Posted on 10/22/2005 11:09:01 AM PDT by aculeus
True, but some of the cost of electricity is transmission and storage - put some power generation close to the power consumer, the electric company saves money. Also, no need to continue buying fuel to power the thing.
That is just enough to supply about 2-3 households at most, you would need thousands of these sushi-ginzu's to compare with a couple of the new pebble bed nuke reactors, I think we should just put the money in small reactors around the country and call it a day.
Someone already suggested that for Flori-DUH?...But the Sierra Club said diverting the stream would "Chill Out" the UK and has sought an injunction to halt Flori-Duh's even thinking about it! LOL.......
Diced Flipper?!
There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who "love Nature" while deploring the "artificialities" with which "Man has spoiled 'Nature.' " The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of "Nature", but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers' purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the "Naturist" reveals his hatred for his own race, i.e. his own self-hatred. In the case,of "Naturists" such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate. As for me, willy-nilly I am a man, not a beaver, and H. sapiens is the only race I have or can have. Fortunately for me, I like being part of a race made up of men and women, it strikes me as a fine arrangement and perfectly "natural."
ROBERT HEINLEIN
Put some really large ones in the gulf stream.
Yes.
Once they're flush.
Cool. Bumpmark.
Well, you're right. But there are some hobbyists here who daydream of personal energy sustainability--it's not just enviro-nuts. It's backwoodsmen (women) nuts...
No argument with 'hobbyists' or 'individualists'. I've lived off-grid, with a generator, and even in one creekside place with a Pelton wheel generation setup.
The new house will (legally) use a high efficiency coal fired furnace, and I've toyed with the idea of a small boiler to power a generator. Coal is cheap & easy for me to obtain locally.
Even now, though we are on the grid, we still have three (two 8KW, and a third, 5KW) generators. That is more capacity than the single East River turbine, for a heck of a lot less money; I could probably pay for a life time's worth of fuel for what it cost to purchase & install that thing. They are talking kilowatts, not megawatts, except when they get into their huge arrays of hundreds of the larger units.
The problem is, like using "waste cooking oil", what works for one or a few is not feasible for millions.
Or, Mother Earth News' wood powered pickup back in the 1970s. It ran, and ran well; they drove all over the country as a demo...BUT several million woodburners on the highway would be a pollution nightmare, as well as drive the cost of wood through the roof.
Nukes work, and they are cost effective, and efficient for mass production of energy. These boutique things are either write-offs, grant-scams, or 'demonstreation projects; but they have the down side of drawing attention of regulators to the quiet individualist.
They don't fool me. They've discovered at last where Jimmy Hoffa is buried, and they're tapping into the energy as he spins in his grave.
LOL
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