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Prius NiMH battery nickel consumption pales in comparison to traditional uses for Nickel. Oops, if your reading this while eating better put down those NICKEL containing stainless steel forks. Got one of those shinny stainless steel kitchens – 1/3 of that shinny metal is nickel! Do not take your next jet engine powered aircraft ride either, as the turbine blades contain high nickel bearing alloys for temperature resistance. Oops, better not ride around in those hummers, they have more nickel than the entire Prius, including the NiMH battery.

The London tabloid that published this story from which all this misinformation has been regurgitated has long ago retracted the story. The Sudbury mine, while once a nasty place, has cleaned up, and now wins enviormental awards – probably why Toyota picked that mine in the first place.

CNW’s articles have been laughed at for years too. The US Government ORNL ran two second generation Prius for 125K miles (used as bank messenger cars in the Phoenix area). After the trial, the cars were still both running strong, and the total cost of operation, including purchase, gas and insurance was $.20 / mile. How CNW comes up with $2.67/mile ($2.87 – $.20) for recycling a scrap Prius is beyond me. Even if the perfectly good 125K mile Prius’ from the ORNL trial were recycled, that would be $333750 to recycle each car! The last time I was to a junk yard, these were not gold-plated Taj Mahal operations. And their is no way they are getting 14.5 times the original cost of each vehicle to crush them.