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Post by austkyzor on Apr 9, 2011 1:18:41 GMT -5
What about hydro power using the water currents of rivers, tides and waves of the ocean to produce power with absolutely no polution of anykind the only down side of that is the loss of land that will go under water (dams) and cost to build (will save my counter arguments for all downsides for there own paragraph so I don't have to repeat my self) Strap a generator to the ocean floor or even the floor of an lake and it can either be on the surface and use the waves or be under water and make use of the tides. downsides: minimal land loss only a few square inches to bolt it down and and money it wont disrupt any life there if anything it will help it cause it will act as an artificial reef Hydro power destroys aquatic ecosystems and they've yet to produce a viable alternative hydroelectric plant that does not do so. Trent's campus has three experimental water turbines trying to figure this out. That and you need very specific conditions for it to be viable (basically it needs to be near a volcano). Uses more energy then it produces Mostly because every truely green energy source takes up way too much space. You can only harnass 57% of wind's energy - it would take about 4000 wind turbines to power New York City alone I can't find any good information about solar plants in terms of how much they produce in comparison to how much a city uses on average (more often they're projected for home use) - but they DO take up massive amounts of space Nuclear energy is the only non-poluting (the only pollution it produces is heat, so, technically non-carbon-emitting) reliable, and efficient producer of electricity. If every new reactor was a CANDU reactor, it'd be renewable to a degree as well Because, contrary to your belief, economics doesn't work that way. Money is only as good as the resources behind it. You can't just print money - Germany tried that and it's economy went so far down the hole that Hitler was elected Chancellor And all the unpopulated areas are unpopulated for a reason. No good in Russia - too cold, windy, and dark. No good in Austrualia - the Outback is called an inhospitable wasteland for a reason. No good in Canada - it's called The Untouchable Frontier for a reason. China's too crowded, Africa is too unstable, and South America is too violent.
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Post by Ryan on Apr 9, 2011 4:41:54 GMT -5
Solar power is the most efficient. We actually did the calculation in class. The US uses aproximately 15 Quads of energy per year or 500GW per year. Direct Solar Irradiance is 300W/m^2 so that means to generate enough electricity to power the US we would need
500*10^9 W / (300W/m^2) /(20% efficiency of solar panels) = 8.3*10^9 m^2 of solar panels. with direct solar irradiance (I.e. a desert). This is 8300 km^2 or 2.8% of the land area of arizona.
So no - green energy is not too land intensive.
Even though you don't get sun at night, this would still provide a huge amount of energy during the day, which means that we would drastically reduce the impact of other energy sources.
Oh - and that's solar panels with 20% efficiency, which is the current market average. The theoretical solar cell efficiency is 29%. So a little more funding for research and we could get considerably closer and require much less land space.
On a complete side note to the above, you can't really complain about destroying ecosystems with fuel alternatives, especially since every fuel alternative affects the current ecosystem. In even the most simple terms, all fuel sources require land which would disrupt an ecosystem. In addition, mining for fuel for nuclear power will disrupt more ecosystems than hydro power, farming bio fuels will affect vast land areas and the ecosystems originally there, geothermal will create a thermal vent and affect the surrounding ecosystems, and wind turbines affect migration of birds which in turn are part of an ecosystem. There is no energy source that will not affect an ecosystem, so basing arguments on that - is somewhat silly. If you want energy to come from something other than your own food, then you should probably expect that an ecosystem will be destroyed and or changed so that you can have that energy.
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Post by Alex on Apr 9, 2011 5:28:08 GMT -5
Er... 2.8% of Arizona is a lot of land.
I really support hydropower. It could destroy aquatic ecosystems, but if we focus on using it, we will find a way around this.
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ryan
Moon
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Post by ryan on Apr 9, 2011 11:19:07 GMT -5
hmm well algae power is possible...i dont know much about it though
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Post by Ryan on Apr 9, 2011 11:34:03 GMT -5
2.8% of Arizona to supply power to America indefinitely is not a lot of land Alex. It's .06% of the US land to provide energy to 100% of the US. That's not a lot.
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Post by austkyzor on Apr 9, 2011 11:40:04 GMT -5
It kinda isn't silly to focus on how a hydro plant affects an aquatic ecosystem considering that we use said ecosystems for food The plants heat the water, cut off sections of rivers, and basically make it almost devoid of life - paving the way for jellyfish to take over (remember: according to The Discovery Channel, Jellyfish are the new Terrorists)
Not to mention that A 3rd of the endangered and threatened species rely on flood plains for food - floodplains which don't flood in the presence of a dam
Also, 1 nuclear plant with CANDU reactors is capable of producing an average of 15-25 TWh in a year. Still not sustainable - nobody's arguing that it is - but for how much energy it produces vs how much it takes in terms of resources, it's probably the best we can do until we find a sustainable solution that doesn't affect the environment, doesn't take up a large amount of space, and produces more energy then a fission reactor.
Like I said - if we develop a working fusion reactor, or if the world unites to build space elevators that problem will be solved. Fusion reactors need hydrogen, which the Earth is full of (the Sun will die before Earth ever comes close to running out) - it just a matter of creating a reaction that lasts longer then 10 seconds, and then harnasing the heat it produces Space Elevators would be a matter of building a large geo-sync'd space station (or 2) in high Earth orbit, both with massive solar panels to harnass as much solar energy as they can, and having both teathered to Earth so that we can build around it. The teather would transport the energy from the station to Earth. There's more to it then that - but I'm paraphrasing my friend who's paraphrasing a physics major.
As it stands now though, our Grandchildren will be able to work off of Nuclear power. Not to say that we shouldn't find something better - but all power generating plans have major problems at this point.
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Post by 4iner on Apr 9, 2011 13:29:39 GMT -5
From the other tread thats about LFTR... I don't know about wind power, but solar power simply costs a lot more than other energy sources. We need time before we can get the price down, and LFTR will provide that time.
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Post by Ryan on Apr 9, 2011 14:32:02 GMT -5
Coal energy costs the US 500 billion a year. Solar energy as I described above would cost 8.3 trillion just from the cost of the cells. In 17 years it paid for itself. Also the energy I described above would replace not only coal - but wind, hydro, and nuclear. So not even factoring those costs in - it's still pretty cost effective. (A CANDU reactor costs roughly $14.4 to build and house the most powerful CANDU reactor I could find had a power of 881 MWe. To meet US energy demands we would need 500,000/881 = 568 CANDU reactors = 8.127 trillion dollars, and we'd have to replace the cores every 25 years, and it's unsustainable)
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Post by austkyzor on Apr 9, 2011 16:27:50 GMT -5
The only problem with solar is you need a large amount of space, and there are limited areas with enough sunlight to offset the energy waste when there isn't enough sunlight.
I agree that solar energy is our best bet - the only problem is that the technology isn't advanced enough that we can set up a solar farm in any open area and have them produce more then they consume.
Nobody's arguing against you - at least, I'm not - but I keep saying that we can't just transition straight to the high-maintanence, limited area, space-taking, panels that only run at 40% efficiency. Which is why I was suggesting that as a transitional phase we all go nuclear to stop polluting the air and so that the energy demands can be met while humanity transitions to solar power. In that transition phase the scientific development of solar energy can be researched properly, with less stress on the need to improve is faster.
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Quinn
Star
[AWD:191c07]
The eye of compromise.
Posts: 580
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Post by Quinn on Apr 9, 2011 16:42:30 GMT -5
Nuclear power is safe as long as every regulation is made and the plants are well maintained and made in USA.
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Post by austkyzor on Apr 9, 2011 17:12:59 GMT -5
Nuclear power is safe as long as every regulation is made and the plants are well maintained and made in USA. How's Three Mile Island goin' for ya? All new Canadian reactors are more efficient, recycle uranium and other fuel materials as well, produce more energy, and less waste And at a cheaper cost too
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Post by Insane_Zang on Apr 9, 2011 18:21:32 GMT -5
Nuclear power is safe as long as every regulation is made and the plants are well maintained and made in USA. lolno
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Post by Alex on Apr 9, 2011 18:55:59 GMT -5
Now you're calling Quinn an idiot? It's just a debate about Nuclear Energy, calm yoself.
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Post by Ryan on Apr 9, 2011 20:01:02 GMT -5
Going all nuclear is nearly as cost intensive as all solar - that was one of the points of my post. Incorporating several DIFFERENT sustainable energies would be our best bet. Offsetting all of our coal by a mix of hydro - wind - and solar energy and for larger more energy consumptive areas using nuclear we would be able to more efficiently transition away from pollutant energies such as coal. A straight transition from 1 energy source to only 1 other will not solve many problems, just delay them - and in the long run be far more cost intensive.
I don't think that anyone would argue that in 1000 years if humans still inhabit the planet, our primary energy source will be solar (or fusion since hydrogen/helium fusion produces the exact same form of energy as solar). But we should be looking at efficient paths to get there instead of the easiest current option.
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Post by austkyzor on Apr 9, 2011 20:05:01 GMT -5
Now you're calling Quinn an idiot? It's just a debate about Nuclear Energy, calm yoself. Did I do that? My computer must have regressed back to when we used to argue with rialvestro - fix'd
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Quinn
Star
[AWD:191c07]
The eye of compromise.
Posts: 580
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Post by Quinn on Apr 15, 2011 9:50:18 GMT -5
All of the toasters and (original) Xbox's in my house are powered by nuclear plants... and that seems to work out pretty well.
WHatever, I really shouldn't debate here... I don't know much about Nukes that wasn't taught in my 6th grade Science class ;p)
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