Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: watsisname on August 27, 2012, 09:18:35 pm
-
2007 was an astonishing year for arctic sea ice extent. Now the record has again been broken and there are still weeks of melting expected. I think the implications of this trend are extremely disturbing. By some estimates we could be seeing ice-free arctic summers not just in our lifetimes, but in the next 10 years.
NSIDC report (http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/08/arctic-sea-ice-breaks-2007-record-extent/)
BBC article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19393075)
I'd also just like to quote (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7006640.stm) an article written after the 2007 record minimum.
Speaking to BBC News on Monday this week, Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the NSIDC, said: "2005 was the previous record and what happened then had really astounded us; we had never seen anything like that, having so little sea ice at the end of summer. Then along comes 2007 and it has completely shattered that old record."
To quote Serreze now (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=78994&src=iotdrss), “What is perhaps most surprising is that we are no longer surprised.”
-
Right now earth is a ****ed up place. Its that fossil fuel mentality, for god sakes we are still using technology that is a century out dated. (combustion engines) Its time to move on! But the ****ing oil companies are too greedy to let go, so its not going to happen. And Monsanto is ****ing with our, seeds and our food. When Monsanto started ****ing with our food, is when all the **** started happening to us. Diabetes and obesity sky rocketed, and little girls that maturing at 7, WHAT THE ****. :mad:
The Human race is pretty ****ed right now, we need change...FAST.
But odds are, our hatred and our greed will blow us to bits in the fifty years. Our legacy would be; 'a race that was too stuck up, stupid, greedy, and violent that they couldn't even get past there own selfishness and stupidity to survive'
Sorry every one had to see that, I have STRONG feelings about this stuff. :nervous:
-
this is an interesting variation of poe's law
-
global warming thread detected. engage evasive maneuvers.
:warp:
-
What is also disturbing is that discussions of data regarding ice extent and trends, taken directly from satellite observations, cannot be posted without resulting in responses like the above.
-
Indeed.
Hazardleader: No, the United States are not the entire world.
-
And Monsanto is ****ing with our, seeds and our food. When Monsanto started ****ing with our food, is when all the **** started happening to us. Diabetes and obesity sky rocketed, and little girls that maturing at 7, WHAT THE ****. :mad:
...huh.
-
I'd never heard of the company Monsanto before so I looked it up. Yeah, I'm not gonna touch that topic here... :V
-
nuke the ice caps!
-
It's high time for people to open their eyes and see that nuclear power is the future energy source. Time to let go of old fossil fuel plants. Also, hydrogen-powered cars are slowly becoming more and more viable (recently, a Polish newspaper wrote about a new hydrogen "sponge" material which can be used for storing it), so it's time to start converting. I can't wait for the day we'll be able to show the middle finger to the middle eastern sheiks from our hydrogen cars and nuclear powered houses. Then, they could set gas prices as high as they want.
-
It's high time for people to open their eyes and see that nuclear power is the future energy source. Time to let go of old fossil fuel plants. Also, hydrogen-powered cars are slowly becoming more and more viable (recently, a Polish newspaper wrote about a new hydrogen "sponge" material which can be used for storing it), so it's time to start converting. I can't wait for the day we'll be able to show the middle finger to the middle eastern sheiks from our hydrogen cars and nuclear powered houses. Then, they could set gas prices as high as they want.
thing about fission power is it is not the be all and end all, while it doesn't pollute during production the waste material is a significant issue, also I believe they are slow to adapt to unexpected changes in demand. Develop Fusion power and I will consider nuclear power a clear improvement until then it's just as bad in my opinion, just in a different way.
also power and cars are not the only source of pollutants, there is also heavy industry to consider.
-
Heavy (and also chemical) industry is the smallest one of those, and one we can't do much about. There are some things that can't run on hydrogen or uranium in there, and oil is still very important in producing plastics. In general (IIRC), the industry produces less warming gases, but more toxins.
Nuclear waste is a problem, but compared to the amount of power it generates and to what fossil fuel plants exhale, it's almost nothing. I agree that fusion plants are the ultimate nuclear power source, fission ones will have to do as a stopgap before those are developed. Regarding increased demand on uranium, construction of nuke plants takes a long time. When the uranium providers see there's a boom (economic, of course :)) on building such plants, they'll work to increase their output in advance.
-
thing about fission power is it is not the be all and end all, while it doesn't pollute during production the waste material is a significant issue, also I believe they are slow to adapt to unexpected changes in demand. Develop Fusion power and I will consider nuclear power a clear improvement until then it's just as bad in my opinion, just in a different way.
Which is basically what our physics teacher in 10th grade discussed with us some 20 years ago.... kinda depressing how little has changed.
-
to be fair there is no magic bullet to meet all our energy demands. nuclear will give us an edge, and will make viable hydrogen or electric cars. fossil fuels, namely coal would still be used to take up the slack in the power demands. if we get lftr (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor) reactors into production, we could pretty much have another line of nuclear reactors running off a different fuel source in parallel to traditional water reactors (or newer generation reactors on the same fuel cycle). you still need to use all those renewable (wind/solar/hydro/geothermal/etc), as its essentially free power for the taking, not very much but enough to justify the cost and turn a modest profit on. even thats not enough, and we will need to be producing coal plants, and your karosene/gasoline/diesel/fuel oil/natural gas, will be needed for mass transport industries (planes/trucks/trains/ships), with natural gas mostly being applied to heating and some power generation. we need all tha powah!
yea **** the environment, just keep my 100w incandescent bulbs running.
-
If we have enough spare electricity, we could use that for heating. I think that if nuclear plants got common enough, fossil fuel ones would become completely obsolete. Renewable sources are good on small scale, but somewhat cost-inefficient with current tech. And aside from planes, mass transport could switch to hydrogen engines once they become developed enough. I think that pollution from airplanes is insignificant compared to other sources.
-
lol. fissile material is just as limited a resource as fossil fuels. do we really want our lust for oil to be replaced by the lust for uranium? and even if we brought a thousand reactors online it would not be enough to make coal obsolete.
-
Well, this would take some power from middle east and greedy sheiks, not to mention it pollutes much less. It's an overall improvement, though not as large as fusion plants would be. As I said, a good enough stopgap. Maybe fission plants won't obsolete coal plants completely (fusion should, though), but they should greatly reduce their number.
-
someone had a design for a working energy positive heavy ion fusion plant back in the 70s. catch is it would be a massive installation, would require a large complex including a particle accelerator, and a fusion target factory and a ****ton of other infrastructure and a $2 billion price tag. but it would work.
-
Well, that's heavy ion fusion, which is rather inefficient compared to hydrogen fusion, heavy ions are somewhat harder to come by, not to mention $2 billion price tag isn't anywhere near what countries can afford these days (heck, at one point I was a worried about ITER getting it's funding slashed, crisis being what it is, but fortunately that didn't happen). 70s, were right in the middle of Cold War. You could justify (and fund) the strangest research (like Project Star Wars or Jedi knights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Earth_Battalion)) by saying "It'll help us against Soviets".
-
its certainly cheaper than the 18 billion we spent trying to get tokamaks to not suck. and its not our fault that the world is running out of evil communists. :D
-
Note, those 18 billion are development costs. We spend those once and then, build tokamaks a lot cheaper. 2 billion in this case seems to be the cost of one installation. After building 9 of them (I'm not sure about the output of heavy ion plant, but it'll almost certainly be smaller than that of a hydrogen fusion plant), we'll come out even, and 9 plants would be far from enough for the entire world.
-
Indeed.
Hazardleader: No, the United States are not the entire world.
I know, I was extremely pissed at the time of the post and I accedentaly vented on the HLP. Sorry guys my bad...
-
Note, those 18 billion are development costs. We spend those once and then, build tokamaks a lot cheaper. 2 billion in this case seems to be the cost of one installation. After building 9 of them (I'm not sure about the output of heavy ion plant, but it'll almost certainly be smaller than that of a hydrogen fusion plant), we'll come out even, and 9 plants would be far from enough for the entire world.
yes but those hydrogen fusion plants have yet to prove energy positive. heavy ion on the other hand is, and can work now.
-
yes but those hydrogen fusion plants have yet to prove energy positive. heavy ion on the other hand is, and can work now.
Nukes are also energy positive.
-
indeed they are, now lets melt those ice caps nature is too slow!
-
Note, those 18 billion are development costs. We spend those once and then, build tokamaks a lot cheaper. 2 billion in this case seems to be the cost of one installation. After building 9 of them (I'm not sure about the output of heavy ion plant, but it'll almost certainly be smaller than that of a hydrogen fusion plant), we'll come out even, and 9 plants would be far from enough for the entire world.
yes but those hydrogen fusion plants have yet to prove energy positive. heavy ion on the other hand is, and can work now.
Still, I'd expect the cost of developing and building, say, 20 tokamaks be less than building 20 heavy ion plants. Also, keep in mind that "energy positive" means just that. For all I know, it could produce 100W gross power, versus ITER's projected 450MW. Not to mention the cost of fuel, which is negligible in hydrogen plants, unlike in heavy ion plants ("heavy ions" usually refer to lead or other heavy metals, which don't come cheap).
-
tokamaks are a dead end for fusion research.
-
dead end or not ITER is going down the route of using tokamaks so unless another project to build commercial level output fusion plant using a different method is going to produce results before ITER does then the ITER design will be the blueprint for the first generation fusion plants
-
Not so much ITER (it doesn't actually produce electricity), as DEMO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO), a planned demonstration of a commercial reactor design. ITER with it's 500MW net output (which gets radiated) is a purely scientific proof of concept, and also a testbed for new technologies. Maybe at one point, they'll rig it to power itself (it requires 50MW to function, so I guess it could be a decent way to cut the electric bill somewhat), but that's it. DEMO will produce about 3GW of power and it will be actual electricity. Of course, it depends on the success of ITER, and on technologies tested in it (and as such, it shouldn't be much more expensive than ITER).
-
that is assuming iter is successful. we could have a heavy ion plant up and running before we even know if demo would work or not. im sure we will have some kind of fusion eventually. but we need powah nao!
-
I'd like to see a reference to this design, as well as possible specifications. Unless there's a catch to make it viable (you can't get too much energy from fusing heavy elements), I don't see this being economical. Not to mention you keep ignoring the fact it'd have the same problem as nuclear plants: limited, mined fuel and radioactive waste. It's likely that it'd only be a little different in functionality from a normal nuke plant, while being much larger and more expensive. And there might be other problems. Remember SSTO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas) technology we had in 60s? It sounds good until you take a look at the numbers.
-
I'd like to see a reference to this design, as well as possible specifications. Unless there's a catch to make it viable (you can't get too much energy from fusing heavy elements), I don't see this being economical. Not to mention you keep ignoring the fact it'd have the same problem as nuclear plants: limited, mined fuel and radioactive waste. It's likely that it'd only be a little different in functionality from a normal nuke plant, while being much larger and more expensive. And there might be other problems. Remember SSTO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas) technology we had in 60s? It sounds good until you take a look at the numbers.
If the information I've seen is reliable, the only "catch" is that it would require a massive particle accelerator to be viable, and the sheer scale of the facility would be gargantuan. It would also use large amounts of fuel, which rises some doubts about whether we could process the fusion fuel fast enough.
If it could be made to work, however, its primary value would be that it would be a massive source of heat that could be used to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels for industrial and automotive purposes; and before you start talking about carbon, it would ideally take carbon dioxide from air, condense it, and crack it to carbon and oxygen with heat; then the free carbon would be processed into hydrocarbons. So, this would essentially provide a carbon-neutral way to keep our vehicles awesome. :p
-
I'd like to see a reference to this design, as well as possible specifications. Unless there's a catch to make it viable (you can't get too much energy from fusing heavy elements), I don't see this being economical. Not to mention you keep ignoring the fact it'd have the same problem as nuclear plants: limited, mined fuel and radioactive waste. It's likely that it'd only be a little different in functionality from a normal nuke plant, while being much larger and more expensive. And there might be other problems. Remember SSTO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas) technology we had in 60s? It sounds good until you take a look at the numbers.
or untill the british sho us how its done[/skylon fanboi]
as for the design it was brought up on the forum awhile back, will do some search fu to try to find it.
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=76712.msg1523470#msg1523470
-
Ah, now I know where's the catch. The thing would have to work on a very large (read: worldwide, or at least continent wide) to be viable. This could perhaps work in the US, which spans an entire continent, but isn't the most flexible technology available. I haven't watched the vid (no time), but I'd gladly read a research paper on it if you find one (I may also look, for it, but later).
-
i find videos like that to be more entertaining to me than 99.99999% of whats on tv. its something you can kind of listen to while doing something else.
its big, but more on the scale of lhc, not something that will span the entire us, but take up some space in some under-populated state. so yea id call it city-sized. granted the accelerator portion of the reactor would be an underground installation, and you could have farmland or whatever on top of it and no one would know the difference. you still need the reactor site and factory complexes to support it.
look on the bright side though, its clean, cheap, produces fuel for cars, is mostly underground and most importantly we have the technology to make it work now. and just cause we have a working fusion power plant does not mean we need to stop fusion research there. it just means we have power while we screw around with improving fusion technology. heavy ion fusion is still big and clunky, but it would shut up all those who think that fusion is a dead end.
-
I didn't mean it'd literally span the entire US (that'd be silly), but rather that multiple installations of this kind would have to be build, all this coordinated and linked on a nationwide scale. Then it could pay for itself. Alternatively, one enormous complex of installations could produce power for the entire country, but only the biggest superpowers (US, China and Russia, maybe EU if it came into some sort of agreement) would have both budget and the need for this. It only makes sense in US, since Russia doesn't have money for this, China doesn't have the tech (and US won't sell it to them) and EU is unlikely to come into agreement over such critical, strategic thing such as an international power plant. China could try, in theory, but knowing their worksmanship, the entire thing would go up in flames, prejudicing the people against yet another amazing invention.
Smaller plants, on the other hand, could be logistically easier to build and maintain, and could be built on a national basis. That's why DEMO better chances of becoming the future of power generation than a heavy ion plant.
-
i figure assuming the eu can stay together they would have a shared power grid of some sorts. not quite sure how that would work. also i wouldn't underestimate the chinese, they can do pretty awesome things when they want to. i very much doubt that their domestic goods are as bad as their exports.
-
Just had to drop in and say fissile materials are NOT a limited resource in the traditional sense of the word. Uranium is not the only substance that can be used for nuclear fuel, and we have been able to build reactors that produce more fuel than they consume for decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
Nuclear power is the future of large-scale power generation. I have nothing against renewable energy sources like solar power, but most of them are not viable for the kind of scale we'd need to replace fossil fuels, and the delusional hippies who actually think they are are fooling themselves.
The problem with all this future power technology is that we need a new power source NOW. Waiting until we actually start running out of easily harvest-able reserves of fossil fuels is probably a bad time to start looking elsewhere. We already possess the technology to build nuclear reactors that are many times safer and much more efficient than pretty much any reactor already operation right now, considering the goddamn moron tree-huggers have stymied construction of new plants in the past few decades.
-
they are a finite resource on earth. not to say as limited as fossile fuel is. but enough so that we would have to break out of the gravity well to survive in the long term. in near term scales we have plenty of nuclear fuel, and were always developing technology that can burn the waste products of previous generation reactors.
i hope that when fusion starts to pick up we dont have the kind of hippie backlash that we had in the 70s that has stifled nuclear technology for four decades.
-
they are a finite resource on earth. not to say as limited as fossile fuel is. but enough so that we would have to break out of the gravity well to survive in the long term.
Natural uranium, yes. But we don't need it. Thorium is a much smarter alternative, especially if certain tin pot dictatorships actually want to be allowed to build nuclear reactors anytime in the next century. It's naturally more abundant than uranium.
Breeder reactors produce more fissile material than they consume. With careful engineering, we would need no fuel from outside sources to keep generating power (on top of what would be required to initiate the cycle, of course).
-
even with both thorium and uranium fuel cycles you still cant breed forever. theres that pesky third law of thermodynamics.
-
Well, but you can breed more than long enough to develop cheap hydrogen fusion alternatives. Hydrogen has one big advantage: Most of the Earth is covered with substance that has two atoms of it in each particle. And it has also enough Deuterium to support early fusion technologies long enough to get pure Hydrogen-Hydrogen plants up and running (IIRC, ITER and DEMO are both going to run on a slightly less efficient Deuterium-Tritium fusion).
-
The result of proton-proton fusion is a diproton, or He-2, which is extremely unstable and thus this is not a viable fusion reaction.
In fact, there is no way you can use only individual protons as fusion fuel - you must have SOME neutrons in the mix. However if you have extra neutrons, they will end up producing neutron flux which will irradiate and activate the materials it hits.
If you use Tritium-Deuterium fuel cycle, you can line your reactor walls with Lithium-7 which will produce tritium under neutron bombardment; this would mean the reactor would replenish its tritium from its inner walls, which would have to be replaced from time to time. Regardless, neutron flux is not exactly ideal if you want to eliminate radioactive waste products.
There are two fusion reactions that produce no neutron flux (well, to be sure there are more but these two are the easiest to accomplish): Helium-3 - Deuterium reaction, and proton-boron reaction. Of these, the former is easier to accomplish (lower optimal energy level to initiate the fusion) but the fuel is sparse (Helium-3 is rare isotope on Earth), and the latter requires about 500 times more powerful confinement to run the fusion reaction at the required, high temperature, but the fuel is practically unlimited - hydrogen is plentiful, while boron is a reasonably abundant element. The Tritium-Deuterium reaction also offers about 2500 higher energy density than proton-boron reaction...
There is a third aneutronic reaction achievable with light elements: proton-Lithium-6 reaction, but its energy yield is rather pathetic.
-
you still cant breed forever
Dekker can.
-
The result of proton-proton fusion is a diproton, or He-2, which is extremely unstable and thus this is not a viable fusion reaction.
Sorry, you're right, I confused it with proton-proton cycle, which, while indeed the most energy efficient, is a whole different can of worms (it's what powers stars, and does involve deuterium as one of the stages). While a proton-proton fusion can and does occasionally produce deuterium (that's how the cycle can work), it mostly results in a rather useless and short lived He-2 (a good thing too, since if it produced deuterium more often, the sun would've fizzled out long ago). I'm not sure if this cycle could be replicated in a reactor in a way that would be good for something, but the answer is likely "no", given the unlikelihood of getting deuterium from a proton-proton reaction.
-
If you want a proton-proton fusion plant you might as well just capture some red dwarf in a Dyson Sphere. Just sayin'.
That's about the smallest scale that it's known to work at. :P
(Helium-3 is rare isotope on Earth)
It's plentiful in SPAAAAAAACE though.
-
But we're not in space. also relevance
(http://i.imgur.com/wM0J1.png)
looking through my notes for what a Q is specifically defined as
EDIT: found it
1 Q = 10^21 Joules
1/2 Q per year = Total energy used for the world
1/10 Q per year = US total use per year
for perspective sun produces 100 Q/wk
(http://i.imgur.com/rlrPo.png)
this a bit late, but is response to any "but we're finding more oil"
-
you still cant breed forever
Dekker can.
why did i know someone was going to say that :D
-
If you want a proton-proton fusion plant you might as well just capture some red dwarf in a Dyson Sphere. Just sayin'.
That's about the smallest scale that it's known to work at. :P
While it's a great way to power an antimatter plant in science fiction, I doubt it's a viable solution to the current energy generation problems. :)
-
you still cant breed forever
Dekker can.
why did i know someone was going to say that :D
Viable Power Source? :)
-
hey dekker we want to implant some large magnets in your pecker. and we have a bunch of sluts wrapped in magnet wire. we want you to generate the power neccisary to run a small city.
-
hey dekker we want to implant some large magnets in your pecker. and we have a bunch of sluts wrapped in magnet wire. we want you to generate the power neccisary to run a small city.
Im sure with plenty of booze and takeaway all out problems would be solved
-
What's the deal with potential He3-He3 fusion? Read about it somewherez.
-
This seems like a relevant article for you. (http://www.technologyreview.com/news/408558/mining-the-moon/)
In short, it has the benefit of giving out much less radiation, but the downside is it's more difficult / less efficient, because of the increased temperature requirement. A better option might be D-3He fusion. 3He is also pretty rare on earth and would be best mined from the moon.
-
even with both thorium and uranium fuel cycles you still cant breed forever. theres that pesky third law of thermodynamics.
Indeed, but if burning the sea (seawater extraction) and burning the rocks (mining of fissionables from granite with positive EROEI) are viable, then we are talking about billions of years worth of energy. Nuclear could power humanity long after the Sun burns out.
-
What's the deal with potential He3-He3 fusion? Read about it somewherez.
In general, fusing He3 with anything is an expensive option. If we were to build a fusion powered lunar colony, then by all means, it'd be a great fuel, but on Earth it's a bit too rare. You're better off working with Deuterium.
-
even with both thorium and uranium fuel cycles you still cant breed forever. theres that pesky third law of thermodynamics.
Indeed, but if burning the sea (seawater extraction) and burning the rocks (mining of fissionables from granite with positive EROEI) are viable, then we are talking about billions of years worth of energy. Nuclear could power humanity long after the Sun burns out.
i like to think of nuclear as an interim power source to cover us till we can get fusion off the ground. its coming, its just taking longer than we though. even then nuclear reactors, especially thorium cycle reactors will still have their place, probibly for space applications (depending on which works better in zero g). for now we should focus on can haz now technologies like lftr and hif.
-
This seems like a relevant article for you. (http://www.technologyreview.com/news/408558/mining-the-moon/)
In short, it has the benefit of giving out much less radiation, but the downside is it's more difficult / less efficient, because of the increased temperature requirement. A better option might be D-3He fusion. 3He is also pretty rare on earth and would be best mined from the moon.
What's the deal with potential He3-He3 fusion? Read about it somewherez.
In general, fusing He3 with anything is an expensive option. If we were to build a fusion powered lunar colony, then by all means, it'd be a great fuel, but on Earth it's a bit too rare. You're better off working with Deuterium.
What I got from reading the article is, He3-He3 is awesome, if they can figure it out (no radiation, direct electrical production), however, they don't know how to contain it yet, and, we aren't going mining in spaaace anytime soon, so He3 fuel is a problem. So, basically, He3-He3 would be a showstopper for other forms of energy production if it ever took off, which, it's not likely to in the near future. Based on the potential, though, if we ever found an economical way to get into space...
-
this a bit late, but is response to any "but we're finding more oil"
Citations for images needed.
Data does not appear to include non-conventional shale gas reserves located in Canada (though the portion in the north-central US does appear to be listed) nor a complete representation of the bitumen located in the non-surface mined portions of the Athabascan oil sands to be recovered with SAGD, CSS, and future extraction methods to be devised.
Data also fails to account for the following: oil price goes up - technology improves - previously uneconomical deposits become economical. There are several millions of barrels of conventional oil stuck in Alberta alone (Turner Valley) which remain unextractable because they were not properly drilled when they were first exploited decades ago. The trick isn't that there isn't enough oil/natural gas or even finding it, it's getting it out of the ground.
Anyone who says we're running out of petroleum in the next several decades is selling something. Not to say we shouldn't be working toward alternative energy sources, just that the situation is nowhere near as dire as some source would have you believe.
-
even with both thorium and uranium fuel cycles you still cant breed forever. theres that pesky third law of thermodynamics.
Indeed, but if burning the sea (seawater extraction) and burning the rocks (mining of fissionables from granite with positive EROEI) are viable, then we are talking about billions of years worth of energy. Nuclear could power humanity long after the Sun burns out.
Yeah, this is what I was getting at. There are no laws of thermodynamics being violated in breeder reactors - they're simply using some of their potential output to shift around some isotopes and "breed" new nuclear fuel. One of the first operational reactors was a breeder, it's certainly not new technology by any stretch of the imagination.
Liquid fluoride thorium reactors are probably one of my favorite designs. It was first proposed in the 1960s. So far, commercial plants haven't bothered with breeder reactors for the same reason we haven't bothered replacing fossil fuels - the people in charge are morons. "Uranium is cheap ENOUGH, let's just keep using it until it runs out, then we can panic and run around like a chicken with its head cut off."
-
Note, when uranium will start getting scarce, I'm sure breeders will be built. I think they're somewhat less efficient and more expensive than normal reactors.
-
Note, when uranium will start getting scarce, I'm sure breeders will be built. I think they're somewhat less efficient and more expensive than normal reactors.
Correct. That's why they aren't commercialized already. But it's a mirror of the fossil fuel problem: the right time to invest in them and start building is now, not when uranium prices skyrocket. Hence, people in power are idiots. :banghead:
-
Note, uranium is consumed slower, so price growth will be slower, and there'll be plenty of time. I wouldn't worry about that.
-
this a bit late, but is response to any "but we're finding more oil"
Citations for images needed.
Data does not appear to include non-conventional shale gas reserves located in Canada (though the portion in the north-central US does appear to be listed) nor a complete representation of the bitumen located in the non-surface mined portions of the Athabascan oil sands to be recovered with SAGD, CSS, and future extraction methods to be devised.
Data also fails to account for the following: oil price goes up - technology improves - previously uneconomical deposits become economical. There are several millions of barrels of conventional oil stuck in Alberta alone (Turner Valley) which remain unextractable because they were not properly drilled when they were first exploited decades ago. The trick isn't that there isn't enough oil/natural gas or even finding it, it's getting it out of the ground.
Anyone who says we're running out of petroleum in the next several decades is selling something. Not to say we shouldn't be working toward alternative energy sources, just that the situation is nowhere near as dire as some source would have you believe.
Ben Brabson, Indiana University Physics department. I don't think we are running out of oil. I agree that it is a matter of being cost effective enough to get the oil out of the ground. note that the extraction rate still continues into 2100. will respond to rest/more later when I have time
-
Note, uranium is consumed slower, so price growth will be slower, and there'll be plenty of time. I wouldn't worry about that.
This is true, but there's also the bonus of the thorium fuel cycle being much more resistant to nuclear proliferation. Given the current resistance to one particular nation even having an operational nuclear reactor, it's a valid point.
Sometimes, I wonder if it's the only way the large and powerful countries will freely allow nuclear power to trickle down to the smaller and poorer countries, so to speak.
-
Note, uranium is consumed slower, so price growth will be slower, and there'll be plenty of time. I wouldn't worry about that.
I would. Things that you postpone because the deadline is so far ahead have a habit of not getting done at all until it is too late. They also tend to pile up and then you don't have the time to do any of them.
Stagnation because of "good enough for now" attitude is how we have ended up totally reliant on fossil fuels. If people had considered this earlier, maybe we would not have this awful situation where everything runs on fossil fuels and disruption in them will make everything stop. Yes, everything, because even if nuclear power produces a fair bit of the electricity in most industrial countries, the bulk is still produced by fossil fuels, especially in third world countries. Additionally, even in industrialized countries, the control power to manage peaks in energy demand is provided - usually - by coal combustion power plants. If coal runs out, the peaks cannot be balanced and the stress could at worst bring the power grid down completely.
Additionally, what do you think is used to mine and transport uranium? Fossil fuel powered vehicles are an integral part of that process.
Instead of thinking that since uranium will last for such a long time we don't need to invest in alternative nuclear power plants, we should do so as much as we can. We should research alternative power production as much as we can, and alternative nuclear power is no exception. However, unlike windmills and solar panels that the misguided environmental enthusiasts like so much, breeder reactors would provide an actually plausible solution for mass production of energy for the needs of industrial processes and needs of the general populace.
Wind mills and solar panels will most likely remain a curiosity on the energy business due to the extremely high volume needed to produce meaningful quantities of power.
Breeder reactors would be imperative in bridging the gap between fission powerplants and first/second generation fusion power plants.
If I were the dictator of the world, I would order a massive increase in fusion research, and while that problem was being properly solved instead of fiddling about with pitiful budget, I would order construction of new, high-power, high safety fission reactors (including breeder reactors) and for every megawatt of production, I would order the same amount of coal burning power plants to be shut down.
For reducing CO2 emissions, this would have the biggest effects of all the possible moves you could make. Close second would be starting to convert automotive industry from fossil fuel reliant reciprocating engines to either turbine powered hybrids, hydrogen cell powered electric cars. Engines capable of using carbon neutral fuels (such as plant oils or alcohols) could still remain in use.
I'm going to be running for the office of World Dictator in about 2025. Who's gonna vote me?
-
Hell, I'm in. You can hardly be worse than any of the criminals we have in charge right now.
-
No one will vote for you, Herra. You make too much sense.
Anyway, yeah, that's basically what I was trying to say, just a whole lot more loquacious. Being reactive instead of proactive has cost us too much already. Sure, we have plenty of uranium available, but fertile thorium is four times more abundant.
Like Herra said, clean and safe fission power is something we can do NOW. The technology already exists. The rainbow-farting, unicorn-chasing people who want the whole world to run on wind and solar power are depending too much on magical technology that always seems to be 5/10/20 years away from viability. I believe that solar power that a good supplement to large-scale generation. If every home had a solar panel to power air conditioners or water heaters or whatever, imagine the load that would take off of the power grid, even in areas that aren't necessarily the best places to generate solar power. But for commercial-level power generation, we need fission, and we need it now, not later.
A large revival of the nuclear industry and an influx of funding would mean more research into fusion power, which I believe is the be-all, end-all of power generation technology. If it's good enough for, oh, y'know, all the stars in the universe, I think it's good enough for Spaceship Earth.
-
Yes but, even the sun has to run down eventually...
-
I'm going to be running for the office of World Dictator in about 2025. Who's gonna vote me?
Herra 2025!
-
Yes but, even the sun has to run down eventually...
But! If we have fusion power, we can sustain our dwarf fortresses in the cooling Earth's crust practically indefinitely; in fact, there will be a temperature gradient between surface and core, and that alone would be enough to drive the pumps needed for our fortress to function. We will also be able to use fusion reactors for high-yield energy production for the massive ion thrusters built on the surface. These will be used to maneuver Earth around the void of cosmos, and our voyage to the Universe will finally properly start, never to end.
Seriously, though, most models seem to suggest that the Earth will be pushed outward in Solar system and will not be consumed by the expanding Sun. The Earth as a planetary body will also likely survive the nova that ends the Sun's life as a main sequence star, and it will give us a gentle push into some direction on the ecliptic. By building subterranean infrastructure, large caverns deep enough to stay intact unless something really major happens, but not so deep that they'll be cooked by the geothermal heat... you could build truly veritable networks of caverns, habitation modules, industrial facilities and power plants. It's totally feasible as a very long scale megaengineering project to build self-sustaining underground colonies. As a bonus you would have 1 g of gravity, even.
The biggest problem is storage of large enough quantities of water. The surface water will be evaporated by the increasing output of the Sun; before that happens, we must stockpile on a sufficient amount of water to sustain the planned population of humans and animals, and also to provide sufficient irrigation for the biomass of plants used for food production.
I am envisioning large, underground tanks with high-powered lights on the walls and algae inside. The algae would be the main source of oxygen, which would be directed to the ventilation systems. As long as you have energy, you can provide light for your plants, and as long as they have other nutrients they will thrive. The amount of population that the cavern system could sustain is largely dependant on these factors: energy, amount of water you have (which determines how much algae you can have producing oxygen), and the efficiency of the circulation of elements in the biosystem.
Of course, this is just my back-up plan in case all attempts at human exodus into space with colony ships fail, or if we don't manage to figure out how to go faster than light. :P
A planetary dwarf fortress would be sort of disappointment compared to spaceships and ****. But it would still be worth doing if it means you could salvage the original birthplace of humanity and maybe some day guide it on orbit around another star, and then re-terraform it, recover the ecosystem from gene pools and underground ecosystem, and re-establish human settlements.
See, this is the problem with current politicians. Their long term thinking is sorely lacking.
-
i would, except i plan to nuke everything in 2023.
-
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing
Now it's been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through
But through the eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday
-
subterranean infrastructure... networks of caverns, habitation modules, industrial facilities and power plants... self-sustaining underground colonies.
(http://i.imgur.com/c8PO7.jpg)
-
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing
Now it's been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through
But through the eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday
i prefer march or die (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYbfFGyB7-E) but i guess it all works.
-
Yes but, even the sun has to run down eventually...
Honestly I'm much more concerned with keeping humanity going for the next century or two, not worrying about what life will be like for our hyperintelligent shade of blue offspring in a billion years. :p
-
So am I. I'm just saying fusion won't be the "end-all, be-all of power generation."
-
fusion will hold us off till we get our mater-antimatter reactors working.
-
I'm pretty sure now HerraTohtori will come charging in to say matter-antimatter is hugely inefficient and say why that is in a multi-paragraph demonstration of his superior physics skills.
-
fusion will hold us off till we get our mater-antimatter reactors working.
Anything beyond fusion for primary generation is going to require some seriously exotic physics. Maybe something involving black holes, splitting of photons, or potentially stealing zero-point energy (note: nobody really has even half a clue how to do any of that).
Anti-matter is great for fuel and munitions, however.