So, how much stock do you put in the most "pessimistic" peak oil theories?

[Maven]

And do you think, as many have said, that it's coming in the next few years?

I know many have said that we will be plunged into anarchy and then a gradual settlement into "pre-Medieval" communal crop-growing arrangements.

What are your predictions, DUers?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Dr Ken Defeyes who accurately called the shortage of the 70's

has said oil production is peaking over these next few years and will gradually decline. He is more of an expert than I, so I would put great stock in his opinion. Furthermore, since these are fossil fuels, we know they are finite. That said, which theories do you believe are pessimistic? As far as speculation as to what will happen, I doubt that is so as there are other sources of energy including ...hate to say it...nuclear. Therefore, the speculation that accompanies peak oil theories may be a bit hyperbolic but the fact that oil..a non renewable resource is peaking certainly isn't a pessimistic but practical theory.

[Maven]

4. Thanks for pointing out an important clarification.

When I say "pessimistic," I'm not referring to speculation about its occurrence so much as its ramifications.

It's interesting that you mention nuclear power, since most material I've read (particularly that written by Goodstein) tends to dismiss the prospect of nuclear power to substitute in any meaningful way for the lost of petroleum-based energy...especially with the long process of development and oil-dependent labor that would be required to build 800 or so new reactors.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

7. There was a really great article in The American Prospect

a couple years ago...if I can find it, I will but it offered alternatives...we know we can stay mobile with other fuels so while there is great incentive for some to maintain oil based economies simply because oil based economies are the wealthiest economies...we're gonna HAVE to deal with it sooner or later.

[hatrack]

10. I think it was M. King Hubbert who made the prediction . . .

. . . though Deffeyes covers his work admirably in the excellent "Hubbert's Peak". :hi:

I'm just waiting for the last few shoes to fall. We're 35 years past our production peak, Iran 31 (for conventional oil), Libya 36, Brunei 26. Russia/USSR production rolled over in 1987, though new exploration and better production methods may produce a second, lower peak.

Oman has been plummeting since 2001, the UK rolled over in 1999, Norway (probably) last year, or if not this year, and the Caspian so far has been a full order of magnitude beneath the more optimistic projections.

So, there are only three more rollovers that really matter: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. Kuwait probably won't peak until about 2015, and with Iraq, who the hell knows? Hard to pump and ship oil with pipelines blowing up every other day.

The big puzzle is Saudi Arabia. Their reserve data is horribly opaque, and they're so dependent on the massively water-flooded Ghawar structure that once that single field fails (and it was discovered, I believe, in 1947), no one knows just what is going to happen with their production.

And 1.3 billion Chinese and 1 billion Indians are all going to want cars. We haven't even begun to see real demand growth. Wait for the next 4-5 years.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

17. I bow to your expertise

and thanks for the correction :hi:

[hatrack]

18. I don't know if reading a lot constitutes "expertise" . . .

But I'll take it as a compliment! :toast:

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

19. If it weren't for your persistence, I'd know a hell of a lot less

Thanks for all your efforts in keeping this forum informative...just want to make sure you know it doesn't go by unnoticed or unappreciated. :thumbsup:

[bunny planet]

69. I heard that Valerie Plame was really deep undercover with an ear to the

Saudi Arabian energy situation, and not WMD's per say. In other words, she was in a postition through years of effort , to find out the truth about the actual real oil reserves and just how much time left before they peak, or whether or not they have already. She was shut down and outed because the *'ies already have this information and they didn't want it to get out. Anybody else hear this?

[happyslug]

101. No, Bush does NOT read policy papers.

That is the consisted report on Both Bush Sr and Bush Jr. Both of them are "People person" i.e. deals with PEOPLE not policies. One story I read about in DU was that Bush Sr wanted a picture of every newspaper person so he could memorize their faces and recognize them and be able to call them by name. Both Bushs seems to be this type of person, getting people to support them based on a handshake etc.

The same reports says neither of the Bushs do much reading on Policy. In effect they do NOT connect things together. For example under Bush Sr you had the fall of the Soviet Union, Castro was in deep economic trouble given the lost of aid from the Soviet Union. The Situation was critical. What should be done? If you read about HOW TO HAVE A REVOLUTION, you realize that Revolutions do NOT occur as an economy goes down hill but after it had bottomed out (For example the worse economic years in France was 1786, the Economy was coming back when revolution broke out in 1789. The worse years for the Russians during WWI was 1916, the Russian's military situation was actually improving in 1917 when they had BOTH of their Revolutions).

Thus the thing to do in 1990 if you wanted to get rid of Castro was to LIFT the embargo. This would have stabilized Cuba's Economy at a point where most Cubans were upset with Castro and Castro could no longer blame the Embargo for the problems of Cuba. So what did Bush Sr do, he TALKED to the Cuban Exiles in Florida and INCREASED the embargo. Bush Sr's TALK meant that POLICY was not decided based on economic THEORY AND PRACTICE, but what his Friends and political Allies wanted.
Political THEORY said end the Embargo and Castro will Fall, Bush's people person agenda lead to the opposite. Bush Friends said to do X so Bush did X, even through anyone who had studied Revolution and how to overthrow a government (popular or not) would have lead a leader who did understand Policy and Briefings to end the embargo in 1990.

This policy of Bush Sr saved Castro in my opinion. Castro was able to adapt his economy to survive the problems of the fall of the Soviet Union. Castro is NOW stronger than ever in Cuba. The US had a small window of opportunity to remove him but do to the Bush's preference for PEOPLE PERSON data acquisition the opportunity was lost.

(Please NO Comments on whether the Embargo should go or not, the above IS not a piece on the Embargo BUT to show the effects of Bush's preference for Personal People Politics over following political Theory and how it undermines his own policies). You can see this in other areas of both Bush's presidencies. Bush Sr showed his superior ability to be a People-Person when he was able to get the huge alliance together to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. Bush's failure to remove Saddam can be traced to this same People-Person attributes of the Bushs. As part of the deal to get everyone on board for the Kuwait War, it had to be limited to Kuwait. None of our Allies in the Persian Gulf wanted a Revolt for like Saddam the Persian Gulf Kingdoms are Shiite Majorities ruled by a Sunni Minority. As such a popular revolt was opposed by the Gulf Emirates (and Saudi Arabia) and given NO support from the US. Anyone who read about Saddam and how he ran his country would have realized that the only way to get rid of Saddam was by a popular Revolt or invasion. Bush promised the Gulf States No support for any popular revolt, and gave none. Bush believed that someone close to Saddam would over throw Saddam. How did Bush know this? He was told by his Friends. Who had been told by Friends of theirs in Iraq who had been told to lie about that by Saddam (A fact anyone who read a report of Iraq would have been able to tell Bush Sr, but the Bushs and the people around them do NOT read policy papers, they exchange information person to person).

Bush Jr operated the same in Texas. 911 can be called the ultimate failure of this person-people policy. The House of Saud told Bush everything is under control in their Country. That was good enough for Bush who wanted to Invade Iraq because his friends wanted him to do it (Seems the best argument TO Bush Jr was that Saddam tried to kill his Father as opposed to any argument that taking Iraq would help America control Persian Gulf Oil). Remember Bush is NOT a policy person, he is a people-person. He will do as his handlers want him to do (One side of being a people person) and than get the rest of the people around him to do the same (another side of being a people person). Note, one person can be a "handler" during one aspect of Bush's presidency and a person to be convinced by Bush on another aspect of his administration. This is Bush's Strength, he is the center that keeps the Present Administration together. Without him his Government will devour each other. Most of them do NOT agree with each other so they need Bush to work with the rest of Bush's team.

This is the power of the People_person, the ability to be glue that holds everything together. Hitler, Stalin and even Saddam were similar centers (And each of their Ruling group collapsed as soon as the leader was dead, even the Soviet Union had an almost complete change in the mid-1950s with Stalin's death and if it was not for the Cold Warriors on the US side, the Soviet Union would have cut back its Military starting in the late 1950s do to the great needs of their country but could not do to the Cold war. Kruschev was a Complete change in Direction for the Soviet Union, and he was only able to do it since everyone in the Kremlin throught he was nuts. He lasted ten years to stablise the Country but when he proposed some real reforms in the early 1960s the bureacrats took over and saw the country go down hill).

My point in this long response is to show that Oil and how much oil is in Arabia could NOT have been Bush's plan to reveal Plame's CIA connection. That would require thinking in term of POLICY and LONG TERM AFFECT not in terms of what my Friends and I want TODAY. Plame was revealed for she was the wife of a man who Bush had come to view as an enemy. Bush as a People Person can not tolerate enemies for to do so would force him to be on his guard all of the time. A people-person can NOT operate like that. Everyone around him MUST be his loyal friend so he can convince them to do want he wants. When he was attacked, the enemy must be destroyed NO MATTER THE COST. Thus Plame was revealed without even thinking of the harm such a revelation would do to American Security.

[BlueEyedSon]

2. Peak oil will occur in 2006 (for conventional oil)

http://www.peakoil.net/Newsletter/NL49/newsletter49.pdf

Possibly as early as 2014 for all oil:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=266x162#186

This is neither optimistic or pessimistic, it is a scientific best estimate.

BTW, there is a "Peak Oil" DU group:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=266

[Maven]

5. Thanks for the group link.

Didn't know such a beast existed.

:yourock:

[SlavesandBulldozers]

3. crop-growing arrangements?

Pre-Medieval communes?

i dont recall ever seeing these ideas espoused on DU.

I don't know much about the distinct theories of peak-oil, but the premise, I think, is well established.

on edit: i do believe that republicans would love feudalism, so you raise an interesting point with the "pre-medival communes" bit.

[Maven]

6. I haven't seen them espoused here.

But they do pop up on a number of sites such as this one. I realize such predictions of the aftermath are based on conjecture, not science, hence the question.

[EVDebs]

8. According to "Crossing the Rubicon" we've only got 35 more years

of total oil left and a bit more for natural gas. Book "Powerdown"

http://www.museletter.com/Powerdown.html

by Richard Heinberg is informative on subject also.

[Maple]

9. We have lots of oil in the world

what we don't have is any more 'cheap' oil

And we won't be plunged into any anarchy or pre-medieval anything.

Enough with the 'end of civilization' scenarios.

When a product becomes too expensive, people switch to a cheaper alternative. And we have lots of them. It's just that oil was cheap and plentiful at the time, and there were fortunes to be made...so that's where we went.

[Maven]

13. I understand that we're not talking about exhaustion of supply.

And I don't agree that peak oil is a harbinger of apocalypse.

But I think the idea of other "cheap alternatives" saving the day is a flippant and unrealistic treatment of the issue. I've yet to see a truly convincing alternative (that exists today) that is renewable AND combines the energy density and transportability of oil.

[bunny planet]

70. the ability to switch to another 'renewable' energy source would involve

considerable usage of petro-chemically powered machinery to produce the necessary technologies that produce those resources. Also, none of the other potential alternative sources of energy produce nearly as much energy as oil. The alternatives are not cheaper, they are more expensive to produce and they require remaining oil supplies to harvest the needed materials to produce them.

Within a few years of Peak Oil occurring, the price of food will skyrocket as the cost of producing, storing, transporting, and packaging it will soar.

It is myth that we can simply decide, and then switch over to renewable energy. This is something we should have begun working towards in the 70's when Jimmy Carter (yes I said Jimmy Carter) told us that now was the time to begin working towards changing our lifestyles and implementing policy that encoutaged alternative energy solutions. For his trouble, he was voted out of office, but he was speaking the truth. Then came Rambo Reagan and the age of SUV's, Ronnie's first act as president being the removal of the solar panels JC had installed at the WH.

Do some reading on the topic if you haven't already , watch the documentary 'The End of Suburbia'. The good news is that we will have an economic meltdown when oil hits $100 - 200. per barrel long before we actually run completely out of oil. If that is allowed ot happen, and the dollar is falling fast as we speak, it won't much matter when we run out of oil, we won't have homes to heat or cars to run, that is unless we are the ruling class.

Everything, and I mean everything in our petro-dependent society is made of oil, including the computer keyboard you and I are typing on right now. Make no mistake we went to war over oil. We are trying to control the remaining dwindling oil resources in the world, our main competition being a little country called CHINA. Instead we should be 'working hard' on conserving what little we have left and being honest with the public about the real 'sacrifices' they will have to be willing to make if they are to avoid total economic collapse and chaos. Not a pretty picture.

This administration's energy policy is to delay telling us the real truth about our disastrous oil consumption until the price of oil per barrel is so high they will have no choice but to tell us. Meanwhile they will have lined their pockets with the profits. Instead of a series of 'oil wars' and drilling in the Alaskan wildlife preserve (which will produce only 3 months to possibly a year's worth of oil after it can be brought on line) this administration could have had a foward thinking energy policy that might have helped somewhat instead of making the situation far worse, in fact grave.

Did you know that His Fraudulency actually has a completely solar powered house at his ranch in Crawford, Texas! Interesting no, does he know something the rest of us don't?

There are things we can do, at the local level, to begin responsibly dealing with this issue, but it has to be sooner rather than later, we are running out of time. Btw, I am not wearing a little tin foil hat. 6 months ago, I knew nothing about this. Just stumbled upon the information and what I found out when I read, blew my mind.

More resources:
www.museletter.com

www.globalpublicmedia.com

PeakOilAction.org

or just google Peak Oil.

Check these out daily:

www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/BreakingNews.html

www.energybulletin.net/news.php

[AndyTiedye]

11. Not Much

Yes, oil production will decline.
Yes, oil will get more expensive.
That will cause everyone to use less oil and more alternatives,
and recycle more.

It is absurd to pretend that alternative energy does not exist,
or that all our technology will dry up and blow away.

The greater risk is that the PNACers will destroy the world
trying to monopolize the last of the oil.

Pushing this peak oil doomsday stuff only makes it easier for
the PNACers to justify their crusade.

[Maven]

15. "...only makes it easier for the PNACers to justify their crusade."

Not really. In fact, it seems more logical to frame Iraq as the beginning of a series of resource wars that have even greater potential to harm civilization, and that those wars will become necessary to serve a few interests (the oil industry) at the expense of everyone else unless a serious shift in the way we use energy is made.

[Old and In the Way]

12. When supply outstrips demand-

that's when the rubber hits the road, so to speak. When that point is reached is a function of the rest of the worlds' demand. China's appetite is especially voracious.

Whatever, we should have stuck with Carter's approach in the late 70's-conservation and investment in alternative/renewable energy. Perhaps if we had, we wouldn't be fighting a war in the ME to keep our hands on the oil spigot.

50 years from now, it will be interesting to know how our grandkids view the later 20th century US history. I think they'll be having a completely different perspective of the Reagan/Bush/Bush years - "The Great American Sellout".

[chrisbur]

14. Canada...

has a HUUUGE amount of oil locked up in sand. I forget what they call it. It just hasn't been financially worthwhile to process it. As oil gets more expensive and their processing techniques get better it will make lots of money.
I read about this in Nat'l Geographic a while back. I could be somewhat talking out my ass though.

[Maven]

16. Hah! You're not, I read that too...oil sands. n/t

[hatrack]

20. It's not just expensive financially - it's expensive thermodynamically

And that's a problem. There's a lot of oil in them thar sands, but it isn't easy to get it out. You need a couple of things - lots and lots of water, and lots and lots of natural gas (preferably cheap and preferably on site).

The Canadian operation currently going after the Athabascan tar sands has lots of both for now, but the process produces huge waste water lagoons with tarry goo on the bottom. To fully develop the Athabascan would require a 20-foot deep lagoon with a surface area equal to that of Lake Ontario, and some Albertans are already beginning to complain about the diversions and pollution.

More to the point, the process barely breaks even from an energy point of view. You have to put in a barrel of oil's worth of energy to get about 1.2 barrels of synthetic oil out, and the process requires earth movement on a scale similar to mountaintop removal mining. Oh, yeah, you also need huge amounts of diesel and/or electricity to run the trucks and GEMs and stuff like that. It's just not a very rewarding proposition, though it is a net energy positive return.

The problem comes when the cheap gas nearby runs out. What then? Do the Canadians import gas from farther away, raising its energy "costs" to power this process? Or do they sell gas to other industrial customers and residential buyers who'll pay more?

Not that Canada's tar sands won't provide some oil, but the next time you see someone referring to "another Saudi Arabia" in Alberta, remember that it's not as simple as all that.

[Maven]

So...essentially it's a house of cards--

because once natural gas needs to be imported, EPR goes below 1.

Right?

[chrisbur]

22. Hmm. Like I said, ass talking.

Screw oil anyhow. Shit this Bush nightmare is really setting us back in so many ways.

[amazona]

24. you're right but it is very sad

It will be the death of the western U.S. and Canada if we are reduced to processing huge areas of landscape just to produce the very little oil per acre that can be produced from the shale.

With any luck it will never be cost productive because it will kill our atmosphere, our climate, our frontier heritage, and, ultimately, it will give humans only a few more decades before the earth is too dirty for people to breathe.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[RafterMan]

21. None

I think they confuse oil with energy. I think it will be painful -- less so the sooner we start facing up to the problem -- but not the kind of civilization-ending scenario envisioned by po people.

I have no way of judging when it will come, but given what I said above, it's best to act as if it's coming in the next few years.

[amazona]

23. I put about zero stock in it

I've heard it so often I'm inured.

If you put any stock in the theory, set in a store of shotguns plus ammunition. Learn about square foot gardening. Learn how to raise chickens. Actually I've done all this but more as a hobby than because I think we're going back to Medieval times.

My partner used to have a game of, if I was dropped on a desert island, could I build a computer from scratch? Now I'm not talking any advanced modern computer. The game is ANY computer, Enigma, the Radio Shack Color Computer, whatever. It is a fun mental game.

But no my garden and my chickens ain't gonna save the world.

My opinion on this matter is worth what you paid for it. :-)

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[BlueEyedSon]

25. Who needs to be "pessimistic"? Look what has ALREADY happened:

Guys in control of the US have lied us into a one war because of peak oil. 10's of thousands are dead and the US Treasury plundered. The war is used as a pretext for a myriad of illegal and immoral acts.

US civil liberties are being curtailed; relations with our allies are in a shambles. Our fiat currency is at a record low value.

Our country is slipping into fascism as power consolidates into a government-corporate-media complex. Reality and the US public's perception of reality have never been more different. Additional wars are planned and being propagandized to the masses.

The people responsible for all this have stolen a presidential election to avoid discovery and prosecution.

[hunter]

26. I myself am looking forward to the twenty hour work week.

If we are lucky, and not entirely stupid, maybe everyone will have enough to eat.

Think of it this way: If gasoline is too expensive, you won't buy a car. If plastic is too expensive, you won't buy stuff made out of plastic. If transportation is too expensive, you won't buy stuff made in distant lands. If heating or cooling a big house is too expensive, you won't live in a big house.

If there is some justice in our societies then the work of growing food and of providing adequate shelter and healthcare will be spread around fairly. We will put in our twenty hours working in the fields, or in the shelters, or in the hospitals, and then we will go home.

If there is no justice then this world will look like some sort of bad science fiction movie, say maybe Harlan Ellison and L.Q. Jone's A Boy and His Dog or Harry Harrison's, Stanley Greenberg's and Richard Fleischer's Soylent Green.

Welcome to the cannibal class. Eat or be eaten.

[Maven]

27. You raise some good points...

Specifically about how changes in behavior will grow "organically" in response to new market conditions.

It'll be interesting to see if there's a net increase in migration to warmer climates in response to heating oil/electricity price increases.

I live two blocks from Times Square and I can't look at all the needless flashing lights without shaking my head anymore.

[Strelnikov_]

28. Or Brin's "The Postman"

My bet is on Solyent Green.

A small number of privileged rich, and the rest proles. Kinda like Mexico on steroids.

[Strelnikov_]

29. Peak Oil Will Signal The End Of Exponential Growth In Energy Supplies

Renewable/alternate energy supplies probably will come on line at a rate that may at least keep up the decrease in fossil fuel energy resources. There seem to be a number of viable energy technologies (wind, solar, bio-fuels) that will be marketable as the cost of petroleum and natural continues to rise. But from what I have been reading, none have anywhere near the capability to provide the exponential growth in energy supply that the era of cheap petroleum and natural gas provided.

What the above means is, for the first time since the industrial era began, available energy will no longer increase over time to meet demand. How this will impact highly complex economic systems that are based on growth as a premise can only be speculated. But to quote the neighborhood bully from my youth, you can bet “it’s gonna hurt”, particularly if the dress rehearsal in the 70’s is any indication.

With competent leadership and some sacrifice, I think the U.S. could manage the ‘Powerdown’ with a minimum of trama. We will not be living at the lifestyles of today, and there will have to be population controls, but life will go on.

Yes, the big question is the ‘competent leadership’ part. If they continue on the path of using military power to secure the remaining cheap oil reserves to preserve the current economic system, instead of using these resources to begin the inevitable energy transition, we are in trouble.

[Maven]

30. "...the U.S. could manage the ‘Powerdown’ with a minimum of trauma"

I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I can't decide if the impact will be worse in big cities or suburbia. Each will be impacted differently, I guess, but we just haven't done the R&D to adequately replace oil-based power and (especially) transportation in order to make your statement true. Think about what could happen to air travel, for instance.

[Strelnikov_]

40. I Guess It Depends On One's Definition Of 'Minimum of Trauma'

Minimum of Trauma – Less than 5% die off due to energy depletion. Civilization like Frederik Pohl’s 'Gateway' or Harry Harrison’s ‘Skyfall’ (a few rich, most of the rest barely hanging in, like one big Mexico).

Moderate Trauma - 5% / 20% die off. Civilization like Harry Harrison’s ‘Make Room, Make Room’ (Solyent Green).

Extreme Trauma – 50% / 90% die off. Civilization like David Brin’s ‘Postman’ (neo-feudalism following general societal breakdown from limited World resource war).

Maximum Trauma – 100 % dust in the wind. Civilization ends like in Nevil Shute’s ‘On The Beach’.

[rfkrfk]

31. no powerdown is needed

Coal will fill in the gap.
Methanol can be substituted for gasoline.
{not as desireable, but workable}
.
When third world countries become aware that
methanol can be made from coal, the situation
boils down to cost issues.

[BlueEyedSon]

32. Right, coal is an inexhaustible resource and non-polluting too.

:crazy:

[rfkrfk]

43. Not exactly

There are troublesome issues, with expanded use of coal.
.
In poor countries, with abundant labor, {and coal},
I think the economics of, digging some stuff out of the ground,
and then producing a substance that will substitute for
petroleum {or for export}, will prove irresistable.

[hunter]

33. Methanol is a terrible fuel for general use.

If you thought MTBE (a methanol derivative) was bad news, raw methanol is worse. Average Joe shouldn't be putting methanol in his fuel tank. Mthanol is an aggressive solvent. This means it is much more likely to escape containment and become a pollutant than gasoline or diesel fuels.

But methanol can easily be transformed into less troublesome fuels such as gasoline or "bio-diesel."

I don't doubt that we will use coal to make transportation fuels. Coal is an easy source for the carbon required to make any liquid fuel. Our greatest priority must be to do it cleanly and with minimal production of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. We might even use nuclear power to supply the process heat, thus recucing carbon dioxide production to an absolute minimum.

One possible synthetic fuel is Dimethyl Ether (DME). Japanese researchers (Takashi Ogawa, et. al.) have built industrial scale direct Dimethyl Ether synthesis plants. Dimethyl ether is a bottled gas which can be handled like any propane mixture. It is an excellent fuel for diesel engines and cooking stoves.

China and India currently have pilot programs to replace coal and wood burning stoves with DME fueled stoves. (Eric D. Larson, Huiyan Yang) These nations have recognized that petroleum-derived bottled gasses are a limited and dwindling resource.

Meanwhile the behavior of our current United States government reminds me of a crack addict digging through the shag carpet looking for any crystals he may have dropped.

Who knows? Maybe the United States will find a giant Saudi Arabia sized oil field in there somewhere... Maybe Alaska? Yeah, thats it...

If not, let's shoot Iraq and take his stash.

[Maven]

37. "...a crack addict digging through the shag carpet"

LOL. What a perfect analogy.

The DME stoves are something I hadn't heard about. I'll have to look that up, thanks.

Still, even with advanced methanol fuel cells, the prognosis for cheap air travel looks grim.

[bunny planet]

74. LOL your crack addict comparison. so true. If it wasn't so sad and scary

It would be funny.

[NNadir]

106. That IS one beautiful image about the crack addict. On DME,

it's my favorite chemical storage fuel. It has so many excellent properties, it's hard to imagine that it will not be the fuel of the future.

DME is already an industrially produced chemical. It is the propellant in hairspray cans that replaced CFC's. In contrast to CFC's, it's atmospheric half-life is about 5 days.

[Strelnikov_]

39. I Do Not See How This Can Keep Up With The Rate Of Oil Depletion

“Methanol from coal could be a very important source of liquid fuel in our future. Although the costs are prohibitive at this time, the technology is fairly simple and easily implemented. The coal is first pulverized and cleaned, then fed to a gasifier bed where it is reacted with oxygen and steam to produce the synthesis gas. Once these steps have been taken, the production process is much the same as with the other feedstocks with some variations in the catalyst used and the design of the converter vessel in which the reaction is carried out.”

Ok, so lets start with some coal at an EROEI of 5 to 7, build a plant, put some more energy into the process, and end up with methanol. Let’s assume that we end up with a product with an EROEI of 2.6 (similar to methanol from wood). So, we are going to replace oil, which has an EROEI of 8 to 20 (say 10 on average), with methanol at an EROEI of 2.6. So for every 2% in decrease in oil, we would have to increase methanol production by 8%.

And this is the problem. It seems that all of the alternate energy sources seem to have EROEI’s in the 1.5 to 4.5 range, so we have to come up with a 4% to 13% increase in utilization to replace every 2% decrease in oil supply.

The way I see it, we will have to work hard just to replace energy lost due to petroleum depletion. Therefore, I still maintain that energy supply will, at best, flatline once peak oil is reached, and economies that depend on perpetual growth will falter and possibly fail.

[hunter]

44. EROEI - Energy Return on Energy Investment

It is likely that many transportation fuels in the future will have an EROEI of less than unity. Jet fuels are probably the best example of this. Making jet fuel from coal or biomass is not an efficient process.

Even radical proposals, like airlines powered by nuclear generated liquid hydrogen have some unsettling EROEI numbers.

Overall, the airline industry is going to be very sensitive to the EROEI problem. Watch the numbers there... how is the cost of fuel fitting into the overall fare structure?

Ships can run on any fuel. Big ships can be nuclear powered. Railroads can run on any fuel or electricity. Trucks and automobiles are less flexible, but still have advantages over air transportation as petroleum energy sources are depleted.

A world economy based on energy sources with EROEIs in the 1.5 to 4.5 range is not the same as an economy based on energy sources with EROEIs in the 8 to 20 range. At the lower EROEI ranges "economic growth" as we know it is simply impossible.

Before "peak oil," oil and natural gas had a very high EROEI. After peak oil the EROEI of natural gas and oil falls rapidly to meet the energy sources with the next highest EROEIs -- most likely coal and nuclear power.

The actual EROEIs of coal and nuclear power are much debated, as are the environmental hazards.

From an environmental standpoint, nuclear power probably beats coal.

But I think I have the same feeling for these numbers that loindelrio does. The economy as we know it is doomed to "flatline" if we keep our wits, and it will crash if we don't.

Foolishly, we based our economy, our so-called "productivity," on a limited resource. Clever industrial age humans behaved no differently than a colony of bacteria placed on fresh agar. We all live on a big petri dish. We call it "earth."

I think we can learn to live within the earth's energy budget, maybe even cheat a little using nuclear power, but we are not going to see those high EROEIs of oil and natural gas ever again.

[bunny planet]

73. you must be talking about that 'clean-coal' technology

His Fraudulency mentioned in one of his inspiring speeches to our nation.

[rfkrfk]

103. in most countries, 'clean' won't be an issue

Worldwide, enviro laws vary.
They'll just make the stuff {methanol},
and use it themselves, or sell it.

[bunny planet]

71. The problem is not only the end of cheap oil, it is that coupled with the

challenge of feeding the population on earth that has grown so exponentially because of cheap oil energy up until this point. How will we grow enough to feed billions of people without a cheap efficient enough energy resource? Alternate energies are not ready to produce nearly as much as will be needed. I'm sorry, it is very difficult to not be frightened by this issue, especially with the lunatics we have running the country and Darth Cheney's nihilistic reactionary energy policy in place.

[bunny planet]

72. Won't the military industrial complex be running on empty soon too.

I suppose that's part of why * and co. and starting to fight energy wars, in order to maintain their military might for just a bit longer. We certainly are an economic house of cards at this point.

[happyslug]

34. The issue is who do you want to believe.

There is an old saying, To Trust a Man look at his motive. Basically people who have incentive to lie will lie, those who have incentive to tell the truth will tell the truth.

When it comes to Peak, you have two sources of how much oil is in Persian Gulf (All other fields are secondary to these fields). First are the present owners of those fields, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Prior to the early 1970s these fields were owned and run by the Seven Sisters and as such the reports of the Seven Sisters are the second source of how much oil are in these fields.

Now OPEC has had reasons to overstate how much oil they had in the ground since the mid-1980s. In the mid-1980s you had an oil glut. To keep oil prices up OPEC had to cut back production. OPEC decided that any future production will be based on how much oil each member of OPEC had in the ground. Right away everyone started to increase how much oil they had in the ground. These are the number given by OPEC to this day. No one believes them, but if true Peak will not happen to 2020.

The next number used are based on the how much the seven sisters said were in those same field prior to the fields being nationalized in the early 1970s. When these estimates are used you come to the 2008-2010 estimate. These are assumed to be accurate for the estimate were made in the 1960s when the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) acted with vigor against "false or misleading" statements by Corporations. Thus the Seven Sisters had good reasons to tell the truth, they did not want to be found liable by the SEC for less than truthful statements.

The third set of number assumes the Seven sisters are lying, that the Seven Sisters OVER estimated the size of the fields. The reason for the over-estimation had been the Seven Sister experience with host countries nationalizing the oil fields in Mexico (1938) and Iran (1954). In Mexico it took ten years before an agreement as to how much the oil company had to be paid for the oil fields taken by Mexico (Iran was quicker but the Nationalization of the Iranian Oil Fields was one of the Reason for the Coup that year installing the Shah).

Anyway these nationalization (and mostly the Mexican Nationalization) scared the Oil Companies. Mexico had wanted to use the lowest estimate of the oil in the ground (What was called "proven" Reserves) while the oil Companies wanted to use a higher figure ("Proven and Possible" Reserves). The same Oil Companies had used the same LOWER figure when filing with the SEC, but pointed out those numbers did not include possible but not proven reserves. THE SEC forbidden the use of "Possible" reserves since it was also possible for those reserves NOT to exist. On the other hand the Oil Companies knew that at least some of the "Possible" oil existed but just did not know how much.

The above sounds like an Accounting problem (and it is). The Problem came to life in the Mexican takeover for Possible exceeded Proven and the Oil Companies wanted to be paid for not only the "Proven" Reserves but a good part of the "Possible" reserves (with the Mexican taking the risk of the "Possible" reserves NOT existing, and the GAIN if the Possible did exist).

Now over a number of Fields "Possible" can be analysis to become "probable" with the losses in some fields overcoming the gains in others. Thus over a number of fields "Possible" and "Probable" can come close to each other. For financial Accounting proposes the SEC does not permit this, but when it comes to valuation for sale it is done all of the time.

I go through the above to show you the difference in prices is based n what estimate you are using. The oil Companies have always claimed that do to fear of the SEC their estimates of the Persian Gulf Fields were accurate and meet SEC rules. The question is what if the estimates did not? What if do to fear of another set of Nationalization the Old Companies OVER ESTIMATED the field size so if the fields were ever taken over the Oil Companies would get higher value than they did in Mexico?

This is important for all of the Estimate on Peak involving Oil Company data is based on "Proven and Probable" NOT "Possible" field size. Thus if the oil company used "Possible" instead of "proven" you have a further over-estimation of the oil fields in the Persian Gulf. if true Peak occurred in 2004.

One last comment, all of the above estimates are plus or minus 2 years, thus when someone says 2008, it may be 2006 or 2010. If someone says 2004, it maybe 2002 or 2006. Certain factors will vary the time flow, in recessions oil use declines, in booms oil use increase, how oil is produce in any one field will go up and down by small amounts even as the overall tread in up or down. Thus all dates are ESTIMATES with some leeway.

[hunter]

35. How much is your house worth?

Suppose you hire someone to appraise it... Under which circumstances do you want a higher appraisal, and which circumstances do you want a lower appraisal?

I think the greater pressure has been to overestimate oil reserves.

The Shell oil debacle was a demonstration of that.

[happyslug]

36. I agree, that is why I lean to the 2004 date.

I believe both OPEC and the Seven Sisters had good reasons to maximize what their oil their believed existed in those fields. Thus when Saudi Arabia Took over its fields in the early 1970s you barely heard a peep about the valuation (SA paid the seven sisters what the Seven Sisters wanted). Since that time both the oil companies and OPEC have lied about the extent of their oil.

On the other hand the Seven Sisters had to worry about the SEC. The SEC was a factor in keeping the Seven Sisters "Honest". The real key is how honest? I believe the Seven Sisters over OPEC, but I still believe the books were cooked and that Peak occurred in 2004 but we will NOT see the results of the peaking for one to two more years given the economy i in the dumper (and when the economy picks up so will oil prices which will lead to an another recession, prices will go up and down until people accept that oil prices will be permanently high).

[Nihil]

45. Thanks for the summary HappySlug

Explains the salient points in language simple enough for me! :hi:

[zonmoy]

38. our civilization

will either find a new energy source(probably fusion if even possible) or will crumble and fall. Those are the two options for us.

[Maven]

41. Speaking of cold fusion...

Found this website, which features a book as well. An excerpt of their description:

Cold fusion beckons a new dawn in the age of scientific energy research. Neglected but not abandoned, cold fusion has made startling progress as a new field of nuclear science. All of the early objections have been explained, and many new insights have come to light. 

The historical information contained in this book challenges the premise that science is always objective. It portrays the professional struggles that those who have explored this controversial subject have endured. It illuminates the blocks to innovation that academic institutions and publishers have posed.

This book displays a cover-up by prominent scientists in the nuclear physics community who have obfuscated the truth and protected their own interests. It discloses little-known historical facts, and it exposes positive reports of cold fusion research written by some of the world's leading critics. It shows that the prominent laboratories alleged to have debunked the discovery mishandled their experiments and gave biased interpretations of findings that may have replicated rather than disproved cold fusion.

Still seems far-fetched but maybe if it gets a flood of new interest/money... :shrug:

[Tace]

42. Harvey -- I'm Posting The Book Forward By Arthur C. Clark

As a separate post. Thanks for the link.

[NNadir]

46. The problem is can the world environmentally survive oil's replacement.

Personally I think that the most dire immediate economic doomsday scenarios are absurd. However the most dire environmental predictions may be true, in particular with respect to climate change.

There are several hundred years worth of coal in the ground, but at the current world population, it's unrestricted use will destroy the planet.

There are several millenia's worth of nuclear fuels available on earth assuming 100% of the world's energy is derived by nuclear means. This is the best environmental option available, but it is a consumable as opposed to a renewable resource.

[RafterMan]

47. I've seen other estimates of nuclear fuel availability

that run to billions of years.

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html

Remember that the cost of extraction isn't that big a deal, since the cost of fuel is such a tiny portion of the cost of producing electricity from nuclear power.

[Maven]

48. Yes, but...

We would have to start building hundreds of new reactors, like NOW, in order to fully replace the energy from hydrocarbons.

Which doesn't seem likely, since (A) the current admin. is more interested in using uranium to build more nuclear weapons rather than power plants, and (B) gaining popular consent for such a massive undertaking (given the controversial nature of nuclear energy) would require an honest accounting of the coming crisis--which oil interests would never allow.

[RafterMan]

49. Not so

Peak oil means moving from a scenario of increasing supply to one of decreasing supply -- not overnight evaporation of all supply.

So we would only have to build reactors at the rate the supply and demand curves diverged. I think that shortages would help build political will, though coal and windmill fantasies would still be a problem.

I agree, though, that a pro-active stance would make things much smoother, and that the current political climate makes that impossible.

[Maven]

51. I didn't mean to imply...

that we needed hundreds more tomorrow. I'm sure any project to address the problem will be a progressively expanding solution to accomodate decline in supply. It's an economic necessity, not to mention a political certainty. I simply meant that with the amount of energy we will eventually need to replace in order to maintain our current level of growth (not likely), any nuclear solution would need to have begun already.

So in essence, we agree.

[sorechasm]

52. According to RAW Bush supports Nuclear Power...

...and that's scary.

See link:

http://lists.sierraclub.org/SCRIPTS/WA.EXE?A2=ind0501&L...

Thursday, Jan. 11 Issue.

I'm afraid if Bush is beginning to go Nuclear (he's already gone Ballistic), it's only for a quick-fix solution to this administration's current failed 'energy policy': acquiring Middle East oil fields by any means necessary.

Since this administration disdains being 'sensitive', I don't have much faith in it's support for Nuclear Power which takes a hell of a lot of sensitivity to millions of sensitive issues.

That's just not how they do things from down there in Texas.

[NNadir]

84. Bush does NOT support nuclear power.

It's mere doublespeak, like "healthy forests." He says one thing and does quite another.

The last sensible response to nuclear issues came from the Clinton-Gore administration, when that administration entered into the (important) agreement to fission weapons grade plutonium in commercial nuclear reactors. This was an issue of tremendous importance which, like almost every other Clinton era peace/environmental initiative, has been defunded and abandoned and pushed way under the propaganda radar screen.

(The Russians are bravely soldiering on, with reduced funding and zero support from the US, with the ThoriumPower company to develop a Thorium fueled plutonium burning Radowsky type power reactor.)

Look at what Bush does, not what he says. He is a bald faced liar.

[NNadir]

59. Maybe somewhere else. Not here.

The fuel cost of nuclear power is trivial; almost "too cheap to meter" as it were. However nuclear power has high capital costs, even in the presence of an educated and supportive population, which still doesn't exist in the United States and may not exist for several decades, if ever. Therefore it is already too late for us to participate in the second nuclear era.

We are bankrupt, not only financially, but increasingly intellectually and morally. We therefore will not have the resources to build nuclear plants and almost no one will be declined to help us recover after our imperial ambitions are played out with great violence (and ultimately defeat) in the oil fields of Iraq and Iran.

You will unquestionably see major idiocy here whenever you mention nuclear power - it exists both right and left and it is a measure of exactly how stupid and myopic we can be here.

We deserve what is coming to us. We are a nation of sybartic ostriching thugs who are indifferent to science and indifferent to humanity. We don't know how to compare technologies, because there are very, very few how actually understand technology. Were it otherwise, we would already have hundreds more nuclear plants than we already have.

I'm not going to do it, but if you read through this thread, I'm sure you'll see examples of what I mean.

[RafterMan]

63. Heh

I've run into that brick wall as well. Here is some encouragement:

http://www.nei.org/documents/PublicOpinion_03-11.pdf

Support for building new plants went from 42% in cheap-energy 1999 to 66% in the energy crisis of 2001. It fell back again as pressure lessened, but in the big picture, pressure will not lessen.

The downside is that we will probably have to experience an unnecessary crisis -- or series of crises -- before people respond.

[Strelnikov_]

114. "The Right Spent Decades Ignoring . . . The Left Rejects Any Role . .. "

Some thoughts from David Brin regarding the Left's disdane for nuclear power. Following is from his review of "COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed"

http://www.davidbrin.com/collapse.html

. . .

"Is this cuckoo? Or is our worst failing one of creativity and will? Let's experiment. I'll offer two true statements. You may, by political reflex, nod in sad agreement with one of them and seethe at the other.

- The Right spent decades ignoring human-generated Climate Change. Conservatives sneer at the leading role that conservation must play in resolving this peril. Refusing to let efficiency and sustainability become Urgent Projects, they pray instead to the "problem-solving magic of markets," the way natives of Rapa Nui beseeched big statues to restore their ravaged isle.

- The Left rejects any role for nuclear power, which helped lift millions out of poverty worldwide without adding appreciably to greenhouse emissions. Three generations have seen high benefit-to-harm ratios from fission reactors. Despite Chernobyl. Despite pollution that -- while frightening -- is intrinsically containable. (This outcomes-ratio stands, astonishingly, even if you include Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) Yet, liberals won't even debate adding carefully designed, next-generation nuclear plants to our toolset for crossing the Gap.

Did you fume at one paragraph while nodding at the other? Step back. Can you see a common reflex? To ignore contrary evidence and automatically say no? These "opposite" party lines share an underlying trait -- loathing distrust for the can-do spirit of modernity and science."

. . .

[NNadir]

115. I really have had a hard time understanding leftist disdain for nuclear

energy, even though when I was young, I held this disdain myself.

Looking back at my own experience, I suspect that the main reasons for it involved confusion between nuclear weapons and commercial nuclear energy. Those of us who lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis certainly developed a very healthy fear of radiation that went hand in hand for contempt for war. When we add the real fears associated with continuous atmospheric nuclear testing, I think leftists were lead to reject all things nuclear.

Eventually the opposition developed from this weak, but real, association between nuclear energy and weapons research (and some early power reactors were designed for dual weapons/power use) acquired a certain momentum and became an idee fixe, so that people were uncomfortable even questioning the notion that nuclear energy could be anything but anti-environmental and anti-peace. I know that when I first realized that nuclear energy was about the best energy and environmental option available to the human race, I always felt uncomfortable raising the point among long term friends and associates.

I also note that many of the early nuclear scientists were leftists, with the notable exception of the detestable Edward Teller. I think the Faustian bargain that was made in the Manhattan project left many feeling ambivalent about the entire experience of nuclear projects. Some, like Szilard, even left physics and many failed to raise their voices loud enough to clarify the technical issues, although many understood the realities all along. (There is an excellent book by Alvin Weinberg, a leftist and the inventor of the molten salt reactor, describing a luncheon he had with the seminal antinuclear moron, Ralph Nader.)

Another factor may have been the naive quasi-socialist "back to nature," notions that grew in leftist circles in the 1970's and the suspicion that anything that involved large was intrinsically evil and necessarily anti-environmental. This factor was certainly present in my own opposition.

Finally, back in the 1970's, when the anti-nuclear movement first came to prominence and first began having success, the technology was still unproven and there was very little experimental data with which to compare predictions. It was possible for anti-nuclear activists to make extraordinary claims about, for instance, the implications of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl that have proved to be completely absurd. There was much less experience with how reliable and cheap nuclear energy could actually be. Helped and egged on by a sensationalist news media that is composed by shit-for-brains "journalists" with extremely poor educations, especially with respect to science and technology, people were able to spin doomsday scenarios without any hope of having outright lies subject to correction. Most people, myself included, tended to believe until at least the mid-nineties that we had a reliable "free press." Only recently have we understood that our press is completely useless and distorted.

Also nuclear power is very high tech. The industry creates the kind of jobs that one would normally desire, those that require a strong educational background, are high paying, and which yield high productivity for investment, but these same factors make it very difficult for the ordinary Joe to understand. It is much easier to blithely fill your gas tank with blood mixed oil than it is to spend nights, as I do, thinking about very, very complex physical and mathematical concepts. It's pretty easy to feel noble with a solar cell on your roof, especially if nobody asks you to think about what went into making it.

One hopes that some of this will change, although I am less and less optimistic that there will be the time and resources to do what must be done if we are to prevent a tragedy of incredibly proportions. With nuclear energy, so called "peak oil" need not have any implications at all except a general improvement in the environment, but we seem to be backing ourselves into a corner in which all the consequences of our fondness for oil will have the worst possible effects.

[hunter]

116. Many promoters of Nuclear Power in the 70's were the worst sort of LIARS.

Some people in the industry got used to the secrecy, easy accounting, and outright corruption.

Nuclear power was more like a blank check from the government than a commercial enterprise in the 'sixties and 'seventies.

[NNadir]

117. This was certainly true in some cases.

My own anti-nuclear activities were associated with the Shoreham plant on Long Island, where all these factors came into play.

That said, it was a new technology then, and the scale of misunderstanding was such that it was very difficult to be open and truthful because we in the opposition were paranoid and obstructionist and, frankly, technically illiterate. In some cases the miscommunication occurred because engineers (a dying breed in the US) are accustomed to technical language that requires real effort to understand. Very few of us had minds open enough to make that effort. There is plenty of blame to go around, and frankly, some small part of that blame rests squarely on my own shoulders.

A typical remark of that era by anti-nuclear activists would be one like that of the internationally known idiot Ralph Nader who remarked in 1977 that if all the nuclear plants in the United States were not shut down within five years, we would have a civil war on our hands.

Just imagine what our skies and land would look like today if Ralph had his way. (Just look what our government looks like now that Ralph has had his way.)

I really recommend for anyone who wishes to understand something about how poisoned the interaction was that the read the section of Alvin Weinberg's "The First Nuclear Era: Confessions of a Technological Fixer" and his description of his lunch with Ralph Nader and what came of it.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1563963582/104-8041102-9320749

There is nothing about Alvin Weinberg that was secretive or corrupt. He comes across as a very sane, hard-working, brilliant and honest man, a man who headed Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and sought to design and develop the molten salt reactor as a breeder reactor because it had zero weapons diversion potential (for which reason it was shot down.)

He sought to have lunch with Nader to try to have the conversation that people ought to have had in those times, a frank exchange about realistic risk/benefit analyses that is still needed some thirty years later. It was a disaster, because as is widely known now but was little known then, Ralph Nader was an ignorant, self-serving, lying pig in search not of environmental (or other) justice so much as self-aggrandizement.

On a personal note, Hunter, I have noted your posts for quite some time. You are a fine environmentalist, and you exhibit the kind of thoughtfulness, reflection and balance we will need if we are to survive the most severe environmental crisis our planet has faced since the last asteroid hit it. Although I do not agree with all your posts, you are more balanced than I am and I appreciate your remarks.

[GumboYaYa]

80. The article you link to is really old information.

In 1998 the Uranium Institute issued a report estimating that at current production and consumption levels, there is over 100 years of raw nuclear material availabe for energy production. At the time of that report Nuclear energy represenetd less than 20% of total wordwide energy production. That report does not project what would happen if we suddenly became much more reliant on nuclear energy, but obviously any significant increase in consumption would have a a corresponding impact on the life of available reserves. I have seen projections that put this number at 40 years based on current energy demands and the corresponding increase in demand for nuclear energy. No one knows for sure, but I venture to guess that the current available reserves of nuclear material is not even close to the thousands of years some pine about. Regardless, nuclear is a stop-gap solution with lots of very bad drawbacks. That doesn't mean that we will not pursue it with great vigor to contniue to support our comsumptive lifestyles. Lots of industry experts are pushing to nuclear already. No permanent solution can ever be derived from consumable resources. Ultimately the solution lies only in small scale sustainable neregy production on a community basis The only question is how much pain and damage do we cause before we ge there.

[RafterMan]

94. Nope

The 40-60 year estimate that is frequently quoted is based on using U-235 from mines. U-238 makes up over 99% of uranium in the world and can be converted to usable fuel while producing electricity in breeder reactors.

Further, it does not take into account uranium in seawater, which can be extracted at much higher costs than in the case of mining. Because of the economics of nuclear power, higher fuel costs do not add much to the cost of production.

Further still, it does not take into account thorium, which is 4x more plentiful than uranium of all types and can also be used as breeder fuel.

Additionally, the calcualtions on the page I pointed to are based on supplying 25x current world electricity production, not 20%.

The idea that "no permanent solution can ever be derived from consumable resources" is only true on paper -- if a resource can last until we have to flee the expanding sun, that's permanent enough for me.

Being for nuclear, however, does not mean being against renewables and distributed generation. Renewable oils would be great for localized heat production, where the heat -> electrical -> heat cycle is less efficient. Distributed electrical production such as from photovoltaics offers safety, redundancy and freedom. But for a cost-effective, long-term backbone that can provide sustained and concentrated power, I haven't seen anything to compete with nuclear.

[GumboYaYa]

95. I admit that I do not know much about Uranium 235 versus 238

in terms of the cost of producing fuel from 238 or the availability of it. This report does say taht there are about 50 years worth of known uranium reserves, but also there are substantial amounts of expected reserves that have not been discovered. It also talks about recycling used fuel to generate electricity, which aparently extends the fuel supply even more. http://www.world-nuclear.org/factsheets/uranium.htm When I look at the available data, it is easy to conclude that there is a substantial amount of nuclear material available for generating electricity. I have no doubt that nuclear will be the next step when oil supplies dwindle even more.

Knowing that nuclear is inevitable does not allay my concerns about the technology itself or the cultural instability of a society whose main value is consumption.

As competition for resources increases worldwide, the widespread availability of nuclear material is a scary thought. Moreover, accidents happen and they will happen in nuclear reactors no matter how good the technology is.

The cultural impact of the value of consumption is a whole different topic, but suffice it to say that any answer to our energy concerns without a corresponding reevaluation of our patterns of consumption, will become the means to continue imposing American imperialist designs on the resources of others.

If we really wanted to avert trouble you would see nuclear reactors being built right now. Unfortunately, the president is an oil and gas guy and he wants that industry to get all of the ROI possible out of their capital investment in the oil and gas infrastructure.

In the end big business will win whatever the issue may be, until we make the environment unlivable and the Earth shakes humans off like a bad case of fleas. Unless of course, we happen to elect real leaders to public office an not industry stooges. I just wonder whether Americans can ever be persuaded to elect someone who tells them to give up their Tivos, big screen TVs and other trappings of a consumptive society.

[RafterMan]

97. Sure

I think a lot of times the energy question gets bundled in with people's feelings about consumerism in general -- that the end of cheap fossil fuels will be a chance for people to reevaluate their priorities and perhaps live for the sake of living, rather than consuming. I don't necessarily disagree with that sentiment, but I do see it as a separate question from the purely technological question of energy production.

Your instincts are correct on proliferation and breeders -- that is why we do not currently use that particular fuel cycle. They use plutonium, which can be used for weapons. But U-235 can be used for weapons, too. When you hear about "enriched uranium", they're talking about processing the ore so that the U-235 content goes from a natural 0.7% to a fissionable 3%. When you hear about *highly* enriched uranium, it means bringing that percentage up to over 90%, where you could build a bomb out of it.

My own argument against the proliferation fear is not a pleasant one. First, there is no way to simply ban nuclear power. The fact that you can fit a reactor inside a submarine proves this -- you could simply hide it. Second, there is no way prevent a determined country from making a bomb -- Pakistan proves this. Here's a country that's held together with string, yet they managed to produce a nuclear bomb. Holding back this tide will only become more difficult as third-world countries modernize: ultimately, there will be no stopping it. If there's no stopping it, the more reasonable question becomes how do we manage it -- this makes it a political question instead of a technological one. Ultimately we are going to live in a world where every country that wants a nuclear bomb has one, whether we choose to take advantage of nuclear power or not. So I say let's take advantage of nuclear power.

On the issue of accidents, what you say is true. But I'd put nuclear's safety record up against any other form of power capable of the same capacity. I don't deny that there is some left-field chance of catastrophe despite all the engineering precautions. Yet this is also true of hydroelectric dams and this is quite reasonably not a major fear for people. And coal plants are an ongoing catastrophe which doesn't seem to bother enough people. On balance, nuclear is a good option and there are many ways to make it a better option. Whatever problems the technology has, if I could snap my fingers and replace our current energy-production basket with an all-nuclear solution, I would do so.

[GumboYaYa]

98. I hear what you are saying from a technological and scientific

perspective. Absent any catastrophic accidents (which you say is a very remote possibility in light of current technlogy), nuclear power has a much less significant impact on the environment than oil and gas power. At least nuclear power production does not pump CO2 into the environment. In the category of meaningless anecdotal evidence, Florida crocodiles are flourishing in the nuclear water run off canals.

From a sociological perspective, I dislike any power generating system that allows us to continue to live detached lifes in suburbia insulated from people who are different in skin color, religion, and economic status. In some respects I welcome the coming energy crisis as it may cause us to reexamine our current culture of consumption. To me the cultural impact of cheap energy is at least as damaging as the environmental impact.

Unfortunately, I think that people will grasp for whatever straws are available to maintain the current materialistic standard of living that a significant segment of our culture enjoys, nuclear being the most obvious of those choices.

Forgive me if I continue to rail against nuclear energy and play devil's advocate as to the potential dangers of the technology. Now that you have educated me more on the subject my objection is primarily sociological and not technological, with the exception that I'm not particularly comforted by the view that we might as well let nukes loose on the world b/c they'll get them anyway. While that is probably a true assessment of the human condition and the conflict of national interests, it is not particularly comforting.

Even if the world goes nuclear, the transition will be painful. As oil and gas supplies dwindle the cost of gasoline will skyrocket. There is no way to build the needed nuclear reactors and fleet of electric vehicles required to replace gasoline burning cars fast enough. The shockwaves through the economy will most likely result in severe recession. Perhaps, that experience alone will cause us to become more conservative. People who have lived without have a much greater appreciation for conserving that which they have. If you know anyone who survived the Great Depression, then you know exactly what I mean.

[NNadir]

96. Agreeing that nuclear is best, then let's calculate it the energy value

of reserves in the ocean.

I'm sure that I've done this calculation before, although my figure for Uranium reserves, which I spout off the top of my head and may have read somewhere, is that the accepted value is around 3000 to 4000 years of uranium reserves. However, if Bernard L. Cohen, who has had a powerful influence on my thinking about nuclear matters, says that there is an unlimited supply, I need to carefully think about his claims, because he is a highly respected and cited scientist and is generally right.

Let us say that there are 4 billion tons of dissolved uranium in the ocean, which is certainly a reasonable figure based on what we understand about the volume of the ocean and the concentration of uranium. The means that there are 4.0 X 10^15 grams of uranium. The atomic weight of uranium is roughly 238, so this translates to 1.7 X 10^13 moles of uranium. Multiplying this by Avogadro's number, 6.0 X 10^23 atoms/mole we see that we have 1.0 X 10^37 atoms of Uranium in the ocean. The generally given yield per fission is 200 MeV (million electron volts), meaning that there are 2.0 X 10^45 eV of energy available in uranium dissolved in the sea. The conversion factor from eV to Joules is simply the unit charge, the charge on an electron, 1.6 X 10^(-19) Coulombs. Thus there are 3.2 X 10^26 Joules of energy in the form of Uranium dissolved in the ocean.

It is variously reported that world energy usage, barring a sudden (and possible) extinction or population collapse of or by humanity, will be 1000 exajoules/year (1 zettajoule) by 2050 or 1.0 X 10^21 Joules. This means that the energy reserves for Uranium (not counting Thorium) is about 320,000 years if Uranium from the ocean provided all of the world's energy needs.

(Note: I have carried some insignificant figures - that I have not shown - in this calculation.)

Now for some caveats:

First, it is certainly not the case that all of the Uranium in the oceans is recoverable. As the concentration of the element falls, the cost of obtaining it rises because the ease at which it can be recovered falls. It is notable that when the Japanese did the actual work to examine the feasibility of this technology, which they found workable at around $200-300/kg, they were placing their recovery systems directly in ocean currents. This is because a land based plant would suffer from diffusion effects resulting in local depletion in seawater, which would raise costs. Although the cost of fuel is now trivial (it is the equivalent of gasoline at less than one cent a gallon,) it is not necessarily true that 100,000 years into an ocean recovery scheme that this would be true.

Secondly, not all of the energy of a fission is recoverable. For instance, about 5% of the energy released (about 10 MeV) in a fission is in the form of neutrinos, the energy of which cannot be captured by any known means, since neutrinos interact very weakly with matter. They leak right out of the reactor and indeed, often right through the planet. Thus we immediately need to reduce our figure by 5% A similar situation applies (to a much smaller extent) to neutrons. Some neutrons leak out of the reactor and into the shielding. However this effect is small, especially in thermal reactors where most, but not all, of the neutron energy (about 1 MeV per neutron, with 2.5 neutrons per typical fission) is captured by the moderating process. Also about 3% of the energy produced in nuclear fission reaction is the decay energy of the fission products, most of which decay in the reactor, but many of which do not. Many fission products, Sr-90 for instance, are removed from the reactor long before they decay, where they account for the heat generated by spent fuel. This heat is lost. I think a reasonable value of the energy lost in this manner would be somewhere around 1%.
Transmutation strategies, and the use of portable energy devices using Sr-90 as a power source would tend to minimize these losses, but they will not wholly eliminate them and it will be a few decades before such devices are as widely as accepted and used as they were in the 1950's and 1960's.

Neither is it necessarily possible to convert 100% of natural uranium into a fissionable form such as plutonium-239. During the breeding process, many parasitic nuclei are formed. These include U-236 (from neutron capture in U-235), Pu-240, Pu-242, Am-241, Np-237, Cm-246, etc. It is widely expected that much of the energy of these nuclei can be captured either through the widespread adoption of fast neutron spectrum reactors or subcritical transmutation reactors, but invariably there will be significant losses, nonetheless. The use of some of these isotopes, particularly curium isotopes, can complicate critical reactor physics significantly however and their use will involve some serious care and attention to detail to prevent reactor excursions and thus improve reliability and economics. It is worth noting that fast spectrum reactors of the type that have been built this far, have been rather testy beasts. (I have a much better design that I'm working on, but I more or less regard it as personally proprietary.) Moreover, even the best recycling schemes can only give 99.9% recovery of actinides. Some will undoubtedly be lost to the environment where they may result in some undue hysteria.

The non-proliferation concern (and objection to nuclear energy) is serious. Any successful nuclear program will need to be internationally audited under a rigorous system of checks and balances, and there will have to be careful attention paid to the isotopic distribution of all actinide elements to minimize this risk. Although the real threat of diversion can be made almost vanishingly small for terrorist types, irrespective of what George Bush and his fellow class clowns tell you, the same does not hold true for governments. Many governments, our own included, have behaved in a grossly irresponsible fashion with respect to the use of nuclear materials.

After about 1000 years of operations, commercial nuclear power will begin to seriously decrease the overall radioactivity of the earth. Most people today imagine that this would be a good thing, since they are rather (foolishly I think) focused on the idea that radioactivity is unacceptably dangerous. This is nonsense, since life evolved in the presence of radioactivity and for most of its history, the planet has been far more radioactive than it is now. (In ancient times, when there was more U-235 proportionally than there is now, natural nuclear reactors formed and went critical for hundreds of thousands of years.) However, it may be that life depends on radioactivity in ways of which we are not aware. For instance, it may be that the well known capacity of the biosphere to restore diversity after mass extinctions - like the one we are now experiencing - may depend subtly on the presence of radioactivity to maintain a sufficient mutation rate. I have never heard this discussed anywhere before, but I still think it is not a trivial consideration. The danger of this effect is somewhat ameliorated by the presence of non-actinide radioactive elements like potassium and rubidium, but I'm not confident that such a depletion of radioactivity will necessarily prove desirable.

It is not immediately clear to me that nuclear resources are inexhaustible as Cohen claims. His expectation is based on the fact that the concentrations of uranium in the oceans as uranium is removed for industrial processes, will be restored or stabilized by the weathering of crustal rocks and injection into the sea of mantle rocks from volcanoes. This may well be, but I don't think the rates of such processes are known well enough with such absolute certainty as to encourage us to be cavalier. I am not much of a geochemist, and so I cannot say with much certainty what the actual crustal concentration of uranium is. I'm not sure that anyone, even with extensive training in geochemistry, can make more than a crude estimate. I know the uranium concentration is high here in New Jersey, where we have a rather pronounced radon problem, but I don't know what it's like world wide. Still I do not necessarily understand the rates of geochemical extraction and distribution and I expect that Cohen doesn't really either. Such processes are slow, I know, and may be slower than Cohen allows. Thus it does not necessarily follow that uranium (or thorium) resources are inexhaustible.

Overall, as I've made clear in many posts, I believe it is an important task for humanity to begin to expand it's nuclear power generating capacity as quickly as is possible. We are in a very serious emergency situation due our unrestricted population growth. If we have time left at all, we don't have much of it. I am not sure however that any of this stuff about the comforting availability of nuclear energy absolves us from our basic responsibilities as stewards of the future, to carefully examine in explicit detail all the risks and benefits of our consumption decisions, to insist to the maximal possible extent that resources be renewable. Above all it our responsibility to teach and practice the values of conservation.

[RafterMan]

99. Even if Cohen is off by a factor of 10,000

500,000 years is an unimaginably long time -- up to five times longer than modern humans have existed, by some estimates. So I am willing to consider the question of energy production solveable, for reasonable definitions of solveable.

The broader issue in your final paragraph is more serious. The impact of humans on the world extends far beyond energy usage. But I would note that in areas where electricity is cheaper than people, population seems to stabilize or even decline just through the choices individuals make. So I am disinclined to tie cheap energy to the Malthusian scenario as many do.

So I view the question of stewardship not as one of avoiding scarcity, but in the straightforward sense of deciding what kind of world we want to live in. That argument may be more difficult to win, but I think it's also the one we really want to win.

[NNadir]

100. Well in any case, as you've correctly noted, fuel, is not the problem.

It is however entirely possible that we will place the planet in some dynamic state from which it will become impossible to recover. This is, in my view, happening right now with global climate change.

Global climate change is not happening for technical reasons but for political, economic social and even religious reasons. One sees it all the time, and not just elsewhere, but right here at DU. In these questions, and not the technical questions to answer to the original question about peak oil can be found.

The rapid scale up of the highly successful nuclear industry should be a no brainer, but as we see here, it is not because neither the availability of fuel or the technical ability to use it address the broader questions.

I really question if there is either the time or the will to get to nuclear fuel, no matter how much there theoretically is.

I really think we need to worry more about the next 5 years and the next 50 years than we do about the next 500,000.

Thanks though for helping to advance the cause of sanity. Your posts are excellent. I think we're pissing in the wind, but all you can do is to try.

[ChemEng]

50. Not much....

[brokensymmetry]

53. I'm fairly pessimistic.

Actually, I think we're seeing the formation of an oil plateau right now. The prices are quite volatile - one of the predictions of some forecasters.

It may be that nuclear, or solar, or coal, or any of a great many other things could offer partial solutions - but there is a big IF. If we have time. I'm not at all sure that we do.

We're extremely oil intensive. The food in the store travels thousands of miles to get to me; in fact, I've read that for every calorie of food we consume, we use 10 calories of oil.

And that's the real problem - transportation. Sure, we can liquify coal - but think how much coal, and how many coal plants would be required to cover just the demand in the U.S. Nuclear is nice, but it doesn't power vehicles. Some will propose the use of hydrogen cars; fine, but it will take quite awhile to replace the truck and automotive fleet.

A real question is - can economies grow without cheap fuel? I'm not at all sure they can. But if they cannot, how will we - as individuals, nations, or the world - pay for the switchover?

I suspect that Haiti isn't a bad model for the future. Hopefully, Easter Island isn't our destiny.

[Dogmudgeon]

54. Some MAJOR considerations

There are several considerations that people (i.e., the people in the Press) tend to overlook. While the public thinks in terms of gasoline prices and plastics, here are a few nasty problems that are receiving scant attention:

Agriculture is tied to petroleum. Ammonium Nitrate, the primary source of nitrogen for "Green Revolution" crops, is a by-product of natural gas generation from petroleum. Since natural gas is a "fossil fuel", coming from the breakdown of petroleum, as oil depletion sets in, so will fertilizer depletion.

Those Green Revolution crops feed about three-quarters of the world's population. Without an easily-available (and cheap) source of nitrogen, the Green Revolution is doomed.

If the Green Revolution is doomed, so is 50-80% of the world population,

Solutions: Gene manipulation to develop grains that can draw nitrogen from the air, a process called Nitrogen Fixing. Harvesting nitrogen from human and animal waste is also a possibility which may become economically viable.

Economic Survival Requires Growth at rates of at least 2.5%. Below that point, permanent economic depression occurs, market economies collapse back to local levels, and all that abstract wealth evaporates.

Solutions: Adoption of a quasi-socialist economic system for basic needs, with carefully developed markets for development of new technologies, products, and services. Decoupling economic survival from economic growth. M. King Hubbert proposed such a system in the 1960s.

Grossly Inefficient Technologies waste huge amounts of energy and resources. Agriculture and the raising of livestock are two such examples. While vegetarian activists like to point out the drain livestock put on the agricultural system, they neglect to mention that a) lower-tech, local livestock raising is not nearly as wasteful, and b) modern agriculture techniques are much more wasteful than the ag lobby OR the vegetarians admit.

Incandescent and fluorescent lighting, too, are big energy wasters. Look for LED-based lighting to become popular soon. LEDs draw much, much less power, and last hundreds of times longer than incandescent bulbs.

Personal autos are also quite wasteful, but we're still utterly dependent on them, in spite of knowing for 30 years that they were doomed for obsolescense.

Solutions: For lighting, encourage use and development of semiconductor lighting (LEDs). For heating, encourage the use of insulation and better construction methods. For personal transport, bicycles are good, and development of ultralight, ultra-efficient "microcars" would fill a gap between mass transit and the loss of autocars. For food, returning to food production techniques in widespread use before the Green Revolution, including extensive food gardening and some family livestock raising. This will reduce resource depletion and still allow for modern food production techniques to take up the slack.

I think that the ultimate solution will be to move production into space. I don't mean an exploration program, but growth-oriented development. We need not move the population into the sky -- merely factories and, possibly, farms. But that's for an entirely different thread.

So ... what do we do for the next century, before we have a robust economic base operating in high Earth orbit?

--p!

[RafterMan]

55. Hold on there

As long as we have energy (say nuclear-produced electric) we can make all the amonium nitrate we want. It's only the hydrogen that comes from gas -- the cost of obtaining it from water is currently only 3 or 4 times greater. Not great, but not civilization-threatening.

Economic survival does not require growth of at least 2.5%. Japan had about zero growth for nearly a decade and maintained a healthy standard of living.

On efficiency, I'm all for it when it makes sense. For many applications, fluorescent bulbs are more efficient than LEDs (see table 2 here: http://www.marktechopto.com/engineering/white.cfm ). And comparing meat calories to potato calories strikes me as being a bit too utilitarian.

[brokensymmetry]

56. As long as we have energy...

true. But is this not like saying "As long as you have food, you won't starve." The problem is, producing enough electricity may be problematic. Building lots of new nuclear plants is possible, but that's going to take a major committment over a long time. Do we have the time? I sorta doubt it...

[BeFree]

57. NUKE PLANTS?

Nuke plants are a fantasy, a fantasy that was financially proven many years ago.

It's the lifestyle that will change. Whether we like it or not. If there are more people here ten years from now, well, that's just more sucking at the oil teat that feeds our lifestyles.

The decline in cheap oil can be gradual like rolling down a long hill, or immediate like falling off a cliff.

Looks like we are headed for a cliff. If yesterday we had demanded much better fuel efficiency, insulated to the max, and funded good alternatives, we would of stetched things a lot further.

We still can stretch things, like Kerry said he would, but it doesn't look like we will.

The solutions will be indivdual in nature, since the centralized contollers have failed to protect the lifestyles of this society and they can not be trusted to start now.

Peace

[brokensymmetry]

58. Actually, I agree with you.

There is a contingent that believes that nuclear will save us; since I haven't really studied the numbers, I cannot prove them wrong. One rather dubious document claims that Uranium can be extracted from sea water at well under the current market price for the next several million years - once again, I doubt it.

Perhaps the worst idea I ever saw (not here on DU, BTW) was to send large space-ships to Jupiter, harvest the methane, and bring it back here. :crazy:

I'm wondering what oil will do in 2005; we're ahead of 12 months ago by 34%. If we hit $60 this year - up about 34% from right now - then we have to start thinking that Peak has hit.

Where things start breaking down is the question. When is food left to rot in the field because it's too expensive to ship to the hungry people in the city?

We life in interesting times...

[RafterMan]

62. Uranium from sea water

The claim is not that you can get it for under market price (which I think is currently under $20/lb), but that you can get it for under $1000/lb. The reason this is not devastating to nuclear is that fuel costs are a tiny fraction of the cost of running a plant. In fact, fuel spiking to such a price would only increase the final cost of product by less than $0.05/kwh. So a 50-fold increase in fuel cost results in less than doubling the cost of production. Not horrible, long-term, and it doesn't involve Jupiter.

Please "study the numbers" on nuclear for a bit. With the enormous amound of FUD surrounding nuclear these days, that's how every advocate of nuclear power reaches his or her conclusions.

[RafterMan]

102. Forgot to add

The $0.05 figure is for u-235-based fuels.

If you use u-238 in breeder reactors, the incremental cost is only 1/100th of that value -- less than .05 cents, not dollars.

[hunter]

60. As the United States Circles the Drain...

Every day the United States becomes a little bit more like that crazy old toothless alcoholic paranoid neighbor sitting on the front porch with a shot gun.

You can make a little bit of money bringing the old man his booze, but you don't let your kids or your pets play near his house.

Nuclear power is probably not going to be the magic solution to the end of "cheap oil" but I'm pretty sure most solutions will not be developed here in the United States anyways.

At this point our nation is corrupt and ineffective.

To the bitter end we will cheer for Arnold as he drives by in his big hydrogen powered Hummer, and we will wave the flag and sing "God Bless America" and proclaim ourselves the leader of the free world. Meanwhile kids in other lands who walk or ride scooters to school and work every day will be kicking our economic ass.

While eastern housewives are cooking their dinners with gas, I'll probably be fumbling around in the dark looking for enough sticks to heat my cold Kelly-Kettle half full of day old chicory-black-market-coffee.

So yes, I agree, with you BeFree, here in the United States, ...solutions will be indivdual in nature, since the centralized contollers have failed to protect the lifestyles of this society and they can not be trusted to start now.

There are many nations that will do what they have to do to maintain and improve the standard of living of their average citizens.

But because we, here in these United States, are the "world's only remaining superpower" we will strut around like little bantam cocks, preening and crowing, totally oblivious to the fact that every new year is a little bit worse than the last year for the average American worker.

Crappy schools, crappy healthcare, crappy food, crappy government are all accepted as perfectly normal, and few are striving for anything better. The Hubble Space Telescope will go down with a whimper, and never be replaced, all our industry both high-tech and low-tech will be "outsourced" and we'll be left without anyone who knows how to run a coal power plant cleanly, much less a nuclear power plant...

God Bless America! We're number one! We are the best... (don't you know? The man on the television tells us so!) Heh. There's a song in there somewhere...)

So yeah, until we cast off our corrupt leaders, we are on our own.

[Strelnikov_]

64. For What We Are Spending On Iraq/Defense, We Could Get A Good Head Start

And we are going to need it, especially when natural gas starts to run out.

U.S. Energy Consumption by Source

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0103.html

2000 data, all in Quadrillion Btu (Quads)

..........................Quads...% Total
Coal.....................22.65....23.1
Natural Gas (Dry)....23.92....24.1
Petroleum.............38.40....38.8
Nuclear Electric.......7.86.....7.9......103 plants
Renewable..............6.16.....6.2
...........................====....====
..........................98.99...100.0

For nuclear, to replace the energy from petroleum (would have to be converted to a carrier for transportation), we would need 503 addl. plants to replace the 38.40 Quads of petroleum based energy. In the 70’s, I seem to remember them costing $1-2 b, so let’s say $4 b/ea. Therefore, we would need $ 2,012 b (I recognize that next gen nuclear plants would be smaller than the current high pressure water plants of today, but for the purpose of exercise, it should get us in the ballpark).

How about wind? Per Heinberg, wind power potential in the US is 60 Quads. Let’s say we install 24 Quads of wind power to replace the 23.9 Quads of natural gas. This would require 667,000 turbines at $600,000/turbine, or $400 b. For wind, lets throw in $150 b of pumped hydro to store the wind power.

Also, we probably need to figure in $300 b in power grid improvements.

So, from the above, we spend $2,012 b + $ 400 b + $150 b + $ 300 b = $2,862 b to build the energy generation capacity to replace the energy from petroleum and natural gas.

Due to the need to maintain all of this energy infrastructure, I don’t think we can expect exponential growth in energy supply in the future. But it does appear that we could possibly at least maintain current levels. Maybe with intensive energy efficiency measures, we could even wean ourselves off most of our coal use.

The above points out to me that the problem we are facing is primarily political in nature. With even mediocre leadership, the landing at the end of the fossil fuel age could be relatively soft.

And Boosh wants to spend $2,000 b to ‘reform’ social security.

And Boosh is spending a nuke plant, or 6,667 wind turbines, per week in Iraq.

How’s that for leadership.

[RafterMan]

61. Nuclear plants are a fantasy?

France gets 75% of its power from nuclear.

How is that a fantasy?

[hunter]

65. It's fantasy because French Electrons are girly-men...

They won't work in the United States, and even in France they demand six weeks vacation and a socialist health care system.

If you tried to put nuclear generated French Electrons to work in America making hydrogen for your Hummer, they'd all become limp little surrender monkeys.

French Electrons would clog up our power systems like welfare queens. They would creep into our television sets and play Jerry Lewis movies late at night while we were trying to sleep. They would go unshaven and topless on our beaches, drink all our wine, smoke all our cigarettes, and eat all our cheese.

Nuclear power in France is just a sick and perverted fantasy. It's like that dream where you are making love to a beautiful French woman, and her friends are all around you naked, and she is spanking you and speaking in a language you cannot understand. And then her friends begin to laugh at you! And she laughs at you, and suddenly there are hundreds of naked fag French guys wearing funny hats there in the room with you, and everyone is laughing at you!

So you go back to America and make movies with lots of explosions. You go to Iraq and make lots of real explosions. You'll show them.

Because Americans, especially American Coal Generated Electrons, are not girly-men.

God Bless America!

[BeFree]

66. I had a dream like that

Only she was glowing in the dark.....

French kissing aside, the very idea that nukes will be our savior is a fantasy. Even Mr. Hubbert, after studying the issue, found that nuke plants far exceeded financial and environmental safety guidelines meant to ensure sustainablity.

There is a good reason private interests have turned away from nuke plants, eh?

Only decentralized, locally controllable, effecient and sustainable electric generating systems are feasible. Numerous systems could come on line in a matter of weeks, while huge nuke plants take years and years and billions of dollars before the first juice flows.

[RafterMan]

67. "Decentralized, locally controllable,

effecient and sustainable electric generating systems"

Such as?

[BeFree]

68. Such as?

Solar, bio-fuels, wind, hydro, fuel cells, and, coal and wood burning steam generating units.

All could be even localized to backyard operations. While, on the other hand, just imagining everyone with their own little nuke plants in the backyard kinda gives ya the creeps, eh?

"Oh look, Henry, our mean and nasty neighbor has a nuke plant in his back yard, let's hope it doesn't blow up."

[bunny planet]

76. I just read today about a town in NJ, Tom's River that has converted all

of their school buildings to solar power and are beginning the process for all their municipal buildings. Individual towns can decide to do this. There are Dean meet-ups that are popping up just to deal with this issue on the local level. Nobody's home on this issue in the Federal Government that's for sure.

[NickB79]

81. Sounds wonderful for powering a suburb

Not so wonderful for powering an industrial park or other industrial sector of our society that is vital for our economy. Good thing all the manufacturing jobs have already left for China then.

BTW, coal? You'd actually support the use of more coal?

[NNadir]

77. Definitely some dreaming going on here. There are 439 operating

nuclear plants on the planet, 25 under construction and 37 planned, and 74 proposed.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.htm

The majority of the reactors shut down in the last 5 years have been British Magnox reactors built in the early 1950s. These small reactors operated for over 40 years without a single loss of life, in spite of being of primitive design. They reached the end of their design life (and they were, BTW, poorly designed by modern standards). They were not abandoned because of the development of a "locally controllable efficient" power industry. In fact, no such industry exists, and the claim that we should place our faith during very desperate energy circumstances in a time of cataclysmic climate change is about as irresponsible as one can be.

Now, when this dream stuff, what you call "locally controllable efficient (ha, ha, ha, ha, ha)" industry is producing 1/100th of the power of the nuclear power, which in spite the very, very, very, very, very, very dubious claim that "private interests have turned away" from the nuclear industry, maybe then someone can come here and express fantasies about what such an industry can do.

The fact is that this industry you want us to buy into, and great risk to our families health and well being, mostly does not exist except where it is financed by extremely wealthy and myopic individuals or by massive government subsidy.

In spite of there being not one new nuclear reactor in the United States, the total share of nuclear generated power in this country has been rising yearly (due to improved operations), this in spite of a massively stupid and poorly educated population.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/gensum.html

This capacity totaled in 2002 (which was a record year) 780,064,087 kilowatt hours. This was nearly three times the output of the industry back in 1983, when the last reactor came on line. Hardly an abandoned industry I think.

The fact is that in countries where there are large numbers of scientifically educated persons (that would be China and India) the expansion of nuclear industry is taking place at break neck speed. In countries where a college education consists of taking some marketing and business classes along with some social science electives (that would be the United States) energy problems are being approached with a mixture of extreme violence and fantasy. Guess which of these countries have futures and guess which will face the consequences of their poor educations and violence?

If I am wrong about this, maybe you will feel free to show me where this claimed "locally controlled" industry is sustainably operating. I defy you to show me 36,500 Megawatts of such capacity, which 10% of the output of the nuclear industry world wide.

Show me where this alleged "locally controlled" industry has anything like the 20,000 Megawatts of new nuclear capacity under construction.

Show me where this alleged "locally controlled" industry has an appreciable fraction of the 40,000 Megawatts of new nuclear capacity planned.

Show me where this alleged "locally controlled" industry has an appreciable fraction of the 60,000 Megawatts of new nuclear capacity proposed.

You can't? I didn't think so.

Oh, BTW, maybe you would like to show us one person, anywhere on the planet who "glows in the dark," as the result of nuclear operations. Just one. Anywhere. On earth. At any time. Ever.

You can't? I didn't think so.

[BeFree]

78. Gee, Nadir

Can you possibly be any more Tunnel Visioned?

Can you imagine, for even one second, that you may be wrong about nukes?

Ya know, you're a pretty fart smeller. And, it seems a good dem, but your fantasy of nukes being the only answer, and just as safe as can be, makes it appear your abundant faith in nukes is somehow nothing more than a huge smelly fart.

Sorry, that's just the way it looks from here. Not like you care, but I just thought I'd let you know.

[NickB79]

82. If I may

I have read NNadir post MANY times that he supports the use of almost ALL potential power sources, such as solar, wind, biomass, and yes, nuclear (probably not coal though). You are the one who fantasizes about him saying nuclear is the one and only answer.

[NNadir]

83. Cool. Call me a "fart smeller." (Mods: Please do not remove.)

This would be better than trying to answer what I say, which you can't do because you have no case. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero.

I ask you for 10%, 5%, OK, even one percent of the power capacity for your fantasy and you respond by claiming that I have "tunnel vision," and saying that I have a "fantasy." I love this. I absolutely love this.

I certainly would object to the moderators removing this remark on the grounds it is a personal insult, because it shows completely that you are bereft of any possibility of responding to what I say. You cannot, as I expected, answer one of my challenges, not one. You call my appeal to a system that produces 20% of world energy and the lowest environmental and physical cost known "a fantasy", but you cannot produce a single watt of demonstrable energy for your "dream system." So we have instead the claim that I am a "fart smeller," even though I am not the one asking to dump my waste into the atmosphere.

That about sums up the strength of our arguments.

I really do not expect thinking to replace religion anywhere, these days, but I do like it religion makes clear exactly how weak it is.

QED.

Nuclear power saves lives.

[BeFree]

85. Good lord man

It is a joke. Instead of a "pretty smart feller", it is a joke to say a "pretty fart smeller".

But hey, you are all wise, wiser than me in most regards, fer sure. I do not expect you to lower yourself to my level, but geez, can't you even take a joke?

As to your questions, all I can say is that mankind got along pretty damn good before nukes, and we will do just fine without them, even better, actually. That is mine, amd most folks opinion. It's clear you have no respect for our opinions, and that's fine. But you are here, so you have to hear them, eh?

[NNadir]

86. I have no sense of humor when it comes to destroying the future in

service to ignorance. I make no apologies for that. Zero.

And you still have no answers, just a blithe appeal to unsupported "fun" generalities for which you offer NO support. That's "NO," as in none, as in zero. Zero.

Just for the record, "man"-kind, as you so unhelpfully refer to the human race, did not number more than 6 billion people "before nukes." In the 1950 the world population according to the US census bureau numbered about 2.5 billion. At that time, it may have been possible to get along without nukes, because the atmosphere was not collapsing as precipitiously as it is now. By 2016, the world population will have tripled from the figure. Without sensible and rational energy strategies, we will not have the ability to step back from this abyss without unimaginable tragedy intervening. The point of irreversible destruction of our planet will have passed - if it has not done so already while people have been 'joking' - beyond all hope of possible or even partial recovery.

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldpop.html

This then, is a completely specious and irrelevant claim, that mankind existed happily before the invention of nuclear power.

The claim that "most people" agree with you is about as worthless as the claim that "private interests are abandoning nuclear power," that prompted my previous and apparently irrefutable response to your remarks.

Most people want to live and are not interested in (self-described) comedy and fantasies and jokes.

This is an unbelievable crisis. I, for one, am not amused.

[BeFree]

88. Hey don't take it so hard

It's not your fault, unless you have kids, too.

Back to the nukes for a second. Most all of the nukes built or planned are heavily subsidized by governemnts, in one way or another. You know it.

It isn't just nukes that are the only problem. It's the idea that life should not be a struggle, and something had to be done about that. Since life is no longer such a struggle, due to the energy uses, the easiest thing to make - babies - has now been made even easier: Viola! Population explosion.

So here we sit, with an exploding world population that in any other biologic happenstance leads to massive die-offs of said populations. And your cure is more power. Do ya see anything wrong with that line of reasoning? Where does it end?

The fantsy is that nukes, or any other energy source, will solve the problems of the current population growth. It is not that nukes can't be built, it is that they shouldn't be built to start with. The whole centralized energy system has enabled the over-population, and more of the same is no cure for that situation.

[RafterMan]

92. Yet in the first world

where energy usage is highest and has most completely removed the struggle for survival from people's lives, birth rates are *below* replacement levels. All evidence shows the opposite of your conclusion is true -- the biggest boom in population comes from the most marginal populations.

Your enthusiasm for mass die-offs is interesting, though.

[NickB79]

91. Yep, we'll get along just fine without nukes 50-75 yrs from now

Of course, a few billion people will die off once in the process after oil peaks, but I'm sure they'll die happy knowing they died naturally of starvation rather than use nuclear power.

[BeFree]

87. God damn, that's scary

There are more reactors than I had imagined. We are doomed. All for what? So Burger King can keep it's lights on 24 hours a day?

There is a thing which grows and grows and grows. We call it cancer. Seems as if there is a special cancer growing in the world.

No, I can't show you all the percentages and megawatts expected from my idea of locally controlled electrical generation. But if we still have lights fifty years from now, that's where most of it will be coming from, I'd bet.

A "massively stupid and poorly educated population"? Well, if that's how you see America, that's fine. It's just a matter of time that the rest of the world reaches our level, then. Because if you trace the stupidity it goes back to having every thing done for us by a centrally controlled energy system run by nuke and coke (coal) heads with out foresight as to where the waste goes: into the air, with coal, into yucca (and where else) for nuke's.

Can't you see the spiral down as the heads get even bigger? Can't you see where it all leads us? I think you can.

[NNadir]

89. Sorry, but your fantasies and your "I'll bets" are not good enough.

As for your fantasies about the existence of "nuclear waste," I have written extensively on why that is NOT a technical problem at all.

On this web site I have shown time and time again both by appeal to relatively sophisticated calculations of a risk/benefit analysis, by appeal to the scientific literature, by demonstration of the concepts of nuclear physics, and by appeal to international governmental policy analysis, that the impact of so called "nuclear waste," is trivial. Many people, I think, seem to have absorbed a good part of what I have to say on the subject. Other people merely repeat themselves in defiance of reason.

Everyone who knows something about energy matters knows that compared to every other form of energy the problem of "waste" is minimized in the case of nuclear energy. Indeed, because of the properties of radioactive equilibrium, so called "nuclear waste," is the only form of waste that has a theoretical maximum at which it decays as quickly as it is formed. Many isotopes found in so called "nuclear waste," have already approached within a few grams of this equilibrium value, Ce-144, for instance, I-131, Xe-135, Ba-140, La-140, Pm-147, Nd-149... It is impossible to increase the mass of these "wastes" beyond currently available quantities even though many of them are potentially very useful materials.

It is only possible to insist that the inverse is true, and that "nuclear waste," is a serious drawback relative to other energy waste problems alternatives by being poorly educated. To me, the hallmark of being poorly educated is to insist speciously on ideas that are not supported by data or by appeal to sound scientific reasoning. It is not enough to say, "I'll bet," and wave one's hands.

[BeFree]

90. Why aren't you working for the DOE?

If you have all the answers to nuke waste, I'm sure they'd hire you, afterall, they have several hundred engineers and scientists working on the problem. They could get rid of all of them, eh?

[NNadir]

93. Most of them know the "solution" on which they are working is political

and not technical. It's a job though. I'd do it if they paid me enough. I've been paid to work lots of things that I don't think were necessarily the best alternatives.

Actually, if it weren't such a piss poor use of resources, Yucca mountain would probably be harmless none the less. I can't imagine anyone being injured by Yucca mountain, any more than anyone has been injured by the storage of spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors anywhere at any time. My friend had a chat with one of these guys recently because he was studying extremely stable inorganic polymers. From the sounds of it, it sounds like the guy was pretty compartmentalized. It happens, even among scientists.

Forensic paleogeology of the Oklo naturally occurring nuclear reactors, in Oklo, Gabon, shows very clearly that fission products do not migrate very far in certain geological formations. At Oklo there are fission products that have moved less than 100 cm. The "wastes" are pretty much where they started out over 1 and a half billion years ago.

The whole Yucca mountain fiasco is an attempt to satisfy people who won't be statisfied, no matter what. No other country on the planet intends to or is burying once through nuclear fuels. Everywhere else it is being recycled.

There is only one place where nuclear materials are being indiscriminately dumped, by Sellafield in the UK, where small amounts of Tc are discarded into the North Sea. This is a horrible waste of Tc, a faboulous element with many, many high value uses. Transmuted it gives the extremely expensive metals Ruthenium and Rhodium which are essential to our industrial base.

[bunny planet]

75. Funny stuff. Thanks for the laugh, this thread was a downer until you came

along Hunter.

[hunter]

79. Thanks.

Here's how I think--

Whenever I turn on a compact fluorescent lights in my house about 40% of that energy comes from natural gas, 25% from nuclear, 3% from coal, and most of the rest from hydroelectric and other "renewable" sources.

Of these numbers it is the small coal fraction that bothers me the most.

I have a big problem with coal. Coal power plants in the United States are dangerous. They emit far more radioactivity into the environment than the nuclear power industry does. Coal also emits mercury, carbon dioxide, "acid rain," etc..., and these pollutants, all with million and billion year "half-lives," are far more dangerous than most kinds of "radioactive waste."

The response of the Bush administration, and of our government in general, has been to ignore pollution from coal-fired plants. If nobody reports it, it doesn't exist.

Meanwhile the nuclear power industry is put under a microscope.

I am not a supporter of nuclear power. As a reckless young man I was fairly active in the anti-nuclear movement -- to the point where my activity was sometimes noticed. I've had my share of interesting "chats" with federal agents, and whenever I write about stuff like this, I still have to think about what the satute of limitations might be for various sorts of trespassing, most especially "dumpster diving."

But these are the facts:

• Kilowatt-for-kilowatt coal fired power plants as they are currently operated kill more people than nuclear power plants.
  
  
• A badly run nuclear power plant that suffers a catastrophic failure (even such as Chernobyl) will cause less damage to the non-human natural environment than a well-run present-day coal burning plant meeting today's minimum legal environmental standards.
  

If I do not oppose the existing coal industry more than I oppose the nuclear industry I am actually harming people. That's the way I see it. If twenty years from now my kids turn on a light and 75% of that electricity comes from nuclear power plants, they will be living in a far better world than one where 75% of that electricity comes from conventional coal burning plants.

In my perfect world coal would only be used as a carbon source -- and not the primary energy source -- for liquid fuels, plastics, and other synthetic products. The primary source of energy for household use, including the energy used for transportation, would be solar.

In my less-than-perfect world coal will be used to make liquid fuels, plastics, and other synthetic products, along with electricity in the cleanest possible combined-cycle industries. Nuclear power could also be part of this equation. Maybe we can peacefully burn up all the plutonium, enriched uranium and much of the wastes we've accumulated building nuclear weapons.

In my hellish world of the future we will have dirty coal power plants, dirty nuclear plants, and we will be killing people for the oil we need to make plastics and other synthetic products.

This is probably the main reason I oppose George W. Bush, and the main reason I am here on DU. George W. Bush and his administration are ignorant fools leading us directly into my third hellish vision of the future.

For the money we have spent in Iraq, we in the United States might have instead chosen a path of energy independence. In ten years we might have cut our energy imports to ZERO. Good bye Iraq, goodbye Saudi Arabia. We don't need you. Have a nice day!

Instead we send our kids to die there.

What kind of stupid is that?

[Nihil]

104. Excellent post

> Whenever I turn on a compact fluorescent lights in my house about 40%
> of that energy comes from natural gas, 25% from nuclear, 3% from coal,
> and most of the rest from hydroelectric and other "renewable" sources.

Nice way to view it.

> A badly run nuclear power plant that suffers a catastrophic failure
> (even such as Chernobyl) will cause less damage to the non-human
> natural environment than a well-run present-day coal burning plant
> meeting today's minimum legal environmental standards.

Unfortunately, the spin-doctors will pick up on one hyphenated word and
use that as the pivot for their pro-coal arguments: "non-human".
That immediately feeds into the dominionist, anti-environmentalist
playbook of "they care more for animals than for flesh & blood people".

(BTW, I agree with you: I am just guessing - from past experience - how
the "leaders of industry" will convince the pig-ignorant masses.)

[bunny planet]

105. The worst kind of stupid, the evil, greedy and dangerous kind.

[ROH]

107. "Oil, Oil, Everywhere..." article in the Wall Street Journal

Quote from The Wall Street Journal article: "To pick just one example among many, finding costs are essentially zero for the 3.5 trillion barrels of oil that soak the clay in the Orinoco basin in Venezuela, and the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta, Canada. Yes, that's trillion -- over a century's worth of global supply, at the current 30-billion-barrel-a-year rate of consumption."


I know the Alberta tar sands have already been discussed in this thread. I would be interested in comments on the reported "3.5 trillion barrels of oil" in Venezuela's Orinoco basin.

[Dogmudgeon]

108. The Oil Matrix

Shale oil, tar sands, and other such sources of oil are sometimes referred to as "petroleum in a rock matrix".

The energy required to extract that oil well exceeds the total energy in the oil itself.

That's the real problem -- an equation called EROEI, the acronym for "Energy Returned On Energy Input". Except for exotic fuels, it makes no sense to expend four calories of energy to recover three calories' worth of petroleum.

Between oils in matrix and untapped reserves, over 80% of the Earth's petroleum remains untapped. And much of that will remain untappable as a general energy source. The oil in matrix will not be profitably extracted, and the deeper-lying petroleum will still require more energy to lift it to the surface than the energy it contains.

Sure, some new technology might help us recover more oil at a usable EROEI, but such energy technology advances have been slow in coming over the past three decades or so. Most of the technology we use to get our oil now is based on old discoveries made more efficient by modern advances. But there have been no major technical advances lately that get us around the EROEI problem.

I would like to be proven wrong on this. As always, I invite anyone with better technical knowlege than I have to revise, correct, and enlighten my thinking. But I just don't think we'll find a magic solution to the EROEI problem.

--p!

[ROH]

109. Here is a reference to the Wall Street Journal Article:

http://www.peakoil.com/article2247.html

Two more quotes from the article:
"The market price of oil is indeed hovering up around $50-a-barrel on the spot market. But getting oil to the surface currently costs under $5 a barrel in Saudi Arabia, with the global average cost certainly under $15. And with technology already well in hand, the cost of sucking oil out of the planet we occupy simply will not rise above roughly $30 per barrel for the next 100 years at least."

"In sum, it costs under $5 per barrel to pump oil out from under the sand in Iraq, and about $15 to melt it out of the sand in Alberta. So why don't we just learn to love hockey and shop Canadian? Conventional Canadian wells already supply us with more oil than Saudi Arabia, and the Canadian tar is now delivering, too. The $5 billion (U.S.) Athabasca Oil Sands Project that Shell and ChevronTexaco opened in Alberta last year is now pumping 155,000 barrels per day. And to our south, Venezuela's Orinoco Belt yields 500,000 barrels daily."

[hunter]

110. The United States alone consumes over 20 million barrels oil per day...

The numbers in the Wall Street Journal article need to be placed in the context of that consumption.

That 155,000 bpd from Canada and the 500,000 bpd from Venezuala would be 3.275% of United States consumption. Of course, the United States is not the only nation consuming oil.

Furthermore, this oil is not the same sort of light oil you could get out of many Saudi wells for $8.00 a gallon. Instead it is a very heavy oil that requires quite a bit more energy to extract and refine than light oil. Much of this energy is currently supplied by natural gas.

Thus there are some serious EROEI issues here. If inexpensive natural gas is not available for processing this oil, and the cost of maintaining extraction machinery increases, the low EROEI of this sort of "oil mining" becomes much more apparent. Worse, if natural gas or nuclear power are not used in the extraction process, the overall carbon dioxide emmisions per barrel of refined product skyrockets.

From an environmental standpoint you might be much better off using the natural gas directly as a feedstock for synthetic fuels.

The Wall Street Journal article you've cited is a perfect example of the stupid "buy-yourself-an-MBA" mentality that is destroying the United States economy. Clever little monkeys learn how to make Excel spreadsheet models full of imaginary constants, and then they use these simplistic models to support their economic fantasies.

"And with technology already well in hand, the cost of sucking oil out of the planet we occupy simply will not rise above roughly $30 per barrel for the next 100 years at least."

To see what an absurd statement that is you might want to calculate the actual cost of every barrel of Iraqi oil now sold on the world market. Don't forget to add in all the lives lost "securing" this oil.

I have some experience making real scientific and economic models. One of the things you quickly learn is that there are very few constants in any good model, and that you must often apologize for many of the constants you do put in a model. To a certain extent the less computing power you have, the more constants you must use in your models.

It's my opinion that anyone who claims we have a hundred year supply of $30 per barrel oil is insane. This could only happen if we had a severe global economic "depression" of the sort that would doom billions of people to starvation.

It is much more likely we will survive this mess by inflation, and that the oil remaining on earth will become too expensive to use for simple joyriding.

Two variables I would watch in this economy are the number of United States citizens vacationing in Europe, and the number of big SUV's that are sold.

We live in very interesting times.

[Dogmudgeon]

112. What's really happening here?

The article -- which I read in full -- contradicts nearly every report on petroleum resources that has appeared in the last few decades.

Saudi Arabian oil -- mainly the Ghawar oil field -- keeps its EROEI low by pumping massive amounts of water into the field. This may be a good production strategy, but it is impractical for most other oil fields. And when the Ghawar oil "runs out", it will really run out.

Second, new discoveries of oil have bottomed out. Huber and Mills (the authors of the book) don't seem to take that into consideration. Also, the assertion that oil is "essentially" limitless just ain't so. The Earth is big, but "big" is still finite. Their optimistic view about using bacteria to recover oil from shale/tar/sand matrices is much too rosy. A lot of different bacilli can "eat" oil, since oil is organic hydrocarbons. But I don't know of any species of bacteria that can selectively recover different fractions of oil (not that it would be absolutely impossible).

Their discussion of financial factors keeping oil prices high is well-reasoned, but their statements of "fact" regarding the geology itself demand better evidence and arguments. $50/barrel oil with a $15 "lift cost" just does not make economic sense. If cracking the oil out of Athabascan sand and gravel is as cheap as Huber and Mills claim, it would be a no-brainer for Canada to open the area to development. But the projects currently running are all experimental. What does Canada owe to the oil companies, let alone the House of Saud? As far as I know, nothing.

The book should be subject to wide scrutiny. If Huber and Mills are blowing smoke, they ought to be publically discredited; but if they are telling the truth, someone is doing a lot of teradollar lying. With such divergences in industry and petrologic data, someone is certainly trying to scam us. Either way, the oil crisis, whatever its outcome, may be the biggest swindle of all time.

--p!

[ROH]

113. Thank you for the replies

You write: "The book should be subject to wide scrutiny. If Huber and Mills are blowing smoke, they ought to be publically discredited; but if they are telling the truth, someone is doing a lot of teradollar lying. With such divergences in industry and petrologic data, someone is certainly trying to scam us. Either way, the oil crisis, whatever its outcome, may be the biggest swindle of all time."

I'm not an expert in this field, and it is difficult to work out the true position. At one extreme, some people have suggested that this is going to be an enormous upheaval for civilisation; while others (such as Huber and Mills) claim that there is very little cause for concern.

I am endeavoring to plan ahead as much as I can.

Should I completely ignore Huber and Mills claims, or do their comments have some worth in this general discussion?

[ROH]

118. It's a question for anyone (particularly NNadir) who can answer, please...

I am endeavoring to plan ahead as much as I can.

Should I completely ignore Huber and Mills claims, or do their comments have some worth in this general discussion?

[NNadir]

119. I am not an expert on tar sands. The question of tar sands is best

addressed by understanding that tar sands are fossil fuels, and that all fossil fuels by their very nature have an unacceptably high external cost, but can, depending on circumstances, have a low internal cost. By this I mean that the production of these materials is only worthwhile if the producers have either an explicit or implicit license to dump their wastes on the general public at will with few restrictions.

The future of humanity very much depends on how this accounting is done and who does it. If external costs are calculated and producers of tar sand derived fuels are required to pay them, there will be no tar sands development; if on the other hand, they can simply dump the oxidation and pollution products into the air and unto the land (as is done with coal), tar sands may come into production.

The decision in this regard is a function of political will. Given that the worst possible examples of humanity are currently in a position to make political decisions, one is inclined not to be optimistic.

In general, I oppose all new fossil fuel development and I am very anxious that the existing fossil fuels be phased out as rapidly as possible. The accomplishment of this task is technically and economically feasible, with huge environmental benefits accruing at the same time, but it may not be politically feasible.

[ROH]

120. My Understanding of the Situation

Thank you for your reply. I have also read many of your other knowledgeable posts in this forum.

My understanding of the situation is that the ideal solution would be for new forms of power generator to be devised or achieved as practicable (e.g. nuclear fusion). However, that is the ideal and unfortunately it simply may not happen; if it does not, over the long-term nuclear (fission) power generators may be the way forward, helped to some extent by wind, hydroelectric and biomass power generators.

However, the process of moving over to nuclear power (plus wind, hydroelectric and biomass power) generation is going to take considerable time to accomplish.

Maybe oil production from tar sands may help temporarily in taking us from the current largely conventional oil based system of power generation to the longer term basis mentioned above? A key point being that oil is not just important for transport and electricity generation, but also in terms of agricultural, plastic and household products - as noted at: http://wolf.readinglitho.co.uk/mainpages/oilproducts.html

[Strelnikov_]

121. Tar Sands Do Not Appear To Be A Viable Energy Source

It appears that synthetic crude yielded from tar sand has an EROEI of 1.5 before refining. Assuming tar sand at an EROEI of 1.5 (which may be optimistic) is replacing conventional oil at an EROEI of 10 (a slightly pessimistic figure for conventional oil being produced today), you would have to produce 189 M bar/day of oil from the tar sands to yield the same net energy as the 70 M bar/day of conventional oil produced currently.

The energy input to produce synthetic crude from tar sands could come from nuclear. The question I have is why invest the nuclear generated energy this way. Production of ethanol/methanol from biomass, with EROEI’s of 2.5+, would seem to be the better alternative to tar sand, particularly considering the significant greenhouse gas and waste sludge problems posed by tar sand processing.

Another scenario would provide for nuclear power being used to generate baseline electric needs. Wind, due to it’s intermittent availability, would be used to store energy through pump back hydroelectric for peaking power, and the processing of biomass into more convenient energy forms for transportation and discrete industrial operations.

I can envision processing tar sands to yield hydrocarbons for materials production as required (plastics, etc.). But couldn’t these hydrocarbons also be obtained from previously abandoned oil fields. We would simply need to separate the oil from the water, thus skipping the strip mining and steam energy input required for tar sand production.

[ROH]

123. Thank you for your comments...

You wrote: "The question I have is why invest the nuclear generated energy this way. Production of ethanol/methanol from biomass, with EROEI's of 2.5+, would seem to be the better alternative to tar sand, particularly considering the significant greenhouse gas and waste sludge problems posed by tar sand processing."

OK. Would there be a sufficient supply of biomass to produce the required total amounts of ethanol/methanol?

You wrote: "But couldn't these hydrocarbons also be obtained from previously abandoned oil fields. We would simply need to separate the oil from the water, thus skipping the strip mining and steam energy input required for tar sand production."

Yes, I think that is a very good point, and NNadir also mentions the important subject of syn gas as another possibility.

[Strelnikov_]

126. It Depends On Your Definition Of Required Total Amounts

If we are talking maintaining a 1970 energy consumption level of 70 Quad/yr., maybe. But if we are starting at 2002 consumption of 100 Quad/yr., and increasing at 2% per year, there is not much hope.

One source of biomass that has piqued my interest is Switchgrass. It is hardy, adaptable to a wide range of climates, and being a perennial requires a minimum of yearly maintenance to grow over a 10 year span.

Biomass yield figures vary from 3 Ton/Ac on the northern high plains, to 14 Ton/Ac in the southeast, and will yield ethanol at 80 gal/Ton. Assuming an average US yield of 5 Ton/Ac, ethanol yield would be 6,095 barrel/sq. mi./yr. (barrel=42 gal.)

Current US petroleum use is 18 M bar/dy, of which 42% is refined into gasoline for personal transportation (7.56 M bar/dy, 16.1 Quad/yr), at an average fleet economy of 20.8 mpg. Assuming ethanol energy density is equivalent to gas (not quite true, but close), we would need 453,000 sq. mi. in switchgrass production. This is equivalent to the surface area of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and the western 2/3’s of Nebraska combined.

Assuming an ethanol EROEI of 2.6, we would also need 6.2 Quads of energy input to produce the ethanol.

Of course, if we were to increase the personal vehicle efficiency to 60 mpg, we would need approx. 1/3 of the quantity of ethanol. The problem is, the 7.56 M bar/dy we are replacing only takes into account personal vehicles. Even with increased efficiency, we would probably need 1/3 of the balance of the 453,000 sq. mi. to produce ethanol for industrial (shipping, construction, etc.) applications. Of course, other biomass energy sources (thermal depolymerization, ag. waste, timber waste, etc.), could somewhat reduce the land mass required.

The renewable energy issue is truly challenging.

From the following article:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.jaffe

“According to Cornell's Pimentel, roughly 15 percent of the North American continent consists of land that is unsuitable for food farming but workable for switchgrass cultivation. Given the typical energy yield of switchgrass, a rough calculation indicates that if all that land were planted with switchgrass, we could replace every single gallon of gas consumed in the United States with a gallon of inexpensive, domestically produced, and more environmentally-friendly cellulosic ethanol.”

Lower 48 = 3,119,900 sq. mi. x 0.15 = 467,983 sq. mi.

[ROH]

127. Switchgrass seems like a very useful biomass source.

On the general subject of biomass, this link: http://wolf.readinglitho.co.uk/subpages/renewables.html#biomass
states the problems in these terms:

"As well as electricity generation, biomass fuels can be used to create alternative transport fuels such as ethanol. Unfortunately, to grow enough biomass to supply the present use of petrol and diesel would leave little farmland left for food. And, since modern agriculture is so dependent on hydrocarbons for fertiliser and pesticides, it would be difficult to grow enough after oil and gas have declined.

One advantage is, as long as the used products are completely regrown, there is no carbon dioxide pollution. The main disadvantage is the low energy output of most biomass fuels...".

Now over 90% of all agricultural land (two-thirds of the cropland, all of the grazing land) is used for livestock agriculture in the United States.

Meat consumption is a very inefficient use of plant foods, because you get only a small portion of any of the food nutrients which you feed the animal back when you slaughter the animal for food. The proportion wasted varies, but it's always at least on the order of 3 to 1, and more usually like 5 to 1, 10 to 1, or higher.

So would a general shift toward reduced meat consumption (as a percentage of dietary intake) be considerably useful?

[Strelnikov_]

128. I Would Anticipate Switchgrass Would Be Grown On The High Plains

and in other areas where agriculture is marginal at best. My understanding is that most of the grazing land in the arid West would not be cost effective without government subsidies.

But there is no doubt, Powerdown will force a diet with less meat consumption, primarily a reduction in beef and pork.

[NNadir]

129. I regard biofuels as palliative at the most extreme best.

This is not the same as saying I oppose biofuels: I don't. In recent times in fact, I've thought of actually going into the business, and I've certainly done a good deal of research on the subject.

Still figures, especially figures that are way to precise, like "EROEI" are highly questionable for technologies that have not scaled to such a point as to even constitute one percent of the energy supply. I know of no operating profitable switchgrass infrastructure anywhere - correct me if I'm wrong - and therefore any value for the "EROEI" is a theoretical and not an experimental value.

In any case, this figure, which represents only an internal cost and not an external cost, makes no attempt to delineate whether the technology is sustainable. First we need to note that the prospective lands on which it is now proposed to grow switchgrass are now doing something quite different. What exactly is that, and what are the consequences of switching to the switch? Secondly, I strongly suspect that the cost, environmental or otherwise, of water is being grandly ignored here.

I really think that the capacity of biomass to replace oil through such technologies as the preparation of "cellulosic ethanol" is somewhat limited. This is particularly true since one has to both harvest, process, and then transport (great distances apparently) these fuels. Even with these (rather large) caveats though, I'm sure that biomass has some role in the carbon source future, but I think the means of application will be rather different than enzymatic (either traditional or more exotic) means.

In any case, I actually think ethanol is a rather poor fuel because of its water miscibility, its corrosive properties, and its toxicity. Oil crops are probably somewhat better as fuels, particularly for non-motor uses like home heating oil. To the extent that ethanol can be used as an esterification agent for fatty acids, it is probably valuable. Otherwise, I'm not a tremendous fan of it and I think it's been way oversold.

Many biologically based fuels also have problems with stability and performance (and even usuability) over wide temperature ranges. Wood oils seem to have a shelf life on the order of months, and pure biodiesels solidify at temperatures not too far below water's freezing point. (I have some interesting ideas about this issue though, but I'm not talking about it.)

Probably the real value of biomass rests as a carbon source in the scheme to which you alluded when you say "thermal depolymerization," though I'd rather use the related technology, supercritical water oxidation. It may, under these circumstances, be possible to recover a much better fraction of carbon in this form than it is with traditional fermentation schemes or oil crops.

That said, I think that future societies will probably be hydrogenating carbon dioxide directly, most likely without the intermediate photosynthetic process.

[NNadir]

122. This presentation by fusion researchers show why fusion is unworkable

for the immediate future.

As background for my participation in an amusing exchange on the tritium thread, I decided to look into how much tritium there actually is on the planet.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x19287

Note that the largest single source of tritium (an essential fuel for all fusion reactors now envisioned) comes from CANDU reactors, which because of an element of their design, "heavy water" moderation, produce a fairly "large" amount of tritium.

I was under the impression that this tritium was NOT recovered from CANDU reactors, but I was wrong, it appears.

This presentation, put on the web by a fusion researcher at Los Alamos national lab, addresses the issue of how much tritium there is in Canada, Canada having the vast majority of the world's (impressive)CANDU reactors.

http://public.lanl.gov/willms/Presentations/Tritium_Supply_Considerations.pdf

There are 18.5 kilograms in Canada now. (Note that at $30,000/gram, the current price, this tritium has an economic value of more than $500,000,000.00.)

Note also in this presentation the amount of tritium that would be required to run a single fusion reactor is given; running at about 1000 MW(th) - the size of a very small nuclear plant - a fusion plant would consume almost 56 kilos of tritium per year. Thus all the tritium produced in Canada (one of the world's largest producers) over a period of several decades would be consumed in about 3-4 months to run a small insignificant reactor.

I think that fusion power may have a roll to play long term, but it is very, very, very clear to me that it will always be impossible to have fusion reactors without also having a number of fission reactors to provide fuel for them. Tritium breeding from fusion reactors alone has not only never been accomplished but actually, it is (for all intensive purposes) theoretically impossible. Therefore the claim of their being some kind of either/or option of fission/fusion is quite simply wrong. You must have fission to have fusion, at least on earth.

Personally, I don't understand all of this nuclear angst at all. Nuclear (fission) power is experimentally been determined to be the safest energy option available bar none, with the exception of intermittently available wind power.

Now I'd like to turn to your comments about oil from tar sands (and or other fossil fuels) being necessary for plastics and other examples of what are now known as petrochemicals. This is NOT true. We live in the golden age of chemistry and with a sufficient input of energy it is possible to produce most industrial carbon compounds, if not ALL of them, from syn gas. Syn gas can be made from lots of things, including dedicated biomass, plastic wastes, food wastes, sewage and, most importantly, carbon dioxide itself. (In the latter case, a source of hydrogen is required, but hydrogen can be produced by thermal water decomposition processes such as the Sulfur Iodine cycle.)

(Note: I do not advocate making gasoline from syn gas, though this process been industrially practiced and demonstrated many times. I prefer making the superior and more flexible fuel DME.)

I hope that the Alberta tar sands are NEVER developed as an energy or carbon source. They are, in my view, simply environmentally unacceptable. It would be better for us economically, socially, environmentally, and intellectually to simply replace oil and coal from the ground up.

The problem is that we are a nation ruled by conservatives, and basically, a conservative is merely a person who believes that nothing should be tried for the first time.

It is conservative thinking to imagine that petroleum and/or coal are somehow as essential as are water and air. Water and air are far more essential. What's more, because petroleum and coal cause significant damage to both water and air, almost any non-fossil fuel technology should be regarded as superior to elaborate schemes for the continuance of fossil fuel based technologies.

[ROH]

124. Thank you for your reply and the link to the presentation regarding fusion

You wrote: "Personally, I don't understand all of this nuclear angst at all. Nuclear (fission) power is experimentally been determined to be the safest energy option available bar none, with the exception of intermittently available wind power."

I think the angst is perhaps mainly due to the general perceptions regarding nuclear accidents / nuclear weapons. The three most noted accidents at nuclear power generators are of course the 1957 Windscale fire, the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, and the 1986 Chernobyl accident. As far as I know, there were no identifiable injuries due to radiation in the first two cases.

I believe many people associate nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons very closely together, and the latter leads to their disquiet about the former. So the problem is possibly one of education and awareness. For nuclear power generation to be widely accepted, the mainstream media and the main political leaders would surely have to accurately clarify the advantages and disadvantages?

You wrote: "It is conservative thinking to imagine that petroleum and/or coal are somehow as essential as are water and air. Water and air are far more essential. What's more, because petroleum and coal cause significant damage to both water and air, almost any non-fossil fuel technology should be regarded as superior to elaborate schemes for the continuance of fossil fuel based technologies."

As well as conservatism, might the difficulty also be due to the fact that several of the world's current administrations have some kind of "interest" in oil (and/or coal) being promoted over other forms of power-generation technologies? Such "interests" may be relatively short-term, and if time is quickly running out the short-term emphasis may become more apparent?

[ROH]

130. Your comments on ITER, please?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

[NNadir]

131. I generally support all non fossil energy research but

this is research. It's 10 billion dollars to produce a 500 MW (th) reactor that will consume annually 2 billion dollars worth of fuel (see my earlier fusion post). The thing would work, maybe, but it will hardly be economic. We have no idea what the actual efficiency will be. I toured the Princeton Plasma Physics lab once and a scientist there told me that they have done almost no work on heat exchangers, almost all of their work has been purely in the physics of reaching the break even point and beyond. So a 500 MW (th) reactor might only produce 100 MW of electricity, in which case no one would be inspired to build one. Still one could learn something in this project and there are much worse places to spend 10 billion dollars, like losing it to an accounting mess in the Iraq-Halliburton axis.

A 2 billion dollar nuclear fission reactor by contrast, operates at less than 3000W (th) and typically produces around 1000MWe. The lifetime of these reactors may be more than 60 years. Some high temperature reactors using SCW technology are expected to get 60% efficiency. The fuel is extraordinarily cheap.

[Dogmudgeon]

134. The deadly Time Lag

How long would it take to get a large-scale production of next-generation, high-safety nukes on line, starting with the next economy-shaking energy crisis?

I'm not sure and have no idea what kind of data I'm looking for, having a very poor education in the economics of nuclear energy. But if I had to, I would guess 15 years -- half of that time from initial funding to prototype, and the second half in production of the power plants.

If a major energy crisis sets in this year, it means that the next energy crisis could conceivably last between one and two decades -- and that's just the crisis stage. I remember well that the OPEC-initiated crises of '73 and '79 suppressed world energy consumption until the mid-1990s; after we returned to where we were around 1976-1980, we had a boom period that happened "magically". This is easily visible on those oil consumption charts we've all seen.

I'd consider that to be an energy crisis of maybe 7-8 years (from the first OPEC price increase until the stabilization in price after the second OPEC price increase). It took 20 years to fully play out (1973-1993).

The good news is that it pushed "Peak Oil" forward from 1985-1990 to 2005-2010; the bad news is that an energy crisis lasting twice as long while waiting for nukes would be much deeper and cause much more damage to the economies and markets of the entire world. We would also NOT be assured of a reduction in energy use; the demands of not only America and Europe, but also China, India, the Islamic world, dramatic climate changes and a state of perpetual warfare would knock the props out from under the ability of energy to drive economic stability and growth.

A large-scale economic collapse might preclude any nuclear development for a long time -- "50 years or more" sounds about right. The second-most-pessimistic scenario is for a Little Dark Age to accompany a Little Ice Age.

So, my question, as messy and uninformed as it (and I) may be, is: How do we win the race against stupidity, time, and disaster?

--p!

[NNadir]

136. There are several issues here, economic, technical, and environmental.

First let's address the economic issue: With the outcome of the 2004 election, a complete and total economic collapse of the United States very much like those experienced by other third and second world nations seems, to me at least, almost inevitable. One feature of this collapse, given the money printing and useless non-infrastructure spending by the government (specifically on war), is likely to be hyper-inflation. I agree that hyperinflation will make the expansion of nuclear energy in this country difficult, if not impossible. In this sense, all of my raving and ranting about the clear benefits of the nuclear option are probably now useless. The United States is probably a doomed nation and a discussion of its role in the world's future, energy or otherwise, to the extent that the world has a future, is probably moot.

There were many issues involved in the halt of nuclear power expansion in the United States in the 1980's, but a critical factor was that the development of nuclear energy is capital intensive. Because the plants are cheap to run but expensive to build, high inflation rates that prevailed during the 1970s and 1980's, in part as an outgrowth of the non-productive investment in the Vietnam war and weapons of mass destruction, greatly added to construction costs. This result made capital very expensive and resulted, along with the deliberate delaying tactics of the anti-nuclear movement, in making nuclear power plants almost prohibitively expensive.

That said, there is no technical reason that it should take more than 24 to 36 months to license, construct, test and commence operations at a nuclear plant. People often act as if existing nuclear plants are somehow unsafe and are in need of profound redesign. Mostly this is complete nonsense. Certainly it is true that some early nuclear technologies were economic and technical failures, specifically graphite moderated reactors such as the one that exploded at Chernobyl, and a few more exotic systems like the HTGCR at Fort Collins, Colorado. (Magnox reactors used in Great Britain, although economically successful, were certainly problematic in their operations.) Nevertheless, the world now has many thousands of reactor-years of operational experience with water moderated reactors and three designs, the Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), the boiling water reactor (BWR) and the heavy water moderated CANDU (Canadian Deuterium) reactor have all been spectacular economic, technical and environmental successes. No technology that has produced about 20% of the world's energy for two decades with less than a few thousand lost lives can be rationally considered to be a failure, or even rationally considered as in need of vast improvement.

With this in mind, the insistence that somehow a "new" or untested type of nuclear reactor is essential is somewhat dubious. That said, because public perception varies considerably with technical reality, considerable improvements in design (undertaken to address unwarranted concerns) have nonetheless been made and would likely be incorporated in any new construction in first (and even second and third) world nations. As William Stacy remarks in the preface of his technical book "Nuclear Power Physics," the physics of nuclear reactors are now completely understood. There are no gray areas. Some of the reason for these improvements involves the rapid growth in computational power that did not exist during the last nuclear era. For instance, I could buy a version of the nuclear fuel depletion software like ORIGEN that I could now run on the same PC on which I am typing this post. I could easily model the evolution of nuclear fuel depletion in a standard reactor in a few hours. In the 1970's running such software would require the investment of millions of dollars and thousands and thousands of hours.

Of course, public perception is very much a factor in new nuclear construction. Sometimes I am very optimistic that this would not be an issue in the second nuclear era, but maybe I'm deluding myself. In recent months I've come to evaluate with increasing appreciation the notion that you cannot go wrong over estimating the stupidity of the American people, for instance.

Let us say this, in France it was demonstrated that nuclear power plants could be built and put on line in less than three years. France has a different culture than ours however. The French, whatever their cultural shortcomings may be, insisted that technically sound arguments prevail in their energy agenda. They simply brushed lunacy aside. They are now reaping the benefits of this decision. They are currently the largest exporters of electricity in Europe.

Environmentally it is a no brainer that nuclear energy should be expanded as rapidly as is possible wherever it is possible. I've covered that topic exhaustively in my tenure at DU and will not repeat those arguments now.

[Strelnikov_]

111. Journalists Do Not Understand The Fact That Energy Cannot Be Created

The problem is that all of the alternative energy sources to conventional oil seem to have EROEI’s in the 1.5 to 4.5 range, and will never be able to offset the loss of the thermodynamic bounty harvested up to now in petroleum and natural gas.

From “The Party’s Over” by Richard Heinberg regarding tar sands:

“The extraction process involves using hot-water flotation to remove a thin coating of oil from grains of sand, then adding naphtha, a petroleum distillate, to the resulting tar like material in order to upgrade it to a synthetic crude that can be pumped. Currently, two tons of sand must be mined to yield one barrel of oil. As with oil shale, the net-energy figures for oil sand are discouraging: Youngquist notes that it takes the equivalent of two out of every three barrels of oil recovered to pay for all of the energy and other costs involved in getting the oil from the oil sands.”

. . .

“”For each barrel of oil recovered, 2-1/2 barrels of liquid waste are pumped into huge ponds.”

He also notes that to replace the global usage of conventional crude, 70 M barrels a day, a waste pond the size of Lake Ontario would be required.

From the above it appears that tar sand has an EROEI of 1.5 before refining. So, assuming tar sand at an EROEI of 1.5 (which may be optimistic) is replacing conventional oil at an EROEI of 10 (a slightly pessimistic figure for conventional oil being produced today), you would have to produce 189 M bar/day of oil from the tar sands to yield the same net energy as the 70 M bar/day of conventional oil produced currently.

So their ‘century’s worth of supply’ goes to 37 years. And assuming historic 2% growth in energy demand, we’re down to 25 yrs.

[ROH]

125. Yes, I think their claim was...

that the Orinoco basin / Alberta tar sands was just one (combined) example of many.

Their article reads: "To pick just one example among many, finding costs are essentially zero for the 3.5 trillion barrels of oil that soak the clay in the Orinoco basin in Venezuela, and the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta, Canada. Yes, that's trillion -- over a century's worth of al supply, at the current 30-billion-barrel-a-year rate of consumption."

So even if their "century's worth" assertion is incorrect, they are suggesting that Orinoco basin / Alberta tar sands is "just one example among many". However, as far as I can see, this is the only example that they mention. If their claim of "one example among many" is correct, their argument may have more validity, but for some reason they do not mention any other examples, and maybe the Orinoco basin / Alberta tar sands is the "best" example they could find for their proposition?

As Pigwidgeon remarked: "The book should be subject to wide scrutiny. If Huber and Mills are blowing smoke, they ought to be publically discredited; but if they are telling the truth, someone is doing a lot of teradollar lying."

[amandabeech]

135. Has anyone considered whether thermal depolymerization (TDP)

could be used to process the watery waste?

The TDP people have stated that they believe their technology could help with processing tar sands. However, I believe that their technology would seriously reduce the amount of material available for hydrocracking and instead turn the heaviest components into carbon.

If TDP were used to process watery wastes, however, then the amount of heavy fractions lost to carbonization would be small in relation to the total output of a given amount of tar sands mined.

What would probably result would be some synthetic gas, a little usable diesel-like liquid fuel, some minerals and lots of distilled water which could be disposed of easily. That is, if the TDP Butterball turkey plant is any indication.

[jmcgowanjm]

132. Royal Dutch Shell (RD) becomes one of the biggest oils again

after the others revise their reserves the way RD
has done

Shell Cuts Oil Reserves again:

Divide 1.4B bbl -amt cut-by 83mil-amt used
by world/day= 168 Days worth of oil gone.

http://energybulletin.net/4220.html

What RD is doing now w/ Venezuela

http://energybulletin.net/4213.html
Venezuela selling oil to China.

BEIJING, Jan. 28 -- China will face electricity shortages this
year, as pressure on the country's energy resources continues
to outpace production.

An official at the National Development and Reform
Commission predicts an electricity shortage this year of
25 million kilowatts (brownouts).

He says the country will work on opening up alternative
energy channels including the construction of large
coal manufacturing bases, speeding up its development
of petroleum, natural gas and water as well as
electricity.

The government will also shut down enterprises that
consume too much energy-(aluminum?)

How you can tell when Peakoil hits- an attack on any oil
producer
by the US.

[jmcgowanjm]

133. Oops-in post above 168 days should read 16.8 days-thanx

In the 1990's, many public companies used
aggressive accounting gimmicks — some legal, some not —
to satisfy investors' demands that they report higher earnings.
Oil companies face similar pressures to build reserves.
And intentionally or not, some companies may have
booked reserves that are not technically or economically
viable, said Matt Simmons, a Houston investment banker
who has warned of a potential supply crisis. Outsiders
have essentially no way to know whether estimates of
reserves are accurate, he said.

"We're going to have another Shell," Mr. Simmons said.
"They're not the only company that got optimistic on
proved reserves."

http://www.braunforpresident.us/headlines/oil_enigma.htm

PS-not endorsing braunforpresident, althoughI'm
sure he'd do a better job, but sourced for NYT article.