Nuclear Energy!

[Irony's Acolyte]

How else would we get our super-powered freaks? Because the last time I checked genetic engineering has yet to pick up the slack.

 

[Jinx_Dragon]

I could give you all a long rant but what is the point as I have gone over it all before.

In short, approve of nuclear power after a fair amount of research into it.

 

[LightOfDarkness]

decommissioning is a big problem as is what we do with waste that'll be problmatic for hundreds of thousands of years.
it is very much a "well we don't have to deal with that problem yet" industry.

i'm not against it but i hate the idea that it becomes a "jobs a good'un" solution.

we should look to tap better sources such as certain high power renewables like geothermal & deep ocean currents and sink loads of development into fusion. all three of these could pay off in a massive way if the technology fell into place.

There have been large advancements in wind turbine technology too, like wind balloons that float 300+ miles in the air where the wind is strong and consistent.

 

[SpecklePattern]

Naturally it would be smarter to research new technology, but like I said. So I guess I am pro-nuclear. And renewable energy sources are nice but they just don't cut the power right now. And I believe, never, as they are so small things in motion and it is not that efficient way to produce power.

It's not exactly like that. The Earth catches enough of sunlight that we could replace, based on pure wattage, all our current oil, coal and nuclear plants with current-gen solar plants.

It is like that. Current, but how fast could we do it? We (humans) need it now. And it is growing faster than ever. Also my "small things in motion" was meaning the fact that 'green' is always so ... spacy. m2 or m3 / W.

It would cost a frakton more than the entire combined budget of the western world (or something on those orders of magnitude), but by wattage it could be done.

The problem with 'green' sources of energy is that they are not stable and predictable sources of energy: we can't control the winds or clouds.

You see, at any given moment, the total output of power plants in an electrical grid must be equal to the use of power (+ loss due to inefficiency in transfer). Too much production and the grid voltage rises, producing a power-spike. Too little production and grid voltage drops.

We have the technology to adjust the power. That is not the problem. Lack of it is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant]

And we all know what happens to electrical equipment if it receives too little or too much power beyond the normal variance it allows for.

No we don't. Those things what happen are equipment dependent and we could say it is as certain as continuous solar power in England.

So when it gets windy in places filled with wind farms, voltage in grid increases. This means that power plants that can be controlled (nuclear, coal, water dams etc) must be run at lower output, or the surplus power sold or stored somewhere (usually into water by lowering the production of water dams and thus saving the potential energy of stored water). And vice versa: too little production and use must be lowered or power brought in from elsewhere (like purchased from the neighbouring country) or amount of production within plants where it can be controlled must be increased to match the demand.

It is a continuous balancing act to keep the power production within accepted variance of the power used at that moment.

The result is that if we replaced all our current power production with wind and solar plants, the electric grid would catastrophically collapse before the day was over.

'Green' energy like that can always produce only a certain portion of the total energy use, the rest must come from more traditional plants that can be controlled precisely, or otherwise an unacceptable risk of energy grid collapse would continuously exist.

Also, electricity msut be provided even when it isn't windy or sunny - in those cases nuclear and coal etc plants must be able to temporarily supply the portion of the power normally supplied by the 'green' energy plants. Otherwise the result is a total power grid collapse, or at the very least a localized one (until new use and production match eachother).

... Hmmm. (Actually I think this is directed to someone else as this doesn't even conversate with my quote.) Like I said.

And I believe, never, as they are so small things in motion and it is not that efficient way to produce power.

That is now, but like I also said.

Naturally it would be smarter to research new technology.

Sak Sak listed many things we would need to research. No company wants to do that if we have ready solutions like nuclear.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

I see it as pretty problematic, not in terms of safety but in terms of cost, it needs massive government subsidy to be economically viable. The cost of building the plants, safety while generating, mining all the fuel (which in itself has a pretty severe environmental impact), disposing of waste and decomissioning when finished means that investors need lots of additional incentive to go for nuke power.

Then it is still a finite resource. There is only so much fissile material on the planet.

Anyways, as a short term stop gap measure until we get something better up and running it is at least something that can produce a lot of energy that we have right now that could be up and running in ohhh, 10-15 years or whatever it takes to build a nuke plant. Mind you, you could build a lot of solar, wind and wave energy farms in the same space of time, I'd suggest giving everything a go, don't want to put all your eggs in one basket and all that crap.

 

[Thedayrecker]

I'm against [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster] it

 

[oppp7]

Not too sure about the safety issues, because while I (possibly foolishly) trust the government to handle it, I don't really have the same trust in the rest of the world. Plus it's not renewable. But as for waste, can't we get rid of it by reversing the process fusion or fission, the opposite of what we do now) and get energy in return/not lose much energy?