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The whole power, transportation, and environment debate
My eldest entered into a rather heated debate this morning with the nanny. He was mostly just "parroting" what he's hear me say, so his arguments were not well founded and backed up with examples. She brought up a number of good (though stereo typical) points that he was unable to counter. For any examples I gave she wanted to see actual "proof". I've come across articles in many places "proving" my stance on the best energy, transportation, environmental, and even water solution is Nuclear power with electric cars, but I have failed to make note of most of them relying on my (admittedly spotty) memory to bring up the examples when this more and more frequently debated topic comes up. So I have setup this page to start quickly jotting down the links I find (or other notes) on each topic. All of the ones I'm writing down today, are ones I have heard/read in recent years, I just need to dig them back up from my bookmarks and such. I have to focus on other priorities right now, but by setting up this page, I can very quickly add them in the future until this is fully updated. I hope others find this enlightening and helpful as well.
Nuclear Power
Long term waste disposal issue and economy of scale.
Creating clean drinking water with hydrogen from nuclear
Modular nuclear power systems
Recycling of waste
Nuclear power safety track record
More stable energy supply, less fluctuation in price than fossil-fuel and other technologies
Electric Cars
Limited Range with current implementations
Longer range with newer but currently pricey battery implementations
Self charging with home solar and wind, and solar skins on cars
No supply chain for 90% of daily American driving (25 mile/day).
Example of solution for long trips with "battery swap out drive through" solution
Disposal/recycling issues with batteries
Coal
Safety track record of mining process
"Clean" coal misnomer
Petroleum
Supply chain dependency on other countries
Limited resources, volatile market place
Continues legacy of existing "gas station" supply chain model
Pollution continues even with hybrids and biofuels
Hydrogen cars
Home generation/storage
Continuing the current "gas station" supply chain mentality
Hydrogen only explosive under specific conditions.
Hindenberg a rare circumstance.
Hydrogen safety track record
Solar
Scalability issues beyond the home, trying to support metro areas
Space usage.
Expense
Useful on "local" home user scale.
Most useful in limited environments/climates/seasons
Wind
Scalability issues beyond the home, trying to support metro areas
Impact on birds and migration
Other "environmental" impacts
"Using up" farmland for wind farms.
Most useful in limited environments/climates/seasons
Sea wave energy generation
Scalability issues
Environmental impact on ocean life
Geothermal energy generation
An excellent option in some areas, but very expensive and only viable in limited geographies
Biofuels
Doesn't Scale
Replacing food farming with fuel farming
Driving costs of food through roof.
Non-food farmed plants still use up space usable for food farming
Using algae farms for biofuel generation
Using fungus for biofuel generation
Using ocean growth for biofuel generation
Polution reduced but continues.
Still dependent on old "gas station" supply chain mentality
