Let’s say someone wanted to generate electricity using a power plant that takes a “working fluid” (say, water, ammonia, freon, etc.), heats it up to a tremendous pressure, runs that high pressure through a turbine (making it spin very fast), causing an electrical generator to rotate, and volia!, out pops electricity.
What fuel should they choose to heat up that “working fluid”?
- Oil? No, oil is bad – it’s non-renewable!
- Coal? No, coal is bad – even “Clean Coal” is dirty!
- Natural Gas? No, natural gas is bad – it could pollute our groundwater!
- Hydrogen? No, hydrogen is bad - this stuff explodes!
- Nuclear Fission? Gosh no, nuclear fission is really bad – the waste is radioactive for generations!
- Nuclear Fusion? Nuclear fusion is bad - that’s like putting the sun in a bottle!
- Concentrated Solar Power? No, Solar concentrators are bad – using all that land disturbs the indigenous wildlife!
Well, seems someone’s seriously considering using humans as a fuel source (aka: Homo Sapiens Sapiens, “The Average Joe”, “those unwashed masses”, etc.). Must be because human beings are ubiquitous, renewable, and potentially has lots of energy per kilogram.
Sounds like an uphill battle to convert hearts & minds into accepting this source of biofuel – Nuclear power hasn’t overcome their bad rap, and they’ve been working at it for over sixty years!
BTW: You don’t need to use combustion – you could simply use flowing water to spin that turbine by building a hydroelectric dam. But…hydroelectric dams are bad – those poor helpless fish!
Thanks for reading!
