This is the fourth part of a four-part guest post by Dr. Michael Dittmar. Dr. Dittmar is a researcher with the Institute of Particle Physics of ETH Zurich, and he also works at CERN in Geneva.

The accumulated knowledge and the prospects for commercial energy production from fission breeder and fusion reactors are analyzed in this report.

The publicly available data from past experimental breeder reactors indicate that a large number of unsolved technological problems exist and that the amount of "created" fissile material, either from the U238 → Pu239 or from the Th232 → U233 cycle, is still far below the breeder requirements and optimistic theoretical expectations. Thus huge efforts, including many basic research questions with an uncertain outcome, are needed before a large commercial breeder prototype can be designed. Even if such efforts are undertaken by the technologically most advanced countries, it will take several decades before such a prototype can be constructed. We conclude therefore, that ideas about near-future commercial fission breeder reactors are nothing but wishful thinking.

We further postulate that, no matter how far into the future we may look, nuclear fusion as an energy source is even less probable than large-scale breeder reactors, for the accumulated knowledge on this subject is already sufficient to say that commercial fusion power will never become a reality.

(Links to 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd parts)

Yesterday's Guardian raised questions about whether oil reserves published in the past by the IEA have been inflated.

Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

Interview With Russian President Dmitry Medvedev: 'Oil And Gas Is Our Drug'

SPIEGEL: In a recent article that you wrote entitled "Go, Russia," you spoke of your country's "humiliating" economic "backwardness." Why hasn't Russia managed to overcome its dependency on natural resources in the time since the end of the Soviet Union?

Medvedev: Because people quickly get addicted to drugs. Trading gas and oil is our drug. People can't get enough of it, even when prices are going through the roof. Five years ago, who could have imagined an oil price of $150 a barrel? Trading in natural resources is easy, it leads to the illusion of economic stability. Money flows in -- considerable sums of money. Acute problems can be effectively resolved with it. You don't need any economic reforms; you don't need to deal with diversifying production. We could rid ourselves of this lethargy if we would only learn the right lessons from the crisis.

This year's Petroleum Geology Conference in London included the following item on the agenda:

Peak Oil: Advancing the topical debate over the timing of peak oil & gas

The aim of the Geological Society's Peak Oil evening meeting is to further discuss and debate the timing and impact of Peak Oil & Gas. Have we become so efficient at exploring and producing petroleum resources that we are we already there as Colin Campbell (ASPO) would argue? Or will technology solutions and a move to more unconventional deposits save the day as Mike Daly (BP) and Glen Cayley (Shell) would suggest? And let's not forget gas. Malcolm Brown (BG Group) sees a longer future for gas but will the progressive use of gas as a substitute for oil hasten its decline? Lots of questions, but do we really have the answers? Come along to the Geological Society . . . and join in the debate. Our four invited speakers will present their case, to be followed by a panel discussion.

The debate took place in the plenary session, with a change in speakers from the original announcement. BP chief geologist David Jenkins argued for the motion that peak oil is "no longer a concern," and Jeremy Leggett argued against, incorporating the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security conclusions into his case. At the end of the debate, approximately five hundred oil-industry geologists voted. Only about a third voted in favor of the motion "Peak oil is no longer a concern." The debate has been written up in November's issue of Petroleum Review.

In this post, I ask Jeremy Leggett a few questions about how he interprets his experience.

Scientific American presents "A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030" in its November issue. In many ways, it sounds good. But let's think about the details: What would the end result look like? Would it really be sustainable? What would the costs really be? Is there any way we could afford to do what is proposed?

Saudi Aramco Will Increase Asia’s December Oil Supply

(Bloomberg) -- Saudi Arabian Oil Co. will supply more crude to refiners in Asia as rising prices threaten to hurt the world economic recovery.

Saudi Aramco, as the company is known, will provide 100 percent of cargoes under long-term contracts for the first time in a year next month, according to a Bloomberg News survey of refinery officials in Japan, South Korea, China and Thailand, who asked not to be identified because of confidential agreements. The refiners will receive between 85 percent and 90 percent in November.

This is Sunday, so this is a "tech talk" about getting fossil fuel out of the ground. While some previous posts have dealt with sandstone and carbonate deposits I’m going to be talking about getting gas out of shale for a couple of weeks, and so, before I started talking about Horizontal Wells, we’d better chat for a minute or so about shale. And when I don’t give an alternate reference for the information, I am likely quoting from the Primer on Natural Gas in Shale, from the Department of Energy.

End Of Cheap Oil, End Of Road For Ruinous Lifestyle

"Every serious discussion of the environment ... is ultimately about oil, whether it specifically mentions oil or not," Owen writes. The explosive growth and general prosperity of the past century have been made possible by the "prodigious abundance" of oil; the problems of the coming century will involve "oil's increasing scarcity and cost."

Owen is not a crank or true believer about peak oil; he reports that the decline of oil production has been predicted for nearly a century. He looks at what we know for sure: However much oil is left, it's being used up at a rate of about 350 billion gallons a day; it's getting more expensive to produce; and demand is growing as China and India push ahead to repeat America's mistakes.

About two-thirds of all the oil produced in the U.S. and Canada goes to transportation, mainly cars, "a use for which there is currently no attractive fuel substitute."

And it's not just the Hummer in the driveway, Owen observes, it's everything the Hummer makes possible — sprawl and its duplication of the built environment, oversized houses and irrigated lawns, added roads, costly extension of the power grid, 100-mile commutes, etc.

This whole way of life is dependent on cheap oil. Sooner or later, cheap oil will be over. Then what?

Robert Cutler has an interesting article in Gundogar recently in which he asks, concerning the recent articles questioning the size of Turkenistan’s gas reserves “Who stands to gain?” from the imbroglio. His conclusion is that it is likely the Russians, and certainly not the Turkmen.

The story, in brief, is that after a steadily rising projection of the size of the gas reserves in the country, the Turkmen President called in a Western auditing firm to look over the books and validate that the projections were real. The British firm, Gaffney Cline & Associates, came, looked at two fields, South Yolaton and Yashlar and certified, a year ago that they held probably 6 and 0.7 Tcm each. To put this in context, it would make South Yolaton the fourth or fifth largest gas field in the world, and would mean that Turkmenistan might have reserves as large as 80% of those reserves in the entire Russian nation. Turkmenistan is currently getting its gas from the Dovletabad field and it is this that was supplying natural gas to Russia and points west prior to April this year.

This is a slide video of the presentation given by Gail Tverberg at the Oil Drum/ASPO Conference at Alcatraz, Italy in June 2009. Her talk is about Finite Resources: One Possible Explanation for the Energy Crisis ( Presentation PDF 1.3 MB).

Finite Resources: One Possible Explanation for the Financial Crisis from Rembrandt Koppelaar on Vimeo.