The footprint that we're talking about is huge and would get larger every year as energy needs grew. It doesn't seem feasible. Plus there's the problem of energy storage. It's far better to go with nuclear power. Waste is no longer a problem using the newest breeder reactors in tandem with fuel reprocessing. You get 1/10th the amount of waste and it's only radioactive for a couple of hundred years instead of a few thousand. Al Gore says that we shouldn't use nuclear power because the plants only come in one size, extra-large. Well, jeez, look at the amount of space these things would be taking up, and for wind the footprint is even larger. It doesn't make any sense.
There is a research project currently going on at Lawrence Livermore that is planning to use dozens of lasers designed to focus on a single hydrogen molecule with the plan of turning it into helium by relatively cold nuclear fusion.
If it works, the fusion reaction will generate a lot more energy than it takes to make the reaction happen. As an effect of the process, it is supposed to give off neutron radiation. The plan is to filter those neutrons through a layer of nuclear waste contained within a layer of the fusion containment vessel. Doing that, it is theorized, will reburn that waste and pull even more usable energy from it and render the waste inert and safe.
So, if the process winds up working as theorized it will make the combination of the neutron reaction with current fission reactors a great source for electrical energy with no toxic waste left behind.
Combine that with the new all electric powered vehicles currently on the production path, like the
Tesla Model S for instance. Then we can think about a time where internal combustion engines and the gasoline needed to power them actually becoming a thing of the past for most of the western civilized countries in the very near future.
We would have to upgrade our electrical delivery infrastructure to make this all work. But that is investment within domestic infrastructure and a job maker. Then we
could just spend the money we had been spending on foreign oil on personel and maintaining the new power distribution system.
I doubt we could get totally away from petroleum. As we would still need it for our plastic goods as likely well as for our large transport vehicles like planes and trains. But it could change the game enough that we could meet that need with more domestic sources. Thus keeping that circle of commerce for power right here and bolster our own economies. You invest in domestic infrastructure, and everyone prospers domestically.
