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[ein]

Just found this browsing through my external hard drive.
Behold! the power of the future!

[Soadreqm]

Actually, there is. We have this rather large atomic-level incinerator positioned about 93 million miles away....

The problem is that no one will agree to putting nuclear waste on a rocket and firing it into space, because if there's a malfunction and the rocket goes boom in atmosphere....well, shit.

Which is why we need rail guns. Compress the waste into slugs, maybe mixed with some ferrous material to make it magnetic, and then sling that shit on a one-way trip to the Sun. If engineered properly, it would be extremely unlikely to disintegrate in atmosphere. (The ideal launch site would somewhere like the Moon...far lower velocity required, no atmospheric friction, etc.) But then you have to get it to the Moon.

Okay, so we need a space elevator and rail guns....

So, uh... Where do you intend to get the energy you need to make all this radioactive waste clear Earth's gravity well? Remember how the US went to the moon? They had a payload of three astronauts, life support for three astronauts, returning rockets and some scientific equipment, totaling less than 50 tons. To get it all into space, they used a Saturn V rocket, one of the most phallic objects ever constructed by Man. That's how hard it is to leave Earth. Advancing technology can bring better rockets, but you still need a set amount of energy to get off the planet.

[Akura]

Just found this browsing through my external hard drive.
Behold! the power of the future!

That sounds pretty good, if even half of that was true.


As for fusion, I remember hearing them building a large reactor somewhere in Europe that may be capable of outputting more energy than it takes to maintain the fusion reaction. I also heard it won't be ready for another 10-20 years, though.

[Levi]

Just found this browsing through my external hard drive.
Behold! the power of the future!

Well that sold me. 

Down with Uranium!  All hail Thorium!

[Virex]

As for fusion, I remember hearing them building a large reactor somewhere in Europe that may be capable of outputting more energy than it takes to maintain the fusion reaction. I also heard it won't be ready for another 10-20 years, though.

That would be ITER. Bit of a shame really, the project was conceived in 1985 but it took till 2006 before the final decision for the plant site was made. People are always complaining that fusion is always 20 years into the future, but that's not difficult if the major test case has been on the drawing board for 20 years...


Anyway, I think I've found the greenest possible way to generate power, though polymer solar cells from bioplastics and Dye solar cells using organic dyes would probably take second and third place respectively.

[ein]

Just found this browsing through my external hard drive.
Behold! the power of the future!

Well that sold me. 

Down with Uranium!  All hail Thorium!

Thor is a much cooler god than Ouranos anyway.

[Tellemurius]

Even better, last year, University of Missouri created a liquid beta battery where a liquid semi-conductor would absorb beta emissions from a radioactive source.

[Virex]

Well the problem with beta batteries is packaging. What are you going to put on them? "Don't puncture. We're serious this time!"?

[Tellemurius]

Well the problem with beta batteries is packaging. What are you going to put on them? "Don't puncture. We're serious this time!"?

course, you can't even do that to regular ones anyways.

[Megaman]

Nuclear energy, I think, is worth all of it's possible ill effects. Sure aforementioned meltdowns and radioactive leaks can occur, however it will produce a good output of power for a very long time before any of that happens.

[Cthulhu]

Just found this browsing through my external hard drive.
Behold! the power of the future!

Well that sold me. 

Down with Uranium!  All hail Thorium!

Thor is a much cooler god than Ouranos anyway.

This sounds cool and all, but I'm wary of pamphlets that gush about how such and such thing is the most revolutionary thing to ever thing a thing all the way to thing-land.

[Darvi]

Thor could easily kick Uranus! *rimshot*

[olemars]

It's a bit pamphlety yes, but thorium does have a lot of ackowledged potential as a nuclear fuel. India is doing a lot of research on it, due to having a quarter of the world reserves of the stuff on its land. It is more abundant than uranium, safer, generates little waste and can even be used to burn some of the worse nuclear waste like Pu. There's also some cool stuff along the Thorium research path, like this.

With shit hitting fan at Japanese nuclear plants and the likely consequences it'll have for reactor construction around the world,  maybe there could be hope for more r&d getting done on thorium fuel.

[Chaoswizkid]

Which is why we need rail guns. Compress the waste into slugs, maybe mixed with some ferrous material to make it magnetic, and then sling that shit on a one-way trip to the Sun. If engineered properly, it would be extremely unlikely to disintegrate in atmosphere. (The ideal launch site would somewhere like the Moon...far lower velocity required, no atmospheric friction, etc.) But then you have to get it to the Moon.

Okay, so we need a space elevator and rail guns....

Actually, I had a thought about that. With electrical applications, we use "ground" as the base voltage of the Earth. We call it "Zero", but it's not really zero. It has some value, it's just relative to everything else it might as well be zero. The voltage potential of the planet *should* be increasing over time due to electrical storms and generated electricity that we sink into it. I'm pretty sure it's confirmed that the moon was once a part of Earth. That means that the Earth has a greater potential relative to the moon. If we had a space elevator connecting the two, I'm pretty sure electricity would actually flow to the moon (or someone who knows more than me can figure out a way to have it flow from the moon to the Earth). Yes, the distance is extremely long, so resistance of whatever conductor we're using will be huge, but I'm sure the part that remains in space could utilize super-conductors that are more easily kept cool enough to function as such, which would help with the resistance. I'm also pretty sure the voltage difference would be high enough that electricity would flow anyway.
So we have flowing current between a planet and a planetoid. Store the power into something, ship it back (Or figure out how to radio-wave electricity like Tesla and just broadcast to Earth).

Then again I'm going off of a pretty limited understanding of the physics involved.

About water power: hydroelectric dams are a terrible, terrible idea.
There are experimental wave generators though, and they could be used without flooding places.

Also, since I apparently forgot to mention it before: thorium based nuclear power plants.

Since the middle part didn't sound sarcastic, I'd really like to know what's so bad about hydroelectric. Pretty clean, helps to not flood developed areas, etc. TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) manages a LOT of electricity for eastern USA, and hydroelectric is their big thing.

[ein]

Three Gorges, mostly.