fireofenergy

$200 Oil Is Coming While We Waste a Perfectly Good Crisis (Part 3)

Here's more about what seems to be the perfect answer...

"Anythings worth getting CSP with storage developed on a massive scale" as that is THE ONLY renewable that could even come close to powering the world!

Problem though, I've "stumbled" upon a much simpler (and unlimited) yet to be (re)developed source of power. A spin off from nuclear tech, the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor is about a thousand times safer and produces less than one percent of wastes, which has a halflife of about a thousandth of what the dummies want to put in Yucca Valley! (So in 300 years, if the casings crumble, the contents would be less radioactive than natural uranium itself!) Better yet, this thing can even "burn" the high level wastes! Infact, it requires such to "kick start" the process of thorium fission (as I think I understand it)!

The reason why it is not used is because the infrastructure and design went towards the weapons making form of nuclear, that is of "burning" uranium, which I oppose.

Just search it and see if this is not truly the answer since the tech has been around half a century ago... Imagine, no need to spend billions on extra lines, no need to fight off global dust storms caused by desert bulldozing (the easiest way to do CSP), and being able to desalinate water and to grow food in the deserts, with all that unlimited power, to not have to worry about the few times when CSP doesn't provide baseload power, not having to impose STUPID wealth restricting carbon caps (as developing nation would starve to death) and most importantly, a way for the rest of the world to produce power for less than that of coal!

Global warming, PROBLEM SOLVED!

As someone who really wanted CSP, I must admit, that something better is available, something that EVERYONE should look into! I am asking more questions about the LFTR concept as it seems almost to good to be true, but it is for real and the science has been around to prove it!

$200 Oil Is Coming While We Waste a Perfectly Good Crisis (Part 3)

What about liquid floride thorium reactors? From what I hear, if developed, are unlimited since thorium is more abundant than uranium. Even though they need uranium to "kick start", the wastes are "only" dangerous for about 300-500 years (as opposed to millions). They are inherently safe(supposedly). The main reason why countries resort to uranium is that was the course of required military research. Creating bombs from LFTR's are far more difficult.

www.dailykos.com/story...

Therefore, if anybody wants to go nuclear, (instead of solar thermal) LFTR just might be lightyears ahead of conventional!

$200 Oil Is Coming While We Waste a Perfectly Good Crisis (Part 3)

Alternative energy has to be made as base load as in solar thermal power. That means literally thousands of square miles of deserts have to be converted to mirrors (not black PV) that concentrate sunlight into molten salt and or graphite reservoirs. Mirrors can also reflect into PV with more than twice the efficiency (but with no heat storage).

The problem though is convincing the enviro retrocats and the nimby's to promote that. Even tougher is how to urge them to make laws enacting such rather cheap solar BUT AGAINST BULLDOZING (for the vast mirror fields).

If solar can't compete, why are the Saudi's investigating it?

"Al-Naimi advised:
“One of the research efforts that we are going to undertake is to see how we make Saudi Arabia a center for solar energy research, and hopefully over the next 30-50 years, we will be a major megawatt exporter.”
(from this pdf)
www.ogj.com/pdf_temp/3...

I'm sure they have visions based upon the proven (but bulldozed) deserts sites in California and the robotic industrializations of tomorrow.

$200 Oil Is Coming While We Waste a Perfectly Good Crisis (Part 3)

Yep, I believe in "green" but only if implemented as an UNLIMITED baseload solution (concentrated solar thermal or better). I do not believe in paying too much for PV, in stupid little conservative tips like "save the baggies", etc.
I also believe that we should drill, but not so much that my kids don't have any left in 10 years (if and) when they can drive. I definitely believe in what James is saying, about population and the rising demand for oil but I do not believe most of you who say "green won't work". Granted, green as you think it won't.

However, "green" (even though I hate to call it that) as I see it will! What's so hard about a bunch of mirrors (with steam generators built tough enough for nuclear)?

All you oil people out there need to realize this one thing: The creation of massive (baseload) RE capacity requires huge amounts of oil and ($$$) That's why I don't call myself green, and is the only reason why we should drill. "Wasting" oil on any other thing (such as fashion and sex) should be considered not as important as "using" it for the creation of the next (and higher level) energy platform.

$200 Oil Is Coming While We Waste a Perfectly Good Crisis (Part 3)

I mean, I hope the economic prosperity created for solar thermal would be able to compensate...

$200 Oil Is Coming While We Waste a Perfectly Good Crisis (Part 3)

I can't help it but gas rose 17 cents in just one week! If solar thermal was to play such a large (and necessary) part, oil will rise to its highest levels due to mirrors production demand. Oh well.

$200 Oil Is Coming While We Waste a Perfectly Good Crisis (Part 3)

On Apr 10 03:56 PM User 392818 wrote:

...
A better question would be
> to ask what the average price of crude will be over the next five
> years. $75 a barrel, $100 a barrel, $150 a barrel? My own bet is
> that it will be closer to $75.
Dude, your'e right! Oil will still be that cheap if renewables account for some 50% with a hundred million electric cars influx (YA RIGHT), or we become so impoverished because we did not employ ourselves for peak oil (and global warming) preparation. Simply mass producing mirrors, steam generators and heat reservoirs would turn things around!

$200 Oil Is Coming While We Waste a Perfectly Good Crisis (Part 3)

Only thorium reactors or concentrated solar thermal power with heat storage can solve the problem (and of course electric cars) as they are unlimited. If the Obama team really meant business on renewables, they would kick start "operation desert mirrors" (how hard could that be?). But instead, they "protect" it so we can suffer peak oil fate. Solar power is so very simple, you just post erect (not bulldoze for) Billions of mirrors that reflect the sunlight into heat reservoirs (or into the twice as efficient Stirling engines or CPV and pay extra for storage). All this should cost more but is better than exponentially increasing fossil fuel prices, especially if America gets the millions of required renewable energy jobs!

It is not too late (unless the nimbyer's stop mass production on that too) !

$25 Oil Could Happen Before a Return to $100

I don't know much about investing but do believe that within a few years, oil will escalate to it's highest cost ever. Because it is finite, the producers know that and because it will costs more to extract. The only way I see oil staying below $100 in the long term is if the world electrifies it's light duty fleet.

Concentrated solar power by use of mirrors and thermal storage (needed for baseload power) is a very real solution once oil prices do rebound to that point where it would be cheaper to mass produce all them mirrors.

With that, there would be no more having to import oil and millions of local jobs (no more global warming either)!

It seems that the oil companies know this. We can't let the other side of the world become our energy producers by becoming our own solar energy producers! (They have the money to... right?)