Slashdot Mirror
Nuke-Proof Bunker Turns Out Not Waterproof
An anonymous reader writes "The AP reports on the opening of a vault in Tulsa, OK which was designed to withstand a nuclear attack by the Russians. 50 years ago they put a Plymouth Belvedere in the vault to preserve it so that we could get a good look at it in the (for that time) magical year of 2007. Unfortunately it turns out that the vault wasn't even waterproof. The once beautiful car is now a literal rust bucket."
Now gimme a break. That was not part of the requirement specifications!
Well, at least people can still duck and cover if there's a nuclear attack. Hooray for worthless advice...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
I read a story about this time capsule a few weeks ago, and I wanted to make sure I found out how it went. Thanks for posting this story. I love this part: "The contents of a "typical" woman's handbag, including 14 bobby pins, lipstick and a bottle of tranquilizers..." My how times have changed...And to think, some lucky person is gonna win that car and 1200 bucks. I tell you what...
This guy's the limit!
It could have been worse - it could have been a 197o's Ford, in which case all that would have been left would have been the tires and a lump of iron oxide.
I always said Fallout had an accurate prediction of how the world would end...
Peace sells, but who's buying?
It was built to shelter people against radiation, not water. And? How did it not work? Did anyone die from radiation in the area?
See how good it works!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Some dumb 1950 duck-and-cover types who actually liked Schlitz beer screwed up big time.
But at least they tried. Where are the equivalent time capsules of today? Why doesn't Slashdot offer (for example) a PT Cruiser to whomever correctly guesses the population of Mars in 2050?
At Friday's ceremony, protective wrapping was removed to show the mud-caked vintage vehicle covered in rust.
Where did all the mud come from? I think that has much more to do with the rust.
Agree? Disagree?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
BTW, the Cold War systems were decommissioned about a decade ago. In the early 1990's the louvers needed painting, so they were removed from building, shipped to someplace (rumor said Texas), painted and then reinstalled. A couple of years later they were removed for good.
I feel sorry for all the EURO's that came all that way to see rust
--==## Who Frags Ya? Baby! ##==--
well at least nobody would need to leave to get water.. not that water would be top priority if a nuke hit though.. maybe
Don't panic
The British kids' TV show, Blue Peter had the same thing happen with one of the "time capsules" they buried on TV. When they dug it up again with great ceremony 16 years later, water had got in and it was a soggy mess.
Not sure what the point of it was anyway; 16 years isn't that long unless you're like 6 years old when it's being dug up- seems pretty contrived and pointless to me.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
You aren't forced to read it, Timmy.
Make us think they are going to nuke us and then launch a surprise attack with water pistols.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I'm waiting for a nuclear engineer to show up and tell us how water can get in, but gamma particles can not. This is not a jab at nuclear engineers, I'm truly interested.
I think the moral of this story is that archiving anything, even if it seems durable, is hard. Now, how confident do you feel about those backup tapes that are in the closet down the hall? How much moisture is getting to them just from the humidity in the air?
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
the story should be looked at carefully by whoever designs nuclear or chemical wast storage areas. 50 years is nothing in comparison to the time frames deposits should last. In this case, there was the unexpected puncture of the hull, which was devastating. It shows how difficult it is to see all aspects of the problem.
The USA bluffed them into spending their way into bankruptcy and collapse with all these stories of super weapons and facilities that the USA was supposed to be developing and the Russians had to match dollar for ruble. Well it turns out most of these facilities were junk just like Star Wars and the manned space program. The Russians had the more reliable manned program (Soyuz) all along but got demoralized from all the talk about how capitalism can make everything cheaper and better and they just gave up. I guess we should thank Hollywood for our victory in the Cold War more than the Pentagon or the White House.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Even if the container were waterproof the car would still rust if the humidity wasn't controlled.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
The stock market was abuzz last week, seeing lots of activity in the rust futures markets.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Wouldn't this thing have rusted regardless of if the bunker was water-tight, due to air moisture?
This whole thing doesn't seem like it was well thought out 50 years ago.
From Soviet Russia, they nuke to the dam or to water reservoir.
They want acid rains, radioactive climates, warm-up air to kill them, contaminated water, very dry and filtered terrain, etc.
Your air, water and food will be scarce.
You asphyxiate in your bunker.
I warned you about the dangers of dihydromonoxide!
I'm saying twenty, thirty million dead, tops.
From the article:
The concrete vault encasing the car may have been built to withstand a nuclear attack, but it couldn't keep away water.
I've read numerous stories about the car in the news press and automotive press. CNN is the first agency to mention anything about it being a bomb shelter. There was no door. They had to rip up the sidewalk and dig down half a dozen feet to get to it.
I think the "may" in the above sentence has been wildly mis-interpreted.
Please help metamoderate.
Ive remember hearing stories about this car growing up. It was really neat watching Ms. Belvedere (thats what we call her) finally come out of the ground. It was a little disappointing to see her rusted out, but it gives her character. They took guesses at what the population would be in 2007, and the very first guess was 388,000, and the population figure they are using is 380,000. That was one hell of a guess. Whoever guesses closest wins the car. I hope they give it to a museum. She belongs to all of Tulsa. Take that Oklahoma City!!!
The story says it is a "literal rust bucket". No, it is not a literal rust bucket, it is a FIGURATIVE rust bucket. This is a literal rust bucket. Actually, no, that isn't a literal rust bucket either, that is a literal rusty bucket, a literal rust bucket would be a bucket which holds rust.
The Porsche Boxster, the New Beetle from Volkswagen, the Smart, those Kia's, I could go on and on... Oh wait, those aren't American cars? Sorry I interrupted - please continue. Have fun bashing "modern design".
...over at http://sweasel.com/archives/356
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
It could be just because I'm "young" but I owned 2 previous model Mustangs and think they were the most beautiful out of all of them (leaving alone the fact that, ignoring that it made less HP than foreign V8's, it had much more power than the old 'classic' models). In fact, the model before that, the almost universally panned 'bubble' model, was my first car that I bought. In any case, I loved them all. I think they're great, simple cars. They're not supposed to the greatest thing ever, they're just supposed to look good and spin the rear wheels, both I think they do in spades compared to the originals.
And also, yes, I think the partially Ferrari inspired remodelling of the current Corvette looks brilliant even though I'm no GM fan.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Please clarify. Since you use the term 'literal', do you mean that the car is not a bucket containing rust, or a metal bucket which has become rusty?
ron lussier / lenscraft / fine art giclee prints/ sausalito / ca
in 1972 there was somne excavation work being done 30 ft away, they said back then that they thought they might have damaged it but the city did nothing to fix the problem.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I have a theory that your taste in automotive styling is set by what's around you when you're growing up.
I, like the parent poster, grew up in the '80s. Like the parent poster, I think that the styling trends of the '50s are hideous, garish, and sometimes even spooky. I can appreciate them from a perspective of nostalgia, but I think it's just hideous out of that context. I'd much rather drive a '90s jellybean or an '80s box, if it came down to that.
If I look back and draw the line, I think I'd draw it about the time my parents' cars were made. I think that's how people recognize what's acceptable to them, and what's not.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
In Soviet Russia, bunkers are waterproof but not nuke-proof.
"The once beautiful car is now a literal rust bucket."
Abuse of the word literal like this really makes me cringe. Literal means 'this is exactly how it is, without being metaphorical in any way'. Unless the car has somehow transformed into a bucket, you've used the wrong word.
Soviet Russia: 94,345,534 score points!
United States: 10,036,262 score points!
Chinese Repub: 09,872,435 score points!
North Korea : 08,231,387 score points!
Islamic Iran : 07,729,002 score points!
Well, at least it is not Dodge - shoesalesman car. Al Bundy had a headache with his Dodge.
is that they put the gasoline in there because they thought the world would be so advanced in the 21st century that we would've moved way beyond that. :P
The AMC Pacer. otherwise known as a "turtle" or a "goldfish bowl" because thats what they looked like.
Coke Memorabilia Collectors took me by surprise too. And this is while in Atlanta no less.
I'm sure we could find the same car (same model, same year) that's been used every day since the 50s in better shape! No joke.
uh...depending upon the breaks.
-- After all is said and done, more is said than done.
...pay a visit to the Minuteman Missle National Historic Site in South Dakota. They offer tours of an underground Minuteman Delta launch bunker on a appointment-only basis, 6-8 to a group. The bunker itself, built in the 60's, is actually an air-tight, climate-controlled concrete capsule suspended on giant shock absorbers about 150 feet below the surface. The only entrance into the capsule is via a 5-ton vault door that could be opened and shut in under a minute. It provides a fascinating insight into the Cold War and the level of redundancy that was in place to ensure that if a launch was ordered, it would happen (for instance, launch orders would be given to a number of different launch sites simultaneously, so no launch site personnel would be aware of who actually launched a missle).
Interesting story: There was an "emergency egress" hatch in the capsule that led to the surface through a corrugated pipe. There were only a few problems: The hatch door weighed over 200 pounds and dropped down from the ceiling, ensuring the first one out would probably be the last one out. And the government was afraid the Russkies knew where the egress points were on the surface, so the government poured a parking lot over it. Only problem was they failed to tell the launch controllers that their "emergency egress" system led to the underside of a parking lot. This was all top-secret stuff, never came to light until after the sites were decommissioned and dismantled.
I guess this one definitely fits the acronym: MOPAR = Mostly Old Parts And Rust!
.. but water leaking in would just displace the oil.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
It's a contest! Some lucky person actually gets to win that old, rusted-out bucket!
From the award letter:
CONGRATULATIONS! You have won this 1957 Plymouth Belvedere, stored in a time capsule 50 years ago! (See picture)
Please make arrangements to have the vehicle moved off of city property as soon as possible or we will have to start fining you $50/day.
This really is a slow news day if our city made it to Slashdot!
You are reading a sig. Cancel or allow?
I have some old machine tools (~75 years?) that were stored in cans of oil. They look brand new.. although, might be a little hard on fabric. :)
..don't panic
I guy I know collected winged mopars and parts and just sat on them for years, old superbirds and daytonas. He lived in an apartment over a big garage and that garage and yard and driveway were overflowing eventually. He got em back when they were still more or less affordable to normal enthusiasts. When he got married several years ago now he sold *one* of them and paid cash for a decent house in the Atlanta suburbs (larryville actually). There's stock investing, then *stock* investing. Plus, he got to drive cool cars all the time.
I saw the car buried and now I've seen it dug back up. It was built to withstand a nuclear bomb because fear of nuclear war was on everyone's mind in 1957, but it was never intended to be anything other than a vault for the car. At the time Tulsa's largest employer was Douglas Aircraft, building Boeing B-47 bombers for the Strategic Air Command, so Tulsa folks considered the town a prime target for a nuke attack.
The car was buried in a spirit of celebration of Oklahoma's 50th anniversary of statehood, but I think in many people's minds, they thought it might be the only thing that survived the unavoidable nuclear attack. (What a legacy, eh?)
As far as the bunker not being very good protection against a nuke, we school kiddies of the time were being taught to duck under our desks and cover our necks when we saw the flash of a nuclear explosion. If THAT was good enough... just imagine how cool a concrete-covered bunker was.
My metamoderation cancels your moderation
I'm amazed not one slashdotter here realized the point I'm about to make.
Most revisionist historians often reflect on the fear that Americans had of being obliterated in the 1950s from a nuclear catastrophe. For a midwestern American city in 1957 to have a contest to determine how many would be living there in 50 years and especially predict the winning guesser (or closest of kin) would be alive in 50 demonstrates there was hope for a future.
As for records archiving, as long as the net stays up we have a global backup system, because we can keep leapfrogging technologies, there is no start and stop point where we change everything all at once. Static archiving gets into troubles because of entropy, stuff just starts falling apart. If the whole net ever goes down hard globally for some years, we would lose a lot of data. Current paper isn't that good, photos fade fast on most media, plastic disk based isn't that good, harddrives aren't that good, etc. Each has a few good points and some bad points, but none of them are really designed for centuries or millenia AFAIK. A few years or dozens of years anecdotal from someone with their pet favorite media does not equal centuries or millenia. It's a guess and a crapshoot really we just don't know. We've already lost just a ton of old filmed media, TV shows and movies, from the last century, film just didn't cut it long haul, requires a lot of expensive care, and we need something that doesn't require expensive and elaborate care, and digital format requires the media to be matched to the hardware it was designed for, that has to be archived as well, and kept in perfect operating conditions.
We are a society that lost our freaking moon tapes! And even before that it had gotten to the point only a few existing pieces of hardware could even access the stuff, and that was some pretty important records. And that is *short term* historically speaking. Real short term.
We have to keep human nature involved in this discussion as well as just the nuts and bolts of archiving. Stuff gets lost or stolen and artificially lost or just gets wet or forgotten about and starts to just rot away. We have right now a fastfood society, nothing is considered all that important. We pay lip service to archiving, sure, I'll admit that, but really, it's a symptom of our short term profits business world and throw away society.
Then you have to consider, exactly what is really worth saving for that long anyway? All of it, all of everything we do, all the records? It's gonna get pretty expensive eventually if we keep trying to do that.
Same guys who built the Tulsa vault obviously also built the one at Necropolis.
Did they find a talking frog?
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
In my day, we were going out of our fallout shelters looking for water chips. Kids these days don't even have to leave their bunker!
The more you know, the less you understand.
They offer tours of an underground Minuteman Delta launch bunker on a appointment-only basis, 6-8 to a group.
/. effect?
And you think they'll withhold a
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
From everything I understand, ducking under your desk, and covering your neck, when you see a nuclear flash, is actually a good Idea.
Here is the thing. If you are in the total kill radius (varied depending on yield) you are gonna die. Pretty Fast.
However, there are a lot of people, outside the total kill area, who will see the flash. If you are far enough away to see the flash, instead of having it just vaporize you, then, well, the shock wave is gonna hit you pretty soon. Now, if you are far enough away, that the shock wave itself doesn't kill you (rapid change in pressure can really be a bitch), you can still be exposed to lots of flying glass (from windows exploding etc.) So, ducking under your desk (for cover) and covering your neck (so your hands, not arteries get sliced) is actually good advice. Stay there for a while, cause there will be a second, slightly lesser wave, coming shortly (30 seconds to 3 minutes) after the first. Seriously. If you have the time to get under the desk, doing so, may actually help
This is a joke that used to be told in Russia at least through the Seventies:
A man dies and his spirit appears before the Afterlife Commissar. "Your qualifications are such that you will not be permitted to enter Socialist Heaven. You may choose to go to either Capitalist Hell or Socialist Hell."
"What's the difference Comrade Commissar?"
"In Capitalist Hell, the Devil and his cadre of demons are ruthlessly efficient and will pound one nail in your ass each and every day. In Socialist Hell, the Devil and his demons get drunk and they forget to pound some peoples' nails in."
"Well in that case, I'll take Socialist Hell."
"You may make that choice Comrade but I warn you: At the end of the month, all thirty of those nails will be pounded in your ass."
Turned out better than this one in Texas.
In summary: "We recommend you don't go below 110 feet."
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
And you have way too much time and very little taste in software... you could at least say how amazing it is that you have konqueror on windows... instead of some proprietry sh*t which isnt even as good as opera.... just be normal and get firefox
I guess they hadn't invented grease in 1957.
Moisture is more dangerous than Nukes!
There was an "emergency egress" hatch in the capsule that led to the surface through a corrugated pipe. There were only a few problems...
I visited the same site. The probem you mentioned could I think be worked around in that they were given shovels to dig out the last few feet with - they could tunnel sideways...
Something that was told to me by our guide was that the tube, in order to withstand the blast shock, was filled with sand, which in theory would empty out into the main silo chamber when the hatch was released in order for the men to get out. The problem? The volume of sand in the tube was greater than the volume of the capsule they were in! The people that used to work in them) (our guide was one of them) figured it didn't much matter anyway as there wouldn't be much to get out to...
A very interesting place to visit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ecclesiastes battle!
"I returned and saw under the nuclear winter, that the nukes are not to the wise, nor the silos to the rich, nor the bunkers to the smart, nor testing areas to the islanders; but time and chance happeneth to them all."
"And the government was afraid the Russkies knew where the egress points were on the surface, so the government poured a parking lot over it."
Asphalt burns, especially near a high-priority target.
Asphalt burns, especially near a high-priority target.
Asphalt isn't the only thing you can use to pour a parking lot. Besides, usually you "lay" asphalt and you "pour" concrete. (Google agrees with me at least).
What?
If you're far enough away to survive the blast, the prompt radiation dosage isn't an issue with normal-size nuclear weapons (not so with really small sub-kiloton blasts though). As long as you get the hell out of Dodge before the fallout arrives (or are lucky enough to be upwind), if you survive the blast and the resulting fires you should be OK. If you want to do the calculations yourself, try this little piece of cold war nostalgia.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
that the ten gallons of gasoline left in the bunker is worth more than the car!
Did no one watch Blue Peter when they extracted their time capsule? Water and air pollution are the biggest problems leaving things under ground...
Stuart http://stuarthalliday.com/
that is silly!
Entropy wins again. Seriously, we need to teach this in schools from first grade. So much erroneous thought and perception is based on a complete blindness to this fundamental truth of the universe.
Now, we are going to do WHAT with nuclear waste?? The half-life of plutonium is what again?? I don't need engineering studies up the yinyang to know what is going to happen with THAT stuff.
E Proelio Veritas.
Here are some high resolution pictures of the car and the items that were stored inside it. Looks like a "fixer upper"
8 700431
Pics:
http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=8700431#
How is it someone in the mid west could build a below-ground concrete vault and not put in a sump pump? Even where I live I know you have to do that.
It's not that simple. If a nuke goes off right above you, the fallout will be substantial, and a lot of the dust and ashes will become radioactive just because of the radiation bombardment. (A lot of previously stable atoms can absorb a neutron and become a radioactive isotope, for example.) The dust from the bomb itself contains a lot of unstable isotopes, and a lot of vaporized enriched uranium that didn't get a chance to fission. (You never get 100% of the uranium mass to blow up, no matter how you build the bomb.) When it cools off, you'll have some kilos of uranium oxide around. Even leaving aside the radiation problem, uranium is a heavy metal and thus toxic.
The blast may have also breached tanks full of chemicals at a local factory, vaporized some building isolated with asbestos, or burned God knows what.
So basically a bunker that isn't water proof might well be less useful than you think.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Most car collectors are boomers. And so, naturally, they are attracted to the cars of their youth (50's and 60's models). Personally, I think most cars from that era are butt ugly. The 60's Mustang design looks like a fucking box on wheels (far inferior to the sleek modern Mustang design). The GTO looks like a bigger box on wheels. Most of the 50's models look like barges with silly fins (I guess you could call that the "Whale" look, huh?). The only design from that era that doesn't make me want to hurl is the late-60's Camaro/Firebird, and it's still inferior to the modern design.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
That our "50's Sitcom" image of American culture would have a patina of rust on it in 2007.
The people that buried that car must of thought themselves so special that they had to preserve selfish cultural icons of the time, thinking that they would be treasures today. Actually the rust and decay is in keeping of the decay our society has undergone and clearly represents a head shaking "What were we thinking?" moment.
The rust covered gas guzzler from the 50's is a great symbol of the huge mistakes we made by adopting the automobile and consumerism as a basis for sustained growth. We really missed the mark then and we are paying for it now and for the new century as we try to return to local scales of economy, mass-transit and fossil fuel independence.
They needed a leak frog from Woot!!!!
Heh. I don't doubt it. I thought you were proposing to fill the non-watertight vault with oil.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Or did you mean that figuratively?
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
a Vault Tech(tm) certified vault.
"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything."
That's what you get for allowing it to be designed by the Russians.
Squirrel!
Don't you all understand?
They had to put it in a nuclear bunker to keep it away from us!
Now it is out...
Don't you know what this car really is?
It's Christine's big sister!
Now gimme a break. That was a PLYMOUTH, not a Toyota or Nissan!
Geez... have some respect!
- Ze Laws ov Termodynamics? BAH!
Kelvin vas a fool!
Mit Hydrogen + Pinoqachole ve can break zes laws anytime!
That is certainly interesting technology, but I am not so sure our materials science is up to the task of keeping all that stuff where it needs to stay to keep on working and remaining safe. In fact, I'd bet against it. Just normal hydraulic fluid at realtively low pressure wipes out steel pipes, see it all the time. Liquid molten metals and neutrons flinging around and stuff...naw, I'm a skeptic it would stay together 300 years. The design is interesting, I just don't think they could build one that would last.
And a second point, and a very important one for me anyway, is I think the centralized power monopolists have had a real good run for over a hundred years now, but it is time to DE-centralize both energy production and where all that cash goes and to help knock back down their political power over the nation. They've made several mountains of loot and have had tremendous political power..but time for a change, a big change. I am not really digging the old central power guys..just a scosh..well, call a spade a spade, greedy is the term. I remember way back in the 70s helping a friend setup what was the first small windcharger in this area. The local power company had a freaking snitfit and tried to block it. They have just been jerks for years over it, because it threatens their business model. That part is obvious anyway.
Joe homeowner can actually purchase and deploy a technologically advanced "fusion reactor" in the form of a solar array, right now and today, and after a few years-that varies-but some amount of years much less than the life expectancy of the system- he owns it and it switches from a debit in the monthly bills to an actual profit. This falls into the "cool beans!" category by any measure. This *never, ever* happens with centralized power and the rent your watts forever model we have now, and certainly not with the current business model of you have not a clue what you'll be paying 5,10,15,20,30 years from now from the central power guys, no matter how they generate that power.
So from the viewpoint of long term safety, convenience, political and economic restructuring and cost, national security and local/regional security, I think nukes lose and solar wins right now.
I've lived extensively with solar, it actually "just works" pretty well, even right through when the centralized grid goes down, and all things considered, if you are really planning to live in your home rather than just look at it as some couple year house flipping investment, it makes economic sense today, let alone in the future when we might have some very sudden and severe price increases for centrally delivered electricity. Combine some solar with some small scale geothermal and a lot better insulation, and it really isn't that hard to have an energy neutral home now. It isn't common yet, but certainly easier to pull off than a lot of these other ideas, because all the tech exists right now, it can all be purchased with a few mouse clicks and a few phone calls really. And with certain lenders now quite willing to roll in the cost of conversion to these techniques, the actual upfront costs and monthly costs are quite competitive with just renting your power.
Plus, it's a whole house UPS system, another really good feature for nerds with a lot of expensive equipment at home, cleaner power than the grid and you have the ability to store if you go battery bank (which I think you should with solar).
Ya, I know, wait 5 years it will be better/cheaper. Meh, same as any other tech, comes a time you either want in or not, same with computers. Remember what you paid for computers years ago? I sure do.. It still was cool though,. and certainly helped the industry along.
Heck, I still have a NIB 4 gig scsi external drive with the sticker on the box, $9,999. Now I didn't pay that, bought a load of assorted "compute" for cheap once, but certainly they sold some of them at that price. 4 gigs! That probably ran some advanced servers someplace. Still
yours is called the silver bullet solution, and I agree, there isn't any single alternative energy tech that can "replace" what we have now. It doesn't exist and won't for the foreseable future.
Here's the deal-we don't need to replace, we augment, and keep augmenting, and combined with a huge retrofitting insulation project-government pushed would be idea, total tax credits for it would work,a manhattan project level endeavor, we start to both add to production, and also start to drop demand. For the production, we use "all of the above", individual solar, small building solar, big windchargers, individual windchargers, tidal generators, low head hydro, geothermal and biofuels and etc.. It is the *combination* of all those factors that make for a new energy paradigm. We are trying to eliminate the continual need for more coal plants and for burning pure petroleum products, and whether it is 300 years or 10,000, nukes are inherently overly complex (nukes make heat-we are facing global warming-heat we got by the solar metric ton) and very dangerous, requiring armed guards in *numbers* 24/7/365/x years or decades or centuries or millenia. And they are nasty targets for attacks anyway, using sophisticated weapons. Hit some wind tower, it crashes. Hit a big solar array, oh well, smashed glass. Hit a nuke plant with something "good enough", which judging by reports out of Iraa doesn't seem all that hard to pull off--world of hurt to a lot of folks downwind, for a long time. They are *dangerous*. Yes, they can make a huge amount of cocntrated heat which can then be spun off to electricity-still too dangerous. Keep building more coal plants-still too dirty, too radioactive. Keep burning pure petroleum-geopolitically dangerous and soon to be EGADS expensive. We are one planetary wildcard event away from 100-200 buck a barrel or even more with oil. And it could very well happen this summer. Geopolitical strike over nuclear power leading to a huge impact with petroleum power.
It's just lame when we have alternatives. I work outside all the time, bright sunlight and heat we got a-plenty! It won't do all of it, but it sure as heck could do a big chunk of it!
We have to do this energy transformation in incremental stages. We freeze what we have with the old model dirty and concentrated cash models, and give priority to total diversification for the next century into the identified alternatives we have for deployment, and keep working on more, like with hydrogen from algae or something. We already have the centralized power and concentrated profit grid system, so we start to add "backups" until such a time as the roles are reversed, promoting better tech as it becomes available (actually, this is what is happening now, despite the major industries reluctance for decades, they are being bypassed from sheer economics and the reality of pollution and global climate change awareness). My pet "way" is what is happening, getting rid of the all our eggs in one basket model. Moreso in some european nations and the developing world than in the US, but globally-this is what is happening, the 'whatever works the best in your neighborhood" model. Same with communications, a lot of places are skipping hard wiring and going straight to almost all wireless for telco. Because it's cheaper/better/faster than the old way.
And just from a security standpoint, our centralized distribution model is already highly vulnerable to both natural disasters and physical attack, and just slap overloading. We are only one major heatwave and tech accident away from another regional blackout.
Adding millions of points of production instead of just another hundred, insures a single point of failure will not completely wipeout some huge area for power. It also lets people become owners instead of renters, the "middle class" dream. own your home, own your ride-now own your power! Renting sucks except for very short term or infrequently needed things. Anything important or that you need forev
...mentioned the huge project to reduce demand, which I am convinced can be done to a huge degree with the concept of "superinsulation", applied as new building codes and as requirements for mortgage transfers. Sweeten the deal with 100% tax credits.
I've worked on a few such places, and the diff is *astounding*, beyond astounding. Talk a maine winter without needing supplemental heat all that much (call it around 10% of the previous load roughly), or a 90+ F day in missouri and a house staying cool with the AC not coming on for days. It is *that* good. I am dumbfounded this is not a major part of the national energy strategy-but I understand why, it isn't "sexy", there aren't gobs of money to be made with flash bang gee whizz new tech and R&D, just boring old more insulation, better windows and doors, intelligent building placement, etc.
The press and legislative interest and venture capitalist interest is on new power sources, I say work on dropping demand-just like the chip manufacturers have discovered. the same amount of watts can get you a lot more computing than yesteryear, by more intelligent construction. Same with buildings. Heating and cooling and lighting are the big three, and rather simple solutions exist for them.
I think we could within 10 years probably drop our collective energy demand to at least just a third of what we use now, using off the shelf normal tech pushed along with a little governmental mandating and economic incentive. I don't like taxes, but *credits*-the anti tax-always seem to work well. People dig getting to keep their loot, for any reason.. Taxes are punitive, credits are rewarding. Ideally of course neither should be needed, but we live in the real world and such political tools exist, so I say use them.