What would be the best source of energy?

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Oil is running out;
coal is dirty
nuclear has disopsal issues
hydro causes huge environmental damage
solar is expensive
wind takes big chucks of land


There’s options out there....what do you think is the best?

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continuing from the other page.. DEMAND cannot be reduced


watch the movie “The Inconvenient Truth” by AL Gore.. carbon emissions are directly proportional to EARTH HUMAN POPULATION LEVELS

it took us 2,000,000 years to become THREE BILLION

it took us 50 years to double to SIX BILLION

in another 50 we MAY double to TWELVE BILLION


Solar .. wind.. and i swear by these .. mark my words, no other option, discovered yet can be ZERO CARBON and renewable like these ..


solar power shall no longer be very expensive.. and once mass production begins.. no looking back


wind energy can be generated on the world’s deserts or even coastlines or mountain ranges.. which wont affect humans/animals/tree cover ..


but the question is .. WILL MAN SEE THE LIGHT ?

Last edited 15 Sep 2007 05:42 pm by THE_PAIN

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Mmmm...that makes me wonder...can the human population really keep growing? I mean, do you think maybe the planet just might have a human population limit?


I of course go for the “green” power as well, but even a really seemingly good idea like wind power can have some major consequences (especially large wind farms).
Almost anywhere you put them you’re going to be disrupting bird migration.
And since the world isn’t exactly sharing power right now, what do those countries do who don’t have great wind locations?

And on a slight tangent of that...what about countries that can’t afford wind or solar technologies? It may be becoming cheaper but not that cheap.

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i believe its 8-12 billion. the earths population limit.

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you believe, or you heard that number somewhere?

I think it’s almost impossible to calculate how many people the earth could sustain, and theres a big difference between just havening a lot of people alive vs. living “well”.
Humans are such an anomaly on this planet...

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i heard a number last year in bio from my teacher, and i think its somewhere around there, but i’m not sure.

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fusion energy

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fusion? mmmmmmm...don’t know much about that, except that it’s still very much in development?

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I think hydrogen is a smart choice.

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Well electric and solar energy are probably the way to go. Maybe some tie ins with hydrogen and wind.

But all of those would be here now and work amazing if we’d spend a little time in researching it and making better stuff out of it. We could have had all of that and have been using less fossil fuels but instead we went the lazy route and says we won’t worry about it until its an emergency.

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no its not


Hydrogen Production Methods

# 1 From hydrocarbons

* 1.1 Steam reforming
* 1.2 Carbon monoxide
* 1.3 Coal

# 2 From water

* 2.1 Biological production
* 2.2 Electrolysis
* 2.3 Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting
* 2.4 High-temperature electrolysis (HTE)
* 2.5 Thermochemical production




NONE of them are zero carbon or even half as clean as solar/wind energy

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I think u have it wrong
In simple terms,
fusion energy uses H isotopes,
when 2 deuterium atoms and 1 tritium atom are fused they let go of high amounts of energy and He4 atoms (a none radioactive helium isotope)
now deuterium is very abundant in earth’s oceans and so is tritium (this one however is radioactive) so we have plenty of fuel, so far there are 3 “ways” to contain the plasma but the one most accepted one are magnetic fields
a magnetic field would be capable of containing the plasma created so afterwards it can be used to create steam or use it directly to produce electricity
But containing plasma is like trying to sit on a balloon, it will eventually escape
This tech however is at least 30 years into the future
but if fully mastered it will solve all the energy issues on earth
Although, the waste will end up radioactive due to the large flux of high-energy neutrons still the waste’s radioactive life is very short, even shorter that those from fission energy

any questions?

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Ummm...yes.

What are the environmental consequences of using fusion power?
Obviously we have some radioactive waste going on (not a big fan...and how short is short?).
What about extracting the deuterium and tritium?
How big do the facilities have to be to produce the reaction and in turn the power?\
Anything else I missed?

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There’s no radioactive waste from Fusion.

However, the things tend to use more energy than they emit, so until someone creates a super-efficient one, it’s just part of the problem.

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Lol, ok, now I’m confused

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They create helium. That’s the only by-product.

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well remaining neutrons become higly unstable
and when coming in contact with human cells or animal cells these cells r damaged for the impact these neutrons make on them
I don’t know the exact life time the waste has so I can’t answer that
but helium4 is not radioactive
in fact is the helium in the atmosphere

and yes it does take more energy to produce
but again this has not been acomplished
although if acomplished it will be a high and safe energy source

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It takes a lot of energy to start fusion, but if you can keep it going without going out of control, you get massive amounts of energy, for little cost. The hard parts are harnessing the energy and keeping the reaction going.

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Hydrogen is a way of storing energy, not producing it. I agree that storing energy from other production methods in hydrogen is a good idea though.

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I’d go with solar and wind power definetly. Least harmful, most renewable and cleanest, but it’s not going to happen right away. I think in the meantime that if we burned all our fossil fuels in large power plants and turned that energy into electricity which would in turn be used in homes and at hydrolysis centers for the production of hydrogen, we could lower pollution. We would just process the exhaust from the power plants leaving as little pollution as possible. Meanwhile hydrogen would be used to power our cars. That way, instead of having many cars that don’t have the means of removing pollutants from their exhaust, you have stationary plants that can afford to have a large filtration system attached as they wouldn’t need to lug it around with them.