The Oil Drum

This is a guest post by Eugenio Saraceno, member of ASPO-Italy and consultant for energy sources management.

First, thanks to all who contributed ideas. You may have an entirely different opinion on the most important energy stories. Feel free to share it. Many of these stories were contributed by various readers. Comments by readers are italicized. If you want to know who wrote what, you can see the entire comment thread here.

Click "There's More" to see my Top 10 Energy Stories of 2007:

We on The Oil Drum spend so much time worrying about oil supply that we tend to think that electrical supply is relatively safe in comparison. If we stop to think about the issues, I think that we will find that the electrical situation is not much better than the oil situation. The likelihood of widespread electrical outages in next five to ten years is uncomfortably high.

We may already be starting to see some beginning examples of electrical shortages, such as this recent story regarding Maine. Residents were being asked to conserve electricity because of a natural gas shortage related to supply disruption and cold weather. Maine has a relatively tight electrical supply and heavy dependence on natural gas, so it is at high risk for this type of disruption. I expect to see more outages like this in the coming months and years, especially in high-risk areas.

In this post, we will look at some areas of vulnerability for the US electrical supply. While this analysis is restricted to the United States, some of the issues discussed may also be relevant to other countries.

(More beneath the fold)

A couple of days ago I was reading the CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential debate transcript. Of course I am always interested to hear what the candidates have to say about energy. There were a lot of good comments, and the usual spattering of dumb comments. But I won't dissect them right now. What got me to thinking were the comments of John Edwards (on Page 2):

The energy gap left by declining fossil Solar fuels may be filled by alternative sources of energy. In short, the Earth has ample supplies of energy to sustain human population and economic growth. Discuss....

This post is intended to provide a structured background to energy matters for new readers and hopefully to provide a provocative debate with seasoned Oil Drum veterans. A listing of over 50 links to Oil Drum articles from the past year is provided which combined provide a comprehensive overview of the issues surrounding peak oil and energy decline. If you are new to the site or have been lurking and want to ask a question then all you have to do is sign up and post your query. The Oil Drum is here to educate--and we are here to help.

This is a guest post by Miquel Torres.

A recent post by Martin Sevior has invigorated the nuclear energy debate causing over 240 comments with the most diverse opinions. I would like to further pursue this debate, as the question of whether nuclear power can provide a big part of the worlds energy needs is extremely important in the Peak Oil debate, because it is the only alternative energy source beside coal providing the type of electricity production necessary for the current electric grid model: big, base-load capable power plants. If that role is fulfilled, the current electricity production system can continue beyond Peak Oil, and even expand to provide the energy necessary for electrified transport. If it falls short, a new energy model is needed.

[editor's note, by Prof. Goose] This is an updated/edited repost by Martin Sevior, Associate Professor, School of Physics, University of Melbourne. We thought this a worthy topic for discussion as nuclear power keeps coming up in many of our threads. The original post can be found here. (Forget not the reddit and digg buttons...)

In the middle of the last year it became clear to me that the Australian Government was interested in having a debate about Nuclear Energy for Australia. I decided that we, in the School of Physics, could make a positive contribution to the debate and organized a study group to investigate this. We constructed a wiki-based website (http://nuclearinfo.net) where we placed our findings. We went live in December, 2005 and have updated the website as we've learned more about energy issues and Nuclear Power.

In this post I draw heavily on that website and restrict myself to talking about light water fission reactors. There are a variety of different and more advanced reactor schemes that could be addressed in a future post. There are more details on our website on all of the topics covered here.

In the middle of the last year it became clear to me that the Australian Government was interested in having a debate about Nuclear Energy for Australia. I decided that we, in the School of Physics, could make a positive contribution to the debate and organized a study group to investigate this. We constructed a wiki-based website (http://nuclearinfo.net) where we placed our findings. We went live last December but have updated the website as we've learned more about energy issues and Nuclear Power.

In this post I draw heavily on website and restrict myself to talking about light water fission reactors. There are a variety of different and more advanced reactor schemes that could be addressed in a future post. There are more details on our website on all of the topics covered here.