Post what you think the PRIMARY energy source in the future will be? (once all the fossil fuels are depleted) I'm sure we will have more than one source, but I think that hydrogen technology will be the most feasable.

Hydrogen (once extracted from water) is the ultimate fuel: It's clean burning (the main waste product is 100% pure water, with zero enviromnental damage) its renewable (the water waste product can have its hydrogen extracted and reused ad infinium) and it's source (water) is practically everywhere.

Hydrogen is unreasonable for many reasons. I'll explain a few of them tomorrow (Pop Sci is an awesome magazine)

The hydrocon!

Depends how far into the 'future' you want to go.

Eventually it'll be fusion (deuterium based) but not for a looooooong while.

Until then it'll be fossil and nuclear, with a smattering of new and renewable (they're not cheap enough to wire into the grids to be viable).

Wang! kekekeke.

If we use fission to isolate the Hydrogen that would work. But then we're really using fission. People go crazy about the idea of hydrogen and how green it is, but they fail to realize that gasoline or coal plants are needed isolate the hydrogen. If we used nukelear* power plants to do it, it might be feasible. I probably don't know nearly as much about it as Yoshi, so read his post tomorrow.

*No, I can't spell nukelear, or get it close enough for a spell check program to fix it.

Hydrogen is still more expensive than useful to produce. That is, it takes more energy to produce a set amount of hydrogen than that hydrogen will deliver. Same with ethanol. Unless this changes, we'll be seeing fission plants pop up unless fusion works out soon.

That's the saddest thing I've read all day... no, all week!

Aye

we have made hydrogen fuel cells already, so so we just need to figure out how to extract hydrogen on a vast and economical scale.

I don't think you can get hydrogen out of a nuke reactor, only heavier and highly radioactive elements, which are useless unless we devise a way to get energy out of nuclear waste.

Solar wind turbines!

Condoms with generators!!

Safe power?

You must have a very happy life, Marytn and Flexor. :p
I'm not that great a speller, but I can fix most words with a spell check. Unfortunately for you, this rates about a 2.1 on my care meter, so you'll just have to fight off the chronic depression every time you see me spell nuclear. (Wouldn't you know, Google fixed it! Now you won't have to stock up on anti-depressants!)

Yeah but I mean.. what do they teach you in school? I could spell nuclear right when I was six years old -- long before I could even speak english.

You left out matter/antimatter reactions.

Nucular. It's nucular.

I'll nuculate you!

Your ego.

[/Signature]

Aye you did leave this out. M/AM reactions can produce loads of energy. But right now it takes more energy to make AM then extract out of it.

Right now, we're stuck on thermodynamics. Current thermodynamics do not yield great efficencies. Your car is about 30% efficient (70% of energy from gasoline is lost to heat). A near by power plant is about 50% efficient. Bad things.

I'd say zero point energy is the way to go.

DESPAIR

Fusion and fission aren't practical for powering automobiles.

My guess would be the primary energy source for homes in the future will be about 60% nuclear fission, and 40% hydro dams/wind turbines/solar panels.

For automobiles and other mobile objects requiring feasibly small power sources, I would guess either hydrogen or fuel cells.

By the way, I was reading an article on slashdot the other day about how they made solar panels like 4 times as effective, and it's kind of a "paint-on" substance, so I think there's potential for growth there.

Finally, I'm no chemist, but how is it possible to start with X substance, extract substance Y from it, use substance Y as fuel, and get back substance X again? That seems like it's agains the laws of thermodynamics or something...

"Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh. You said 'nuclear.' It's 'nucular,' dummy. The S is silent."
-Peter Griffin

<3 Family Guy

magnetic.

1. extract hydrogen from water, oxygen is left.

2. sell it.

3. fill up car with hydrogen and oxygen in separate tanks.

4. hydrogen and oxygen meet and react in the engine, releasing energy and heat

5. water is formed as a result of the chemical reaction.


6. go back to step 1.

Yeah. Hydrogen is nothing more than a storage form of energy. And unfortunataly every time a energy is transformed from one form to another, some energy is lost, usually in the form of waste heat.

Fusion would be a nice way to go. Since it needs hydrogen as fuel, the existing plants to produce it could easily be used to provide hydrogen also to be used in fuel cell powered automobiles. An internal combustion engine, as found nowadays in cars, is hopelessly obsolete technology, really, like JediGandalf said. Fuel cells is the way to go there, probably, unless something even smarter is invented.

Too bad Iter seems to be in constant trouble due to petty politics...

Hydrogen is a fuel. It's not the source of the energy. It will take more energy to produce the hydrogen than you'll get back out from the reaction.

That being said, we WILL see hydrogen fuel for cars etc, because the reaction is so clean. It will only arrive slowly because the entire infrastructure that has been built to support petrol/diesel fuel will have to be replaced. So that includes all the petrol stations, every single fuel truck that delivers to those stations... and so on. It's a MASSIVE change and it will not come about any time in the next few years. When we see hydrogen fuel cell technology becoming more financially feasable then it will slowly trickle into the world. But it's not going to be easy.

[Edit: forgot the important bit: it will be used as a fuel because you can't drive around with a mini nuclear reactor in your car. Yes there will be energy lost through the use of a fuel rather than an energy source in your car, but it's better to waste that energy than to have a mini nuclear explosion every time you have a road accident]

As for the energy source, I think all forms of renewable will get a lot of development until they are a reliable form of energy production. At the moment (certainly in the UK) there is a big bias towards wind farms - but that's only because it's the most developed form of renewable energy. What is needed is investment into other forms of renewable, but because of the way the market works, wind is getting most of the investment. Which is a shame, because it's not the most reliable form of energy - the wind doesn't blow the whole time, but the centre of the earth is always hot (geothermal) and the tides are regular.

As for nuclear - there are two major problems here: firstly, we still haven't got a truly clean way of dealing with the waste produced. "Hey! Let's bury it underground!" Great. Yes, it's buried deep enough that it won't damage us, but it's very literally sweeping the problem under the carpet. The other problem is that if a nuclear reactor has an accident, then the consequences are a lot more severe than with any other form of energy production. I don't think we'll be seeing another Chernobyl any time soon - I think the Human race as a whole learnt its lesson from that incident - but there is still the possibility of something going wrong.

I'm not fussed about the problem of meltdown, nor about the problem of waste. Those plants do not last a long time at all... although the thought of Dungeness copping out is a wee bit worrying.

That oxygen and hydrogen thing would work, but you'd still have a net loss of energy.

fusion all the way baby.

I believe we are close to breaking even and sustaining the plasma field for considerable times soon.

And i'm sure that extracting deuterium from sea water and removing the oxygen is quite easy to do given a few decades of development

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

You all left out mining the quantum vaccum...

Yep

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/generaltech/article/0,20967,927469,00.html

My post. I win

The entire city of Copenhagen is powered by wind turbines. Renewable energy isn't impossible, it just requires some work.
'Getting off' fossil fuels is an immediate concern for the global community, in order to prevent irreversible climate change, so there isn't really any choice but renewable sources to curb CO2 emissions. In the short-term, nuclear power will probably be useful while making that transition, but it is not a long-term option. It is 6 days before Kyoto is initiated, but the largest consumer of fossil fuels, that's you USA, is doing nothing but increasing that consumption. This is a problem, an immediate problem, a big problem.

Gravity.

Eventually someone will figure out a way to convert the gravitational energy on earth into electrical energy.

GRAVITON!

Ha. While I personally entirely agree with this sentiment, it's not why the world is suddenly going 'oh crap, we need new energy sources'. Fossil fuels are gonna run out. Really really soon.

We fat, lazy Americans are going to continue to use fossil fuels until either a) we are pressured GREATLY to speed up alternative energy sources or b) Use up every drop of fossil fuel on this planet. Until then, you will see internal combustion cars packing MORE AND MORE crowded freeways.

Spelling is one of my weak points. I can spell most words right, just some throw me. It's weird. Minute is one. I'm sure spelling is very important to those of you who plan to take jobs as secretaries or word processors.

Back in the typing pool, Flexor!