Abolish the laws that have crippled the nuclear industry for decades and retarded technological progress. Nukes will out compete all other sources of grid electricity and energy will be so cheap that heavy industries will sprint back to America and we will have exactly zero reasons to care about goatfuckers in the desert. I also just solved climate change.
Establish a serious long term strategic stockpile program. Copper, cobalt, platinum, basically all important industrial materials. Grow the stockpile a little every year until America is immune to supply disruption.
In 20 years America is not only the most powerful country we are literally invincible.
This will never happen because our politicians are incompetent or evil and our military actually just a collossal welfare program.
Oh yeah supply shocks are a huge worry for manufacturing so the strategic stockpile is another big reason to locate in America.
Now demand for skilled labor is so huge that not even our liberal education mafia can brainwash kids into taking gender studies, they take shop classes again because they want that big paycheck.
>>28405844
How to power cars trucks construction equipment tractors fishing boats aircraft and tanks without oil?
But that said, yeah I would love to see a 100% nuclear, hydro, and wind power grid with cheap electricity everywhere. Unfortunately liberals fuck it up like they do everything
Too many luddite retards in America to make that happen.
>>28406095
Hydrogen fuel cells. You can get the hydrogen from electrolysis.
>>28406175
Natural gas masterrace
but for real I think a dual-fuel hydrogen / natural gas car could push out gasoline
>>28406223
Hydrogen is the only way. Nuclear will be a very bad for this country long term.
Nuclear will be a shot pile of doom for any country that embraces it, mark my words.
>>28406175
I'm guessing better/cheaper batteries will make electric passenger vehicles and commercial trucks viable in the next 10 years, and superior to gasoline and diesel in the next 25
Biofuels will probably eventually take over for aircraft, boats, and other applications that aren't as easily run off batteries, with minimal changes to engine design
See Tesla Motors. We can make good electric cars right now, they are just expensive. The real bottleneck is energy density of batteries. They are improving slowly but steadily. Eventually most vehicles will be electric first cars, then trucks. Weight is a huge factor for planes so who knows about those, eventually maybe.
Internal combustion engines are basically as good as they're gonna get, so the whole industry will slowly move towards electric over time. And self driving tech will be ready soon so we'll probably need a lot less vehicles in the future anyway. Think robotic Uber.
USA has plenty of oil for the military and other uses.
Hydro and wind can't hold a candle to nuclear. Energy would already be 1/10 the cost as it is now if it weren't for the NRC and ridiculous laws forcing us to use 40 year old reactors.
Energy is probably the biggest national security vulnerability we have right now. And the cost of electricity is one of the biggest factors in economic growth.
>>28406290
Where do you think hydrogen comes from, a hydrogen mine?
Oh wait yes it does actually, it comes from natural gas. (CH4). Except it takes energy to make hydrogen that has to come from somewhere else. Also it's expensive to transport and store. Also dangerous invisible fires.
Hydrogen sucks dude. The only thing its good for is NASA rockets.
Fission is the only way forward. It would be a lot safer and a lot less scary if we allowed technological progress. It's totally possible to make safe, small, affordable reactors that are impossible to turn into a bomb.
>>28406290
>>28406490
>not using breeder reactors for energy and then using that energy to create a hydrogen economy
It's not ideal, but I legitimately can't think of another alternative to fossil fuels that's anywhere near as viable.
>Establish a serious long term strategic stockpile program.
Completely irrelevant because if any of them were actually scarce, we could go up to mine them in space right now.
>>28406490
>The only thing its good for is NASA rockets.
Except SpaceX is demonstrating that liquid hydrogen is a giant waste of cash,.
But thats how government agencies like NASA operate.
>>28406600
Half of the space shuttle program was designed in a specific way to funnel money into congressmen's districts. Not to be the most efficient.
>>28406657
And the other half was to fit air force demands, which it was never actually used to do...
>>28406290
There would be a lack of available hydrogen, or it would be expensive, until the upgraded electrical system and the electrolysis centers were installed. Natural gas already exists almost everywhere and could be expanded into commercial gas stations pretty quickly. You would have a hell of a time displacing gasoline as a transportation fuel without using natural gas to quickly get the infrastructure started
>>28405844
Build the plants in the Nevada test range. It's already polluted and nobody gives a squat about that desert.
Use the Plutonium from the nuke weapons being decommissioned. MOX fuel works. But hell on wheels if it escapes into the environment.
Build Thorium Chloride reactors to burn up the waste fuel rods from the regular nuclear plants.
The hot temps from the Thorium reactors can make methanol from the C02 and water in the atmosphere. That would be a truly carbon negative plant after it runs through it's payoff period.
Use only three designs like the French do and make the reactors bulletproof. Not just for economy of scales, but for uber safety guarantees to the folks in Las Vegas.
BTW, there is Thorium on the surface of the moon as reported by the LRO probes. No wonder the Chinese are interested in mining the crap out of it. Technically break even in cost you could beam the electricity to Earth in yet another damn wide desert hole like Mohave or Death Valley.
>>28407009
Worst case scenario if OPEC cut us off suddenly?
Use the nuclear plants to generate live steam and cook coil for gas and crude oil. Expensive but would put WWII Germany to shame in the synthetic oil program. We have better tech now for feeding the refineries.
Unless someone is bombing them every week.
>>28407108
>being a retard who doesn't even look at US oil production
The US is self-sufficient on oil now
>>28405844
>Copper, cobalt, platinum
you know what has alot of that shit?
pic related
>>28405844
You are correct.
It will also never happen.
>>28406583
Asteriod mining has nothing to do with strategic stockpiles. Spaceships are just as easy to kill as container ships.
The point is to provide a buffer in case of a disruption in supply. This could be war, a natural disaster on the other side of the planet, a labor strike, anything.
Stockpiles also reassure domestic industry that their multibillion dollar factory will not go bankrupt because they can't get enough germanium or whatever. This sounds like a minor thing but supply risk is a major factor in how companies plan their operations.
If our stockpiles were deep enough other countries might not even bother playing economic fuck fuck games with us because it wouldnt hurt us anyway.
Stockpiles also include things like large amounts of food, water filters, medicine, etc. Stuff that is really important after a terrorist attack or natural disaster or disease outbreak. All things that can fuck us up real bad if we aren't prepared. All supplies we will need in a major war.
>>28407205
Space mining is still too expensive, even with platinum being consumed faster and faster it will still be about 20-30 years before people start looking at the sky for cash.
>>28406175
Energy density way too low currently.
>>28407205
I'm actually a huge supporter of asteriod mining. But if we were actually doing that we would need a strategic stockpile even more. Because our supply lines would be even more vulnerable to enemy action.
>>28406600
Aerospace employee here. You have no idea what you're talking about.
>>28405844
Nuclear will be (or at least should be) an important component of the grid going forward. But anyone who think it should or will be by far the dominant source in the short or medium term is a fucking moron. Even if red tape was gotten rid of or streamlined, setting up new nuclear reactors/plants (even with the most advanced and simplified designs) would be expensive as fuck.
>>28406095
>without oil
You could run them without fossil fuels. Oils for lube/hydraulics would still be necessary but once you get passanger/commuter vehicles on electricity you can greatly scale back oil consumption and greenhouse emissions.
>>28406095
You know Republicans are mostly the ones trying to cut the tax incentives for wind, solar, and other renewables... right?
>>28406290
Hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles (cars, trucks, and buses mostly) is never going to become a big thing. It very well could for things like ships and freight trains though. The real potential for fuel cells lies in certain energy storage applications.
>>28407135
No it's not. It's just that the % of oil that is imported from OPEC has dropped significantly.
>>28407349
Obviously we can't rebuild our nuclear industry overnight. Building a strategic stockpile will take a long time too.
These are long term projects and will take decades to come to fruition. But they are the two most important, cost effective, common sense things America should be doing right now.
This is /k/, and I'm primarily thinking about this stuff in terms of national security and wartime infrastructure. But both of these projects are highly beneficial to the economy, diplomacy, industry, and make us more flexible in emergencies of any sort.
Yeah we all know that F-35 is a giant money hole, and the new Fords will get sunk just as quick as the rest of the fleet in an actual war. Whatever.
Cheap energy and deep magazines. I garuntee that these factors are going to be decisive in any war.
>>28407349
Like the other guy said, not possible short term but definitely possible long term. France gets 75% of its electricity from nuclear power, Germany did have 25% from nuclear power. They both bitched out when the Fukushima accident happened and they're reducing their nuclear power usage. Retard decision IMO
>>28405844
What do you guys think will be the next nuclear style quantum leap in power (and weapons) technology?
Antimatter, cold fusion, quantum drives, harnessed blackholes ,whateverthefuck you can think of.
>>28408039
Antimatter is just too unstable for using to create energy, it's like hydrogen but worse.
Black holes maybe, but if something went tits up.. well let's just say I wouldn't want to be on the planet when it happened. Granted it would be damn quick.
Probably some kind of fusion, or some fornm of quantum entanglement bullshit that comes out of cern.
Most likely it's something we can't even understand just yet.
>>28408039
Figuring out what the fuck 'black matter' is and what happens when a neutrino reacts to something.
>>28405844
I love how /k/ is full of nuclear engineers and policy experts that know that the only thing holding back free power is unleashing fission on the masses. When they really know fuckall about any of it.
>>28408039
Fusion. Only 15 years away, every year since 1960.
Long odds that maybe the EmDrive actually works as advertised, and will revolutionize pretty much all locomotion and propulsion, from cars and ships to space.
So how is this weapon related?
>>28407283
This isn't exactly true, a couple of groups are organizing and developing "prospecting" systems for identifying economically viable asteroids. So there's definitely interest, currently.
>>28405844
Long term we can't go full nuke much to my disappointment. It would cost more to store the spent fuel than it would save. We need to invest in thorium/MSRs, solar and hydro simultaneously.
>>28408493
It's war related.
America has lost every war since WW2 because we can't strategy.
>>28408727
Retard detected.
>>28408938
>It's war related.
That's cool and all, but this is /k/-weapons, not /k/-war.
