Fed stunner: We'll need equivalent of 300 new Hoover dams to keep up with power demand * WorldNetDaily * by Rich Nolan, Real Cle...
The U.S. Department of Energy recently made a startling admission. U.S. electricity demand is going to double by 2050 and meeting that soaring demand is going to require the equivalent of building 300 Hoover Dams.
We need to revisit nuclear power in a big way.
Gen IV Reactors, and perhaps especially Thorium reactors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
The power requirements of our future are staggering. We will not keep up with the old ways.
With that said, I am pro-coal, pro-oil, pro-NG, etc. In fact I wish we would stop fucking around with solar and wind and get serious about NG and Geothermal.
I love the idea of geo-thermal. I haven't studied it enough to know any drawbacks or ramifications though.
Btw, how about growing citrus in Nebraska? With no HVAC?
Yup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD_3_gsgsnk
Simplifying, that is a semi-underground greenhouse (the Native American word for it is "Wallipini") which faces the sun, uses thermal mass, etc., and duct work underground below the frost line, with a push fan and a pull fan. Like the push and pull fans on a tower PC.
Not to make it sound like I am diminishing this man's work. Quite the contrary, I am super impressed with him and what he has achieved here.
You can effect a form of geothermal. I wouldn't say it's easy to do, but it's fairly understandable how to do it.
It ain't gonna cover your electric bill, but it can cover all or most of your heating/cooling bill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc_BbbMi1cg
Also, if you are digging a well, you can drop a loop down there.
Once you go below the frost line, the earth is around 68F year round.
I saw this little gem the other day and enjoyed how low tech it was. This is in AZ (Tucson, I believe) so this would not work where one has a real Winter. But actually I'll wager that it could work in a place with a real Winter with some changes (deeper hole for the container, insulated pipe, etc.).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb5aHQO47kM
Would love to make one of those for a shed as an experiment.
That's cool! The hot springs up here has a geothermal greenhouse. I think it's impressive when people figure out how to "nature better".. lol
Dump water in a hole, let the earth heat it into steam, run that steam through a turbine and you'll have power.
Alternatively, use that heat directly to heat your house. Great and very reliable technology, just expensive to build but cost practically nothing to operate as you need to drill very deep to access the heat.
Thorium is the way to go. But that is the easy part. The hard part is the transmission lines. They are already maxed out. They have to be careful because they get hot and droop. When that happens strands can break, reducing capacity.
Fair point. I was focused on production in writing. Transmission and storage remain big issues. However those issues apply even more to wind and often to solar, I hope you will agree.
When do we get our Mr. Fusions?
Diffuse energy has very little value, is expensive and has a lot of drawbacks. The more concentrated the energy source, the more added value. That is one reason why gasoline outshines things like hydrogen and batteries.
Yes I am not sure anything has more "K" at the point of need than gasoline/diesel/oil. And distribution is not super-fun, but we know how to do it at this point. And storage is fairly straightforward, up to a point.
Which is why gasoline/diesel/oil are still doing well.
EDIT: My comment was not well worded. What I meant was that the K you get from these fuels vs. the price you pay + the cost/complexity of the distribution/storage you need to employ to get it ... is still the best or nearly the best math. NG would be better, if we had more filling stations for it, more vehicles that could accept it, etc.
NG is not too bad. I drove a flip a switch NG and gasoline pickup truck sometimes for work. But NG has a density issue. It takes up a lot of volume. But it is fantastic for power plants. They need several NG power plants in west Texas as they are producing more than they can handle.
Why can't it be compressed? I've always wondered this.
It can be. There has been some good work done with composite tanks for hydrogen. It would be interesting to see some range calculations for a smart vehicle configuration. It would be much safer than hydrogen (boom). But not as safe as gasoline or better diesel. But safe enough. An excellent project for an engineering college.
There would be some refueling safety issues, but I think could be handled easily. The good part is that most of the infrastructure is already in the ground to heat our homes and our food. If you designed a hybrid, the configuration options could be quite enticing.
Refueling time could be short, the engine could be small and light, the battery could handle the impressive acceleration and hill performance, no need for a lot of expensive pollution controls. It’s cheaper, the fuel is cheaper, virtually no impact on the electrical grid, you could have a home refueling station (outdoor) if you wanted.
It creates CO2 and H2O. And we actually need more CO2, not less. More food, more oxygen and a greener planet. Or you can use a NG fuel cell for just H2O.
Thanks for making me do this thought experiment.
Yep. I am familiar with NG vehicles. My experience with them is quite positive. The tank(s) do eat up space though.
Oops, I think I solved the problem. But it would violate my law of good enough.
If we could create a practical LNG vehicle, that would be something.
Technically, Chevron should have neutered most of EPA ability to create arbitrary law/mandates.
Are they just continuing about business as if SCOTUS never ruled?
I think the EPA needs to be sued out of existence before they blow up a major city.
They need to be shuttered before they can mandate their new propane based refrigerant. They are taking away the flame retardant component from r410 to make it more efficient. Yeah, efficient at burning houses down.
I was referencing "The Simpsons Movie" and we all know how prophetic that show has been in the past.
...of course, SOP...
Mandate all things EV (cars, cooking appliances, fridge, etc) make sure there isn't enough power for everyone, ration power through social credit (merit) system, cause droughts, ration food based on aforementioned score, create camps for people who can't make it in the new system, get them sick, and ration the health care.
Sounds like Agenda 2030 to me. These assholes have always been about creating artificial scarcity in order to control the masses. There final move is to make power all "renewables" and then ration who gets power. Simple yet very effective.
There is plenty of coal and natural gas. EPA needs to be put in its place, as do all the other 3 letter agencies that have been dictating law for 40 years.
...the containment is not the issue...
...it is having water to contain which mucks things up...
My main concern is that people are only now starting to realise the problem. If we ignore the trendy AI, electricity usage was set to double anyway. If you ban cars that run on fossil fuels and replace them with electric vehicles then that will cause a doubling of electricity usage all by itself.
The other problem is the proposed solutions. If you see how much energy a wind farm can generate in a year and divide that into the total energy usage of a country you can get an approximation to how many of those wind farms you would need to run the country. When I put in the numbers, the US would need a wind farm that covered an area of 8 times that of Texas!
Similarly for the UK, I found a solar plant's area and yearly output and worked out how many acres would be needed to replace our largest power station. The answer was around 400 square miles!
If our governments were responsible then these figures would be known, and publicised, upfront.
In the case of the UK which is a tiny country compared to many, we do not have thousands of square miles available for "sustainable" energy solutions. Even worse, we complain that we cannot feed ourselves because we do not have enough farms and then we need to built a new house every two minutes to cope with the influx of immigrants.
Our government are more interested in collecting Brownie Points rather than thinking through the problems. They are just "travelling hopefully."
Texas has an area of 268,820 square miles. If you take that times 8, you get 2,150,560 square miles. The total square miles in the United States (including Alaska) is 3,809,525 which means that the wind farm would cover at least two thirds of the country. You might be wise to incorporate this information into a post. More people need to see your comment.
The world is in need of a worldwide revolution. No wonder why Q said that the military is the only way.
they never think of what it takes they just spew BS for the retards to eat...green new scam
Reminder to anons that the boss name dropped Dr. John G. Trump at the bitcoin conference in Nashville back in July....
There's your solution to this problem.
Here is a quick profile.