YOU!: Fix the US Energy Crisis

RuiMonteiro

Thanks for the information. It's really intersting and an imaginative solution.

Now i can answer what Cliff said more properly regarding carpool lanes.
It does sounds good the idea of people who are not qualified paying to have access to this lane but in practise i don't see it working properly because a great amount of people either would join that system and pay to use the lane and therefore congestionating both the carpool lane and the other lanes or people wouldnt simply join and making this new method useless. I am taking into account that people would vote "yes" primarly, but of course they vote yes as an opinion that it would work but they aren't necessarly going to use it.

This could work however if it's set up a maximum of users that don't qualify but want to pay to use the carpool lane so that there isn't a saturation in the special lane, and as i see it this is the only solution that could work because it would prevent the system to become pointless. In the begining the number of users should be an estimative and then if this works properly the number of users should be adapted to the time of the year and the results of the first test.

And i don't see this being discriminatory.


Rui M.

tumor

I don't think there is any real energy crisis,everything is made for profit.We could switch at any moment to the hydrogen or some other form of cleaner economy ,but
as long as oil makes more money for energy companies,humanity will live in misery.

Cliff_J

Rui - my bad on the word confusion - I thought carpool would be easier than High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane. Sometimes its too easy to assume..

The basis of congestion pricing is supply-demand and the author won a Nobel Prize for economics. Here's a page that has a link to the PDF of his paper (verbose) near the bottom and a link to his guidlines right after it and the guidlines is far easier to read.
http://www.vtpi.org/0_price.htm

In short, the price is set high enough to keep the usage low. Somewhere in California they have this system implemented and while more than half the motorists have the ability to pay to use the carpool lane it is still well below saturation. A survey revealed that most people purchased it as a backup in case they were late for work or congestion was bad and it would be worthwhile to pay the $3 or whatever fee on that day but otherwise they use the regular lanes. Computers monitor the carpool lane and the price is adjusted to keep the traffic level appropriate in that lane to keep all the cars moving at the speed limit or better.

I don't see discrimination either but there are deep historic wounds that have yet to be resolved by some. That's pretty common anywhere, especially when times are tough and blame is assigned to the usual suspects.

Maybe instead of saying "think globally, act locally" it should have just been "think globally, act globally" so people would think of things more as a system instead of discrete elements. Once everything is reduced to pieces its easy to be selfish and get local optimization but hurt the overall system. Where's my magic wand....

I think the idea of increased nuclear power production is a very good use of technology and resources with low costs (unlike solar with its hidden costs of manufacturing the panels). But the implementation challenge is massive, 3 mile Island and Chernobyl were very well covered by the media and the Chernobyl site is still a mess. All a politician would need to say is "...do you want that in your backyard..." and emotion overrules intelligent discussion about the real dangers.

Cliff

4newton

There is no energy problem there is just a political problem. Any government that has not provided for the future needs of the country is a failure. Any government the uses restrictions, limits, conservation, or rationing to solve a problem that it has all the resources for is a failure.

We have and have had for over 50 years all the energy that we will ever need for the next 2000 years or more. Only by political pressure from shortsighted Dark Age intellectuals have we failed to develop this energy.

Nuclear power is the answer.

russ_watters

That is true except for what to do about cars and ships. They would still need to be converted over to some form of electric power - battery, fuel cell, or other. That's not a trivial task, but certainly converting all of our gas/oil/coal power to nuclear is the first task.

My proposal called for heavy research for fusion power. Fusion power would be nice, but the truth is, we really don't need it. But I fear that we won't build another nuclear plant until we hit peak oil production in 50-100 years and the economics (and environmental problems) are too ugly to ignore.

Maybe it starts with education: somewhere people are learning that nuclear power is dirty and unsafe. They need to be taught that it isn't.

Aquamarine

Nuclear energy is an excellent way to generate hydrogen as a fuel for transportation:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf70.htm

But hydrogen has lots of problems, this may be a better solution:
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

About other energy sources:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf10.htm

RuiMonteiro

Cliff,

Thanks for the information. That's a good system for the carpool lane then, very intersting and imaginative.
I took a look at the site you provided and also saw some information on what London did when was decided to keep cars out of the center of the city and for what i read it seems other cities are trying to implement this system wich also seems a good idea.



I don't know exactly what are the hiden costs of manufacturing the panels. I can tell you again about that solar central in Portugal and the investor is private and not a big company. And the production of solar panels is getting bigger, i think Greece leads the production.


As i see it and many other people see it converting all of the gas, oil and coal power to nuclear (or other any energy source) is a big mistake. The reason for this is very simple, the uranium reserves are not ilimited and we would eventually fall into the same problems of finding alternative energy sources and the problem of oil dependacy that many countries suffer today would become a uranium dependacy. I'm not saying that nuclear power shouldn't be used at all, i'm saying, as i said before, energy sources should be diversified, its benefical for everyone.


Saying that the peak of oil production will be in 50-100 years is completly irrealistic. First the oil reserves are not estimated to last that long, second as time goes by the oil available decreases and because of the decrease in the reserves and the oil demand that increases every year the price will go up to a value making oil useless, a simple law of market.



Rui M.

Cliff_J

I'd say its pretty universal and the media did nothing for it with the 3MI and Chernobyl coverage (even though that could use more to help raise money to fix it before it gets worse). Its like what the movie Jaws did for public perception of sharks and so on. As a kid I remember both being mentioned a lot and no one mentioned the pollution and deaths from other power generation. Maybe because of the vested interest in the coal production in the state and economic benefit of keeping that industry around.

Ever watch the Penn & Teller show on Showtime? Its entertaining and thought-provoking as they examine both sides of an issue (and then poke fun at one side). The show they did on recycling was very interesting as it was based on a paper that showed recycling as a waste of resources. They brought up the barge in the 80s as a media event that worked well with an EPA report that said the number of landfills was decreasing (without mention of the size of the landfills). Their point was how we have been tricked by subsidies and inaccurate information that leads us to support a wasteful activity. The only thing they said they supported was aluminum recycling and made no mention of industrial recycling which both have clear numbers (and with aluminum the electricity needed to convert bauxite is staggering).

Aquamarine - that was an awesome link for biodiesel. If you've ever driven through farmland in the US its amazing how much productive land the government pays farmers to keep idle that could easily be turned into production for energy purposes. At least they've started testing something:
http://www.fsa.usda.gov/pas/publicat.../biomass00.htm

But I think it would be an easy sell to the population that such a readily available source is already in their backyard and under-utilized. I especially like the EROI method of determining the viability of a fuel source. And since the sulfur content of biodiesel should be low (ignorance?) then pollution would easily be on par with current vehicles without many modifications.

My question would be why Europe with its far higher diesel car density hasn't made progress to adopt biodiesel when their fuel prices are so incredibly high in comparison to the US? I know that Britian has made efforts to switch cars over to LPG, but this seems so much easier (assuming people drive diesels).

Cliff

hitssquad

Before-tax mineral fuel prices in Europe are about the same as they are in the US. Fuel taxes in Europe are higher, though, making the pump price higher:

• taxes comprise $2.82 of the $4.07 gallon in France, $2.56 of the $3.91 gallon in Germany, and $2.53 of the $3.97 gallon of fuel in Italy. In the U.S., fuel taxes comprise about 39 cents of the average $1.64 gallon of gas.

What is high everywhere is the before-tax price of biodiesel in comparison with that of mineral diesel. This would help explain why, in Europe, mineral diesel is preferred over biodiesel.

Aquamarine

More on Biodiesel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel

There seems already to be a growing grassrot interest, this forum is quite active:
http://forums.biodieselnow.com/default.asp

A somewhat optimistic thread, "Can oil producing algae be grown at home ?"
http://forums.biodieselnow.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3414

Cliff_J

Umm, I just watched part of a program on the History channel about what happened at 3 Mile Island. I almost change my vote from nuclear to anything else after that, no wonder the population doesn't want more nuclear plants after the extremely poor planning by the designers and actions by the company running the plant. After the first nuclear power plant ran by the military had its problems I guess I assumed there would be better planning, but I guess maybe even partial ignorance is bliss.

Cliff

russ_watters

Could you be more specific as to what the program said, Cliff_J - I studied the TMI incident in school and the conclusion I drew is that the incident shows how safe nuclear power is.

gech

I think you had the right idea in starting this thread, but you're assuming alot. I think only Brewnog touched upon this, which everyone else passed over. What you are assuming is that we have the time to implement these solutions. Do we though?
40% of our (United States) energy comes from oil. Domestic production of oil peaked in the 1970s. Today we are dependent on other areas to provide for our (relatively large) oil needs. Unfortunately, these sources (the Middle East) will reach their peak, by some estimates, in the year 2010, 2015, 2020, or in some places, right now. Oil is behind every part of our everyday lives. Our economy is dependent on oil. When the output of an oil reserve has peaked, it means it is now heading downward. This means that there will be less production and the obvious negative economic effects are numerous and wide-ranging.
To put it simply, the world will produce less and less oil, and the economies that we have built around our energy resources will fall. Hard. So yes, solutions are sorely needed. I think addressing this issue is perhaps a start so I'm glad you brought the energy issue to bear. I think some of the solutions presented are optimistic, but nonetheless moot if we cannot employ them to replace oil (Oil is everything, especially in the U.S.) in time. I liked how many of you linked to articles which talked of potential energy sources. Here's another link which addressess many of those alternatives.

I don't know if you can really solve this problem. Some of you may have supported altering our lifestyles, like driving more fuel efficient cars. It is actually a fact that we will have to adapt and change. We will need to reorganize our communities, and start "living locally". Everything we need will have to be produced "in our area". If we can do this, then we can soften the blow we will take as we run out of cheap oil.

Aquamarine

The usual malthusian scenario that have always been wrong before. The link contains gross inaccuracies.

There is enough nuclear fuel to last at least thousands of year. Certainly enough time to get into space and to build an economy based on solar power:
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=46366

Read my prior links on biodiesel. The price of fuel for transportation can rise but not more than to the cost of producing biodiesel.

This is of course what the extreme environmentalists want, energy crises or not. They hope for a breakdown of the capitalistic society which will create a socialistic/anarchistic utopia.

RuiMonteiro

I just took a look at the links you provided. The first report from the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency is highly speculative. Sometime ago i found several reports stating that even taken into account the unknown and undiscovered uranium resources, at current rate of uranium consumption, it would last around 150 years. So current estimates (with current comsuption of uranium) project that uranium use should end around 2060 or so.

Another problem is the geographical distribution of the uranium reserves, wich the same report makes believe that they are more well distributed then oil. The uranium reserves are well localized and that would take us back to the dependance problem, not counting with the processing of the uranium, wich only a few countrys have the technology.

But let me say again that i'm not against or in favor of new nuclear plants, i do am against, like i already stated on this thread, substituting all the oil and coal plants for nuclear plants. For obvious reasons it would be better economically and socially that the energy resources of one country isn't based primarly on one type of energy but on several.

On a final note regarding oil and uranium dependance, just because one country is rich in a determined energy source it doesnt mean they will use it before using another country resources. Thats whats happening in the US, they don't have the need to import has much oil has they do, the US has one of the biggest oil reserves, they do this to prevent a faillure on import oil supply and to make sure the US will have enough oil to use when the world reserves are low.



Rui.

Aquamarine

More on the supply of uranium and thorium:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.htm
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.htm

The only way to get the low supply figures quoted by the malthusians is to ignore thorium, breeder technology and that higher higher uranium prices will automatically increase economically usable resources.

On other other power sources:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf10.htm

This may change if hydrogen or other ways to store massive amounts of energy ever becomes feasible. But even so there will energy lost converting to and from storage.

RuiMonteiro

I certanly am not ignoring thorium or how technology will evolve through the years. What i'm saying is that those reports are very speculative (also including the last links provided), it's easy to see that.
And regarding proven and estimated uranium resources the main problem is not their physical limitation but their economical limitation, as the uranium price starts to get higher (and it will also suffer peaks of high cost due to many unpredictable factors) it won't automatically increase the investment on new technology to make use of other type of high cost uranium resources. This is what is happening with oil. With a current elevated oil price no one is investing on new technlogy to extract other un-familiar and abudant types of oil resources, simply because there are many factors involved, it's not that linear. I'm not saying this on what i assume because i'm not an economist but i'm saying this based on reputed economists and not some malthusian theory from the 18th century.


Rui.