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| sak |
 Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 2:13 pm Post subject: Safe power generation |
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Forum Sophomore
Joined: 21 Sep 2007
Posts: 131
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What could be tomorrows’ (perhaps even today’s) power solution
Sun?
Wind?
Geothermal?
Tide?
Fission?
Fusion? |
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| Ophiolite |
| Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 2:56 pm Post subject: |
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Forum Radioactive Isotope
Joined: 25 Jul 2005
Posts: 4632
Location: Scotland
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No method of generating power is inherently safe. Here are a few random examples of the dangers.
Solar Energy:
Maximum value in very sunny locations. Service engineers run increased risk of skin cancer.
Wind Energy:
Wind turbines kill substantial numbers of birds.
The concrete for their foundations adds significant amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
Geothermal:
Drilling holes in the ground is a risky business with an associated death rate.
Tide:
Apart from disrupting the ecology of estuaries, maintenance engineers are put at risk when constructing or servicing the equipment.
Fission:
Chernobyl, Windscale, Three Mile Island. Should I continue?
Fusion:
I'll leave this one as 'an exercise for the student'.
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| mitchellmckain |
| Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 3:17 pm Post subject: |
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Forum Professor
Joined: 06 Oct 2005
Posts: 1888
Location: Salt Lake City, UTAH, USA
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| Ophiolite wrote: |
Fusion:
I'll leave this one as 'an exercise for the student'. |
The only fusion power we have is the same as solar energy.
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| Ophiolite |
| Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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Forum Radioactive Isotope
Joined: 25 Jul 2005
Posts: 4632
Location: Scotland
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At the moment.
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The Universe is not only weirder than we imagine it is weirder than we can imagine. J.B.S.Haldane. |
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| William McCormick |
| Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 3:50 pm Post subject: |
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Forum Professor
Joined: 03 Apr 2008
Posts: 1119
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| mitchellmckain wrote: |
| Ophiolite wrote: |
Fusion:
I'll leave this one as 'an exercise for the student'. |
The only fusion power we have is the same as solar energy. |
We have perpetual motion, however you need to monitor it constantly. It is really not the ideal thing to power your home. Unless we created a safe standard system, with some kind of remote monitoring.
And perhaps a common grid/ground, neutral, to absorb high voltage spikes created with ARC accidents. These ARC accidents without a common grid or ground, could create some serious damage to household equipment.
Sincerely,
William McCormick
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Warning: Any information contained in this post could be part of a conspiracy to make you stupid. So only use it if you understand it. Use at your own risk.
http://www.Rockwelder.com |
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| Cold Fusion |
| Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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Forum Ph.D.
Joined: 10 Apr 2007
Posts: 759
Location: In the circuitous haze of my mind
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NM
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Forget all that you know, achievements can only be accomplished by starting from nothing and selectively applying facts that are purely objective and absolutely necessary.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence"
-Einstein
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php
Use your computing strength for science!
Last edited by Cold Fusion on Tue May 06, 2008 4:36 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| bit4bit |
| Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 4:29 pm Post subject: |
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Forum Ph.D.
Joined: 14 Jul 2007
Posts: 623
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| Ophiolite wrote: |
Fusion:
I'll leave this one as 'an exercise for the student'. |
Fusion actuially has very little dangers compared to other sources. For example, a fusion reactor unlike a fission reactor cannot go into meltdown, since you only need a little fuel reacting at any given time. Also the problem of radiation is much less than a fission reactor, so long term waste storage isnt an issue. The only disadvantage really, is that the cost of the materials makes it extremely expensive, so it doesn't work out economically. Probably solar/tidal/hydro energy will be used more, until fusion becomes cheap enough. (alot of sources I've read give estimates of about 20-30 years)
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The only fusion power we have is the same as solar energy. |
Well JET has already seen good results from containing, maintaining, and extracting energy from fusion power, and now the worldwide project of ITER is slowly moving forward. They not long ago announced the location in the south of France. The engineers involved estimate its output to be about 400MW for 40MW of input energy, and its going to be the biggest built so far.
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We have perpetual motion, however you need to monitor it constantly. It is really not the ideal thing to power your home. Unless we created a safe standard system, with some kind of remote monitoring.
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So why do we have an energy crisis, if we have perpetual motion??
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Chance favours the prepared mind. |
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| Pong |
| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 12:08 am Post subject: Re: Safe power generation |
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Forum Professor
Joined: 08 Apr 2008
Posts: 1263
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| sak wrote: |
Sun?
Wind?
Geothermal?
Tide?
Fission?
Fusion? |
You forgot my favorite: hydro. The hydro vs. solar argument I like to give, is that hydro is the end product of natural solar panels covering most of the globe - oceans! - and energy collectors ready-made for us - rivers! All that power channeled through a point, it's too good. How can photovoltaic toys compete with seas and mountains? |
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| Dishmaster |
| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 12:57 am Post subject: |
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Forum Junior
Joined: 30 Apr 2008
Posts: 258
Location: Heidelberg, Germany
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Perpetual motion? Huh? What's that? Perpetuum mobile?
You forgot mention "increased efficiency" as another important contributer. If you increase the efficiency of generating electricity and heat, you can gain already a lot. Also improving insulation helps quite a bit for heating. I think that a decentralised production of electricity and heat is very promising, because lots is wasted by transporting it from the large production centres to the consumers.
Solar power can be used in many different ways. Not only the solar collectors (for generating electricity or heating water) are constantly being improved, but also solar turbines are very efficient and can even be used in not so sunny regions. Here, the sun is reflected and focused via a number of mirrors to a reaction chamber, where water is heated up and evaporated. These mirrors even track the motion of the sun. Here is an example: http://www-stud.fht-esslingen.de/projects/alt_energy/sol_thermal/powertower.html |
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| Pong |
| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 1:27 am Post subject: |
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Forum Professor
Joined: 08 Apr 2008
Posts: 1263
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| Dishmaster wrote: |
| You forgot mention "increased efficiency" as another important contributer. |
Excellent point. |
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| sak |
| Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 10:28 am Post subject: Re: Safe power generation |
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Forum Sophomore
Joined: 21 Sep 2007
Posts: 131
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[quote="Pong]
You forgot my favorite: hydro. ... ... [/quote]Reservoir eat into square kilometers of forest. May be H2 would! |
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| Pong |
| Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 9:27 pm Post subject: |
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Forum Professor
Joined: 08 Apr 2008
Posts: 1263
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It's true. But another alpine lake hardly seems an imposition on nature.  Where I live (Rocky Mountains) there are lakes galore, and waterfalls... then we build the dam and fish ladder, so everybody wins.
There are activists who work to stop these projects. They protest the destruction of ecosystems. Chained to trees and "STOP DROWNING BEAR CUBS" and so forth. So to meet power demand the government sneaks in gas fired plants amid agricultural sprawl, and there are no protests. Crazy huh?
At this rate we'll be buying power off the American grid, blissfully oblivious to the source of power, so long as it's cheap and doesn't sully our pristine wilderness. |
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| Ihatetrollz |
| Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 10:46 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 08 May 2008
Posts: 22
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| UKDutyPaid |
| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 9:40 am Post subject: |
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Forum Freshman
Joined: 13 Nov 2007
Posts: 79
Location: London
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I vote for more of these awsome looking solar power stations:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6616651.stm
Be interesting to see what would happen to the global economy and politics if a bunch of the worlds poorest, yet sunniest, countries produced power for export... |
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| Harold14370 |
| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 3:20 pm Post subject: |
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Forum Professor
Joined: 13 Apr 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: Pennsylvania
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| UKDutyPaid wrote: |
I vote for more of these awsome looking solar power stations:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6616651.stm
Be interesting to see what would happen to the global economy and politics if a bunch of the worlds poorest, yet sunniest, countries produced power for export... |
Eleven megawatts. I am underwhelmed. |
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