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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (403560)	8/1/2008 1:46:20 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1572416

"Fusion has been "20 years out" for longer than you have been reading." I want my Atomic Car! Fueled for a lifetime! damninteresting.com Look at those sweet fins to add stability!

To: combjelly who wrote (403560)	8/1/2008 2:07:34 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572416

What strain? The idea is to take electricity from solar cell arrays that isn't being used and storing it. If it consumes a great deal of energy in the process of "storing" it, then the net gain may be too marginal to make it valuable. Maybe not. But the article wasn't explicit about it. If you cannot do it profitably (that is, the net "stored" energy isn't able to recapture the infrastructure cost to do it) then it will just be one more failed attempt to make solar energy workable. Everyone has known forever that solar would be the Holy Grail. But as yet, nobody has come up with a way of doing it that makes it economically feasible. Unlike wind, which offers great promise. Fusion has been "20 years out" for longer than you have been reading. The particular article, I recall, indicated we could see it within a decade. It was, at the time, thought to be a huge development. But it is true, that fusion has proven to be very problematic, which was my point. So has solar.