/sci/ - Science & Math

>>1396059

yes

>>1396059
I don't understand. What is the failure?

You can realistically power a nation with just nuclear, you just can't be a little bitch about it.

That looks terrifying

>>1396059
Wind is pointless and dangerous in cold climates.

You can realistically power a nation with a combination of solar, wind and geothermal.

Most people are on the coasts. Most wind is in the plains. To build windmills would require a lot of rewiring, unless smaller versions could be used to power individual buildings where they were mounted. Nuclear power is fine, but some people don't want to live near the plants. Solar is a joke.

>>1396167
any time i see a picture like this, as soon as i read "large mirrors" i stop reading

>>1396111
mechanical -> electrical -> mechanical -> electrical
Conversion inefficiency, bro.

>>1396156

>Implying solar farms that size are any more realistic than a network of moon castles.

>>1396166

>>1396156
My guess is that that image assumes we can collect all of the radiation falling onto the panels, which is far from accurate.

Also, that may look like small patches of land, but to build enough solar panels to cover land that large would cost a lot of money.

>>1396183
Your guess is wrong too, it accounted for inefficiency of panels.

>>1396192
[citation needed]

>>1396180
it doesn't have to have great efficiency, it's just a way to have something when there is no wind or light

>>1396182
Incorrect.

hilariousfilename.jpg

Question-would a series of massive wind farms in the plains able to power most of the U.S. have significant impact on weather patterns, since they remove wind energy from the lower atmosphere?

>>1396213
[fuck you faggot this isn't wikifagia]

>>1396223
lol no.
But go nuclear I always say.

>>1396223
I'm sure deforestation would compensate.

>>1396233
this

>>1396223
Nope. Just like geothermal energy doesn't cool the earth. The amount of energy in wind is staggering compared to the tiny fraction that we can harness from it. It'd be like saying boat exhaust is going to heat up the ocean.

>>1396230
>Isn't himself sure if inefficiency was actually taken into account

>>1396180
pumped hydro is used fucking everywhere bro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn_gUcCO-gM

>>1396283
Going to send us to a 'Sahara' link too?

>>1396344
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_Be5pCOz2Y

>>1396278
Being used everywhere =/= efficient

>>1396349
keyword in the pic was "store"

hsfag detected

>>1396362
Water elevated from the surface doesn't store electricity. It stores potential energy. The picture has nothing has little to do with OP's post.

>>1396348

Most definitely lol'd.

Why would you use water to store the energy, when you could just use a weight, and avoid inefficiencies of the propellers.

>>1396386
Just like the grandfather clocks.

>>1396111

Shit already exists. It's called pumped storage.

Also magnetic-bearing flywheels are far more efficient.

>>1396379
I'll bet you noticed the correct spelling is "HUGE", too

>>1396386
what are you gonna use? a mountain?
Water can be pumped into reservoirs when there is excess wind power, and let out through turbines when wind power is low.
The swiss buy in cheap french electricity at night, store it as pumped hydro, and sell it back to the french during peak times.

>>1396414
fucking bastards!

You can power the world on just nuclear as long as you make it known that we dump the waste in some shitty country, OK?

>>1396414
Water takes up more space compared to other denser materials like steel.

>>1396407
XBOX HEUG is a meme.

>>1396436
where are you gonna get steel that's going to hold a candle to the amount of water available?

>>1396446
If steel is too expensive, then use rock.

>>1396432

You don't talk about until after the locals start getting birth defects! Get it together new guy.

>>1396455

So what are you going to do with this rock? Hang it from a crane?

>>1396386
Why would you use a weight to store the energy, when you could just use water, and avoid inefficiencies of the winch.

>>1396463
Put it on a slope using an escalator.

>>1396491

And keep this monumental escalator continually oiled?

I get the feeling that a huge escalator with hundreds if not thousands of feet of cars on tracks will be a little less efficient than a water pump.

Also sticking a pump at the bottom of a hills with a pipe running up it is a lot easier to do.

>Nuclear

Yes.

>>1396491
And then roll it down when you need power! Genius!

>>1396509
If that doesn't work well, then use powdered stone moved with pressurized air.

Whatever happened to the Hydrogen Economy?
I thot the way of the future for storing energy was to crack water, release the oxygen and store the hydrogen for burning in hydrogen fuel cells.

>>1396565
Turns out crackin water uses more energy than you get from the resulting hydrogen. Most hydrogen is got from oil i think?

>>1396565

ends up not really being a good way to store energy, and running cars with hydrogen isn't a very good idea because then you have tanks full of pressurized flammable gas when cars crash into each other.

there are people working on creating bacteria that will produce hydrogen or methane gas though, if one of them figures it out then hydrogen could become quite a bit more popular.

Why don't we just use magnets /sci/?

>>1396379
>has nothing has little to
Niggawut?

>>1396664
FUKKEN MAGNETS HOW DO THEY WORK

But yeah. A potential eternity machine could be made with magnets and shit like that. Would have to require some engineering I lack, and possibly a push to start it all.

Wind and water energy is the most abundant sources on the planet. Problem is, that waterplants usually have to create dams, which fuck up areas by creating the giant reservoirs, and create the danger of dams breaking. Wind energy is protested against, because the windmills are noise as fuck, and they look ugly as sin. People don't want a forest of whipping, noisy blades in their backyards, so only solution is putting them in remote areas, or out at sea. The latter is costly, as you'll have to make sure they're secure, and on land, you still have to get cables out to the mills. Logistically speaking, it's a hell no matter what you do.

The most probably, cheap and efficient solution, is nuclear powerplants. If they're build by current western standards, they're so full of failsafes a meltdown is unlikely to occur. Higher chance of running into another astronaut on the moon than, a current techlevel powerplant melting down. The only issue with the nuclear ones, is that only certain nations can be allowed, as you can use the waste in weapons.

the answer is no
something like only 25%

>>1396786
why hello thar lay-person

>>1396786
>potential eternity machine
it's called a stasis-generator

get with the jargon

Dyson Sphere, motherfucker.

>>1396948

Not a layperson, but I have studied the matters to some extend. I am not claiming I have superior knowledge over these matters, but I do know enough to hold myself in a discussion.

>>1396977
My bad. Stasis generator it is, then.
I have not frequented /sci/ enough, appearantly.

>>1396993

Where will you get the materials for a dyson sphere?

>>1396059
Solar could power ALL NATIONS if it wasn't for the fact that it's not efficient enough.

>>1397008
All the shit in our galaxy.

>>1397014
so it can't then? haha

>>1396993
You know, if we want to keep using Earth as a natural planet, we either cannot use a dyson shell or will have to create an artificial orbiting sun or several of them to complement the loss of natural sunlight.

But a possibly better solution would be to construct solar statites in polar positions down to maybe 50º from the poles. This way we can gather a whole lot of energy while not diminishing the amount of light the planets receive.

Of course, any kind of a solar-enclosing shell will need to be protected from sungrazers and sun-impacting comets, necessitating a big network of sensors all around the system.

But compared to even partially enclosing Sol, constructing such an amount of sensors is a trivial task.

to all those who bash solar. suck it
http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13325

I think all of us people who know how magnets and A/C work should form a union and charge the shit out of everybody. That or we could just start our own self-sustaining colony after we kill all the nuclear scientists in the world (the ones left alive will be very thankful to us for raising their demand/lowering the supply).

>>1397069
on further thought I realize that some place close to ocean is the ideal place of colony operation

>>1397027
Right. So, if you have the means to gather enough resources to create a dysonsphere large enough to contain the sun, and have a diameter of 2 AE, then what will the purpose be of constructing such a massive object? If you can harvest and manipulate matter taken from other planets, powering a single planet is going to be easy. Dysonspheres makes no sense to create.

But as >>1397039 mentioned, other variants of the Dyson-whatevers exist. Points, rings, and the likes. But instead of building them 150 million kilometers away, it'd be easier to construct a ring outside of Mercury's orbit. You'd be getting more energy that way, as it -does- dissipate over the course of 1 AE.

>>1397095
First, it's one AU. Second, it does not vanish into think air. The net loss would be caused by tiny asteroids and planets in the way. AKA: Fuck all.
Stop being a derpa

>>1397063
What is the standard percentage of efficiency among modern solar paneling?

>>1397112
AU, yes. Sorry. I dunno where the AE came from. But, appearantly, you still understood it.
Look. If you take a lightbulb as example, it lights up considerably less, the further away from it you move.
There's a Goldilock Zone for every star. Pretty much a region in the orbits that's not too cold, and not too hot. Earth happens to be in one of these.
If you move closer to the Sun, you get warmer. If you move further away, you get colder, and thus less output of the sun.
Don't take me for a simpleton, I do know what I'm talking about, despite a few errors in spelling and terminology.

>>1397138
If you had a proportional diameter to the increase of distance away from the sun you would get the same output. If you enclose the sun 100%, it's not going to matter much if you put it close to its coronoa or somewhere near the Kuiper Belt.

>>1397155
Maybe so, but in terms of materials, it will matter.

>>1397166
Who gives a fuck, get self-replicating space bots to basically chew up the Kuiper Belt, Pluto and the asteroid belt.

Point Fusion is the future of our energy needs.

>>1397138
1397039 here. The reason for building a dyson shell is that whoever builds it needs a REALLY. FUCKING. LOT. of power for some long-term project.

Also, it's now usually thought of as a dyson swarm, -illions of machines enclosing the central star in concentric, non-co-planar orbits. A solid dyson shell would be too unstable, not to mention the extreme qualities needed for a material to construct said.

One possible use for a dyson swarm is a computational cluster. A dyson swarm could power a -illions of of times the computational power we now collectively have at our disposal. Such a cluster could be used to power a virtual ecology running many times faster than normal.

This could be used for predictions or simulate a virtual world where uploads could live.

This could be one possibility in the deep future when the amount of stars has diminished, especially if no way to escape heat death is found. Then people could use a virtual worl to extend the subjective lifetime of the universe to any amount allowed by the speed of the computational substrate.

Probably not. Nuclear is best bet, but it will take a heck of a long time to get enough capacity online. Realistically current renewables + nuclear tech will never meet our power demands, which we will need to find a way to drastically reduce.

>>1397440

basically you are saying that a dyson sphere could keep millions/billions of people warm and fed and then also have sufficient computational power to keep them all plugged in to a matrix-style simulated world?

How long until we get antimatter power plants?

>>1397440

The Last Question.

Isaac Asimov.

no if we dont change our livability

>>1397587

antimatter would only be a power generation technique if we can find deposits of naturally occurring antimatter somewhere.

it is more of an extremely dense energy storage technique.

>>1396059
Yes. It's very simple if everyone would build their own generators. Batteries on the other hand might be a little trickier of an issue but even with what we know today it is still feasible albeit a space consuming.

>combination of solar, wind and nuclear?

why would you combine nuclear with anything?
it's leagues better than the other two. it's like combining a twisted up rubber band with a diesel engine.

>>1396560
itstimetostopposting.jpg

>>1397637

I can only think of one reason, but it's a pretty good one. Nuclear capacity takes an awfully long time to bring online.

>>1396179
I like this methodology.

>>1397645
you mean build time for reactors?

that's due to eco-bullshit red tape put in place by people who do not understand how radiation works, at all.

remove that, and the actual building of the reactor shouldn't take more than 2-3 years at most.

>>1397587
Why would we use antimatter power plants?
Antimatter is extremely dangerous in any appreciable quantity. Better to use it in space exploration or in military applications, in roles which need a compact powersource and a calculated risk is worth it.

>>1397575
Um. Uploading means forsaking your body and living as a virtual consciousness. At certain point, the upkeep of flesh becomes too wasteful to continue when the energy resources diminish.

And when the flow of energy diminishes even more, either the population of said virtual environment will have to be culled, the speed of the simulation will go down or the resolution of the simulation will.

This is why I'm really wishing for extra-versal travel or a new brane-flex.

>>1397656

I do indeed and I agree, the eco bullshit is largely to blame, but its not going anywhere.

We'll need a stopgap of some sort.

I'm liking Desertec's chances.

http://www.desertec.org/en/concept/

>>1397679
>We'll need a stopgap of some sort.
yeah
A PROPER EDUCATION ON NUCLEAR CHEMISTRY, OUTSIDE OF THE CHINA SYNDROME

>>1397440
Fuck yeah this

>>1397808

I agree, as I said before, but realistically few of the restrictions on nuclear energy will be lifted, people are retards.

>>1397808
> few of the restrictions on nuclear energy will be lifted, people are retards.
Americans may be retards, but that isn't universal. France gets 75% of its electricity from nuclear power (plus 15% from hydro, leaving 10% for other sources, mostly fossil fuel).

Dispite the earthquakes I think geothermal could be a viable alternative energy

Since its inception, nuclear energy has been subsidized by state-run fuel refining for military purposes. It's not nearly so affordable when there's no war dollars.

You guys seem to forget uranium is a finite resource. The world could last maybe 50 year if solely dependent on nuclear energy, at today's power usage.