As technology advances, the need to power that technology increases. This is becoming more concerning as we're running out of our chief energy resource: oil.
Now, of course, it's not possible to for any energy source to last forever. Delta S > 0. Even the stars will die. But, hey, a billion year fix is better than a hundred year one.
So, what other options are there? What will keep our technological society chugging along?
Well, there's ethanol.The idea makes sense. By far, the best solar cells known to man are contained in plants. Chlorophyll converts the energy of sunlight into the more storable and transportable form of sugar. Then we can process that sugar and make fuel we can run our cars off of. The problem is, raising crops isn't that easy, and requires us to put our own energy into it, in the form of fertilizers, harvesters, etc. That's true of any means of acquiring energy, but in this case, we put in more than we get out. Ethanol isn't feasible as an energy source even on a short term basis.
There's coal and natural gas. There's still plenty of that left, at least compared to oil. But that's hard to get out of the ground, and it's horribly polluting.
And then there's the nuclear option. Although nuclear power plants have their dangers, most of them are exaggerated. While there is the possibility of a meltdown, modern nuclear power plants are extremely well shielded. You wouldn't be exposed to significantly more radiation standing right outside of a nuclear power plant that was melting down than you would anywhere else. And nuclear power plants are well protected against external threats as well.
The only real concern about nuclear fission is the waste. Radioactive waste will stay radioactive for millions of years. What do you do with it? Right now, our best solution is to bury it deep under mountains. But that's not terribly secure. I haven't seen these ideas anywhere else, and they're probably not feasible, but the best I can think of is to either bury them deep under a subduction zone or launch it into space.
But anything we do now, is really just tiding us over until we can harness the power of the sun directly, either with extremely high efficiency solar panels, or fusion power plants.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Here is a fusion project you might not have heard about:
Bussard Fusion Reactor
Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion
It has been funded:
Bussard Reactor Funded
I have inside info that is very reliable and multiply confirmed that validates the above story. I am not at liberty to say more. Expect a public announcement from the Navy in the coming weeks.
The above reactor can burn Deuterium which is very abundant and produces lots of neutrons or it can burn a mixture of Hydrogen and Boron 11 which does not.
The implication of it is that we will know in 6 to 9 months if the small reactors of that design are feasible.
If they are we could have fusion plants generating electricity in 10 years or less depending on how much we want to spend to compress the time frame. A much better investment that CO2 sequestration.
BTW Bussard is not the only thing going on in IEC. There are a few government programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory, MIT, the University of Wisconsin and at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana among others.
Actually, oil is not in short supply. What is in short supply is the oil that we are able to get to with current technology. Right now, the drilling techniques we use require large pockets of oil in a single space in order for us to pull it out from underground. There is actually something called shole oil (not sure on the spelling of that, but it is phonetically correct) which is oil spread very thin over a very large area. The current estimate is that there is enough of this oil under Arizona and Colorado to supply America with oil for thirty years. We just can't get to it yet. Thats the problem. I do agree that some other method of energy does need to be found, because eventually oil will run out. It's just not quite as soon as you think.
I see your point, and I agree with it. I read somewhere (probably Popular Science) that in 50 years or so our world’s main problem won’t be worrying about poverty or global warming, but that we’ll be in an “Energy Crisis”. If we don’t unlock the secret of fusion or harness some new technology soon, we really will be in a problem.
It’s very interesting trying to think of what the world would be like if energy wasn’t as accessible as it is today. We take advantage of energy, though we still pay for it, it really isn’t much of a problem. But a world living with a shortage of energy is almost inconceivable. For the sake of mankind I hope we’re able to think of something before it gets to that. Cold fusion, they say, is within a couple decades away, and there have already been breakthroughs with solar panel technology, so at least we have something to look forward to.
The beginning of your article makes it appear that we get most of our power for electronics from oil. Yes we do use a lot of oil for cars, but that is not relevant to my computer needing more power. I believe most power that goes to ones house is from power. I think the best solution is wind, solar, and nuclear. Wind and solar are more friendly and abundant, the problem is that they take a lot of space.
Finaly some legislation that talks of Charcoal sequestration in the soil, Please contact your represenative about how important it is to get this into the farm bill!!
S.1884 – The Salazar Harvesting Energy Act of 2007
A Summary of Biochar Provisions in S.1884:
Carbon-Negative Biomass Energy and Soil Quality Initiative
for the 2007 Farm Bill
http://www.biochar-international.org/newinformationevents/newlegislation.html
Post a Comment