It's a great article and I find the energy contents of the various sources to be very interesting. I liked that you pointed out the major by-product of nuclear power, heat. I believe that many people think that you start the nuclear reaction and it magically spits electricity out the other end. People are pushing nuclear as a "clean" energy source but it requires tremendous up-front resources, produces tremendous amounts of heat "pollution" and we still don't know what to do with the waste.
Being from the south our largest use of electricity is for cooling our homes with the second being heating our homes. It has always occurred to me that while we are cooling there are people in other parts of the world that need heating at the same time. I have given considerable thought to how to efficiently transfer the energy but haven't come up with anything better than what exists. However, it suddenly occurs to me that if nuclear plants were located in colder areas the water used for energy production could be piped into cities to provide heat. The electricity can then be sent to those areas needing cooling. This of course gets into the energy transportation problem as the further it's transported the more it costs.
Energy production, storage, transportation and use is a fun subject and one that I wish I had more time to explore! As a home builder I see many ways that home HVAC and refrigeration systems could potentially be improved if it was approached as a completely integrated system. One day I hope to be able to experiment with some of that.
Great points. Nuclear energy power plants work well, but their cost to construct is much higher than renewables at this point. The byproduct of nearly any energy transformation is heat. It is difficult to use this heat in many cases because of either lack of heat networks (Europe has them, but rare in US) or because the entropy of the thermal energy is too high. On your last point, I've actually designed a much better home HVAC system that uses energy more effectively than current systems. It's something we need going forward.
Love this article! Beyond the contents of it, this way of presenting physics makes it possible for everyone to learn the ideas behind it - much more so than the equations that are less intuitive.
Energy determines everything else in climate and sustainability. Everything. Understanding energy units, potential energy, chemical energy, and so on is foundational to our ability to deal with the other issues we face
It's a great article and I find the energy contents of the various sources to be very interesting. I liked that you pointed out the major by-product of nuclear power, heat. I believe that many people think that you start the nuclear reaction and it magically spits electricity out the other end. People are pushing nuclear as a "clean" energy source but it requires tremendous up-front resources, produces tremendous amounts of heat "pollution" and we still don't know what to do with the waste.
Being from the south our largest use of electricity is for cooling our homes with the second being heating our homes. It has always occurred to me that while we are cooling there are people in other parts of the world that need heating at the same time. I have given considerable thought to how to efficiently transfer the energy but haven't come up with anything better than what exists. However, it suddenly occurs to me that if nuclear plants were located in colder areas the water used for energy production could be piped into cities to provide heat. The electricity can then be sent to those areas needing cooling. This of course gets into the energy transportation problem as the further it's transported the more it costs.
Energy production, storage, transportation and use is a fun subject and one that I wish I had more time to explore! As a home builder I see many ways that home HVAC and refrigeration systems could potentially be improved if it was approached as a completely integrated system. One day I hope to be able to experiment with some of that.
Great points. Nuclear energy power plants work well, but their cost to construct is much higher than renewables at this point. The byproduct of nearly any energy transformation is heat. It is difficult to use this heat in many cases because of either lack of heat networks (Europe has them, but rare in US) or because the entropy of the thermal energy is too high. On your last point, I've actually designed a much better home HVAC system that uses energy more effectively than current systems. It's something we need going forward.
Love this article! Beyond the contents of it, this way of presenting physics makes it possible for everyone to learn the ideas behind it - much more so than the equations that are less intuitive.
Energy determines everything else in climate and sustainability. Everything. Understanding energy units, potential energy, chemical energy, and so on is foundational to our ability to deal with the other issues we face
No wonder I like hamburgers! They are quite satisfying! Great article!