RCA jacks on the back of consumer stereo equipment. Nickel is a component of about 1/2 the ferrites used in the common personal computer power supply. The CRT that you are watching this on, probably has a nickel bearing ferrite EMI absorber on the video cable (that large lump near one end of the chord).

These uses of nickel existed long before the Prius, and are not are effected by the presence of the Prius. The articles were esentially elaborate lies, consequently. Toyota buys about 1 % of the mines output per year. And its not clear if all of that goes into Prius batteries, or is also used for other stainless steel parts on the Toyota cars.

The benefit of the NiMH battery in the Prius is clear. Using half the gasoline it would have without the hybrid drivetrain, displaces allot of electricity generation for the production of the Petroleum, let alone the emissions from burning that extra gas.

Do a search on this site for Sudbury, and you should find a multitude of responses to these articles, including links to other sites that debunk the articles.

 

The point that really jumps out at me is the 1,000 ton/year purchase of nickel by Toyota for use in the Prius. This represents less than one percent of the nickel production at Sudbury (0.75% from the numbers I found). To attribute all of the devastation caused by the smelter to a single customer is misleading.

In fact, much of the ecological damage that is getting pinned on the Prius was done a long time ago. The Inco Superstack was constructed way back in 1972 and was designed to disperse sulphur gases and other byproducts of the smelting process away from the city itself. Starting in the early 1990s, a major construction effort started to dramatically clean the waste gases before pumping them up the Superstack, removing around 90% of the sulphur dioxide. The upgrades were completed in 1994, and emissions from then on were much reduced. Again, this all took place before the Prius even went into production.

Furthermore, Sudbury is no longer this polluted, as INCO and the city have planted over 8 million trees there since 1979. A really good history online of the Sudbury devastation/reforestation comes from GM Canada – that’s GM, maker of the Hummer, ahem, writing about how Sudbury was polluted and how it has come back. Really, one should blame Chicago more than Toyota, as Sudbury’s trees were all cut down in 1871 to help rebuild Chicago after the fire. GM provides telling photos of some of the reclamation from 1979 to present.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mário Rui Romero @ Jun 26 2007, 10:44 AM) [snapback]468246[/snapback]</div>

Most journalist are unpaid little toadies that have to sensationalize everything in order to get paid for their meaningless stories. Its very simple, the truth is boring, sensationalism sells, it is a shame that journalism is little more then printing photos of Briteny spears vagina and Paris Hilton going to jail.