Guest post by David Archibald
When I posted on peak oil’s effect on agricultural costs and food security, some comments questioned the idea of peak oil. What follows is a summary of the subject. We will start with what is considered to be the most successful economic forecast ever made – the prediction in March 1956 by King Hubbert of the Shell Oil Company that US oil production would peak in 1970. This was in a paper entitled “Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels” presented at the Spring meeting of the American Petroleum Institute in San Antonio, Texas. The paper’s title reflects Hubbert’s view that nuclear power would have to replace fossil fuels on the latter’s exhaustion. The view hasn’t changed, but the replacement need has become urgent.
Figure 1: Logistic Decline Plot for the United States
Source: Al-Husseini 2006
Figure 1 shows the basis for Hubbert’s prediction. This is a logistic decline plot of annual production divided by cumulative production to that year against cumulative production. His original analysis anticipated that Lower 48 crude production would peak at 2.8 -3.0 billion barrels between 1966 and 1971 and then enter an irreversible decline. Production in the lower 48 actually peaked at 3.4 billion barrels in 1970. Under Hubbert’s original forecast of ultimate potential of 200 billion barrels in his 1965 assessment, 1991 crude oil output was projected to be 1.9 billion barrels. Actual 1991 production was, in fact, 2.0 billion barrels – a modest variation from Hubbert’s prediction made 35 years earlier (Smith and Lidsky 1993).
Figure 2: Logistic growth curve for US crude oil production
This figure is from Nashawi et. al. 2010. The blue line is the modeled projection to 2070. The purple line is cumulative production to 2008. The US has burnt through 84% of its original oil endowment.
Figure 3: World oil discovery by year
Source: Al-Husseini 2006
Figure 3 shows that oil discovery peaked fifty years ago in the early 1960s. Based on the well-established trend, not much hope can be held for positive departure from the forecast discovery profile.
Having shown how powerful Hubbert-style analysis is forecasting production, let’s go on to look at what the global oil production profile looks like.
Figure 4: Logistic Decline Plot for Global Oil Production
As Figure 4 shows, the world had consumed half of its original oil endowment by 2005. 2005 was the year that global oil production peaked. According to Hubbert theory, we will have a few years of near-peak production before the steep decline down the right hand side of the bell-shaped curve begins.
Figure 5: A 2004 estimate of the Global Oil Production Decline
Source of figure: Al-Husseini 2006
I have included Figure 5 because it covers a 120 year span and it has been accurate for production over the last seven years since it was published.
Figure 6: World Oil Production 1965 – 2030
This is another way of looking at the coming decline which will be 1.5 million barrels/day/year. The decline will go on for about three decades at that rate before flattening out.
Figure 7: Logistic growth curve for Non-Opec oil production
Source: Nashawi et. al. 2010
Discussion of oil prices and the tightening oil market tends to concentrate on just how much spare capacity Saudi Arabia has. As Figure 7 shows, whatever swing capacity Saudi Arabia has will soon be overtaken by events. The big story is Non-Opec production, which will almost halve by the end of this decade.
Figure 8: Oil price 1990 – 2016
Modelling the oil price in a tightening market is difficult because of the dampening effect on consumption of the increasing price. Plotted logarithmically, the oil price chart itself may reflect that effect and thus might be used as a predictive tool. What it shows is that the oil price is constrained by a parallel uptrend channel rising at 15.6% per annum. The current UK retail price for gasoline is indicated on the chart to show that civilisation, of a sort, can continue at very high oil prices.
Table 1: Oil price forecast by year and the concomitant effect on agricultural operating costs.
Table 1 shows how the oil price rise derived from the established trend in Figure 8 translates through to price per US gallon and agricultural operating costs relative to the 2009 level. There will be a severe departure from what Michelle Bachman has promised to achieve.
Figure 9: Energy-related inputs relative to total operating expenses, 2007-08 average
From: Sands and Westcott 2011
Based on the USDA figures and recalculating for the $200 per barrel oil price expected in 2014, wheat and corn operating costs will be 60% higher in 2014.
In 2009, the Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, said that “we have to leave oil before oil leaves us.” Only one country is doing that, and of course it is the same country that is proceeding to commercialise the molten salt, thorium-burning nuclear reactor – China.
Figure 10: Chinese oil production, imports and coal-to-liquids production
This figure shows Chinese domestic oil production, imports and a projection of coal-to-liquids production assuming that demand follows its established trajectory.
China currently has three Fischer-Tropsch coal-to-liquids (CTL) plants and one liquefaction plant commissioned with a further three Fischer-Tropsch plants under construction. Total planned production from those seven plants is in excess of 600,000 BOPD. A journal earlier this year reported that “Chinese CTL investors will pay active efforts in preliminary works for mega size CTL projects starting from 2011 and may realise commissioning of such projects before the year 2015”. By comparison, in the United States, Section 526 of the Energy Security and Independence Act of 2007 blocks the Department of Defense from using CTL fuels because the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from those fuels would be much larger than the GHG emissions from conventional petroleum.
The economic effect of continuously rising oil prices will be to continuously cause economic contraction.
Table 2: Compilation of studies on the Oil Price – US GDP Effect
Source: Sauter and Awerbuch 2003
At the 1.5% average estimate of growth decrease per 10% oil price increase, the 15.6% per annum oil price rise expected over the next few years will shrink the US economy at 2.2% per annum. The fastest way to reduce this effect would be to install CTL capacity in the US. To replace all of the US’ oil imports with home-grown CTL would take more coal than is currently burnt in US power stations. It follows that what is also needed is a good, safe nuclear technology to replace coal in power generation, bearing out Hubbert’s observation of fifty-five years ago.
References
Al-Husseini, M., The Debate over Hubbert’s Peak: a review”, GeoArabia, Vol. 11, No. 2, 2006
Nashawi, I.S,, Malallah, A. and Al Bisharah, M., Forecasting World Crude Oil Production Using Multicyclic Hubbert Model, Energy Fuels, American Chemical Society 2010
Smith, A.L. and Lidsky, B.J., 1993, King Hubbert’s analysis revisited: Update of the
Lower 48 oil and gas resource base, The Leading Edge, November 1993
Sands, R. and Westcott, P., Impacts of Higher Energy Prices on Agriculture and Rural Economies, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Report Number 123, 2011
Sauter, R. and Awerbuch, S., Oil Price Volatility and Economic Activity: A Survey and Literature Review, IEA Research Paper, August 2003.
October 2011
Hubbert’s prediction for the US isn’t the only one he produced. Leaving out the inaccurate ones gives the false impression that the model produces highly accurate predictions:
“The popularity of the approach stems partly from the fact that Hubbert’s 1956 prediction
of lower-48 oil production was extremely accurate, even to this day. However, this is
misleading, as his other three predictions were highly inaccurate. His forecast of US gas
production in 2000 was 65% too low and his world oil production forecast for 2000 was 50%
too low. Even production in Texas is now about twice the amount he forecast. Indeed, given
his estimate of URR in Texas, production should have ceased recently as the resources were
exhausted. Since Texas was a mature, heavily studied province even in 1956, this error
speaks to the fallibility of the method.
Other Hubbert models exhibit the same flaw. One group at the US Department of Energy
produced a series of Hubbert-style production profiles in the early 1980s (for example, US
Department of Energy, 1983). For non-OPEC countries, they produced a prediction for
Southeast Asia that has proven very accurate to date, but for non-OPEC South America and Egypt, their forecasts were much too low. Similarly, Root (1991) and Masters et al. (1990)
also produced forecasts with near-term peaks for regions, most if not all of which are clearly
too pessimistic.
The most egregious errors have come from C.J. Campbell, who has repeatedly predicted
a near-term peak for the world, not just non-OPEC or non-Middle East (Campbell, 1989;
Campbell, 1991; Campbell, 1997) even though most in the industry have difficulty finding
signs of near-term scarcity. His 1989 prediction that world production had already peaked
and prices would rise to the $30–50 range in the early 1990s was clearly wrong, and his 1991
book produced forecasts for non-OPEC countries that were 10 mb/day too low (net) by 1999.”
…
“There appear to be two primary errors in the design of these models. First, Hubbert-style
forecasts take URR as a static variable when it is dynamic. This is a serious error. URR refers
not to total resources, which is arguably a fixed amount, but to the proportion of the total
which is recoverable. It is logical that this should increase over time, as technological
advances raise the proportion of a field which can be recovered economically and as other
changes (additions of pipelines, for example) lower costs and thus make it economical to
produce smaller and/or deeper fields and less productive wells.”
…
“Some modelers have argued that URR can be estimated using so-called “creaming curves”
which show discovery size by companies or in a nation, such as the UK, to demonstrate the asymptote3 (Laherrere, 1999). However, this is misleading because they compare current
estimates of field size for discoveries of many different periods. This is like comparing
acorns and oak trees; naturally the latter are bigger, but that doesn’t prove that the former are
destined to always be smaller. Using a given data base of field sizes seems to always yield
an asymptote, but the asymptote moves over time.”
…
“…there is another major mis-specification. Production depends not just on discovery,
but the amount of capacity lost due to depletion effects. As a field is produced, its
productive capacity declines—all else being equal (that is, if no additional drilling is done,
or enhanced recovery put in place). Many of the pessimistic models appear to be showing a
very high rate of production decline for existing fields, and some such as Pursell (1999)
explicitly argue that depletion is now so great that offsetting it—not raising capacity—is the
major challenge to the industry.
But careful study suggests that the impact is being overstated, as either the rate of
depletion is overstated or the ability to offset it is understated. In reviewing oil production
forecasts for various nations, Lynch (1990) was able to derive the forecasters’ estimates of
production decline rates for existing fields and found nearly all showed an annual drop of
10–20%, close to the absolute maximum (that is, with no further investment). Since all but
one of the production forecasts proved to be much too low, the implication is that either
additional investment slowed the decline of production in existing fields, newer fields were
offsetting more than expected, or more probably a combination of the two.”
http://www.aspo-australia.org.au/References/Lynch-july-02.pdf
The CO2 scare continued the already-advanced war on petroleum, following this peak oil scare . Anyone who really wants to know the truth before they get caught up in the new hype should read the recent book by Daniel Yergen, who won a Pulitzer in 92 for his history of the oil business. He is a consultant for IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, and the book is “The Quest:…..” I find it hard to believe that this peak oil article appeared on a trusted website. The science is far from settled as to the true origins of petroleum. Google ‘peak oil debunked’ for a look at the evidence for abiotic origins.
Just to clarify molten salt reactors can use thorium but they can also use uranium. They can use spent fuel and plutonium. Solid fuel thorium reactor have been built and work great. fort saint vrain being one of them. That reactor had problems with its gas cooled bearinging getting wet. But its fuel worked great.
The promise of molten salt reactors is not the cheap fuel it is they have the potential of needing less capital to build them. They run at near atmosphere and can not meltdown. You do not need a special forged pressure vessel built only overseas. nor do you need a containment vessel. A new light water reactor costs billions to build. The new light water reactors cost billions to build. The bigger the project to more conservative the investor. any advanced reactor deigns will have to be built by someone to prove that it can be done. and that they can be licensed.
RE: Brent says: (October 29, 2011 at 5:57 pm)
“The promise of molten salt reactors is not the cheap fuel it is they have the potential of needing less capital to build them.”
I believe the only practical promise of thorium based nuclear reactors is to become a plentiful source of *cheap* energy. If they cannot provide low-cost energy equivalent to the current global production of petroleum, then they will remain a footnote in history. I find references to the ‘green’ aspects of thorium based nuclear energy to be rather disquieting. To me, these sound like distractive considerations that might lead developers and investors off the track into the muddy ground that sunk Solyndra.
I see our civilization to be like a boat hydroplaning on cheap energy. If we run out of that oil which we can afford to use, then we must either switch to an alternative engine or rig a sail.
The rise of unconventional oil production from fracking in oil shales with horizontal drilling will wreck havoc on traditional resource models like something coming in from another dimension. Natural gas markets in north America were the first to feel the impact of unconventional supply surge and even that technology shift has not played out across other regions. Unconventional liquids plays will follow the natural gas shift down in real dollar terms. Just give it some time, analogous to waiting for the fall in the AMO to wreck havoc on the global warming models.
Note that in Figure 2 future discovery is appended on , citing Campbell from 2004. This use of a 2004 citation predates the successful field development of the world’s first unconventional oil basin development in the Bakkan Formation and other targets therein. This is like lamenting the fall in natural gas reserves when the opposite is true as a result of unconventional drilling in shale targets. The technology has changed in a more radical way than the resource models allow for—-wake up.
RE: Resourceguy: (October 30, 2011 at 6:53 am)
“Note that in Figure 2 future discovery is appended on , citing Campbell from 2004. …”
If you look carefully, you will see that you are actually referring to Figure 3. (Enumerated below the chart.)
This is one of those cases where I believe the US Energy Information Agency may be really dropping the ball if they are not providing the public with complete and authoritative tables of current data for making charts like this.
It is also important to distinguish between cheap oil sources and those sources that can only be refined by energy intensive techniques that might force the cost of gasoline up to ten dollars per gallon in today’s dollars.
Carbon isotope effects in the open-system Fischer–Tropsch synthesis, 2007
Yuri A. Taran a,*, George A. Kliger b, Vyacheslav S. Sevastianov c
a Institute of Geophysics, UNAM, 04510 Mexico DF, Mexico
b Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis, RAS, Moscow, Russia
c Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry, RAS, Moscow, Russia
Taran, et. al. wrote:1. Introduction
The Fischer–Tropsch synthesis (FTS), which generally can be defined as the heterogeneous catalytic reduction of oxidized carbon compounds by molecular hydrogen, is widely accepted as a process potentially responsible for the presence of organic compounds in meteorites, submarine hydrothermal systems and igneous rocks (e.g. Lancet and Anders, 1970; Shock, 1990; Salvi and Williams-Jones, 1997; Yuen et al., 1984; Foustoukos and Seyfried, 2004; Horita, 2005). This ‘‘inorganic’’, ‘‘abiotic’’ synthesis has also been considered to be important in global geologic processes including production of methane and petroleum and finally, as a source of prebiotic compounds on the early Earth (Szatmari, 1989; Charlou et al., 2002; Sherwood Lollar et al., 2002; Horita, 2005, among others).
Abiotic hydrocarbon generation is well supported by the scientific evidence, including the liquid petroleum part of the hydrocarbon spectrum.
The supposed so-called “fossil” fuel theory has never been successfully replicated in the laboratory, yet the Fischer-Tropsch type process has not only been replicated in the laboratory it has also been developed to such an extent that petroleum has been produced in commercial quanities.
Follow the scientific evidence: The best evidence supports the Abiotic Oil Theory.
So-called “peak” oil theory is false.
The following paper is a relatively brief review of evidence supporting Abiotic Oil Theory:
Inorganic Origin of Petroleum
Introductory paragraph: “The theory of Inorganic Origin of Petroleum (synonyms: abiogenic, abiotic, abyssal, endogenous, juvenile, mineral, primordial) holds that petroleum is formed by non-biological processes deep in the Earth crust and mantle. This contradicts the traditional view that the oil would be a “fossil fuel” produced by remnants of ancient organisms. Oil is ahydrocarbon mixture in which the primary constituent is mainly methane CH4 (a moleculecomposed of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). The occurrence of methane is common in Earth’s interior, with the possible formation of hydrocarbons at great depths. This hypothesis dates from the nineteenth century when the French chemist Marcellin Berthelot and the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev proposed to explain the origin of oil and their theories was revived [in the Russian geo-science academy] in the decade after 1950.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/55489859/Inorganic-Petroleum-Origin
An interesting read and thought provoking.
Abiotic Oil and the Forever Oil Theory
I do not think that abiotic oil implies oil forever. We have been producing oil at near peak rates for just about thirty years. According to one estimate, (T. Boon Pickens) we are now extracting oil at a rate of 85 million barrels a day. If we go back in time 85 million years, just before the end of the Cretaceous period, the Earth only needs to be able to produce about one barrel of biotic or abiotic oil a day to give us the supply we are depleting in a single year. This time is just a convenient number. The beginning of the Mesozoic Era with the Triassic Period was 248 million years ago.
Starting 85 million years ago, a one hundred-year supply, at our current usage rate, could be produced by a natural production rate or renewal rate of roughly one hundred barrels a day. This does not matter if that production is biotic or abiotic. The Earth has had so much time to generate the oil in the ground that a very low renewal rate can account for all that we have found.
If the Earth had been producing abiotic oil at 85 million barrels a day since the Cretaceous period then I would expect the ocean and the ground to be covered with a thick layer of degraded oil.
RE: Spector, thanks for the correction for the figure number as previously posted. But I fear though that your sources of information are limited on this topic and perhaps you are far behind. I’ll at least get the thought list going for you. Do you really think EIA and USGS are going to come out and admit their models developed internally and at academic research groups are bunk? Most of the body of research for those models comes from U.S. onshore basins with thousands of vertical drill holes over many decades forming statistical distributions for drilling success rates and yield. Now image the evolving picture of declining costs of unconventional wells with much higher probability of success in extensive basins and with multiple tragets from each drilling pad. Go read the quarterly reports of the mid sized oil firms that pioneered this biz model. They are the ones defining the trend and the resource base, not EIA. The oil majors are also woefully behind in this revolution and only their money assets and bank connections are being used to play catch up. I also fear that you are citing group think terminology when you use the catch phrase high cost oil. You could also have used that term for high cost natural gas wells a short time ago but the industry is rapidly becoming the unconventional segment and with declining costs measured as time to complete the average well and rising yield per well. As for your concern about the cost of gasoline being pushed up by high cost oil, go look at what unconventional natural gas drilling did in a matter of three years of bonanza-type investment rush beyond the Barnett Shale.That supply rush has only been tempered by the plummet in natural gas prices in the typical tit for tat commodity sector dance to get to a new market equilibrium. I hope this was helpful. There is a similar revolution taking place in the solar sector with a similar lag in understanding the price and cost plummet.
RE: Jeff L, your comments about the Bakken could have been (and were) stated about the limited impact of the Barnett Shales on gas supply in the picture of things. What changed is a lot of people with extensions to the idea going out and testing 20 other shale basins and finding similar success. That same quiet rush to test other large potential sites and in some old oil sites is now taking place. At some point it will make more sense for investors to pile on to these large new resource plays for methodical drilling and production potential onshore and thereby make the multi-decade offshore oil development projects look risky and high cost! Maybe you will get a clue when one of the unconventional states like ND passes CA in oil production.
It’s not the definition of peak of oil that’s in question, but it’s meaning that causes the controversy.
Peak oil proponents attach a great deal of significance to it’s meaning.
RE: Resourceguy: (October 30, 2011 at 6:37 pm)
“. . . I fear though that your sources of information are limited on this topic and perhaps you are far behind. I’ll at least get the thought list going for you. Do you really think EIA and USGS are going to come out and admit their models developed internally and at academic research groups are bunk?”
That may be true and my discovery of the EIA website is recent, but I would assume from their name, “US Energy Information Agency,” that they are responsible for providing the public with accurate and authoritative historical data on known global oil production and discovery without regard to any previous model or theory. They do not appear to be doing this.
Given the reputation of the author, David Archibald, as a petroleum expert, I have to assume that Figure Three is generally accepted as a true picture of the current state of petroleum discovery and production. By eyeball integration, this chart seems to indicate that we should have discovered about 70 billion barrels of new oil since 2004 and we have extracted over 140 billion barrels of oil from the Earth in the same time interval. Yes, a chart based on more current data would be preferred.
I have seen seemingly authoritative estimates for the onset of declining oil running from 2012 to 2090. I make no such estimate on my own, except to say that I have found no reason to believe in an unlimited supply of oil.
RE: Spector
Try looking up EIA charts and data about reserves tabulation and projections for natural gas in the U.S. prior to four years ago and compare that to updates today and next year after the energy tech revolution becomes obvious. You will at least get one glimpse of a revolution in that one hydrocarbon segment and the fragility of EIA/USGS models and assessments. There is basically no cost to society of you and a federal agency being flat wrong about fundamental market changes that are being driven by the private sector at the margin and with a slow moving cycle of revisionary updates by the agency. There is a tremendous cost to society when you and a federal agency allow energy policy to swing in a costly and wrong direction either absolutely (see Solyndra bankruptcy) or prematurely. see… http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204226204576602524023932438.html
Over the last eight years, Trendlines Research has reconciled for comparison literally hundreds of long-term outlooks for its monthly Peak Oil Depletion Scenarios chart presentation: http://www.trendlines.ca/free/peakoil/Scenarios/scenarios.htm
There are three common errors made in the failed efforts: (a) underestimation of URR/EUR. Most are under 2.5 Tb and reflect a failure to account for rising resource as crude price escalates within the projection period. In general, URR rises by 33 Gb for every $1/barrel increase in oil prices; (b) overestimation of UDRO (underlying decline rate observed). This cyclical loss factor has averaged 2.7% since 1970 and the rate crests and troughs in direct correlation to American Recessions. It is running at 3.4% in 2011, but many practitioners use 5% to 9% rates that foil their short-term targets; & (c) an inherent flaw with worst cast scenario principle of standard bottom-up models is their decision to only utilize announced-to-date megaprojects consistent with seven-year horizons albeit the 40-yr avg is 3.0 Mbd/yr.
Global maximum production is most certainly going to be related to Peak Demand rather than any form of resource constraint of the natural Geologic Peak (bau). Peak Demand will in turn be determined by ever-rising crude prices: http://www.trendlines.ca/free/peakoil/PeakScenario2500/PeakScenario2500.htm
This leads to a critical issue in production profiling … the need to accurately predict the long-term price trend. Many invalidated scenarios were based on illogical price forecasts of $200 to $500 and reflected little appreciation for demand destruction thresholds: http://www.trendlines.ca/free/peakoil/BarrelMeter/BarrelMeter.htm
The consensus of the 16 Tier-1 Scenarios infers Peak Oil will occur @ur momisugly 97 Mbd in 2024. This is the highest ever peak rate for this average. At this time, my own PS-2500 model projects Peak Demand (100 Mbd) will present itself when crude price hits $205/barrel in 2028. The Peak Demand Barrier is a definitive Petroleum/GDP ratio that was breached temporarily in 2008 ($90/barrel), again in early 2011 ($99) and is projected to be $262 by 2035. Consumption will not rise during the months price surpasses this line-in-the-sand. Peak occurs when crude price fails to drift back…
Other critical price events rising with GDP are the USA Light Vehicle Sales Collapse Threshold ($92/barrel – avg USA contract crude) & fossil fuel induced/augmented G-20 Recessions ($120).
re: Kum Dollison says: October 28, 2011 at 7:36 pm and October 28, 2011 at 7:42 pm
Sorry, it’s not rational to pick a single month’s price for comparision when the monthly price is so violatile. From 2009 thru 2010, inflation adusted, the price varied from a low of about $32.90 to a high of $83.13. Obviously picking a single month for comparision is pretty meaningless at best, and very misleading at worst – and yet you try to shift simply to another month rather than looking at a more meaningful comparison.
Then, how about we compare apples to apples, and you provide some evidence to back your claims. I’ve already shown that your initial claim of prices tripling was way off, prices only increased by roughly a quarter (Rational Debate says: October 28, 2011 at 6:57 pm). I also pointed out that with oil prices as massively violatile as they’ve been in the last several years, picking one month’s price is almost certain to skew the picture badly. So you ignore that, choose oranges to compare to apples, and move the goal posts – all without a single reference to support your claims. Plus you have fun tossing in a supposedly massive increase over a longer timeframe, where, golly gee, you just happened to pick the bottom of the pricing around those years, and again you provide zero reference and go even further to pick, yet again, a single price rather than a year’s average. Even using your new chosen years, however, the average price for 1998/99 was $19.37 to a 2010 price of $73.44. That’s an increase of about 3.8 times, not 1000%.
Heck, lets just go back and compare to 1979-1982 why don’t we? In inflation adjusted dollars, every one of those years averaged HIGHER oil prices than 2010.
Furthermore, as long as production is keeping up with demand, as it clearly has been, there’s no problem – and no way to claim that production is representative of actual resource availability. It would be one thing if they were unable to produce to demand, and prices not only went up, but STAYED up for an extended period – e.g., well past the point where the cycle of exploration to new production could realistically have occurred.
As to production having stalled out over the past 6 years, again, 2011 isn’t yet complete & therefore not available for comparision. Plus, production is coupled to demand which has been significantly affected by global economic woes. Let’s take the past 6 years available years anyhow. Production is up 2.65%. If you take the past decade, it’s up over 13%. http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?product=oil&graph=production and http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904060604576572552998674340.html
So you go ahead and make your ‘smart money’ bet – but I’ll go with the available facts which sure don’t support your view on the issue.
re: Spector says: October 29, 2011 at 11:13 pm
Spector, nuclear power provides electricity, not transportation fuels and other petroleum based products (plastics, etc). They have to be competitive primarily with natural gas and coal – not oil.
RE: Rational Debate: (November 3, 2011 at 8:41 pm)
“Spector, nuclear power provides electricity, not transportation fuels and other petroleum based products (plastics, etc). They have to be competitive primarily with natural gas and coal – not oil.”
I believe the basic requirement is plentiful cheap energy. Once that energy is available it can be used manufacture energy storage fluids, such as manufactured hydrocarbon fuels or as outlined in the ‘Hydrogen Economy’ proposal.
We will see major changes in our way of life if future energy sources become too expensive to be used for personal transportation. My comment applies to an undefined time in the future when declining oil production would otherwise force declining automobile and aircraft use.
One of the selling points touted for Molten Salt Thorium Reactors is that they supposedly extract most of the available energy and leave very little waste. They also say that typical solid fuel Uranium/Plutonium Reactors only extract a small fraction of the energy available and leave the rest as radioactive waste in the spent fuel rods.
re: Spector says: November 5, 2011 at 2:56 am
I totally agree that cheap plentiful energy is crucial to mankinds well being – even to the well being of the ecosystem. It’s only people who have cheap abundant energy who have the luxury to be concerned about the environment and other species, rather than scraping all the time to avoid starvation or death from exposure.
You are partially correct wrt to present day nuclear reactors – they do only burn up a relatively small amount of the fuel in each fuel rod. This is where the issue of reprocessing and breeder reactors comes in, however. The spent fuel from typical reactors can be reprocessed and much of the energy potential recovered for use as new fuel rods. That also drastically reduces the volume of ‘waste’ that remains. All of that said, one has to keep in mind that even without reprocessing, the volume of ‘waste’ (it’s actually a resource still, not waste) is very very small compared to both the amount of energy that has been produced and to other energy generating methods. It’s also all managed – not puffed out into the atmosphere (although scrubbers etc., have drastically reduced the airborne pollution from coal plants, there is still an airborne pollution component, which you just don’t have with nuclear power).
Just to give you a feeling for the volume we’re talking about, all of the spent fuel rods from over 50 years of nuclear power generation in the United States (roughly 20% of our electricity for many decades now from approx 102 reactors), could be fit into a space the size of a single football field and a depth of a few yards. Spent fuel rods wouldn’t be stored in that geometry of course, but that certainly gives one a feeling for just how small a total volume actually exists. In a realistic storage geometry (e.g., dry cask storage, configured such that casks can be handled and or retrieved as desired) all of the existing high level ‘waste,’ including that generated by military applications, can easily go into a single repository under one mountain top/mesa that takes up a tiny edge of the Nevada Test Site (where most of our nuclear weapons tests have been conducted). This also includes some materials such as old reactor vessels, etc.
If those spent fuel rods were reprocessed, the volume would be reduced to about 1/100th the current amount.
When you consider how much energy has been produced for such a minuscule amount of waste product, it’s truly mind blowing.
Here are two recent videos showing what the leading proponents of the Molten Salt Thorium Reactors are saying. One is a long compendium with a short five-minute summary and the other is a talk by Kirk Sorensen at the Weinberg Foundation. I am not qualified to say if this is a viable project or just a way for governments to waste money; the concept, however, does sound very interesting and potentially practical.
LFTR in 5 Minutes – THORIUM REMIX 2011
508 likes, 5 dislikes; 21,719 Views; 1:59:59 (2 Hrs)
Uploaded by gordonmcdowell on Oct 4, 2011
“Thorium is readily available & can be turned into energy without generating transuranic wastes. Thorium’s capacity as nuclear fuel was discovered during WW II, but ignored because it was unsuitable for making bombs. A liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) is the optimal approach for harvesting energy from Thorium, and has the potential to solve today’s energy/climate crisis. LFTR is a type of Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (Th-MSR). This video summarizes over 6 hours worth of thorium talks given by Kirk Sorensen and other thorium technologists.
“THORIUM REMIX 2011 starts with a 5 minute TL;WL summary, to hold you over until you find your Ritalin.”
Energy Future: Guest Kirk Sorensen speaks at Weinberg Foundation Launch
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Uploaded by WeinbergFoundation on Sep 25, 2011
“8th September, 2011 – The Weinberg Foundation, an organisation promoting clean, safe energy from Thorium launches at the House of Lords in London. Co-founder, John Durham introduces guest speaker, Kirk Sorensen of Flibe Energy, who shares with guests his interest in the work of pioneering physicist Alvin Weinberg, and the innovative technologies in energy pioneered at Oak Ridge Laboratories, in Tennessee during the 50’s and 60’s.”