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Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
Oil prices will go way up when it gets more scarce, as will natural gas; and I don't think that the supply of uranium is infinite .
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It’s close to.
World Uranium Reserves
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Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
If you generate electricity locally to where you use it, you only need to produce what you use -- the transmission losses are sometime quite high.
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It’s actually only around 10% and I can link you to my provinces utility report if you want it.
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Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
Solar heat can be stored efficiently, and as the SA article suggests, other means like compressed air storage underground might be possible.
Nothing is perfect, and there is no single solution. Diversity and distribution are key -- as is efficiency! We could easily cut our energy use in half by efficiency alone.
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You talk about efficiency but do you comprehend the efficiency cost of storage? To get electrical energy and convert it to compressed air and then go back to electricity would require 4 conversions, electrical to mechanical, mechanical to compressed air and then reverse the procedure. Good generator and motors are about 90% efficient, I don’t have compressor and air motor efficiencies handy but saying 90% would be generous. 0.9 to the power of 4 is 65% efficient, that is a third of your stored energy lost to the conversion, it’s a bad road to go down before even considering costs.
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Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
Guys, I'm so ready for this discussion -- it is my passion and I am pretty knowledgeable about it. Carbon based fuels are "so yesterday" in terms of their long term availability and their huge effects in the global climate..
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I have done my homework on this issue as well, if you have any questions just ask, I have no problem sharing what I have found.
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Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
And nuclear is a no go for me, too -- if only for the huge security threat of plutonium in the wrong hands. We're messin' with the strong force, and we do not need to! There is a huge excess of renewable energy, just sitting there for us to collect and use.
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It appears you are ideologically opposed to nuclear regardless of any argument we put up here. The purity of fissionable material used for weapons is so much greater than that used in power generation. Any country that wants to pursue a road to nuclear weapons will have them 30 years from now no matter what we do. If isolated N. Korea can do it then anyone with enough determination can. Dumping nuclear power will have no effect on weapons proliferation but we will lose our power source that has the best combination of reliability, cost and carbon footprint.