Staredit Network

NEVER!
You're right, its not inefficient in that sense, however, I don't think its worth the waste.

Hydrogen batteries for cars, solar power more widespread, hydro, wind (bigger fans dont have the bird problem, like the ones in atlantic city if youve been there recently) and of course we can't rely totally on theses however the more we use them and advance thier technology the more we can use more effectively.

The waste of what? Money? Granted, right now it is still slightly more expensive than coal power in terms of the actual running costs. In pretty much every other sense it is superior to coal.

While this is a good idea, we still need a way to get the electricity so we can produce the hydrogen (as well as powering everything else we use).

Yes, it seems like a common misconception. Hydrogen is not a power source at all, it's simply an energy carrier.

No material can carry energy forever in a atmosphere. As you are more misconcepted hazel. The energy deriving from hydrogens are from chemical reactions.

Nuclear Fusion generators don't produce alot of harmful nuclear material. It is to think. They'll fuse about a mg a day since... each atom fused will create another material. And that another material will fuse again with the resulted material. And so on until it gets to one big material, which then will be 1 mg. Very efficient.

Nuclear Fission is probably better than creating too much carbon dioxide, and other harmful gases.

The nuclear waste and risk. If there was no resulting waste, it would be a fabulous source but we cannot rely to long on fission because we can't get in the same position we are in now with fossil fuels. Lets go straight to the clean stuff.

Yes, but like I've said there are better alternatives.

Existing nuclear reactors are providing 20% of USA's electricity, they are all going to be decomissioned when thier reactors are too old. I think that we could easily make up for that 20% loss if we put effort into solar, wind and hydro.

Well, for us it is anyway, because we don't have any free H2 to work with.

As far as I know, most designs for fusion reactors only fuse the hydrogen, and after that they don't use it for nuclear fuel anymore. It takes a lot to fuse a significant amount of anything heavier than hydrogen; even our Sun isn't fusing helium in large quantities yet and won't for the next 5000000000 years.

Like I've been saying, the nuclear waste isn't nearly as dangerous as the waste from coal plants, because one, there's less of it, and two, it's solid so we can pack it up and move it rather than having to let it escape into the atmosphere where everyone has to breathe it. And the danger of a meltdown is extremely small; as far as I know all modern reactors are designed such that it's essentially impossible for them to meltdown. Hell, they say that it's difficult to make them meltdown even if you actually go in there and try to destroy it.

The nuclear fuel in the Earth's crust will last us much longer than the fossil fuels. While this is a concern in the long run, the idea of nuclear is to sustain cheap energy production for long enough to develop fusion and/or something better than fusion (like ZPE).

Solar and wind aren't bad, but unfortunately both rely on the weather. As for hydroelectric, a little-known fact is that it actually pollutes almost as much as fossil fuels do. As far as I can tell nuclear beats the crap out of all three of them.

Valid points. I'm kinda torn over this, I guess what I really want is the end of coal plants and fossil fuels in cars. Nuclear fission I don't mind, however I really don't think we should rely on it too long.

I wonder if the fusion reactors being tested use deuterium and tritium to make helium. Thats how the sun does it, can anyone confirm that?

possible. but there are better ways. type 'nuclear fusion' in wikipedia.

Theoretically speaking you could have a car that runs off the fumes of ethanol, making it burn clean and 100% effective and cheap for the environment

I'm not sure if that's the exact process or not.

That is correct, I think mostly that's what this thread has been about.

other than that, you could always use tangerine oil. 1 gallon per 350,000 lbs of tangerine.

I wonder if the fusion reactors being tested use deuterium and tritium to make helium.
- Probably not. But they are probably testing to finding the way to keep fusion going and what material serves as the best cost efficient fusion material.