cliveb, drmatt I completely agree with both of you. Until charging times are greatly improved battery fuel will remain a niche product. Hopefully battery tech will vastly improve as drmatt said, but that is many years down the road at best. I have no viable alternative for personal transport.
Like you, I see little chance of green energy ever being capable of reliably powering the current or future energy needs of the world. I honestly think we are making a huge mistake not going full board with nuclear power, augmented where feasible with green power. Especially if we build the newer 4th generation nuclear plants where their targeted primary fuel source is our already spent nuclear fuel rods. Nukes solve every aspect of what we want from "green" energy with respect to small physical footprint, small carbon footprint, on demand generation, releases only steam to make power, existing delivery method, etc... But then there are the safety concerns and spent fuel rods (which is greatly reduced with 4th gen plants). I say go nukes (like France which gets around 80% of it's power from nukes) then replace nukes over time with green energy as it becomes prevalent, relevant, and reliable. Every form of energy generation has it's draw backs. The Achilles heal of any green power is storage for when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Solve long term reliable storage and we can then use anything we wish to generate it. Solar panels require some nasty chemicals to make. Wind can harm birds and must be turned off in high winds (happened in UK a few years back). Hydroelectric requires steady water flow (not too fast not too slow) in a changing world of droughts and floods (the Hoover dam will soon be turned off as it's source is drying up). Etc... Possibly cold fusion? Possibly solve long term green energy storage? Green energy source we haven't even dreamed of yet? All possible...... but the reality is we MUST build sustainable "clean as we can get" power generation NOW for future needs. Try them all, keep improving them, but lets build what we know and need NOW. IMHO I just don't see a better way than nukes. :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ toby10's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=12553 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=105775 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
