Net Energy

[4dsc]

http://www.peakoil.ie/newsletters/740

Good read..


This is a plain text article extracted from Dr Colin Campbell's ASPO Newlsetter 63 (March 2006).

The following article by William Stanton draws attention to the net energy issue. By all means, renewable energies of all sorts will be desperately needed and deserve every support, but it would be a mistake to imagine that they are substitutes for the cheap and abundant energy from the oil and gas that drives the modern world.

[megatherium]

1. No mention of nuclear energy in this article. nt

[4dsc]

2. Nuclear??

Why are you comparing nuclear power to oil and gas??

[megatherium]

3. The author argues that when fossil fuels run out, we will be unable

to so much as make wind turbines; he argues that renewable energy is inexpensive only because fossil fuels are involved in their manufacture. But my point was that there are other sources of energy out there, particularly nuclear. The analyses I've seen indicate that there should be enough uranium (or thorium) to maintain present output of nuclear energy for many decades if not centuries; eventually, we will build breeder reactors (some countries have begun to do this), which have the potential to extend nuclear power for tens of thousands of years. Of course, there are good arguments against nuclear, but its availability is not one of them. So by hook or by radioactive crook, we will be able to afford to make PV panels and wind turbines.

[4dsc]

4. Still comparing apples to oranges

IMHO, there is not comparing oil to nuclear power. They are two different subjects. You cannot use nuclear power to run AMerica the way OIL runs America and the world. Oil lubes the machines that run and build America. Nuclear energy cannot do that and never will..

Not to mention the COST associated with building nuclear power plants will go up as oil becomes more scares. You cannot build a nuclear power plant using nuclear power.. It takes oil!!

[rfkrfk]

5. completely disagree

with a source of unlimited electricity,
anything can be made, if you try hard enough

hydrogen as fuel, is just one example

[jpak]

6. What analyses are these????

The US imports > 66% of its uranium.

If the US had to rely solely domestic uranium resources, they would last <25 years.

Extraction of uranium from seawater is a joke - the US would have to process >7000 cubic kilometers of seawater each year to meet current demand.

Note: the volume of Chesapeake Bay is "only" 73 km3 and the annual discharge of the Mississippi River is "only" 535 km3 per year. To meet current global uranium demand, would require processing "only" >34,000 km3 of seawater. That's equivalent to total annual freshwater runoff from the continents.

Breeders don't work. The only countries with current breeder programs are Japan and India. Japan's Monju reactor is still under repair after a serious sodium fire in 1995, and India just wants to make plutonium for bombs with its (under development) breeder.