Reliable sources of clean energy and human nature.

[DougSpindler]

We are addicted to hydrocarbon fuels

  Yes we are.

and have a lot of it.

  Nope - not any more - not that's economically and energetically easy to extract.  And we're using it at about 4x the rate that new reserves are being discovered. Economic growth depends on the availability of cheap fossil fuel. Without it, growth stagnates and massive amount of borrowing (requiring central bank intervention to promote) is required to keep the house of cards from collapsing. Geopolitics become unstable and wars are waged.

One thing I don't understand is why is PV solar so high on the list.  The guy is a physicist.  One would think he would understand and has seen the issues with solar.

  You're right. You don't understand. He understands very well the limitations of solar and other power sources. Read the individual posts on each energy source.

The "we are running out of fossi fuels" line has been told for 50 years or more.  So far it hasn't happened.  If fossi fuels are running out why aren't prices going up?  And why are we discovering new deposits?  What's your evidence to support the claim this time?

Guess that's why what the problem is with the table the guy is a phyusicst and doen't understand manufaturing.   That's the problem with many physicits they they look at the theroy and not what's possible.  We dont' have the resournces or manufacturing capabilities.  Before the guy made his blog post he should have talked to the folks in the solar maufactuing industry.  They would tell him they can't do what he's stating.  Not even in 50 years.
 
He's also not talking about the issue solar has caused.  In England and Germany they had to burn more coal then they had to in the past because of solar.  I'm in California and in the summer months we have back-outs because of solar generated electricity.

You might want to do a bit more research to get the full story.

[DougSpindler]

Fritz Haber solved this problem 100 years ago.  Then with the use of petro-chemicals and GMOs we have more than enough food to feed everyone.  I can get summer fruits anytime of the year.

He didn't fix Peak Everything. Nitrogen fertilizer we can make from air with modest amounts of energy, but the same can't be said for all the bulk materials we need to build stuff. Energy consumption to recover usable bulk materials is going to shoot up at about the same time as fossil fuel prices start to get off the rails.

The best for humanity would be to stop breeding for a while, take care of the elderly with robots while we can still build them and avoid a much nastier die off down the line.

Haber and Bosh industrailized the nitrogen fixation process.  Today 60% of the world if fed that's the Haber Bosh process, petrochemials for pest control and GMO.

China tried popuation control.  Didn't work, did it.  The world popuation will peak at 10 million.

https://youtu.be/hVimVzgtD6w



 

[Marco]

China tried popuation control.  Didn't work, did it.

In some ways it did, in some ways it didn't. It gave them breathing room, in exchange for some problems down the line. I think it was a good trade off for them and I think India's trajectory will vindicate that with tragic consequences within my lifetime.

[mtdoc]

The "we are running out of fossi fuels" line has been told for 50 years or more.  So far it hasn't happened.  If fossi fuels are running out why aren't prices going up?  And why are we discovering new deposits?  What's your evidence to support the claim this time?

You're demonstrating very simplistic thinking and a low knowledge base. The relationship between oil prices and demand is a complex system. But by and large prices have gone up. The problem is that high energy prices depress economies and demand falls.  Cheap credit has allowed economically unviable unconventional oil extraction companies to stay afloat with large debts that will not be paid back.  They are pumping out tight oil as fast as they can despite losing money just to service that debt - this has kept prices artificially low.

As I mentioned - we are discovering new reserves but at a much lower rate than we are consuming current rescources. Also, most new reserves are really just theoretical since they cannot be extracted without large energy inputs (low energy return on energy invested.) and therefore it is likely it will never be economically sensible to extract these resources.

There's much more to the story of fossil fuel reserves , the shale "revolution" , prices and their link to macroeconomic realities.  I'd suggest you start here and here if you want to learn more.

[DougSpindler]

China tried popuation control.  Didn't work, did it.

In some ways it did, in some ways it didn't. It gave them breathing room, in exchange for some problems down the line. I think it was a good trade off for them and I think India's trajectory will vindicate that with tragic consequences within my lifetime.

Can you explain how it did and how it didn't.  From what I understand the policy caused a huge imbalance in the population.  There are is it 1,000 or is it 10,000 males for every female?  So while this may have limited China's population then and now, the un-wed Chinese men are moving abroad to find wives which is causing immigration issues in other countries.

But I'm no expert on this.     

[DougSpindler]

The "we are running out of fossi fuels" line has been told for 50 years or more.  So far it hasn't happened.  If fossi fuels are running out why aren't prices going up?  And why are we discovering new deposits?  What's your evidence to support the claim this time?

You're demonstrating very simplistic thinking and a low knowledge base. The relationship between oil prices and demand is a complex system. But by and large prices have gone up. The problem is that high energy prices depress economies and demand falls.  Cheap credit has allowed economically unviable unconventional oil extraction companies to stay afloat with large debts that will not be paid back.  They are pumping out tight oil as fast as they can despite losing money just to service that debt - this has kept prices artificially low.

As I mentioned - we are discovering new reserves but at a much lower rate than we are consuming current rescources. Also, most new reserves are really just theoretical since they cannot be extracted without large energy inputs (low energy return on energy invested.) and therefore it is likely it will never be economically sensible to extract these resources.

There's much more to the story of fossil fuel reserves , the shale "revolution" , prices and their link to macroeconomic realities.  I'd suggest you start here and here if you want to learn more.

Thank you for the references.  Mind if I use my critical thinking skills here? The first reference is for a women with a background is as a casualty actuary, working in insurance forecasting.  What does that have to do with the oil industry or geology? 

The second reference is for a consultant.  Yes he is a geologist, but he's not an independent researcher.  His services and opinions are for hire.  No exactly an independent source of information.  He also appears have a lot of interest in the stock prices for oil companies and that's what's in his tweets.

These people definaly have opionins and it appears one could purchase those opinions.

Do you have any referecnes to independlt research that's without a bias?

[mtdoc]

Thank you for the references.  Mind if I use my critical thinking skills here? The first reference is for a women with a background is as a casualty actuary, working in insurance forecasting.  What does that have to do with the oil industry or geology? 

Actually, her background as an Actuary is very relevant to this analysis. In addition, she has many years experience and has published extensively on the relationship between macroeconomics and fossil fuel as well as other resources.

Instead of attacking the messenger perhaps read the paper first. Here is a direct link to the publication in the academic journal Energy  (Sorry forgot fee for that - but the entire academic paper is available in the link I originally provided).  What specifically do you dispute in her analysis?

The second reference is for a consultant.  Yes he is a geologist, but he's not an independent researcher.  His services and opinions are for hire.  No exactly an independent source of information.  He also appears have a lot of interest in the stock prices for oil companies and that's what's in his tweets.

Apparently you are unfamiliar with this field.  The reality is that most of the relevant research is done by oil and gas industry linked analysts.  There are very few independent sources of analysis.  Gail Tverberg is completely independent and Art Berman is considered one of the most independent and knowledgeable oil industry analysts.

These people definaly have opionins and it appears one could purchase those opinions.

Nonsense. Their opinions and analysis is available free of charge. Follow the links provided.  If you have criticisms of their work - you might have more luck being taken seriously by looking at the data they present first than referencing what facts you dispute.

[f4eru]

One thing I don't understand is why is PV solar so high on the list.  The guy is a physicist.  One would think he would understand and has seen the issues with solar.

Because the issues with solar are slowly fading away.
Intermittency -> cheap massive batteries and thermal storage, coming now as seen in Australia
Inefficient heat generation -> better thermal gain for HVAC
Transport of energy -> big scale HVDC
Inefficiency -> not really relevant as the fuel cost is zero
Price -> that issue has been solved

The problem remaining in Europe with big scale solar are political issues:
The best place to put a gigantic solar generation for europe is in the north african desert area, with HVDC links across europe (Like the old Project Desertec)
With that there is year round daytime solar energy available with practically no shading.
Unfortunately the region is politically unstable due to civil war and europe intervention in Lybia -> no way in hell will investors plant big infrastructure there in the actual conditions.
Not sure how this is different in North America and Asia, but the situation is probably much better.

[tszaboo]

There is not and will not be anything that will fully replace fossil fuels. That is not to say that alternatives are not needed. They are.

You do realize, that with sufficient solar and wind power, and a few P2G plants (Power-to-gas), it is possible to completely get rid of the current fossil fuel usage? Storing massive amount of gas is possible, and we can generate the gas from CO2 and H2O. In fact we can just reverse global warming altogether. And burning methane is not polluting unlike coal or pretty much everything else.

Yes we can, but where are you going to get all of the energy to do so?  Or do you plan to do this by breaking the laws?  Laws of thermodynamics that is.  At this time that's the only way we could do it.

Jesus christ man, you have a real problem with reading and thinking. What laws? You place a solar panel, it generates 20+ times the energy over it's lifetime, than it takes to make it. No laws broken. You use the suns energy. You place more panels than what you need, and generate natural gas from the excess energy Use this magical thing, called chemistry and science. You confuse cost with price, and completely ignore economics of things.

If you have trouble understanding basic concepts, we have nothing to talk about.

[IanMacdonald]

The problems with nuclear are mainly down to existing plant being an adaptation of Cold War weapon-making equipment. The PWR makes use of only a fraction of a percent of the energy in its fuel, and the fuel is then thrown away. That is why the waste is so long-lived. The fuel is largely unused. Also relevant to note that all of the major nuclear accidents except one were due to chemical rather than nuclear energy. Boiling water under pressure and zirconium fuel cladding are a bad combination, because once zirconium gets well alight it will burn underwater, or in steam. (The zirconium is necessary because it's one of the few structurally strong metals that doesn't capture neutrons.)

A radically different reactor design such as the molten salt LFTR would eliminate both the fire/explosion risk and pollution problems. We know this can be done, because it was tested in the 1950's and it worked. It could also be substantially cheaper to build once production is under way, because it would not need the massive safety precautions of the PWR. Since it would use nearly all of the energy in the fuel the amount of hazardous waste would be far smaller, and the world's nuclear fuel reserves would last many times longer.

As for fusion, it's criticized for taking so long to come to fruition, but when you consider that wind energy has been under development for nearly as long, and that global renewables expenditure is around half a trillion USD a year, whereas fusion research expenditure is a few billion.. I think you can see why that is. 

The real unknown in this is LENR, which shows great promise although no-one has yet built a commercial product (Well, besides Rossi's alleged sale of a few units.) If LENR does turn out to be viable then it's basically game over for every other energy source. Again, research is woefully under-funded for what could be an invention as significant as the wheel. No, make that more significant.  Part of the problem is that there is no textbook theory to explain it, and the academics have a credibility barrier when it comes to anything they can't first of all describe in maths, and only then in hardware.

[Marco]

MSRE wasn't actually build as a breeder. Despite all the cheerleading and "success", private industry spent decades trying to push breeders based on liquid sodium cooled fast reactors instead. I'm sure they had some good reasons, even though liquid sodium just proved to cause too many expensive accidents in the end (not disastrous, just expensive).

Fast reactors and nuclear fuel reprocessing have as of yet been nothing but commercial disasters.

[DougSpindler]

Question I've been asking about MSR is if they are so good and have been proven why are the billionaires and countries investing in fusion?  The Chinese spent a lot of research money on MSR and found technological challenges they could not solve.  They were suppose to have a MSR reactor up and running in a year or two, but they just cut funding as it was failing miserably.

MSR may have 50 years ago been a viable technology, but witht the advances in technology it's no longer relivent.


You really think batteries are a good long term "solution"?  Hard to beleive.

 

[Marco]

As I said, with back of the envelope calculations ocean based gravity storage looks doable.

[DougSpindler]

As I said, with back of the envelope calculations ocean based gravity storage looks doable.

We are already using all the fresh water based gravity storage we have. 

How would you do ocean based gravity storage?

I live in the US and I'm not sure how ocean based gravity storage would work for people in the middle in of our country?  Not sure where the height is either. 

Can you explain?

[Marco]

How would you do ocean based gravity storage?

Concrete with lots of aggregate on a steel cable.

As for distances, for HVDC the US is not big.

[tszaboo]

Question I've been asking about MSR is if they are so good and have been proven why are the billionaires and countries investing in fusion?  The Chinese spent a lot of research money on MSR and found technological challenges they could not solve.  They were suppose to have a MSR reactor up and running in a year or two, but they just cut funding as it was failing miserably.

MSR may have 50 years ago been a viable technology, but witht the advances in technology it's no longer relivent.


You really think batteries are a good long term "solution"?  Hard to beleive.

They also invest in solar roadways or Scientology.

Your reasoning is in the category of: Logical reasoning fallacy / Red herring fallacies / Argumentum ad crumenam.

[DougSpindler]

Question I've been asking about MSR is if they are so good and have been proven why are the billionaires and countries investing in fusion?  The Chinese spent a lot of research money on MSR and found technological challenges they could not solve.  They were suppose to have a MSR reactor up and running in a year or two, but they just cut funding as it was failing miserably.

MSR may have 50 years ago been a viable technology, but witht the advances in technology it's no longer relivent.


You really think batteries are a good long term "solution"?  Hard to beleive.

They also invest in solar roadways or Scientology.

Your reasoning is in the category of: Logical reasoning fallacy / Red herring fallacies / Argumentum ad crumenam.

Only way to know if something's going to work is to apply critical thinking skills and if it's plausible give it a try.

The only reason solar roadways aren't working is because scientologists haven't blessed it to work.

[Lionered]

Shifting to full and pure renewable energy would require time and big investment. it will also kill big industry of the current energy that we use. however, it will have significantly good impact to the environment  in the future.

[DougSpindler]

Shifting to full and pure renewable energy would require time and big investment. it will also kill big industry of the current energy that we use. however, it will have significantly good impact to the environment  in the future.

Depends on your what you wan by full and pure renewable energy.  Solar and wind will never provide a reliable source of electricity.  Only practical solution is that’s clean and renewable is next gen nuclear.

[Kleinstein]

Just installing Solar and wind is not enough for a reliable energy supply - they need storage, quite a lot of storage. It is more about getting good storage that decides over the success or failure here.

However nuclear also tends to have a reliability problem: to get any reasonable level of safety one needs to have the option to shut down the reactors in case a fault is found.  This includes design faults - so to have a reliable supply one could not depend on a single type / family of reactors. To really keep the promised safety levels, the logical consequence of the Fukushima accidents would have been to at least temporary (until the units are fixed) shut down all similar reactors (essentially all BWRs) - but that was not done because of possible risk for grid breakdown in addition to the costs.

In addition so far nuclear has turned out to be too expensive - even not counting for waste storage and sufficient  insurance to cover possible accidents.

[DougSpindler]

Just installing Solar and wind is not enough for a reliable energy supply - they need storage, quite a lot of storage. It is more about getting good storage that decides over the success or failure here.

However nuclear also tends to have a reliability problem: to get any reasonable level of safety one needs to have the option to shut down the reactors in case a fault is found.  This includes design faults - so to have a reliable supply one could not depend on a single type / family of reactors. To really keep the promised safety levels, the logical consequence of the Fukushima accidents would have been to at least temporary (until the units are fixed) shut down all similar reactors (essentially all BWRs) - but that was not done because of possible risk for grid breakdown in addition to the costs.

In addition so far nuclear has turned out to be too expensive - even not counting for waste storage and sufficient  insurance to cover possible accidents.

You are mixing up  current nuceear technology white Next Gen.  Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima accidents are impossibe as the technology is completely different.  Uranium is not used so there is no danger of long term contamination.  With Next Gen nuclear if there should be a Chernoby or Fukushima size accident  accident in just 20-30 ears all of the radio-active istopses would have decayed away.  Next Gen Nuclear is renewable also.  Meaning we will never runout of nuclear fuel.

 

[mtdoc]

 Next gen nuclear is like next gen batteries and cold fusion, it’s always the solution and it’s always just  a few years away...

[Kleinstein]

Those next gen nuclear is so much in the planing stage, that it will likely never come. One also has to be careful with promises made - much is marketing speak to keep the research funding alive. So keep an eye on the  .  In that phase of development especially US researchers tend to promise essentially everything they can not easy prove to be wrong (some don't even seem to care if other prove them wrong).

Even with fusion the decay of tritium would take more than 30 years to really get contamination down. Of cause I don't know the units ears for time so maybe 1 ear = 100 years. 

[Marco]

If Fukushima had been a sodium cooled reactor the results would have been far far worse.

[DougSpindler]

Thorium is dead technology at this time.  If Next Gen Nuclear is just a few years away why is France building a facility?   And isn’t hina building a next iteration nuclear reactor with the American Company Terra Power?