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Topic: The upcoming energy crisis. (Read 32196 times)
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JonoPorter
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Don't mess with the US.
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I just wanted to state few interesting facts.
How a majority of the world stores hydrogen is in a mixture of hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbons are naturally occurring and are easily stored. The more common name for them is oil. Pure Hydrogen is colorless, odorless, and tasteless. Also when pure hydrogen burns it has no visible flame. So a Hydrogen station could be on fire and you wouldn’t know it, until something other then hydrogen starts to burn, mainly you.
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Lukipela
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The Ancient One
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As far as I can tell most oil companies already are private... didn't you mean nationalize?
I really am not doing well i nthis topic, am I? Yes, I meant nationalize.
Yeah making gasoline illegal would be suicide, but I think at the point in time we're discussing oil would be to expensive for most people. And if it was too expansive for many companies the government could decide to fund, atleast partially, the oil or gasoline for them. This way you wouldn;t interfere with the market, and I think most people would understand that keeping the industry alive is more important then their private needs.
Depends on your private needs. If the heating in your house is produced with oil, then you might not be too happy. Alternatively, if the heating in your house is powered by electricity, but thet elecricity becomes to expensive because of the oil price, you have the same problem. Basically, when oil becomes to expensive, it'll create quite a lot of instability.
But either way I don't see the problem. You seal the stuff in lead containers and dig it under the ground. Just make sure no one will dig it out to soon and you're set.
It's the making sure part that is tricky. There are a lot of things that really cant be predicted which could influence a storage that is supposed to last for this long. Granted, many of them are unlikely, but for example even guarding the stuff might be tough. What if the economy flops after 2060s stock crash? Guards need to be payed, and every facility nmeeds to be maintained.
Well there different kinds of batteries.
I belive there is one on top of my faculty's bulding, it's connected to a solar collector.
The problem with them is that they are quite expensive, not too environmentally friendly either, and you'd need a lot of them to make use of them even in a small town.
My point exactly. Unless you find some truly efficient reusable batteries for those mills, they're unreliable.
No I meant something more like this little guy. And here are its tech specs. A purely electric car, I know it's nothing special but it sure would be enough for me.
Yes, but the people making a living driving large trucks from one part of the continent to another might not be staisfied with that.
There are also hybrid cars that use gasoline to generate electricity. They are quite neat because they can reacharge while breaking for example, so they use much less fuel.
Some run on hydrogen instead of gasoline.
Most of these cars are either too expensive, or not as good as the ones we have right now, but hey, in 50 years things may change.
Fusion does not require Uranium it only requires hydrogen, and we have oceans full of that stuff (H2O). So any claim that the fuel source for fusion won’t last very long is rather ridiculous.
I see Ivan set you right on most things, but I just wanted to comment on this. That we have loads of food doesn't mean a thing if we don't get it working. Just like all that lunar-3 up there is worthless unless we can bring it down.
We will. Time is not as limited as you seem to believe, people have been saying for decades that the oil will run dry. They even had experts that have given multiple dates, which have come and gone, of when all the oil wells would be dry. I take the news of oil wells dying up as a grain of salt. Also oil companies are always finding newer ways to extract more oil out of the same well. You are assuming that because a claim was false in the past it will be untrue in the present. That's not really logical. Different circumstances mean something that at one point wasn't true can at another point be true. For example, if I were to say "The Saviour will be born in roughly 20 years" in 800 BC. I would be wrong. If I said it in 20 BC I would be entirely correct. You dig? In this instance some of the changed circumstances are : - New energy consuming countries such as China and India mean we're consuming vastly more oil than in the 80s.
- Several large sources of oil are semi-hiostile and might prefer to sell oil to others than us. In the 80s they had noone else to do business with
- New technology still comes at a price, oil prices will rise as we deplete easier sources
I’ve been to Europe and was amazed at how compressed everything is. The impression I got was you could not go 5 miles after leaving a town without entering another. I don’t know if this true of all of Europe. In America you can cross an entire state without entering a town that is little more then a gas station. Just out of curiosity, which part of Europe did you visit? As was mentioned, it's a big, varying place. and i lack the heritage to be a leprechaun [quote author D-999]Great. As I said, Hydrogen is energy storage. It is pretty good energy storage. Indeed. If we could connect windmills to that kind of battery, they'd be much more useful. |
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What's up doc?
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Ivan Ivanov
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Depends on your private needs. If the heating in your house is produced with oil, then you might not be too happy. Alternatively, if the heating in your house is powered by electricity, but thet elecricity becomes to expensive because of the oil price, you have the same problem.
Well, yes. But there are more sources of electricity then oil. Let's stay with nuclear power for now as we're sure we can use it. Even tough the prices will generally be higher the change won't be that dramatic.
Basically, when oil becomes to expensive, it'll create quite a lot of instability.
That goes without saying, the question is wheter we'll be able to survive this instability and how much of an inconvieniance it would be.
It's the making sure part that is tricky. There are a lot of things that really cant be predicted which could influence a storage that is supposed to last for this long. Granted, many of them are unlikely, but for example even guarding the stuff might be tough. What if the economy flops after 2060s stock crash? Guards need to be payed, and every facility nmeeds to be maintained.
You don't really have to guard it. Dig it deep enough so that digging it out would require heavy industrial equipement, and possibly put the containers in another container whose opening would require even more equipment and just leave it there. If you see someone with enough of heavy equipment snooping around the area you just send some people to supervise their work.
Yes, but the people making a living driving large trucks from one part of the continent to another might not be staisfied with that.
That's why sadly they have to find another job.
Possibly driving trains instead of trucks.
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« Last Edit: April 05, 2006, 02:55:38 pm by Ivan Ivanov »
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Lukipela
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Well, yes. But there are more sources of electricity then oil. Let's stay with nuclear power for now as we're sure we can use it. Even tough the prices will generally be higher the change won't be that dramatic.
Still doesn't help any one with an oil burner. I wasn't trying to make out that all energy come from oil, only that if oil becomes too expensive, electricity isn't always an "easy" alternative.
That goes without saying, the question is wheter we'll be able to survive this instability and how much of an inconvieniance it would be.
That remains for the future to tell. Despite the fact that I may come off as negative in this thread, I don't actually think that we are necessarily heading for a huge disaster. It might turn out that Bio is right, and that amazing amounts of oil is found within the next few weeks. Fusion might come through. Hell, Helium-3 might save the day. The reason I'm taking the "What if" side here is because it annoys me when people refuse to acknowledge even the possibility of a problem. A bit like when it comes to faith really  So I'm not saying everything will end badly.I'm just pointing out that it isn't impossible.
You don't really have to guard it. Dig it deep enough so that digging it out would require heavy industrial equipement, and possibly put the containers in another container whose opening would require even more equipment and just leave it there. If you see someone with enough of heavy equipment snooping around the area you just send some people to supervise their work.
Then, after the avian flu 0f 2036 kills of 75 % of europes population leaving these sites completely unguarded and anarchy reigning , "freedom fighters" simply commandeer heavy machinery and dig them up.
Alright, I'll admit that is unrealistic.  The point I'm trying to make is that you simply dont know what will happen in the next 1000 years. The future is hard to predict, and very few man-made things survive for that long, including countries and civilisations. Therefore, you have to build a shelter for waste that is immune against whatever the next millenia brings.
That's why sadly they have to find another job.
Possibly driving trains instead of trucks.
This might slightly miff the people who are used to cheap food in the supermarkets, as well as the people who don't live close to a train route. A large part of our current lifestyle depends on trucks. Cheap tomatoes from spain, cheese from france, tea from england. If most improted produce dissappears or becomes much more expensive, the cost of living will rise dramatically. In a lot of places, current railway arrangments would make it extremely hard to feed a large city if all produce was brought in by train.
Also, assuming that all trains don't become electrified withing the next 10 years or so it might also miff those whose trains are dependent on diesel, and thus too expensive to drive.
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What's up doc?
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Ivan Ivanov
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Still doesn't help any one with an oil burner. I wasn't trying to make out that all energy come from oil, only that if oil becomes too expensive, electricity isn't always an "easy" alternative.
Maybe it doesn't help anyone with an oil burner, but it does give him some room to maneuver. Replacing a heater might be a fuzz for some, but it's less trouble then going to the forest every day to cut down some wood to burn.
I think it doesn't matter if something doesn't seem an easy alternative right now, what matters is that it might be the easiest alternative at some point in the future.
The reason I'm taking the "What if" side here is because it annoys me when people refuse to acknowledge even the possibility of a problem. A bit like when it comes to faith really So I'm not saying everything will end badly.I'm just pointing out that it isn't impossible.
A risky debating tactic in my opinion. It has an equal chance of backfiring as it has of succeding. For example I'm somewhere in the middle on this issue, but was compelled to take the opposing side because I saw your arguments as over-dramatic.
Alright, I'll admit that is unrealistic. The point I'm trying to make is that you simply dont know what will happen in the next 1000 years. The future is hard to predict, and very few man-made things survive for that long, including countries and civilisations. Therefore, you have to build a shelter for waste that is immune against whatever the next millenia brings.
Ok, I see the problem but I think you're exagerating it when you talk about 'millenia'.
I admit there is no sure fire way to keep the waste safe, but I've said it before and I'll keep saying it till the end of time, you have to compare the probability and the size of a disaster that might be caused by something going wrong with the waste with the consequences of not having a good energy source.
It's obvious that if there is an alternative to nuclear power then we should use it (well, unless it will have its own drawbacks), but we might not have the luxury of choice.
This might slightly miff the people who are used to cheap food in the supermarkets, as well as the people who don't live close to a train route.
Well if I were to choose between beeing slightly miffed because I can't afford as much food as I can now, and starving to death or eating my neighbor's cat and possibly my neighbors too, I think I'd choose the former.
In a lot of places, current railway arrangments would make it extremely hard to feed a large city if all produce was brought in by train.
Really? I think small towns away from railways will have a bigger problem then large cities.
You could build super large super markets next to train stations and it would probably be enough to feed the city. Probably.
Also, assuming that all trains don't become electrified withing the next 10 years or so it might also miff those whose trains are dependent on diesel, and thus too expensive to drive.
Wha? Come on, Poland is considered to be a few steps behind other countries, and I very rarely see a diesel train here.
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Your bruises are reminders of naivete and trust
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GeomanNL
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I recall that there were also ideas about placing large solar collectors in space, and transmiting the energy to earth through low frequency radiation (micro waves I think) - which is harmless to humans, and is received by very large arrays and then converted into energy - somehow.
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Arne
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You can actually dispose of nuclear waste safely... in the future. You can either send it into space or the sun, or transmutate it into something else.
Solar panels in space could be nice, but remember that some energy will be used to keep them in place, or the solar wind will blow them away. Beaming the energy down here must surely result in loss of energy too.
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GeomanNL
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Batteries are heavy compared to normal fuels, if you look at the energy they are carrying. On top of that, they don't last long, are expensive, and are heavy polluters.
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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You can actually dispose of nuclear waste safely... in the future. You can either send it into space or the sun, or transmutate it into something else.
Energy inefficient in the extreme.
Solar panels in space could be nice, but remember that some energy will be used to keep them in place, or the solar wind will blow them away. Beaming the energy down here must surely result in loss of energy too.
The solar wind blowing away solar panels? You put them in orbit. sometimes it pushes against the wind, sometimes the wind pushes it along. The only net effect ends up being the drag of the panel's motion against the solar wind as if it were sitting still. Note that the solar wind is still higher vacuum than any vacuum achievable on Earth, by several orders of magnitude.
If there is a problem, it isn't that.
As for beaming efficiency, yes, there is loss. After the losses, it's still going to be more efficient than ground-based solar arrays, just based on its being in the sun nearly 100% of the time (how much depends on the orbit you choose).
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