No.
We need the energy. The alternative is building more nuclear reactors…
I don’t know about you but I would rather have windmills…
One thing is certain: man-made global warming is a reality.
I read one person complain: ”when will this con end?”
Heh…
When the sea levels rise to Jurassic levels and cover the UK with 100-m deep seas?
Shijuro (nearer Go-juro though...) is not georgedixon's relatively honest Blog 
Don’t worry, Shi – long before that we will all have been wiped out by the coming Ice Age
I hate the sight of them. The early data was corrupted by commercial sources and Institutions standing to ‘make quite a few bob’. We now know that effective domestic insulation was the eco friendlier and more economical route to take. Cold fusion will be an inevitable development and may hold the answer to all our future energy needs. You will also appreciate the attendant risks….potentially of apocalyptic proportions.
Fusion is a dream. We just don’t have the knowledge and resources to make it net energy viable.
North of I, is the Bristol Channel. One of the fastest and most powerful tidal ranges in the world. Some time ago an amazing project to dam it and turn it into a hydro plant that would power the entire SW and some of Wales.
Turned down…because of ‘objections about the environment’!!!!
Of course, the fission nuclear power plant has been approved… because of the massive amount of money it will earn in contracts for the government and their old school friends.
Great deal for the environment eh?
“Fusion is a dream”..
And you can relate inventions that were not so conceived?
Whilst there are a number of fusion rector prototypes being used as we speak, none have gotten anywhere near to actually generating a net output.
It matters not if it can be done, only if it is able to produce more energy that it takes to start it…
The basic problem is relatively simple: Stars have a huge mass and the pressure/temperature in their cores is staggering, millions of degrees Celsius… (you need at least 3-million Kelvin to even START the reaction…).
Without that advantage of gravitational containment, an alternative is needed… and there is the problem. To create a magnetic field powerful enough to hold the energised Hydrogen and then power a laser hot enough to start the 3-million Kelvin plus reaction-you need to generate more power than the reactor generates.
Of course, the task may produce some extras in the understanding of fields etc… but worth all of those billions?
The general census of opinion regarding cold fusion is that it is ‘unlikely’…with current technology.
Fusion, is a massively complicated process to initiate and maintain…
…outside of the core of a star, that is…
Fusion reactors (rectors?) are not be confused with fusion apparatus, shij.
Pedantism is the last refuse of the scoundrel Melv…
I kinda think we need both.
Nowhere, not even the Falklands (which generates 25-40% of it’s electricity from the huge South Atlantic winds fully rely on wind alone. It’s just too unpredictable.
We do definitely need to do something and sharpish. Possibly people might take the hint when we have wild hippopotami return to the Thames?
I suspect that the government doesn’t want renewable energy any more than OPEC does…
I mean, the energy user is a massive cash cow, yes?
We can’t rely on wind power anymore that we can rely SOLELY on solar, it needs to be ALL renewables!
Wind, Solar, Hydro (wave and dams), geothermal and bio-fuels.
From a government that relies on taxes for income, they will NEVER go renewable, because it’s the end of the gravy train!
Now we hear they are going to invest billions in the rail network apparently. Well… we will see, but I doubt they will lower fares…
Say we decide to increase branch lines to pre 1950’s levels, drop fares to equal petrol costs for an equivalent distance-and we suddenly get a 40% increase in people using the trains.
That would be a massive reduction in CO2 emissions from cars… but… a huge drop in: fuel duty, Vehicle excise duty, VAT and people buying cars (more VAT etc)…
Added to the expense of actually doing it, it’s a double hit that no government will take on…
We could pass law to make all new houses ultra-energy efficient and have solar heating/electricity panels built in at cost… again, they won’t do it for the same reasons.
We have to go nuclear as the main source. The only way renewables will work alone is if we all give up using so much energy, buying so many goods etc.
With regard to eco ,fuel will soon be too expensive for people so they won’t be able to run personal cars.
As for the high speed train, this seems to be for the benefit of a few people and will too expensive for anyone not working on the board of a bank……..
Or…
Change our ways AND the way we power our lives…
‘ever heard of a fusion bomb?’
Err… How is that maintaining a reaction?
I am a fan (excuse the pun) of wind power, I think its a technology that’s still in its infancy. If you think about it in comparison with the automotive industry, early cars were crude, noisy, uneconomical and in some case just plain nasty. Competition and development drove the market to what we have today.
The big problem is that wind is difficult to predict and not a consistent source like conventional energy production. This is why shear numbers are important, as well as the development of suitable storage, you just to have to look at the electric car market to see the biggest drawback is the batteries and getting something to store the charge that is not the size of an aircraft carrier.
However, having said all that I don’t see any realistic reliance on alternative energy for at least 10 years, even as a percentage of the power market. Although, I do think we will see more wind turbines slowly appearing.
So then Mr Science, explain this:
The consensus is that we have about 20 ish years of fossil fuels left, even saying we have a 100 for sake of argument ok?
Now, those fossil fuels were the result of 20,000,000 years of so of carbon capture in the Carboniferous… That’s TWENTY MILLION YEARS OF ATMOSPHERIC CAPTURE RELEASED IN TWO HUNDRED…
We, (the human race) have put that lot into the atmosphere in ONLY 200- YEARS!
But the upswing in temperature is nothing to do with us?
How much evidence do you need?
At the moment, sea levels are rising, if the temperature rises enough , a tipping point will be reached and sea levels will rise to Jurassic levels.
End of the UK…
I love the Plato quote BTW…
It could be you eh?
Oh BTW… note how your silly posts have gone in the bin?
lol
Oh Crappy. I am truly delighted.
That you cannot dare reproduce a submitted post in its entirety means that you have lost …and that I am the stronger.
And all that matters( to you far more than I) is that we both know it.. don’t we?
🙂
You need to get out more mate…and get a girlfriend…
Lol
WTF?
Etc…
A couple of years ago, on a TV programme covering this very subject, a professor from one of the more highly regarded American universities suggested that when the oil runs out, the oil companies will slowly roll out the patents for alternative fuels they have been buying up and burying over the years. While to bring them out now would definitely ‘help clean up our living room’, it would mean their shareholders would suffer from lower bonuses as oil revenue fell. Perhaps this is one of those far fetched conspiracy theories? There was also an argument about global warming being man made and the same professor asked one of the main claimants of this, “What caused the end of the last ice age?” I forget what answer, if any, was given. One of my neighbours works for a company which makes wind turbines. It is not an English company (the majority of them aren’t) and only a very small part of their manufacture is made in this country. Good subject for a discussion though.
I knew someone that worked for an R/D dept of a large tyre company. He told me they had experimental compounds that would last for 90,000-miles. Never be used though, for obvious reasons…heh.
Most people’s fear of nuclear power is the fuel that is used at present (uranium); a better way ahead is to use Thorium. More of it, shorter half-life and very difficult to turn into weapons grade plutonium and India and Canada have built Thorium reactors. Why do we not hear of this as an option?
Is there any money in its refinement?
Can weapons be made from it?
Can it be reprocessed for use in fast breeders?
Its a money thing…