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DrumBeat: January 9, 2007
Posted by threadbot on January 9, 2007 - 10:05am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Speculators keep oil prices afloat - Investors still think oil is a hot commodity, which may explain why crude hasn't fallen far despite brimming supplies, warm weather and a cooling economy.
"There is no fundamental reason for [the price of oil]," Stephen Schork, publisher of the industry newsletter the Schork Report said of oil prices in the $55-$65 range. "This is a market that is trading on speculation."
"In our view, with the current supply demand environment, the price ought to be $35 to $40 a barrel," said Mark Gilman, an oil and gas analyst with the Benchmark Co., a New York-based investment firm.
James Howard Kunstler: Making Other Arrangements
Still, the widespread wish persists that some combination of alternative fuels will rescue us from this oil and gas predicament and allow us to continue enjoying by some other means what Vice-President Cheney has called the "non-negotiable" American way of life. The truth is that no combination of alternative fuels or systems for using them will allow us to continue running America, or even a substantial fraction of it, the way we have been. We are not going to run Wal-Mart, Walt Disney World, Monsanto, and the Interstate Highway System on any combination of solar or wind energy, hydrogen, ethanol, tar sands, oil shale, methane hydrates, nuclear power, thermal depolymerization, "zero-point" energy, or anything else you can name. We will desperately use many of these things in many ways, but we are likely to be disappointed in what they can actually do for us.
Perhaps the most widely heard response to the peak oil argument is that the world has lots of oil left. To those who understand the peak oil problem, this is a non sequitur. The typical counterargument begins with "Yes, but..." followed by a lengthy disquisition on the difference between stocks and flows of a resource, the geology of oil wells, and the various types of oil.Often what the listener thinks he or she hears is that the cornucopian thinkers are right. But, less often does the listener understand enough to take the problem seriously.
Over 1.5 TRILLION barrels of oil equivalent have been produced since Edwin Drake drilled the world's first oil well in 1859. The world will need that same amount to meet demand in the next 25 years alone. And if you're thinking that it's all for your gas tank, you're only half right.
Dems make bad start with "no-energy" plan
President Bush favors a comprehensive national energy policy that includes tapping domestic sources of oil and natural gas. Democrats have been unwilling to discuss any energy plan that calls for more drilling in Alaska.National security will suffer and Americans will pay a premium at the pumps if the Democrats compound their error in blocking drilling legislation by permanently banning all exploration in ANWR. The refuge is believed to contain about 11 billion barrels of oil -- enough to nearly equal the nation's imports from Saudi Arabia.
White House Hopefuls to Target Oil Industry Tax Breaks
Several high-profile Democrats, to include Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and John Kerry (Mass.), offered bills that would repeal tax incentives much like legislation the House Democratic leadership hopes to pass in floor votes scheduled for next week.
Ethanol makes economic sense for Missouri
Mapping the human genome wasn’t enough. Now Craig Venter is trying to create a microbe that will free us from our addiction to oil.(Sorry, it appears this article is now behind a paywall. You can get an idea of what it's about here.)
10 Books on Solutions for Energy Descent You Must Read in 2007
Are people ready for EU's energy revolution?
European citizens know very little about the importance of energy policy in their daily lives and do not see the need for research on energy efficiency.
Bulgaria Bakes At Least 2 Electricity Hikes in 2007
The predicted increase is due to bulging prices of gas, influenced mainly by the disturbed supplies of gas from Russia to Western Europe. Gas is the predominant fuel used in Bulgarian heating utility companies.
Nigerian Militant Group Threatens Fresh Attacks
The Movement for Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), a major militant in oil rich southern Nigeria, threatened on Sunday to resume attacks on oil facilities this month and seize more captives."We are resuming with our attacks this month and may even take more hostages." the MEND said in an e-mail to media.
By re-nationalizing its energy sector, Putin’s regime is slaying its largest golden goose.
Zimbabwe seeks $2 billion to avert energy crisis
Zimbabwe requires more than $2-billion to build a new hydroelectric station, refurbish and expand existing power plants to avert an energy shortfall likely to black out the country and much of Southern Africa this year, according to the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority.
Japan to subsidize uranium search
Japan will heavily subsidize uranium exploration as the global demand for the nuclear plant fuel increases, tightening the supply of imports Japan relies on.
Energy independence is South America’s big dream
LA PAZ, Bolivia – Aiming to leverage their huge natural gas reserves, leaders across South America are talking about building a network of pipelines stretching thousands of kilometres to feed demand and wean themselves from being so dependent on big U.S. and European energy companies.
Whale sightings add to pressure to block Firth of Forth oil transfers
THE Executive came under pressure yesterday to intervene to stop plans for ship-to-ship transfers of Russian oil in the Firth of Forth, amid fears that it will jeopardise the flourishing wildlife in the river estuary.
What Al Gore Hasn't Told You About Global Warming
George Monbiot's new book Heat picks up where Al Gore left off on global warming, offering real solutions without sugar-coating the large personal sacrifices they will require.
Rising carbon emissions set energy challenge
"Only in China between now and 2015 the capacity they will build in the power sector will be equal to the existing capacity in the EU (European Union)-25," he said.Without a change in policy nine-tenths of this new Chinese capacity would come from burning coal, the highest carbon-emitting fossil fuel, Birol says.
Grim prognosis for Earth - A View of the Year 2050
Rising sea levels and the spread of deserts have forced as many as 200 million people to seek new homes as environmental refugees. They're flooding into Europe, North America and Australia....The Netherlands, after centuries of wresting land from the sea, has had to give much of it back. Thousands of people are living in floating communities.
Oil priced beyond the means of Third Worlders means more for America, for the moment, and indeed the public here is glorying in still-affordable gasoline. Judging by the evidence in the supermarket aisles, there have been no noticeable Cheez Doodle shortages. There are certain Third World countries, however, that also happen to be major oil producers. Nigeria, for instance. It is already a very chaotic state. The oil there is extracted mainly by multinational corporations who pay substantial royalties and licensing fees to the Nigerian government. The people of Nigeria mostly do without. Increasingly, they are tapping into pipelines illegally and siphoning off oil. Meanwhile, a quasi Civil War has provoked assaults and kidnappings against the oil infrastructure and foreign workers. Sooner or later, Nigeria will become too chaotic and its oil supply will go off-line, so to speak, perhaps permanently. When that happens, the happy motorists in Atlanta and the San Fernando Valley may start to notice that something is happening.
Greenpeace: EU about to make climate change blunder
The European Union will sabotage its aim of getting developed nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions sharply if it sets a lower target for itself than it seeks for the rest of the world, Greenpeace said on Tuesday.
It's clean air vs. TV in poor India village
Across the developing world, cheap diesel generators from China and elsewhere have become a favorite way to make electricity. They power everything from irrigation pumps to television sets, allowing growing numbers of rural villages in many poor countries to grow more crops and connect to the wider world.But as the demand increases for the electricity that makes those advances possible, it is often being met through the dirtiest, most inefficient means, creating pollution problems in many remote areas that used to have pristine air and negligible emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas.
Fast-growing weeds have evolved over a few generations to adapt to climate change, which could signal the start of an "evolution explosion" in response to global warming, scientists reported on Monday.This means that the weeds will likely keep up with any attempts to develop crops that can adapt to global warming, said Arthur Weis, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine.
Not since the 1970s has the world seen anything like it. On the eve of his third term in office, Venezuela’s fiery president Hugo Chávez has announced a sweeping nationalisation of the economy, encompassing the telecommunications sector, electricity companies and heavy oil upgrading projects in the Orinoco river belt.
Russia oil trade dispute angers Belarus
MOSCOW - Belarus complained bitterly Tuesday that Russia was digging in its heels over a trade battle that has disrupted Russian oil supplies to Germany and much of Eastern Europe, as European officials voiced criticism of the pipeline shutdown.
EU demands supply line restored
European countries reliant on Russian oil were on Monday seeking to secure energy supplies and considering tapping strategic reserves after Moscow turned off a pipeline that delivers oil via Belarus.Germany demanded an “immediate and full reopening” of the Druzhba pipeline, as Poland admitted it was “completely dependent” on Russia to meet its oil needs.
Moscow-Minsk dispute leaves Europe in a quandary
In spite of the mercurial moods of Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s authoritarian ruler, the country has long been one of Russia’s closest allies, enjoying its generous subsidies in the form of cheap oil and gas. In reality, the Kremlin has been getting increasingly irritated with the antics of the man it has kept in power.
IEA: Market can cope with Russian oil disruption
"There is apparently no immediate impact to any of the refineries in the countries involved, as they all have working stocks of several days. So there is no threat that product supplies to the end users will be disrupted," the IEA said in a statement.
Nexen Achieves First Oil from Buzzard Field
Richard Heinberg: The Closer We Get, the Worse It Looks
The problems of Climate Change and Peak Oil both result from societal dependence on fossil fuels. But just how the impacts of these two problems relate to one another, and how policies to address them should differ or overlap, are questions that have so far not been adequately discussed.
BP sees oil output fall for sixth quarter
LONDON - BP, the world's second largest oil company, has said that its energy production dropped by five percent in the final three months of 2006, the sixth quarterly drop in a row.In a trading update on Tuesday, BP said it pumped 3.82 million barrels of oil and gas per day in the fourth quarter compared with 4.02 million barrels during the same period a year earlier owing to supply disruptions in Alaska, a cut in output by OPEC oil-producing cartel and weak demand for gas.
Analysts had expected fourth-quarter output in the region of 4.0 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (mboed).
Danger of leaks said to hang over BP's Caspian pipeline
The story of how BP built the BTC pipeline using an inappropriate coating, despite repeated warnings that it would not work, points to companywide flaws, said Matthew Simmons, founder of Simmons & Co., a Houston- based oil and gas investment bank."There are clear parallels between what happened here and what happened in Alaska and Texas City," Simmons said. "When you get a problem at BP, you get massive denial."
Russia Cabinet told to weigh output cut
MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin ordered his Cabinet on Tuesday to consider a possible reduction in oil output amid a dispute with Belarus over a halt in transit of Russian oil to Europe — an indication the battle could drag on.
Oil pipeline disruption 'destroys confidence' in Russia, says Merkel
BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that the sudden suspension of oil deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline in Belarus destroyed confidence in Russia as an energy supplier."It is not acceptable when there are no consultations about such moves," Merkel said Tuesday when asked about Russia's reliability as an energy partner.
Cities rediscover allure of streetcars
 |
Cities hope that streetcars can do in this century what they did in the last: Connect neighborhoods and provide a relatively cheap alternative to walking and driving. |
Geothermal plan in doubt after tremors
BASEL - Efforts to tap energy deep below the earth's crust to provide power for homes in the Swiss city of Basel may have to be scrapped after setting off tremors."We had expected the experiment to cause minor tremors. But so far we do not know in detail why the quakes were bigger than expected," said Stefan Wiemer of the Swiss Seismological Service.
I got a book on tape for Christmas - "Attack on the Middle Class" by Lou Dobbs. After listening to it for the last couple of days on the way to and from work, I have even less faith than before of having any impact on changing the direction of the battleship.
He delineates the money being poured into lobbying from who to who.
BOTH parties are two sides of the same coin.
We will hit the wall at 60mph. Only slightly turning the wheel at the last moment. But not enough I fear.
Peace
John
Hello Samasara,
My hope is that the Native-American Indian Tribes with their independent nation status will be the leaders in forming large, contiguous Biosolar Habitats. If one considers the staggering amounts of money that they are generating from casino gambling, and if these huge sums are put to Biosolar usage across their lands for the benefit of their people--it would do much to alert the rest of the US of the need for 150 million wheelbarrows & bicycles, PVs, windturbines, and relocalized permaculture.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Oops, forgot to include a link:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0615gambling1...
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Nationally, U.S. Indian gambling revenue totaled about $19 billion last year, up 12 percent, but about two-thirds the size of commercial gambling in states such as Nevada and New Jersey, the report said.
Meister expects Arizona to post growth again this year, albeit not as high as 26 percent, and he expects gains to continue nationally.
His report estimates Indian gambling directly and indirectly contributed $19.4 billion in wages nationally, 539,000 jobs, $6.2 billion in tax revenue and additional revenue sharing with governments of $900 million. He estimates total economic output from the industry at $52.3 billion.
-----------------------------------------
That is alot of money that could be diverted to the Paradigm Shift across Indian Tribal lands.
So you think people that sell tax-free cigarettes, alcohol and gasoline in conjunction with running casinos are going to take the lead in some kind of moral crusade?
I would love to know how you came up with this thought.
You keep hoping the wrong things, Bob. It is not going to happen. Homo sapiens is going to slam into the wall at near full speed. Our only hope is for yet another technological miracle. Barring that, we're screwed.
Hello Keithster100 and Greyzone,
Thxs for responding. You guys are probably correct, but the many AZ tribes control vast landholdings in crucial habitats. The Arizona tribes have terrible problems with obesity, alcoholism, and diabetes, along with other problems directly attributable to living against their ancient teachings, skills, and culture. PO + GW Outreach would be the best thing that ever happened to them as they could readily adopt their past cultures to biosolar living.
Take the health problems for example. I have read articles saying their tendency to get vastly overweight is due to the fact that their bodies are desert-evolved for the efficiency of highly active laborious lifestyles. Adopting sedentary habits and auto-driving is killing them vs their ancestors covering large distances to glean slim-pickings from the sparse AZ habitats. A early tribal recognition of this fact could lead to active permaculture programs whereby they go back to growing native foods versus Chez Doodles and Soda Pop. What better way to optimize their decline?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I have to dissapoint you about YATM. Physics being what it is has dealt its cards and the solar hand is as good as it gets. And it is a damn good hand, if I may say so... 10000 times the power manking needs, guaranteed for another three billion years...
If I were you, I would play that hand.
The difficulties of solar relate to how diffuse it is and therefore to the general problem of collection. Your statement of 10,000 times the power mankind needs can immediately be quartered, because currently there is no feasible way to install solar collectors on ocean surface. Then we can further reduce the collectible surface area based upon other factors, including food needed for agricultural, etc. Finally, the availability of solar is variable based on latitude with more nothern climates having less availability than southern climates. This brings into play problems of distribution and storage.
It sounds all very nice to point to the total solar radiation falling on planet earth but there are real engineering issues that must be addressed to utilize that energy. It doesn't just happen because the energy is there. If that were the case why had it not already happened in the prior thousands of years of human existence? Ah, yes, it DID happen, but the utilization level was so low as to preclude a modern lifestyle or modern population densities.
In other words, the engineering issues are not yet solved on a scale or in a manner that does anything other than ensure massive social upheaval anyway.
Now exactly what were you trying to say again before the bus of reality ran over your pipedream?
Yeah.. like many of us, you miss IP's point entirely.
As long as we hit this wall HARD enough, our bodies will just pop through the hole the collision produces, and land neatly on our bikes which are parked on the other side of the wall.
Our buildout of PV/Wind/Solar Heat/Conservation measures are way too late. (Even Nuclear, for those who look to that route) Who knows if we still have a few years to really ramp them up, or if we will do it even so. More and more people are trying as Grid PV and other commercial products start to ramp up some, but the numbers, as most probably recognize, are dismally small. The lies and distortions of XOM and GM, et al.. are getting some noise, but few Pols can take this info to the logical conclusion.. or dare to anyway.
I do have some hope in the fact that we are spread out over the whole planet, and that some pockets will find solutions where others are getting slammed, or slamming one another. While the international economy is one of the great, chain nets that will pull many, many communities downwards together.. as economic ties weaken, various communities will have the chance to 'refloat' on local assets, and the reduced ability to transport so freely could also have the benefit of protecting various areas by the very virtue of their distances from others. This might once again be a saving grace for the profligate USA, with the oceans as massive borders to migratory flows or invasions, etc. But really, this thinking is more about much smaller areas and communities, which is what I work on, since it beats painting caustic pictures of the 'Road Warriors'. By the way, if they were all attacking each other for fuel, would they really be doing it in a bunch of souped up V-8's, or should we remake it to today's tech and have them all on Vespas and Priuses?
I had a fairly pollyana-ish friend who took the 'Grass is always greener' aphorism and turned it into 'Make your own grasses as green as possible'.. Hard to say it without smirking, but I know it has a good bit of truth in it, nonetheless.
"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.."
Bob
"souped up V-8's, or should we remake it to today's tech and have them all on Vespas and Priuses"
I suppose what the V8's had that the Vespas & Priuses don't, is it is possible to extend their running life using only metal hand tools.
Greyzone, before denigrating somebody else's 'pipedream', at least get your geographic facts correct. Solar energy is more abundant in the tropics or nearto than it is in either more northerly or more southerly locations.
Hemisphere-centricity aside, he's right. The "total solar flux" argument is the last refuge of the cornered cornucopian. It's a will o' the wisp that blows away at the first breath of common sense.
Right. Could one consider the fission products of all fissionable materials in the Earth's crust and bulk, or all the deuterium in the oceans?
Totally pointless---like pointing to the vast deserts of Australia or North Africa and exclaiming how much luxury truffles they could produce.
Whoa! Big deal! I spoke from a northern hemisphere perspective! Horror of horrors!
Guess what? Most of the land mass upon which solar collectors can be installed is... *drumroll* in the northern hemisphere.
My statement can be easily cut by a factor of one thousand, because once we start to change Earth's albedo by more than 0.1% or so, the absorbed heat causes global warming directly. Let me show you why that is so:
Currently (2001) it is estimated that we use 4.26 × 10^20J of energy annually. That is roughly 13,500GW of continuous power, most of which is waste heat, of course. Solar radiation on the surface is approx. 1kW/m^2. The exposed side of the planet has an effective area of pi*r^2 = 1.34e14m^2. Thus the power of solar radiation hitting Earth's (completely cloudless) surface is roughly 130,000,000GW and above the atmosphere it is 50% more. 1W/m^2 is the magnitude of the radiative forcing from trapped IR radiation in the atmosphere (energy that has not been used by us at all) that causes global warming. This equals roughly 132,000GW of heating power. These are all orders of magnitude, in reality there is cloud cover etc. which is seriously complicating things.
Thanks to the energy conservation law it does not matter where the heat that causes global warming comes from. It can be trapped IR or it can be heat created by fusion power, to the planet it is all the same. It follows that ANY power generation method will have similar effects on the surface because the only way to get rid of it is by radiation into space! The limit of how much energy we can use in total before we start heating the planet directly (rather than by changing the atmospheric IR scattering) is therefor only one order of magnitude beyond the amount of energy we use already. And since future solar cells will have roughly 40% efficiency (going beyond three junctions seems a waste) and since the thermal efficiency of other power generation methods is also 40%, useful power vs. process it is a wash. I made the assumption here that the radiators are at sea level... you could always put the power plants on stilts above the atmosphere and then avoid the 60% penalty or install the solar panels in space and use them to shade the planet etc., but I am trying to discuss 21st century technology here, not 23rd century stuff.
So if we really wanted to use energy beyond the 1W/m^2 limit (which is on the order of maybe 100,000GW), we would need to start installing planetary air conditioning. It can be done, but we are talking terra-forming or at least terra-controlling technologies here... something I won't speculate about right now.
You see... the point is that solar energy can easily cover what we need right now and then some. But beyond what can be done with solar energy, there is very little room for anything else without really heroic efforts.
"Now exactly what were you trying to say again before the bus of reality ran over your pipedream?"
I was trying to say that I have done my homework. Please, please inform yourself.
Hah... so all we need is to cover the whole planet with solar panels? we are saved!
Or. . . how many solar panels would it take to run a factory that makes solar panels?
much more then would be practical. it creates a feedback loop in which they must produce them faster and faster to get the energy they need to produce them faster to meet demand..
EROEI of solar is 5-10 and getting better all the time. No problem. Inform yourself.
"Only" a few hundred thousand square km with current technology...
Our houses 'only' cover a few factors more then a 'a hundred thousand square km'.
People don't get that. On a flight to the East Coast this year I got to see parts of the Midwest and observed how huge the area of the barn roofs was. It occured to me that one could probably generate more net energy by putting solar cells on the farm barns than by all bio-ethanol efforts in total. But then... solar cells don't vote. Farmers do. So the political influence is all with bio-ethanol.
Sorry Bob, but I have to agree with Keithster. Speaking as a card-carrying Indian living in the Native-American Ground Zero known as Tulsa, Oklahoma, I can assure you that (unfortunately) the tribal nations are as short-sighted and greedy as any other. Our leaders are elected based on the promise of economic growth within our nations, not on a far-reaching view of an ecologically-balanced future. We're just folks like anybody else.
Hello Tsulio,
Thxs for responding. I am a fast-crash doomer [realist] myself, but I think some tribes could rapidly modify their reservations to Biosolar lifestyles with gambling income. Sorry, I am not familiar with Native-Americans in the OK area, and what I know about AZ tribes comes from Googling and what I notice from driving around my state.
For example, the Fort McDowell tribe is only 900 members [only 600 live on the Reservation] but in 1996 they each annually got $30,000 apiece from tribal dispersement. This amount is probably much higher nowadays because I know that the casino has been expanded greatly and with the continuing growth of the Asphalt Wonderland: business is booming. With 40 square miles of land for so few people-- there is much they could do to enhance future sustainability if they can shift their mindset. Here is a link:
http://www.ftmcdowell.org/History%20&%20Cultural.htm
If I owned that much land and had that kind of annual free money--I would be installing PVs, potable water systems, bicycle paths, permaculture, and so on. Many tribal members have new McMansions and are driving new SUVs [noticed in my last drive], so I guess the Peakoil message hasn't spread to them yet. Sadly, they also ignore my warning emails as I have gotten no response. It is very difficult to get past those gatekeepers that have the power to filter emails, but I keep trying.
I think that once the tribe does become aware, that the much smaller bureaucracy [as compared to Az state govt], will be able to move very fast in adopting Biosolar changes. Once PO+GW Outreach achieves saturation-- it is only natural to try and optimize the decline path ahead. Time will tell.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Unfortunately, it comes down to the average human's short-sightedness. The figures you cite are impressive, but as you point out, this revenue is being spent on the same goods and housing as in the rest of America. While you do make a good point regarding the smaller beauracracy leading to a chance for swift change within a particular tribe, you have to keep in mind that the individuals who make up that tribe probably aren't interested in building a sustainable community. They're interested in buying all the stuff that gets advertised on their satellite TVs.
Anecdotally, I give you my tribe as an example. When we began to see greater income as a result of our successful gaming enterprises, we established a program to provide a free college education to any tribal member who wanted it. The catch? You have to choose between either Gaming Management or Environmental Engineering. Graduates of the latter program are in strong demand to deal with the ecological fallout from our last great revenue boom - leasing tribal lands to oil and gas. Instead of preparing for the future, my tribe attends only to its present needs.
It's not impossible that some far-thinking tribe will implement the changes you suggest, but it's no more likely within the Native American community than it is within groups of educated and thoughtful Anglos, Latinos, or African Americans.
fast-crash doomer + realism = Lots Of Laughs.
Same for the idea that Native Americans will save the white man's ugly butt. That sounds more like eco romanticism to me.
Here are the facts: solar and wind energy markets have reached $11+ billion each in 2005 and are projected to grow beyond $100 billion some time around 2015. Venture Capital has discovered over the last two years that there is big money to be made in renewable energy and keeps pumping it up on the technology side. Drivers for alternative energy markets are government efforts all over the world to reduce energy dependence and imports from less than stable suppliers. In effect: renewables are becoming the playgound of the adults. Which means more international corporations and big business rather than Mom/Pop tech outlets and university R&D. Banks will want their share in return for the trillions of dollars of loans that it will take to re-tool the world energy infrastructure. When Edison and GE got into the game, it was huge. But it will be completely dwarfed by what will be happening over the next two decades.
I don't think the Native American tribes will get to play a major role in this. They would have to play it mighty smart if they wanted to.
The thing about buying/selling Solar/Wind equipment, is that a company is taking the chance of being the 'capitalist who sells you the rope to hang him with'.. as you can get products that don't require service contracts or visits by refueling trucks. It is one of the most hopeful things about Renewable Energy, and is why I support it over Nuclear, in part, as it allows a broadly dipersed ownership of the 'energy supply' create a more practical level of democracy than always is present on the paper-ballots of a paperless society.
FYI, I think my own, white butt isn't ugly at all. You just have to take my word on it.
I don't see renewables as the endpoint of capitalism. Quite the contrary. The capital expense to make millions of reliable solar panels for a competitive price is enormous. You can't just grow them in your back yard, they are being produced in state of the art factories. MW size wind turbines are enormous engineering challenges. You can't carve them out of a piece of wood in your garage. All of this is hard core technology on many levels. We are talking about industries here that have to grow to close to a trillion dollars a year if they are supposed to make even a dent in our energy future. And they will... we shall see $100 billion within a decade, at which point renewables will be everybody's darling (if for no other than economic reasons) and we will see the trillion worldwide being approached over the next 30 years.
The problem with nuclear is mostly that physics has linked weapons materials like Pu to the operation of reactors. You can't have civilian applications without the practical possibility of weapons. Most countries with exception of Japan, Germany and Switzerland, I think, got into the nuclear energy business as a by-product of their interest in nuclear weapons. Unless we can sort this out with international mechanisms to control the consequences, nuclear is a real pain in the ass. Just look at India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran. We shall see more of that.
And them ferrocious finns!
Yes that is the problem with nuclear. But massive coal expansion is worse.
We need to go to accelerator based reactors, which can burn up the long-half-life actinides, in the longer run.
I agree for technical reasons but I just can't see that happening for political ones. Who wants breeders in their back yard? Who wants the fuel reprocessing next door? Are we going to move ten times more disguised nuclear material across the country than we do already just because people are afraid of hosting the facilities in their county? I don't see it but maybe it is still the smaller of two evils...
Accelerator driven reactors are rube goldberg machines that keep getting press, but they just suck. Its an interesting, but dumb idea. You can make critical reactors just as safe, and accelerator reactors just as dangerous. If you want to do actinide burning, just use a liquid chloride reactor. If you want to do actinide free breeding, use a liquid fluoride reactor with thorium fuels. Just dont spend hundreds of millions more on a giant accelerator system.
http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/
I was not aware those accelerator ideas were still kicking... the Russians loved to talk about them in their nuclear physics textbooks but once you had to deal with a real accelerator meant to produce (a lot of) radiation (I was involved with SNS, ugly, ugly, ugly is all that comes to mind), you rather want to stay away from the idea.
I guess we still haven't seen the final demise of the fusion reactor, either. At least the Tokamak kind looks utterly hopless for its poor economy, but it seems the world is set to burn money in it, if not deuterium/tritium.
Thorium reactors, IF they became reality, could be interesting. How much real effort goes into making them ready for prime-time?
There are some Norwegian research in Thorium reactors. I have only read very short articels about it where it is said that the interst in it is due to Norway having very large Thorium deposits. They probably would like to develop this technology to export Thorium when their oil and gas deposits run out.