That's th' ticket! Look for better carnot efficiency. Unfortunately, as I noted on a recent video report by our group. We are a water boilin' society. For the most part, if you come to the energy table with a process and it can't boil water it is considered not worth honorable mention.
We have been boiling water for a long time to get at our energy, usually shaft energy of some sort and the tradition is hard to break.
The future will be in some sort of direct conversion if possible.
The old NASA "SNAP" series of nuclear thermopiles were great examples of nuclear to electric direct conversion devices, but had really poor efficiencies. (2-10%) However they made use for rotting isotopes which would be rotting anyway. Most of the fuel loads in these things were reactor bred stuff and the power was waste power that created them anyway. Problem was, they were really HOT both thermally and atomically, thus the suspension on a long boom away from the space craft.
Richard Hull
Created on Friday, March 30, 2001 10:19 AM EDT by Richard Hull