The End of The Age of Oil...

Paul Pollets

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/111704_end_oil.shtml

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Tony Conner

Things Change...

...in funny ways, sometimes. Around 1900, the oil companies were in trouble. Kerosene for lamps was their main product, and electric lights were chewing away at that market at an impressive rate. Then, just in a nick of time, along came the automobile. The oil companies switched from kerosene to gasoline, and marched on through the 20th century.

Best case, is that the oil supplies gradually dry-up, and the price drifts up accordingly. This gives people time to adapt.

The worst-case scenario is a couple of huge suppliers running out around the same time, with demand increasing in places like China & India. This gives people NO time to adapt. And that can lead to the scenario described in the Chinese curse - "May you live in interesting times."

J.C.A._3

Thanks Paul,

Some interesting thoughts to ponder indeed. Now if we could only find a way to put the damning greenhouse gasses to work for us....

Did you get the pictures of the snow I posted after your spring tease? I'm still waiting for an address to ship this stuff to. It has shrunk down about 3 feet in the last couple of weeks but I think you can still order some until late April. Chris

hr

Road and Track

had an interesting article on China and their desire for cars and highways. Much of the concrete that has been consumed by China is for roads. Because they are discovering a love affair with the automobile.

If they stay on course and end up with the US model of 2.1 cars per family, or what ever the figure is, within 10 years thay could comsume the entire OPEC production just to fuel their vehicles.

Wars have been fought over resources since the beginning of time, even over spices! Wasn't it our current VP that predicted wars will be fought from now on, until the end of time over the remaining oil reserves. Who would know better than he.

hot rod

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Mark Hunt

I had to bring this up

We all agree that alternative energy sources must be found.

I am attaching a graph that illustrates what other countries are doing with an alternative energy source.

Why is America dead last?

Mark H

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Lurker_2

re:

Why dead last?

Name a country on that list you would rather live in.....other than Sweden.........bulgaria perhaps......


current tech nukes aint the answer

eleft_4

Mark ,

look at the geographic size of all those other countries.
This graph is uh, skewed, maybe?

al

Mark Eatherton1

Thats kind of an unfair graph Mark...

Lithuania is not a large country. 80% of what? 22% of what?

Agreed that the US is not using as much nuke power as it could be, but nuke power done right is NOT a cheap alternative. None of the alternatives are... It's jsut a question of long term pollution, and what we as human beans are willing to put up with.

Personally, I'd rather not leave my great, great, great grand children problems with which to deal with.

JMHO

ME 8-) (how do you like my new glasses..)

Weezbo

Another graph would be interesting.....

why arent we as a nation lashing up deep well geo thermal distribution systems....or getting the grip on the infra structure ..while the energy is still available...there are numbers that were impressive enough to me when i was 15 years old that suggests we have all kinds of energy in that regard.
i think the land down under has some sorta pretty good grip on the topic, i often wonder why we dont have a more aggressive stance on the developement in this country.
i just read the link. funny thing that one of the other thought that i was going to mention was underground fussion experiments. one of my ,super geek matamatical physic freak friends, bagged off study , to go to work in the desert,he may be on that very team from Cal Tech...either he was telling me about monitoring lines miles in the ground or vise versa whatever...the point being the potential of the younger minds of our planet is one of the "resources " that we specifically need to invest our resoures to developing....

Mark Hunt

Al and Keith


I am asking why this country does not consider nuclear an alternative energy source. That is all.

Keith, please do not go down that "where would you rather live" path with me. OK? You will find that you are barking up the wrong tree.

Al, I don't care how big those countries are. Why is it that the USA will not build a nuclear power plant? Why???

Is it possible that they do not have the vocal opposition to nuclear like we have here in the USA? Is there no NRC?

Or are they smarter than us?

Many here say we need to model ourselves after the Europeans, so let them put their money where their mouths are. Look at the percentage of nuclear generated energy in the European countries. Combine their geographic size. Why are they doing it and we can't?

I see that another poster here this evening made a remark about our Vice President. A remark that illuded to his "big oil" connections. Well Mr. Chirac of France said he wanted to see anothe 75% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from all of the Kyoto participants. Easy for him to say when the majority of France's electricity is generated from a non-green house gas producing process. What the heck do they care about reducing green house gases?!?!?!?

Care to guess where the US stands in oil production in the world?................11th

Natural gas?..............6th

Coal?.........#1

Dead last for nuclear though.

I am just saying that nuclear should not be dismissed as a viable alternative energy source for this country.
Seems to me that we are tying our own hands.

Tell me where I am wrong on this.

Mark H



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Jason_15

I agree

Mark, I agree with you 100%. We have not built a nuke plant in 30 years. It is high time to start building again, to ease our dependence on unstable foreign oil, and to save on pollution from coal generation. yucca mountain will be a safe repository, if the Government could just get it open....

Mark Hunt

Geeze!!!!!


All I did was post a graph!!!!!!!
Are you mean to all of your students like this?!?!??!?!?!(Wink, wink)

Look, if we look closely at that graph, we see that MOST of those countries are EUROPEAN. Take that into account and Lithuania's size becomes moot.

Are those countries making bad decisions? If so, where is the world outrage? Why isn't there a world summit to ban nuclear power?

I thought that the movie "The China Syndrome" was a bunch of BS when I saw it as a kid, and I still think it was nothing more than propaganda now. The Russians have their Chernobyl, but what were the REAL reasons behind that?

As for overall size, it seems to me that Lithuania is taking an even greater risk of destroying itself. With such a small size and population, a nuclear accident could wipe them off of the face of the planet? France too?

I'd love to hear why nuclear is a bad idea.

Mark H

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Lurker_2

re:

Why dead last?

Name a country on that list you would rather live in.....other than Sweden.........bulgaria perhaps......


current tech nukes aint the answer

Lurker_2

>>I'd love to hear why nuclear is a bad idea.

ummm, radiation, no where to store waste, accidents, short lifespan of plants, huge expense, radiation, radiation, oh, did I forget radiation?

There is a much larger discussion about whether we are running out of oil or not. to the extent that some are beginning to doubt the whole squished dinosaurs explanation

[sorry bout the double post, either me o the computer is tweeked]

Mark Hunt

Ok


Now tell me which of those issues have caused the loss of even one life in the USA.

Tell me which "alteranative" energy source is 100% environmentally friendly? Solar? Ever seen what it takes to produce a solar panel?

You have to do better than ifs and buts Keith.

Mark H

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Unknown

Yes, let's seed our country with prime targets for terrorist attack and inadequate protection. Say, like that lovely plant upriver from NYC.

Nukes are better than oil, I'll grant you that. Of course, then you have to use electricity for everything or store the energy somehow for cars... and we're still working to make that truly viable. Good enough for home heating, but that's just one aspect of fuel consumption in this country. We have to power big rigs, trucks, boats and planes. Juice just isn't good enough for that yet given our current storage and utilization technology for electrical power.

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1solarguy

great thread

The market has killed nukes.People don't want them.The uranium requires too much energy to process.They are not safe. Would you live next to one?Do you trust the NRC to look after your safety?
Yes we are running out of cheap oil. Bought any diesel fuel lately? I cant understand how we as a nation piss through incredible volumes of oil, just burning it up in outsized suv's, heating egregious mc mansions etc,etc. Enough people don't realize how many other uses we put oil to- plastics,etc.
IT is amazing how much oil we could get by on if we used only as much as we need, not as much as we can. We WILL learn to use it sparingly,but probably too late.

Gordy

Graph

Marks graph is not that skewed. It simply states the percentage of electricity made by nuclear power. As far as the size of the countries go that only plays the part of how many reactors are needed to cover the percentage of power generated by nukes for the country. Obviously the smaller the land area and infrastructure, the less nukes needed to supply the grid.

Right now all alternatives are expensive because we are so use to oil. When it runs out we won't have a choice. Personally I think nukes are the only reliable alternatives right now. Solar depends on whether the sun shines, wind depends on whether it blows,Hydro needs to be strategically placed. So the only ones that are truley reliable and can be put about anywhere are nukes and oil/coal burnin power generators.Nukes protect the ozone layer. We could do better with the waste though.

Lurker_2

>>Now tell me which of those issues have caused the loss of >>even one life in the USA.

Tick tock Tick tock. tis but a matter of time, the more sources you have, the morethe odds change. Of course you know that most people don't 'die' from nuclear accidents.

What we do with chernobyl in seabrook?



>>Tell me which "alteranative" energy source is 100% >>environmentally friendly? Solar? Ever seen what it takes >>to produce a solar panel?

AS it so happens I have. Hydroflouric acid is really cool,burrows in and eats calcium yum yum. Can't remember the name of the gas the explodes on contact with air. BOOM hehe.

>>You have to do better than ifs and buts Keith

Have you done better?

All I said is ther are doubts about the actual shortness of oil supply, remember who exactly is it that wants us to think there is lots? Certainly not Mobil.[who owned the Solar panel company where I worked some years ago]
Besides the fact that electric generation is but a fraction of oil consumed. Nuclear cars? I think not.

Efficiency:
INCREASE THE CAFE NOW!!!
not to 40 mpg or something stupid. Call for a 1/2 mpg increase per year. every year. forever.

What is the fed requirement for boilers/furnaces? Increase it by half a point a year. Till you can't buy anything but 90+ percent.

Outlaw incandescent frigging lightbulbs. CF, LED whatever.

A/c units ditto. 10 EER this year, 10.5next...

Generation:

more wind hydro geothermal. Soybean oil I don't care. Vodka's 8 bucks a gallon retail, you tellin me we can't grow fuel?

Hydrogen is W fiddlin' while Rome burns. Relax, burn oil, we'll figger it out. Yeah, right.

Jason_15

Nukes

No deaths in the USA to date!! and about plant life, the nuclear plant I live by will have a service life of 50 years (Point Beach) once it's license gets renewed. that is not a short plant life. Thanks to Point Beach, I enjoy some of the lowest cost electricity in the country. Also, you are exposed to more radiation living near a coal plant, than if you are INSIDE most parts of a nuclear plant. Fact.

Mark Hunt

Well


I would accept your premise if the towers were nuclear powered as well as the Pentagon.

In fact, no nuclear power plant was targeted in the 9/11.

Point moot.

Come visit 9 mile Island.

It is beautiful when it's running.

Mark H

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Weezbo

ME

*~/8=) thanks the shades are GREAT! especially at this time of year ...All that solar glare off the ice .*~/8) man thanks! tey are kida like welders glasses they keep slippin down over my nose ...

Constantin

Allow me to quibble...

Mark,

There are a number of interesting points you left out... For one, Europe is going Nuke-free, albeit in stages. Germany won't build any new Nukes, France is supplying them with lots of Nuke-derived energy instead.

A big factor in France's favor was that the government nationalized the grid, had a competition for a Nuke design, then started building the same nukes all over France (and many of them on the Eastern border, to the chagrin of the Germans who look at the prevailing wind directions and say "hmmmmm"). It is precisely this sort of cost cutting, standardization approach that is lacking over here.

Standardizing a plant not only ensures that your construction costs are low, it also makes maintenance a lot easier because you know what to look for and when and where to expect problems. US plants are typically one-off designs, which means that not only do they require extensive engineering and review to have the design approved, they also have unique challenges in maintaining the beasts afterwards.

Another factor is that the French have actually figured out what to do with Nuclear fuel rods once they have finished their life inside the reactor. In the US, the storage ponds are full and the DoE is on the hook for removing said waste and storing it somewhere... yet that somewhere has not been found yet (Yucca isn't open for highly-radiaoctive waste yet). Until the storage ponds start to empty an a actual disposal sight is created, no utility in its right mind would break ground on a new nuke.

The Chinese are doing some interesting work with inherently safe pebble reactors that may allow the deployment of mini-nukes on a town-level. Yet, even the Uranium on the planet is limited, so Nukes are but a band-aid until we manage to better live within our means. Whether that means harvesting the power of the Sun all over the Sahara or whatever, it is doubtful that the current means of energy will be the same ones by the time I'm old and gray.

What I also hope for is a regional energy strategy, where each region is required to have enough generating capacity to keep the populace electrified. People can cry NIMBY all they want, but there is no security until the towns and cities can provide enough power on their own instead of relying on thousands of miles of high-tension wires to carry juice to them. There is no way to police all those pylons and hence ample opportunity to cause a ton of economic damage with very low-tech means.

Anyway, for me, the biggest source of free, non-greenhouse-gasses-producing energy remains conservation. What you don't use today, you can use tomorrow.

Lurker_2

re

Ask the PSNH customers how much they like nuke power. 50 years is a long life? What's the service life of Hoover dam? And when your nuke is done it is DONE. decommission and post a guard at the gate, for the next 1000 years.
Saying no one has died from nukes is the same as saying do one has died from coal, and for the same reasons.

Mark Hunt

Tell ya what Keith


You have a bit of a time out and then maybe we'll talk.

You got all the talking points down, you just need to learn tempo.

BTW, If "ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts, it would be Christmas every day.

You live in a world full of "ifs". Hope you don't have to cross the street tomorrow. No tellin' what MIGHT happen.

Mark H

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Lurker_2

re

?

Mark Hunt

Clarification


Suppose 7 people got on a craft designed by the brightest engineers in the world. the craft was supposed to blast off and orbit the earth. All of the models said this works. Past launches proved it works, but one day the whole thing blows up in your face. Challenger ring a bell?

Flash forward into the future. That same model launches as planned. Picture perfect. Unfortunately, on re-entry the entire craft is vaporized by extreme heat and the entire crew is killed. That would take the dead count to 14. When should we stop the shuttle program? More people have been killed in space shuttles than by any American built nuclear reactor. Seems to me that the risk is greater???

Fact still remains that Europe has a whole bunch of reactors that have had no "accidents". How many nuclear powered subs does America have that operate with a 100% score card?

All you bring to the table is "what ifs". Do you live your life on "What ifs"?

Still waiting for a reasonable answer to the question. Why doesn't America have a nuclear program when so many European countries do? Who is wrong?

Mark H

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Mark Hunt

And your point is?



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Mark Hunt

\"The market\"


never had nukes.

Your remark is simply not true.

"The people" never had a choice one way or the other.

Mark H

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hr

A couple nuke thoughts

the cost to build and staff a plant makes them cost prohibitive. There isn't one any where in the world that makes economic sense. Even the French admit that

Nobody, anywhere, wants the waste they generate. States are starting to sue the federal goverment for not meeting the time frame to empty out the temporary storage facilities across the country. Do you know how many temp disposal sites there are in your area or state? Often protected by not much more than barbed wire and concrete walls.

They are pre-deployed weapons of mass destruction. A very likly target for terrorist in in fact we would need as many as the article above states to supply this country.

The fuel to feed them?? How much of that is readily available, and what country could we invade for more Uranium?

hot rod

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Tony Conner_2

Add...

... to the unbelievable engineering, construction and operating & maintenance costs - which are known - the cost of demolition - which are unknown and will be HUGE. Not decommissioning - demolition, and cleaning up the site at the end of the useful life of the plant. A number of nuke plants have been DECOMMISSIONED, but none have been DEMOLISHED with the related clean-up costs. ("Clean up" is a relative term - it can't really be cleaned, just hauled away and stored somewhere for a zillion years. Like you say, nobody, anywhere is particularly interested in taking the waste.) Once somebody has to bear the clean-up cost for one of these plants, I doubt that you'll ever see another one built.

Mark K

NIMBY

I think that the problem with the US and energy consumption is that people are not really serious about addressing the problem.

Here in New England, there is a huge fight going on now with a proposal to build a huge windmill farm in Nantucket Sound. This would provide enough "green" electricity to light all of Cape Cod and the Islands. Yet, there has been fierce opposition to the project. Why? Because some of the rich people who own houses in the area are upset that they might be able to see a tiny speck of a dot in the distance that would "ruin" their views of the water.

It's gotten so bad that I just read in the Boston Globe this morning, that the Commonwealth convinced the feds to redraw the state boundary further out in the water, so that Romney can have control over the area and put a stop to the project.

It's great to talk about alternative energy sources, but if nobody is willing to look at a windmill, or a sea of solar panels, we are going to be stuck sitting in the dark, sweating in the global warming heat...sort of like that movie, "Soylent Green"..

Unknown

I see, so we should only be concerned with office buildings from here on out. Good to know!

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Unknown

two differences.

1. you choose to go into a shuttle. You don't get to choose if a reactor is built next door. when you do, it never is, NIMBYs all over the place.

2. If a shuttle explodes, it's a tragedy. If a reactor goes, it's an utter catastrophe. Land unusable for hundreds or thousands of years, potentially MILLIONS left dead, sick, or homeless. If Indian River blew, the Tsunami would look like a kid's birthday party went bad.

There are times that risks are worth it. Risks with nukes are small, but CONSEQUENCES are not. And like every lock can be picked, you cannot ensure their security.

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Bob Gagnon plumbing and heating

Thomas Edison

I was at a green conference last night in Boston and a speaker had a quote from Thomas Edison that went something like this- The sun has huge potential to provide us with energy, let's hope we can figure out how to use it before we run out of coal or oil. Bob

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Mike T., Swampeast MO

It's the Dreamers Who Change the World...

...not those who spend their careers rearranging the same numbers and ideas into so-called "discoveries".

An industry that Tesla created himself doomed his ultimate goal of putting the atmosphere and the earth into a controlled and usable resonance powered by the energy of the cosmos.

Dean_7

nuclear plants and space shuttles

If you take a look at the Chernobyl and the two space shuttle disasters you will find that all three were caused by managers overriding the engineers and either ignoring safety concerns voiced by those engineers or discounting the potential dangers. If we can send men to the moon and back 35 years ago with the technology available at the time. There is no reason we cannot develop clean hydrogen technology. Yes there are enormous techincal challenges in doing so but going to the moon involved enormous technical challenges and so did the Manhatten Project . Yet we did both. The difference is we had a collective national will to do these things. What is needed here is the same thing. In both previous cases the President of The United States at the time stood up and said we are going to do this, period. That is what we need now The President to say we are going to do this and we are going to do it in a specific time frame. Besides as Franklin Roosevelt said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Also the Saturn V rocket was the most powerful rocket ever built, and still the only one to have performed flawlessly. Why? Because we did it right the first time. And what were the techinical challenges involved in developing that thing?

Todd_9

Mass. wind farms

I think it was on either Bill Maher or Dennis Miller. The host was taking RFK Jr. to task about energy usage. One of the biggest waste's of fuel is for private jet use, he was teasing him about his(Jr's) usage of private jets and helicopters. I also heard somewhere else that the Kennedy's were some of the same people opposing the wind farm off of Hyannis.

1solarguy

decommisioned

Maine Yankee nuke plant has been decomissioned and demo'd.
Good articles on it in Scientific American.

Tony Conner_2

Is There...

... a link to the article? I'd be really interested in reading it. If there isn't, can you give me the one paragraph summary?

GMcD

Look around at the electrical grid

You want disruption? Have a look around at all the underprotected exposed electrical substations and high voltage transmission services draped around the country. Economic warfare is easy - what was the cost of the big blackout a couple years ago? The office building hits were for the "in your face" publicity. It is a heck of a lot easier to take a drive in the country and disable the electrical grid with a few well placed fertilizer/diesel fuel bombs.