I’m not an electrician but it’s always seemed to me
to be somewhat anachronistic to use atomic power to
run a steam turbine to make electricity. Surely there
must be a way of direct production...? Here we are
generating electrical current with the same means
of production used from the very beginning.
Hard to come up with a more efficient way of converting heat to electricity at that scale and reliability. If you’re trying to capture electrons directly and send them out the transmission grid you’re going to be importing truckloads of nuclear fuel every day, not to mention running the biggest X-Ray machine in the world.
“I’m not an electrician but it’s always seemed to me
to be somewhat anachronistic to use atomic power to
run a steam turbine to make electricity.”
Bingo. The giant energy problem of the next decade(s) ISN’T where are we going to find stuff to burn.
The problem is: Where, on a planet where only one percent of the water on it is fresh water, are we going to find sufficient water for both energy exploration AS WELL AS production.
Consider this, however:
A generator is nothing more than a piece of iron spinning inside a magnetic field. The core of the earth is made up of nickel and iron. It rotates within a giant magnetosphere. Where does that electrical current manifest itself? Does that current require water to produce?