works fine enough on my greenhouse, nice and tropical there !

 

you're right. Fossil fuels are so much better.

 

i agree, the faster we use them up the less polution in the long run

 

Both I guess? Fusion will be a long way away.
Fuel cells are inefficient now though, as are most alt. energy sources.
I think hydrogen fuel cells and solar panels will be the best bet for rapid development.

 

Drill, baby, drill!

 

you are just too suggestive at times:excited::excited:

 

Yeah, I say the darndest things in the heat of passion...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_market#Available_supply

Physicists say there's nearly an inexhaustible supply of Uranium...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants

Nuclear power stacks up economically...
"The lifetime cost of new generating capacity in the United States was estimated in 2006 by the U.S. government: wind cost was estimated at $55.80 per MWh, coal (cheap in the U.S.) at $53.10, natural gas at $52.50 and nuclear at $59.30."

Short term is relative...reactors have expected lives of 40-60 years and take anywhere from 5-10 years to build. Times and design costs could be cut if a "cookie cutter" model was developed and mass produced. Fission is the 120+ year "stop gap" while fusion is the actual goods.

ITER claims to have a commercial scale "Demo" fusion reactor in the next 50 or so years. So at most two sets of fission plants would need to be laid down. One set now, and another set if, and this is most likely, ITER falls behind schedule. Like I said previously JET is 70% (Q = .7) of the way to break even, and they're not even using the most easily burned fuels. Supposedly JET could goto break-even or more with a final D+T fuel run.

I love hydroelectric because its so damned clean and cheap. Once the dam is up it just works and works and works...and 70 years later works!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Coulee_Dam
^^^ Installed generating capacity: 6809 MW [18]

 

Putting energy into the form of hydrogen fuel cells doesn't have a net gain. The whole point of a a fuel cell is to act like a battery, but with out the set backs of charge times. Breaking water into it's component elements takes energy. That's why recombining hydrogen and oxygen releases energy, and viola! you have power. The benefits of fuel cells are the lack of charge time, you just fill up the car's "gas" tank with hydrogen and off you go, and the efficiency as compared to a battery (batteries dissipate energy in the form of heat which is wasteful).

"A fuel cell is an electrochemical conversion device. It produces electricity from fuel (on the anode side) and an oxidant (on the cathode side), which react in the presence of an electrolyte. The reactants flow into the cell, and the reaction products flow out of it, while the electrolyte remains within it. Fuel cells can operate virtually continuously as long as the necessary flows are maintained.
Fuel cells are different from electrochemical cell batteries in that they consume reactant, which must be replenished, whereas batteries store electrical energy chemically in a closed system. Additionally, while the electrodes within a battery react and change as a battery is charged or discharged, a fuel cell's electrodes are catalytic and relatively stable.
Many combinations of fuel and oxidant are possible. A hydrogen cell uses hydrogen as fuel and oxygen (usually from air) as oxidant. Other fuels include hydrocarbons and alcohols. Other oxidants include chlorine and chlorine dioxide.[1]"


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell


I'm not trying to say I'm against fuel cells, but they don't MAKE energy, they just store and consume it efficiently. I think hydrogen fuel cell cars would be great if the hydrogen was made at the fill up station, because the electricity over the power grid flows at about 98% efficiency, and that means that you don't have to spend and money hauling trucks full of hydrogen.

 

You didn't address my questions at all. But let me address yours. First, Uranium is not "inexaustible"...that idea is absurd on it's face. As for the economics of nuclear power, did you factor in the fact that we currently have no way of disposing of long-term nuclear waste? That the U.S. is still assuming liability for any nuclear accidents that occur, and that cost is not included in your calculations?

Second, you say that ITER will have a "demo" fusion reactor built in 50 years. If they know how to do it, why will it take 50 years? How many design problems have to be overcome in that time frame in order for them to be successful. How many research breakthroughs have to occur, breakthroughs that cannot be relied upon?

And finally...hydro. There's ample evidence that hydroelectric dams do not have unlimited life spans. Not only do they silt up, but they cause huge environmental impacts that only now are beginning to be understood. It's likely that Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, for example, will have to be dismantled in our lifetimes.

And what percentage of U.S. electric power is currently derived from hydro? What additional potential is there, and where?

If you applied the same skepticism toward your own solutions as you do toward solar, we might be having a rational discussion.

 

Assuming that we don't blow up the moon, we have the possibility of tidal power. There are many possibilities there. We are also wasting the potential of tapping the gas from the huge amounts of sewage and manure that we produce. If we would stop thinking big, and start looking for local solutions I think we would be way ahead of the game.
As a last resort we could always bottle our farts!:rose::rose::excited:

 

Ignoring the last point, I agree that the best solutions are probably local, small scale, distributed technologies, along with conservation/improved efficiency. Large scale, power-grid applications are vulnerable, not only to terrorism, but to the kinds of dislocations brought about by climate change. In California, we've built a colossal infrastructure to deliver water to the southern part of the state, and we're planning more, but there still won't be enough if the Sierra snowpack is reduced, or the Colorado River watershed doesn't contain enough water to go around.

 

Marco, something is very fishy with your calculation.

I did some calculations for Germany, which is obviously not the best place for solar energy. Its latitude is roughly that of Canada.

Germany used 13 842 Petajoule in 2007 (3845 000 000 kWh)
An area of 10 m^2 yields 750 kWh per year, if you solar cell has 8% efficiency
Germany has 35 710 407 000 of slices with 10 m^2

That makes ~26.78 * 10^15 Wh if you covered the whole country.

If you divide the yearly consumption by this number, you get something ~0.14.

So you need 14% of Germany's area to cover all its energy needs. Note that energy consumption number includes everything; electricity, heating, mobility...

Note that 8% efficiency of a solar cell is very conservative.
Note that 750 kWh yield per year is the lower estimate for middle Europe.

Closer to the equator, the numbers get much better.

Solar power systems installed in the areas defined by the dark disks could provide a little more than the world's current total primary energy demand (assuming a conversion efficiency of 8 %). That is, all energy currently consumed, including heat, electricity, fossil fuels, etc., would be produced in the form of electricity by solar cells. The colors in the map show the local solar irradiance averaged over three years from 1991 to 1993 (24 hours a day), taking into account the cloud coverage available from weather satellites.​

(Source)

 

very interesting, it is important to realise that solar energy is finite but this wikipedia page on solar energy has some different figures to your post.
(sorry - i don't have the post count to include the link)

I have no way of knowing which figures are more accurate (and i am sure you have done more research than i have) but thank you for making my think about something I had never questioned before.

 

We could always start a market for human-powered energy. Instead of going to gyms, if one could have a generator powered by say the rotation of a bicycle or a treadmill sort of energy, it would be a motivator and bit of a money saver?

Jokes aside, no energy source that we have is completely efficient. I'm all for nuclear power, but I think that anything-- wind, solar, hydro power-- can all be added together to lessen the use of current fossil fuels.

I'm certainly no scientist, so until someone figures out a way to harness Einstein's theories along with a renewable energy source I'll try to make use of what we have now.

 

No- what you do is you make the thing that isolates the hydrogen inside of the car so that you run the car on water (indirectly). The biproduct is also water (granted, less than what was originally put in, but ya know), so it becomes an interesting cycle.

 

how do plan to get the energy down to earth where we live?

 

in kansas, we have started building giant wind generators as an alternative to coal.

 

Large scale power grids have enough redundancy built in to prevent large scale blackouts. Power engineers design them properly so that that people on the XNXX forum don't have to worry...