Electric cars.

I'm afraid it was a massive lie. Whether that's to drum up support and/or funding, or maybe to rattle Putin by seeding the idea that his gas will soon be worthless I don't know.

They got about 50% more power out than the laser beams used to trigger it put in. Great. Except read right to the end of the article to find that the machinery used to power the lasers used a huge amount of energy, many times the amount that they got out of the reaction.

We've seen this several times before. Every now and then someone announces a net power gain, only to then admit that they were only counting limited parts of the process.

I hope they crack it. I don't want to be the part pooper. But sadly the latest 'breakthrough' is non-news. They're still no further forward. But at the end of the day, we shouldn't be too harsh with them. They are after all trying to replicate an actual star.

 

Tidal power is working very successfully in Orkney. The problem there is they cannot use it all and are having to convert it into Hydrogen to store it. They are using the Hydrogen to power the inter-island ferries in port.

 

Well I was under the impression the problem was, of how do you contain a process that is similar to what happens in the sun.
A process that once started seems difficult to control or stop.
But then what do I know.

 

Hi,

Isn't nuclear the dirtiest fuel?

As a kid 70 years ago when coal was the most used fuel we had short severe winters and long hot summers with no mention of melting the ice cap; whom can we believe but this energy problem needs solving.

Kind regards, Colin.

 

Apart from fuel, fusion needs two things. Heat, and pressure. We can't match the pressure at the core of the sun, but we can massively exceed the heat. It's one multiplied by the other so you only need to make one side bigger, in the lab that's the heat.

You can stop it instantly by switching off the electromagnets that contain the plasma or cutting the fuel or both. It's not like nuclear fission where you get a self sustained reaction. Without the heat generated by the lasers or the pressure from the electromagnetic containment, fusion simply can't happen. IF they nail it, it will be safer than current nuclear fission reactors, which are already very safe.

No. Apart from true renewables, it's about the cleanest. There are many myths about nuclear waste. Much of it is mixed with glass which locks in the radiation. There's a sculpture in some city somewhere in the world made out of it. It's less radioactive than coal, or bananas. It doesn't glow in the dark or cause fish to grow legs and two heads or any of that.

 

On tidal power, some engineers have taken a different approach. Still at prototype stage but promising. It's very simple compared to the turbine approach. You have a generator anchored to the sea bed, connected to a drum of steel cable. The end of the cable connects to a float. Tide comes in, float rises, pulls on cable, and gears then drive a generator. Tide goes out, tension comes off, cable is reeled back in ready for the next tide. Two problems to overcome. Firstly, you have to stop the float being dragged around by currents, otherwise the cable will just pull out and that's the end of that. The other problem is more one of geography/topology. This plan will only work where the depth difference between high and low tide is significant. Apparently there aren't that many suitable places, which is probably why the idea is still at prototype stage and not receiving much funding.

 

I thought one of the tidal ideas involved building something similar to a large harbour with gates, you let the tide come in then trap it and let it out a low tide through turbines.

I think this would be good but then less environmentally friendly, so its probably dead in the water.

 

I believe that was the system earmarked for Cardiff Bay. It is basically just the same principle of pump storage without the energy required to do the pumping.

 

Its using nature as is all so called "free" energy, I just think its more reliable than wind or any corks bobbing about on the ocean.
At least its predictable which would be good.

 

As the prevailing wind in the UK is from the West I think we should build zillions of wind turbines off the west coast. They will absorb ALL the wind and all we will ever experience are light zephyrs except when the North wind doth blow.

 

On the A21 on Sunday night (!! 4 hour queue at Blue Boys roundabout)....a lot of problems were down to electric cars which had used up power to keep warm while idling, and then fizzled out on the road. (No breakdown services, no snowploughs, no gritters.....)