I don’t agree with all the prescriptions presented. However, his outline of the problem is good for some critical thinking. The secret word is Terawatt. But a terawatt is only a rate of delivery. To be really useful it has to be ready to go when you need it. That would be terawatt-hours. And terawatt-days. And terawatt-months. And terawatt-years. And then comes reliability. Can the production be sustained? What is the up time? Is the resource seasonal? Can it be matched to demand?
I do like his idea about upping the research budget to $10 billion a year. I know. A quick ramp up will encourage a lot of waste. The problem is that you never know where a good idea will come from. Suppose we spend that amount in inflation adjusted dollars for 20 years. That is $200 billion. Suppose we only get a significant pay off from 10%. If that 10% covers even half our energy supplies (i.e. what ever technology that is developed is cheaper than the alternatives) it will have paid for itself.
There are a lot of interesting ideas available. Pebble Bed Reactors, Molten Salt Reactors, and others.
We need to phase out subsidies for solar and wind. When they become economical they will roll out on their own.
My thoughts? Well they drift back as always to The Polywell Fusion Reactor.
You can learn the basics of fusion energy by reading Principles of Fusion Energy: An Introduction to Fusion Energy for Students of Science and Engineering
Polywell is a little more complicated. You can learn more about Polywell and its potential at: Bussard’s IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained
The American Thinker has a good article up with the basics.
Why hasn’t Polywell Fusion been fully funded by the Obama administration?
Cross Posted at Power and Control
Comments
2 responses to “The Future Of Energy”
We should keep in mind how oil is currently used – this will provide some direction as to how any alternative energy must be used if it is to be a viable replacement, or at least what its role looks like as a supplemental source. Currently, 91% of all oil in the US is used for transportation and industrial purposes – an end use which nuclear energy (whether fusion or fission) can’t replace. The remaining 9%, which fusion energy could potentially service, is used for commercial, electric power, and residential. See link, look for pie chart ‘US Oil End Use Breakdown’.
http://www.oilshockwave.com/pdf/OS_FactSheet_042808.pdf
Doug,
That is not strictly true. If you can supply high temperature process heat at 1/4 or less of current costs you can turn that energy into liquid fuels.
You could start with calcium carbonate and end up with gasoline on an industrial scale if energy was cheap enough.