[extropy-chat] Energy & Global Warming [was: Partisans and EP]

[Robert Bradbury]

On 2/13/07, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
>
>
> What sort of regenerative energy do you have in mind that is of
> sufficient density?


I suspect Eugen is arguing that the same amount of R&D put into increasing
the efficiency of solar cells or making them cheaper (if one could "print"
them like newspapers they wouldn't be very expensive) and/or efforts to
develop catalysts that could enable production of hydrogen from water using
solar energy would be better than spending the same amount on thorium
reactors.

I've never seen any accounting for the amount of money that was spent during
the 40's and 50's on reactor development but I suspect it wasn't a small
chunk of change.  Presumably much of it was done on the Pentagon's dime.  If
one put $500B into building silicon "refineries" and solar cell
manufacturing plants one would see the costs drop through the floor.

There is no getting around the fact that building any kind of "reactor"
involves a relatively massive complex "plant".  Solar to electricity or
solar to hydrogen however ultimately involves material only a few hundred nm
thick.  Spike could sit down and whip out the numbers but I suspect the mass
of a thorium reactor plant could cover a significant fraction of the land on
the Earth in solar cells.

Robert
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