[Lothos]

TMI


I like the summary that Lovelock gives at the end. Accidents happen, but we shouldn'thave abandoned nuclear power the way we did. How many know we even had a commercial shipping vessel that was nuclear powered? And yet, we continue to prevent shipping companies from using nuclear power to this day.

 

[Haggar]

I didn't read it, as I don't feel like it, but I think we definately need to increase nuclear capacity, and more work on stations such as ocean driven heat pumps, and solar chimneys.

 

[steveo]

you mean we are letting fear and ignorance run our lives!!! i agree that we need to restart ourt nuke plant program back up. russia is building offshore nuke plants.

 

[KartRacer]

Article puts it into a good perspective. They are already on their way to building more nuke plants. Hopefully the same thing doesn't happen to them as happened to Midland and the few others that were in route to being finished at that time.

People in this country are so afraid of immediate risks, but don't seem to care for the future. They don't mind that we may be deciding our own fates while we keep buring coal and fossil fuels. But when it comes to building some windmills or nuclear plant, they put a stop to it out of the potential threat or the birds the windmills will kill or something stupid like that.

 

[SquirrelWJ]

Took an Energy Economics course last semester. Not sayin' a college course is the best informational source... but a lot of the research papers we did on alternate fuels pointed towards Nuclear power being one of the best sources of power. France actually has what's called a Fast Breeder plant... that takes the Uranium and produces power with it, then takes the byproduct (waste) and reuses it as more fuel. Hell, if you put one of the Nuke plants near a city, you could use any by-product heat to help heat the city itself, cutting down on waste energy uses even further.

One reason people don't like that sort of plant is that the waste fuel is plutonium... but the cost of refining it into weapons grade is high.

Ethanol is a freaking joke. It costs more to make and use than just gasoline use does. All it does is makes the farmers happy.

Solar is getting better but still highly expensive per kilowatt hour.

Wave generators would be extremely useful if we could finish the R&D on it so that they can withstand the corrosive effects of the salt water and the strong storms they'd have to deal with.

Geothermal isn't very useful at all...


But as always... people will stick to what they know until they're forced to change to something else.

 

[Kawierider]

I see collaberated efforts becoming the key to the future....projects like using waste heat from nuclear power to heat cities.

The ammount of energy wasted in exhaust stacks, and discarded with by-products of industrial processes is stagering

Did you know there is algea that produces bio-diesel when fed sunlight and co2......and after it gets the diesel harvested you can make ethanol with the left over algea. Harvest 1/10th of the gass that a power plant, or your furnace, or any thing that burns anything produces and boom, cheap diesel, cheap ethanol.