NationStates Jolt Archive

The use of Windmills?

Solar power?

Waterfalls?

The use of Windmills?

Solar power?

Waterfalls?

We should use them all.....

We should focus more on switching to them. Then we won't have some sort of economic collapse if our oil runs out.

We should use them all, in addition to nuclear power, and we should also continue to research new energy possibilities. We need to release ourselves from our dependence on fossil fuels.

is this even going to turn into a debate? is anyone really going to jump up and down and celebrate oil and the fact that it's heading towards extinction? sweet, gas prices are insanely high. thats awesome.

We should focus more on switching to them. Then we won't have some sort of economic collapse if our oil runs out.

Not "if," but when!

waterfalls? you mean hydropower?

All 3 are good in principle, with I'd say wavepower coming out as the best of the alternatives, another really good alternative is Biomass.

Solarenery is abundant, and always will be. Photovoltaics, solarcells, aren't. The minerals used in the most efficent ones currently available are rare. THe environmental damage done to actually get some of them is compartively large for the number of grams of the materials that we get in return. A solar cell with a life of 20 years, assuming nothing accidentally breaks it, only gives 8 years of useful energy. It takes the first 12 years to pay back the energy debt created making it. 8 years for the cell itself, and 4 for the infrastructure used to make the energy useful.

Windpower rapes nature! Windfarms look god awful. They all make the most annoying humming noise. Its fun how the most scenic bits of nature seem to be where the best supply of wind is. Nothing against offshore windfarms. Apart from the cost...

The sooner we can all have our very own Mr Fusion in our homes the better :D

Hydrogen.

Windmills and Solar power are great ideas, but unfortunately the technology isn't there to make them feasable just yet.

The Altamont pass east of the San Francisco is literally littered with windmills but provide more expensive energy than other means. Plus the upkeep of the windmills is such that the majority of those mills are in such a state of disrepair that they probably not be able to be brought back into service.

Waterfalls.... well we already do utilize a large ammount of hydroelectric power. Hoover Dam is probably the best known source. Waterfalls would be highly inefficient in generating power.

Hydrogen isn't a source of energy, it's an energy storage/transfer medium.

You need to take power from something else to manufacture hydrogen. Solar is a possibility, but the problem is by time you've got your hydrogen at the end, you've wasted so much energy that you would have been better just running your car of batteries.

Of course you could use nuclear to produce hydrogen, but you'd still have the case that the electricity would have been better using the energy for something else.

We can oil by other means, though that doesn't exactly fix all the air pollution. Diesel can be manufactured from crops, and oil and gas can be made from sewage and normal rubbish.

waterfalls? you mean hydropower?

All 3 are good in principle, with I'd say wavepower coming out as the best of the alternatives, another really good alternative is Biomass.

Solarenery is abundant, and always will be. Photovoltaics, solarcells, aren't. The minerals used in the most efficent ones currently available are rare. THe environmental damage done to actually get some of them is compartively large for the number of grams of the materials that we get in return. A solar cell with a life of 20 years, assuming nothing accidentally breaks it, only gives 8 years of useful energy. It takes the first 12 years to pay back the energy debt created making it. 8 years for the cell itself, and 4 for the infrastructure used to make the energy useful.

Windpower rapes nature! Windfarms look god awful. They all make the most annoying humming noise. Its fun how the most scenic bits of nature seem to be where the best supply of wind is. Nothing against offshore windfarms. Apart from the cost...

The sooner we can all have our very own Mr Fusion in our homes the better :D

It's kind of funny how you seem to have it out for wind farms, but have nothing against hydroelectric dams, which can have devastating effects because of the huge lakes that build up behind them. I'm not criticizing. It is just an observation.

bring on the spherical tokamak, small enough to fit in a room... well it will be in future :)

http://fusion.org.uk/st/

It's kind of funny how you seem to have it out for wind farms, but have nothing against hydroelectric dams, which can have devastating effects because of the huge lakes that build up behind them. I'm not criticizing. It is just an observation.

The three gorges dam has flooded a huge area, and destroyed millions of homes, protected archeological sites and no doubt some species have been made extinct too. Not good in the slightest, however we've now got a new resource, a huge lake. People can use that area, infact that area could even be used for growing huge quantites of algae, which can then be harvest, dried and burnt as a biofuel.

Another damming example would be if we dammed the Baltic Sea between denmark and sweden. Baltic sea water, isn't sea water, its brackish, having only .5% salt in it, 1/6th of normal sea water. After a period of between 20 and 30 years you'd have freshwater. It would be replacing salt water, so nothing "new" would be underwater. Thats an extra 23,000km3 of freshwater, increasing the liquid freshwater on earth by about 1/5th.

Yes hydro creates environmental problems, but it offers pluses too. Windpower only offers energy. Unless anyone can think of any other benefit of it?

<enters Devil's Advocate mode>

While the alternative forms of energy are all viable alternatives, there are problems with most of the forms.

Active solar power (using photovoltaics) - as has been stated before, the environmental cost for the procurement of materials for existing photovoltaic cell designs is rather high, not to mention the energy expenditure and pollution associated with the manufacture of the cells themselves. Their payout time for cost is in excess of a decade (longer if you take the energy used in their manufacture into account).

Wind Power - Yes they can be an eyesore. Yes they can make an annoying hum. No the wind does not blow continuously.

Waterfalls/Hydroelectric - The building of dams for hydroelectric energy production causes not only severe environmental damage, both from their initial construction, but also in their through modification of the river ecosystem. Additionally, massive dams always run the risk of being the potential for massive disaters for any areas downstream from the dam itself should it ever break (a very real possibility, especially if the dams are not properly maintained).

Wavegenerators - great for the coastal areas ... what about Omaha? What about the possible environmental impact from introducing the sheer quatity of these devices required to produce enough energy for even a small city?

Nuclear - hmmm ... Three Mile Island ... Cherynobel ...

<exits Devil's Advocate mode>

OK, now for the flip side (to a degree). I am a firm advocate for passive solar (which can incorporate things such as architecture to better use the sun's energy to heat or cool a home without photovoltaic cells, solar water heaters, etc). Wave generators do strike me as having potential, especially for isolated areas, though I would be somewhat hesitant to see them in widespread use.

I do believe wind power is a great form of alternative energy, though one that cannot be counted upon at all times (like when the wind doesn't blow). However, I do not believe in the entire "wind farm" concept, unless the land is also used for other purposes as well, such as farming (there is a vinyard in my area that has windmills sprea throughout the grapes).

I do not particularly like the environmental problems associated with hydroelectric dams, nor do I like the use of eminent domain to acquire lands that would be put under water for hydroelectric projects. And nucelar, imho, poses too much of a potential hazard to justify the energy produced.

Hydrogen does appear to be a very viable alternative. There is a more stable form (I believe it is called hydroxide) which some folks are looking at in the development of a hydrogen powered vehicle. This form would reduce the risks of explosion/fire to a minimum; the major drawback is there is no current distribution network for the compound.

Finally, one form that has not yet been mentioned is geothermal, which I feel also has great potential.

OK that's it for my DA/nonDA rants.

What abiout wiinmdpower from tall buildings. If you go high enough in some cities, 20-30 stories I think. You could get almost coninuaous wind.
Coperations should jump at the chance to save money. Sell back extra energy to power company.

Hydrogen, methane, renewable resources.

Shell and British Petroleum would not be pushing alternative fules if they were not seeing the writing on the wall as far as depleted reserves.

Same goes for the new hybrid cars the automakers put off making for so long.

We'd better develop those alternatives quickly.

We need to reinvigorate our nuclear program here in America. Although other alternatives are good, I think the benefits of nuclear are far higher than the risks.

We need to reinvigorate our nuclear program here in America. Although other alternatives are good, I think the benefits of nuclear are far higher than the risks.

Nuclear is interesting. I had the thrill of being in Hershey PA when Three Mile Isalnd melted down, watching thousands of people being evacuated, it was something to remember. The Utility, GPU, had people with no high school diploma running the safety equipment, in order to save on overhead.

"Oh, but they were trained", we were told. The training took all of two weeks. D'oh.

So if we do this again let's be sure we do it right. With regular independent inspections to prevent cost cutting.

maybe we can launch the waste into space.

BP hasn't refered to itself as British Petroleum for years. It gradually got phased out to just BP. Now they will have it know that BP stands, for Beyond Petroleum. They've also got a lovely flowery logo too :)

AFAIK, They are the worlds largest investor in, and supplier of, solar energy too.

If money had been spent on reseach and upgrading nuclear energy plants we'd be in a much better state now.

nucular!

I mean nuclear power. The alternatives are good, but just too expensive right now. I'm waiting for fusion, but it seems like it's gonna take a while.

I believe we should use as many aternatives as possible and always heading towards the most environmentally friendly solutions.

I mostly wish we could use Tesla's technology of drawing energy directly out of the air and transmittinging it wirelessly for free to everyone. Alas noone would fund something they couldnt make any money off of though.

Solar energy - doesn´t make much sense in Northern countries
Wind energy - only makes sense in costal regions
Water energy - makes sense.
I think my country- Germany - simply subsidises those energy forms to much. That makes energy more expensive due to an extra tax on it.
I think they should be used but only on those places where it makes sense.
But our red-green government is blinded by a socialist and eco-fundamentalists ideology.
That is just subsidizing things: I think the subsidies must be reduced and that more nuclear power (which is very unpopular though) or gas power should be used. Also the coal should remain to play a major role. Domestic coal is subsidized as well but we can import it from the global market (South Africa, Australia). More important is to reduce the dependency on oil - step by step. And we need to bring stability to the Middle East and to remain close ties to Russia -our main supplier.
We need cheaper energy to compete on the global market.
Otherwise the country is going to loose competitivness on the global market.

Windmills- While cheap, can only be used in places with sufficient wind and enough area to make them cost effective. I'm not saying they are useless by any strech of the imagination, just cumbersome as far as energy goes.

Solar power-Solar power is horribly inefficient and the panels which we currently have are expensive, delicate and take up almost as much space as the windmills. Until the solar panels can be mass produced and increase their efficientcy, doubtful.

Waterfalls- I'd kind of prefer to leave waterfalls that are the usable size for the public to see. They ARE kinda pretty.

Geothermal Energy-This is something I would like to see A LOT more attention to. The Earth isn't cooling off any time soon, and if we could tap into it, we'd have virtually infinate energy.

Nuclear- Seriously guys, it's not as bad as people make it out to be. We've had two main oops's in our nation's history of which neither caused extensive damage. Nuclear waste can be taken to Yucca mountain for the next several decades anyhow. It's a crutch for later and really productive for what you get.

Fusion- Sounds stupid but WE ARE SO CLOSE! In the next 30 years we can have this form of energy running. Many times more powerful than nuclear and with less waste.

Just some thoughts.

-R. S. of UC

Nuclear power is our best shot now, after all Chernobyl is exactly the kind of stupid stuff the U.S.S.R did to everything they could get their hand upon. Three Mile Island was, in fact, a testimony for the saftey of nuclear power. The idiots left in charge over there did everything within their power to expose an active core (that is a bad thing, for those of you that don't know) and the system didn't allow it.
This is one place where the French have the right idea, almost all of their electricity is nuclear and that is where just about all of their investment is placed.

Solar and Wind power are both the most horrible ideas to come about in the area of power. Solar Cells, as well as costing your arms, legs, and your neighbours arms and legs, are immensely damaging, not only causing envirnomental damage, but also causing various cancers. Wind Power is loud, inefficient, ugly, and take up territory that could be better applied to any number of things. Hydrogen is, as has already been pointed out, a carrier of energy, meaning it had to come from somewhere else in the first place.

Solar energy - doesn´t make much sense in Northern countries
Wind energy - only makes sense in costal regions


Solar energy is used at both poles, and extensively throughout scandinavia.
The further north you go, the more it just doesn't get dark in the summer. Conversely there may only be a few hours sun in the middle of winter.

Wind energy works almost anywhere, but is best where there is a large differential in temperature over a flat area. The area around the great lakes in North America is a good example, its inland, but also reckoned to be one of the top 3 places for potential wind energy production in America.

Zero Point Energy!

Solar energy is used at both poles, and extensively throughout scandinavia.
The further north you go, the more it just doesn't get dark in the summer. Conversely there may only be a few hours sun in the middle of winter. .
I doubt that this is efficent. Most sun is on the desert arreas in North Africa -particularly on the desert circles around the world.
Ironically those countries who have got the most of oil anyway.
As a matter of fact the sun is only coming on a flat angle and not directly. I don´t think that is efficent.

Wind energy works almost anywhere, but is best where there is a large differential in temperature over a flat area. The area around the great lakes in North America is a good example, its inland, but also reckoned to be one of the top 3 places for potential wind energy production in America.[/QUOTE]
America has different geography. It has no mountain regions Which go East-West only a few which go north-south. Therefore the climate is more extreme (continental climate) and has more wind. That can´t be compared to Europe, where we have mainly west-east mountains and none north-south. Since that is the case the climate is more mild. There are some regions where there are exceptions - like on the mountains and on high plateaus.
But there are still not as efficent as on the North Sea coast.
I´m very critical of this energy anyway. They are not looking good in the landscape. I´ve heard that birds are dying because of them. And they can be very loud.
I think nuclear power and gas (which is also very environmentally friendly) is a better option.
And if people here are against nuclear power I think we are going tohave to import more from France.
I personally think that the facts are going to a reconsideration of the energy policy. After all -- there will be a government change and even the current goverment plans include nuclear power up until the time between 2020-2030.
I think we can´t do without it.
And we need more gas. The renewable energies can´t play a major role. It is unrealistic, since we need so much energy.

Solar power is good, because you can use it directly, through solar panels, or use it to make hydrogen fuel, which can then be used for cars and things. The only waste product would be water, which if it stayed in the cell, could be turned back into fuel again with more solar power (i.e. hydrogen would just be a store of the power, not the source).

Solar power is good, because you can use it directly, through solar panels, or use it to make hydrogen fuel, which can then be used for cars and things. The only waste product would be water, which if it stayed in the cell, could be turned back into fuel again with more solar power (i.e. hydrogen would just be a store of the power, not the source).
I think that is a big problem. Solar and wind energy is not always available. And it is not possible to safe the energy (without huge energy loses).
That is a difference to water. Except if you life in a country with a long try periods it is pretty reliable. The same is the case for the fossil energies and for nuclear power.

I think that is a big problem. Solar and wind energy is not always available. And it is not possible to safe the energy (without huge energy loses).
That is a difference to water. Except if you life in a country with a long try periods it is pretty reliable. The same is the case for the fossil energies and for nuclear power.

The only time solar power is not available is night. The sunlight doesn't have to be bright to give us energy, just present. Obviously we won't get as much, but we'll still get some.

If by "safe the energy" you mean store it, as in hydrogen fuel cells, you are correct that the process is currently rather inefficient, but technologies are being developed to improve the efficiency.

The main issue, and one that most of you seem to have failed to miss, is that of the lobbyists. You see, regardless of whether a Democrat or a Republican is in the White House, Big Business runs this country. And one of the most influential members of this super-elite is the Automobile Industry. You see, right now we have the technology to build cars that get one hundred miles to the gallon. In fact, there have been many different models proposed, and each in its turn has been bought by the auto industry and then squashed. Why? Because inefficient vehicles will break down faster and thus more income is generated for those wonderful auto corporations. Not to mention that, whether you choose to believe it or not, most of the major oil companies are in bed with these auto corporations and cooperate with them to increase profits for both. My father was a mechanic for 15 years, before he started his own business, and he himself has many ideas as to how fuel efficiency could be improved. This is why we are having so much difficulty with finding viable alternative sources of fuel that will still provide our needed energy. Even the hybrid vehicles are a great deal more expensive than they should be, and they are not nearly as effective as they could be. Until we can overcome the headlock that Big Business has on our country, we will make progress only through the slowest and most excruciating methods possible.

Solar

There have been tremendous advances in solar collecting and storing capabilities, from Japan's solar sail to new advances in technology that allow panels to capture and store much more to new batteries, the research is finally paying off. Right now solar is not very efficient but in a year the science of late will be applied and I imagine in 5 solar will be a good form of energy, esp. on the local level. Another thing to remember is that even when it's cloudy, light waves pass through and hit us. Solar has, until now, only been able to store very little in pristine conditions, but the science is changing.

We should focus on getting them as a norm, but not limit ourselves to them. We should still be looking for new ways, while improving the ones we already have.

I beleive we should look further into nuclear fission, the process of combining atoms instead of splitting them. Currently though it uses more energy to produce from this option than what would be obtained from it, but if we got it to work it would be excellent. There would be less nuclear waste as well. Currently I see our best options are wind and solar, both are pretty much reliable and both are eco-friendly.

We should focus on a combo of wind, solar, and natural gas. Solar panels can be woven into roof shingle threads, and be handled by a regular roofer. Wind farms are increasing in popularity, even in the US. In fact, the most opposition comes from, listen to this, Greenpeace! Anyhow, natural gas is on a course to replace oil as a fuel by 2025. It's by no means infinite, but it's a perfect bridge to whatever lies beyond.

I beleive we should look further into nuclear fission, the process of combining atoms instead of splitting them. Currently though it uses more energy to produce from this option than what would be obtained from it, but if we got it to work it would be excellent. There would be less nuclear waste as well. Currently I see our best options are wind and solar, both are pretty much reliable and both are eco-friendly.

i assume you mean fusion...what we do already is fission.
that said, I think neculear power, fusion or currently avilable fission is a great way to go, stop giving into the anti nuke ppl, and let them go, its clean, its cheap, its safe (it is safe, consider how many die from polution and such from fossile fuel, and then compare that to neculear deaths)

Zero Point Energy!
well you get the damn gate to work

nuclear

look at the us navy no major accidents

doesn't iceland (or at least one city in iceland) run entirely on geothermal energy?

and energy from renewable sources is great.

if we got cold fusion down, we'd be set.

I like alternative energy.

There's also the [potential] possibility for antimatter (I'm dead serious - there's a research lab in Europe that's making great strides where this is concerned).

(now my seriousness ends)

However we must make sure that the antimatter they create does not fall into the hands of a group claiming to be the Illuminati, and "detonating" the antimatter in Vatican City.

There's also the [potential] possibility for antimatter (I'm dead serious - there's a research lab in Europe that's making great strides where this is concerned).

oOoOoOo...

do you happen to have a link to some info?

doesn't iceland (or at least one city in iceland) run entirely on geothermal energy?

and energy from renewable sources is great.

if we got cold fusion down, we'd be set.
Yes Iceland does. But: Iceland has a very low population and it is situated on two plates and has a lot of geothermic activity. Unique in the world. Wouldn´t work to the slightest degree for any other country, though.

Yes Iceland does. But: Iceland has a very low population and it is situated on two plates and has a lot of geothermic activity. Unique in the world. Wouldn´t work to the slightest degree for any other country, though.
Well, it also supplies most of the power on Hawai'i.

We should focus on a combo of wind, solar, and natural gas. Solar panels can be woven into roof shingle threads, and be handled by a regular roofer. Wind farms are increasing in popularity, even in the US. In fact, the most opposition comes from, listen to this, Greenpeace! Anyhow, natural gas is on a course to replace oil as a fuel by 2025. It's by no means infinite, but it's a perfect bridge to whatever lies beyond.
I agree with you in one point: gas. That really has a great future. There are more and more modern gas plants beign built in Germany.

Also wind a solar energy. Though I think the government gives to much subsidies to it. And it also subsidises wind turbines in the flat land and even in areas with little wind. I think there is a lot of money being wasted on it -billions, in order to serve a green ideology.
I think there should be more competition and more free market in that field as well.
Also I wouldn´t rule out nuclear power. It is a form of energy that is secure -if handled right- and is not vulnerable to changing energy prices.
I think it is and remains an important energy source.
Probably fusion power could develop to an alternative to the current nuclear plants. But that is rather a long-term vision which may or may not be feasible to do.

I agree with you in one point: gas. That really has a great future. There are more and more modern gas plants beign built in Germany.

Also wind a solar energy. Though I think the government gives to much subsidies to it. And it also subsidises wind turbines in the flat land and even in areas with little wind. I think there is a lot of money being wasted on it -billions, in order to serve a green ideology.
I think there should be more competition and more free market in that field as well.
Also I wouldn´t rule out nuclear power. It is a form of energy that is secure -if handled right- and is not vulnerable to changing energy prices.
I think it is and remains an important energy source.
Probably fusion power could develop to an alternative to the current nuclear plants. But that is rather a long-term vision which may or may not be feasible to do.
I agree about the competition part. Currently, most of the wind farms being built in the US are built by public utility companies, but farmers love building them.
As for fission, I don't see where it has a future. As good as it is, it has a horrible reputation, and already, some countries are letting nuclear power die. Japan actively builds them still, but that's only because they have no domestic energy source. The biggest hope is the US, where there has been talks of a revitalized program. Even though Congress has funded the program, however, the first new plant won't go on line until 2015. So I remain pessimistic in this area.

oOoOoOo...

do you happen to have a link to some info?
CERN's website
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html

Well, it also supplies most of the power on Hawai'i.
Hawai´i has the same geologic formation.
It would be interesting indeed to get acces to the middle ocean hills (I´m not shure about the English, sorry). That is actually mainly in the atlantic and Pacific. And in Hawai´i and Iceland they are on earth - if you will. If we could somehow get access to that we would have an incredible energy resource.
But that is more easily said than done. We would need to get miles down into the ocean and to find places where this activity is high and to built plants over there miles down below sea-level. Technically simple not possible today. Aside of the costs. But in future? Who knows.
It somehow reminds me of Jules Verne - Jurney to the centre of earth.
There is of course enormous power below that.
It is just currently impossible to get access to it - outside of Iceland and Hawai´i. And there are other options - like fusion power. It can´t be said which options is most feisable. It is simply much to early to tell. More research needs to be done for shure.

Nuclear is interesting. I had the thrill of being in Hershey PA when Three Mile Isalnd melted down, watching thousands of people being evacuated, it was something to remember. The Utility, GPU, had people with no high school diploma running the safety equipment, in order to save on overhead.

"Oh, but they were trained", we were told. The training took all of two weeks. D'oh.

So if we do this again let's be sure we do it right. With regular independent inspections to prevent cost cutting.

maybe we can launch the waste into space.
It wasn't a "meltdown" by any stretch of the imagination. It was a safety valve lifting. HUGE difference.

It could have been much much worse... should have been worse... but as Hajekistan said, it's a testimony as to the safeguards built into the design.

Nuclear fission can be a very viable alternative to fossile fuel. Nuclear waste is a problem, but after searching I can't find any real scientific reasons to oppose Yucca Mountain.

I agree about the competition part. Currently, most of the wind farms being built in the US are built by public utility companies, but farmers love building them. .
Because they are guaranteed that the energy is bought for a certain price I assume. The same can be said here.

As for fission, I don't see where it has a future. As good as it is, it has a horrible reputation, and already, some countries are letting nuclear power die. Japan actively builds them still, but that's only because they have no domestic energy source. The biggest hope is the US, where there has been talks of a revitalized program. Even though Congress has funded the program, however, the first new plant won't go on line until 2015. So I remain pessimistic in this area.
The current German government has change the nuclear law in 2000/01. Since them the aim is to get rid of nuclear power plants till the year 2020-30. Though the opposition disagrees with it.
They mainly support alternative energies and also to some degree gas.
The SPD also wants to remain domestic coal - which is the only fossil energy Germany has resources of. The opposition favours more coal imports instead of subsidising domestic coal.
Over all, there is an energy mix of nuclear technology, coal, gas and alternative energies (water, solar, wind).
Oil is virtually not used for producing electricity. It is mainly used for heating, traffic and the industry.
So, in that sense the energy policy has already decreased the dependency on oil significantly since the 1970s. The next step would be to replace oil with gas heating and to get new cars - with gas probably. There are some buses with that energy source. But it is too expansive currently.
Oil is still cheap enough to be used for that for several decades.
None the less: it would be short-sighted not to think about possible alternatives.

Waterfalls- I'd kind of prefer to leave waterfalls that are the usable size for the public to see. They ARE kinda pretty.
They'd probably be better put to use damming rivers and creating power and floodplains to grow crops. There's a point where public need outweighs public good.

Geothermal Energy-This is something I would like to see A LOT more attention to. The Earth isn't cooling off any time soon, and if we could tap into it, we'd have virtually infinate energy.
I agree with you about geothermal, it would provide a lot of energy. The problem is that to get to the magma layer, you have to drill a few miles down, and most of our metals melt at the temperatures found in the mantle.

Nuclear- Seriously guys, it's not as bad as people make it out to be. We've had two main oops's in our nation's history of which neither caused extensive damage. Nuclear waste can be taken to Yucca mountain for the next several decades anyhow. It's a crutch for later and really productive for what you get.
The problem with nuclear fission is that there is only so much uranium, and you can't exactly power cars with it. That's why oil is so vital, not for power plants, but for automobiles.

Fusion- Sounds stupid but WE ARE SO CLOSE! In the next 30 years we can have this form of energy running. Many times more powerful than nuclear and with less waste.
We are so far from fusion isn't not even funny. The most powerful reactors in the world have yet to hit a break even point, and even then if you have to spend a million tons of hydrogen to make one joule of energy there's no real point. The reason the sun works is that it's so massive it combines the energy of countless tiny reactions. Fusion is actually much, much less power than fission, since E=MC^2 and hydrogens have less mass than uranium. But it is not wasteful, since it makes good, clean water. Another problem is that it is very difficult to get deutrium, which is a necessity for fusion.

Forum newbie here, but I have to throw in my two cents:

Geothermal: As has been said, its been put to use anywhere it will work for.

Fission: Works and, as has been said, is safe. However, as has also been said, its not a renewable resource or portable, but should last us at least long enough to find something else, and could be used to charge hydrogen fuel cells for power.

Solar Cells, Wind: I think their flaws have been pointed out.

Fusion: Yes, Deutrium is rare. Our current controlled fusion attempts may not have put out anything, but our uncontrolled attempts at fusion (thermonuclear bombs) will, I believe, work. We just need to manage to get a reaction of that efficiency that doesn't blow up in our face. The waste helium could then be put to use. Fusion produces more energy than fission because more hydrogen is converted into energy than uranium is in fission.

Underwater Ocean Currents: These haven't been mentioned. We don't have the technology to exploit these yet. Besides, they could probably only power underwater structures only.

Solar Heat: I read something in either Scientific American or Discover, I don't remember which, about a system of mirrors controlled by low-power motors for focusing light on one side of a piston cylinder. I don't remember the exact engineering of it, but basically it heated one side of the piston greatly (supposedly enough that if you touched a stick to it, the stick would catch fire), making the air inside expand, to drive the piston. This would, once perfected, be a more efficient, cheaper, less harmful version of solar power.

Solar arrays in space: These could also, theoretically work. Set up a huge number of solar panels, aim them at the sun, and microwave-beam power back down to earth. Granted, if the beam misses, we could have some problems, but if we get cheap superconduction, we could put these dishes out in the middle of the desert where a miss wouldn't be as dangerous as if we had them in a city.

I wonder why I remind myself of the options for an issue.

i assume you mean fusion...what we do already is fission.
that said, I think neculear power, fusion or currently avilable fission is a great way to go, stop giving into the anti nuke ppl, and let them go, its clean, its cheap, its safe (it is safe, consider how many die from polution and such from fossile fuel, and then compare that to neculear deaths)


Yes that is what I meant, I just got the names confused.

What about some kind of cheap biomass?

I don't believe any of the three mentioned (solar, wind, hydroelectric) could completely replace fossil fuels at the current time. They may be able to be incorporated in partial terms to reduce the use of exhaustible resources, but in the end it might actually be more cost and effort than what it would be worth.

I think nuclear might be the future, hesitant as I am to have it see widespread use. Nonetheless, it would be hard to argue we don't know more than we did then. We also have more advanced technology, and that isn't slowing down. There will always be risks, but perhaps someday soon we can reduce those to an acceptable level.

Though that still leaves the problem of nuclear waste... bleh.

I lika the fusion. Due to its fuel sources, a fusion power plant will never be able to explode. The most dangerous material used is tritium, which has a half-life of 12.5 years (practically nothing). The fuel mixture is deuterium/tritium. Deuterium is heavy water - as long as oceans exist we'll have a natural supply of the stuff. Tritium is man-made from lithium. Lithium's significantly cheaper than Uranium 235.

When I was working on the program at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (I've just gotta gloat once), the estimate was 50 years to fusion power. The fusion exists. It just needs to be ten times as efficient and self-sustaining. Yeah. Easier said than done.



Oh yeah, as opposed to fission, fusion power uses lasers. Big ones. And therefore it's cooler.

I have not read all of this thread so don’t know if it has been mentioned but…..
Solar, wind and wave energy collection is not without environmental impact. Currently such systems are relatively inefficient but they still impact. Place collectors in the desert and absorb a significant amount of energy that would normally be part of the weather system and to a small degree you start to affect the weather, the same goes for wind and waves. We can accept that at present the effects are small, however as we don’t fully appreciate the interdependencies various aspects of the weather, we cannot be sure what impact we are having.
It is probably fair to say less so than burning shed loads of fossil fuels, but we must remember there is an impact. After all we don’t have the same amount of biomass we once had to act as a shock absorber.
So I’m all for ‘alternative’ energies but lets just keep a watchful eye on the impact they too have on the local and world environment.

sooner or later, no mater how many wild habitats we destroy
to extract the last lump or drop, no matter how many wars
we fight over who gets to control and profit from its distribution, the last reserves of oil and coal WILL run out

this is not an idiological sentiment but a physical reality.

nuclear for a variety of reasons both tecnical and especialy political, both liberal AND conservative,
will never meet the majority share of the energy needs
of current of forseeable population levels.

not at current levels of consumption.
not at drasticly reduced levels.

it is a viable 'filler' however and will not likely be abondond entierly any time soon.

but the vast majority of energy demand CAN, and will sooner or later HAVE TO be filled by what today are being called
'alternative' sources of energy.

alternative to precisely what we might ask.

alternative to the concentration of wealth and controll?
possibly. but alternative to unsustainable consumption
of resources nature can only renew at rates orders of magnitude lower then those at which they are currently
being consumed.

so i don't see there as being a choice of tecnological society not eventualy turning to an intigrated network
of these so called 'alternatives'

unsustainable means simply and litteraly that you can't go on doing it because if you do it ain't always gonna be there

nuclear is not entirely nonpoluting. there are still spent fuel rods to dispose of.

nor for that matter is bio-mass in as much as no combustion is totaly non-poluting.

wind and solar are of course not really 'free'.
the wind and the sun themselves might be, but the
tecnologies to harness them are not.

be that as it may, looked at from either a cost bennifit perspective or even in a return on investment context,
wind, solar, and modest scale hydro are nearly as attractive as they are sustainable.

and looked at from an environmental perspective there is of course no contest.

yes windmills do kill a small percentage of birds, and photovoltic and other solar tecnologies do consume energy
to produce their components, and of course the dams required to produce energy from falling water flood valleys
that are also attractive and interesting places and homes
of wildlife as are forrests and mountains.

but these are all tradeoffs that can be balanced intelligently. and in total at their worst, signifigantly
less harmful then current 'mainstream' practice.

but why wait for having to before diminishing and ultimately eliminating dependence of combustion and the
fuels to feed it as our primary means to generate energy?

we know for instance that there are more real costs then just the loss of habitat at their sources as well as those
of dependence on international trade. there are also local and regeonal atmospheric and climitalogical effects whose consiquences while not totaly maped in future detail can be objectively observed by anyone with ordenary optical vision.

nor does it take a rocket scientist to predict at least some of the consiquences of a few inches rise in sea level, however undramatic that may sound, or the observable retreat of glaciation that is leading to it.

chainges in seasonal weather paterens have in some cases now been positively linked to this over all effect genericly refered to by the sometimes confusing term of global warming.

and do i need to go into detail as to what is to be gained in the way of experiencial qualities in and of our own individual lives, or what is being put at risk by not doing so?

have you ever breathed clean pine scented mountain air?
or drank from a clear clean cold running mountain stream?

such an experience was not uncommon no more then a few decades ago. when the oil and coal are gone it might
well be again. but again do we really need to wait for the day when the power goes off, our refrigerators stop running, the trucks and trains stop bringing the neccessities of life to the then stranded cities, or the likely aftermath of such an event when the power does not come back on in an hour or a week or a month or a year?

have you ever felt hunger?
is this how human population levels are to be brought back into balance with the cycles of renewal upon which all life on our planet including our own is utterly dependent?

policies create incentives.
personal priorities collectively create them as well
and likewise the 'markets' for the perspectives of those who'se possitions and responsibilities are to set policy.

wind, solar and micro- to midi hydro are not an if but a when, and the further back that when is pushed, whatever may be temporarily gained by doing so, is at the expense of what we must all experience and hope to live through some way or another as a resault.

=^^=
.../\...

Would any government like having income from taxes on petrol,gas etc cut to almost zero? The fact is that global energy companies have the power in government to block research and therefore we are stuck with 'dirty' energy resources, which company would be prepared to see profits fall from bilions a year to almost none existant levels, governments would lose billions in tax revenue, the fat cats don't pursue the goals of clean energy as much as they should, where would they get their hefty salaries, how would government replace the lost revenue? It's a sad fact but money is king and shall remain so, what would happen to the many many hundreds of thousands of people employed in the existing energy companies, who is going to have to pay for social security, housing etc for these people who int the end will be out of work? I'm all for clean energy 100% but think that we are many many years away from having cheap, clean renewable energy resources available to all. :headbang:

Quantum Energy sources. They are by far more efficient, with an enormous half-life, and there's no risk of meltdown. For example, the worlds smallest Quantum Click has now been developed, in the United States, believe. It is a model of Big Ben in London, and the total size is about half the size of a box of Tic Tac's. The movement is also based on similar technology. Here's the crunch though, the power source is the size of a grain of rice (uncooked), will last for about 5,000 years, and niether lose or gain no more than 1 second every three-hundred years. How does it work? It uses the vibration of atoms and sub-atomic particles on a Quantum Level to provide kinetic and potential energy.

That's efficient. It's also possible to be mass produced for very little expenditure when the technology and science are refined. Think about it, a commercial passenger air-craft with a power cell the size of an apple, or a battle ship with a power cell of about the same size and still the same amount of bite. Fanstastic.

A feel that for the moment, recycling is the best way to go. We currently waste a huge amount of eat when using appliances (fridges/computers/etc..).
Even such mundane things as proper insulation in a house seem to be lacking in alot of places i've been.
I'm not sure whether it was comercialised, but there was a kitchen unit that combined fridge/oven/other together so that there was as little energy wastage as possible. heat generate from one appliance went to powering another appliance.

I am for alternative power, but until it is truly cost efective, you should look to becoming more efficient with our energy usage.

I lika the fusion. Due to its fuel sources, a fusion power plant will never be able to explode. The most dangerous material used is tritium, which has a half-life of 12.5 years (practically nothing). The fuel mixture is deuterium/tritium. Deuterium is heavy water - as long as oceans exist we'll have a natural supply of the stuff. Tritium is man-made from lithium. Lithium's significantly cheaper than Uranium 235.

When I was working on the program at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (I've just gotta gloat once), the estimate was 50 years to fusion power. The fusion exists. It just needs to be ten times as efficient and self-sustaining. Yeah. Easier said than done.



Oh yeah, as opposed to fission, fusion power uses lasers. Big ones. And therefore it's cooler.
tritium is made in light water reactors

A feel that for the moment, recycling is the best way to go. We currently waste a huge amount of eat when using appliances (fridges/computers/etc..).
Even such mundane things as proper insulation in a house seem to be lacking in alot of places i've been.
I'm not sure whether it was comercialised, but there was a kitchen unit that combined fridge/oven/other together so that there was as little energy wastage as possible. heat generate from one appliance went to powering another appliance.

I am for alternative power, but until it is truly cost efective, you should look to becoming more efficient with our energy usage.
recycling creats more polution then it stops

I'd also vote for thermonuclear fusion - it's inherantly safe, the fuels required are plentiful and it's waste byproducts have half lives of minutes rather than centuries.

More importantly, the Joint European Torus at Culham, UK has already proven the technology works - if interested have a look here (http://www.jet.efda.org/index.html)

In my view, alternative energy projects just won't be able to provide the amount of energy that we are used to using.

I'd also vote for thermonuclear fusion - it's inherantly safe, the fuels required are plentiful and it's waste byproducts have half lives of minutes rather than centuries.

More importantly, the Joint European Torus at Culham, UK has already proven the technology works - if interested have a look here (http://www.jet.efda.org/index.html)

In my view, alternative energy projects just won't be able to provide the amount of energy that we are used to using.


The problem with the big JET plant is that it is too inefficient to be able to produce more energy out than put in due to the huge ammounts of power required to produce the magnetic fields.

Thats why I put a link to the Spherical tokamak pages due to its compact size it uses 10times less power in the fields than the big JET plant, and the START project(which was hand built out of canabalised and borrowed parts) managed to achieve world record Beta values (the beta value is the efficiency) about 3 times that produced in the big tokamak.

Also they are building the next generation of Spherical ones at culham and it is almost ready to be switched on here is a link to the pages for MAST (http://fusion.org.uk/mast/index.html) if your interested.

Here in Australia, there's some good research being done in geothermal power. We won't need the vulcanism of Iceland to get our geothermal plants going. We just need good old desert granite, something Australia has a lot of.
Nuclear fission is interesting, but there are all the problems associated with lobbyists, waste, and so on. We Aussies use our nuclear plant purely for producing radioisotopes that are very useful, such as in medicine.
I'd like to see nuclear fusion appear, but that will be a little while.
Wind and solar would be good for small purposes, such as powering farms and hot water systems. I don't think that they'll be all that major, but they will help out.
For a funny idea, how about hot dry asphalt power? In summer, the roads get hot, so maybe if one could use that to help supply power...

Henrice - Yep, JET is limited in what it can achieve, though to be fair it was only built as an experimental tokomak; JET are, I beleive, looking to move on now with a much larger scale plant to continue the work started at Culham.

Cheers for the link to the MAST page by the way, interesting reading :)

Easiest and cheapest way is just to use what we do have more efficiently. Ultimately renewables are best of course, but there are cost and time issues, and here in the UK, rampant nimbyism (nimby = Not In My Back Yard) - people like the idea of wind farms, but don't want one next door for some reason (me, I think they look nice).
But what would be better would be for people to start trading in gas-guzzling SUVs and Hummers for something that doesn't require the entire output of Saudi Arabia to run (I hate to mention the Middle East in an environmental thread, but you know you wouldn't give a damn about what goes on over there if it wasn't that you get half your energy from them).

Nuclear is the only viable and sustainable power source open to the world at present. Forget the stigma that comes with it and the legacy of nuclear waste, there are ways of disposing of it safely. And if you think nuclear fuel is unsafe and could cause global catastrophe, how do you think pouring uncountable tonnes of hydrocarbons from coal-burning power stations into the atmosphere has helped the planet?

The main problem with nuclear power is not that it is expensive and difficult to run, or creates a legacy that will not resolve itself for billions of years (and we are talking billions), it's convincing the public that it is safe.

The technology is there to mass-produce safe nuclear power stations, and the knowhow to use the technology is there. Until other, renewable sources can be tapped world-wide, we are fast running out of options.

Henrice - Yep, JET is limited in what it can achieve, though to be fair it was only built as an experimental tokomak; JET are, I beleive, looking to move on now with a much larger scale plant to continue the work started at Culham.

Cheers for the link to the MAST page by the way, interesting reading :)

Yeah I understand that JET was just an experimental tokamak and it has been very sucessful in providing valuable information on the physics of plasmas and how to control them more effectively, hey START probably couldnt have even been built without the information provided by JET.

Its just that I think the standard Tokamak in itself is too inefficient and that they should concentrate on spherical ones, but hey I could be proved wrong by the JET Mk2 ;)

no probs on the link, I follow big physics quite intensely :)

I just had to fix that awful spelling error in the title...

recycling creats more polution then it stops
Recycling involves less direct pollution, but it sucks alot more energy. I forget the numbers, but I think it takes somewhere in the range of 50-100 times as much energy to make a recycled paper cup as a non-recycled styrofoam one. As a result, recycled products increase the energy burden, which results in more fuels being burned, and then more crap gets put up into the air. And while one paper cup isn't that much of a difference, think of the thousands used each day . . .

Recycling involves less direct pollution, but it sucks alot more energy. I forget the numbers, but I think it takes somewhere in the range of 50-100 times as much energy to make a recycled paper cup as a non-recycled styrofoam one. As a result, recycled products increase the energy burden, which results in more fuels being burned, and then more crap gets put up into the air. And while one paper cup isn't that much of a difference, think of the thousands used each day . . .
By saying that - i`m not shure about the numbers as well - you assume that the energy comes from fossil fuels. But there is also nuclear power or gas (which is a fossil fuel of course, but with very little polution involved, especially in modern gas power plants).
So, whether it is good or bad depends on the way it is handled.