shbaz says:
"There isn't enough uranium in the world to sustain electricity for the United States alone, what are we going to do about that?"
If you went to the doe website's discussion of Uranium Reserves, located at
www.eia.doe.gov...
you might get some further insights.
"Photovoltaic modules are innefficient and they cost energy and pollution to produce too."
Don't get me wrong; I'm not a complete PV fan, but I am not sure of your definition of "inefficient". In some cases, e.g., microwave repeaters on
remote mountain tops, electric cattle fences running off a capacitor bank, or daytime-only pumping to a water tank for subsequent gravity-feed water
delivery, PV is a great approach. It's just not justified for large-scale use.
"If we want energy from the sun, it's best to use the heat to create steam. A fresnel lens doesn't stop working after 10 years."
True, and neither does a reflective trough that is a parabola in cross-section heating a metal pipe carrying the water and flashing it to steam.
Unfortunately, you are dealing with superheated, high-pressure steam, which requires some
very involved engineering and some rather high-cost
construction, as well as some pretty sophisticated water-recycling and safety equipment. Workable, certainly, but I couldn't say for sure if tha
approach is cost-effective. And besides, you
still can't generate electricity at night, which means the same old storage problems as with
PV.
"As for cars, there's no energy crisis now and there never was. Alcohol is a far superior fuel to gasoline..."
Why? its specific heat is much lower.
And the "Manual for the Home and Farm Production of Alcohol Fuel"
(
journeytoforever.org... ) says:
"Alcohol fuel can be an important part of the solution, but it is by no means a panacea. If all of the available agricultural surplus were
converted to ethanol, alcohol would supply less than 5% of our motor fuel needs. Add the possibility of converting cellulose residues to ethanol and
general biomass to methanol, and the most optimistic total falls short of 10% of our present needs! However, this is a very important 5 or 10% because
it can be renewed each year, and each gallon of alcohol produced will save a gallon of oil."
"...and vegetable oil is nearly as good as diesel while being FAR cleaner."
I believe the same argument obtains here. You're talking about a lot of vegetables!
"Both can be produced in desert environments using plants that we normally regard as a nuisence for growing so fast in such great
quantities..."
What plants do you have in mind? Jojoba? It's not fast growing at all, although it produces small amounts of very pure lubricant. However, the
attempts in the late 1970's to commercially grow jojoba came to nothing; it simply wasn't cost-effective.
Russian Thistle? Fast growing, and good for making "Tumble-logs", but its specific heat is the same as most lignin-based plants: pretty
miserable.
And besides, as someone who has lived in the Sonoran Desert for 26 years now, I am sensitive to the fact that there simply isn't enough water to grow
that amount of alcohol-producing plants....
...unless you have a particular species in mind with which I'm not familiar.
[edit on 14-9-2004 by Off_The_Street]