[Stefan]

From what I have read geothermal is too expensive to find. Too expensive to find OUTSIDE of a national park or monument.... I still think nuclear fission or fusion will be the future of energy.

[treewalker]

[MtnGoat]

I agree for once with treewalker. While geothermal energy may be a partial solution for some places, IMO plain ol' fission reactors are a badly neglected solution to the problem of efficient power.

[Dante]

I've done a fair amount of reading on hydrogen fuel cell cars because of my interest in biodiesel. However you generate the juice to make hydrogen from water, most of what I have read suggests it would be more efficient to just use that power to charge the batteries in an electric car than to make and distribute hydrogen. If you are using oil, gas, coal, etc. to generate the power to make hydrogen, you are just replacing distributed tailpipe emissions with fixed point powerplant emissions. Finally--and for the record here's where my bias shows--hydrogen is a poor candidate for transport. It is simply not nearly as power-dense as Diesel fuel or biodiesel. You don't get nearly the range from the same volume or weight of hydrogen as you can from the same volume or weight of Diesel fuel. Why convert petroleum or natural gas or coal into electricity, then make hydrogen, then run more of it in a truck to move less cargo a shorter distance using more energy when you could make diesel fuel out of the oil, natural gas, coal and/or renewable vegetable oil. Before you chastize me for promoting "dirty Diesel" let me tell you Diesel engines are about 40% more efficient than gasoline engines, which means about 40% less CO2 for the same amount of work. Diesels are also getting much cleaner very quickly. The only way to achieve a sustainable hydrogen economy is with nuclear, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, etc. power. Even then, for short trips you'd be better off using an electric car and for longer trips (the cargo scenario) you really need somethign more power-dense than hydrogen to match the performance of Diesel engines. For example, you could power cargo ships directly with nuclear power. Otherwise you'd have to increase their size drastically to accommodate the volume of hydrogen required to replace the bunker fuel that currently runs cargo ships Diesel engines.

[MtnGoat]

looks like you've done your homework DJ. From what I've read you're pretty much spot on. The low energy density of H plus the fact that energy must be used to split it from water means H becomes essentially an energy losing placeholder, with the actual net energy use higher than what is returned in almost all cases. If many folks could get over the knee jerk reaction to nuclear power and actually examine it as the engineering problem it is, they'd realize we already have the technology to reduce CO2 (which I think is a bogus problem in the first place) and other pollutants in a huge way relatively quickly. Nuclear tech is pretty mature, some really slick new designs such as pebble bed ideas make scalable cheap reactors possible, and safety for this stuff is merely a function of how much engineering you want to do on already existing tech.

[MCaver]

I've never been against nuclear power once the waste issue is dealt with. But in this age of terrorism, there are inherent costs in safety that have to be factored in -- not just in meltdown and accident prevention, but in protection of infrastructure. You think hijacking a couple of planes is bad, what happens when a terrorist hijacks a nuclear powered ship and sails it (literally) into Puget Sound? Getting off fossil fuels is pretty high up there on the list of national security issues for me, and we're getting a much later start than we should have. The 1972 oil crisis should have been a warning sign. The question now is figuring out the best system to replace it. I've done some reading on wind-hydrogen systems lately (not as much as DJ apparently) and it sounds pretty good, particuarly with safety thrown in.

[Dante]

I'm fine with hydrogen in appropriate applications if the energy does not come from petroleum, natural gas or coal. I just don't think transportation is an appropriate application. Electric vehicles would be better IMO for short trips where emissions are a material concern and Diesels are a better choice for long distance travel, particularly if you are moving heavy loads.

[Dante]

I'm all for it. I just think we'd be better off attatching steam turbines to the geothermal resources and using the electrical power directly instead of turning it into Hydrogen. In the near term, that would free up petroleum, natural gas, coal, etc. to use for transportation until we can come up with better solutions.

[Steve]

Spent radioactive fuel rods aren;t the only problem. We've got many (26?)1,000,000 gallon tanks near Hanford that have highly radioactive liquids that people can only guess what's in them and how all that stuff reacts over time. The stuff is corroding through the tanks and getting into the Columbia, it is also creating a radioactive gas as a bi-product of the mixing of many types of isotopes. I worked in the nuclear industry for a couple years and learned a few (not the really bad ones I'm sure) of the dirty secrets of the industry. There are all kinds of operations they do and the stuff contaminates everything it comes in contact with. Of course there are many procedures that try to contain it within a certain region, but there is much more involved than heavy water and spent rods. BTW; fusion energy is a pipe dream.

[MtnGoat]

you've got a good point, but IMO it must also be remember that what we're dealing with at hanford is an engineering problem, not a technology failure. The degradation at hanford is due to the fact that none of those storage sites were intended for long term storage. they are past their design lives by decades due to the political wrangling over long term storage. yes, there are lots of considerations when dealing with radioactive materials including all the handling hardware and waste materials. No one can or should minimize the hazards of materials which emit ionizing radiation in it's myriad forms and substances. Still, the amount of energy available when properly done is absolutely staggering and this fact can offset the dangers, with those dangers properly handled. And thus provide a counterbalance to all the risks of providing equivalent amounts of energy by other means. I don't know the exact number, but isn't a single pound of fissionable uranium the energy equivalent something like tens of thousands of boxcars of coal? This is not a bad thing, it's a good thing! for what it's worth, from my spot it's looking like fusion is a pipe dream to me too, worth messing with just because of it's possibilities but not worth betting the farm on.

[Former Nuke]

Nuclear power plants are way too expensive. I worked on Diablo Canyon from '79-'82. It was due to be powered up about the time I left, but a big problem was found in the engineer's analysis of the piping. By the time the dust settled 5 years later, the $700M plant ballooned to a $5B plant. Plus a nuke plant is designed to last 20 years, but the wastes are a problem for hundreds or thousands of years. Then there's the problem of mothballing a used-up plant, and dealing with the waste byproducts. "Not in my back yard!" The paperwork and analysis for a nuclear plant is tremendous -- even more than the aerospace industry. Red tape issues and lawsuits make it prohibitive. Why do you think the nuke industry is a fraction of what it was 30 years ago? Public fear is a powerful player in this hot issue. All the talk on NWhikers ain't gonna affect the basic dollars and sense of nuke power. A better way to solve the problem is to use less energy. Remember the mantra in this order: Reduce Reuse Recycle Course, that's tough to do when our culture focusses on bigger cars, bigger houses, more electrical toys, more air conditioning, longer commutes, more comfort...

[MtnGoat]

of course they're expensive. the permitting process is incredibly complex and overdone. the thing to do is come up with straightforwards standards for safety, and allow private financing with *no* coercive public element of subsidy to finance them. Neither punish them nor support them, and allow them to sink or swim on their own. Given proper safety concerns wether they pay to build or not should be determined by the market, not the interference of idelogues of any stripe. This of course would be easier if power is deregulated so people pay the true costs of their electricity and varying sources can compete at different price points. Anyone who wants to, small or huge, should be able to tie into the grid with whatever generation they can build (subject to reasonable safety/enviro concerns) and sell power to whomever will buy it. Allowing subsidized *or* price distorted power generation irreparably harms efforts to get people to use less power. Allowing power prices to float and vary and differing sources to compete with each other will allow nascent technologies to prove themselves where it counts, in the marketplace, stimulate alternative efforts, and reduce the waste inherent in artificially low price areas. as for public fear about nukes, that can be changed. discussing it here may not change the world but it doesn't hurt. People are rational beings and when presented with reason, they will respond. I can understand the sentiment for reducing waste, and it is approachable from a price perspective by allowing the market to float, but in the long run growth is growth and rejecting more and new power sources in favor of conservation only, if that's what being argued, is doomed IMO. If there are *really* a majority of people who really want smaller homes, less power, etc, they'll exert their power by choosing these things on their own.