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No, I like the fact that you are open about your beliefs. I just wondered whether much useful debate could occur.

If you have two work places then you probably have choosen the best option.

It is rational for companies to ask for subsidies and tax breaks: Your competitors will anyway. I think when it comes to big business it is more a case of govts being controlled by industry than the other way round.

Here's a random article talking about subsidised nuclear power:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/pgem/electric/ch2_box1 .html

A more reasonable standard (and the one currenly aimed for) is for the waste to become as harmless as the original unprocessed uranium ore that the waste ultimately came from.... which, I will point out, was not "stored" with any care. It also becomes simpler if you reprocess, and separate out the longest and shortest lived wastes by type. That brings it down to about a 10ky timeframe, which while a difficult criterion for a repository, looks achievable.

Hey, if mother nature can manage the problem, humanity ought to be able to figure it out.

That's the thing. They are radioactive

With the information on that page and a few others, we can do some math, and shed some light on the matter.

"...the average radioactivity per short ton of coal is 17,100 millicuries/4,000,000 tons, or 0.00427 millicuries/ton" (or 4.27 Curies/ton)
Source: http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html

The United States consumed 1107 million short tons of coal in 2004
Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/quarterly/html/t 28p01p1.html

Electrostatic precipitators capture 99.8% of particulates.
Source: http://www.airbornepollutioncontrol.com/jul26_2004 .html

Thus, all coal-burning facilities in the United States release an estimated 4.27 Curies/ton * 1107 million tons * 0.002 = 9.454 Curies of radioactive material every year.

Chernobyl released 7 million Curies of radioactive material in 1986. Windscale in the UK released 20,000 Curies in 1957, and an early accident at the Hanford plutonium processing plant in the US released 205 Curies. Three Mile Island released 17 Curies.
Source: http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/369/3619.html

That's the thing. They are radioactive

With the information on that page and a few others, we can do some math, and shed some light on the matter.

"...the average radioactivity per short ton of coal is 17,100 millicuries/4,000,000 tons, or 0.00427 millicuries/ton" (or 4.27 Curies/ton)
Source: http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html

The United States consumed 1107 million short tons of coal in 2004
Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/quarterly/html/t 28p01p1.html

Electrostatic precipitators capture 99.8% of particulates.
Source: http://www.airbornepollutioncontrol.com/jul26_2004 .html

Thus, all coal-burning facilities in the United States release an estimated 4.27 Curies/ton * 1107 million tons * 0.002 = 9.454 Curies of radioactive material every year.

Chernobyl released 7 million Curies of radioactive material in 1986. Windscale in the UK released 20,000 Curies in 1957, and an early accident at the Hanford plutonium processing plant in the US released 205 Curies. Three Mile Island released 17 Curies.
Source: http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/369/3619.html

So do all the other nuclear power plants in the South keep you up at night?

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_gla nce/states/statesal.html

I count 20 commerican reactors with a quick look at former Confederate States.

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html
http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/energy/factshts/163-9 7/FS-163-97.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nucleare nvissues.html
http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/coal.htm

WTFUD?

No need. There's prior art on that one already. http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0010.sht ml

Do you know what percentage of atmospheric gases is CO2?

0.035%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_atmosphere (Pie chart a little bit down the page.)

Let's say, just for argument, that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere doubles. Then it makes up 0.07% of the earth's atmospheric gases.

This is not going to kill us.

"Carbon emissions for U.S. territories range from 9 to 12 million metric tons per year." http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/gg99rpt/appendixa .html

One metric ton is 1000 kg.

"Volcanic activity now releases about 130 to 230 teragrams (145 million to 255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcano

One short ton is 2000 kg.

Let us compare. US activity gives off 18-24 million short tons, volcanic activity 145-255 million short tons, of CO2 each year.

How much can we affect climate change if our entire CO2 emission is 1 percent of that of a single natural source of CO2?

Dept. of Energy Human Radiation Experiments

Tuskekee Syphilis Experimentation

Essay on Human Experimentation ...
...
Though I just yanked the top most of my mind and located that on Google for you, this should get you started.

Actually the stick that's being used to encourage the production of algeal farms is ironically, the kyoto convention. any 1,000 megawatt powerplant with roughly 3 square miles of land (2000 acres) nearby can produce about 40 million gallons of algea oil, and 50 million gallons of ethanol a year. and the algea thrives off of eating the co2 and nox from exhaust, while creating some potentially lucrative opportunities for the power companies.

by 2009 the system will be fully production tested, and they're currently installing several 'test sites' to make sure the system is ready to be brought online at any major fossil fuel plant world wide. http://www.greenfuelonline.com/

I also understand that the japanese are using a simmilar system, but rather than processing the algea into oil and ethanol, they 'mix' it back into coal, to be burned to produce the elctricity, that produces exhaust gas to feed the algea that gets mixed with the coal to, well you get the idea.

the ethanol and bio diesel markets may be more lucrative, than reducing annual fuel consumption by whatever 90 million barrels of ethanol and oil equate to in tons of coal.. although i found a handy calcualtor yay http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/science/en ergy_calculator.html
which says about 150 gallons of diesel is equal to a short ton of coal, and about 167 gallons of 'gasoline' (closest thing to ethanol) equals the energy in a short ton in coal.. hrm... but i still have no idea how much coal a 1,000 megawatt plant uses per year. if i'm interperting the calculator correctly, it's saying that you're getting over 1,000 times as much energy from 'cleaning' the emmisions as the plant is using, anually.

hrm. i have a funny feeling the news site i read the article on had some of the details 'wrong' because according to the wiki on solar power 3 square miles of land only gets a million megajoules of energy a year, roughly 2 weeks worth of power output from a 1000 megawatt plant. meh, perhaps the figures of millions of barrels was only if every 1,000 megawatt plant in the us that had room to put up an algea farm did so. that would make a lot more sense, since there are at least 1,000 of them.

Guess it's time to invade Canada and Mexico then, since we get most of our imported oil from them.

I'm getting tired of all this this Iraq=oil FUD. Iraq's total oil supplies are miniscule, so it's not like there's some effort to squeeze more blood from the turnup either. I'd put money on the possibility that we've actually used far more oil in the Gulf War II than Iraq itself could even produce.

Whatever the actual grievances of the US government, spreading and maintaining inaccurate information is counter productive.

I realize you were joking, but jokes are only funny when based in reality (unless you're British). "Hey, that spade's a diamond!" just isn't funny. That people assume you're right and laugh along doesn't make it true, it just makes them stupid.

yes, thats because:
>An algebraic result from the Hubbert theory says that the production rate peaks when half of the oil has been produced

Also, 'Peak oil' is not:
'peak oil production'
'peak oil consumption'
'peak oil discovery'
Its a combination and calculation taking into account these and other influences such as estimating undiscovered oil reserves, time taken to exploit, demand etc etc. shown in a graph form.

Maybe we should avoid referring to estimates and statistics and look at cold hard facts that are readily digestible:
We use oil.
We need to find this oil.
When we are finding less than we are using we need to prepare alternatives.

Sadly (just a couple of broad references as rants should only go on for so long):
"1965 was an incredibly significant year for modern civilisation. Because, although this fact went largely unremarked for three decades, it was the year in which our rate of crude oil discovery stopped rising and began to fall. It was the year of peak discovery, and since 1965 we have been steadily finding less."
http://www.thesharpener.net/?p=41#comments
"All or nearly all of the largest oil fields have already been discovered and are being produced" http://money.cnn.com/2005/12/07/markets/peak_oil/i ndex.htm

So i guess the time is right to find alternatives now ;)

Added thoughts (some discussed elsewhere in main thread, some not)
- Oil reserves are estimates. some of these numbers are simply wrong - lately we have seen a lot of reserve totals being decreased rather than increased - not good for us.
- What is oil? - we have lots of closish forms of oil, eg. oil shale, tar sands.
- see: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7616 to counter the argument that technology will save us
- "An oil well never runs completely dry; when the price is right, the oil can be made to flow again"
- Credit is due to some oil companies who are investing in researching alternative forms of energy but generally (IMHO) its not enough. I wonder how much influence public pressure has on this investment - do they do it to quieten down the rebels? After all, they are businesses and are expected to maximise profits which they are doing. I'd like to think that they are preparing for arguably their own futures - but i have doubts.
- "Food grains grown in the United States now contain between 4 and 10 calories of fossil fuel for every 1 calorie of sunlight."
http://www.thesharpener.net/?p=41#comments

oh,
"Given the long lead times required for significant mass-market penetration of new energy technologies, this result in no way justifies complacency about both supply-side and demand-side research and development."
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/featu re_articles/2004/worldoilsupply/oilsupply04.html

you know, fashion is a great thing. i say 'bring back the hippies'.

Peak Oil could be 2005/2006, but remember, just because its peaked doesn't mean economies that can afford to pay for it wont get their fix.

Betting against the bull can hurt, I want to see all these gloomy peak-oilists short sell stock and make billions on the impending downfall peakers predict.

I fail to understand why people fear peak oil and get all gloomy, like humanity will just give up and die out and not find other ways such as:

microbes

nuclear

wind

ocean current

fusion

shale oil

tar sands

mile deep rigs

etc.

On a global scale, volcanoes release less than 1% of human emissions of carbon dioxide and hence are a minor contributor to changes in its atmospheric concentrations. ...
Most recent estimates by volcanic experts with the U.S. Geological Survey suggest that, globally, volcanoes release about 150 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. By comparison, humans annually emit more than 22 billion tonnes (Gt) of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion alone, and another 6 or so Gt of CO2 from deforestation activities. That is more than 100 times as great as volcanic emissions.

Mount Etna, in Sicily, is the largest single volcanic emitter of CO2, estimated at 25 Mt of CO2 per year. By comparison, emissions from Mount St. Helens following its eruption several decades ago were less than 2 Mt of CO2/year.

Unless there is a distinct and pronounced rise in the mean temperature that can be shown to begin with the industrial revolution, I don't see this to be anything significant.
From the data in TFA, it only shows that there is currently a spike in the median temperature, and that there have been previous spikes and lulls.
In geological terms, IIRC we are between ice ages - 10K years into a 20K cycle. Guess what, I expect it to be warm right now & then start cooling off in the next 1K years or so.
I see lots of proof of global climate change, but I have seen very little data showing it starts with the industrial revolution and the increased production of greenhouse gasses by humans.
Compare 100 million cubic metres of gas of CO2 from 1 lake (184K Metric Tons) with 5652 Metric tons for the US in 2000. 30X the CO2 output of the US in it's worst recorded year - almost 8 times the entire worlds output. You think those numbers are bad? 1,800 tons per day of SO2 from a Hawaii volcano - with even more CO2.
Am I anti-polution control, heck no. I like breathing. But when it comes to claiming that humans are having a huge influence, I just think people are underestimating Mother Nature.

Sweet! We are totally off the hook! Especially when you consider that transportation is responsible for one-third of US CO2 emissions!

I'm happy to share the bill with the Chinese, but c'mon.

Here we go again, with the ignorant hate of GW Bush and the United States. Did you even KNOW that the US uses a considerably higher percentage of renewable energy sources than countries like the UK and Japan.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page /trends/table1.html
check it out 6% Renewable energy in 2004, and it never dropped below 5% in this 5 year period.

So what do we see from the UK over the same period?
http://www.restats.org.uk/electricity.html

Hmm it hits a peak of 3.58 in 2004, but for the majority of this time the US used twice the percentage of renewable sources during this time period.

now I point to energy production:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ranko rder/2038rank.html
So lets see... I'll save you the math I did but I calculated that the US DOES produce 10X as much non-renewable electricity as the UK. But look at the flipside of the coin we are producing 21X as much renewable electricity as the UK.

So yeah we are probably leading the world in pollution, but we are probably also leading the world in renewable energy usage. I agree, YES, we should use more renewable energy. But its not because GW is evil, its not because the United States is a terrible polluting machine, and its not because of that media scare tactic (in other words crock of ****) known as Global warming. We should the Earth is going to warm up and cool down on its own and what we do is not going to change that much. But, we are going to run out of fossil fuels and we are going to fill it up with disgusting toxic sludge. Lets go for the heart of the problem instead of pointing fingers and spreading fear.

USDA says that we can get as much as 2.66 gallons of ethanol from a bushel of corn. The 2004 harvest was 11.8 billion bushels, so the whole crop could yield (at most) ~31 billion gallons of EtOH.

Then there's biomass. The "billion ton vision" is looking for a billion tons/yr of stuff with cellulose in it. Iogen has an enzymatic process from which they claim 330 liters (87 gallons) per ton; from that you could theoretically get another 87 billion gallons a year.

Total from the whole corn crop (g'bye, Tony the Tiger and Corn Chex) and all that biomass would be 118 billion gallons/year. We burned 139 billion gallons of gasoline in 2004 (9,063,000 barrels/day), plus another 4 million bbl/day of distillate (diesel) and 1.6 million bbl/day of jet fuel. Ethanol isn't going to do the job no matter what, and hyping it as The Solution just because it isn't hydrogen is a huge mistake.

The problem with ethanol is, ironically, that it is compatible with the existing vehicle fleet. That fleet has an average tank-to-wheels efficiency of 14.9%. Lead-acid batteries are about 70% efficient, Li-ion is closer to 95%. We are far better off going plug-in hybrid than wasting our money on ethanol.

Moderators: when the parent is back down to 2, it's about where it ought to be.

Second, corrupt, incompotence, and lack of over sight. Check out the nuclear energy system in France. It's heavily governed, has strict regulation, design requirements, etc... In the US we have reactors that are in use beyond their expected life, storing significantly more spent fuel then designed, cutting corners on down time, bribing inspectors, and of all different designs and natures.

In analyzing this point, it's very important to ask the question, "Why is the system this way?" The answer is quite simple: Almost no nuclear reactors have been built since the 80's. The last one was made operational in 1996, ten years ago. This situation is caused by the politcial football that Nuclear Power has become. Any new nuclear plants must face thousands of regulatory issues, environmentalist protests, impact statements, and political resistance. The resistance is so high to opening new plants, that the cost and time required to open a new plant makes it impossible.

Meanwhile, plant operators struggle to keep their existing plants online well past their expected lifetimes. Nuclear Plants continue to close left and right, and it is only slightly less problematic to replace them with dirty coal fired plants. One way or another energy producers are losing. Demand continues to rise while generating capacity lags behind. Someone has GOT to shove through the cruft and make it profitable again to open power plants. Unless that happens, Americans will not see any new nuclear power, especially not safe nuclear power.

Second, corrupt, incompotence, and lack of over sight. Check out the nuclear energy system in France. It's heavily governed, has strict regulation, design requirements, etc... In the US we have reactors that are in use beyond their expected life, storing significantly more spent fuel then designed, cutting corners on down time, bribing inspectors, and of all different designs and natures.

In analyzing this point, it's very important to ask the question, "Why is the system this way?" The answer is quite simple: Almost no nuclear reactors have been built since the 80's. The last one was made operational in 1996, ten years ago. This situation is caused by the politcial football that Nuclear Power has become. Any new nuclear plants must face thousands of regulatory issues, environmentalist protests, impact statements, and political resistance. The resistance is so high to opening new plants, that the cost and time required to open a new plant makes it impossible.

Meanwhile, plant operators struggle to keep their existing plants online well past their expected lifetimes. Nuclear Plants continue to close left and right, and it is only slightly less problematic to replace them with dirty coal fired plants. One way or another energy producers are losing. Demand continues to rise while generating capacity lags behind. Someone has GOT to shove through the cruft and make it profitable again to open power plants. Unless that happens, Americans will not see any new nuclear power, especially not safe nuclear power.

...a boat that costs $300,000 to fill the gas tank (look it up).

US$300,000 to fill up the tank? I believe that I will look it up.

Let's assume that you're buying diesel at your local neighborhood Shell station, all road taxes and everything included. Right now, average price in the US, at the pump, is $2.472 per gallon. Diesel is around 7.1 lbs per gallon, so that works out to be $0.348 per lb, or $767.58 per tonne (~2204 lbs).

$300,000 would equate to 3,908 tonnes of diesel fuel at pervalining on road prices. Thats nicely refined diesel, not fuel oil. As a comparison, Cunard's QE2, a ship I can comfortably claim will be bigger and less fuel efficient than your average millionare's play-toy, holds 4,381.4 tonnes, consuming about 1/10 of that for every day of sailing. If you were to price out marine-grade fuel oil rather than diesel, you'd end up with more than a QE2's worth of juice. Even so, you'd have enough to send that liner over 7,000 miles before hitting empty.

Ah, the power of Google. But to your original claim, sir, I must call foul.

Granted, this is from 2002, but:

Transmission lines and distribution lines are categorized by their voltage rating. Transmission lines are generally defined as 115 kilovolts (kV) and higher (765 kV is the highest installed). Subtransmission systems are 69 kV to 138 kV. Distribution systems, that furnish power to retail customers, are less than 69 kV.

(cite)

So when did we go up to 1.4MV? According to the DOE, the most we use is half that.

'Course, that doesn't change your main point, but I'm having trouble finding ANY kind of transmission loss statistics.

Still think it's insignificant?
Compared to how much energy those people use for things other than not watching TV, yes I do. Any number can be multiplied up enough times to make it seem big, but to get an impression of whether it really is or not requires context.

For some context here, according to this page, in 2004 the total US electricity demand was 692,908MW (693GW). So your figure (which I suspect is high, but this is all wild ass speculation!) is 0.19% of the total.

Personally, I'm more concerned about the other 99.81% :)

The RTGs in question here are not just Plutonium slugs.

Remember there have been accidents with them in the past.

During the three mission accidents that did occur, the RTGs performed as predicted. The Transit 5-BN-3 mission was aborted because of launch vehicle failure. The RTG burned up on reentry as designed with the plutonium dispersed in the upper atmosphere. The RTG design was changed shortly after that to accommodate intact reentry. The next accident was with the Nimbus-B-1 that was aborted shortly after launch by a range safety destruct. The RTG was recovered, with no release of plutonium, and the heat sources were reused in later missions

The failure of the Apollo 13 mission meant that the Lunar Module reentered the atmosphere carrying an RTG and burnt up over Fiji. The RTG itself survived reentry of the Earth's atmosphere intact, plunging into the Tonga trench in the Pacific Ocean. The US Department of Energy has conducted seawater tests and determined that the graphite casing, which was designed to withstand reentry, is stable and no release of plutonium will occur. Subsequent investigations have found no increase in the natural background radiation in the area.

In order to minimise the risk of the radioactive material being released, the fuel is stored in individual modular units with their own heat shielding. They are surrounded by a layer of iridium metal and encased in high-strength graphite blocks. These two materials are corrosion- and heat-resistant. Surrouding the graphic blocks is an aeroshell, designed to protect the entire assembly against the heat of reentering the earth's atmosphere. The plutonium fuel is also stored in a ceramic form that is heat-resistant, minimising the risk of vaporization and aerosolization. The ceramic is also highly insoluble.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTG
http://www.ne.doe.gov/space/space-desc.html
http://www.nuclearspace.com/facts_about_rtg.htm

http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy /northern_fleet/incidents/31772.html
Nice information about RTG powered lighthouses

You are incorrect. Nearly a third of all electrical production in the United States comes from oil and natural gas, and coal produces about 43% of our electricty, not 60%.

Natural gas produces about 19%.
Oil contributes about 12%.
Nuclear is about 14%.
Hydroelectric is about 7%.
And lastly, renewables, not including hydroelectric, are about 12%.

See my source for more details.

About 43% of our electical power in the United States comes from coal power plants.

But coal has several problems. First, there are the obvious environmental issues... although I doubt many people will care about those once oil hits $150 a barrel. (Environmental issues have a tendancy to take the back burner when people can't afford to heat their homes.)

The second problem is that while coal is certainly more plentiful then natural gas and oil, it too is a limited natural resource. Coal production could peak as early as 2035.

As far as oil sands, it is just too expensive to produce sweet crude from oil sands. By too expensive I mean more $100 a barrel. Sure, as peak oil makes itself more clear oil sands may indeed become a viable alternative, but only viable insofar as cheap will be redefined. The economy will still collapse and wars will still be fought over the remaining "cheap" oil supplies. Our current way of life is simply not sustainable.

One hope I do have is for oil shale. Shell has come up with some new techniques to extract sweet crude from oil shale at a cost of about $30 a barrel! This would be absolutely fantastic and would give us at least another 30 years to deal with peak oil... not to mention the fact that the United States has the world's largest deposits of oil shale and it would give us a MASSIVE edge in the global conflicts that are likely to arise over the next few decades regarding oil.

Actually, you are the first. The fact that you Canadians do not actually consider the US a threat to your safety and security (if you did, your current low expenditures on military preparedness could only be described as suicidal) kind of puts the lie to your myth of the big bad oil-grabbing US, now doesn't it?

As for the remainder of your post, the fact that you see no operational difference between a large, stable democracy like India having nukes, and a totalitarian regime like Iran which has stated as a matter of policy that it believes that another nation in its region should be obliterated having nukes tells us much more about your reasoning than anything else you've said.

Okay, that's not quite true. Your ignorance about jthe world oil economy tells us a lot too (hint: can you name the top 10 nations selling oil to the US? Do you think the list supports your claims about the importance of Iraqi, Iranian, and Russian oil? Well, do you?).

"I believe that he makes a big mistake: he equates society with government."

I not so sure about that -- Diamond says that government is a facet of society, and governmental collapse is a symptom of pending or occurring societal collapse. Government can also contribute to societal collapse, as it's actions or lack thereof directly affect the actions of the people in a society.

As to "If the government would butt out, we could return to the days that an honest day's work reaps and honest day's pay."

This is exactly the problem. Can't see the forest for the trees -- everyone doing what is in their immediate best interests (an honest day's pay) can result in dire consequences in the long run for the entire society.

We need to wisely pick and choose what policies, restrictions, etc, we enact for ourselves, or else we'll burn out our resources and cause our own collapse. And how else do we enforce those policies except through government?

My problem with Simon's analysis is that he looked at historic figures, typically over huge populations. Also, his calculations were based on societies that succeeded; by default, no failed societies were included (like the ones that Diamond examines). Also, historical models cannot be extrapolated to the future with certainty -- just because we've not yet hit the limit of sustainable resource use doesn't mean that no limit exists -- especially as our actions often decrease the supply of available resources.

"There is more oil still in the earth than all the oil we've taken out in history: we just need to find ways to get it out profitably."

Considering that we've only been using oil for less than two centuries, and that oil use is still increasing -- the fact that more remains than we've used is insignificant -- some details on that from DOE. Note that other fossil fuels are picking up the slack for oil, since oil usage rates are increasing slower than they were a couple decades ago.

"We don't have that today as our currency is constantly stolen through inflation, people don't enter their own businesses due to regulations and licensing, and we're uncompetitive as we don't work hard because government provides everything, cradle to grave.

Little of this statement has to do with resource depletion and management, except for the claim that people don't enter business due to regulation and licensing. A lot of that regulation and licensing is there to prevent people from personally profiting in a manner that has a net bad effect on society. Restrictions on high-polluting mining methods, for a very visible and clear example. Regulation is a way for society to govern itself to do what it thinks is best. Which brings me back to my first point -- government is part of society. It's a primary method by which people impact the actions of others within their society.

"Electricity generation is expected to nearly double between 2002 and 2025, from 14,275 billion kilowatthours to 26,018 billion kilowatthours."

Thank you. I've never seen the actual numbers ran, and they appear to be legit within a margine of debatable error. I get:

Area of earth = 5x10^14 M^2 x (4.8 kWh/meter^2)/day = 2x10^15 kWh/day x 365 days = 7x10^17 kWh annual sunlight recieved yearly.

Your consumption numbers seem a bit high.

I get about 1.5x10^14 kWh per year world consumption projected for 2010 from more official sources.

divide the available annual recieved by the usage and we get, very conservatively 4000 times the energy needed is recieved. To adjust for my original statement which was per day, we get 1 decade of energy consumption per day in sunlight on the planet. I was off by a couple orders of magnitude, unless my math is wrong.

Also, though, to not compare apples to oranges, we have to consider that since we have already accounted for energy loss from the planet in our sunlight calculations, most of the energy recieved is converted to SOME FORM for storage on the earth, be it biomass, heat, electrical, etc. My original statement was that we can afford sinks of energy converting these forms into more useful ones, which I think holds, although without quite the punch of my original statement, especially if we consider other forms of energy not provided by modern terrestrial solar that we can tap, both renewable and non-renewable, such as currently geothermal, fission and fossil and in the (hopefully) near future, extra terrestrial solar arrays, fusion, geomagnetic and non-fossil chemical.

I think you're getting confused between "fission" and "fusion".
Here is a list of operating plants using fission.

Nuclear plants can only replace power generation sources. In order to evaluate the real impact of power generation sources which don't emit CO2, let's compare the amount of CO2 emitted by existing "electricity production" facilities to all the other uses.

Amount of CO2 emitted in the US by sector in 1998 (million metric tons carbon per year):
Electricity production: 549.8
Industrial: 298.9 (477.7 minus 178.8)
Transportation: 484.2 (484.9 minus .7 from electricity)
Commercial: 60 (238.4 minus 178.4)
Residential: 92.6 (284.5 minus 191.9)
(Source: Energy Information Administration (mainly page 25))

Bottomline: electricity production accounts for 550 while the other players sum up to 936. And those 936 will be very hard to reduce because we will have to hackor replace every internal combustion engine, every classic heater... But we need (Kyoto) to reduce those emissions by at least 60% before 2050. Therefore the theory "nuclar plants will solve the greenhouse gas problem" is, as far as I understand, JAAL (Just Another Awful Lie).

Any thingie able to produce grid-electricity without polluting is interesting, but some write that nuclear plants are the only way. This is... well, you guessed it... JAAL, because most clean sources (sun, wind...) can do it.

In fact even the coal plants can be much cleaner, for example trough some clever design. Will be, in fact, instead of "can be", because some are building them right now. And don't think of it as some european gadget, see FutureGen.

Those clean sources, and even the clean coal-plants, do not produce dangerous waste and are more easy to build, run and dismantle than a nuclear plant. And they do not run amok, Chernobyl-style.

> 4000 people from Chernobyl? Wherever you are getting this from must be counting
> everyone that died in the area for whatever reason

No. This '4000' figure comes from recent (2005, September) evaluation by pro-nukes and is is very probably way underestimated.

Not even that works, just look at all the hooha that is being made about Yucca Mountain . It is located in one of the most bleak and god forsaken corners of this country, and is almost 2 hours north of Las Vegas, in the middle of the Nevada Nuclear Test Range. Despite its remote location, suitability for long-term waste storage, and the billions already and yet to be spent to insure safe operation on a scale of thousands of years, it is still not good enough in the eyes of nuclear power's detractors.

Reactors use fuel to heat water to drive steam driven turbine generators right.

How much heat is needed? How many turbines are there? Could we not instead of using uranium, rather
use photos to heat the water from the sun, fed by giant lenses fed by fibre optics, so we could in effect
have lots of collectors 10m wide funnel the light down 1inch fibres all heating the water pipes
which drive the turbines. Sure its only during sunlight, but damn, its 100% free once running. Even during
cloudy days, but not real real dark days. So what surface area do we need to equal a nuke plant? The surface area
of the nukeplant perhaps?

Something like this - http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/re newable/solar.html#Parabolic%20Trough
or http://www.enviromission.com.au/project/video/vide o.htm (build 10 of these babies)
and http://quasiturbine.promci.qc.ca/QTVapeur.html for more info

That website is a from a business which would like to profit from low energy research (nothing wrong with that, but it's not an objective scientist's site). If you restrict yourself to websites of national laboratories and respect physicist groups, you'll find a different story: continued investigation recommended, but no convincing evidence because of background noise, poor experimental technique, etc. For a summary of the state of affairs, see this So it's premature to say "IT's Real!", just that scientiists say it's worthy of further research.

I don't think the temperatures is anywhere near "normal" fusion temperatures. Here is a reference suggesting you need 10-100 million degrees. TFA says the the temperature in the bubbles is maybe 15,000 or so at best.

Or... we could listen in on 1-900-hot-sexx calls, take peoples' fingernail clippers away, dick around in totally unrelated countries, and continue to make sure that we hand over as much cash as possible to terrorist supporters in saudi arabia in the form of imported oil.

I'd rather do nothing. If nothing else, it's cheaper. Otherwise, how about some stuff that makes sense?

- Armed air marshals on flights. Failing that, issue every able-bodied man a machete, and assume that the good guys will outnumber the bad. Or hell, let's just coast on the knowledge that you can't even set fire to your shoe during a flight anymore without it turning into an audience participation event. That'll probably last a few years... longer if Bush keeps everyone on high-alert with the fear engine.
- An intelligence community that has the ability and power to convince friendly interests to help us. Bonus points if it actually obeys the law and properly notifies Congress of its activities within the timeframe allotted by the law. If several weeks after a wiretap is not enough time to find paper and pen and write a report about it, then ask Congress to change it.
- Energy policy that at least pretends that it's weaning us off foreign oil. And by that, I don't mean the ANWR, whose "hot" new estimates are at a 95% chance of having 11 billion barrels (about a year and a half of supply at OPEC's current ~25Mbl/day, assuming we could even pump that fast from a single field)
- A lighter hand in foreign government: Iraq wouldn't have been the mess it is now if we hadn't first put Saddam there. Oh, and many of Al Qaeda's top members were CIA trained (including bin Laden himself). It appears our country is short on learning from its own history. Also, let's try to have fewer influental people telling foreign heads of state that we should assassinate them.
- That our leadership joins the rest of the 16th century in condemning torture, which has been discredited for about that long as an interrogation tool. Knowing it has been used, I am led to wonder just how many of the "credibile" threats that we've had in the past few years end in "now please! take the stick out of my ass!" or "quit electrocuting my balls!"
- That the next time the US decides it wants to do something that costs more than 20 billion dollars or so, that someone sits down and writes out a real plan on what the goals are, what the plan to achieve that goal is, and what the timeline looks like. It doesn't have to be accurate -- this is the government we're talking about here -- but it needs to exist so that people can pretend that someone in charge knows just what the hell is going on.

Humans currently use 321 TWH/day. Solar insolation at the equator is about 425 w/m^2. So 321,000,000,000,000 WH / 12H (sunlight per day at equator) and further / 425 W = 6.3 × 10E10 m^2 required for all human power needs, if located near the equator, and 100% efficiency.

Assuming 50% efficiency conversion gives 1.5 10E11 m^2 required, which would be a square 355 km (220 miles) on a side. This is about the distance between Washington, DC, and New York, NY.

So we need a photovoltaic array about the size of Pennsylvania (174 x 309 miles) at the Equator to produce 314 TWH/day.

Do you think that may have other environmental effects?

On the other hand, nuclear power reactors generally produce around 1 GW of electricity, so it would take 13,000 reactors to provide all human power. There currently are 441 producing 381 GW altogether (about 9 TWH if we assume they run 24 hours which most do while up).

Since the Earth's land area is 148 million km^2 / 13,000 = you can have 11,000 km^2 around each nuclear power plant, or one every 114 km or so. Or to make life easier, you can have more reactors per plant, there is no big reason why you couldn't have 10 per site and have only 1,300 installations (cooling is the only limitation, air cooling is possible but water cooling is cheaper and easier to build).

Current photovoltaic production is about 180 MW peak, keeping in mind that is probably around 1 GWH/day given average day length. That number is way up in the last few years, it was about half that in 2000. I imagine there is probably ~10 GWH/day being produced by solar now, compared to 9 TWH/day of nuclear, a factor of about around one thousand.

Well, powering 6 billion people with nuclear isn't a terribly attractive option either.

How much of our (electrical) power could we get out of the alternatives? All of it, actually. Take solar: On a clear day, insolation is about 1000 W/m2. Lets assume a 10 percent efficiency rate for converting that to electricity. (Current photovoltaic cells are more like 17 percent, but the up-front costs make PV a bad tech for large-scale. I'm thinking something like solar towers, or solar thermal)

The area of Nevada is 286,367 Km2. If you were capture the energy that reaches 1/100th of Nevada, you would generate 2,863,000,000 KW. (that's 2 TRILLIAN.) Take it down with our assumed efficiency of 10 percent, and you get 283 billion KW (283 GW) of electricity.

Total power generation capacity in the US = 963 GW (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epa_ sum.html).

Not bad. Make it 1/10th of Nevada, and you've overshot current production by a factor of 2.8 (or so).

Of course, in the real world, you'd spread the generation out across the states, keep gas turbines as a backup, and use pumped storage to overcome rough spots (or hydrogen, if you must, even though it's much less efficient.)

The other neat thing about alt energy is that while the initial investment is high, it never needs to be refueled. It really makes a lot more economic sense then natural gas, nuke or oil. (and coal, if you take into account things like health care costs and other environmental problems.) The trick is to get the players to look at it as a 40-year investment, rather then a 20-year.

-Daniel

What about counting the people poisoned with plutonium injections during the Cold War? The U.S.A government has a web site about it. Of course, you could read this too. The victims of this testing are mostly dead now, but might have lived long, healthy lives if not for the United States need to know what radition does to people.

And, if we go back to the 19th century, what about the many thousands of Confederate fighters who were killed by the Union forces? I'd say they deserve to be counted as citizens killed by the United States.

Our government has relied upon force to keep itself in control of everything it wants to, and only the peoples' right to challange uncontrolled government authority in court has kept us from becoming a completely facist state. I still love our country, and see it has made progress toward peace and justice for all, but let's not ignore that some people in power want to corrupt the system with facist tendancies, and they need to be stopped now!

Gosh, I am disappointed in the quality of nerds these days. Ever heard of the back of an envelope? For god's sake, units of energy are defined by how much they heat water, so it's not hard to figure this one out.

Projection from http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/world.html is that the world will use 645 quadrillion BTUs of energy per year in 2025. If we assume this all comes from the ocean at 100% efficiency, this would be enough to raise a patch of water, 100m deep by 1024km on a side, by 1 degree C. Insignificant next to the whole ocean? sure. But certainly significant compared to local or even regional climate variation! (not that hydrocarbons aren't worse, or that this can't be spread out but hey, now all the slashdot blather can be vaguely informed. sheesh).

Well Toby the economist. The DOE and many other places say that only about 3% of electricty comes from oil. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profil es/us/fig3.html

Since you are an economist you MUST have some numbers to back your statement up. So how is it at that oil, which is barely used in electricty is solely responsible for making windpower so much more cost effective?

You do have facts right? Or are you one of those republican econimists that pulls stuff out of his ass?

Incorrect.

Oil is not a dominant driver of the price of electricity. In 2004, the US got 3% of its electricity from oil, less than, say, conventional hydro, and not a whole lot more than non-hydro renewables (see here). Natural gas, on the other hand, was responsible for 18% (coal was 50%).

The cost of wind power has been steadily declining. Depending on the data you look at, it can be very competitive with traditional sources of electricity. In fact, because the marginal cost of producing electricity from wind is (nearly) zero, adding wind power capacity can *lower* electrical rates, because a wind farm operator can usually be the low bidder on the spot markets, lowering the final price (I'm speaking slightly out of my ass here, but the general idea is correct). Conventional generators are always bound by fuel prices for their marginal costs.

While the University of California will be deeply involved in the new management of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, it is not strictly correct to call this a win for UC. As the DOE press release makes clear, the winner of the competition was a limited liability corporation comprised of UC, Bechtel, BWX Technologies and others. The difference is very significant in some areas. For example, LANL personnel will no longer be members of the UC staff and participants in their retirement system, but employees of the LLC. The DOE did not release details of the winning proposal yet. As they do, I believe it will become increasingly clear that there is much more to this change than just UC continuing to play the same role.

As of now, we don't have enough energy to allow everyone to live like those of us in 1st world countries

The problem here is that you lump Europe and other "1st world" countries in with the US, then take the US's insane per capita energy consumption as the baseline. The US uses more than 4 times as much energy per capita than the other G-7 nations, while the actual quality of life is very much comparable.

This can mostly be contributed to simple waste of energy. The details are on Google, but let me share a personal anecdote: on a business trip to NYC in June, the highrise airconditioning didn't ramp up quickly enough for a warm weather period. So the first 2 days it was terribly hot in the office. Then it grew colder until on the 4th day it was freezing cold. The people working there were already prepared and whipped out their radiant heaters, which from then on ran full throttle to combat the building's air condition that also was running on what seemed maximum power (the hallways, without radiant heaters, were too cold to stay there). When I returned in October, the same situation still prevailed.

So, simply by behaving like the other G-7 nations, the US could cut 80% of their energy consumption without any loss of quality of life. And this is although in Europe there is also a lot of wasting going on, and estimates here say that we could easily half the consumption, again without any loss of quality.

I think we could provide comparable qualities of life to the whole world, if the US (and to a lesser extent the rest of the "1st world") would stop acting as if it all belonged to them.

Gamma radiation is very high energy (and short wavelength) EM radiation. Neutrons are...neutrons. Alpha particles are Helium nuclei, and Beta radiation is positron radiation. That's about it for the types of radioactive decay radiation [sic].

A sheet of paper is sufficient to block alpha particles. A thin sheet of wood will effectively block beta radiation. Lead works well for neutrons, and a LOT of lead is required for gamma radiation.

Beta radiation is high energy electrons or positrons. In beta minus decay (from a nuclear conversion of a neutron to a proton), an electron and an electron-antineutrino are emitted. In beta plus decay (from a nuclear conversion of a proton to a neutron), a positron and a electron-neutrino are emitted.

Lead does not work well as a shield against neutrons. Being that neutrons have no net charge, they do not interact very strongly electrically (though they do have a very small electrical and magnetic moment due to the fact that they are composed of quarks). Hence, they will pass right through lead without a problem. Only very light nuclei will allow them to bounce off losing a significant amount of kinetic energy. This is why most nuclear reactors are moderated with water--it is hydrogen rich (a light nuclei) and is more effective at stopping neutrons. If you want to know more information, read the neutron moderation section of the DOE's reactor theory technical standard (V1) (warning: large PDF).

The positive feedback loop associated with the difference in albedo between sea ice and open water is generally recognized. Another, potentially more powerful feedback loop that is not as widely known is the potential huge release of methane from the arctic permafrost. First, note that atmospheric methane is a very strong greenhouse gas, about 8 times stronger than carbon dioxide. According to http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/oilgas/hydrates/,

"Methane hydrate form in generally two types of geologic settings: (1) on land in permafrost regions where cold temperatures persist in shallow sediments, and (2) beneath the ocean floor at water depths greater than about 500 meters (about 1,640 feet) where high pressures dominate. The hydrate deposits themselves may be several hundred meters thick." "In 1995, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed its most detailed assessment of U.S. gas hydrate resources. The USGS study estimated the in-place gas resource within the gas hydrate of the United States ranges from 112,000 trillion cubic feet to 676,000 trillion cubic feet, with a mean value of 320,000 trillion cubic feet of gas. Subsequent refinements of the data in 1997 using information from the Ocean Drilling Program have suggested that the mean should be adjusted slightly downward, to around 200,000 trillion cubic feet -- still larger by several orders of magnitude than previously thought and dwarfing the estimated 1,400 trillion cubic feet of conventional recoverable gas resources and reserves in the United States. Worldwide, estimates of the natural gas potential of methane hydrate approach 400 million trillion cubic feet -- a staggering figure compared to the 5,500 trillion cubic feet that make up the world's currently proven gas reserves."

I was interested in what proportion of the methane hydrate reserves were located in the permafrost region, and how much methane release might result from melting of the permafrost. Here is some revealing information:http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/geoma rs2001/pdf/7035.pdf

From the above link we learn that oceanic hydrate contains up to 95% of all naturally occurring hydrate worldwide. The methane deposits under the permafrost are at least 200m deep, some much deeper, and those deposits constitute an estimated 5% of total methane hydrate deposits on Earth. So the actual estimate of methane trapped beneath the permafrost is estimated at 5% of 400 million trillion cubic feet of methane is:

2,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic foot = 56,633,693,423,376,624,568 liters, trapped below the permafrost.

Now, further: "What matters for climate change is methane mass (kg or tonne). Normally, volume (m3) or flow rate (m3/h) is measured using some measurement device or instrument, and these volume values are converted to mass (kg or kg/h). An intermediate step usually involves adjusting the measured volume by measured pressures and temperatures to volumes at standard conditions (0 C and 1 atm, equal to 1.013 bar)." http://cdm.unfccc.int/methodologies/inputsconsmeth /MGM_methane.pdf

So for methane, "1 gm mole occupies 22.4 litres at 273 K and 1 atm.

C 12.01115

H 1.00797

16.043 g CH4 = 22.414 litres

Density (16.043 / 22.414) = 0.7157 g/litre or kg/m3.

So 56,633,693,423,376,624,568 liter * 0.7157 g/liter= 40,532,734,383,110,650,203 grams = 40,532,734,383,110 metric tons [metric] (40.5 trillion metric tons).

somebody please check my calculations...

For comparison, the mass of the Earth's atmosphere is estimated at 5.3×10^18 Kg =5,300,000,000,000,000 ton [metric]

Scientists are beginning to see evidence that methane and CO2 release from thawing permafrost is a positive feedback result of the warming

Like it already is, you mean?

The US Department of Energy has by statute ultimate responsibility for the disposal of spent nuclear fuels. The point and timing of Department of Energy custody of such waste is an active subject for the court system and for negotiations between power generators and the Department. Nuclear fuel disposal costs are funded by a surcharge on the cost of nuclear fuels. Presently this charge is 0.1 cents/kWh of power generated.

From Nuclear Power and the Environment, a DOE EIA paper. The paper also correctly notes that whether the disposal price is set adequetely high is open to debate.

The program was called Operation Plowshare. I stood by the crater in the wikipedia page called the Sudan Crater in May. It's ridiculously huge. A few of these in a line and you'd have a nice canal started, or a good sized lake (with complimentary 3 eyed fish for a while)

It's safe now, but at detonation, the area was pretty heavily contaminated.

I'd post as myself, but I already modded this discussion.

~
tivoKlr