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I like this idea. its responsible and it reminds me of how i used to win Age of Empires. Build a fence around all the resources so the bad people can't get them.Quote:
How difficult would it be for a “coalition” of countries that do not support more nuclear powered countries to buy up or secure all the available uranium or other critical components needed for a nuclear program?
The only problem is that other countries not in the coalition would be seriously pissed off.
Nothing quite says "Death to [country X]" like a mushroom cloud. :2thumbsup:
That is a very good question.Quote:
Originally Posted by ezrider
Very hard considering the following.Quote:
Originally Posted by yesdachi
USA and UK are the main partners in the coalition of the willing.
Australia is in the coalition as well and is friends with both USA and UK. Australia also plays cricket with Pakistan and India... more on this later.
USA has made trade deals with India. This includes helping them with their nuclear program. USA wants Australia to sell Uranium to India... why?
Because over 40% of the worlds easily accessible and cheap Uranium is in Australia. OPEC supplies a simliar percentage of the worlds oil.
But India and Pakistan has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As such Australia will not sell uranium to either of them.
So until the US stops pushing for countries that haven't signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty there is not much hope.
And this is between nations that get along fairly well, it is a lot more difficult when nations are not allied to the US.
Would Australia ever consider filling in all their mines and leaving the uranium where it belongs?
There is a semi-official policy only to ever have 3 mines operating.
Until fusion or thorium reactors become a power source I think uranium is going to be utlised. The alternatives are not viable to look after overpopulated regions. I doubt Europe could be run on green energy and keep the current population at the current lifestyle levels.
I betting Europe could, just look at Ireland and its wind farms. Wind turbines are becoming more and more efficient and productive, I think its just a matter of time. Now to mention I saw a brilliant european inventor create a small wind turbine, that instead of sprawling the blades out, he spirawled them up. Creating a cheap (A little less then $1000) wind mill that could fit ontop of any roof. Was going to be marketed by next spring. Not to mention larger windmills are becoming more and more popular among Texans living out in the more rural parts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Papewaio
As for the topic, this is why we cannot let Iran get nukes, and why we must have N Korea eliminate their nuclear weapons. They cause proliferation, I'm not saying they can't have nukes, but they cannot have them right now when their governments are unstable, when their breeding terrorists. The more countries that build nukes the cheaper and easier they will be for terrorists or worse yet an actual covert action by another government setting off a nuke in a major city. Iran already funds and gives safe havens to the many terrorist networks they've created, do you think they wouldnt give them a nuke if they had a chance? :yes:
I'd like to see hybrid wind and solar... have the blades coated with thin panel solar.
That'd be interesting but you'd have a problem being able to draw the energy from the solar panels becuase you can't have a cord attached. They are already coming out with electrolosys based hydrogen combustion engines for car's. Hopefully they'll have a generator like that soon, would beat both idea's.Quote:
Originally Posted by Papewaio
Same way the power goes to a generator or a small electric engine... brush conductors.
Solar panels are useless anyway. They only provide power when it isn't needed (ie during the daytime in summer).
You could use it to pump water up into reservoirs or something, but still...
Air conditioning? Daytime in the summer, IIRC, stresses the power grid more than any other time here in the States.Quote:
Originally Posted by BDC
Batteries, capacitors for storage.
Things that are left on during the day:
Clock Radio, DVD Player and other 12:00 blink devices.
Fridge, not so good when it goes off for the day.
Climate control systems...
I've often thought that this would be a good solution to our energy crisis-cover all roofs with solar panels, and put a wind turbine of every house. Everyone would feed into the main grid. It would be expensive to set up, and it will never happen, but I imagine it would provide a decent amount of juice if you could get national uptake.
I wonder if Isreal is ever going to forcibly stop Iran. I remember hearing a quote from Tehran (The prime minister of Iran I think) saying he will "Wipe Isreal off the map".
Still fairly pointless. Main issue with wind turbines is they are very loud, and pointless unless you get a massive one. They also need to be in an open area and high up - so in a neighbourhood where every house has a big turbine on it, they would be pretty useless. Noisy, unproductive, an eyesore, and very very annoying. Expensive to set up too. Millennium-Dome style useless.Quote:
Originally Posted by Big King Sanctaphrax
The solar panel issue is slightly more complex. Even if the power generated does take the edge off air con (less of an issue in the UK), what happens on the cloudy day? Or evening? You still need just as much backup power, so you have to keep all your power stations running anyway. So you generate just as much CO2 as before. Unless you live somewhere with 24 hour, guaranteed sunlight, or have guaranteed sunlight and a good way of storing the power, it's not all that useful.
With wind turbines, ones that can fit on houses can be 2.5kw or more. That quickly becomes significant.
Noisy? Ones that I have been close to in London have been to all intents and purposes silent.
Ugly? Yes, to current tastes, and with current designs. One argument is that people will probably change their views as more appear, and more are used to them being there. The other is that designs may alter making them more appealing.
So, not noisy, potentially producing electricity, and about as ugly as satellite dishes, TV aerial masts, and mobile phone masts.
Solar panels. The latest ones are 45% efficient. If buildings had them (and even windows UV and IR photovoltaic cells) the amount of energy that would be gained would be significant - obviously mainly in the summer. There is also the issue that if one is preventing rooms heating up, the need for air conditioners also decreases, and energy that is required from the grid also drops, as some can be gained locally.
I've been to holiday recently in Trinidad (the point comes later, OK?) There electricity and water can shut off suddenly, without warning.
Guess what? People there survive. They are used to it (even I did - 30+ degrees without even a fan...) They have reserves of water, and just don't use electricity till it comes back on.
I'd imagine that in the UK we would be able to alter the flow of electricity better than they do. Possibly work out the mean production of electricity by renewables, and then assume only 50% of that. Or dynamically alter the amount we get from France. Or have different grades of electricity user: the interruptible supply, going down to home users during the day / middle of the night.
Yes, we might have to alter our habits. Possibly use less, and in extremis even think "damn, I can't have the oven on as I'm using the hoover at the moment".
Can we adapt? Of course! If we as people can stop acting like grasping toddlers that throw a tantrum when we don't get everything we want immediately I' sure we'll cope.
~:smoking:
They continue to work, just less effective.Quote:
The solar panel issue is slightly more complex. [...] what happens on the cloudy day?
As a "practicing medic" I'm sure that you're excited about the posibility of loosing power at a major hospital. Can we adjust? Sure we can, we used to live in caves after all. :dizzy2:Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
I was under the impression that most hospitals had back-up generators, uninterruptible power supplies, emergency battery packs for equipment, etc.
So you need power-plants to supply the difference. So they need to be kept on all the time. So in the end, you save hardly any power.Quote:
Originally Posted by Duke John
Solar cells are still only about 20% efficient too. Plus it's worth remembering that whilst your turbine works fine when it's alone, surround it with hundreds of other ones and suddenly it doesn't work too well.
Now this will all improve - but it's never going to actually solve that much. It's just PR to make people feel better. People won't put up with interruptable power supplies, at least not whilst there's still coal in the ground. Annoy them enough and they'll even accept nuclear power.
I see much more future in wave and tidal power tbh. Far more reliable, and far more energy available.
I saw a similar one from a Canadian company about a year ago, they are very cool and don’t depend on the wind direction because they are in a vertical helix, able to catch wind from any direction (coincidentally I can make wind in any direction ~D).Quote:
Originally Posted by BigTex
The weird drawback to wind power (at lease in MI and some other states I know of) the buyback for energy created by wind is less than for solar, making it too expensive to generate on a farm type scale like in CA (stupid IMO, but not for the energy company). Some legislative tweaks and some industrious capitalists and I think wind will be a good future power option.
I don’t think power-plants are and an on/off type of thing, they can control the amount of energy they produce. Just by watching the weather reports they can determine the capacity they will need to run at because of the amount of anticipated juice generated from solar or wind, even if they could cut back 5% on a day that would save how many rail road cars of coal?Quote:
Originally Posted by BDC
Great now I’m trying to put the coal miners out of business.
Enough to save the amount created for however many thousand square km of solar panel and wind turbine? Which will need to be repaired/updated pretty often anyway...Quote:
Originally Posted by yesdachi
And I suspect that power plants probably get much less efficient if you keeps messing about with them. Hence why you use hydroelectric power to tide over when you have surges.
As a practising medic, I am aware that ALL hospitals have backup generators... Great example :laugh4:Quote:
Originally Posted by Vladimir
~:smoking:
They pollute though. You'll have angry mobs outside demanding you suffer like the rest of society during the blackouts...Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
People are idiots.
And they tend to be on specialised grids for the entire neighbourhood too... I live within one of those grids so the rest of Sydney will have a blackout, the local hardened grid will continue (it won't just fall over domino style and has some sort of generator supply) and once that is exhausted only then will the hospital have to revert to its own dedicated generators.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
At work we have a diseal generator, UPSes for the entire server room and independent backup power supplies for dedicated comms equipment.
For instance standby generators by sector for 2005 NSW
Data/Telcos 180 MWs, 52%
Office Buildings 86 MWs, 25%
Retail 23 MWs, 7%
Broadcast 20MWs, 6%
Hospitals 10 MWs, 3%
Obviously anything that can locally reduce the load would be of interest to them. At our work putting in LCD monitors rather then CRT ones is cost effective... LCDs take less power and generate less heat... so directly they use less energy and they also reduce the amount drawn for airconditioning. It also extends how long the generators can last at the site.
Likewise most power plants do not run constantly at full capacity. They run far below that and only ramp up as demand goes up. There is no way that the energy companies want to expend fuel for energy that they do not then sell.
It's a great example because not only are you advocating less efficient, dirtier forms of electricity generation you're also suggesting that we lower our standard of living to that of some backwater republic. Very :clown:.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
Very New Labour perhaps?Quote:
Originally Posted by Vladimir
Hehe.
Last time I looked, backup generators are there in case the normal supply fails. Apologies if you are unaware of the meaning of this word.
Yes, shock horror, we might have to alter the way we live slightly. Possibly the concept of thinking of others is a novel one, but you'll have to trust me that it is neccesary from time to time.
~:smoking: