One little issue: can someone gave me numbers on the energy cost for building a rocket and launching a kilo of nuclear waste into space? And the enbergy cost of getting a kilo of reactor fuel? Add those two costs, and subtract that from the amount of energy the nuclear reaction gives you. Is that even on the positive side of 0?

kasperl wrote:One little issue: can someone gave me numbers on the energy cost for building a rocket and launching a kilo of nuclear waste into space? And the enbergy cost of getting a kilo of reactor fuel? Add those two costs, and subtract that from the amount of energy the nuclear reaction gives you. Is that even on the positive side of 0?

I have no idea.

Could use a nuclear powered rocket, though...............

Alternative fuels are one of my areas of expertise, sibce I'm doing a double geology/biology degree and the topic overlaps rather a lot.

Liberator - the old, primitive Hydrogen cells did use platinum. There're dozens of new ones coming out that use far more common metals.

And yes, the reserves of fossil fuels will run out soon, especially oil. This is inevitable in the current western culture. Coal will last a bit longer, natural gas probably about the same time, though that's hard to call TBH, since we don't know what the end of oil will mean for gas. Hydrogen, combined with wind, solar, tidal, current, hydro and other sources of power will soon become the rule, rather than the exception simply out of neccesity.

On sending Nuclear waste into space - on word - Columbia. Admittedly, that was on reentry, but space travel is still an exceptionally risky venture - do you really want to detonate a space vehicle carrying high levels of extremely dangerous nuclear wastes in the upper atmosphere?

On the extraction of Hydrogen - once again, this is an outdated figure. Researchers at the University of Western Sydney have been developing a way to get Hydrogen directly out of water using power derived directly from Solar panels. They estimate that 40 square kilometers of panels (spread throughout the continent of course) would produce enough hydrogen for the entire country. And before you ask where we'll put the panmels, one word - roofspace.

This belongs in General BTW.

I think he was concerned about a flame war, frankly. And my point about solar disposal was simply an idea.

So, Black Wolf, any figures you would care to share with us?

liberator wrote:Also, anything hydrogen associated is right out. It takes 1.3 units of hydrogen to get 1 unit of hydrogen through. Hydrogen fuel cells require 10 grams of platinum per unit for construction and operation; there are only ~7,000,000,000 grams of platinum in the entire planet, which is enough for about a years worth of production; HFCs only last about a year.

Nope. As BW said we don't need platinum for the storage side and the platinum used in the production side is used as a catalyst and therefore doesn't get used up by the process.

Hydrogen definately is looking like a good replacement for hydrocarbons.

Also, whilst it is currently impossible to create a synthetic material with the same required properties as platinum, I am sure that will not be the case for too much longer.

Hydrogen power is certainly an option, however, my main concern is more a matter of time. Even if we started converting things over to Hydrogen cells tomorrow, it would be too big a job to even be close to completion by the time we start running dangerously low on other fuels.

Edit : On a similar note, this is why Electric cars are a lie. Because the amount of pollution produced to create the energy to charge it is greater than the amount of pollution put out by a petrol car for the same distance.
And amusingly enough, we are having brownouts here at the moment, so if I vanish, you know why

Flipside wrote:Even if we started converting things over to Hydrogen cells tomorrow, it would be too big a job to even be close to completion by the time we start running dangerously low on other fuels.

The figure I heard was something resembling a $40 trillion dollar infrastructure that would need to be replaced. That's ~20 times the budget of the US for 2004, which is a horribly bloated thing.