Fission Reactors will be clean,safe, and I think about a billion times more effecient than Nuclear Reactors(Fussion), but won't be ready for 50 years b/c of lack of funding and technological breakthroughs. Saw it on a Discovery channel program on alternative energys. We should be dumping money into this, what other alternative energies do you know about?

You have the terms confused. Currently we use nuclear fission, and the energy you're talking about is fusion. Fusion is the forcing of atomic nuclei together while fission is the opposite. The current problems with fusion is that it takes more energy to mine/make the radioactive forms of hydrogen (Deuterium and Tritium), and even more energy to fuse it that you end up losing energy. Eventually we would want a self-sustaining reactor that we only need to feed. It is the same concept of a star; perpetual fusion to create energy.

Currently, the only "clean" energies would be wind, water, solar, and potentially geothermal. Other than that it will simply be perfecting the technologies we DO have such as clean coal, natural gas, and the nuclear fission that recycles the plutonium-239 created by the breakdown of uranium-235. I believe those types of reactors are called Breeding Reactors. They use a mixture of PU-238 and U-235 to help cut down on the nuclear waste.

This post was edited by ChaosDealer73 on Dec 10 2008 10:46pm

Vouch, Ive been telling people this for 4 years.
But we use Fission, and are working on Fusion. Ive made the mistake before =)

Wind, Water, Solar energy are clean, but they aren't very effective.
ChaosDealer's post pretty much says what I was about to waste a paragraph writing...so Yeah, go with that =)

The problem with solar energy is that only a small fraction of it actually hits our planet, and of that fraction only a tiny amount is able to be utilized (not to mention the inefficiencies of current solar panel technology).

Has any area near really large differences between low and high tides used that as a source of energy? It'd be very similar to a hydroelectric dam, I remember reading something about it or watching a TV show.

EDIT:Not to say that we shouldn't use solar, it's just the hardest to use to it's full potential.

This post was edited by Myrddrall9 on Dec 10 2008 11:32pm

There were debates on putting solar panels in space where the atmosphere would not lessen the energy absorbed, but the issue was getting the energy back down to earth. Someone suggested using microwaves to beam it back to earth, but I'd feel bad for whatever happened to cross the path of that beam. Hehe.. insta-fried bird.

And you're right about solar energy being difficult to use effectively. The best things to do in terms of solar energy is to use it per capita. Try to build all buildings using passive solar energy while using active solar energy panels on the house (And adding a geothermal pipe would be all the better). That will save a ton on electricity and the rest (which will be significantly less) would be covered by the electrical grid.

Also, putting solar panels in deserted areas/deserts would be more useful, but expensive.

That brings up another interesting point that I had picked up somewhere, that a possible incentive for development of solor energy would be to allow for excess energy generated to be resold (private individuals for example would get a payment for their contribution to the grid), this would both result in more effective technology and more effective electrical use (people would try and conserve more electricity for the sake of cash).

Methane gas can also be used as natural fuel, and so can vege oil...pretty much any oil and it is as effective as gasoline. Those are conveniently forgotten.

Methane is harvested from most landfills now and used as minor supplements to natural gas. The only thing is that methane doesn't have the same amount of power. Right now, biofuels aren't perfected either. Some people run cars off of fryer grease though.

I have a question, why can't we use wind if we just build those wind towers higher?

the energy amount you get out from windmills are extremely low, no matter where you place it.
it requires large areas to build out and ruins most of the landscapes, it's environmental friendly though.

and i think you got the fusion-fission backwards, fission already exists and we get most of our electricity from it but the uranium will probably soon end since its a limited resource.
but yeah we should invest time and money into fusion as it would be one of the greatest steps in mankind, its like 1000x more energy then fission and requires less money and it's alot safer if we manage to build it correctly