Posts by Phil Clemow 9 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jul 2008
If you read the article (carefully, that means ALL of the words) tokamaks already exist, they just dont produce power, they consume it (making them useless power plants).
The hope is that modifying them this way will allow them to produce power, or at least use less and get rid of the waste.
As for fusion being the solution? Yes, it probably is one of them, but I would suspect it would have exactly the opposite problem to wind, in that the output couldnt be changed to match supply (as opposed the output changing too much) as this would destabalise the reaction.
So ... like everything else ... its not the complete solution
Clearly the solution is to turn the drive into a flea
put the flea into a box ... put that box into another box ... mail it to yourself ... and when it arrives ...
SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cx7jzq2Bx4
If you want 100% confidence the data is destroyed that is, most of us are content with less that 100%.
If you want 100% confidence in things, you best not leave the house, cos you cant be 100% sure you want explode if you do ...
Find me a good way to get hold of hydrogen cheaply and easily, store it and transport it and maybe ... maybe I'll accept the fuel cell car
Until that time, why dont we work on batteries, make them charge faster, that being the only real failing of the battery car.
As for top gear ... clarkson was pretty encouraging on the tesla, he was no more negative than any car hes put in ... he ALWAYS finds some fault, in a porsche, a ferrari, whatever.
Not sure on the graphics card choice but I would suggest that first stop is more RAM, it is cheap as chips and should give you a good boost on those games.
I run a 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo, 3gb of ram and a HD3850 and get good performance for those games at 1680x1050 (satisfies me anyway), you have to turn down the graphics to get crysis (and by extension crysis warhead and far cry 2) running well but ... who doesnt?!
From all accounts the 3850 and 4670 are similar performance, so with that card I'd say you can run these games and games in years to come, as long as you have more ram, and from a quick perusal of the web, the 4670 also beats the 8600GT.
Looks like a pretty good browser; very VERY fast as has been mentioned, got all my settings and stuff from firefox easily (including all my saved passes, slightly disturbing!) and I have yet to find a site it doesn't work with correctly, hell, its nice not to have to install flash on a fresh browser.
I haven't tried it yet, but it also looks like it will suit my EEE 701 and its tiny screen too :)
BUT, much like whenever I try any new browser, I miss mouse gestures so so much!
oh, and you can't add anything to the spell checker, so firefox will have to retain its red wriggly underline
Capacity factor of a 1/3 means that over a year it will produce roughly 1/3 of its theoretical maximum
ie. a 1GW generator will not produce 24GWhrs a day ... but 8GWhrs ...
this is NOT the same as producing full power for 1/3 of the time and nothing for the rest!
yes power scales as wind speed cubed ... but there is control capability to smooth that out at low wind speeds ... and at medium high wind speeds the generator maxes out power wise so the controls are designed to limit power output
As has been said (countless times!) the solution lies in a nice mixture
In my opinion its something like
Wind turbines ... lots ... offshore by preference ... perhaps with wave power mixed in using the structures as a base
Hydro and Tidal ... as much as we can manage
nuclear ... lots ... we need to find somewhere to store the crap though
Import links ... we'll need some of these
New technology ... we need to keep looking
Storage ... we desperately need some good storage
Wind is too unreliable
Solar is too expensive
Demand management is too much like hard work
Nuclear is too risky
and so on ...
No renewable solution is perfect, and chances are we wont be able to live exactly how we do now, but, even if global warming Isn't happening, we WILL run out of coal/oil/etc at some point and we ought to be doing something about it.
I sometimes wonder when people will stop slating the current crop of renewable ideas and either help improve them or design their successors.
Wind is the best we have at the moment, so building wind is a good idea. When someone comes along with a better idea, we'll talk about it.
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