solar energy harvested through biological means is much more effective than photovoltaic cells

Nuclear energy is the only way to go, imo.

Another problem with fusion reactors is that the plasma (what we plan on getting our energy from) can't stay together long enough. Tokamak reactors can only currently run for about 2 secs before the plasma separates, which causes the reaction to stop.

Ironically, a nuclear fusion reactor's flaw is also it's safety feature. If anything were to go wrong, the reaction just stops, instead of exploding; and the only byproduct besides the radioactive waste is harmless helium :].

And they produce roughly 3-4x more energy in ratio to fuel used within fission reactions. Fission reactions produce more kwa than do coal, natural gas, or oil, so what does this tell you? Fusion is serious shit.

This post was edited by penguinhero on Dec 11 2008 07:43pm

Definitely is serious shit man. Fusion reactors stop because unlike fission, you have to force two atoms together. The reason we can only hold this plasma together for 2 or so secs is because we cannot supply such power for a sustained period of time, but some day if someone figures this out....damn we'd be set!

I'm not sure if the issue is us being able to provide enough power, I think it's that we haven't engineered a design that can successfully contain the plasma without it leaking. But yeah the reason it does stop is because there isn't a self sustained chain reaction like there is in fission O.o.

This post was edited by penguinhero on Dec 11 2008 08:00pm

We can contain plasma successfully, they've created a 'container' made by magnetic fields, and it successfully keeps the plasma in -- I don't think thats a major problem, at the most it would have to be re engineered to contain large amounts of plasma.

At this time I just thought our problem was we needed to input more energy to create and maintain the plasma then we would have gotten out of it.

I could be wrong though

Some University (Either Princeton or Harvard or mabye not either) is working on or has an experimental Fusion reactor. But yes, if we do get them, Space travel could be made much better as well as our energy possiblitys, Nuclear is already clean and safe, but fusion is cleaner, and safter.

combine tidal, solar and wind, we have ennough energy forever.

get geothermal, u can forget the above.

ignore corporate alternatives. such as gas, clean coal, nuclear power etc..

MIT I think?

My father said some student came to him looking to buy a turbine of some sort becuase they are making a tokamak generator.

This post was edited by penguinhero on Dec 12 2008 12:15am