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Wave Powered Generator to Power Homes
Eh-Wire writes "A Scottish company, Ocean Power Delivery (OPD) and it's Norwegian backer, Norsk hydro are set install three wave powered generators 3.5 miles off the north coast of Portugal for the Portuguese renewable energy group Enersis. This will be the world's first commercial wave powered generating system. Providing the initial three generators perform as expected, an additional thirty wave powered generators will be installed by the end of 2006. It's estimated the wave powered generator farm will displace 6000 tonnes of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be emitted from conventional electrical generating plants."
anything one does to extract energy affects the environment. wind farms and nuclear plants change local micro-climates. i'm curious as to what, if any modeling has been done for 'sausage' farms.
as an aside, these things are certain to confuse and confound first time extra-solar visitors.
EU is proceeding, along with Japan, with a test bed for materials to be used in nuclear fusion reactor, if they ever sort out where it's gonna go. In the mean time, IMO, the best thing that could happen for 'clean' power would be a global standard fission plant along with a set of standards for site requirements. Cookie cutter fission plants would make nuclear power much more affordable. As for nuclear waste, IMO it's pretty arrogant to think we'll be around 50k years from now, while at the same time not being clever enough to figure out how to handle the waste by the time the 50k year countdown ends...
Decent point, however the problem I see is that everyone is looking at the cost of PRODUCING a set amount of electricity. That is irrelevent. You need to look at the total cost of production and DISPOSAL. The cost of disposal from a Nuclear plant is hudreds of times higher than the cost of disposal from a coal plant. Some could even argue that disposal costs are INFINITE! There are other options other than nuclear. Coal isn't perfect either, but just like nuclear, new coal plants could be built clean.
A few years back, 3m designed (I believe it was 3m) a filter for coal emmissions to remove ALL harmful materials from the emissions. 100%. The problem was cost. I believe one of the main materials was crushed diamond or something like that. Good Ol' W decided that they shouldn't be required, and funding shouldn't be spent on development and requirement of such filtering systems. So, should we blame the cancer rates on the coal plants, then build nuclear, or simply look to who is to blame for these emissions.
Does anyone know anything about these filters? I didn't find a reference in a quick search, and I'm not crazy.......well maybe.