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[quote user="DSchmitt"][quote user="futuremodal"][ Hey, don't forget hydropower!  It is the cleanest source of generating large scale volumes of electricity known to man.  Nuclear is a distant second in terms of cleanliness.  But of course for new electric generation much of the hydropower potential has been used up already, which leaves nuclear as the clean choice. But neither hydropower nor nuclear power can address the need for transportation fuels in the here and now, not to mention the next 50 or so years.  You can string catenary for railways, but not for highways, waterways, or airways.  For the continued use of hydrocarbon liquids as transportation fuels, we will need to utilize coal in great quantities if we want true energy independence. For that reason, it would be wise for the nation's energy planners to begin to push nuclear for all new electric generation, and save coal for conversion into transportation fuels.  We need to analyze a policy in which we convert current coal fired power plants to nuclear plants, or convert them into coal liquification plants, or even convert them to biofuels plants. There will always be significant petroleum sources from "friendly" areas for the Western World for centuries to come, but those sources will always be overshadowed by the unfriendly petroleum sources.  Better to rid ourselves of the need for such sources now, rather than having to deal with it later on their terms. [/quote] I agree.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   You started the thread started with an article about burning coal as the energy source to convert crops to ethanal.  This is wasteful and polluting.  Nuclear produced electricity may be a better energy source. I just had another thought (maybe crackpot).  Maybe ethanal plants could be built in conjunction with nuclear plants and use "waste" heat from them.[/quote] Well, here's one reason why I think using coal in conjunction with biofuels may be preferable to using nuclear - both nuclear and coal can provide waste heat to aid processing, and of course electric needs of a biofuels plant.  But only coal can provide an energy content "boost" to biofuels via coal gasification.  One of the proposed biofuels from cellulose ideas (the MixAlco process) involves using natural gas to hydrogenate ketones into alcohols.  If indeed the concept proves out, then converting cellulose to a ketone, then hydrogenating it into an alcohol, will make more sense than trying to directly ferment or acidify cellulose into alcohol.  And right now, synthetic natural gas made from coal is actually cheaper (not to mention safer) than getting natural gas from LNG terminals.  Thus, gasifying coal into synthetic methane (if not just using the basic coal gas stream of hydrogen and CO), then using that syngas to enhance the energy value of biofuels is an advantage of coal that nuclear cannot do.
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