Forums → WEPR → Humanity...
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I think there's two main reasons. Antimatter and matter release energy upon destruction, so the reverse operation requires an input of the same energy. Because of this reaction to regular matter, it is also very difficult to store for any prolonged period.
The thing about this is they sound more like technical issues we have with the process. What I've heard is that it's a physics issue not a matter of simply not having the sufficient technology to do it. (which is currently also a problem) I was hearing that we simply can't produce antimatter at a much faster rate than what we do today. If we can't do that then the use of antimatter as a power source could never be made viable because we could never have enough antimatter to use in the reaction.
Another power source I would be willing to bank on for the future, if the greedy would get out of the way is solar power. This is a technology that really could be greatly improved with further research and even at the level it's at today it's use could have a significant impact in our dependance of other power sources.
What we probably could do with current technology is put up massive solar and wind farms and make up the difference with nuclear plants.
Such technology wouldn't have to be just placed in dedicated farms but could be used all over. For instance we have developed solar panel roof tiling for homes. If an array like this or like the standard panel could be placed on every building this would make those buildings partially or even completely energy independent. Further this by putting it on a smart grid so the building producing more energy than they need instead of feeding back to the plant divert the power to nearby buildings that need more power, thus reducing the over all loss from traveling back to the grid.
I estimated that the cost to set something like that up fro every building in the US would at commercial prices would run roughly $12 trillion to do. Just for residential homes it would run about $9.5 trillion. (I've heard of some solar paneling that could be done for far cheaper as well, such as this.) I know that sounds like a lot of money but let's consider the US defense budget for a moment. We are spending over $1 trillion a year on it (I think it was something like $1.4 trillion last year and goes up) If we could instead focus less than half that (about $500 billion a year) on such a project we could achieve having such a network of power sources by the late 2030s.
Wind generators could be installed in tall buildings that constantly face high winds due to their height. I also like the idea of installing them across bridges where available like this Italian bridge.
I don't buy for a second the counter argument against wind turbines about how birds will sometimes fly into them. This seems like a very small cost compared to the damage other conventional means of power do to not only birds but all sorts of life, including our own.
I've heard of the idea if making solar roads. This is where we turn long stretches of road into solar power panels.
http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml
The major problem I can see with this is that they wouldn't be able to be kept clean enough to remain efficient, specially with heavy use of traffic. I think we could use a similar idea to these sorts of smart roads but instead of making them solar we make them piezoelectric power generators. This could also be done for sidewalks. Basically any heavily traveled road would then become electric generators as we use them which could be fed to the grid.
(example) http://www.robaid.com/tech/walk-over-sustainable-dance-club-floor-tiles-to-generate-power.htm
Basically the idea behind all this is instead of having a few large power planets generating lots of power, we have lots of small generators producing a small amount of power but collectively producing a large amount.