Fuel/Energy Source of Future

[Re-Framed]

Which fuel equivalent do you sympathize?

As we all know the amount of fuel that we today utilize won't last forever. The day will come when humanity will have to make the right decision. So I'm asking You to select the fuel type you most sympathize that could sustain our glorious nation for years to come. Imagine if You have been given the chance to do it on your own.

P.S. This poll is for Biology project so this thing was made on-hurry. Also there is no explanation of current selections because I'll try to see what the difference is when people have the needed cons and pros of the materials and when they simply need to guess and rely on their own knowledge and opinion. The second part of this test will be published in another forum (far away from here, believe me). At the end of the week I'll collect the results and post them on these two forums also placing the links.

P.S.S. DON'T FORGET TO VOTE IN THE POLE.

Please discuss. Your opinion is what matters.

#4: OK it's my mistake. Still I don't know how to edit polls so I guess there will be Hydrogen for a while. Just ignore this choice.

 

[Pesmerga]

I went to go vote on the pole but no one told me which one.'

Also, our glorious nation of Lithuania? Nice try, Zorlax!

 

[DEATHMASTER]

Nuclear. Solar would be nice, there's tons if we can get it more efficiently

 

[Dan]

Hydrogen is not a fuel source. You might as well put flywheels on that list if you are going to put hydrogen. The vast majority of the hydrogen we use today comes from oil refining anyways.

 

[Pesmerga]

Won't hydrogen become an energy source once we get that whole fission thing down?

 

[Dan]

We already have the whole fission thing figured out. Since 1945 in fact. It is not a source of hydrogen.

 

[Eejit]

Nuclear - Fusion gradually replacing fission I expect.

Methane hydrate is mostly on the sea bed isn't it? Too difficult to harvest, and isn't a renewable source either (neither is biofuel, it's just mixing fossil fuels with renewable ethanol).

 

[ríomhaire]

Nuclear power. First person who finds a picture of Mr Burns making a claw with his fist and saying "Nuclear Power" from that episode where they are making the ad for working in the nuclear plant gets a cookie.

 

[Deleted member 56031]

Hydrogen fuel cell for me

 

[ríomhaire]

Won't hydrogen become an energy source once we get that whole fission thing down?

That would fall under the category of nuclear.

 

[theotherguy]

Combination of solar energy, wind energy and nuclear energy is the most viable solution in the short term (100 years), with the possibility of hydrogen.

Fusion power is the ultimate fuel though, and if anything is after that it will have to be dyson spheres and antimatter drives.

 

[theotherguy]

Hydrogen is not a fuel source. You might as well put flywheels on that list if you are going to put hydrogen. The vast majority of the hydrogen we use today comes from oil refining anyways.

But it most certainly can be a fuel source if we find an energy-efficient way of producing it, like genetically engineered microbes which eat methane and output hydrogen and hydrocarbons.

 

[Mr Stabby]

But it most certainly can be a fuel source if we find an energy-efficient way of producing it, like genetically engineered microbes which eat methane and output hydrogen and hydrocarbons.

Methane is already a fuel though, why not just use the methane as fuel?

 

[Polaris]

Definitely nuclear energy, we should use fission reactors, advance fusion research and improve hydrogen fuel cell technology for automobiles.
Wind energy is absolutely uneconomical, biofuels are good but only for some transportation and current solar energy is uneconomical and absolutely not ecological.

 

[theotherguy]

Methane is already a fuel though, why not just use the methane as fuel?

Pollution. The entire point of using hydrogen is the lack of CO2 released as a gas when it is burned or used in a fuel cell.

 

[Lokizen]

Vacuum energy, when it's developed.

 

[Naudian]

Looks like nuclear is the most popular. The one thing that bothers me about it is radioactive waste...whats the deal with that stuff? Do they just throw it in a tank somewhere and wait for it to decay or whatever it does? Is that gonna work forever?

TELL ME ALL ABOUT IT HL2.NET

 

[Krynn72]

Im pretty sure its just a "throw it in a barrel, bury it, and hope it doesnt leak for all eternity" kind of deal.

 

[pistolero!]

Who knows what could happen until "the future", none of these options entirely convinced me yet.

 

[Irksome]

I like the idea of solar energy; clean, and renewable but currently unreliable, inefficient, and costly. Other than that I like nuclear energy too.

PS: Besides we'll all be using tiberium in the future anyway.

 

[Polaris]

Solar energy is clean?
It's extremely unclean, do you know what kind of mess is manufacturing of photovoltaic cells? This includes environmental factors of silicon manufacturing, cadmium telluride and a lot of energy used in fabrication.
Just think about it.

 

[Terminator]

Nuclear ftw!

We need a RBMK reactor for every town and city!

Seriously tho, i think within current tech a few more nuclear power plants would fit the bill, i already live about 5 miles away from one so it dosn't really make much difference to me anyway!
If it all goes tits up at least i can become a stalker.

Once fusion gets off the ground, which i believe it will someday (mabye 20 years?) then this will be the next step!

 

[Saturos]

Hydrogen I think is where it's at tbh. There's a city in Oregon U.S., (can't remember which though) that already has a bus line that's totally hydrogen powered (I'm not talking about hybrids here either). Hydrogen is clean with the only emission being water (clean, %100 water), no toxic wastes, or a possibility of nuclear meltdown/fallout.

Solar, wind and water is nice too, but only in the areas where such resources are applicable, and as stated before, today's solar panels are not efficient enough to warrant a city-wide power plant that's strickly solar powered.

Solar energy is clean?
It's extremely unclean, do you know what kind of mess is manufacturing of photovoltaic cells? This includes environmental factors of silicon manufacturing, cadmium telluride and a lot of energy used in fabrication.
Just think about it.

Another good point about solar energy BTW.

Hydrogen is not a fuel source. You might as well put flywheels on that list if you are going to put hydrogen. The vast majority of the hydrogen we use today comes from oil refining anyways.

Uhh, H2O? (how do you type subscripts in these forums btw?) Scientists are working on ways today to efficiently break down and reconstruct the molecular makup of water so than only hydrogen remains. There's literally thousands of miles/ and trillions of tons/litres worth of hydrogen right out at sea. :thumbs:

I'm really interested in harvesting power from humans of late tbh though. Where's that option?

 

[theotherguy]

Uhh, H2O? (how do you type subscripts in these forums btw?) Scientists are working on ways today to efficiently break down and reconstruct the molecular makup of water so than only hydrogen remains. There's literally thousands of miles/ and trillions of tons/litres worth of hydrogen right out at sea. :thumbs:

I'm really interested in harvesting power from humans of late tbh though. Where's that option?

Water is a no-go. You need energy to electrolyze water, as it turns out, you need more energy to break down water than the energy you would get by running hydrogen through a fuel cell. So in the long run it would use more energy than it gets. Our best bet for hydrogen without causing pollution is either A) finding a vast store of hydrogen gas somewhere on earth or B) genetically engineering bacteria to produce hydrogen from other sources

Harvesting power from humans? You'd get more power out of literally having people crank the generators by hand than tapping into the metabolic energy of a sitting human.

 

[Raziaar]

My money is on human remains. Wars can supply themselves infinitely.

 

[Adabiviak]

Hydrogen is not a fuel source, it's just a medium (although a damn fine one if you ask me). I'd vote, but it won't be a single one of any of those sources.

 

[Dan]

Hydrogen is not a fuel source, it's just a medium (although a damn fine one if you ask me). I'd vote, but it won't be a single one of any of those sources.

Except for the fact that it is very low density and it leaks out of every possible seal you can make because the molecules are so small. If you parked your hydrogen car for a few weeks with a full tank it would probably be half empty just from leakage. Compressing hydrogen into something dense enough to be useful takes a lot of energy, and there is still more hydrogen in a litre of gasoline than there is in a litre of compressed hydrogen gas.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

Combination of solar energy, wind energy and nuclear energy is the most viable solution in the short term (100 years), with the possibility of hydrogen.

Fusion power is the ultimate fuel though, and if anything is after that it will have to be dyson spheres and antimatter drives.

This.

 

[Saturos]

This.

AND water energy. (Dams anyone?) I forgot to mention this, nor is it on the polls.

 

[Dan]

It's called hydro power

 

[Saturos]

It's called hydro power

hydro = water, so

I can't complain though because I think it's terribly annoying when people call airboats "fanboats". Same thing, different scenario I guess.

Still, I'm calling it water power today you @hole.

 

[Kula Meenur]

Methane Hydrate is the largest body of natural fossil fuel on the planet to this date. But mining it would be a bitch, and would be too costly

 

[Mr Stabby]

Also tidal. Carbon capture coal technology is also promising, most countries still have vast abundances of coal.

Hydrogen isn't a practical fuel, it would be better to synthetically make hydrocarbons via the Fischer-Tropsch process, using CO2 from sea water. It still requires an external energy source ie nuclear.

 

[Dan]

The simple fact of the matter is that nothing is even on the same order of magnitude as oil in terms of energy density and accessibility. You can add up all of hydro, wind power, nuclear power, and every other power source and it doesn't come close to rivaling the energy we get from oil. The only foreseeable conclusion is that the global economy is gonna start feeling the hurt soon. This will be the century we say good bye to modern conveniences and hello to pedal powered washing machines.

Peak uranium isn't that far behind peak oil, and nuclear fusion is only a dream that even the optimists claim is 20 years in the future, and most would say will never produce a net energy gain. The only demonstrations of fusion have sucked in far more energy than they can produce and are still very unstable. (not as in explode unstable, but doesn't last very long unstable)

 

[Shodan]

Nuclear. I think that it'll be the option the government takes because they can't find anything that will produce enough power. I think that the problem of Nuclear waste isn't as bad as running out of coal or something. I just wonder what will happen when it really begins to build up. The half-life of the spent fuel is too long for it to be gotten rid of quickly.

 

[Eejit]

Nuclear. I think that it'll be the option the government takes because they can't find anything that will produce enough power. I think that the problem of Nuclear waste isn't as bad as running out of coal or something. I just wonder what will happen when it really begins to build up. The half-life of the spent fuel is too long for it to be gotten rid of quickly.

Store it somewhere until we can haul it up the space elevator

 

[ríomhaire]

Looks like nuclear is the most popular. The one thing that bothers me about it is radioactive waste...whats the deal with that stuff? Do they just throw it in a tank somewhere and wait for it to decay or whatever it does? Is that gonna work forever?

TELL ME ALL ABOUT IT HL2.NET

If we ever manage to achieve controlled fussion it would produce very little radioactive waste.

 

[Dan]

The problem with nuclear power is that we will run out of fissile material soon after we run out of oil. It is just pushing the problem back a few decades at most.

Fusion power simply isn't feasible without gravitational containment (like the sun). The most optimistic proponents say we might have the first energy producing fusion generator in 20 years if they can discover new technology in that time.

 

[Terminator]

Fission products half lives (even the longest) are very short lived in comparison to geologic movement.

Deep storage is a good option, bury it deep away from major geologic activity and forget about it for 10,000 years, an automated and secure system of transfer directly from reactor to storage site (or the facility under the reactor) would mean much less risk of contamination, terrorism and transport costs.
There is still much room for reactor and facility design, whilst some aspects of todays nuclear power are very advanced some is still somewhat (and worryingly so) 'backward'

Fission is the way forward for now, with enhanced reactor efficiency and reprocessing the Fissile material supplies would last at least a century.

 

[kupocake]

Minovsky Particles.