1091
Yeah about that.
Those are termosolar powerplant, they use the sun to boil water and spin a turbine.
Why do I have an overwhelming urge to climb that
You know if you're a moth, you can just fly up there.
No brother!
BRotHeR i cRaVe foR tHe ForBiDDen liGhT
You played too many Ubisoft games.
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Better solar power extractor.
If you think about it coal fired power plants are also solar powered 🤔
True, just that an intermediate step(of many steps) is to continually destroy the atmosphere.
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do you not know how those work?
the sun shines on the side angled upwards and heats it up. everybody knows hot air rises, so this raises the blade, creating the spinning motion.
it's basic, really. third grade stuff.
I really love how it's almost that simple.
the sun shines on the ~~side angled upwards~~ planet and heats it up. everybody knows hot air rises, ~~so this raises~~ creating winds that drive the blade, creating the spinning motion.
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The sun heats the planet unevenly, this causes wind. Wind is solar
Its even more metal they heat salt that heats water to spin the turbine. This keeps the power generation well after sun down.
Although they're falling out of use these days, both because they're not very environmentally friendly on account of being instant bird death-rays, and also because regular solar panels are cheap enough that it's not worth it to make a big thermosolar plant.
Habitat destruction, air pollution, and pesticides are unfathomably worse for birds.
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Idk, my country just inaugurated a gigantic one of these.
Also, fotovoltaic pannels decay with time and have to be replaced, 15 years I think? Their manufacturing isn't also the greenest thing on earth.
You build one of these, and you can run it for a long long time.
15 years I think
This number gets lower every time I see it.
First, manufacturers typically guarantee their panels for 25 to 30 years.
Second, while we can extrapolate from existing data and perform accelerated aging tests, we're actually not completely sure how long PV panels last in the real world because the oldest ones from 1987 are still going.
fotovoltaic pannels decay with time and have to be replaced, 15 years I think?
much longer: https://www.slashgear.com/1989112/solar-panel-lifespan-longer-new-study/
The usual warranty period is 20 years generating 80% of the nameplate generating Watts
They keep generating reasonable amounts of power 50 or 100 years later, though they tend to get overtaken by new technology in 10 to 20 years, and since they pay for themselves in about 4 years in my area they get replaced while still working well
I think we export our obsolete panels to developing nations
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Ahkshually, those tend to boil salt...which is later used to boil water.
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Solar panels are all nice and stuft, but what about some boiled water?
china already have a supercritical carbon dioxide system integrated into a functioning powergrid and operating commercially. The system exploits an exotic phase of co2 which expands to fill a volume like gas, but moves frictionlessly through tubes as a liquid. There are concerns about lifespan because of how caustic the system is, but apparently some new materials are being trialled which negate this.
Heat pumps are the next evolution of the "it's just steam again isn't it?" meme.
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Link with description for those who are unaware of this like me
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ACKSHUALLY we're going to put special solar panels inside the reactor.
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People are essentially internal combustion engines that burn food. Trying to capture that energy in ways that increases the load on us just causes us to need more calories. That's counter productive as you could just burn said food itself to get energy, and agriculture is an energy and environmentally intensive industry to begin with.
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Can someone explain the solar panels bit at the bottom? Is it because the creator of the meme is advocating that as a cooler method of energy, given that it doesn't use boiling water, or is it because the fusion reactor can utilise solar panels to convert the energy to electricity?
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check out helion. they are trying to make small, modular reactors that are cheaper to build and maintain, so they can be deployed easier than fission reactors and the couple of fusion designs that already exist. iirc they have the actual fusion part working and are now working on actually getting the energy out of it. real engineering has some good videos about them on nebula and YouTube.
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this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
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