@Rule292 posted:I still think it kind of interesting that the in the current form, the most efficient form of motive power is electricity but only when you have your own fossil fuel powered generating station onboard the locomotive.
Perhaps some day we'll have the "fuel man" will come every so often and exchange out a box of spent nuclear fuel "core" for a new one to power our homes.
Actually a diesel electric locomotive is not the most efficient, not if you look from fuel to output thermodynamically ( and I will admit upfront this is very much splitting hairs, just to highlight something). A diesel engine in terms of efficiency is about 7 to 8% input to output, an electric motor is about 90 to 95%, so end to end you are talking let's say 7%. If you had a power network running off solar using today's technology, solar cells are up to 35%, and even factoring in losses due to transmission line losses and then the electric motor loss, you would still be much higher. Likewise nuclear and hydro and wind are much higher efficiency wise if you do a similar calculation.
The kicker of course is that most power production on a national scale is Nat gas and coal running turbines and not having a national grid, lot of higher efficiency power production is localized, so yes that is true.
One of the potentials of fusion power (like Mr.Fusion *lol*) is theoretically a byproduct of fusion power from an article I read long ago, would be really long lived batteries ( really more like fuel cells) using long lived ions generated by the fusion reaction. Not a physicist and it could just be a pipe dream, but in theory you wouldnt need power transmission, those ionic de ices could power heavy duty vehicles like trains.
