Page 2 - Nuclear Power

Right. The natural and unconventional ways of producing energy are the best options if you have plenty of them. There aren't too many natural locations for building hydro-power stations....not even for artificially creating it.

Same with wind as Ice stated. Even at the best windy locations, it is not constantly blowing at full speed. So, check that off.

Capacity of a Power station is divided in two parts - Base capacity which is the minimum demand a station is supposed to supply all around the year and Float capacity which is the fluctuating part above the base demand. This goes high at pick hours and low at night time....

The best practices include having a nuclear power station or thermal power station for the base capacity, because of their reliability. Now, thermal power station has lots of problems regarding pollution and efficiency being lower than 50%. So, what's left is the option to choose nuclear.....

Despite having high risk and very high capital required, the odds of a nuclear plant failing are pretty low. Infact, they advantages like efficiency, handling etc completely outweigh the disadvantages, if you don't consider something going seriously wrong.

Nuclear power is here to stay...it is just too good to go away. Although, natural ways of getting power look very attractive, their lack of feasibility just keeps them away..atleast for now.

Yep.....until something better comes along its the best we currently have available.

Not to mention the negative environmental effects of producing all of those mills. All that pollution from manufacturing. And then you want to put them in the wilderness, in natural animal habitat?

You are kidding right?! O_o
The only negative effect of a wind mill is danger to wild birds' population. Normally they will be placed in planes so not so many animals linger there...and at that height definitely monkeys don't try to climb.

If the sight isn't an eyecandy for some, then it is a different matter altogether.

I rather think wind power plants are good looking. Now I'm all for nuclear, but looking into some things with men such as tesla, you wonder if nuclear really is the best way to go.

Actually, I heard a statistic that if the same amount of money that is spent on oil drilling/refinement was put into solar development, within 5 years solar energy would bring twice the power return of oil based power....

Another problem with hydroelectric is that the barrages often get clogged up and it is quite costly and inefficient having to clean these out once or twice a year.

On a side note, i think this thread could be moved to the Science section

See, when there is a research going on, pumping more and more money doesn't guarantee the definite returns. And it is not too hard to think/understand for even a school going kid.

Have you seen solar panels? Small solar panels that could run a street light are expensive. You cannot recover your money even after 15 years. Would you call that a good investment? Okay, if you're saying 'yes' for example of a street light, but would you invest such huge amount of money even for running a regular house? Most sanely, NO.

When I was in 3rd year of my undergrad, a team developed a solar refrigerator. They had aid from some orgs and in the end the entire project remained only a successful experiment which was not feasible for practical purposes.

Whatever medium sized experiments on solar energy are being done today, are actually done on panels crapped out of old satellites. Satellites somehow get priorities in using the most recent solar energy resources.

Unfortunately, our jounalism sometimes has a tendency to overrate what doesn't exist, just with a purpose of criticizing whatever is there. And when it is not possible that everyone knows the technical aspects of such things very well, it is even easier to throw in some heavy technical terms to fool them.

Edit: I agree with proposal of moving this thread to Science section. It is a matter of time when Mrs Hey takes a look at it.

I know that's steam and it's used for cooling. I meant it seems inefficient to go from the amazing power in a single atom to... converting it to water THEN converting it to rotary power to turn a turbine to use magenet to make electricity? I might not know much about physics, but transferring energy around like that makes you lose a whole lot. So to refutre your disagree, yes I do know what that stuff is - it's steam used for cooling. The fat tower is not the reactor - it's a cooling tower. (reactor is in a smaller bunker off to the side, protected by many feet of concrete)