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[Sergius]

It's too bad nobody will touch nuclear energy with a 1000 foot pole. It has been so maligned by the media and the uninformed environmentalists.

Did you know that creating a solar panel produces an ungodly amount of toxic waste? I guess people who install them don't care because the waste isn't being produced in their homes...

Did you know that wind turbines completely wreck the air currents and ruin a lot of the environment on their own?

Did you know that hydro plants... well, everyone knows that hydro plants ruin ecosystems by diverting and/or weakening the river flows.

Nuclear is clearly the way to go.

I remember some person claimed that he was exposed to radiation by living within 100 meters of a nuclear power plant. The amount of radiation was about the same amount you get from... wood. That's right, wood is radioactive and therefore deadly and it's bad for the environment, we should destroy every tree in the world before they destroy us.

[Duke 2.0]

 Mind you we already effect the winds with our heat island cities, which would be solved by either planting a ton of trees on the tops of buildings as to branch over the streets and block light from being absorbed on the asphalt, or get lighter-shaded materials for things directly touched by the sun.

 Now if we could harness the winds generated by heat islands, then I could see wind power coming into use.

[DJ]

Now I know oil isn't much better, but my point is that at our current level of technological prowess and corruption, we should wait before making a major leap to alternate power sources.

The problem is, we can't wait. We have reached peak oil, which means the global economy has peaked. The only way from here is down, and that implies stuff like wars, mass starvation (did you know it takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce one calorie of food?) and general chaos.

[Samyotix]

I remember some person claimed that he was exposed to radiation by living within 100 meters of a nuclear power plant. The amount of radiation was about the same amount you get from... wood. That's right, wood is radioactive and therefore deadly and it's bad for the environment, we should destroy every tree in the world before they destroy us.

I agree there's many idiots in the environmental movements, particularly the Vegan Taliban a.k.a. PETA and similar chicken-loving human-haters, and the occasional hysteric.

However, despite many people repetitively claiming that "Nuclear" was clearly "the way to go", no one has bothered to explain ...
a) how they calculate the cost of keeping nuclear waste buried and airtight for 200.000 years... they don't. So they're lying about the cost of nuclear energy - the next 3000 generations of mankind will have to bear the burden and cost of keeping our radioactive waste buried.

b) Machines can be close to perfect. Humans aren't. Accidents therefore happen. We can then conclude that there is no such thing as a perfectly safe technology that involves overbred,m fallible monkeys like us, which in turn is illustrated by dozens of severe accidents in the past: Sellafield. Chernobyl. And there's a large area in Russia, the most radioactive site on the planet, where something went wrong with experimental reactor in the 1950s.

PS Yes, making solar cells causes toxic waste. So does making the computers we are all using to access the forum, so does the battery in a laptop, and cars also cause huge environmental problems. But these are still nowhere near as dangerous as nuclear waste, a few kilos of which, utilized properly, would AFAIK be enough to sterilize the surface of the planet within a couple of years.

[Duke 2.0]

Now I know oil isn't much better, but my point is that at our current level of technological prowess and corruption, we should wait before making a major leap to alternate power sources.

The problem is, we can't wait. We have reached peak oil, which means the global economy has peaked. The only way from here is down, and that implies stuff like wars, mass starvation (did you know it takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce one calorie of food?) and general chaos.

 Please. We have been claiming to reach peak oil for many, MANY years now. The only difference now is that the sources we have been depending on for a long time have...

 Actually, I can't think of an oil well that is drying up now.

 But anyway, every time the term peak oil is used, I know it is only slightly more possible then a doomsday theo- Wait, wars? Famine? Strife?

 Peak Oil is a doomsday theory! I knew it!

[DJ]

Modern reactors are nothing like the Chernobyl reactor. Not only are they much safer, but they also take much more energy out of the nuclear fuel, which means their waste is much less radioactive. Heck, I bet you could use it for depleted uranium ammunition.

And I really doubt you could sterilise the planet with a couple of kilos of nuclear waste. In fact, I don't think a couple of tons of pure U235 would do the job. Sure, you'd eradicate humanity, but it takes a lot more effort to eradicate all life.

And Duke, we have reached peak oil. Read that link I posted. Fact is, we haven't found any oil deposits worth extracting since 2004 IIRC. Sure, we have the oil deposits we're extracting now, so what's the problem? Well, those deposits are being extracted at the maximum practical pace, which means that global oil production isn't going to rise. So, our energy supply is stagnating, while our demand for energy is growing at a dizzying pace (and no, we can't do anything about it unless we somehow get a negative global population growth). When demand is greater than supply, markets tend to go crazy.

[Eagleon]

Nuclear "waste" is a pretty amazing power source all by itself. It's pretty ridiculous that people are talking about throwing it into space, burying it, etc. and in the same breath talk about how we need renewable energy. All you need to do is encase it in glass and you have a self-contained heat source ready to drive steam turbines. No moving parts, lasts for thousands of years, practically maintenance free, and the process that makes it creates energy as well.

I <3 nuclear waste.

[Sergius]

I remember some person claimed that he was exposed to radiation by living within 100 meters of a nuclear power plant. The amount of radiation was about the same amount you get from... wood. That's right, wood is radioactive and therefore deadly and it's bad for the environment, we should destroy every tree in the world before they destroy us.

I agree there's many idiots in the environmental movements, particularly the Vegan Taliban a.k.a. PETA and similar chicken-loving human-haters, and the occasional hysteric.

However, despite many people repetitively claiming that "Nuclear" was clearly "the way to go", no one has bothered to explain ...
a) how they calculate the cost of keeping nuclear waste buried and airtight for 200.000 years... they don't. So they're lying about the cost of nuclear energy - the next 3000 generations of mankind will have to bear the burden and cost of keeping our radioactive waste buried.

b) Machines can be close to perfect. Humans aren't. Accidents therefore happen. We can then conclude that there is no such thing as a perfectly safe technology that involves overbred,m fallible monkeys like us, which in turn is illustrated by dozens of severe accidents in the past: Sellafield. Chernobyl. And there's a large area in Russia, the most radioactive site on the planet, where something went wrong with experimental reactor in the 1950s.

PS Yes, making solar cells causes toxic waste. So does making the computers we are all using to access the forum, so does the battery in a laptop, and cars also cause huge environmental problems. But these are still nowhere near as dangerous as nuclear waste, a few kilos of which, utilized properly, would AFAIK be enough to sterilize the surface of the planet within a couple of years.

Myths About Nuclear Energy:
http://www.heritage.org/research/energyandenvironment/bg2087.cfm
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2007/3405_nuclear_myths.html

[Duke 2.0]

 Problem with glass cases though, is that they shatter. We need durable ways of containing such forces.

 Although I am all for having power generators using massive warehouses filled with radioactive waste to heat water.

 I'm not touching peak oil for the same reason I don't touch Global Warming(Which I touch like a molester, but that is besides the point): A lot of it is defendant on their charts and simulations, many of which have proven faulty because of random chance, faulty data going into the system or just plain problems with simulations. And no, we are always wrong.

 I believe we can sustain ourselves 'till better technology comes around, as long as the new developments are as efficient as what we have now.

[JoshuaFH]

I don't know alot about all of this, but biofuel just doesn't seem viable. I've lived around farms my whole life, and it just seems unlikely.

Farms right now use absolutely gigantic plots of land, and that's just for food. To produce enough power to sustain a country as big as America or China? I don't even think we have enough land for that.

Farms use a great deal of high nitrogen fertilizer and other chemicals too, which pollutes the water table and therefore pollutes lakes and rivers for miles around. It's bad enough where I live, and something like that on a mass-scale would just destroy the very idea of clean rivers and lakes.

Then again, i'm not an expert, and maybe genetics or something along those lines would be able to quell my gripes.

[andrea]

ony thing biofuels are going to do, is starve people. we are already going to have problems with farmable soil soon or later. there is just not noug hland to fuel the whole word with corn!

[Nilocy]

Nuclear power is a much more viable method of 'green' (both metaphorically and litteral) energy. The wastage factor, from mass to energy is relatively low and a single power plant is the equvilant of half of scotland being covered in wind farms... My biggest hope is that once that fusion reactor comes online it'll allow a sustainable source of energy for ever. Water. They are getting close, but in saying thatm, they've also been getting close for the past 20 years. And yeah, biofuels are rediculous, they're effectively useless to humanity on large scales.

Also, nuclear waste could just be launched off to the sun.

[Duke 2.0]

Also, nuclear waste could just be launched off to the sun.

 Actually, nuclear waste is perfect for space probes. It is already in a deadly radioactive environment so leaking isn't an issue, it lasts forever and a day, it is relatively constant in heat production and we could have tons of the stuff.

 I say go fourth with nuclear and start the space age. Although that brings up the problem of rockets blowing up while launching and thus spilling it all over the place. but then again, with the private sector developing space technology I expect great advances in rocket safety.

[Tylui]

Now I know oil isn't much better, but my point is that at our current level of technological prowess and corruption, we should wait before making a major leap to alternate power sources.

The problem is, we can't wait. We have reached peak oil, which means the global economy has peaked. The only way from here is down, and that implies stuff like wars, mass starvation (did you know it takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce one calorie of food?) and general chaos.

I didn't read much else after this, but like...

Are you sure you have your unit conversions right?  A "Food Calorie" is actually a kilo-calorie of energy...  So I could understand if 10 calories of fossil fuel could produce one (kilo)calorie of food...

But then again I could be wrong.

And umiman:  didn't you say in the DF Meetup Thread that you don't live in America?  It's like... inspiring to me that you know so much about America...  I know next to nothing about it, and I've been here my whole life.  I could tell you more about the Dwarven economy than the current state of USA's economy. -_-

[Mephisto]

This is a way-off sci-fi idea, but I'm waiting for the day we can send off a "tanker" type of ship to a gas giant and just syphon off burnable gases to take back. Of course, that wouldn't help our environment any.