Re: Shuttle Replacement Needs to Become a National Priority!!!


"James Nicoll" <jdnicoll@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dc9jf6$h8$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> In article <J%WFe.9828$h.5596@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> jonathan <write@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >
> >Let me ask you, looking into the future what is our biggest problem
> >facing us? Isn't it our global energy needs? In fifty years or so
> >we need to replace oil with other sources.
>
> Coal liquifaction should see us well into the 21st century,
> assuming the whole world industrializes (centuries if they don't).
>
> I also hear tell that there's this atomic power stuff from the
> pulps that looks promising and a certain amound of uranium and thorium
> in the Earth's crust, to the tune of about 10^30 joules worth or about
> equal to the energy in 160,000,000,000,000,000,000 barrels of oil. Humans
> use use about 10^13 watts but most of us are poor: multiply that rate
> by 20 and there's enough fissionables to last us about 160 million years.
> If we'd got started using atomic power in the late Jurassic, we'd just be
> running out now.


And what about the rest of the world? When will, say, Indonesia, India
or Mexico get to build dozens and dozens of nuclear power plants?

And what about climate change when the rest of the world becomes
industrialized and is then burning ten times the fossil fuels we are now?
I don't see a future in that.


>
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