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Post by Captain SpExtacular on Feb 19, 2008 21:00:30 GMT -5
Alternative Energy Sources, there are a lot of them. From solar, hydro electric, hydrogen, tidal, bio, geo-thermal, and the dreaded nuclear.
So whats your take on all this? Personally i like what ever it is we have now.
Psssssssst....Wind and Solar suck!
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Post by viruszero on Feb 19, 2008 21:24:24 GMT -5
Hydro-electric dams are impractical. They can only be built in certain areas and even then it involves alot of work in comparison to the others...
Solar- takes ALOT of solar collectors to get any amount of power...
Wind- Ever heard a windmill? they aren't exactly quiet, so they're great if you can't hear anyway, but if you value your ears then you might want them farther way or use a different source of energy.
Tidal could work for coast line areas... but you'd need alot of them. And you'd have to be careful they don't interfere with shipping lanes and any ocean life...
Bio? not sure about this one, I haven't heard much about it to be honest.
Geo-thermal... would be a pretty good source of energy I guess, though I don't really know enough about it to say whether it has any major flaws/drawbacks or any huge virtues other than it's clean.
Nuclear... Shut the hippies up and bring in the glowing green rods... Any nuclear plant with all the precautions would be safe enough. So chernobyl's reactor exploded, there were many issues within that... otherwise Nuclear power is the safest way to generate power and it's cleaner than coal/oil.
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Post by Professor Fann on Feb 19, 2008 23:25:49 GMT -5
Hydroelectric - only if you have large rivers that overflood areas all the time.
Solar - I heard Australia is using its desert to be covered with the solar absorbant panels. With all that heat, surely it can be converted.
Biomass - all you need is a farm with animals, make sure their dung is collected, fermented under bacterial conditions and you get methane gas (a variant of fossil fuel) for cooking. I have seen them before in practice and it works for the poor farmers.
Nuclear - France is trying fusion reaction, which provides a whole lot more than just fission reaction. The only problem is finding out how to contain temperatures of 100 million Celsius.
Wind - well, it only works in desert areas whereby sandstorms and winds are common. Any country with lots of sand can do this.
The rest are basically costs exceed profit and such.
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Post by Goku Goku Gadget Saiyan on Feb 19, 2008 23:32:49 GMT -5
Iceland has so much Geothermal power, its planning to eliminate the use of fossil fuel by the year 2025. Solar could work, if we find out how to make Solar Panels more efficient. Wind... wind is out. Hydro-electric is too impractical for places with little to no water. Nuclear has the best chance, due to it being the safest and most powerful of them all. Biochemistric would work... for awhile. We would end up killing our environment or something.
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Post by Professor Fann on Feb 19, 2008 23:36:49 GMT -5
Let me just ask for the sake of curiousity - anyone here familiar with the term perpetual energy?
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Post by Captain SpExtacular on Feb 19, 2008 23:41:13 GMT -5
Yeah, it doesn't exist. In order for an object to maintain speed it takes an outside force to keep it so. I believe thats correct and that it applies to energy.
Nightmare get Rock Richard on here so he can explain! He knows more details about that kind stuff.
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Post by viruszero on Feb 19, 2008 23:43:46 GMT -5
Probably the easiest way to contain such an amazingly high tempurture would be magnetically suspended. Though inertial fusion method might be just as effective if more work were done with it...
But it's not the heat from the solar energy that does the work... It's the light hitting photovoltaic cells which send the electrons to cross the panel and generate a net electrical charge... The heat could be used but running black piping full of water to heat it but I'm not sure if it could be used for electrical energy generation... I don't know if the moving water would heat enough to turn to steam to drive a turbine. And it would depend on: the size of the black tube, and the speed of the water... Faster water wouldn't heat as fast I would think, but if it did get up to steam level it would have a fair bit of power providing the pipe was big enough...
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Post by Paranoid on Feb 20, 2008 22:19:44 GMT -5
Wind - well, it only works in desert areas whereby sandstorms and winds are common. Any country with lots of sand can do this. Wind generators can go anywhere. Canada is so big, and no one lives in most of it. there are tons of wind generators here. also big waterfalls, like the Niagara Falls, give most of Eastern Canada and US their power. and then there is the highest tides in the world on out atlantic coats at one stop, so some tidal energy there. We have a bunch of Nuclear plants coming now, but I see no point for it.
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Post by Professor Fann on Feb 20, 2008 22:37:24 GMT -5
Wind generators can go anywhere. Canada is so big, and no one lives in most of it. there are tons of wind generators here. also big waterfalls, like the Niagara Falls, give most of Eastern Canada and US their power. My mistake. Anywhere where the tendency for strong winds to exist is potential for wind energy. Fusion rectors to go. It's all to meet energy demands. China is adding half of India's energy capacity into itself every year and yet there's shortages. Either it's the weather or people are using a lot.
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Post by Paranoid on Feb 21, 2008 20:03:01 GMT -5
They need to invest in saving energy, not finding methods to get more. the problem is, you make more money from selling energy than developing technologies to save power. it's all too much greed. I probably wouldn't be better in the position of the big business guy, but they should try to work for what helps the environment be cleaner and less harmful to our bodies
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Post by Captain SpExtacular on Feb 22, 2008 0:35:20 GMT -5
Well that is the big trend in world as of current. So more than likely thats what they're slowly trying to work into their schedule.
Hydrogen is pretty cool, but it takes so much energy to make it its not hardly worth the effort.
Fusion would be amazing. But cmon, do you really think that they're close enough to unlock the power of the sun? It's possible, but not in our life time. To imagine an infinite energy source that was completely free and with no byproducts. We wouldn't have to worry about an Ice Age and "global warming." But it will be a long time until that happens.
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Post by Professor Fann on Feb 22, 2008 23:06:19 GMT -5
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