I'd like my data center to be powered by ...
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Geothermal (Score:2)
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Surely there are several several OM of heat inside the planet than heat that peeps could tap into or vent. And there's more heat being created each year from nuclear decay and crustal flexing from moon and sun orbits.
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This is where a facepalm unicode character would be handy (not even going to *touch* the "volcano capping" thing).
Earth's temperature is what it is due to an equilibrium between inputs (primarily the sun) and outputs (primarily radiation to space). Heat radiates from the air very quickly, as you may have noticed by how cold it gets on a clear winter night vs. when it's c
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The great thing about collage is that everyone sticks together.
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The great thing about collage is that everyone sticks together.
Sure it is... All the cliques & frats/sororities & clubs etc are where people band together to exclude others...
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Geothermal is available everywhere if you drill deep enough, but so many of the places where it lies close to the surface ( Hawaii, southwestern Germany) are in places where the Greens won't let us use it.
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Why not, what would greenies have against thermal?
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In Germany, the issue was the small dish-rattler earthquakes that bethermL can create because of water lubrication of shallow strata, as with fracking. The Hawaiians banned fracking because it angered the volcano god. In north cases, these local gripes were inflated into show-stopper issues by the Greens.
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The Hawaiians banned fracking because it angered the volcano god.
what stupid bullship. what kind of person are you who would say such bullshit? [looks at username] umm...
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That should have been "banned geothermal."
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The Hawaiians banned fracking because it angered the volcano god.
But what has the reasonable idea of banning fracking got to do with Geothermal energy extraction?
Fracking is fossil fuel extraction. The using of its product generates CO2.. The extraction of heat energy from the ground does not have to.
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The issue is that geothermal power involves circulating water through rock strata that do not ordinarily carry it, like fracking, since nobody wants to disturb existing hot springs. In the same way, it can cause small earthquakes.
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Here in Iceland some people are against it because of the need to build roads / powerlines out into wilderness areas (and subsequent roads/pipes to each well from the central plant), and because of the wastewater ponds. And some complain about the increased H2S emissions in the area
Personally I think that's taking things way too far. Of course there need to be regulations and environmental controls, but you really don't get much more low environmental impact per MW than geo. And there's lots more polluti
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Agreed. Surprised there weren't these 2 choices listed:
* Geothermal
* Wave
actually works well, in a few places (Score:3)
Geothermal actually works very well, where it works. Roughly the same ring of places that have volcanos and earthquakes, minus the areas where near-surface conditions make it infeasible. In the US, geothermal is at a depth where it can be reached in California, but not really any other state. Minus the mountains and the cities. So you end up with a few places in California where it works well, and that's about it for the US.
In -theory- if you went deep enough, you could maybe tap geothermal in a lot of
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Geothermal works great for heating houses. Regardless where you are on the planet. ...
For creating hot swimming pools perhaps a bit less, for creating electric power lokely even more less.
Not all CO2 is created by making electric energy
Re:actually works well, in a few places (Score:4, Interesting)
Geothermal actually works very well, where it works. Roughly the same ring of places that have volcanos and earthquakes, minus the areas where near-surface conditions make it infeasible. In the US, geothermal is at a depth where it can be reached in California, but not really any other state. Minus the mountains and the cities. So you end up with a few places in California where it works well, and that's about it for the US.
Actually, geothermal is shit in California. The world's most geothermally active place was The Geysers, right here between Kelseyville and Calistoga. I say was because using the site for geothermal power released the steam and output started to fall, so they had to start pumping primary treated sewage into the ground to keep even 80% of production. The plant has always been over budget and under production, and they have long been mismanaging the waste produced. Radioactives and heavy metals build up on the turbine blades, and the turbines are suspended over an open concrete pit and pressure-washed to remove them. When the pit fills up, it's capped with a layer of concrete, the walls are built higher, and the process begins anew. It's a layer cake of horrendousness, and it's just sitting there like a canker. This is better than what they were doing before, though; they loaded up the waste into drums and trucked them to a field out Butts Canyon Road, which is now a superfund site surrounded by a big fence with lots of government warning signs about how you're not to go there under penalty of punishment. They dug up the drums and the soil, removed most of the drums, put down a plastic liner and then reburied everything. FIXED!
Geothermal power is a boondoggle, especially in California. It's a stupid, toxic, pointless waste of time. Putting the same money into PV solar starting in the 1970s would mean both more output and less pollution today.
Re:Geothermal (Score:4, Insightful)
So the mystery here is why you are suggesting all cars are yellow. Unfortunately this site is now popular enough to attract the attention of "social media workers" doing the astroturf thing, so that's an annoying possibility.
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Which is why geothermal isn't harvested by laying a blanket across the whole planet.
150mW * 510000000000000 square meters is 67TW, four times higher than global energy consumption.
But gee, if only there was some sort of way to harvest geothermal other than laying a blanket across the whole planet. Something like, say, if heat would collect somewhere over long periods of time. Like, throughout the entire thickness of the many-kilometers-thick crust and so on
Hydro FTW (Score:3)
The South Island of New Zealand is basically some mountains with rivers running down the sides, so we built some dams [wikipedia.org]
Dam failures and ecosystem loss... (Score:3)
Hydro is great if you don't mind the expansive ecosystem loss to reservoirs and occasional dam failure [wikipedia.org], like the one at Banqiao [wikipedia.org] which killed 171,000 people and cost 11 million their homes.
There was a time when environmentalists recognized the extensive damage wrought by hydro, and fought tooth and nail against its expansion. These days though, "environmentalists" are shameless enough to apply the green label to burning forests and crops--actual environmental impacts be damned. Or wind backed up by ineffic
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Hydro is great if you don't mind the expansive ecosystem loss to reservoirs and occasional dam failure
I don't mind at all. So lets get going with it.
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And nuclear is expensive too - and emits CO2 due to the mining, refining and waste storage.
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People exhling CO2 is a zero sum game. Not 'producing' anything more than before was converted into food, by plants.
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And the alternatives to hydro power are even worse, but spread out over larger areas. Hydro is causing a local impact and bad dam maintenance and design is the culprit when a burst occurs.
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And the alternatives to hydro power are even worse, but spread out over larger areas.
Solar power not only has only a small impact on the environment because we site it places where that's true, but it also reduces global warming; when sunlight falls on the panel, it doesn't fall on the land and get stored there. Since the back of the panel is white and the front is black, the majority of the heat it radiates is radiated outwards, towards space. Barring being trapped by greenhouse gases, this energy overwhelmingly escapes the atmosphere. So it doesn't matter even if a panel has high albedo,
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Wind power has only a small impact on the environment, and the area it is spread out over is largely empty. The environmental impact is minuscule.
The environmental impact of wind is still being studied, however the turbines are not very attractive nor quiet when you are near one, and as you say they are spread over a very large area. There is early evidence that the sound of the turbines does cause stress to wildlife. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24597302 [nih.gov].
It is known that animals also avoid power line corridors (very unfortunate as these are typically considered as beneficial animal corridors during environmental assessments). http://www.the [theguardian.com]
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Hydro is as close to being an ideal source as you can get, and is the only baseload renewable, but there is no future in it. The good places have all been taken.
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"Data centers require reliable power 24x7, and the sun does not provide that, no matter how much wishful thinking is applied."
Wishful thinking might not help, but speaking at least for myself, I'd rather use one of the many solutions available to store solar power during the day for use at night:
http://www.popularmechanics.co... [popularmechanics.com]
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re... [sciencedaily.com]
http://www.technologyreview.co... [technologyreview.com]
Still thinking, maybe a little less wishful :)
Min
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You could, except major rivers tend to be heavily populated.
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Ah, the great 'self sucking machine' of right wing outrage, it was Enron who caused the California brownouts while manipulating the energy markets.
Educate yourself to understand 'the rest of the story':
Enron Linked to California backouts [marketwatch.com]
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If hydro is available, why not use it? Nothing is perfect by any means, but once the dam is constructed, hydro is a relatively inexpensive source of constant, high quality electricity 24/7. A good example of this would be Paraguay/Brazil's Itaipu Dam.
If it were available, I'd definitely go hydro. However, in a lot of areas, it definitely isn't going to be possible.
Most likely, a data center would probably have to use a mixture of sources. Solar would definitely help take the edge off peak energy consump
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Hydro, wind and solar are all powered by the Sun.
How?
The sun heats air, generating wind.
The sun heats water, causing evaporation and then rain that falls in the mountains for hydro.
This. Get the power right from the source. Even nuclear fission power comes from heavy elements fused at the center of the sun and spat out during an early nova outburst.
But direct solar power it getting more interesting just in recent years, the cost of solar power has come down from "astronomical" (as in it was only cost effective for satellites) to "competitive with fossil fuels" :
http://www.investmentu.com/ass... [investmentu.com]
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Fission elements doesn't come from the center of the sun, at least not the current sun we have. And fission energy looks nice on paper but is actually pretty expensive - and emits CO2 due to mining, refining and building of power plants.
Direct solar may sound nice and work fine in small scale, but collectors would have to cover great areas to be effective. Hydroelectric power is concentrating the power to areas in a more effective way. There are of course disadvantages with hydroelectric as well, but the im
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Direct solar may sound nice and work fine in small scale, but collectors would have to cover great areas to be effective
The total world energy consumption is somewhere around 100PWh/year. That's around 274TWh/day. The sunlight hitting the Earth is around 1kW/m^2, so 8kWh/m^2 assuming 8 hours of sunlight. If you assume 100% efficiency in conversion (totally impossible, but we'll start there and refine later), then that means that you need about 3.45E10 m^2 of land devoted to solar power. That's a square about 185km on each side. If you assume 10% efficiency (mass produced photovoltaics are 12-25% these days), then you ne
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Considering that solar collectors are requiring quite some resources to manufacture - some of the material is in limited supply - it's looking good on paper but in reality it's not that easy.
A medium sized water power turbine can produce over 100MW while a solar panel can give at best 1kW/m2 given ideal conditions. That means that you need at least 100 000 m2 (24 acres) of solar panels to produce the same power.
So solar panels may be a nice add-on to power production but it won't be a cost effective product
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- some of the material is in limited supply - ... you are simoly wrong. ... again you are wrong.
Considering that PV cells are made from the most common elements on earth
So solar panels may be a nice add-on to power production but it won't be a cost effective production for the bulk production.
Considering that the price for panels are dropping every year
Fact is: you easy can build small PV plants and grow them. You can not build small water plants and grow them, at least not easily.
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I find 1.21 GW per square inch to be reasonable, but that doesn't mean I'm going back in time with a solar powered postage stamp.
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1) all power is regional. Electricity needs to be consumed within a couple hundred miles from where it's produced. It won't help if you cover the Sahara. :(
2) deserts like the Sahara are ecosystems as well. I'm sure the animals and plants there wouldn't be happy with you ruining their home
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Absolute nonsense, UK is currently putting down undersea cables from Scotland to Norway in order to use Norwegian pumped hydro - several hundred miles total, more than 500 miles round trip. A thousand mile lines are perfectly doable, more even if the electricity is cheap and you don't mind double digit percentage loses. We've also been considering purchasing electricity from Iceland which would
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Round trip? Nobody cares round trip. The distance sounds like the far side of reasonable. I suppose the definition of reasonable varies depending on the location.
Supernova Required (Score:5, Interesting)
Even nuclear fission power comes from heavy elements fused at the center of the sun and spat out during an early nova outburst.
Actually a supernova is required to produce the heavy, fissionable elements. Based on the ratio of Uranium isotopes the one that gave us our heavy element occured about 6 billion years ago or about 1-1.5 billion years before the solar system and Earth formed.
The sun is powered by nuclear fusion which can only create elements up to iron-56 after which you have to put energy into the process to make larger nuclei. In stars ~4-5+ times larger than our sun this comes from the sudden gravitational collapse of the core when it has burnt all the way up to iron. The result is a supernova: the core collapses into a neutron star and the resultant release in gravitational potential power both the explosion as well as the production of the heavy elements beyond iron.
In fact if you really want to escape solar power the only option is nuclear fusion. However this could be regarded as a fossil fuel since you are using energy 'fossilized' by the Big Bang and is not renewable...but then there is no such thing as renewable energy if you take the really long term view.
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not quite. When the nuclear reactions in a star start burning iron, it actually absorbs more energy than it produces. The iron cycle lasts tenths of a second, as opposed to the hydrogen cycle which can last ten billion years. If a star is massive enough to even HAVE an iron cycle (most die at or even before the manganese or chromium stage because there simply isn't enough material left by then to sustain fusion reactions and not lose the outer shell as the core simply expires), it collapses and detonates in
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Nobody talks about bloom boxes any more. Why not? Cleaner than grid electricity, reliable 24x7, in many places cheaper than grid. Small footprint. Why did these go out of fashion?
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FWIW, since the topic concerns data centers, it may be worth noting that many large data centers have DC power supplies direct to equipment. For example, Cisco 3750's: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/t... [cisco.com]
So you're on the right track, and it's already been done in common real world environments, but it's just not found its way into most households and businesses, and it's unlikely to get to many homes in that form (the size of the wires needed for large amps over DC would be a significant hindrance to adoption)
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Sure man. Coal is powered by the sun cuz the sun provided energy to plants hundreds of millions of years ago, and as the plants grew then decayed they turned into coal. Gasoline and diesel is also sun-powered because of the dinosaurs that ate the plants. Nuclear is not, geothermal is not, tidal is not.
Most of the above (Score:5, Insightful)
In the long run, a sustainable mix of the above. Whether that includes nuclear, is open for debate. And preferably with the waste heat being put to productive use (as in: heat buildings, use in industrial processes etc).
In the short run, modern design nuclear might not be so bad. Especially compared to coal, which can't be 'clean' imho no matter how you cut it.
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"And preferably with the waste heat being put to productive use"
How about extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. It doesn't have to be cost efficient if it's part of the cooling design.
The biggest pain in the ass about nuclear is turning it up and turning it down. Not only does it take hours and days, it can't be at peak efficiency both ways. If your reaction is optimized for a certain heat, rate, fuel consumption; whatever; and you 'turn that down'; something is getting more radioactive absorbing those neutro
Re:Most of the above (Score:5, Informative)
The current generation of PWR reactors can turn up or down at up to 5% of full power output per minute within a range of power outputs typically 50-100% (without restriction), or between 25-100% with a restricted number of cycles (10 per week). The idea is by keeping the system isothermal and isobaric within the 50-100% range, there are no fatigue issues. With the use of high burnup enriched uranium fuel, there are fewer issues with xenon build-up than was the case in low-burnup, low-enriched fuels used in older designs.
With BWRs, a substantial part of the control range is done by controlling reactor feedwater flow, as opposed to using control rods. This means increasing power is simply a matter of increasing feedwater flow by turning up the feedwater pump speed. With BWRs there are no heat exchangers, as such, only the fuel and cladding, these have extremely low thermal mass, so there is almost no time lag between the change in flow rate, and changed steam production rate. The only limiting factor is the risk of thermal shock to the fuel pellets and cladding; so, while ramp rates of >30% per minute can be performed, the number of such cycles each fuel rod is exposed needs to be strictly limited.
This doesn't address the issue of economics of load-following nuclear, which are problematic because of the capital expense and low fuel costs. However, there are regions where solar and offshore wind are being used in load-following mode, and these are far more capital intensive. France load-follows their nuclear plants, with an average load factor of about 70%, and they find that the economics are acceptable.
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Wind and solar are not 'dispatchable' so they can not load follow. Except by disconnecting parts of a wind farm or big solar installation and following: downwards.
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"allowing them"
"will allow them if they can work the bugs out"
Until stored solar becomes common you need to use the second formulation.
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The parent obviously talked about PV, not about solar thermal.
Thermal plants are usually not build to load follow either, they are build for base load.
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Totally. Fukushima is a good reminder of the downsides, but every baseload-type has serious tradeoffs. Later generation nuclear + renewables where available + rare nat gas peak turbine is probably the best mix with the tech available.
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In the short run, modern design nuclear might not be so bad.
You can have the short run or you can have modern nuclear design. But you can't have both. The tech is not ready for full commercial roll-out.
Geothermal (Score:2)
Geothermal for a primary sources and solar/wind for power spikes. Other sources require fuel sources which can be depleted and nuclear generally necessitates large plants which have down times for maintenance and in natural disasters can be scrammed due to lines being cut and demand dropping.
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Problems with this "solution".
Geothermal requires large amounts of water. It either has to be naturally occurring in the rock or pumped in. There also has to be sufficiently hot rock close to the surface to heat the water. Places there naturally occurring water is near hot rock are pretty rate which limits availability.
Solar/wind is very bad at dealing with spikes. To do that you need what is called dispatchable electricity. Basically electricity that can be turned up, "dispatched", on demand. It is impossi
Orphan Tears (Score:2)
In the voice of Mr. Burns...Excellent.
Trolling much? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Clean, natural coal"
That's a joke, right?
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Along with "safe, predictable nuclear" and "unlimited power from the sun" (Night seems like a pretty hard limit to me. Not to mention heavy cloud cover...) They are all, of course, jokes.
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There is no such thing as clean coal and there never will be, because in the best case you still have to deal with fixing the sequestered CO2. CO2 may not be a pollutant, but it is still a problem. If we could ship the oil to Mars and burn it there this would be a benefit, because it would help thicken the atmosphere and anything is better than nothing in the early stage, but here on Earth it's a PITA.
You forgot the obvious selection... (Score:2)
Less greenhouse gas is better, but my job requires 24/7 power on the servers. Wind, Solar, Coal, as long as the power stays on.
More specifically... (Score:2)
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If you want nukes it means committing to a huge industry and using it as the main game. It doesn't come in small sizes unless you can justify an utter
Why do we need so many datacenters anyway? (Score:4, Funny)
All Energy in our Universe is Nuclear. (Score:3)
As we ween ourselves from carbon based fuels we need to keep in mind that none of the so called 'renewable' sources of energy actually are renewable: they all depend on the continuous output of that nuclear furnace we call the Sun.
Missing option (Score:3)
Thermal.
Driven by the unlimited supply of hot air emanating from management boardrooms.
Tidal (Score:2)
And the sea is a convenient place to dump the waste heat too.
Disclaimer: my data centre only needs a couple
Nuclear fusion (Score:4, Funny)
FMC - Full Mass Conversion (Score:2)
As depicted in a Robert Heinlein novel.
Unlmited Power (Score:2)
... from the dark side of the force.
Already there (Score:2)
I call what I'm doing "the LAN of things". Anyone who puts all that sort of thing "out there o
Caffeine (Score:2)
Caffeine, making the world turn at various speeds since the 10th century
The obvious choice (Score:2)
It's very simple. Use the heat coming off all those servers to run the turbines that power all those servers. The big advantage: the more you overclock the servers, the more heat they provide for your turbines!
Of course, wind technically is in part,solar power (Score:2)
So really a vote for one is a vote for the other. Yes, wind is also impacted by the earth's rotation and just the shape of the earths surface, but it's the sun that has the most impact.
Small Modular Reactors (Score:2)
Plus they can be built to be 100% safe, some just rely upon the ground itself as coolant for the waste heat. As for radioactive waste, just re-bury it at a landfill and let it sit until the radiation is no longer at harmful levels.
Only two options (Score:2)
The only two real options are "nuclear" and "sun". All others are derived from the sun's energy. Even CowboyNeal's biogas - unfortunately.
Fossil Fuels.. (Score:2)
And if you didn't, you'll probably be fired someday.
Surfs up! (Score:2)
Surfing is only possible when the waves are up. why not surf the internet only on windy and or sunny days?
Many sources (Score:2)
Every power source has some kind of drawback. Wind turbines kill birds. Solar panels occupy acres of otherwise usable green space. Hydroelectric dams interfere with fish and other wildlife. Nuclear energy leaves waste that is hard to safely store. Burning anything pollutes the air. Each, if used exclusively, leads to one type of side effect becoming a major problem. If we can learn to rely on a wide variety of power sources, it will be more possible to manage the extent of the damage caused by any on
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nuclear waste embedded in lamp glass is so safe you can SWALLOW IT and it won't harm you.
I have jewellery made from thorium-doped lamp glass.
politicians (Score:2)
they have enough energy to boo and jeer at each other while fucking children and blowing up brown people, they can get on those treadmills and generate me a few Gigawatts.
Organ legging (Score:2)
I'd power my datacenter by killing all the troll posters, selling their organs, and then burning the unwanted remains to heat a boiler. It's both a public service and an endlessly renewable resource - we'll never run out of trolls.
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Supplemented by burning political promises.
Re:How about (Score:5, Funny)
The endless supply of right wing hot air is the perfect renewable energy supply.
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The endless supply of right wing hot air is the perfect renewable energy supply.
There's a reason Congress' heating bills are so low, even during a cold DC winter - there's plenty of hot air flowing from both sides of the aisle.
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I live in DC and have severe allergies. I describe myself as being allergic to congressional hot air, because I feel much worse whenever congress is in session. I've said this for the last eighteen years (maybe I need some new jokes), regardless of who's in charge.
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A bad idea because it would release carbon.
wish? How about a pony? (Score:2)
If we're wishing, I'll wish it were powered by a spell cast by talking ponies.
If we want to talk about steady, reliable, sources of electricity that actually work and I can afford, that's entirely different. That's done with a mix of:
Geothermal in northern California (2%)
Hydro-electric at a few places where there are huge lakes with giant waterfalls (1%)
Solar-electric in some places, for several hours per day, on sunny days (4%)
Wind in certain places, during an hour when it's windy, but not too windy (2%)