Will future cars be electric and run on Solar/Lithium Polymer?

[Brutha]

Fine. There's wind turbines, geo thermal energy, big dams appear to be a proven tech too (albeit one with high impact on the environment).

They might be wind turbines and big dams are proven tech but they don't produce enough energy to go off fossil fuels as fast as we should.

Geo thermal is potentially harmful when you mess something up. Maybe you can get an vulcano if you mess up that kills a lot of people.
We don't know how we effect the working of the earth if we use up the Geo thermal energy.
We have learn't that messing around with our atmosphere isn't that good of an idea.
Are you sure that messing around with the deepest level of our earth couldn't produce huge problems?
The long term effects of Geo thermal aren't clear at all, so you can't realy call it proven tech.

No, sticking nuclear waste in a vault deep under ground is not a solution! It's a workaround, at best.

It's a solution. It isn't perfect but it's better than what we do with the waste of burning fossil fuels.

[escapee]

Beside global warming, we are facing another threat in the no so distant future - fresh H20 shortage. One of the ways to solve this potential crisis is through large scale nuclear powered seawater desalination.

Desalination - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In a December 26, 2007 opinion column in the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Nolan Hertel, a professor of nuclear and radiological engineering at Georgia Tech, wrote, "... nuclear reactors can be used... to produce large amounts of potable water. The process is already in use in a number of places around the world, from India to Japan and Russia. Eight nuclear reactors coupled to desalination plants are operating in Japan alone... nuclear desalination plants could be a source of large amounts of potable water transported by pipelines hundreds of miles inland..."

Worldwide Water Shortage On Horizon

A crisis is looming over water shortages worldwide. By 2025 more than half the nations in the world will face freshwater stress or shortages and by 2050 as much as 75 percent of the world's population could face freshwater scarcity. So say Mike Hightower and Suzanne Pierce, water experts at Sandia National Laboratories, in an article they wrote that appeared in a recent issue of Nature.

[JimOfferman]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Geo thermal is potentially harmful when you mess something up. Maybe you can get an vulcano if you mess up that kills a lot of people.

I think the chances of a geo thermal power plant causing a volcano are much lower than the probability of a nuclear power plant going boom.

Geo thermal is about turning the earth's waste energy into usable energy for us humans. It's sticking fans in the rising hot air.

We may not know the long term effects, but that goes for nuclear too. Based on what we think we know, it's hard to argue that nuclear is safer.

It's a solution.

It is not a solution. It's sticking our hands in the sand, literally, and hoping the problem will go away...

[Brutha]

I think the chances of a geo thermal power plant causing a volcano are much lower than the probability of a nuclear power plant going boom.

How do you know?
At the present nobody really knows how removing energy from deep in the earth will effect what happens down there.
In addition nobody knows how Volcanos or earthquakes form good enough to predict them.
As a result you don't know whether you temper is one variable that would set up something.

Geo thermal is about turning the earth's waste energy into usable energy for us humans.

How do you know the earth is wasting energy?
Maybe you do change something is you remove the "waste".
If you look at a system that you don't understand perfectly and identify "waste", you might hit something that serves a function.
It also not that clear whether the earth would really reproduce that energy.

We may not know the long term effects, but that goes for nuclear too.

Nulcear waste would be stored at a place where it doesn't interact much with anything.

[escapee]

We may not know the long term effects, but that goes for nuclear too. Based on what we think we know, it's hard to argue that nuclear is safer. It is not a solution. It's sticking our hands in the sand, literally, and hoping the problem will go away...

French would think otherwise.


Nuclear power in France - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In France, as of 2002, Électricité de France (EDF) — the country's main electricity generation and distribution company — manages the country's 59 nuclear power plants. As of 2004, these plants produce 99.8% of both EDF's and France's power production (of which much is exported),[1] making EDF the world leader in production of nuclear power by percentage. In the same year, 425.8 TWh out of the country's total production of 540.6 TWh was from nuclear power.[1]

France is the world's largest net exporter of electric power, exporting 18% of its total production (about 100 TWh) to Italy, the Netherlands, Britain, and Germany, and its electricity cost is among the lowest in Europe.[1][2]


Areva NC claims that, due to their reliance on nuclear power, France's carbon emissions per kWh are less than 1/10 that of Germany and the UK, and 1/13 that of Denmark, which has no nuclear plants. Its emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide have been reduced by 70% over 20 years, even though the total power output has tripled in that time.[10] In the same Ipsos poll, 88 percent of the population believe that reducing the greenhouse effect was a major reason to continue using nuclear power.[6] French environmentalist Bruno Comby started the group Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy, and says, "If well-managed, nuclear energy is very clean, does not create polluting gases in the atmosphere, produces very little waste and does not contribute to the greenhouse effect".[11]

If you 're earth loving environmentalist, nuclear is your ultimate friend (or foe ) depending on how you look at it. Apparently, you're seeing nuclear option as "mushroom cloud", the evil side of nuclear .

[JimOfferman]

Originally Posted by Brutha

As a result you don't know whether you temper is one variable that would set up something.

What's my temper got to do with anything? Please do not confuse my making a point with a bad temper. I'm not angry, I'm arguing my case!

Nulcear waste would be stored at a place where it doesn't interact much with anything.

Right back at you: How do you know? We think we can put it away in places where it will not cause much harm, but we can only positively conclude that it didn't do any harm after the fact.

Maybe putting out concentrated solar power plants will cause the sun to die sooner. Maybe building a tower that traps air rising from the surface and sends it through a turbine before releasing it in the upper atmosphere (where it was going in the first place) will have side effects that we can't predict. Humanity has side effects that we can't predict.

But, all things considered, I still think we are better off with "truly" clean sources of energy, over nuclear power (or fossil fuels), which has downsides that we can predict.

Originally Posted by escapee

If you 're earth loving environmentalist, nuclear is your ultimate friend (or foe ) depending on how you look at it. Apparently, you're seeing nuclear option as "mushroom cloud", the evil side of nuclear .

I guess nuclear is a step up from fossil fuels. I just think we, humanity, can do even better.

[Brutha]

Originally Posted by JimOfferman

What's my temper got to do with anything? Please do not confuse my making a point with a bad temper. I'm not angry, I'm arguing my case!

That not what I was suggesting, you should look at the dictionary definition of the word: va=temper - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Right back at you: How do you know? We think we can put it away in places where it will not cause much harm, but we can only positively conclude that it didn't do any harm after the fact.

It doesn't interact with anything down there, so I'm not worried that a interacting disturbs a complex system with will create problems.

Maybe putting out concentrated solar power plants will cause the sun to die sooner.

Maybe building a tower that traps air rising from the surface and sends it through a turbine before releasing it in the upper atmosphere (where it was going in the first place) will have side effects that we can't predict.

According to wikipedia that is not how geo thermal works.

It is also sustainable because the hot water used in the geothermal process can be re injected into the ground to produce more steam.

If you just would take the energy from the water or air that would naturally go to the atmosphere that shouldn't have much effect. But when you pump additional stuff in there to decrease the temperature down there, you change how the things down there work.
If you capture energy of the sun via concentrated solar power plants you don't change how the sun works.

But, all things considered, I still think we are better off with "truly" clean sources of energy, over nuclear power (or fossil fuels), which has downsides that we can predict.

I still don't think that you should take "waste"-products from complex systems away that you don't understand when those complex systems can do massive damage from time to time.
Most big disasters where not really predicted beforehand.

I guess nuclear is a step up from fossil fuels. I just think we, humanity, can do even better.

At the moment it seems that we don't go off fossil fuel fast enough and do even worse.

[Jerigan]

Originally Posted by Brutha

They might be wind turbines and big dams are proven tech but they don't produce enough energy to go off fossil fuels as fast as we should.

Just wanted to pop in here and mention a 248 page study the US Department of Energy released. It's titled 20% Wind Energy by 2030. The study points out that there is 8000 GW of economic wind available in the US, but that only 300 GW is required to produce 20% of electricity requirements. Wind is a very feasible alternative. I believe I read that the current increase in wind power generation is approximately 5 GW/year. To reach 20% by 2030, the industry would need to increase production to at least 15 GW/year.

So really it's less a question of the technology and more an issue of motivating people to increase production.

[JimOfferman]

Originally Posted by Brutha

That not what I was suggesting

Please accept my apologies for misreading you then, Brutha!

It doesn't interact with anything down there, so I'm not worried that a interacting disturbs a complex system with will create problems.

No, we think it doesn't interact with anything down there. Again, we won't know if we were right until after the fact.

Safe nuclear storage is an unsolved problem. Quote:

Some of the waste from nuclear plants will retain harmful levels of radioactivity for tens of thousands to millions of years.

How can we ever be sure that nothing bad will happen in those millions of years? It's not like we can turn the radiation off if it doesn't work out...

According to wikipedia that is not how geo thermal works.

Yeah, well, wikipedia isn't always right

I still don't think that you should take "waste"-products from complex systems away that you don't understand when those complex systems can do massive damage from time to time.

The big difference would be that we could stop taking those waste products at anytime. Hopefully before irreversible damage is done. Nuclear waste doesn't have a kill switch like that. Once it's been created, you are stuck with it - for millions of years!

Most big disasters where not really predicted beforehand.

Nope. If we could do that, we wouldn't have those big disasters (or, at least, wouldn't be affect much by them). But we can't.

All we can do is make a guess to the best of our knowledge as to which way leads to the least harm for ourselves and the environment.

At the moment it seems that we don't go off fossil fuel fast enough and do even worse.

That, unfortunately, is not a problem of technology (it's ready to go), but politics.

You can make a difference, though. As a European, you're free to choose which energy company "delivers" your electricity - choose one that uses renewable sources to do so.

[escapee]

In order to stop our coastal cities from being flooded by seawater in decades to come, and shield our children from the dangerous emission of coal and gasoline burning.
I agree with you that going nuclear is an important step from natural gas ( eg: carcinogenic coal, gasoline and etc ) We will need to go nuclear for some time while allowing the scientific community to invent a more energy efficient solar panel, discovering more suitable locations for geo thermal plants/wind turbines and etc

Some Amazing Facts about Nuclear Power

Anti-nuclear activists like to scare us with horror stories about the "thousands of tons of nuclear waste" that have been produced since nuclear power began some four decades ago. That sounds like a lot -- until you put it into perspective, which anti-nuclear activists and the mass media never do. Consider that one pound of plutonium can produce as much energy as the Yankee Stadium full of coal. And coal-fired power generates something like 100 million tons of waste annually in the United States, or about three tons of ash per second. Every few hours, more coal ash is generated than high-level nuclear waste has been generated in four decades!

Oh, but nuclear waste is far more dangerous than coal waste, isn't it? Actually, it isn't. For a given amount of energy produced, coal ash is actually more radioactive than nuclear waste. How can that be? Simple. The quantity of coal ash is literally millions of times greater than the corresponding quantity of nuclear waste, so even though the radioactive intensity of the coal ash is much less, the overall amount of radiation and radioactive matter is greater.

But nobody worries much about the radioactivity of coal ash because the chemicals in it are far more dangerous. They include several thousand tons per year of mercury and other heavy metals, along with huge amounts of lead, arsenic, and asbestos, for example. Yet even the huge quantities of chemical waste in coal ash are of little concern compared to the gaseous emissions from burning coal, which kill an estimated 10,000 to 50,000 Americans every year, depending on which study you believe. As a point of reference, even the lower estimate approaches the rate at which Americans died in the Viet Nam war, and the higher estimate greatly exceeds it, yet the media rarely report on those deaths.

So let's get this straight. For a given amount of energy produced, coal waste has more radioactive matter than nuclear waste, yet the radioactivity of coal waste is nowhere near as dangerous as the solid chemical waste, which in turn is nowhere near as dangerous as the gaseous emissions. Are you starting to get the picture yet?

But even those staggering figures fail to capture the major environmental advantages of nuclear power over coal-fired power. Why? Because the solid and gaseous emissions from coal burning are generated in such a huge quantity that they cannot possibly be contained. They can only be spewed into the atmosphere and dumped into shallow landfills. There is no conceivable way to isolate waste that is generated at the rate of three tons per second. Nuclear waste, on the other hand, is so miniscule in comparison that it can be almost completely isolated from the environment at a very modest cost. And even though that cost has been greatly inflated by the anti-nuclear hysteria, it is still very managable.

If all the high-level nuclear waste that has ever been generated were simply dumped into the middle of the ocean, it would be many thousands of times less harmful than the coal waste generated over the same period. But the nuclear waste is so miniscule in quantity that it can be isolated almost completely from the environment. In fact, that is exactly what is being done all over the world. Basic technology exists to convert nuclear waste into a solid, water-impermeable glass form, encase it into stainless-steel-lined concrete containers, and put it thousands of feet underground where water hasn't flowed for hundreds of thousands of years. And nuclear power produces no gaseous emissions, of course.

[escapee]

Coal ash Vs Nuclear
Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste: Scientific American

Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky.

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, fly ash—a by-product from burning coal for power—contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste.
.

Coal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coal is primarily used as a solid fuel to produce electricity and heat through combustion. World coal consumption is about 6.2 billion tons annually, of which about 75% is used for the production of electricity.[citation needed]China produced 2.38 billion tonnes in 2006 and India produced about 447.3 million tonnes in 2006. 83.2% of China's electricity comes from coal. The USA consumes about 1.053 billion tonnes of coal each year, using 90% of it for generation of electricity. The world in total produced 6.19 billion tonnes of coal in 2006.

[Brutha]

Yeah, well, wikipedia isn't always right

Yes but it still makes sense that you get a lot more energy with geo thermal is you somehow pump water back down there to "reuse" it.

The big difference would be that we could stop taking those waste products at anytime.

But maybe you have started a feedback loop.
And once you cooled the inner earth down it won't be as easy to get it hot again.

Hopefully before irreversible damage is done. Nuclear waste doesn't have a kill switch like that. Once it's been created, you are stuck with it - for millions of years!

I think that people in 100-200 years would have no problem with sending the waste to the moon (or some asteroid if they want to life on the moon) if they don't want it on earth. You can't do that with coal ash with is well distributed over the earth.

All we can do is make a guess to the best of our knowledge as to which way leads to the least harm for ourselves and the environment.

When the quality of your guess is increadible bad, it's better to reduce the amount of possible damage by not messing around with complex systems.

You can make a difference, though. As a European, you're free to choose which energy company "delivers" your electricity - choose one that uses renewable sources to do so.

You are right that there are individual decisions, but decision of whether one builds new coal plants or new nuclear plants (or even shuts down nuclear plants) are much more significant than personal decisions.
At the moment it seems that Germany builds new coal plants but exists nuclear, which is a bad decision.
There's no leverage in switching your personal electricity company.
You probably have more influence by choicing the text of your songs than by switching your electricity company.

[JimOfferman]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Yes but it still makes sense that you get a lot more energy with geo thermal is you somehow pump water back down there to "reuse" it.

I don't know. I would put my bet with technologies that harness what is already there (sun, wind, rising air, ocean currents) rather than start messing with things that, as you so eloquently put it, we don't fully understand yet - in my opinion, this includes nuclear fission (in particular dealing with the waste thereof).

I think that people in 100-200 years would have no problem with sending the waste to the moon (or some asteroid if they want to life on the moon) if they don't want it on earth. You can't do that with coal ash with is well distributed over the earth.

I do not share your certainty on this.

When the quality of your guess is increadible bad, it's better to reduce the amount of possible damage by not messing around with complex systems.

Precisely why I am opposed to nuclear! The decay of nuclear waste is such a complex system.

There's no leverage in switching your personal electricity company.

You bet there is! Thousands upon thousands of households in the Netherlands alone choosing to buy green energy meant that our energy companies are now investing in more and more renewable sources of energy.

Not as fast as you and I would like, true. But it is a difference.

You probably have more influence by choicing the text of your songs than by switching your electricity company.

Perhaps you are right. Maybe you should just pick up a guitar and start singing songs about green energy? Brutha - the green troubadour!