Originally Posted by EL Chicane
Couldn't have said it better. But one point. Nuclear Energy is doable with minimal environmental impact if you actually recycle nuclear waste as new fuel. There are designs for new reactors that use no water as coolant, and eat their own wastes to produce power. The problem is, the ROI on nuclear fission reactors is very very veeeery long. And fission materials are still expensive to come by. You're right, fission materials are a non-renewable resource once you've used them up.Originally Posted by Bogeyman
Also, Reactors made in the US are dangerous and expensive because they're all built to different design specifications and standards. The French have had no problems because they make their reactors to a standard design. This keeps development costs low, aids in maintenance, and safety and efficiency upgrades can be applied to all similar reactors at the same time.
But still, in many cases, producing power by Nuclear Fission is more expensive than by oil or coal... and there's no way it will get cheaper, as we slowly use up all the fissionables available to us.
Myth ang cold fusion. But hot fusion should become commercially viable (hopefully!) within the next 50-100 years.Originally Posted by oldblue
(antagal!)
Biofuels would be a good stopgap measure, pero tama si uls, even in Brazil, where they were able to demonstrate a near 90% usage of biofuel before, the usage of biofuel was greatly dependent on crop abundance and harvest size. Biofuels will only supply some of our needs.
I can't wait to see that!Originally Posted by Bogeyman
Biowaste is one possible way to fill the gap. Flammable gases harvested from bacterial biodegrading factories could supply some energy, and there are ideas of using bacterial batteries in sewage treatment plants.
Organic Solar Cells are another. They produce much less power per square meter than silicone cells, but are non-hazardous to the environment, and potentially cheap to set-up... thus you could have huge arrays.
One other thing that's particularly exciting to me is the new wave-generator concept. Instead of having large rafts catching wave energy, you have hundreds of cheap, replaceable buoys anchored to the seabed off the coast. These have magnets inside them, and the up-and-down bobbing motion of the waves make the magnets move in relation to each other, generating current. Just five hundred of these could power half of Manila. And they'd help control erosion of the coastline, too. Best of all, they'd be cheap to make, and easy to replace.


(antagal!)

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