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Thu 30 Jun, 2005 12:24 am
will we have another raw material that will replace oil?
We will never (within our lifetimes, that is) run completely out of oil. The problem we will be facing soon is that world oil production will no longer meet demand.
The US today is producing somewhere around 9 MM BPD of oil. Twenty years from now that will be down to 6-7 MMBPD. Forty years from now it will be down to perhaps 4-5 MMBPD.
The US could probably cut gasoline consumption by 30% overnight, if people changed their lifestyles just a little. Carpool to work, drive to the mall and grocery store every third day instead of every other day, scrap the SUV and drive a more fuel efficient car. If everyone did this, the gasoline demand would go down dramatically overnight.
I see the problem as being more fundamental. We had a loud and clear wake-up-call in the early 70's about oil supply, and we've done nothing. We've been eating our seed corn for the past thirty years. Since that time we have:
1. Not built a single new oil refinery in the country.
2. Not built a single new nuclear power plant in the country.
3. Built exactly one (yes, one) commercial synfuels plant (at Buelah, North Dakota)
4. Forbidden oil drilling on millions of acres of land, both onshore and offshore.
5. Spent somewhere around $6 billion to build the Supercollider in Texas, and then scrapped the project leaving just a big hole in the ground. Brilliant. Just ****ing brilliant.
Sounds more like the actions of a nation with a death-wish, than the actions of a nation planning on long-term survival.
Interesting analysis Jim.
It is ironic how after the oil crises, SUV's are still popular.
Quote:2. Not built a single new nuclear power plant in the country.
Wouldn't that create nuclear waste with a really long half-life?
Quote:4. Forbidden oil drilling on millions of acres of land, both onshore and offshore.
environmental reason perhaps.
Quote:5. Spent somewhere around $6 billion to build the Supercollider in Texas, and then scrapped the project leaving just a big hole in the ground. Brilliant. Just ****ing brilliant.
What happened there?
It'd be a really good time now to come up with a more efficient fuel for the economy.
Quote:What happens when the oil supply no longer meets demand?
I suspect that those small boys, who we put in office to run our affairs, will suddenly, about 2 days before that happens, stop playing politics and do something. Suddenly a brilliant entrepreneur will be allowed to produce a fleet of alternatively fueled vehicles that will immediately reduce oil consumption by half. After halfway solving the problem the little boys will go back to playing politices while the rest of us try to pick up the pieces of our lives and move on.
Ray - I agree there are no easy obvious answers. And every day we wait and do nothing our options become less and less attractive.
I agree nuclear waste from fission plants is a problem. I do not pretend to be an expert in the field, but it seems to be more of a political problem than a technical problem.
With what I know, the only viable long-term solution is to develop fusion power, but in the interim there are a lot of other things we could be doing. I strongly believe the interim solution is a combination of BOTH conservation and making every reasonable effort to increase supply.
Jim wrote:With what I know, the only viable long-term solution is to develop fusion power
Fission should cover energy consumption at the current rate for 3000 years I belive, I'd call that a long term solution. Energy demand is rising exponentially, but fission should still last centuries.
Don't have a lot of time to write, but there are two factors to consider in this discussion:
#1. Energy is generally the limiting factor of Growth;
and
#2. No society has every lessened its need for energy without collapsing.
More later
Cycloptichorn
Cycloptichorn wrote:Don't have a lot of time to write, but there are two factors to consider in this discussion:
#1. Energy is generally the limiting factor of Growth;
and
#2. No society has every lessened its need for energy without collapsing.
More later
Cycloptichorn
Those are very good points Cy, but please tell me of a society that has collapsed because it was forced to reduce it's need for energy.
Fusion is slowly getting off the ground
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/29/international/europe/29fusion.html?
France Will Get Fusion Reactor to Seek a Future Energy Source
By Craig S. Smith
Published: June 29, 2005 New York Times
PARIS, June 28 - An international consortium announced Tuesday that France would be the site of the world's first large-scale, sustainable nuclear fusion reactor, an estimated $10 billion project that many scientists see as crucial to solving the world's future energy needs.
The only thing that moves our government is crisis. Until than it is talk and more talk.
The need for alternate and renewable fuel has been a topic for discussion for many years and yet nothing substantial has been done. In fact whenever the subject comes up they act as if the problem just revealed itself. What was and is needed is a project similar to the Manhattan project, the one developed the atomic bomb. Instead what do we get another cockamamie energy bill.
Necessity is the mother of invention. The powers that be do not as yet see it as an absolute necessity.
and " indecision is the mother of flexibility". If we keep waiting around all sorts of options open to us.
Brand, I was referring to the move taken by OPEC after the Yom Kippur War (?).
BTW, would nuclear fission create waste?
Nuclear waste has an extremely long lifetime.
Nuclear fusion would create much less waste, and waste with a shorter half-life, than fission.
With fusion, the primary waste would be the structure of the reactor itself, after it is decommissioned. With fission, most of the waste are the spent fuel rods, with really nasty half-lives and toxicity.
Unfortunately, this is all a moot point, because:
1. Our "leaders" don't have the backbone to solve the problem of nuclear waste disposal.
2. We haven't built any new fission plants in 30+ years, and many of the plants we do have are beginning to reach the end of their service lives.
3. Since there's no political constituency for fusion, virtually nothing has been done to develop it over the past 30+ years.
Fiddle on, Nero.
Ray wrote:Brand, I was referring to the move taken by OPEC after the Yom Kippur War (?).
BTW, would nuclear fission create waste?
Nuclear waste has an extremely long lifetime.
Oh, well that was a long time before SUV's got popular, plus Americans have short memories. High prices and all...this 4th of July is suppose to be one of the heaviest traveled ever....including more SUV's than ever.
Yeah, there was a lot of people going to the US from Canada today. There was an insanely long line-up at the border.
Jim, the government must have been doing something... I mean they can't just keep dumping the waste underground and in the ocean.
The moon would be a good repository.
McGentrix
How about the White House it is not being put to any good use presently?
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