James Dahl wrote:I'm a peak oil guy and a dollar crisis guy, which makes me a conspiracy theorist I guess lol, even though it's not a conspiracy and involves openly available information <_<
We already have the technology to switch to alternative energy, we don't need to resort to coal. Coal exhaust isn't just dirty, it's radioactive. We have the technology to make the switch to solar for all our energy, it'll just be profoundly expensive.
Nuclear is a decent option but it's horribly expensive and we don't really have a good answer to nuclear waste or nuclear accidents. We have the technology to harness nuclear power but we can't *really* control it. We don't have force fields or some shit like that where if something goes horribly wrong we can't contain the reacting nuclear materials or stop them from melting through the reactor floor.
I am unaware of this revolutionary solar technology!
Last time i checked solar was not energy dense enough, even in the middle of the atacama desert you would not be able to match the efficiency of thermal plants like gas or oil and coal. and what about somewhere like the pacific northwest?
The bigger problem is transmission of all that power to where its needed,
theoretically papering a small part of the sahara could provide electricity for a large part of europe, but no technology exists to transmit that much power efficiencty, yet, and we are decades away from room temperature super conductors and it is strongly hinted that manufacturing that would require zero gravity.
When i suggested coal to liqueds, i was thinking practically, lets assume peak oil is real and the major G-20 economies agree its a threat, this is the only option open to them.
The technology is mature and ready today, its a matter of throwing money and mass producing modular parts for the coal to liqued plants and the 3rd generation and 4rth generation nuclear plants.
They can do this in 10 years.
Depending on how efficient and well planned the move is, it will be no worse than WW2 UK economy, with food rationining in the advanced economies and famine in the third world, followed by an economic boom as all that industrial production and energy comes into line.
as for nuclear, i suggest you read up on nuclear plants, even wikipedia will be enough to get an idea.
for example Fukishima is a boiling water plant a close relative of the presurized light water plant the most popular type of reactor.
both are late 1940's designs, and fukushima was built in 1970, already obsolete and unsafe.
and both pressurized water and boiling water reactors are actually the worst design you can have in terms of saftey and efficiency
they were built first and made popular because the US navy had experience with high pressure turbines and pressure vessels and Admiral Rickover needed to built a reactor quickly for submarine use.
When people wanted to build commercial reactors they went for the cheaper option of using an exisiting design(n PWR which are crap) instead of starting from scratch..
so you see its all a bad accident.
3rd generation plants are 2nd generation plants that are more efficient and have allot of safety features.
e.g the new Korean plants for the UAE, KEPCO's AR-1400's are some of the safest in the world, and nearly meltdown proof.
Fukishima or even long mile island type accidents are very difficult due to the design.
now 4rth generation like high temperature molten salts, are meltdown proof.
infact you can bomb a working reactor and still have no meltdown and very little radiation leaks.
The hippie anti-nulcear folks have not kept up with the technology,
Nuclear power is the cleanest and most efficient source we have today.
If they are so worried about the green house effect, and global warmer they should be campaiging for everyone to be like France and get 75%-80% of their power from Nuclear,.
that gets me everytime