What's new
Frozen in Carbonite

Welcome to FiC! Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Newer far more effective forms of energy than what we have discussion

IndyFront

Ξ⌊:Ξ≪⊕ `∧∀⊥∥'⌊: ∀∃∃∀⌊:⊕⌈≪⌊:⊕Γ.
Author
This is a thread for broadening one's horizons regarding new forms of energy that are being discovered that could pave the way forward for humankind. Let's begin:

Five Crazy New Forms Of Energy That Just Might Work

9b2b76c540b8d11b2f5f43a4208d7eec.jpg

By Nick Cunningham - Jun 26, 2014, 5:42 PM CDT
In this age of rising greenhouse gas emissions, everyone is looking for ways to scale up clean energy and cut back on fossil fuels. That typically involves the usual approaches: solar, wind, nuclear power, and hydropower.


But what if there are other technologies out there that could take a bite out of fossil fuels? There almost certainly will not be one silver bullet, but in the future there could potentially be a much broader portfolio of clean tech than just solar and wind.
Here are five technologies that may be a few years away (in some cases, many years away), but hold some promise of one day providing a significant source of pollution-free energy.


1. Tidal and wave power. Although somewhat different technologies, tidal and wave power capture energy from the movement of the ocean. Tidal power generates energy from the tides moving in and out, and is a little further along in development. Wave power generates energy from the rise and fall of waves and is still in the experimental phase. A company called Ocean Power Technologies planned to build a wave power pilot project off the Oregon coast – and received federal and state grants to do so – but abandoned the project after costs became too high. But tidal power in particular offers a lot of promise since there is no shortage of coastline on which to build. A third potential marine technology uses thermal energy; Lockheed Martin is pioneering what it calls Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), which uses the temperature differences between surface water and deep water to drive a steam cycle.
2. High altitude wind. Similar to the land-based and offshore versions, high-altitude wind energy harnesses power from wind, but as the name suggests, from very high altitudes. Turbines are tethered to the ground via cables and fly hundreds of feet in the air where winds are much stronger and more consistent. There are more than 20 companies developing prototypes but none have yet produced a commercially viable technology.


Read about the other 3 here:

---

Another good one: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/five-forms-alternative-energy.htm

Figured this could be its own thread as opposed to derailing the US thread into a potential Vyor-Me brickbat. Anyway, enjoy!
 
Simple, we use nationalists to fuel the future.


Or we use the best kind of fuel, nuclear, for nuclear fuel is great, and some stuff to plop on to one's tanks afterwards is great as well.
Ha! That's one of the most utterly hilarious posts I've seen in awhile.

But, seriously... what would you like to see as a new form of energy? Y'know... to be on topic and all
 
Last edited:
Ha! That's one of the most utterly hilarious posts I've seen in awhile.

But, seriously... what would you like to see as a new form of energy? Y'know... to be on topic and all
https://www.explainingthefuture.com/helium3.html

Mostly helium-3 fuel stuffs, simply because that means mining the Moon. And I vaguely remember a document that said a farm silo of the stuff could power the eastern US seaboard for about a month or so if I am recalling it correctly. So you definitely get your pound for pound from it.
 
Ha! That's one of the most utterly hilarious posts I've seen in awhile.

But, seriously... what would you like to see as a new form of energy? Y'know... to be on topic and all
Ah, so a histogram that doesn't present sources, methodology, variants within types of power sources, from a shitty website. And, of course, that doesn't cover anything actually relevant for energy production such as reliability, availability, and so many other paramaters.

Ignorance and arrogance in a single package, as usual.

Given that you have put me on Ignore for the crime of reminding you of facts in various threads, I suppose you will now try to post some attempt at an indirect rebuttal to reply to me while pretending to not reply to me. I await this display of passive-aggressiveness eagerly.
 
https://www.explainingthefuture.com/helium3.html

Mostly helium-3 fuel stuffs, simply because that means mining the Moon. And I vaguely remember a document that said a farm silo of the stuff could power the eastern US seaboard for about a month or so if I am recalling it correctly. So you definitely get your pound for pound from it.
OMG yes! I love Helium-3! Ever since I first heard about the Titan Company in the 2001: A Space Odyssey series! Especially when combined with sociocyberneering, this stuff would be the tits.
 
OMG yes! I love Helium-3! Ever since I first heard about the Titan Company in the 2001: A Space Odyssey series! Especially when combined with sociocyberneering, this stuff would be the tits.
Of course, in the real world, it doesn't work as smoothly or as easily. Scifi ain't real life engineering, kiddos. Fusion on a commercial level is unlikely to come before the end of the century. So, it's fission, baby!
 
What does the chart even mean, concretely? The thermal-to-electric efficiency of coal is around 1/3, sure (though it's typically higher than the chart indicates, so I suspect some unspecified data massaging), but that's not what will make it more or less competitive.
If you want an energy ratio that's a bit closer to the mark, look at ERoEI (energy returned on energy invested), e.g.:
Reputedly, wind power improved significantly since a decade ago, but it's still a lot less than coal.

A word about Nuclear on the graph: generally, this depends a lot on the technology, though the US is also very weird about nuclear. One can find spreads like 45-60 and even around 100 for nuclear; I believe this particular graph represents older domestic diffusion-based enrichment methods only. This is at least partly because American enrichment technology was obsolete but was disintenvised from developing much for two decades, and the ratio heavily depends on where and how the fuel was obtained and processed. Due to the Megatons to Megawatts agreement from 1993 to 2013, Rosatom supplied a lot of nuclear fuel to American nuclear power plants at a cheaper rate than American centrifuges could make it. Ultimately, this funded Rosatom's survival through the 90s and maintained their lead in centrifugal enrichment technologies, which are about an order of magnitude more energy-efficient than diffusion methods. Hence, in 2013, Russia had half of the world's enrichment capacity, and the biggest grower, China, is using technology bought from Russia.

IIRC France was also aggressively moving away from diffusion about a decade ago.
 
Yep. The George Besse 2 plant uses centrifuges for the production of nuclear fuel. According to wiki, it's at 7,5E6 SWU/year.
Nice. Just to look up the numbers, gaseous diffusion is roughly 2500 kWh/SWU, while centrifugal plants can easily be in the 50±10 kWh/SU range, which is huge gap than can explain why nuclear can go from ∼15 to ∼60 to ∼100 in ERoEI depending on just what the heck one is doing. There are also other methods. ... Of course, by no means is it the full economic picture, but from basic physical energy ratios, it makes far more sense than anything else.

Just to make sure I was remembering the capacity stats correctly, I tried looking it up again, too, so... World enrichment capacity: operational and planned (in kSWU/yr) [ref]
Code:
              2013    2015    2020
France        5500    7000    7500
            Areva, Georges Besse I & II      
GerNethUK    14200   14400   14900
            Urenco (Germany), Almelo (Neth.), Capenhurst (UK)
Japan           75      75      75
USA:Piketon      0*      0       0
USA:Urenco    3500    4700    4700
USA:Areva        0       0       0
USA:GLE,Paducah  0       0       0
Russia       26000   26578   28663
            Tenex: Angarsk, Novouralsk, Zelenogorsk, Seversk
China         2200    5760   10700+
            CNNC, Hanzhun & Lanzhou
Other           75     100     170
            Argentina, Brazil, India, Pakistan, Iran
Total apprx. 51550    58600  66700
At least from this, it looks like France wants to keep up with growth of its already heavily-nuclearised power grid (and/or sell more to Germany since ze Germans are going weird on nuclear?), while China is very hungry.

It's slightly surprising that USA has substantially less enrichment capacity than France, but I suppose that's what happens when one of them diddles around for over two decades and the other likes nuclear power.
 
I blame the environmentalist.
Eh, the Environmentalists have always been an ass when it comes to nuclear tech... especially many environmentalist groups started out trying to stop the development of nuclear ordinance. It isn't beyond possibility -given the history- that the USSR had utilized Active Measures to further this in order to undermine the West.
 
Eh, the Environmentalists have always been an ass when it comes to nuclear tech... especially many environmentalist groups started out trying to stop the development of nuclear ordinance. It isn't beyond possibility -given the history- that the USSR had utilized Active Measures to further this in order to undermine the West.
Oh sod off with your current obsession, Aaron.
Nice. Just to look up the numbers, gaseous diffusion is roughly 2500 kWh/SWU, while centrifugal plants can easily be in the 50±10 kWh/SU range, which is huge gap than can explain why nuclear can go from ∼15 to ∼60 to ∼100 in ERoEI depending on just what the heck one is doing. There are also other methods. ... Of course, by no means is it the full economic picture, but from basic physical energy ratios, it makes far more sense than anything else.

Just to make sure I was remembering the capacity stats correctly, I tried looking it up again, too, so... World enrichment capacity: operational and planned (in kSWU/yr) [ref]
Code:
              2013    2015    2020
France        5500    7000    7500
            Areva, Georges Besse I & II     
GerNethUK    14200   14400   14900
            Urenco (Germany), Almelo (Neth.), Capenhurst (UK)
Japan           75      75      75
USA:Piketon      0*      0       0
USA:Urenco    3500    4700    4700
USA:Areva        0       0       0
USA:GLE,Paducah  0       0       0
Russia       26000   26578   28663
            Tenex: Angarsk, Novouralsk, Zelenogorsk, Seversk
China         2200    5760   10700+
            CNNC, Hanzhun & Lanzhou
Other           75     100     170
            Argentina, Brazil, India, Pakistan, Iran
Total apprx. 51550    58600  66700
At least from this, it looks like France wants to keep up with growth of its already heavily-nuclearised power grid (and/or sell more to Germany since ze Germans are going weird on nuclear?), while China is very hungry.

It's slightly surprising that USA has substantially less enrichment capacity than France, but I suppose that's what happens when one of them diddles around for over two decades and the other likes nuclear power.
There was a plan to reduce the share of nuclear energy, but it was scrapped last year. Phew.
 
Eh, the Environmentalists have always been an ass when it comes to nuclear tech... especially many environmentalist groups started out trying to stop the development of nuclear ordinance. It isn't beyond possibility -given the history- that the USSR had utilized Active Measures to further this in order to undermine the West.
Of course; they actively coughed up a cloud from Chernobyl to sabotage the West, too, just in case they got to thinking nuclear power is good.

Well, reality is more complex than that with e.g. both SU and US having had influence in environmental issues in Europe at various times to advance their interests, while general feeling of catastrophism was surely stoked by the Cold War regardless of any state actor, but it's probably not very worthwhile to try to discuss nuance a dialogue script.
 
Of course; they actively coughed up a cloud from Chernobyl to sabotage the West, too, just in case they got to thinking nuclear power is good.

Well, reality is more complex than that with e.g. both SU and US having had influence in environmental issues in Europe at various times to advance their interests, while general feeling of catastrophism was surely stoked by the Cold War regardless of any state actor, but it's probably not very worthwhile to try to discuss nuance a dialogue script.
Aaron is obsessed with something. It changes depending on the year. But he is always obsessed with something to a pathological level. A couple of years ago, it was nuclear war, then it became biowarfare, now it's the Russians.
 
Last edited:
Tesla, although he was a bit of a cook in his later days, thought of the idea of harnessing cosmic rays (I'm assuming he meant x and gamma rays and the like). How viable would this be? I assume it'd be harder because most of those waves are weakened by Earth's atmosphere (That and it'd be harder to actually get the energy down to the surface), but it's still an interesting prospect.
 
sod off with your current obsession, Aaron.

1815

 
Tesla, although he was a bit of a cook in his later days, thought of the idea of harnessing cosmic rays (I'm assuming he meant x and gamma rays and the like). How viable would this be? I assume it'd be harder because most of those waves are weakened by Earth's atmosphere (That and it'd be harder to actually get the energy down to the surface), but it's still an interesting prospect.

Not enough of it, would be my first guess.
Though cosmic rays actually are not the same thing as x and gamma rays. Individually they are very high energy, but the total amount of them reaching the Earth from space is trivial compared to the amount of electromagnetic radiation reaching Earth from the sun.
 
Not enough of it, would be my first guess.
Though cosmic rays actually are not the same thing as x and gamma rays. Individually they are very high energy, but the total amount of them reaching the Earth from space is trivial compared to the amount of electromagnetic radiation reaching Earth from the sun.
Yep. For several billion years, Earth has been hit by tons of ultra high energy cosmic rays that are the result of stuff like large novae and stellar collisions, but in a density that is barely detectable, as in a few detection a year by most labs. I doubt the cosmic rays received since Earth was a thing then are matching even a day of sunlight. We're talking about a one trillion to one ratio or more.
 
Back
Top Bottom