Peak Oil

[Rusty Barrels]

I'm wondering if any of you guys are familiar with this site?

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/


If you go by this the shit is likely to hit the fan within the next few years (It won't splatter much unless it's a solar powered fan, though). Does anyone know other credible sites dealing with Peak Oil and other coming crises?

 

[Duxprep]

I 've seen that site -Some very interesting stuff. Another forum is http://peakoil.com/.

What was eye opening for me was the realization Oil (ie. petroleum) is intergral to EVERYTHING in our society. Food production (pesticides) transportation, and virtually all manufacturing processes. Many many materials that are critical to everyday life have petroleum in them or require petrolium to produce them. Thats the driving reason why the western world is so focused on securiing oil - Its not just about the gas. So as supplies begin to dwindle the "S" truely begins to hit the fan..................

 

[drgrant]

IMO I don't think we're going to run out of oil anytime soon. This
doesn't mean, that it won't get more expensive, etc. The real problem
is global demand has increased, so this strains the entire system and having
surpluses as time goes on is going to be less likely as the global demand is
more dynamic. The US is not the only country with people in it that
want to drive cars, etc. And then you have India and China growing at
exponential rates with populations which dwarf ours by orders of magnitude...
even if a small pct of those people drive and do other things, that's still a
shitload of oil being used.

The oil mafia types have too much to lose by not having something to sell... so
if we were anywhere near running out of oil, they would be gearing up to sell
some kind of other energy source.

I tend not to believe these "the world is running out of oil" types.... yeah,
it'll happen... but everytime they start whining about it the oil mafia finds
some huge new drilling potential, etc, which seems to contradict whatever
the doom and gloom types are saying.

-Mike

 

[csharpdev]

Peak oil isn't about "running out". It's the point when discovery, pumping and refinement can't keep up with demand. It's becoming harder and harder to find oil, the oil they are finding is becoming harder and harder to pump.

We could hit peak oil 50 or 100 years or more before we actually run out. The effects of even the slightest drop in oil production are enormous. The article is worth a full read. And when it comes to "alternitives to oil", there are none.

 

[Jose]

And when it comes to "alternitives to oil", there are none.

Bullshit.

Nuclear fission is an electrical power generator without peer and it is right here right now.

Diesel fuel can be synthesized from organics such as legume oil and coal.

Gasoline can be replaced with ethanol.

Those are just the short term measures and all that is needed to deploy them in large scale is a national will like the one that made us first in space. There are no technological barriers to making any of them happen.

Nuclear fusion and H2 fuel cells will take care of the overwhelming majority of electric and motive power needs in the future.

Those who think there are no viable alternatives to oil are either supremely ignorant or have a vested interest in the oil industry.

 

[matt]

Bullshit.

Nuclear fission is an electrical power generator without peer and it is right here right now.

Amen.

Diesel fuel can be synthesized from organics such as legume oil and coal.

Gasoline can be replaced with ethanol.

not in any real quantity though don't think, unless the price of oil goes WAY up.

Nuclear fusion and H2 fuel cells will take care of the overwhelming majority of electric and motive power needs in the future.

I've worked in the fusion research industry. It will ALWAYS be 50years away... don't hold your breath.

Regarding fuel cells, it was my impression that the source of H2 is from oil.

 

[csharpdev]

Oil has a much higher energy density than the other fuels. Yes you can burn ethanol but it takes as much or more energy to produce the ethanol as you can get out of it. (according to the article) Ethanol was also one of the myths that aired on 20/20 along side the "gun control reduces crime" myth.

The most cost effective way to get H2 is from oil (as far as I know). You can get it from water but the energy required to break the Hydrogen-Oxygen bond is more than the energy you get from burning the H2 (per the article). Also Hydrogen fuel cells use a lot of precious metals like platinum.

I don't know about fission but I'm pretty sure fusion uses Uranium, something that is not in infinite supply. Even if fission is the answer what is the cost and time required to replace all oil and natural gas fired power plants and where does the energy come from to build the power plants?

But I'm assuming everyone has read the article. If there are errors in the facts provided in the article please point them out. It was written by a lawyer; for whatever that's worth. Lawyers do seem to be pretty good at doing research, then again many of them I'm sure are quite dishonest.

 

[Rusty Barrels]

Bullshit.

Nuclear fission is an electrical power generator without peer and it is right here right now.

Diesel fuel can be synthesized from organics such as legume oil and coal.

Do you realize how much petroleum is required to plant, fertilize, harvest, transport, and process all those legumes? What about the looming crisis of the loss of farmable land in this counrty due to poor farming practices since the 1930's? How much rationing are you willing to put up with when all that food acreage is replaced with fuel acreage?
Do you realize how much petrolium is currently used to exctract, process, and transport all that coal?

Gasoline can be replaced with ethanol.

Ethanol comes from corn and corn prices are already rising dramatically due in large part to the (relatively) small amount of ethanol being produced and the rising cost of oil. Ethanol is a pipe dream, my friend, but the liberals and the media sure are in love with it.

Those are just the short term measures and all that is needed to deploy them in large scale is a national will like the one that made us first in space. There are no technological barriers to making any of them happen.

I think rearranging every aspect of our infrastructure to suit some new form of energy will be more costly than anything we've attempted in human history. It will be especially difficult with the cost of oil rising because that affects the cost of everything so there will be less capital lying around for people to invest in new technology. By the way, have you noticed any "national will" to overhaul out energy infrastructure? It seems to me like America is still hooked on "cheap" oil.

Nuclear fusion and H2 fuel cells will take care of the overwhelming majority of electric and motive power needs in the future.

The last I heard, a hydrogen fuel cell car costs about $1,000,000 with no hope of new breakthroughs to lower the price. And as csharpdev said, the manufacturing process is heavily dependany on petroleum.
My understanding of uranium is that there is not enough of it to supply the world's needs and how do you power a car with uranium anyway? We won't be switching to electric cars powered by fission generated electricity anytime soon either. And don't forget the ocean liners, buses, trains, and trailers that are used to transport goods all around the world. Are they going to be powered by electricity also?

Those who think there are no viable alternatives to oil are either supremely ignorant or have a vested interest in the oil industry.

How do I know you're not supremely ignorant?

 

[Duxprep]

Well done, Rusty well done. Anyone who has looked at the issue in depth understands that nearly all alterntive fuels as well as vitually everything in the world as we know it has a dependency on petroleum. It is in fact a finite resource, and some day (likely sooner rather than later) we'll begin to experience what happens when that supply begins to dwindle

 

[Jose]

Do you realize how much petroleum is required to plant, fertilize, harvest, transport, and process all those legumes? What about the looming crisis of the loss of farmable land in this counrty due to poor farming practices since the 1930's? How much rationing are you willing to put up with when all that food acreage is replaced with fuel acreage?

Having lived for a decade in the Great Plains, I'm pretty sure you are wrong about our loss of farmland. I'm no farmer, but seeing three or four combines make short work of several thousand acres of wheat in a day makes me think it is you who does not understand how much fuel is used to plant and cultivate massive quantities of grain.

As for transportation and processing costs, do YOU know how much oil is a part of that? Or are you asking a rethorical question hoping no one will call you on it?

Do you realize how much petrolium is currently used to exctract, process, and transport all that coal?

Obviously not as much as the energy content and market value of the coal, or else it would stay underground.

Ethanol comes from corn and corn prices are already rising dramatically due in large part to the (relatively) small amount of ethanol being produced and the rising cost of oil. Ethanol is a pipe dream, my friend, but the liberals and the media sure are in love with it.

I don't remember where I said ethanol was the only solution. Can you please point that out for me? Gasoline powered cars will be replaced by diesel ones here just like it has happened in Europe simply due to their efficiency. The convergence of technology and demand will be here in 2 to 3 years. I happen to work in the auto industry, so you can take that one to the bank.

I think rearranging every aspect of our infrastructure to suit some new form of energy will be more costly than anything we've attempted in human history. It will be especially difficult with the cost of oil rising because that affects the cost of everything so there will be less capital lying around for people to invest in new technology. By the way, have you noticed any "national will" to overhaul out energy infrastructure? It seems to me like America is still hooked on "cheap" oil.

Would you kindly explain what about our infrastructure needs to be changed to suit electricity generated in nuclear fission power plants? How about electricity generated in fusion power plants?

Our what needs to be changed to switch from gasoline to diesel through a pipeline? A few hundred gallons at the beginning flush out the residue and done. You apparently don't understand much about our electrical grid either.

The last I heard, a hydrogen fuel cell car costs about $1,000,000

Since there are none available for retail sale, your quoted cost is irrelevant.

with no hope of new breakthroughs to lower the price.

And this you know how? Because you read it on the internet?

My understanding of uranium is that there is not enough of it to supply the world's needs

Quote please? And when is uranium supposed to run out under various scenarios? Did you know that spent reactor fuel can be reprossed and used to power reactors again? The French have been doing it for years. This dumb statement of yours really shows your ignorance. And tread carefully on what you claim to know about nuclear power generation. I made my living at it once.

and how do you power a car with uranium anyway? We won't be switching to electric cars powered by fission generated electricity anytime soon either. And don't forget the ocean liners, buses, trains, and trailers that are used to transport goods all around the world. Are they going to be powered by electricity also?

The rest of this rant is so ridiculous it does not warrant a thoughtful response.

 

[Rusty Barrels]

I'm hoping that no one who read the last post needs to read a point by point rebuttal to see the flaws in it. I can't see how it's worth my time to get in an argument about this here. I'll hold my toungue, Jose, and you can think whatever you want about what I originally said.

 

[hminsky]

I think nuclear power has been given a bum rap in the US by the environmentalists. It is plentiful and potentially extremely safe and clean as well. I saw a neat proposal to build a large array of underground nuclear plants out in the desert someplace. By using a common design instead of a one-off design each time, the plants would be much cheaper to build, and if one leaked, it would simply be sealed up; being buried it would not contaminate anything.

Power can be efficiently distributed across the country now, using a new technology for high voltage DC distributition, which is much more efficient than AC distribution (the Japanese manufacture and use high voltage DC for parts of their power distribution grid).

Electric cars would make the cities cleaner and quieter.

Hydrogen could be generated pretty easily where it is needed.

I think it is kind of sickening how we burn oil today, it's like burning whale oil for lamps. Oil is useful as a lubricant, raw material, chemical and fertilizer ingredient, but we should NOT be burning it.

 

[Len-2A Training]

Background: My first job out of college was 3 years as a nuclear project engineer on submarines at GD/EB (Groton, CT). I really loved the work, but left when the politics put men and boats at risk and put me in an untenable position. I stayed in touch with my former boss and coworkers for a good 10-15 years after I left.

I later got hired by Stone & Webster Engineering writing engineering policies(boring) and legal policies in response to laws and regulations (interesting). When that lay-off hit (CA passed a law in 1978 prohibiting any new nuke plants and thus SunDesert got killed), I went to work at Yankee Atomic Electric Company as an engineer, responsible for the Yankee Rowe plant's instrumentation (interesting and worked with a great bunch of folks at the plant, not so great people in my Westboro office!).

So, my comments are based on 6 years in the nuclear industry, working on the issues as a result of Three Mile Island's disaster. I was in the Yankee Rowe control room when TMI went down, their ROs were frantically calling our ROs to get an idea of what was happening - TMI ROs were clueless! And watching the legal and political results (from the inside of the industry) of what the Clamshell Alliance (anti-nuke group) did to PSNH (Seabrook)!

Nuclear power is technically very viable and can be very cost effective when implemented correctly. But it is the politics of the industry that will kill you!

HOWEVER:

- Many of us left the industry in disgust and will never work in that field again.

- The regulatory process strangles viable companies, putting them on the verge of bankruptcy before they can build anything. It's an economic disaster to even think of building a non-military nuclear plant in the US.

- The NIMBY factor will tie any company up in court with one lawsuit after another for 10-20 years. This drains corporate resources, resulting in bankruptcy and no power plant.

- The politics and stupidity of gov't in in-action! Nuclear fuel rods when "spent" are easily recyclable. However, the gov't has never had the balls to mandate a plan to transport them from the power plants to a recycling plant for rebuilding and re-use. Therefore, the NRC has mandated that they be maintained FOREVER on-site and never moved or re-used. e.g. Yankee-Rowe has been totally dismantled, but "containment buildings" had to be built and secured to contain all the fuel rods on-site! Thus the need for security forever, the land it sits on can't be "recycled" for other uses, etc.

- As the NRC publicly stated in their report on TMI, there are some companies (who are/were) in the nuclear field who should NEVER have been there. They don't have the right "headset" about how to SAFELY run/maintain a nuclear plant vs. a coal/oil/gas plant that they were doing for years and years. These are usually companies that had "jumped on the nuclear bandwagon" just to make money.

* This really hit home after TMI as I talked to the Yankee ROs that were trying to help them while the disaster was happening and the AAR we were given, complete with pictures/video of TMI taken a week after the disaster by a team of Yankee employees who went down there to help out. If you can imagine, a week after the disaster there was NO SECURITY on-site that made sure that nobody walked/drove onto the site unless authorized, even though the site was "hot" (radiation leak)!!

* My one visit to Pilgrim scared the hell out of me, and I've crawled around reactors for years. They had radioactive leaks (contaminated water) all around inside the plant all the time. Their management admitted to us that they had fires within the plant on a regular basis! Their management teams were replaced on a regular basis and the workers didn't follow orders, knowing full well that their managers would be gone shortly! All the worst of this was confirmed to me by an old friend, someone I went to high school and college with and later became plant manager at Pilgrim. I caught his ear at one of our high school reunions and he confirmed every bad thing I pointed out about Pilgrim and it's management.

 

[Adam_MA]

I think it is kind of sickening how we burn oil today, it's like burning whale oil for lamps.

Tell me about it! We should just set fire to the whole whale! No processing that way!

 

[Duxprep]

Pilgrim

LenS - Were you aware that Pilgrim is up for re-licensing as we speak? We've all suspected what you've stated about security lapses and failures within the plant . The NRC just doesn't seem to give a crap and seems to want to let these things slide. Boy would it be nice to have your sworn testimony on record!

 

[Len-2A Training]

My testimony is worthless, as I visited the plant in 1979 and totally left the nuclear industry a week or two after that plant visit.

I have no real idea what's gone on there since that date. My info is terribly dated (almost 30 years) and I would hope that they've "cleaned up their act", but I don't even stay in touch with anyone in that industry any more (my friends from S&W days moved on/retired).

NRC has on-site inspectors who are supposed to stay on top of this stuff. I guess you can draw your own conclusions on those that were assigned to Pilgrim back then!

BTW: You could eat off the floor (safely) at Yankee-Rowe and Vermont Yankee back in 1978-79, in comparison. Even with that said, I have no way of telling what the last days at Yankee-Rowe were like or what Vermont Yankee is like today.

Also, I am a firm believer in the technical viability of nuclear power. It can be done (technically) very efficiently and safely. NRC rulings on not moving spent fuel rods off site very negatively impact both efficiency and safety! I am a realist (you see that in my postings about gun laws here too), understanding the political will to do the right thing (or not) and the reality of getting something done (or not) wrt building new nuclear power plants (ain't gonna happen on mainland US soil).

Sorry, but I can't be of any help regarding Pilgrim's current situation.

 

[pipmaster1971]

The reality is that there is currently no single solution to the peak oil problem. Certainly we are not there yet, but burying out heads in the sand isn't the solution either. What there will be is a multi-pronged approach.

* Nuclear: Certainly has great potential, at current demand maybe they could provide another 100 years or so. If we really start a stable concerted global research effort into thorium reactors, fast breeder reactors etc. they could last much longer. Of course, if we switched the bulk of our energy production to nuclear this supply would shrink considerably. However, it could give us time until fusion becomes viable.

* Methane: Lots of it on the sea-bed. It also has great potential.

* Alternatives: Are always a possibility; however as has been proved by the Cape wind project you still need to get around the nimbyism. It has potential to provide a large amount of our power, but certainly not core production. Again, it'll be regionally based.

* Ethanol: Great potential providing the Iowa lobbyists don't screw things up for us. I can see that some parts of the country would use corn based ethonol, others would use sugar-beet based ethonol, some would use switch-grass and others would use a combination. The same would be true globally. It is NOT a panacea, it has problems (like those mentioned by other posters). It's hard to transport, energy hungry to produce.

* Reduce demand: Ahhh....the one that no-one mentions. Perhaps people are scared of been called hippies. Simple things, buy a fuel efficient car next time you're in the market, ensure homes are constructed well, turn lights off when not in use, keep your foot off the gas, cut out a few car journeys per week. I can't find the resource, but one link I read stated that SIMPLE efficiency savings (not some hippy move into a mud hut type savings) would cut global energy use by 15-25%.

Your big problem with energy research (and this is true in the US and world-wide) is that no country is willing to invest long-term political capital into any single technology, or a combination of technologies. You get a pro-nuclear administration in power one year, and then an anti-nuclear administration in 4 years later. No company is going to invest billions in such an unstable political climate.

 

[JonJ]

http://www.planetark.com/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=42538

China May Stop Ethanol Production From Corn

BEIJING - Beijing may ask China's four authorised fuel ethanol plants to gradually shift away from using corn as a raw material, Xinhua news agency said.

The state-owned news agency quoted an unnamed official from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) as saying at a seminar on biofuels that the plants would have to switch to non-grain raw materials, such as cassava and cellulose.

But a commission official told Reuters that there was no detailed plan for such a switch, which would not likely happen soon even if officials decided to end production.

"Considering that some regions need ethanol supplies, the production will not stop," said an official with the commission.

"Some of the producers in Henan, Heilongjiang and Anhui are already studying the use of sweet potatoes and cellulose, but the technology is not mature yet," said the official who declined to be identified.

The Xinhua report late on Sunday comes as domestic cash corn prices are starting to climb amid tight grain supplies despite a record 2006 crop, due to increasing demand from corn processing industries, including fuel ethanol producers.

Beijing has already stopped approving the construction of new corn-based fuel ethanol plants, while providing generous subsidies to the four plants, which largely use corn. China is the world's number three producer of fuel ethanol after the United States and Brazil, with Beijing promoting biofuels, including biodiesel, to reduce the country's dependence on imported oil.

"Food-based ethanol fuel will not be the direction for China," Xinhua also quoted Xu Dingming, vice director of the Office of the National Energy Leading Group, as saying.

Story Date: 12/6/2007

 

[drgrant]

* Reduce demand: Ahhh....the one that no-one mentions. Perhaps people are scared of been called hippies. Simple things, buy a fuel efficient car next time you're in the market, ensure homes are constructed well, turn lights off when not in use, keep your foot off the gas, cut out a few car journeys per week. I can't find the resource, but one link I read stated that SIMPLE efficiency savings (not some hippy move into a mud hut type savings) would cut global energy use by 15-25%.

IMO limiting demand is great but it is really only a stopgap. World population
grows, or more people get lights, etc, and you're back at square
one. Sounds nice in principle but good luck getting it to actually work.

One demand limiting idea I actually like is telecommuting... because that
actually produces a shitload of tangible, easily realized benefits for a bunch
of different people. Not taking that extra trip to wherever doesn't
amount to much... but not having to put 450 miles on your car every
week (like I do) would equal a HUGE return on investment. As it is
now I burn up over $120 from every paycheck (2 weeks ) paying for gas to get
to and from work, then there is the parking and all the other crap that comes with owning a car.

Better off just trying to find a cheap source of electricity and improving the
transport (and efficient use) of said commodity. IMO that pays better
dividends than trying to convince billions of people to change their
energy use habits in a bunch of fragmented ways.

-Mike