Bio-Fuels not so green

[Taomon]

Jillian, Paulitics is right. There is quite a bit of nuclear material that's moved aroung the states. It's highly regulated and accounted for. Look at France and how they've managed nuclear power. Quite an example.

Does that justify the amount of toxic waste created by nuclear power? What do yopu suppose happens to that waste and the area surrounding its storage?

 

[Zoomie1980]

Hydrogen cars? What do you suppose will happen when two hydrogen cars collide? Hiroshima all over again.

LOL! That's pretty funny....

Nuclear fusion ... two hydrogen cars colliding to create a helium car....bet it's light...

 

[BrianH]

Changing our fuel source will not be much better than anything else, at this point in time. I believe we will be stuck in the age of fossil-fuels until we die. The fact is, anything invented (now) that will actually solve the energy demand will be purchased by the large oil and energy companies. The patents will be purchased and crushed. Not only because the energy companies will begin to loose money, but also because it would put thousands and thousands of people out of jobs. Imagine and unlimited source of energy (the sun is not an unlimited source; it's dark for roughly 8-12 a day: if you use batteries, you're still polluting the earth with used chemicals that are dangerous)

THere have been inventions that would solve the fuel problems, but we'll never see them.

I worked in auto parts for a few years and we used to have this guy come in and buy all of these strange (mix-matched) parts. I once asked him what he was doing and he said, I'm building a fuel-cell car. (hydrogen). He said that he was going off a design from Australia where these guys had built a fuel-cell that could drive a car 2,000 miles on a 2-liters of water and a gallon of gasoline. (I don't know how true this is) but he said that he had spoken with the guys and they aleady had it installed in their vehicle and it was performing. We'll have a hard time switching to it because of the energy companies. The only way for us to accomplish this would be for the people to boycott fossil-fuels until the companies found something we liked, (which there's no way that this could happen).

 

[Taomon]

Changing our fuel source will not be much better than anything else, at this point in time. I believe we will be stuck in the age of fossil-fuels until we die. The fact is, anything invented (now) that will actually solve the energy demand will be purchased by the large oil and energy companies. The patents will be purchased and crushed. Not only because the energy companies will begin to loose money, but also because it would put thousands and thousands of people out of jobs. Imagine and unlimited source of energy (the sun is not an unlimited source; it's dark for roughly 8-12 a day: if you use batteries, you're still polluting the earth with used chemicals that are dangerous)

THere have been inventions that would solve the fuel problems, but we'll never see them.

I worked in auto parts for a few years and we used to have this guy come in and buy all of these strange (mix-matched) parts. I once asked him what he was doing and he said, I'm building a fuel-cell car. (hydrogen). He said that he was going off a design from Australia where these guys had built a fuel-cell that could drive a car 2,000 miles on a 2-liters of water and a gallon of gasoline. (I don't know how true this is) but he said that he had spoken with the guys and they aleady had it installed in their vehicle and it was performing. We'll have a hard time switching to it because of the energy companies. The only way for us to accomplish this would be for the people to boycott fossil-fuels until the companies found something we liked, (which there's no way that this could happen).

Storing solar energy into batteries would not pollute the earth. The fact that you mention that the earth is dark 8-12 hours a day means you do not understand the potential for solar creating energy and storing it.

 

[BrianH]

Fair enough, I'm not saying that it couldn't work. I'm sure it could help some people. But an entire population? The batteries will require maintenance, they don't last forever (rechargeable or not), and the sheer size of a batter to store energy for that many people...I could only imagine. What happens to the double A batteries when you're done using them. You throw them away, their filled with acid. To me, storing acid-filled batteries somewhere is just the same as storing used uranium in various places. They have electric cars that store energy in batteries, but the batteries are enormous. And that's just for a car. I think some research into the field is great. I'm a big advocate of solar energy. But I still beleive it will only work in certain parts of the world, that don't have hail, and tornadoes and hurricanes, the cost to maintaint them (for some parts of the world would be defeating the purpose) We once thought about putting solar panels at our house, but it would cost too much to maintain them, we get a couple of good hail-storms a year. I'm not saying that your idea is retarded, but I think we will be dead, or really old before we see the extreme large scale use of solar power.

 

[Bern80]

Does that justify the amount of toxic waste created by nuclear power? What do yopu suppose happens to that waste and the area surrounding its storage?

Read BVBM post above. As he noted the notion that nuclear power is unsafe or toxic or polluting or whatever is simply not grounded in fact.

 

[BrianH]

Feel free to look this up...but from what I've read, our electricity producing nuclear plants produce less than 1 cubic yard of waste in one year. That's not alot.

Google "South Texas Nuclear Project". There may be some other sources to find this kind of information.

 

[Shogun]

check out the potential for wave energy and Salter's Duck.