Energy Supply?

Question

Anyone have any ideas in regards to conserving energy - proposals that could possibly work?

Answer 1

How about we stop wasting money on conserving energy and start spending money on nuclear power plants.

Energy conservation is a risky strategy to follow because of the fact that any money saved from energy conservation often goes into using more energy (e.g. those who swap a Landcruiser for a Prius tend to drive more than they did in the gas guzzler, those who get a more efficient air conditioner tend to leave the thermostat set lower, those who get appliances that use less power use them more or just buy more) so the expected savings don't actually arrive (usually you get lower energy usage but not by as much as you'd expect).

There is also the risk that increased energy efficiency may actually result in increased energy usage (in fact it is precisely this that caused the whole problem with global warming we're having right now).

Energy conservation also misses the fact that if we need it then we've already lost because no matter how few people you have on earth if we don't have a non polluting source of energy we're going to be screwed while if we do have a non polluting source of energy then what's the point of conserving it?

Nuclear is the cheapest non polluting source of energy we have which is why I'd prefer that we just spend our money on that instead of other power sources (though I'd like to see money going to fusion, space based solar and the sequestration part of clean coal (but only because I want to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and put it into the ground)).

Spending money on synthetic fuels (hydrogen or a synthetic hydrocarbon, I don't care all that much which) would also be needed to deal with transportation (this way we could convert nuclear power into petrol or something similar). I wouldn't spend money on crackpot ideas like what Super Man suggests though.

Answer 2

Raise gas taxes to $2 a gallon and use it to buy all the gas guzzlers which would be crushed to make 60 mpg hybrids. Part of the gas tax could be used to help Detroit retool its factories for hybrid production.

Answer 3

Go to www.uspto.gov and enter patent number 5,430,333.

There you will see pollution free electric power able to be built to be more than 1000 times that of our largest Nuclear Reactor!

Plant Vogtle, our last Nuclear Reactor makes only 930 megawatts.

The first generation “baby” power plants from this new technology makes 1000 megawatts.

Vogtle cost $10 billion, 30 years ago.

These new power plants cost $2.5 billion in today’s money.

Vogtle is about to be retired, as are all our other Nuclear plants.

All the fueled power plants only have about a 30 life span.

The power plant design you will see at patent office site live well 100 years.

They burn NO fuel what so ever!

It costs more to demolish a Nuclear plant than to build one new!

The spent Nuclear fuel has a 25,000 year storage problem with no solution yet, and a tremendous cost that defies accurate estimation due to the very long time frame.

Nuclear power has been estimated to cost more $50.00 per kilowatt hour when the demolition and storage costs are applied.

Guess who gets to foot that bill, the tax payer!

Being fuel-less the design you see at the patent office has a cost of about 3 cents per kilowatt hour.

Coal fired power plants make 8 lbs of air pollution to run 100 watt light bulb for an hour.

There are NO cost estimations for the clean up of all that pollution.

We keep seeing in the news about coal miners dieing in cave-ins.

With the high cost of electric power being hidden for so long by our politicians using their abysmally poor judgment to allow this to happen in the first place. Then compounding the problem with their constant lying about it to all of us, and the problem now coming to light despite their best efforts to lie and hide it. We are now stuck with the costs of their abysmally poor judgment after their being “paid” by big power to lie to us about the scope of this problem for decades.

Call all your elected official state, local, and federal. Tell them you want the pollution free electric power you saw at the patent office web site! Tell them to get off their assets and get moving on making pollution free and cheaper electric power happen ASAP!

Or swallow their lies so more until our nation is so polluted our children die younger than ever before. Cancer is running rampant everywhere, it comes from all the pollution our elected officials are allowing to be spewed into “our” environment every day. It time to put pollution into it’s proper place, “THE PAST”!

We now have the technology, we can build it, it’s 100% clean, and the electric power is cheaper than ANY fueled power plant.

What Can Be Patented

“ The patent law specifies the general field of subject matter that can be patented and the conditions under which a patent may be obtained.
In the language of the statute, any person who “invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent,” subject to the conditions and requirements of the law. The word process is defined by as a process, act or method, and primarily includes industrial or technical processes. The term machine used in the statute needs no explanation. The term manufacture refers to articles that are made, and includes all manufactured articles. The term “composition of matter” relates to chemical compounds. These classes of subject matter taken together include practically everything that is made by man and the process for making the products.
The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 excludes the patenting of inventions useful solely in the utilization of special nuclear material or atomic energy in an atomic weapon 42 U.S.C.2181(a).
The patent law specifies that the subject matter must be “useful”. The term “useful” in this connection refers to the condition that the subject matter has a useful purpose and also includes operativeness, that is, a machine which will not operate to perform the intended purpose would not be called useful, and therefore would not be granted a patent.
Interpretations of the statute by the courts has defined the limits of the field of subject matter that can be patented, thus it has been held that the laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract Interpretations of the statute by the courts has defined the limits of the field of subject matter that can be patented, thus it has been held that the laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable subject matter.
A patent cannot be obtained upon a mere idea or suggestion. The patent is granted upon the new machine, manufacture, etc, as has been said, and not upon the idea or suggestion of a new machine. A complete description of the actual machine or subject matter for which a patent is sought is required.


http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/index.html#functions

Answer 4

After we shoot Jane Fonda and kill all the lawyers, how about we start building Nuke plants? The cleanest form of power yet found.