Powering America and the World Recently there was a discussion and article about the different forms of energy we use and which ones were the safest and which were the most dangerous. One of the things I heard were, many people believe nuclear fission is the safest. This is the type of nuclear power being used right now in all of the world’s nuclear electricity generating plants. While there are many of these plants around the world and only a few have had accidents, it only takes a couple to cause incredible damage. I don’t see how they can be classified as safe. There are many risks involved not many people talk about. Even before we talk about safety, we have to mention the fact the spent fuel is extremely dangerous and this danger lasts for hundreds of thousands of years. There is nowhere we can guarantee on the planet that will keep people safe from the dangerous radiation connected with this storage. Some will say we can store the spent fuel in salt mines deep in the earth. Many will go along with this, but think about this, the earth is dynamic and things happen like earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions and other things which could expose this spent fuel. It might take fifty or one hundred thousand years if it happens, but would it be fair to people in the future to store it this way. The only safe way to store it is to send it to another planet or moon far from the earth, but it looks like by the time we get that technology we will have nuclear fusion which is so much safer. You may be wondering why I say nuclear fusion will be much safer, so I will tell you. First of all, there is no nuclear waste. This means no spent fuel to store. Most scientists believe this is what powers our sun. Some disagree however and say if this was true the fuel would have been used up by now. Anyway, it is far safer than nuclear fission. The by product of fusion, is helium, something much easier to deal with. Fusion does not release the dreaded greenhouse gases that pollute our atmosphere. One of the reasons fusion is so much safer than fission is The problem with fusion power is not safety, but the fact we have been working for decades to perfect it. We have to reach the point where the machine produces more power than it uses to work. So far, we are making progress but we are still far from perfecting the process. There are those who claim we can use coal without polluting the atmosphere, this is the opposite of what others are saying. One has to wonder if we put an effort into making burning coal cleaner or finding some other way to get it to release its power, would coal then be safe to use? We have so much coal in this country, it seems like a waste not to take advantage of it. Ohio State University researchers have discovered a way to make this happen. They have developed a process called chemical looping and it is potentially able to eliminate many of the pollutants released in burning coal. This includes carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides. The process had already been run for a week with great results, but will the prejudice against burning coal put a halt to this experiment? I hope not. Many people believe natural gas is completely clean when burnt. It is true it does burn very clean compared to other fossil fuels, but not completely clean. When natural gas is being burned it is producing about ¾ the number of pollutants of burning oil. Could it be cleaned up to the point where it is truly totally clean? There certainly could be experiments going on to make natural gas cleaner, but I am currently unaware of any. When I look over the energy situation in this country, I have to come to the conclusion Nikola Tesla was correct when he designed and built the first hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls with Westinghouse. Hydroelectric plants if constructed properly are considered clean energy and the great news is there are over 90,000 dams in the United States and some of these have hydroelectric generators or can have them. We should make sure all dams capable of them are equipped with them. Only about 2,500 dams have hydroelectric generators. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has stated more dams could be equipped with hydroelectric generators. Less than 3 percent of dams generate over 7 percent of the power in this country. There have been other ideas for generating electrical power which would supply clean energy. There is wind power and solar power for instance. There are problems with wind power even though some will not admit this. The huge turbines are unsightly, and are destroying the bird population. They depend on the wind which might slow or not be available. Recently a different type of tower has been designed with much smaller propellers and many more of them, but this is not a perfect solution. Using the sun as power in several different ways could be one way if perfected to generate power. I believe many of us realize we have to get off the electrical grid. It is a target for hackers and in case of an attack extremely vulnerable. One idea which has been kicking around for quite some time is the idea of putting a station in space which would beam down electricity made from solar panels in space. One of the advantages is it would always be in sunlight which eliminates the problems with solar panels on roofs which either only work entirely in sunlight or at reduced power as some of the newest ones do. We have found plenty of ways of generating power and some are much cleaner and safer than others. While the sun is an incredible power source if we can completely harness it, so are the oceans and rivers all over the planet. It seems to me we already have many of the answers and they do not necessarily involve any form of nuclear power.
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