At the core of any electrical delivery system are two essential parts that cannot do their jobs on their own. That would be the grid-work to connect the power plants and the power plants themselves. One of the most important assets for any network is the ability to adjust to changes and also to adapt to disconnect while maintaining its integrity. Examples of failures are the East Coast Blackouts seen, where power was knocked out to the eastern United States due to a catastrophic domino effect. Any good power delivery system will have redundancies so that it will not suffer such failures on a mass scale. A worst case scenario would be for a part of a grid to fail, causing an overload of a different area in the grid, causing it to also fail, which would obviously spread quickly. The way to avoid this is capacity for change, that means each segment of the new grid could take on the load of not just one other segment - but instead it could take the load of ten or more without significant increase in the risk of failure. Additionally backup lines and routes to the failing grid should be available and be automatically switched. Seeing blinking lights of alarm clocks that need to be reset should be something of a rarity, not a yearly occurrence.
        Another issue with the supply of power is the generation of power itself, and the issues involved in that are complex and very convoluted by current industry lobbyists and those who would profit from less sound sources of power. Actually I lied about it being complex - it's more like "Burn or not to burn". Simply put, burning anything as a source of power is negative for our environment because it releases carbon into the atmosphere and further increases the trapping of heat from the sun which in turn causes climate change and only furthers us along to drastic situations. Instead of that big mouthful of domino effects, again, why not get rid of burning any sort of fuel when it comes to the generation of electricity?
        It's a simple thing really, to burn is to destroy, while to heat is to create. Power generation technologies today rely on a simple concept that has been around since the 1700s. Steam. From coal plants to solar plants to nuclear plants they are all generating heat to create steam which is then piped through turbines and those turbines are spun by the transfer of pressurized steam from one location to another. That is where the coal goes, the oil goes, and the beams of sunlight go with exception to the case of photovoltaic cells. Rather than use the burning of wood, coal, and all the other forms that release carbon into the atmosphere we could be using the atom - the great savior of the 1950s. Yes the atom, the smallest particle besides the quark that makes up the atom (that we know of, quarks could be made up of smaller parts). Anyways, back to the nuclear reactors and how they will cause the world to end... if you believe that last statement I highly recommend you keep reading.
        Nuclear power plants of the latest generation of technologies have not been built yet, however if they were they would be more efficient, safe, and extremely cost effective when you consider their only byproduct is a little bit of nuclear waste, no more radioactive than what keeps our planet warm in the mantle. Storage of such material is always an issue, but it can be done safely and effectively. In fact, the waste from nuclear plants is giving off radioactive energy that might be able to be harnessed and used for the generation of electric power, further creating a more efficient electrical system in this country. If nuclear waste can generate power, then is it really waste and wasted? Or is it the next step to recycling? The advantages of nuclear power far outweigh the disadvantages. There are no emissions but steam, and hot water, those emissions can then be cooled and re-used. They are not radioactive, as the cooling system of the plants are very advanced and use a heat transfer system where the radioactive coolant never touches the water used to transfer heat. Much like the heatsink that is keeping your computer cool, water is just a way to transfer heat. There are engines, called Stirling engines, that can run off of heat differentials (one side is cold, the other is hot) which could be set up on the outflow of nuclear power plants, and thus further increase the mechanical and electrical energy gained from the heat, instead of just using it to spin a few fans.
        Nuclear power is one of the things that would power the new Utopia, as it would be in one centralized location on each continent and would distribute power accordingly, waste would be safely taken care of and by using the next generations of nuclear power plant design there would never be a "melt-down". Nor would there be "accidents". Instead it would take the place of all fossil fuel burning for power, and cut emissions drastically. The power grid that supplies the world will be redundant and power outages will be very rare. It is important that these be met in order to power the next step in the Electric Future program, as this is the core infrastructure that every other facet of a world empire will rely on. Additional sources of power will also be used, however dams are not good for the environment unless they are built with the migration of fish in mind, and even then they can seriously disturb the ecology of an area. Wind Power is one of the great untapped resources, and would obviously be used to help power the grid, as would solar stations, although they would need to be in places where they do not hurt the local ecology as they are quite large, and they do consume a large bit of space. However solar power could be used to power shipping and also other forms of transportation - however I will touch on that in a later issue. Fusion Power could be the successor to fission, however fusion still has quite a ways to go before practicality and inexpensive power generation.
        The future can be many things, but my future, the one I envision, is a bright one where mankind has the electrical power and ecological concern to balance both needs. We need a cleaner world, and we need our electricity, and we do need to see the stars too. It is essential to have the power needed for a growing world, the delivery systems that are free of glitches and can compensate if they do happen, and a world that does not burn hydrocarbons like they are candies to be consumed as rapidly as possible.

Back to the Codex