April 18th, 2008
Brightness
Things to remember on protest…
Don’t let them kid you when they talk about a fantastic future.
Don’t let them kid you that it is the answer to all our problems.
Don’t let them kid you when they say they know what they are doing.
Don’t let them kid you that this has nothing to do with the missiles.
Don’t let them kid you this 54-year old technology is still the cutting edge.
Don’t let them kid you that nuclear energy is anything more than steam power.
Philip J Schadenfreude on 
It is odd that most of the traditional power generation methods are all basically steam moving turbines.
It seems to me, noting as a sort of disclaimer that my whole scientific background is based on science fiction movies, there should be a way to generate power just by sapping heat out of the air. I mean heat IS energy, right? It’s almost always hot around here, and it’s all going to waste.
There is.
Thermo-coupling.
But you need a big temp differential for it to work well.
There is another method, tho I always forget the name of it.
Involves electrodes that induce heating or cooling,
There is a hot water system that saps heat from the air and puts it into water.
It will work down to about -16c, but I can’t remember the term for it.
Solar works by taking light and making it into electricity, which is an interesting process in itself.
Most other traditional power generation models work by taking the suns energy, storing it in living organic matter, fossilising that organic matter, purifying its carbon content, burning it, taking the released heat, heating water to steam, spinning a turbine with that steam, capturing the kinetic energy with generators and turning that into electricity.
Or, using star forming events to produce large quanities of heavier then hydrogen matter, which can be mined and purified, then allowed to decay and heat water, etc.
All electricity on earth stems from the sun.
I like the idea of nuclear, I really like fusion power. I think we need to work some things out, but I think it is the immediate future.
I like that I get paid lots because everyone uses coal.
We spent ages studying nuclear power at school recently. T’be honest, it might just work, but no doubt you have thousands of reasons it won’t :p
Well, I ain’t'ent no scientist!
EGS
That’s just funny. I love steampower…
On a side note: how do you get the links in your “We like…” sidebar to alternate randomly like they do per page load?
I remember doing final-year physics and being really ticked off at this very same realisation.
on the other hand, a steampunk universe is wherever you look for it.
I remember watching a neighbor kid
launching a rocket using only water
and a hand-held pump. It didn’t need
steam, and the accident rate was very
high. The rocket would get everyone
wet and land in the neighbor’s yard.
I waited for him to lose an eye, but he
started shooting it at other kids instead.
That’s when I left and went home.
This is using the same principles of steam power.
High pressure.
These kind of rockets can be quiet powerful.
Another fun way to make rockets with water is to split the water to Hydrogen and Oxygen and mix the gasses in an upside down bottle (plastic) and ignite the mix.
Very powerful indeed.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NoLh1ILDWB4
Almost all of our advancement in the field of energy for the past 296 years has been merely coming up with new ways to make steam.
It occurs to me that the sun is really just a giant nuclear reactor, so really, all energy on earth is nuclear based.
We know for a fact that this big nuclear reactor kills thousands with its radiation every year, so why are we so scared of little reactors?
We also know that the sun will blow up and destroy the earth, which is something that smaller reactors can’t do.
The main difference, I think, is that we don’t have to deal with nuclear waste from the sun. That’s the biggest problem with nuclear power, IMO.
Your logic doesn’t make much sense to me. For one thing, smaller reactors can for a fact destroy life on earth as we know it. A bit slower perhaps, but still. It’s not the risk of explosion or radiation-leaks that bother me the most, it’s the effect that storing the waste has on the planet. Also, the sun works on fusion, not splitting atoms. A lot less risky.
I’m all for exploring cold-fusion, magnetic motors, solar-, wind- and water-power.
The sun does emitt deadly radiation. Hence deaths from sun cancer.
Have you ever had sun stroke? That sucks.
The thing that most amuses me about the nuclear waste arguement is that we already have large hot-beds around the planet. Vast quantities of nuclear material emitting heat.
True, current storage is lacking, but I think that with decent research and funding, we could use clean fusion power.
Over all, we have along way to go in reducing our energy dependency and the harm it causes.
I agree with the clean fusion bit, but I maintain that natural occurence of radiation as whole, is less harmful then what we do with it. I use sunblock, for example.
Just my opinion though.
I also find the fact that our “most advanced source of energy” is steam power… I guess we still have solar power… Maybe one day well have Zero Point Energy (even if it is pretty iffy…)