Presumably part of the problem is finding a way to create power without something going BOOM.
Well, just daydreaming a bit this morning after my shower, it occurred to me you could build rooms in granite a mile under the surface and just set bombs off. You could attach those chambers to hundreds of escape valves with turbines in them that generate power. These would, in some quantity, dissipate the blast.
You could also fill many underground reservoirs with water (or some other material) that would boil, let off steam in the manner I understand fission reactors do, and also drive turbines.
We likely already have 1 kiloton bombs. We could more or less drop them down a chute, and bang, immediate and sustained power. Since the power output would be in units–since there is no minimum critical mass to start, and no need for cooling rods to stop the reaction–power could in this scenario be fitted to actual needs.
As things stand today, it takes more power to create a wind turbine than it will ever create in its lifetime. Quite literally, even if it does its job well throughout its lifespan, humanity as a whole has lost, even if Obama donor and Federal Reserve Board member GE does a very tidy, very profitable business in the process.
Over some period of time, though, solar might become viable, and in some localized instances wind may make sense too. Both are highly dependent on the environment, though, so some equivalent of a coal or wood fire would be good, in which if the fire is dying down, you just add bricks or logs.
We could have dozens of “kilns” (I will call them), and keep only those occupied for which there is a need. Power output could be scaled real time to power demand.
Who knows? Perhaps even small communities could one day have such arrangements, perhaps even houses, with microton bombs.
I am a staunch opponent of the idea that humans are having a significant, or even measurable, impact on global temperatures as a result of using plentiful and easily deployed fuels. At the same time, I do not oppose efficiency per se, and this might be a step in that direction.