WeAreTheKey

Apparently John McCain doesnt care about new fuel resources he just wants to up he anty on the old nonrenuable resouces...

lifting bans on drilling of our coasts and tearing holes in our earths crust to suck up the last remnants of the black blood, building more an d more nuclear reactors (you know like the ones that iran want to build but cant cause theyre"evil") forgive me for my snotty tone, but frankly i am fed up with the same ole shit. I want renewable energy, clean air, my earth to not be sucked dry and change.

The BEST thing about renewable is it has the possiblity to be universal=ing free. We could provide energy to all(if we figure out the best ways to do it) and that means a better planet. With the sources we are using now=profit and profit and profit..for everyone at the top...

no thanks, Ill take the path headed towards the ideal over the same tired falling apart dirt road that leads back where we started....

It'd be helpful if you referenced what you're talking about with McCain and the off-shore drilling thing. He seems to think that ruining environments for the chance of sucking up just a bit more oil is the solution to our problems. That, and as you said, nuclear plants.
I for one, just can't see our future being fueled by hundreds and hundreds of nuclear power-plants all over the world.
Besides, cars don't run on nuclear power. We still need a replacement for oil.....

nuclear power is a clean, efficient way to power everything we do at home or work.

and if you want to get technical, it can power electric cars. i mean i want a reactor-powered car as much as the next guy, but...

here's a good article (and preface):

http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=375

Yes, I've been hearing the same thing about nuclear power lately. Very promising. Unfortunately, many people still hear the word "nuclear" and immediately dismiss it as "bad". Clean, cheap, efficient energy sounds like a good idea to me.

Thanks for sharing, DW!

There are definitely benefits to nuclear power, but I still am not yet convinced about what to do with all of our spent nuclear fuel rods. If we end up powering our whole country with nuclear power, that'll require a LOT of plants, which means a LOT more fuel rods oozing radiation. Are we going to forever load these things into Yucca Mountain?

I don't know, maybe it's a good option, and if we could ever get electric cars actually ONTO OUR ROADS then yeah, we could power them from home with nuclear electricity. It would still be a tough situation though, because with so many more nuclear plants, the odds of a meltdown or similar situation would greatly increase, and it would only take one to cause the public to freak out about it all over again. And then what would we do?!

Also, what about all of our transport vehicles, heavy-lifting and construction vehicles that run on diesel and aren't good candidates for battery power? We still will need another fuel source.....hmmm....
Maybe uhhhh.....Dark Matter??
Yeah, I have no idea.

well the fuel rods can be (and for at least a little while i know this is what they did) encased in a hugely thick glass sphere, then stored at various locations. ever heard of hanford washington? it used to be (still is?) a nuclear waste storage facility out in the desert. for that matter once we have enough of this stuff building up that it becomes a problem we can just load it into the space elevator and fire it at the sun!

ok so i haven't done a whole lot of research on the disposal end of things.

big diesel rigs will continue to run on diesel and biodiesel for a loooooong time, because it is an easily renewable fuel that is almost 50% efficient. this is fantastic for an internal combustion engine and really, industrial and developmental vehicles are such a small overall polluter that really they are last on the list of things that need fixing. diesel, while it makes black smoke and looks gnarly when big trucks and boats poop it out, really is mostly comprised of things that break down quickly and easily and they simply dont hurt tne environment anywhere near as much as some would have you believe.

as far as meltdown goes, we need to look at how many nuclear plants are currently reliably producing safe power, and have been for how long now? i mean honestly, how many nuclear power plants have you heard of? Trojan- because we live right next to it, and chernobyll, which we know about because it blew up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power

take a peek. honestly nuclear power, along with geothermic, power generated by dams (whats it called?), and this new form being developed that utilizes the energy of the ocean waves* will be our main sources of energy in the coming years if we play our cards right.

* (it works by bouyant rings that ride poles in the water- as the rings go up and down over the windings with the waves it generates current- i dont know all the details but it's very efficient, totally clean, and very, very promising)

Hydroelectric.
a link on wave energy technology

I pretty much agree with DW, though solar is growing by bounds now too. It's become very efficient very quickly. While I'm not really enthusiastic about the use of nuclear power expanding, I do agree that in general it seems much cleaner and sustainable than oil and coal. I'm ok with using it more often while other power options are developed to points they can be used on a mass scale... fine as a stepping stone... but not as a solution IMO

fair enough. i've actually heard that solar was getting much better, too.

There are some pretty sweet YouTube videos on developing solar technologies. I think Ko posted some of them in the Solar thread.
They are definitely getting pretty advanced.
I guess as long as nuclear can truly be safe, and we aren't simply putting off another inevitable disaster down the road, then it's OK. I just always envisioned the solution being something more....I dunno, natural, or easily harvestable, like magnetic engines, or subtle-energy field collectors, or something. Thousands of nuclear plants just seems...... like the incorrect answer somehow. But as Ko said, in the interim it can serve as a useful bridge until that next technology comes to fruition.