Alternative Energy

[Reaper]

So what are your thoughts on alt. energy? In your opinion what source of energy would be the best for the world?
I say nuclear power. Cold fusion, or just fusion if possible would be even better.

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[Chyse]

i do believe that cold fusion hasn't been tested successfully more than once.

and umm...idk....nuclear power is too dangerous imo.

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[Red Squirrel]

nuclear power has its pros and cons. Pros, its clean while operating - no toxic emissions (at least I think so). It is probably the most efficient.

Cons, if it blows up, you can say goodbye to most of the continent. And it produces radio active waste, which end up in the oceans then we wonder what happened to 524 species that used to exist.

Hydro is probably the best way, as theres no byproduct output whatsoever to create pollution, but you need a source of fast moving water to take advantage of it.

I could see wind and solar being used more, though you need huge batteries to store the energy during times where they arnt producing. But think a well equipped setup like this coulod produce a lot, without any pollution output.

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[manadren]

Solar, Wind, and hydro are all great alternative sources of power, it's just a matter of what kind of investment to make it effective (physical space, R&D, and money spent on the generators themselves). I think in the end, if we really want to put forth the money into R&D, those technologies can improve to the point were they can really start replacing nuclear power, coal, and other risker forms of power.

Personally I think the real key is having a wider distribution of power sources. Instead of just having solar farms in nevada, start building solar panels on roofs everywhere, and let the owners of the buildings feed what they don't use back into the grid. But I'm not just talkign about solar. Think lots of little power plants instead of a few big ones.

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[Stasi]

i do believe that cold fusion hasn't been tested successfully more than once.

and umm...idk....nuclear power is too dangerous imo.

Cold fusion is still theoretical and has never been tested successfully. "Hot fusion" has, in the form of hydrogen bombs that use atomic explosions to start the fusion reaction.

Red said:

Hydro is probably the best way, as theres no byproduct output whatsoever to create pollution, but you need a source of fast moving water to take advantage of it.

It's more complicated than that. The ecological cost of hydroelectric power is more about affecting creatures' habitat than outputting some form of pollution. Nevermind the fact that you're limited to certain ideal locations, and seasonal/circumstantial available water throughput.

Cons, if it blows up, you can say goodbye to most of the continent. And it produces radio active waste, which end up in the oceans then we wonder what happened to 524 species that used to exist.

Not really, but kinda sorta. Waste management could stand to improve. And how many nuclear power accidents that contaminated a sizeable radius can you name? Chernobyl? That's one. Three-mile Island was no Chernobyl.... Nuclear power is used quite a bit in the world with relatively low risk due to redundant checks and safety measures. Of course, terrorism is a threat and could "override" such operational safety features.

I could see wind and solar being used more, though you need huge batteries to store the energy during times where they arnt producing. But think a well equipped setup like this coulod produce a lot, without any pollution output.

The proliferation of such alternative energy sources, especially wind farms, could affect animals' quality of habitat. And solar panels, and the storage cells to contain excess energy have a manufacturing process whose ecological effects I'm unsure of. Anyone who knows about the debate as to whether or not the Prius is more ecologically sound than a Hummer understands that active end-product pollution is not the whole story in the big picture.




I think nuclear is the way to go, on the whole. Strict regulation and security, in combination with some form of pollution "credits" should be cost-effective. Newer clean-coal power plants are also good options.

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[Reaper]

i do believe that cold fusion hasn't been tested successfully more than once.

and umm...idk....nuclear power is too dangerous imo.

Actually there's a lab in Germany that can create a fusion reaction but the problem is the plasma cools down too fast. They can only get about 1/5 of all the potential energy from it. If cold fusion was easy to achieve, think of how amazing that would be. . .so much energy, and so much more efficient than fission.

Or at least that's what the internets and TV tells me. I used to know a physicist though. . .he moved to a different country.

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[manadren]

Yeah, I think we can throw cold fusion into the "Wow, that would be great, if someone could actually get it to work" category. No 'successful' attempts have held to to any kind of scrutiny so far.

Stasi does make a good point though. Even the 'environmentally friendly' alternatives do have an environmental impact. But the question is, how much vs. what we are already using. Still I say stick some solar panels on your roof, and a wind turbine on top of that sky scraper. Feed what you don't use back into the grid and get the power companies to take that off your bill. If we could make it cost effective for businesses to generate their own power in an eco friendly way (in an area already having an impact on the environment - their own buildings), that would probably be the best solution for everyone. These types of power would end up having too much on an impact if currently used for widespread mass power generation. So give people an incentive to spread the load around.

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[Red Squirrel]

True never totally considered the habitant impacts on hydro and wind. I'm sure birds do get hit by the blades of the wind generator, and fish might get killed in the hydro turbines. I would hope they at least put the right things in place to help prevent the impact as much as possible, like grid up the turbines and add a small conduit big enough for fish to go through and bypass the turbine but not big enough to loose too much water.

And yeah having everyone contribute would be great.

Unfortunatly this is complicated with AC power as unlike DC you can't just branch on another power source in parallel. With AC it has to be 100% synced or you'd get a short. But I'm sure with some kind of system this could be achieved, like a sine wave monitor that syncs the wave form of the inveter, or something.

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[Stasi]

i do believe that cold fusion hasn't been tested successfully more than once.

and umm...idk....nuclear power is too dangerous imo.

Actually there's a lab in Germany that can create a fusion reaction but the problem is the plasma cools down too fast. They can only get about 1/5 of all the potential energy from it. If cold fusion was easy to achieve, think of how amazing that would be. . .so much energy, and so much more efficient than fission.

Or at least that's what the internets and TV tells me. I used to know a physicist though. . .he moved to a different country.

I haven't found anything to suggest that cold fusion has ever been tested successfully. Look here:

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-1/p31a.html

http://www.boston.com/news/science/article..._a_cold_theory/

http://partners.nytimes.com/library/nation...old-fusion.html


Teams from MIT, Caltech, Berkeley, BYU, Yale, University of Rochester, CERN, and others attempted to duplicate the results of the supposed successful test in 1989 by a couple of researches at University of Utah, and all failed. I haven't found any experiments since then that were successfully duplicated by other teams. In science, duplication of results is absolutely critical to something being accepted by the wider scientific community, and humany as a whole.

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[Reaper]

I never said it had been.

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[Stasi]

Actually there's a lab in Germany that can create a fusion reaction but the problem is the plasma cools down too fast.  They can only get about 1/5 of all the potential energy from it. If cold fusion was easy to achieve, think of how amazing that would be. . .so much energy, and so much more efficient than fission.

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[Reaper]

Read it like this:

"Actually there's a lab in Germany that can create a fusion reaction but the problem is the plasma cools down too fast. They can only get about 1/5 of all the potential energy from it.


If cold fusion was easy to achieve, think of how amazing that would be. . .so much energy, and so much more efficient than fission."

"Fusion" in the first half is not the "cold fusion" from the last.

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[robonightmare]

there is a device, being planned, that could use the gulf stream to turn turbines. also, tides are being used for energy. pretty new hydroelectrics there.

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[Red Squirrel]

When I was young I thought of a way to get unlimited power, You have a solar panel powering a light bulb along with other stuff, the light bulb would keep the solar panel going. I did not know about the laws of perpetual energy then.

I have this thing in mind that in theory should work and is not 100% perpetual, but I don't have the time and resources to build it, and its also too good to be true and probably would not work.

If only it was that easy.

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[Stasi]

Read it like this:

"Actually there's a lab in Germany that can create a fusion reaction but the problem is the plasma cools down too fast.  They can only get about 1/5 of all the potential energy from it.


If cold fusion was easy to achieve, think of how amazing that would be. . .so much energy, and so much more efficient than fission."

"Fusion" in the first half is not the "cold fusion" from the last.

I see. Sorry for the misread on my part.

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[Stasi]

When I was young I thought of a way to get unlimited power, You have a solar panel powering a light bulb along with other stuff, the light bulb would keep the solar panel going.  I did not know about the laws of perpetual energy then.

I have this thing in mind that in theory should work and is not 100% perpetual, but I don't have the time and resources to build it, and its also too good to be true and probably would not work.

If only it was that easy.

Yeah, it wouldn't work because there's too much "resistance" in the whole process. In other words, the transfer of energy from the panel to the bulb and then back to the panel is incomplete. You understand, right, that even the most efficient power plants/sources (i.e. nuclear) can't even harness half of the potential energy from its respective reaction (fission, fossil fuel combustion, mechanical from wind farms) and distribute to the "grid".

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[Chyse]

i think we should harness the power of Nitrogen. Our air is like 97% nitrogen. That's a crap ton of gas.


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[robonightmare]

we could launch a satellite into space and then have the energy generated in space, from the sun, which is intense enough, up there, to boil water, thus have it turn a generator, and use microwave beams to beam the energy down to earth.
FOOLPROOF!!!!

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[Red Squirrel]

When I was young I thought of a way to get unlimited power, You have a solar panel powering a light bulb along with other stuff, the light bulb would keep the solar panel going.  I did not know about the laws of perpetual energy then.

I have this thing in mind that in theory should work and is not 100% perpetual, but I don't have the time and resources to build it, and its also too good to be true and probably would not work.

If only it was that easy.

Yeah, it wouldn't work because there's too much "resistance" in the whole process. In other words, the transfer of energy from the panel to the bulb and then back to the panel is incomplete. You understand, right, that even the most efficient power plants/sources (i.e. nuclear) can't even harness half of the potential energy from its respective reaction (fission, fossil fuel combustion, mechanical from wind farms) and distribute to the "grid".

Yeah and even if it was 100% efficient, as soon as you put a load on it, then the light bulb would dim.

Thats another issue with perpetual devices, if someone would in fact have one that works, thats nice and all, but can it keep working if theres a big load on it? One perpetual device I've seen that works (VERY slow and impractical) would completely grind to a halt if you put even a low load on it. It was basically a cross with a tank at each end and a liquid inside, the liquid would evaporate and go to the top most tank, then the weight would make it "spin" but it did maybe one turn in 24 hours. Hook that up to a simple conveyor belt and it wont move at all.


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[robonightmare]

that's actually not perpetual motion, considering the sun is a source of energy. lol I owned on that device.

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[Red Squirrel]

Yeah good point. Thats one thing we forget though is some of these "free energy" devices are simply working on a source of energy thats always present. The sun is a great place to start. Wind is semi always present.

A solar panel array with batteries could pretty much give unlimited electricity for free if properly setup. As long as the batteries can run fully through the night, then the sun comes the next day and charges them, and cycle continues.

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[robonightmare]

there are a lot of problems with solar power. one, they depend on the sun being out that day, and as everyone knows, the sun can stay gone due to clouds for several days on end. so, there's one. there is also the low power generated. if only we could use the UV rays. those always get through.

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[Red Squirrel]

Even with clouds there is still light. Though the issue is today's solar panels arn't that efficient since they cost too much to make and are less demanded. I remember I used to have s knex solar panel and I had to shove it RIGHT on the light bulb to even get enough light to get a couple volts.

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[robonightmare]

well, I suppose that maybe they could create a more efficient one, but the real problem is is that the forces that power it are not strong enough to create decent energy.

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