Nuclear Power

It's true that the solar panels being developed now are much more efficient, but aren't really at a point to be dispensing mass amounts of power. They also require a large amount of space. The key to using them is to combine their usage on small projects with other energy efficient components. I was working on a project where the goal wast to create an HVAC system for a person's home that would require no energy to run, and solar panels helped achieve the goal. I don't know how the project made off, I left early.

I am dubious about hte effects of wave energy due to the impacts it may have on changing ocean currents - granted it's never immediate, but often creates a drastic change in the ocean, rivers, etc over a long period of time.

 

Nuclear energy doesn't bother me. I grew up just a few miles from Oak Ridge, TN where they have a huge amount of nuclear research not to mention the facilities that manufactured U238 for the two WW2 era bombs used in Japan. Personally, I think nuclear energy is a very good viable option at this point for a number of reasons: A, it is highly efficient and requires no fossil fuels. Secondly, electric cars are going to become a reality ( aka: the Chevy Volt, and upcoming Tesla Model S) thus the demands on the existing grid will be increased in the future, and building new fossil fuel plants to power electric cars makes zero sense to me.

But... It is not totally out of the question that an accident similar to Chernobyl is an impossibility. Anything man-made can break or malfunction. Just look at the Shuttle, which is picked over for months and months before every single launch. Two have blown up so far. Secondly, Cherynobyl was in the middle of nowhere. Yet it caused an enormous amount of damage and deaths. Try and think of an area desolate enough in the US that a nuclear reactor could be built. More than likely it would be within proximity of a metro area.

Lastly, there are new ways of making power being developed all the time. Solar is coming a really long way. Even 5 years ago, I had a solar panel I found in the trash at work. The thing could power a ceiling fan in my room. They've gotten even better now and out here in Cali, quite a few homes actually power themselves with solar power.

So there are more ways than one to make electricity. Am I concerned about Nuclear power? Not really. I'm more concerned about the fact that more and more third world countries have the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons, and that to me is a bigger threat than anything. But if the US is going to make more power plants they need to do like the French have done and standardize their plants to have a similar design, which in turn makes them more reliable and cheaper to run- just like mass manufacturing cars.

 

fission or Fusion?

Your young at 19 you can't possilby have it all figured out. But what the heck I'll bite....

Nuclear is very cheap right now, but storing and shipping the waste material is totally against the ECO/Green movement building in this country. Solar energy, or the cellulose Ethonal could be the next big thing, but hydrogen that can be cracked at reasonable cost from water is where the research monies should be going.

 

LMAO ..... funny

 

Only problem with hydrogen is that you have to spend an equal amount of energy to produce it, which means it is inefficient. Ethanol would be promising if it was more from crops like switch grass and not corn. My only issue with cellulose based fuel is that no matter what, it requires a gigantic amount of land, as as soon as it became a big fuel source, farmland would likely experience a property bubble, which is exactly what happened during the corn ethanol craze. That in turn raises the cost of the resulting fuel.

 

I'm not saying other forms of power don't have any merit or role in making us less dependant on fosil fuels. But there is no other viable solution. Technology has come a long since events like chenobyl, and the US has always has MUCH stricter saftey regulations than russia ever had. And for long term wast disposal? Would you rather have the average person's electricity consumption in a LIFETIME be contained in 2 pounds (sixe of a coke can) be contained in solid waste, or have that produce 68.5 TONS of waste released into the atmosphere. Not to mention that since we don't recycle the fuel, from the waste we have now, it has 30 more years worth of uranium supply if we build 1000 new plants.

 

Woot! It's pretty cool stuff, as long as they maintain the plants
then life will be good.

 

There's always other solutions, just need to think them up

I know there was some research being done with algae that sounded very promising. Here's an article, for example.

 

I wish for one, we would harvest the methane from dumps more. Methane is the most hazardous greenhouse gas and also a decent energy source.


I like what my professor said. He was saying that every new form of energy that is created takes about 50 years to get fully functional and stable. That would be an issue with new energy methods. Nuclear is already there...and if we can produce FUSION, our energy problems would be virtually gone. So research away on new ones, but capitalize on the resources we have

 

Depleted Uranium or "spent fuel" has been used in the munitions of conventional warfare by the US since 1991 due to its unique properties of hardness and density (1.7 times that of lead). The only other country to do so has been Israel, who first used it in battle in 1973.

Since '91, the US has dispersed well over 400 tons of DU incorporated into munitions over the battlefields of the middle east and Eurasia. Radiation levels, cancers, and birth defects are up in some areas related to the first gulf war (in some cases) are in excess of 1000%.

The incendiary and aerosolizing nature of the DU munitions when put into use make the resulting radioactive contamination impossible to contain or clean up, with a half/life of 4,500,000,000 years to dissipate naturally.

FWIW...

 

How about using fusion to make hydorogen...now give me the cookie

 

You and isoclee need to hold your horses, i mention fusion a few posts ago! And did you mean to say "to make hydrogen"? In fusion you collide two hydrogens to make helium.

 

FYI, the longer the half life, the less radioactive the substance. Granite is more radioactive than uranium metal. 4.5 billion year half life means it is extremely stable. It is blantantly false that there is no way to contain radioactive contamination. When conventional uranium mines are closed, the only thing you need to do to restore it to naturally safe levels is bury it with different kinds of soil and it provides more than enough shielding of the mine tailings

 

I don't think there is a scientific break-even fusion reactor yet (power out = power in), let alone an economic break-even.

Hydrogen has other problems besides making it. It has to be stored and moved around.

 

large hadron collider

 

I was reading about GM's HydroGEN vehicle program. Apparently the hydrogen has to be stored at 10,000 PSI. Holy crap! If you got into a bad enough accident, a ruptured tank @ 10,000 PSI would be dangerous.

I was watching modern marvels the other night. There is a french company that has developed a couple of small 4 door passenger cars that will run 150 miles on compressed air. They were pretty crazy looking, but they actually worked! Ugly as sin, but how cool would it be just to fill up with air and go?

 

Psshh, I run around the woods with a 4,500 PSI tank tucked under an arm. It's called paintball.

If you can make that happen I'll help get the patent money and we can split the award money. Last time I heard, Thermodynamic law was tough to beat

 

nuclear power isnt soo bad =D i work on them... well for the navy that is... bleh...