renegade7 said:
mad825 said:
They still need a few decades of research to yield any potential. I would rather have Fusion over solar Panels tbh.
If you're talking "decades of research", sustainable fusion as a useful power source hasn't even been shown to be physically possible yet.
OT: What I'm concerned about is the current state of the silicon mining industry. Until we can be guaranteed conflict-free minerals, ie silicon, tungsten, wolfram, etc, that didn't all get mined by child-slaves to fund warlords in unstable countries, we cannot be guaranteed a sustainable solar-powered future. I also don't even know if the global reserve of silicon is even capable of supplying a project of that scale.
I really think we should hold off until we have reliable means to mass-produce graphene that don't involve scotch tape, in the meantime we should focus on reducing power needs to mitigate ecological impact, since that's something we can all do right now.
You do know what silicon is right? Might be able to pose questions about what can reasonably be refined, but silicon, in the form of silicon dioxide, is trivial to find.
Go to just about any beach on the planet, for one.
Silicon. - 7th most abundant element in the universe, makes up about 27% of the earth's crust, 2nd most abundant element on the planet.
Seriously, We really aren't going to run out of silicon.
At least, not before running out of lots of other things.
I mean, it's more than 5 times more abundant than iron.
And have you seen how much iron we use? It's everywhere.
Also, glass is made of silicon. Ever looked around at how much glass there is in the modern world?
A trillion solar panels would be a drop in ths ocean
However, the same can't be said for trace elements used to create semiconductors.
On the other hand, anyone that thinks nuclear fission is a viable alternative while posing questions about resources for solar panels...
Uranium is a limited resource. At present usage rates, existing stocks will be used up in 90 years. There are more sources than just those we know of, but the numbers are in line with fossil fuels.
Thorium reactors do somewhat better, but it's still fundamentally an open question how long nuclear power would be viable.
You might point out that a viable solar power system needs batteries, which don't last forever. Which is true, but the materials making up a battery are largely recyclable, and can be reprocessed intok new batteries.
Which do you think will become a problem first? solar + batteries? Or nuclear fuel supplies?
Fusion would at least be based on hydrogen, an element so common the likelyhood of using up the entire planet's supply of it is remote.
Fission on the other hand... Especially of Uranium... Is not that impressive, in terms of how much fuel there is to work with.
It certainly isn't a supply measured in millions of years, or even thousands.
At best, one measured in centuries.
Which was also something we could once say about oil, coal, and natural gas...