Gas 3.50 a gallon?!?!?!

**...bigdog...** · 05-01-08, 10:54 PM

Originally Posted by Potemkine

Originally Posted by ...bigdog...

Originally Posted by Gumby

Nuclear Power supplemented by wind/solar/hydro plus affordable electric cars is the solution.

nuclear power won't need to be supplemented by the pittance of electricity wind/solar/hydro/geothermal can/will produce.

I agree but until the government relaxes some of the laws regarding the enrichment rate of the nuclear fuel, we will still have the problem of what to do with that fuel. I agree it is a great idea...hell the nuclear power sub reactors will never need refueling. Even if civilian run reactors are only half as much enriched as military, we could have clean power for centuries if not a millennium or two without needing to take out the waste.

quite obviously, nucleaer power will never become a reality without changes to the laws. Saftey protocols for waste maangement already exist, given there are already dozens of active nuclear plants. The only change is the quantity of waste, which is small in comparison to the amount of destruction coal and oil infrastructure causes on a global scale. Simple as that.

**...bigdog...** · 05-01-08, 10:56 PM

Originally Posted by Kraker Jak

Originally Posted by ...bigdog...

Originally Posted by Kraker Jak

Ask yourself this.....if we went to hydrogen cars....do we really want some people basically having hydrogen bombs in thier back yard in order to fill up thier tanks

it's people like this that got nuclear power off the table as our primary power source back in the day.

No bigdog, Iam all for nuclear energy....but you have to do it right....Russia learned a valuable lesson....the Chernobyl incident was most likely the cause of putting nuke energy down the drain here in the states. But we do have 2 nuke reactors that are active.....

Iam just not for Billy Bob doin it in his backyard. I would hate for my neighbor to kill me and my family, cuz he wants to save money by not going to the hydrogen station down the road

stop speaking from things you halfway heard about once a long time ago, and go tour a modern nuclear facility regulated by the US government.

The difference between us and them is as black and white as it gets. And if the argument of nuclear power is that "it might kill people"....even if that were true....how many coal miners, oil workers, transportation associated with those industries...how many of those people are hurt/killed/affected every year? coal miners lung? refinery waste leaking out into local communities water and air supply (pasadena TX anyone?).......

time to get off the dope, kraker.

**AKA_Lump6** · 05-01-08, 11:05 PM

In my home town they started playing porn at the pumps while you fill up with gas....so you can watch someone else get fucked.

**Pineapple!** · 05-02-08, 03:20 AM

Originally Posted by AKA_Lump6

In my home town they started playing porn at the pumps while you fill up with gas....so you can watch someone else get fucked.

"Clever."
"I thought so."
"How's that working out for you?"
"What?"
"Being clever."

**belial8256** · 05-02-08, 04:05 AM

where i am, 3.50 sounds pretty good right about now. I believe the current price near st.louis is 3.80. :3

Originally Posted by Kraker Jak

The same technology we used to build hydrogen bombs would be the same thing we would use to power a hydrogen powered car. Just as dangerous....but its still FUSION

Thats...not correct.
For one, fusion implies smashing two atoms together to create a (doubtlessly) bigger atom. Excess energy is what we would use. As it stands, besides those guys at MIT (which i still haven't read up on), and the massive ITER reactor being built in Europe, fusion tech. isn't yet viable (amount of energy in > output). I suppose in rts game terms, it'd be like having the research 60-80% done.

The way a hydrogen powered car works results from the conversion of hydrogen's chemical energy to mechanical energy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle

Unfortunately, as it stands there is some difficulty extracting hydrogen efficiently. (And even then, the highest yield of hydrogen would come from Natural gas. Thats trading one problem for another.)

This is of course, not to mention the fact that our infrastructure is set up for oil like no other. And even if we stopped using oil for fuel, we'd run into a problem concerning plastics, fertilizer, (eventually) electricity, etc. etc. :3

As far as the power plants go... They've come a long way from the 50's. Chernobyl was an example of poor maintenances,observation, and information. Perhaps the casualty toll would not have been so damn high if the people knew what was happening. More or less it was an exception that constantly looms (like 3 mile island) over Nuclear power.

Here is the list of nuclear accidents over the course of 50 YEARS:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...lear_accidents
(there are currently some 440 nuclear power planets world wide)
Even if Chernobyl was a disaster, it was learned from, and safety innovations were implemented. Thats why there is only ONE Chernobyl. And with the advent of breeder plants (reactors that use heavier elements whose waste is a usable fuel), the amount of waste has been cut down/slowed.( on a related note, did you guys see that fungus that is eating radiation at Chernobyl

-->http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,276196,00.html)

Still, it is for good reason that these plants are government regulated, and not commercial. That radioactive material could be used to make some very very dangerous things, and our government feels its best if it keeps its eyes on those sorts of things. IMO there is a lot more at risk having one of these stations go awry than say a coal mine collapse (no offense intended to anyone).

Really, we use fossil fuels for our energy purposes because they've got such a high goddamn yield. Short of putting something stupid, like a fission reactor, in a car (or submarine), you'll find it nearly impossible to find a fuel that will give you the same ability as gasoline. :3

I suppose though, as far as civ planning goes, we're kind of fucked. Besides really dense cities, most towns and 'burbs were designed with the idea that personal transport would be used primarily to get around. Really, more stock should be put into public transport. I think it would seriously cut down on this problem (look at Europe for example? Ich mag Die S-Bahn .) But then comparing Europe to America is like comparing apples to oranges...

Ahhh if only we didn't have such fucking crazy protective tariffs on sugar...

**Gumby** · 05-02-08, 04:29 AM

This is the solution for me if I had the $$$

http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/...ar-12.17b.html

**belial8256** · 05-02-08, 05:05 AM

I remember reading about some sort of special polymer that can carry a current/ generate one when friction is applied...i remember the the idea being applied to clothes for some raisin. *will look for article*...

Ideally, i'd like a car that could generate power from its own wind resistance...

And also the friction that results from the tire to road interaction.
Yeah...a wind fan on top of my car....i'll teach those birds to fly too low.

@ Gumby:

I almost don't want to believe that...

**Gumby** · 05-04-08, 10:12 PM

well, I did the math and at my last rate of consumption in the U.S.A. (German electric bills are way weird so I cant use them for this) that device, if it cost me $40,000, would save me $28,000 over the course of its 40 year lifespan. I would sign up today if they were available and I had the dough.

**Silent_Crow** · 05-04-08, 10:17 PM

Micro-nuclear-reactors? Get outta here.

Its like people who think flying cars are the future. Cool in theory, but will never happen.

**ToadFrog** · 05-04-08, 10:27 PM

Its not helping either that the oil companies are buying out all the alternative fuel sources and "buying out" the people that come out with better technology to run your engines on. Some guy up north came up with a way to run your car on water, after you started it with gas and ran it for about 5 minutes you could switch over to water and get a thousand miles to the gallon... now he doesnt exist anymore, lol sucks for him. Another thing, why is corn the main concentration for fuel, for some reason I remember something that it is only about 35 acres per gallon, while wheat is a little more and the list goes on and on but nothing seems to stick out... however algae, per acre, can get to 100 gallons compared to the energy that gasoline gets. It pisses me off that things like this are happening just so a handful of people can make money.