Let them eat radioactive charcoal (Page 2 of 2)

Hkelukka, I stand corrected on the fission/fusion confusion- it was indeed me that had them backwards.

Also I had no intention of coming across as patronizing you or anyone else.

You have valid arguments here, as well as I and other contributors do.

I do see the current system as wasteful and obsolete, that is only my opinion.

Like Pictus, I am trying to envision other ways to acheive common goals, while I do kinda have that ever present nightmare scenario in the back of my mind.

This debate got hotter than I anticipated.

I only meant for this thead to be some food for thought, and a remembrance for the victims of Chernobyl.

I appreciate everyone's input equally, even if I don't agree with all the views....

I wish the average Joe had a say in this stuff, sadly we don't- and probably never will, so I suppose this thread is ultimately irrelevant and
yes, redundant.

More mental waste.......    J

PS I don't really believe that.

Cortex. Good, then there is no problem. Anyway tis not even hot Simple differences of opinion that if digged deeper would probably generate alot of heat. But there is very little heat at the moment.  I also apologise if i came off as too agressive.

I see the system as wasteful and obsolete as well. That said, it depends on what you view as your goal, if your goal is to get to the end of the journy then what ever is not neccesary for that end is wasteful. But if waste is what the current situation is striving for then it is not wasteful. So the problem is not with being wasteful, but having such a society that the only way we could run it is by being wasteful as too much efficiency would lead to unemployment and through that, deep troubles for the society. We need a shift in the focus of society before we can optimise because the redundancy is the only way alot of normal workers can live and get paid.

LightningEye

The radioactivity isnt on the plane but when you get high enough into the atmosphere certain radioactive particles have an easier time in getting to. If there is a big solar flare while you are flying you can get 100 times the radioation you get in a normal chest X ray. Even if that does not happen the radioation in most flights is slightly higher than if you stand outside of your house.

Fusion cant be used at the moment because they are not yet at a point where it is anywhere near efficient enough. It costs alot, meaning that it requires many engineers and physicans to work on it, which if put to work on another form of power generation would accomplish more. Even if we put all the engineers to build fusion plants the return for the power invested in starting the reaction is very small at the moment. At the moment it is not really possible to build fusion power, but research into this field is progressing at such a rate that in 20-50 years the return for power invested versus power generated will reach such a point that building them will be smart (if it costs several billion dollars at the minimum and you only generate 1 mv/h, then its not really smart as you would have to fill the planet with such generators. Ofcourse this is an exaggeration but not by much)

Geothermal depends on proper settings for the heat to be generated. This already works in iceland due to the immense ground heat generated. But anywhere else you would have to dig a really deep hole or find other ways to use the heat that emenates from the planet. This is also very ecologically damaging because it requires you to mess with groundwater and under layers in the earth. I wouldnt advice this in places that dont have alot of geothermal heat generation normally (like iceland)

Wind is not good for large scale because the power cant be stored anywhere very easily and if the wind stops blowing for a moment the powergrid could be in serious problems. Wind without backups can do 2-5% of normal powergrid, beyond that you need some way to store the power long term and be able to retrieve it. One of these ways is hydrogen. Meaning that you use the power from the wind power plant to form an electrolysis in water and collect the hydrogen generated and stick it in some huge tanks and then use fuelcells or similar to then convert the hydrogen into electricity. Would require alot of hard work to get working properly and would still be relatively unstable. Tho this definetly has its place in some coastlines and other very windy places.

Solar is good in its own right, and should already be used far more than it is used. By for example, making the roof paneling of houses from solar panels and in some cases windows a well. Then having such houses have their own batteries that are connected to the powergrid. So that when they generate power but dont use it, it is stored in the battery until it is full and then it is redirected If possible, back into the powergrid itself. Tho not possible in most places, just storing it in a battery would be enough. Then when they start to use power it would first empty the battery and then start to draw from the powergrid. The downside with this would be the fact that most powerplants would still have to be kept running becaus of the non-steady powerconsumption, there could be times when the sun shines alot and people dont need alot of power. But powering down powerplants is not a good idea because starting them again takes alot of fuel. So they would have to be kept on a "low run mode" but overall it would have a serious impact on power consumption and be a very good idea.

And tidal is also a good alternative. Meaning that you take something along the lines of a wind powerplant underwater in a place where the tide always goes in and out. Like placing a weight on a wind powerplant so it sinks to a certain depth and then putting it in the gulf stream and anchoring it to the bottom and having a powercable lead to a surface. This is highly experimental at the moment but definetly worth the effort due to the very low expenses. However, at the moment is along the lines of wind power, unless we can find a place relatively close to the people that need the elecrticity that has a steady current that runs the same way through the day, it will still have the same problems as with wind power. One such place would be any the fjords in norway or some other such place through the world.  There is another way, in simply anchoring a ball to the bottom of the sea and everytime this ball goes up or down the there is a wheel on the inside that spins because the rope that connectes it to the bottom is pulled on. Its a bit of a difficult concept to think of but it actually worked for a while. Until they stopped working because for some reason the connection between the ball and the ground breaks really really easily or some such. This could be a good idea but it would require large areas where the sea isnt too deep and gets wavy alot.

Different alternative powersources such as these SHOULD be used wherever possible beause they are truly renevable. Thats why iceland is such a good example, they use a geothermal because it is natural for them to. It probably wouldnt be too natural to power NY with geothermal, not to mention, smart, because it would require immense amount of space and time to build. (talking, decades) But even if all of these powersources are taken to the max of what they have to offer we still need to have powerplants Because having all your eggs in one basket invites disaster. And the powergeneration ability of these powersources really isnt large enough to power the entire earth

There are a plenty of powersources that are up and coming. But even if fusion was made feasible at this very moment, it is probable that it would take a century or so until our powergeneration was fusion based completely. In the meantime we need as clean a way to generate power that is also stable. Coal and oil to me are very very bad ideas because of the huge amount of particles and pollution they produce. Tho they can be refined by putting very strict pollution quotas on them. And as such they are a good option if we can get them to clean up their act. Nuclear is also good because it dosnt generate any microparticles which can cause cancer in your lungs like burning coal and oil does. Tho the downside is the waste, that can however already be used in such a way that it is reduced to heavy metals that are not anymore dangerous than most. The possibility of meltdown is still there and should be taken seriously, one way to address this issue is to place nuclear powerplants away from population centers and having a ready responpse plan for all population centers on what do in the event of a nuclear meltdown. I read alot of articles about this topic because there is a nuclear powerplant very close to finland (100 miles or so. less infact i think) that is built like chernobyl. And even the greens in finland agree that if it blows up and we react with the best possible efficiency and contain people in their homes and supply them with iodine and encourage them to stay indoors for a while and make sure the radiation fallout dosnt get into the water reservoirs the death rate is at around 20(to million) immidiatly and a few thousand more later of cancers.

Ofcourse the same study said that if we dont do anything and our response is like the russians had during the chernobyl then the deaths would be in the 100 or 1000 range.

Put that in comparison with how many people die because of not taking care of their health and improper food, suicides, heart diseases, everything that could be prevented with less effort. The deaths caused by nuclear power are miniscule in comparison. And the fact is that the more energy we expend on fighting for electricity, the less energy we will spend on feeding the poor. A weird example but it actually is true once you realise what money is.

Money is simply concentrated effort. When you make an effort you recieve money in exchange. Money is energy made manifest. your physical drive or energy made manifest into a form you can then exchange for something you need. So if society has X amount of money, then it means they also have X amount of effort they can put into upkeep of their society so if they expend X - 1 on something they only have 1 unit of effort left to spend on something else. That is why what it costs is actually a very valid question because if the cost is so astronomical for something, it simply means it requires an immense amount of effort to build and that means that the effort used to build it is away from something else. It is only with the invention of capitalism that this trend became twisted because it is no longer usefull to have all that many people working. But that is another topic.