Do you think we'll have another dark age(s)? Or are we past that kind of stuff?

[the_poochies]

After watching this film:



Too much of it has come true already.

[DP]

Doc wrote:
[quote=Acer]
Electricity is the easy part. We can use nukes for that.

What kind of nukes?

We're running out of uranium. Civilian supplies should be exhausted by 2013.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24414/
Fusion or so-called breeder reactors. Any material can be used. Heard on NPR a few weeks ago that a laser has been developed that can start the reaction. The scientist interviewed thinks he can have a working reactor in five years.

[Doc]

DP wrote:
[quote=Doc]
[quote=Acer]
Electricity is the easy part. We can use nukes for that.

What kind of nukes?

We're running out of uranium. Civilian supplies should be exhausted by 2013.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24414/
Fusion or so-called breeder reactors. Any material can be used.
None of the 30+ proposed nuclear reactors in the U.S. are breeder reactors. All breeder reactors presently in use are considered experimental (and expensive). They usually need run off of plutonium if they are to run efficiently and they produce weaponizeable plutonium as they work.

France is the only nation to ever have a breeder reactor contributing significantly to the grid and in addition to never reaching more than 1/3rd capacity in regular use (it was once briefly pushed to 90%), it was plagued by problems -- notably rusted containment units and radioactive leaks -- and ultimately was shut down and written off as a multi-billion $$ failure. It was shut down in 1996 and no nation has employed a breeder reactor since then. (Japan had a similar program that was shut down at roughly the same time and for the same reasons. It may be started up again in 2010, but that's doubtful.)

While it's possible that we'll use breeder reactors in the future, it'll probably be at least 50 years before a practical full-scale breeder reactor is built.

[Article Accelerator]

trisho. wrote:
During the Dark Ages we know (and focus) about in Western history, while Europe was thumbing its asses and not washing its hands to avoid a plague, the rest of the world figured out engineering, calculus, cartography, gun powder and washing its hands.

Huh?

Calculus was invented by Newton and Liebnitz (Europeans, sort of). Washing hands for purposes of antisepsis was invented by some French guy (Pasteur) or some English guy (Lister) (Europeans, sort of). No region opened up more of the world (think "cartography" and Mercator) than The Old World (Europeans, sort of).

Gun powder and engineering were invented about 25,000 years ago (before the dawn of man and the creation of the World).

[Article Accelerator]

Doc wrote:
[quote=Acer]
Electricity is the easy part. We can use nukes for that.

What kind of nukes?

We're running out of uranium. Civilian supplies should be exhausted by 2013.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24414/
Fusion reactors. Not the we-should-have-it-working-by-2150 tokamak kind but designs that have a realistic chance of actually working soon:

http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1...msg-834601

[Doc]

Article Accelerator wrote:
[quote=Doc]
[quote=Acer]
Electricity is the easy part. We can use nukes for that.

What kind of nukes?

We're running out of uranium. Civilian supplies should be exhausted by 2013.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24414/
Fusion reactors. Not the we-should-have-it-working-by-2150 tokamak kind but designs that have a realistic chance of actually working soon:

http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1...msg-834601
Aside from the fact that the device in that article has about a 2% chance of actually working, has never been fired, is a decade behind schedule, cost more than 3 times its original budget, is being diverted for use as a weapons-testing platform, won't be ready for even small-scale testing until 2012 and even if it's successful at generating power would take another 30 years or more to replicate at the scale necessary to power a city... Yeah. Okay. That could be the solution.

[freeradical]

Captain Dave says that our current survival risk quotient is 63 out of 100 for "The end of the world as we know it".

Stock up on those MRE's.

:-)


http://www.survival-center.com/

[Rick-o]

Maybe Captain Dave ought to update the info on his site a little more often!



Survival Risk Quotient: 63

Captain Dave's Survival Risk Quotient, is updated regularly and attempts to rank how close we are to an all-out global disaster, also know as TEOTWAWKI, or "the end of the world as we know it." 100 is T EOTWAWKI, 50 is an average threat level and 0 is a peaceful world with no threats, or what it would have been like for Adam and Eve without the Serpent.

This quotient, updated on Saturday, February 12, has decreased to its lowest level in some time, reflecting the lack of recent terrorist activity, elections in Iraq and the death of Arafat and subsequent election of a Palestinian president who seems intent on peace. Although the threat of a terrorist attack appears to have receded, Captain Dave reminds his readers that terrorists always seem to strike when they are lest expected.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

Just this morning I came across this article about thorium nuclear reactors: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/

If the article is accurate, this could be the future.

[Doc]

N-OS X-tasy! wrote:
Just this morning I came across this article about thorium nuclear reactors: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/

If the article is accurate, this could be the future.

The problem with all of these new nuclear technologies is that they are at least 30 years away from maturity... and have been since at least the 1950's.