Worldwide Energy Depletion?

[mweiss 0]

I was reading on TheOilDrum.com this week, a mix of several articles, starting with nuclear power fuel supplies, and later, articles on sustainability, and came across a surprising assertion, by, what appear to be several individuals working in the nuclear power industry: that Uranium supplies are winding down, the mines aren't producing as much as we need, and that the shortfalls are temporarily being covered by purchasing, through contract set to expire in 2013, uranium from decommissioned warheads from the Russians. The article states that Russia, aware of its own shortages, will not renew the contracts for sale of U238 to the US.

I was unaware of the numbers. They are larger than I had imagined: something on the scale of 60,000 tons per year are mined. Reactors consume about 90,000 tons. The difference is coming from military sources. The article indicates that in 2013, a massive global shutdown of reactors will begin phasing in.

I also read other assertions that touched on the nature of businesses and decision makers to tend not to plan ahead, but continue along unsustainable paths until dire emergencies arise as a direct result of shortages.

On one hand, I sense an undercurrent of enviromentalism on that site's articles, but on the other, the writers produce voluminous data, all referenced, supporting their assertions. And these writers claim to work in the industry. They, more than anyone, should have a realistic understanding of the situation, would they not?

Still other articles talk about the fabric of society breaking down as we transition from a high energy consumption society to a low energy one. The transition, they say, could be catastrophic, displacing the middle class into poverty, infighting and a struggle to survive in the most basic pre-historic-type way.

I would agree that we are inexorably tied to petrol and nuclear as energy sources. The one hope is the breeder reactor, but, as the Oil Drum folks assert, these technologies take time to ramp up, decades at least, and if the infrastructure collapses before that ramp up, then society falls into chaos and survivors emerge as a feudal society.

There is so much more to discuss, but that's the very slim nutshell. We live in a rather irrational society, where industry has short look-ahead and government is ultimately irrationally selfish with its "do anything to get reelected" mentality, which is not forward-looking in the least.

I know that Objectivists feel that we are NOT overpopulated, and some have even said you could fit the world's 7 billion into the state of Texas with reasonable density, but these are mostly conjecture with now demonstrable proof or references, so I'm skeptical that we are not reaching a critical nexus between population/energy demand and available cheap/recoverable energy supplies.

I think the truth resides somewhere in between the two extremes. My thinking is that we'll see a continuing escalation of oil prices, forcing more and more people to use less, but hopefully we won't see a catastrophe that causes a disruption of the fabric of society and the food supply; that this transition will be gradual enough to allow innovative minds to solve the problem with solutions that will allow us to maintain the current lifestyle at affordable rates.

I don't know about anyone here, but I've seen my electric bill go from $80 to $544 in the span of one decade. Four decades ago, I paid $6 for electricity on a monthly basis. I can't imagine being able to sustain another doubling of the rate, as it would then equal property taxes and exceed all other expenses. Cap & Trade promises to cause an intentional steep rise in electricity costs, which would surely set the nation into panic as the poor would lose access to electricity, causing a massive exodus from the north to warmer climates and the middle class to further tighten spending, causing a deepening of the recession.

Anyone here have inside knowledge or work in the energy industry care to share your views on the Oil Drum's publications of doom and gloom? Are we destined for a Guatamalan lifestyle in the next decade? Or will it be business as usual?

[toyohabu 0]

According to this site there is at least a 230 hundred year supply of uranium at current rate of use. This does not include the possibility of improvements in efficiencies and if need be the 60000 year supply of uranium that resides in the worlds oceans. There is also the thorium cycle and thorium is 3 times more plentiful than uranium. It does not appear that we need to worry about this.

[Bob Kolker 0]

Use breeder reactors. They can be dangerous, but they can make plutonium for energy use.

Bob Kolker

[mweiss 0]

Just one article from a mainstream magazine to support nuclear energy security? Are there any industry white papers that support this, other than the opinion of a college dean? I'm looking for inside industry evidence. I'm trying to figure out if TheOilDrum.com is a conspiracy of enviros, or a gathering space for industry insiders who are being truthful to the extent their knowledge allows.

This was extracted from:

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5677

Intro to the article follows:

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

During 2009, nuclear power plants, with a capacity of 370 GWe, will produce roughly 14% of the world-wide electric energy. About 65,000 tons of natural uranium equivalent are required to operate these reactors. For the last 15 years, only 2/3 of this fuel has on average been provided by uranium mines, whereas 1/3 has come from secondary resources. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the secondary uranium resources will be essentially exhausted during the next 5-10 years. In this paper, the situation concerning the secondary resources at the beginning of the year 2009 is presented. The data used are from the IAEA/NEA 2007 Red Book, "Uranium Resources, Production and Demand," and from the World Nuclear Association (WNA).

Our analysis shows that, at the beginning of 2009, the remaining world-wide civilian uranium stocks amount to roughly 50,000 tons. With the almost inevitable yearly draw-down of 10,000 tons, these civilian stocks will be essentially exhausted within the next 5 years. This coincides roughly with the year 2013, when the annual delivery of 10,000 tons of natural uranium equivalent from Russian military stocks to the USA will end. As the majority of the remaining civilian stocks, about 30,000 tons, are believed to be under the control of the US government and American companies, it seems rather unlikely that the USA will share their own strategic uranium reserves with other large nuclear energy users. In summary, all data indicate that a uranium supply shortage in many OECD countries can only be avoided, if the remaining military uranium stocks from Russia and the USA, estimated to be roughly 500,000 tons, are made available to the other countries.

[JohnRgt 0]

According to this site there is at least a 230 hundred year supply of uranium at current rate of use. This does not include the possibility of improvements in efficiencies and if need be the 60000 year supply of uranium that resides in the worlds oceans. There is also the thorium cycle and thorium is 3 times more plentiful than uranium. It does not appear that we need to worry about this.

It seems that, on our current course, about the only thing we could ever run out of are caves -- and we know the Green solution to that.

[toyohabu 0]

another site

Canadian site

[rtg24 0]

Just in case it needs repeating, most of those projections assume:

1. population growth will continue at emerging markets rate forever, and longevity will continue to grow at civilized world rates (otherwise the numbers just aren't scary anymore)

2. energy efficiency will remain the same forever.

Anybody who has watched any Western country's working class and middle class over the course of the last century will laugh at 1. (Japan provides further insights) and as for 2. try running a Boeing 787 against a Caravelle; or indeed, visit Tokyo!

[Bob Kolker 0]

I was reading on TheOilDrum.com this week, a mix of several articles, starting with nuclear power fuel supplies, and later, articles on sustainability, and came across a surprising assertion, by, what appear to be several individuals working in the nuclear power industry: that Uranium supplies are winding down, the mines aren't producing as much as we need, and that the shortfalls are temporarily being covered by purchasing, through contract set to expire in 2013, uranium from decommissioned warheads from the Russians. The article states that Russia, aware of its own shortages, will not renew the contracts for sale of U238 to the US.

I was unaware of the numbers. They are larger than I had imagined: something on the scale of 60,000 tons per year are mined. Reactors consume about 90,000 tons. The difference is coming from military sources. The article indicates that in 2013, a massive global shutdown of reactors will begin phasing in.

I also read other assertions that touched on the nature of businesses and decision makers to tend not to plan ahead, but continue along unsustainable paths until dire emergencies arise as a direct result of shortages.

On one hand, I sense an undercurrent of enviromentalism on that site's articles, but on the other, the writers produce voluminous data, all referenced, supporting their assertions. And these writers claim to work in the industry. They, more than anyone, should have a realistic understanding of the situation, would they not?

Still other articles talk about the fabric of society breaking down as we transition from a high energy consumption society to a low energy one. The transition, they say, could be catastrophic, displacing the middle class into poverty, infighting and a struggle to survive in the most basic pre-historic-type way.

I would agree that we are inexorably tied to petrol and nuclear as energy sources. The one hope is the breeder reactor, but, as the Oil Drum folks assert, these technologies take time to ramp up, decades at least, and if the infrastructure collapses before that ramp up, then society falls into chaos and survivors emerge as a feudal society.

There is so much more to discuss, but that's the very slim nutshell. We live in a rather irrational society, where industry has short look-ahead and government is ultimately irrationally selfish with its "do anything to get reelected" mentality, which is not forward-looking in the least.

I know that Objectivists feel that we are NOT overpopulated, and some have even said you could fit the world's 7 billion into the state of Texas with reasonable density, but these are mostly conjecture with now demonstrable proof or references, so I'm skeptical that we are not reaching a critical nexus between population/energy demand and available cheap/recoverable energy supplies.

I think the truth resides somewhere in between the two extremes. My thinking is that we'll see a continuing escalation of oil prices, forcing more and more people to use less, but hopefully we won't see a catastrophe that causes a disruption of the fabric of society and the food supply; that this transition will be gradual enough to allow innovative minds to solve the problem with solutions that will allow us to maintain the current lifestyle at affordable rates.

I don't know about anyone here, but I've seen my electric bill go from $80 to $544 in the span of one decade. Four decades ago, I paid $6 for electricity on a monthly basis. I can't imagine being able to sustain another doubling of the rate, as it would then equal property taxes and exceed all other expenses. Cap & Trade promises to cause an intentional steep rise in electricity costs, which would surely set the nation into panic as the poor would lose access to electricity, causing a massive exodus from the north to warmer climates and the middle class to further tighten spending, causing a deepening of the recession.

Anyone here have inside knowledge or work in the energy industry care to share your views on the Oil Drum's publications of doom and gloom? Are we destined for a Guatamalan lifestyle in the next decade? Or will it be business as usual?

This sounds like the Club of Rome bullsh*t that was au courant in the 1970's. The Club of Rome predicted that we would run out of everything useful by the year 2000. Their predictions were no good, and neither is this prediction. In a pinch we can harvest sunlight. The sun pours more energy on the earth everyday than we can consume in ten thousand years. It is simply a matter of technology to convert sunlight into electricity either photovoltaically or by wind or use temperature difference between the ocean surface and deep water to generate molte volte.

All we have to do is get the ecophreaks and lovers of scarcity the hell out of our way.

Bob Kolker

[mweiss 0]

Bob, I've been spending a lot of time on my coffee breaks reading TheOilDrum articles and the comments at the bottom. My intuition, which comes from a background level integration of the sum of my readings there, tells me that the folks there have a disdain for the wealthy. I keyed in on several derogatory remarks about the middle class and their SUVs. Bam! Alarm bell goes off in my head. These folks probably never attained any wealth and are hoping we all go down in the flames of social collapse, so they can get their 'satisfaction' seeing us all fail. Hatred of the good? I may be making a grand assumption there, but I suspect the Oil Drum site is just a veiled plant by the anti fossil/nuclear fuel enviros.

Did you sense an enviromentalist untertow in those articles? Am I way off track here, or have I detected an ulterior motive behind that site?

[Bob Kolker 0]

Did you sense an enviromentalist untertow in those articles? Am I way off track here, or have I detected an ulterior motive behind that site?

Sense the undertow? Hell, I smell the eco-stink! Pwew! I am old enough to have lived through the Club of Rome nonsense. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

The idea of an energy shortage verges on the absurd. More energy comes to us from the Sun each day than we can use in a thousand years. There is no such thing as an energy shortage in a wide open thermodynamic system like the solar system. Do we have the best means for harvesting sunlight? Not yet. Can we get it by cleverness and hard work? You bet we can! We don't have an energy shortage. We have a vision shortage, which the eco-phreaks encourage. In a world of blindness, everything is dark. These people want to blind us to the sunlight above and the fires raging below. This planet has enough internal heat to warm us for a billion years, not that our species will last that long.

Energy Shortage ?????!!!!!!!

Bob Kolker

[Bob Kolker 0]

Read the following article on breeder reactors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

There is no shortage of usable fissile material. Let us get rid of the eco-phreaks and the Zero Sum Fascists.

Bob Kolker

[mweiss 0]

Read the following article on breeder reactors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

There is no shortage of usable fissile material. Let us get rid of the eco-phreaks and the Zero Sum Fascists.

Bob Kolker

Interesting article, the contents of which are mostly familiar. There is, however, one statement that seems to conflict with what I know about the law of conservation of energy (ie., you can't get more out than you put in):

"a nuclear reactor that generates new fissile or fissionable material at a greater rate than it consumes such material"

How is this possible, vis a vis the law of conservation?

[Bob Kolker 0]

Read the following article on breeder reactors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

There is no shortage of usable fissile material. Let us get rid of the eco-phreaks and the Zero Sum Fascists.

Bob Kolker

Interesting article, the contents of which are mostly familiar. There is, however, one statement that seems to conflict with what I know about the law of conservation of energy (ie., you can't get more out than you put in):

"a nuclear reactor that generates new fissile or fissionable material at a greater rate than it consumes such material"

How is this possible, vis a vis the law of conservation?

No violation. U-238 plus a neutron capture produces PU-239 which is fissile.

What you have is a re-arrangement of matter, not creation of new matter or energy.

See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_breeder_reactor

The fast breeder make PU out of U.

But there are disadvantages: the breeders cannot be cooled by water since water captures neutrons and that inhibits breeding fissile material. Something like liquid sodium must be used to cool the reactor to keep it from melting or burning. But liquid sodium is tricky to handle. Breeders will produce new fissile material but they are also more dangerous to operate than light water reactors. Instability CAN be created, that is a more unstable atom can be created from a less unstable atom by neutron capture.

Another argument against FBRs is that bad guys could steal the plutonium to make bombs. By "poisoning" the plutonium with mercury traces, the plutonium mass becomes almost impossible to make into A-bomb material. End of problem. It is not a very good argument against fast breeder reactors.

The good thing about breeders is that there is no radioactive waste. Everything gets used to make more fissile material. Eventually one runs out of feed stock and fissile material transforms to lead. End of story.

Back in the days of alchemy, one of the dream quests was to convert less valuable material into more valuable material. Fast Breeders do this using the laws of physics pertaining to nuclear reactions. While lead cannot be economically transmuted into gold, non fissile U-238 can be made into fissile material from which energy can be extracted. And there is no waste!

Bob Kolker

[Alon Tsin 0]

Did you sense an enviromentalist untertow in those articles? Am I way off track here, or have I detected an ulterior motive behind that site?

Sense the undertow? Hell, I smell the eco-stink! Pwew! I am old enough to have lived through the Club of Rome nonsense. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

The idea of an energy shortage verges on the absurd. More energy comes to us from the Sun each day than we can use in a thousand years. There is no such thing as an energy shortage in a wide open thermodynamic system like the solar system. Do we have the best means for harvesting sunlight? Not yet. Can we get it by cleverness and hard work? You bet we can! We don't have an energy shortage. We have a vision shortage, which the eco-phreaks encourage. In a world of blindness, everything is dark. These people want to blind us to the sunlight above and the fires raging below. This planet has enough internal heat to warm us for a billion years, not that our species will last that long.

Energy Shortage ?????!!!!!!!

Bob Kolker

What you say about solar energy is true. Even today there are already solar cells with a 28% efficiency (as opposed to 10-12% efficiency we had only a few years ago) , and next year or so there are going to be cells with more than 35% efficiency, and there is development for an even better efficiency. I don't think we have to wait much longer for a time where the sun can supply a good deal of our energy consumption (taking weather in account, of course)...

Energy shortage, indeed....

[mweiss 0]

Thanks Bob, for explaining the distinction between energy creation and matter conversion (to more useful forms of matter).

As for solar energy, it would be a darling, but some of the challenges are maintaining all those cells, placing them (in the desert, perhaps) in a location that is not used by types of land use, such as retail, industry or residential, and piping that energy to cities and towns.

I know the global warming folks are already against solar because they believe all those cells will absorb solar heat and cause more GW. Manufacture cost is still in the absurd range. For instance, it would cost over a hundred thousand dollars to build a solar system with enough output to power my stereo system. Financing would have to be available. Most people could not afford it.

The other obstacle is that to get the full 6 hours of sun per day, you'd have to be located near the equator, or at least the southwest. Northeast states get 3.5 hours of sun (based on the info from one solar panel company) and even their most powerful grid tie system would not provide enough juice so I could live a normal life. To make matters worse, where I live, in the black forest, less than 1% sunlight reaches the ground. That's why they call this place New Mildew.

[Bob Kolker 0]

I think the truth resides somewhere in between the two extremes. My thinking is that we'll see a continuing escalation of oil prices, forcing more and more people to use less, but hopefully we won't see a catastrophe that causes a disruption of the fabric of society and the food supply; that this transition will be gradual enough to allow innovative minds to solve the problem with solutions that will allow us to maintain the current lifestyle at affordable rates.

The escalation of oil price is good news. It will promote the development of alternatives to petroleum. Do you know how kerosine hit the big time? Whale oil was getting more and more expensive (since so many whales were being killed). Kerosine could be sold for pennies a gallon to light the lamps of the nation. It was the scarcity of whales that promoted the petroleum industry. Likewise, the scarcity of petroleum will promote the alternatives.

Bob Kolker

[Carlos 0]

What you say about solar energy is true. Even today there are already solar cells with a 28% efficiency (as opposed to 10-12% efficiency we had only a few years ago) , and next year or so there are going to be cells with more than 35% efficiency, and there is development for an even better efficiency. I don't think we have to wait much longer for a time where the sun can supply a good deal of our energy consumption (taking weather in account, of course)...

Energy shortage, indeed....

The problem is that if you install a solar cell array it will take nearly 20 years to break even in terms of energy and money. Building solar cells is energy and financially intensive, and what you get out of it (free solar energy) is slow to pay it all back.

I'm confident that in the future it will be feasible for the average man to install solar arrays on his home at an affordable price and have energy independence, but that day isn't now. A very large part of the solar hype and explosion in industry is due to the very large subsidies the government is pumping into the business, and the "go green" hype that is overwhelming our culture.

[Carlos 0]

Solar Technology is very beautiful and interesting though, especially the new generation of thin-film cells.

http://cientifica.eu/blog/wp-content/uploa...nosys_solar.jpg

http://www.ovonic.com/images/me_uni-solar_...00dpi_large.jpg

We had a graduate seminar on this subject and had scientists from industry come speak at our university about their work with pv (photovoltaics), and it was uniquely exciting to get to hold a section of these beautiful, flexible cells in your hand. Very remarkable technology.

Here is an interesting web-site with lots of info on what's going on in the PV-industry:

http://www.pv-tech.org/