All of humanities technological advancements can be summed up in ever more complex ways to boil water
That’s why photovoltaics need much more R&D. They are the only true advancement in electricity production since the inception of broadly adopted electrification.
Exactly why we should ditch them. We shall not break tradition. Praise be the turbine
Hollowed be thy pipes
Anoint me in condensate
Blessed be the holy turbine, we seek guidance in its rotation. Long may it spin and bring forth a bounteous current.
Hey we burn things just for heat too.
Yeah, heat to boil water
We heat homes, smelt ore, many industrial things.
And water
We smelting water tonight?
Not only water as per the original comment. You need heat to smelt ore and do any number of industrial things to progress society.
But then you quench that ore in water! It’s just heating water with extra steps!
Most of the biggest advances in technology is just about moving liquids. Rocket science is really just large scale HVAC.
Oh boy just wait till you hear how fossil fuels work
That’s just steam power with extra steps!
I’ve got bad news for ya bruv
Wait till you find out how nuclear fusion makes electricity
You mean, how it will in 20 years?
Perpetually so
It’s like Musk time. In 20 years it’ll only be 20 years away.
Helion’s approach is actually different. They are attempting to capture energy directly through induction. I hope it pans out for them, seems like a really interesting approach.
That seems inefficient
Here’s a video I saw a few months back you might find interesting:
We can do it now, just haven’t found a way to scale it and make it economical yet.
ITER is doing a great job on that front
Don’t leave us ice cold.
Our entire society* has been based on burning things. Then we progressed to… burning atoms.
(*Exceptions I can think of is solar, wind, hydro.)
Then we’re leaching off the sun burning atoms.
Ohhhhh!
Solar farms did start out as using the sun to boil water. Basically mirrors redirecting light to a central point to super-heat a pipe flowing with water.
Theres actually been a major increase in solar thermal power stations in the last few years
ACKSHUALLY you’re not burning atoms in a nuclear reaction. You’re creating a chain reaction of neutrons colliding with Uranium isotopes. No combustion.
Wind and hydro still have to spin a turbine. Solar is the one true stand out advancement in electricity production since we started using electricity.
They spin it directly though, not via steam.
They can’t all be photonic inversion.
Well Rotating a rotor on a generator is the most convenient way to make electricity with parts that last a long amount of time. Also doesn’t help that we use AC power while other sources like photovoltaic produce DC power which needs to be converted to be used.
Don’t forget about the deadly waste product!
Deadly, horrible waste product that is processed and made so safe you can literally kiss it. But don’t let me get in the way of fearmongering.
I see your youtuber, and raise you Scientific American with quotes by actual doctors and nuclear technicians. In detail, the article explores all of the myriad ways that nuclear power is the opposite of kissable. My fav? Illinois isn’t on a fault line, but they send all of their spent nuclear fuel to Nevada, where it is stored on a fault line.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-waste-lethal-trash-or-renewable-energy-source/
2009 is basically ancient by today’s standards.
