[CanRay]

MAGIC!

Oh, that's your answer to everything, isn't it? 

Consider how many magicians work with radiation, and what happens to them when they do.

Admittedly, it's a good thing for a GM.   

[JimJungle]

quote]Just what we need, a slotted off Fire Elemental that's angry that it's heating a house for a year and a day!

Magicians are too expensive to provide something as plebeian as electrical power for the Megas.  For other groups...  That might work.  A Fire Elemental-Heated Steam Engine Power Generator using captured rainwater, perfect for a Barrens operation that needs to stay off the grid!
[/quote]

What I'm talking about is for the private customers. How about runner made stuff? Summoning Spirits to power machines is a great idea! Spirits Love being enslaved for menial labor. That couldn't possibly go wrong! (Sarcasm at only 50%). Magitech Armour, anyone? You just know that the Megas have people at least trying this. There has to be ways to rudimentary machines with a Spirit. Throw in a Animate Object spell, and you got a start.
Of course, if the media gets wind of a Mega using Spirits in this manner, they'ed have all sorts of animal/spirit rights chumps on thier ass. Not to mention pissed off Free Spirits, Magicians, and even a dragon or two. I smell a story arc...

[Cryonic]

Fusion reactors in SR pump in seawater to create energy and pure H2O. What more do you want?

The ability to deal with the radioactive elements from inside the reactors after they're taken offline due to the internals being too brittle to operate any longer?

Fusion reactors turn Hydrogen into Helium. At slightly higher pressures they'll create Lithium and other slightly heavier elements. But they don't create radioactive waste like a Fission reactor system.

[baronspam]

I would think that most non-electric vehicles run on biofuel.  In fact, I think one of the main reasons that food is such as issue and that the masses eat processed soy and krill is that much of the farmland goes to biofuel rather than food production.  Tomatoes and carrots are for the rich because very little land is devoted to growing them.  Farms are either producing bulk staples like soy, wheat, lentils, etc or growing corn for biofuel. Even today, the great majority of corn is grown for feed, starch, sweeteners, oil, industrial uses, and increasingly fuel, and very little is actually consumed as a vegtable or as cornmeal.  Biofuel demand is one (certainly not the only one) of the reasons behind food price increases in the last year.  In a world like shadowrun where almost all of the fossil fuels are used up and the remains are shale oils that are difficult and expensive to extract, growing our fuel sources would likely put huge strains on the cost of the food supplies.

[CanRay]

Fusion reactors in SR pump in seawater to create energy and pure H2O. What more do you want?

The ability to deal with the radioactive elements from inside the reactors after they're taken offline due to the internals being too brittle to operate any longer?

Fusion reactors turn Hydrogen into Helium. At slightly higher pressures they'll create Lithium and other slightly heavier elements. But they don't create radioactive waste like a Fission reactor system.

I could have sworn I remembered some Shadowtalk about issues with the reactor core and having to deal with the effects when it has to go offline.

Might be a case of "Did not do the research", or something far, far more sinister.  Or a Shadowtalker talking out of their hoop.

[baronspam]

Fusion reactors in SR pump in seawater to create energy and pure H2O. What more do you want?

The ability to deal with the radioactive elements from inside the reactors after they're taken offline due to the internals being too brittle to operate any longer?

Fusion reactors turn Hydrogen into Helium. At slightly higher pressures they'll create Lithium and other slightly heavier elements. But they don't create radioactive waste like a Fission reactor system.

I could have sworn I remembered some Shadowtalk about issues with the reactor core and having to deal with the effects when it has to go offline.

Might be a case of "Did not do the research", or something far, far more sinister.  Or a Shadowtalker talking out of their hoop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Waste_management

I don't know any more about physics than I learned in highschool and few hundred hours of watching the discovery channel, but the link above is to a short wikipedia article that seems to indicate that shile there are radioactive issues to deal with, they seem to be less significant that Fission reactors and much less long lasting.

[Nath]

I could have sworn I remembered some Shadowtalk about issues with the reactor core and having to deal with the effects when it has to go offline.

Might be a case of "Did not do the research", or something far, far more sinister.  Or a Shadowtalker talking out of their hoop.

Native American Nations, Volume One, page 83
>>>>>[The issue still remains of what we will do with the fusion plant in 15 or so years when continuous neutron bombardment has made the metal components of the core so brittle that the unit must be decommissioned. Do we just seal it in concrete and forget about it? For 17,000 years? I assure you, I'm no neo-Luddite; I merely have concerns and questions.]<<<<<
 -Warden (23:57:49/11-28-52)

As far as I can tell, this is a real issue with fusion reactor. Fusion creates H2O but also high-energy neutrons. Those can cause neutron activation, creating radioactive isotopes. I'm not sure however the activation products would last for as long as 17,000 years (activated iron for instance, decays to a non-radioactive isotope of Manganese in a few years).

[CanRay]

I could have sworn I remembered some Shadowtalk about issues with the reactor core and having to deal with the effects when it has to go offline.

Might be a case of "Did not do the research", or something far, far more sinister.  Or a Shadowtalker talking out of their hoop.

Native American Nations, Volume One, page 83
>>>>>[The issue still remains of what we will do with the fusion plant in 15 or so years when continuous neutron bombardment has made the metal components of the core so brittle that the unit must be decommissioned. Do we just seal it in concrete and forget about it? For 17,000 years? I assure you, I'm no neo-Luddite; I merely have concerns and questions.]<<<<<
 -Warden (23:57:49/11-28-52)

As far as I can tell, this is a real issue with fusion reactor. Fusion creates H2O but also high-energy neutrons. Those can cause neutron activation, creating radioactive isotopes. I'm not sure however the activation products would last for as long as 17,000 years (activated iron for instance, decays to a non-radioactive isotope of Manganese in a few years).

Thanks Nath!  I was sure I read about it somewhere.

I failed physics, BTW.  Which is odd because I later calculated just how many newtons of energy a throwing hatchet generated after falling off the top of the CN Tower when embedded into a guy's chest.

[freddieflatline]

I would think that most non-electric vehicles run on biofuel.  In fact, I think one of the main reasons that food is such as issue and that the masses eat processed soy and krill is that much of the farmland goes to biofuel rather than food production.  Tomatoes and carrots are for the rich because very little land is devoted to growing them.  Farms are either producing bulk staples like soy, wheat, lentils, etc or growing corn for biofuel. Even today, the great majority of corn is grown for feed, starch, sweeteners, oil, industrial uses, and increasingly fuel, and very little is actually consumed as a vegtable or as cornmeal.  Biofuel demand is one (certainly not the only one) of the reasons behind food price increases in the last year.  In a world like shadowrun where almost all of the fossil fuels are used up and the remains are shale oils that are difficult and expensive to extract, growing our fuel sources would likely put huge strains on the cost of the food supplies.

Probably not corn.  In my opinion they probably use some sort of algae to create bio-fuel.  Corn is to expensive.  Easier to have big tanks of algae out in the desert or other non arable land.

[CanRay]

Probably not corn.  In my opinion they probably use some sort of algae to create bio-fuel.  Corn is to expensive.  Easier to have big tanks of algae out in the desert or other non arable land.

Or the ocean.

...

Until the algae starts to die, and they have to shift to Soylent Green.

[savaze]

Petro-Chem Fuels are the common form of "Gasoline" (Petrol substitute, actually) that's been mentioned in the fluff back in the day.  A bit of Petrol with a lot of chemical fillers.  Bio-Diesel is a big one, and is likely to have a Aviation Fuel equivalent.

There are two types of aviation fuel; a type of gasoline "Avgas", IRL most modern planes use a high octane variety with very tight specifications (used in piston engine planes); and jet fuel which is a modified kerosine, I'm told you could use kerosine in a pinch if you have hundreds of gallons laying around (used in turbine engines). There is one diesel engine that is designed for aviation use and it's used in a helicopter and can not use bio-diesel (and it's got it's own problem with power).

So if you know of bio versions of gasoline or kerosine (which is already a cleaner burning fossil fuel) then feel free to input them, but a loss of power from bio-fuels in an airframe means that airplanes can't fly as fast or carry as much in a more extreme way than is exhibited in land vehicles. You could say that the Avgas most planes use today is bio friendly because there was higher-octane leaded gas being used just a couple of decades ago that was taken off the market. There are conversions for aviation piston engines to car-grade gasoline, but they are only used in 3rd world countries and it's dangerous to use, unless engine failure is the normal name of the game. I've been told that some countries have all of their aircraft converted to jet fuel because of the price of Avgas.

If you are going to reference any "X-planes"... The results weren't necessarily adopted widespread. The same could be said with any aircraft designed to fly above 60,000' and extremely high speed vehicles, like the SR-71, which are their own beasts unto themselves.

[CanRay]

Anyhow, there's lots of use for Petroleum in the world.  Asphalt is still made from it.  So are plastics which are extensively used in manufacturing of...  Everything (Including Plassteel.).

I had a big speech about all the uses for it from a friend of mine that took Civil Engineering and cleaned Oil Refineries for a living before he became a cyborg and started having major issues getting into the "United States of Paranoia" (Or so it seems at Air Ports.).

[Cryonic]

Anyhow, there's lots of use for Petroleum in the world.  Asphalt is still made from it.  So are plastics which are extensively used in manufacturing of...  Everything (Including Plassteel.).

I had a big speech about all the uses for it from a friend of mine that took Civil Engineering and cleaned Oil Refineries for a living before he became a cyborg and started having major issues getting into the "United States of Paranoia" (Or so it seems at Air Ports.).

And since Petroleum is just the same "crap" as can be found when creating biofuels (long chains of hydrogen and carbon) all it takes is the right catalyzer to create the right length of chain with the right secondary linkages (sulfur is used in car tires to cross link the hydrocarbon chains).

"Tubes in the Desert" is just one research project about building giant tanks of algae in normally unusable land to create fuel farms. The ocean is ok, but you can't build an algae farm that is very deep or they would starve from a lack of sunlight.

Just an FYI, but there is no technology that is truly sustainable. Everything requires an external input of energy (namely the Sun) to "complete" the cycle.

[CanRay]

Well, the sun isn't about to run out of fuel any time soon.

...

Hopefully.

[hobgoblin]

I would think that most non-electric vehicles run on biofuel.  In fact, I think one of the main reasons that food is such as issue and that the masses eat processed soy and krill is that much of the farmland goes to biofuel rather than food production.  Tomatoes and carrots are for the rich because very little land is devoted to growing them.  Farms are either producing bulk staples like soy, wheat, lentils, etc or growing corn for biofuel. Even today, the great majority of corn is grown for feed, starch, sweeteners, oil, industrial uses, and increasingly fuel, and very little is actually consumed as a vegtable or as cornmeal.  Biofuel demand is one (certainly not the only one) of the reasons behind food price increases in the last year.  In a world like shadowrun where almost all of the fossil fuels are used up and the remains are shale oils that are difficult and expensive to extract, growing our fuel sources would likely put huge strains on the cost of the food supplies.

Whatever it is, it is likely bioengineered for maximum yield and patented up the ying yang...