Crude Prices Skyrocket: $11 Rise in One Day

[Chi Meson]

Those *viable* objections simply do not cut the mustard in explaining why we have not built *ONE* power reactor in 40 years!

Of course you meant to say 20 years, right? It's only been forty years since the first plant went on line.

 

[seycyrus]

Of course you meant to say 20 years, right? It's only been forty years since the first plant went on line.

If you've got some dates, please give them. I don't mean to sound hostile, but I'm not at my home computer, and I don't have my references. of course, 40 years is not the correct number.

Edit: It might be correct acutally. the first plant went online in '57. 50 years ago.

I'm talking about plans being drawn up and ground broken for a new plant, not finishing up construction that was started earlier.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Stop blaming liberals, stop blaming conservatives, stop blaming oil companies, stop blaming environmentalists, stop blaming Hummer drivers, stop blaming Bush (...no, keep blaming him, the twat!) and learn how to live with the "new economy."

Blame is not the point. We have an election coming up, and it is time for everyone to recognize that the Republicans have always been the problem. Enough is enough. The crisis that we have worked so hard to avoid for forty years may finally be upon us.

As for the other comments made: I'm not a liberal nor a Democrat. I consider myself more Libertarian than anything, and I am an Independent. I don't like Obama because he is liberal, I like him because he is the right man for the time, and he is extremely smart, if not brilliant. We need someone as smart as him in times like these.

 

[Astronuc]

Well, I don't really see any good short term solutions. But ITER is a promising step.

The building of ITER won't get underway until next year, and it was take several years to get it up a running, and then it may or may not prove feasibility of fusion for electrical energy. Tokamak assembly starts 2012, and first plasma is anticipated in late 2016. http://www.iter.org/a/n1/downloads/construction_schedule.pdf

It takes about 5-6 years to construct a nuclear plant - if all goes well.

To be fair to the anti-nuke and skeptics, the nuclear industry got sloppy in the 70's and 80's, and the accident at TMI-2 didn't help instill confidence in the industry, nor the fire at Browns Ferry in which a work lit insulation on fire with a candle while trying to look for air leaks. The fire burned the cables to the reactor control systems.


Most of the natural gas fired plants built since 2000 lose money with gas much above $3/MBTU. They were budgeted on low cost natural gas.


As for oil supply, the non-OPEC nations are holding back. They don't have to produce more, but instead they can sit back and watch the price of oil increase.

Then there are the speculators on the commidities exchange who keep bidding up the price, based on speculation that oil may not be available, e.g. if a hurricane hits the Gulf of Mexico again.

The oil companies don't have to compete for customers, so they can pass on the cost to consumers, and their production divisions can rake in the money.

 

[Benzoate]

Right now the price of gas is driven partly by a limited refining capacity. The price of crude is driven in part by the weak dollar. In the 70's we experienced severe supply shortages. So at this point it seems to be a different situation. But increasing demand from India, and in particular from China, is also a significant factor.

Noteworthy: For about 15 years the price of crude hovered around $20 a barrel. It hit a low of $10 a barrel just before Bush began his run for office in 2000. It has pretty much skyrocketed ever since. Since Bush showed up on the scene, the average price of crude has risen by about 600%

While I agree with you that gas has rise dramatically over the past 8 years since Bush has been in office, the price of gas hasn't only risen up in the United States. It is extremely worst in other parts of the world as well. The average price of gas in the past 8 years has when from 3.00 per gallon , to 9 dollars . I find that kind of ironic because you think the price of gas in Europe would be extremely low compared to the price of gas in the United States. The reason is because there is not a high demand for cars in Europe vs. the number of cars in Europe since most people do not drive in that part of the world. When their is a high supply of cars vs. a low demand for cars , you think the price of gas would go down. Go figure

 

[Chi Meson]

If you've got some dates, please give them. I don't mean to sound hostile, but I'm not at my home computer, and I don't have my references. of course, 40 years is not the correct number.

Edit: It might be correct acutally. the first plant went online in '57. 50 years ago.

I'm talking about plans being drawn up and ground broken for a new plant, not finishing up construction that was started earlier.

No you are not correct, and yes you are sounding hostile. I did misspeak, before: the first plant went online in the late fifties, but the oldest plant currently working went online in 1969. So ALL of the currently operating plants have been built in the last forty years. The five newest plants were built in the 90's, with the most recent online in 1996.
http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/usnuclearpowerplants/

Currently there are designs in the works to build new plants (with bipartisan support). The delay has to do with the very delicate processing required for recycling spent fuel. As most people know only 20--25% of the energy is taken from the fuel during the first fission process. Our current waste WILL BE tomorrow's fuel. But the processing looks a lot like production of nuclear weapons. The new designs are part of a multinational cooperative effort to assure that reprocessing is for fuel only.

This is interesting; even Greenpeace's co-founder Patrick Moore has come around on nuclear energy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html

 

[Chi Meson]

Blame is not the point. We have an election coming up, and it is time for everyone to recognize that the Republicans have always been the problem. Enough is enough. The crisis that we have worked so hard to avoid for forty years may finally be upon us.

As for the other comments made: I'm not a liberal nor a Democrat. I consider myself more Libertarian than anything, and I am an Independent. I don't like Obama because he is liberal, I like him because he is the right man for the time, and he is extremely smart, if not brilliant. We need someone as smart as him in times like these.

I agree with you here, and I was not actually referring to you in my post. Rock on!

 

[Astronuc]

No you are not correct, and yes you are sounding hostile. I did misspeak, before: the first plant went online in the late fifties, but the oldest plant currently working went online in 1969. So ALL of the currently operating plants have been built in the last forty years. The five newest plants were built in the 90's, with the most recent online in 1996.
http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/usnuclearpowerplants/

Currently there are designs in the works to build new plants (with bipartisan support).

Oyster Creek and Nine Mile Pt 1 are the oldest nuclear plants operating and they went online ~'69 time frame.

The other plants from the 50's and 60's have been decommissioned, and they were small plants (e.g. Big Rock Pt.) primarily for demonstration purposes. We've had several more modern plants: Trojan, Maine Yankee, Connecticut Yankee (Haddam), Millstone-1 and Rancho Seco shutdown and decommissioned. The utilities considered them uneconomical, especially when the electric industry was deregulated.


Locally we've seen gasoline (regular) at around $4.15/gal give or take (and it's been steady for about 1 week), but today, I saw $4.23 at one station. I expect it will hit $4.50 or so during the summer.

Now interestingly, the demand for gasoline has gone down, and supplies (inventories) were greater than demand, but the price still rises.

 

[seycyrus]

No you are not correct, and yes you are sounding hostile.

When I read my response, I realized that my asking you for dates when i provided none might sound hostile. Which is why I edited the my post. What is the preferred way for me to indicate that I don't mean to appear hostile, besides stating it, that is? Should I kowtow?

I did misspeak, before:

Hey, it's ok. Happens to the best of us. At least you weren't stupid enough to point out that you didn't mean to appear to be hostile.

the first plant went online in the late fifties, but the oldest plant currently working went online in 1969. So ALL of the currently operating plants have been built in the last forty years. The five newest plants were built in the 90's, with the most recent online in 1996.
http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/usnuclearpowerplants/ ]

Ok, so we are now talking about FIVE built in the last 20 years, (let me round off, and I'll let you do the same)

How many coal plants have we built in that time?

Currently there are designs in the works to build new plants (with bipartisan support)

Right. *Currently*.

The navy has a phenomenal nuclear track record. If we had put serious effort into design and implementation of nuclear reactors then our present pickle might be a little less sour.

I was yelling about the efforts of the past, and the obstacles that prevented progess.

I also read an article in the NYT discussing how the majority of the remaining opponents of our current efforts are the dems.

 

[seycyrus]

Blame is not the point. We have an election coming up, and it is time for everyone to recognize that the Republicans have always been the problem.

Yeah, no blame there.

Blatant tripe.

 

[DT_tokamak]

Iter

The building of ITER won't get underway until next year, and it was take several years to get it up a running, and then it may or may not prove feasibility of fusion for electrical energy. Tokamak assembly starts 2012, and first plasma is anticipated in late 2016.

Yes, ITER will be years coming. That is and always has been the primary problem with fusion energy... funding and motivation. The physics behind fusion from toroidally confined plasmas was ironed out quite a while ago. There is no doubt among fusion scientists that the tokamak can provide a commercially viable solution.

The biggest enemy against fusion as a clean and abundant energy source is simply people's perceptions. Most people among the general population can't define fission and fusion. And even among the scientific community that lies outside the field of fusion research and fusion technology, most don't understand the level at which the technology has already proven itself. The only reason we haven't had a test reactor produce a high Q factor yet is because we need money to build a powerful enough reactor. The science is the same, the budget is not. Thankfully, ITER will be able to demonstrate a Q factor of around 10.

I would beg people to stop dismissing this technology. It works, it works without a doubt. Yes, the reactors are expensive, but once built, they will produce energy with a fuel supply that is both abundant and safe.

The United States spent over $100 billion in today's dollars on the Apollo project. Why? Because putting a man on the moon was something people could get excited about - it was something people could comprehend. If fusion offered the same sense of awe, we'd have commercial reactors now. Unfortunately, we've never been quite as motivated by practical and useful things as we have by fascinating things. But for people like me, I find fusion to be both.

We will have commercial reactors one day. We only hurt ourselves by dismissing their promise.

 

[Chi Meson]

Ok, so we are now talking about FIVE built in the last 20 years, (let me round off, and I'll let you do the same)

There have been at least five plants put online in the last 20 years. There have been 103 put online in the last 40 years.

So this corrects both of our original statements concerning this number.

 

[Astronuc]

. . . . The physics behind fusion from toroidally confined plasmas was ironed out quite a while ago. There is no doubt among fusion scientists that the tokamak can provide a commercially viable solution.

The physics (theory) is more or less understood, however, it has yet to be demonstrated as a practical source of electricity. Plasma stability, energy input and energy extraction are still the biggest problems to be solved.

I think there is still plenty of doubt.

 

[seycyrus]

There have been at least five plants put online in the last 20 years. There have been 103 put online in the last 40 years.

My point is that we have squandered the opportunities we had to have access to greater amounts of safe nuclear power.

Compare this to your original statement regarding this number. This is not about rounding off, it is about having correct data.

I already said my number is/was incorrect. I asked you for the dates, even going as far as to indicate that I didn't want to appear to be hostile by asking for the information. How many times do I need to say that my number was wrong before you realize that I admitted it?

My rounding off was in regards to the length of time since the '90s which I rounded up to 20 years. Which is why I put the rounding statements in parenthesis *in* the sentence my remark referred to.

I was not rounding 100 to ZERO, nor five to twenty, nor 1 to twelve. Nowhere have I tried to make such a claim.

 

[wildman]

Bush has nothing to do with this or the oil companies. This is the third oil crisis. The one where the price of oil just goes up and up (with a downward blimp whenever Iraq oil goes back on line). The first crisis happened in 1967 Six Day War when the Arabs cut our oil. Yep, they cut our oil. Didn't notice anything did you? (At least those of you alive at the time). The reason was the US was not at peak oil yet and the US simply increased production. The next oil crisis happened in the 1970s. This one drove up prices for a while until World oil production increased and down came the prices again. This was because the World was not at peak yet.

This time the prices have rocketed past the second's level without a significant increase in oil production. There is only one explanation for this. It is that we are at peak oil (at least outside of the Middle East).

Don't worry; it will stabilize when alternatives to oil come on line. The alternatives will probably cost around $5 a gallon in today’s money so plan on that for the long run.

(See the latest National Geographic for source material on what I wrote above).

 

[wildman]

Nuclear power wouldn't solve ALL of the problem, just like more fuel efficient vehicles wouldn't solve ALL of the problem.

Nuclear power would certainly reduce our dependence.

Those *viable* objections simply do not cut the mustard in explaining why we have not built *ONE* power reactor in 40 years!

I can explain it: Stupidity.

 

[DT_tokamak]

The physics (theory) is more or less understood, however, it has yet to be demonstrated as a practical source of electricity. Plasma stability, energy input and energy extraction are still the biggest problems to be solved.

I think there is still plenty of doubt.

Plasma stability is not a problem in modern tokamaks. The poloidal and toroidal coils keeps the plasma stable for the most part and the correction coils take care of the remainder of instabilities.

Energy input is not a problem either... we've been firing up tokamaks for decades and achieving fusion reactions. TFTR hit 500 million C. No troubles there. The only thing we need is to get more energy out than we put in. And that's simply a matter of dollars which will create us larger reactors... that's not a question of science.

As for energy extraction, that's a pain in the a** for the engineers, but they're quite well capable of that. No one in the fusion field doubts the engineers' ability to optimize energy extraction.

I'll reiterate this for anyone that's interested in fusion, but skeptical... the biggest enemy fusion has is simply the lack of knowledge of people outside the field, to what has been accomplished and to what is being done inside the field. In order to tell people what's being done and exactly why fusion will work just fine, we need people to read and understand thousands of pages of technical information. No one outside the field is willing to put that much energy into understanding it. So they chalk it off and simply say, "hey, we haven't seen it work yet."

Well, we never saw a man standing on the moon before we sent one there. But I can tell you that the Apollo engineers were quite certain they could get the astronauts there and back safely. It's the same case with fusion scientists... except for the funding.

 

[russ_watters]

Most people say we either are AT or PAST peak. The peak hit about six years ago, which would coincide with the evil emperors arrival!

Every part of that statement is untrue. The second graph on the wik link on peak oil is a good dozen different predictions, only one appears to show a peak around 6 years ago. That being said, roughly halfway down on the page is a link of crude production to 2004. It shows we, in fact, did not hit our peak 6 years ago. Production was at its highest, and rising, when the graph cut off 3 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

 

[russ_watters]

But the "libs" have been pushing for higher fuel efficiency all along.

What does that have to do with it? Higher efficiency will not change the fact that we need much more energy today than we did 20 years ago. The choice made at the time was fossil fuel energy instead of nuclear energy. That choice was made by liberals. It's as simple as that.

If the liberals had not torpedoed nuclear power 20+ years ago, today we'd be less dependent on foreign oil, we'd be much lower on the world CO2 sh!t list, our skies would be clearer and people healthier, and we'd be paying less for all forms of energy. The anti-nuclear stance of the liberals for the past 40+ years has probably been the most environmentally and economically destructive thing to ever happen to the US.

 

[russ_watters]

Nuclear power wouldn't solve the problem.

Quite simply wrong.

What's more, there are still plenty of viable objections to nuclear power...

Also quite simply wrong.

 

[russ_watters]

Stop blaming liberals, stop blaming conservatives, stop blaming oil companies, stop blaming environmentalists, stop blaming Hummer drivers, stop blaming Bush (...no, keep blaming him, the twat!) and learn how to live with the "new economy."

The new economy isn't here yet, so until it gets here we need to deal with the problem. How we deal with the problem today (as for the past 40 years) will determine what the new economy looks like in 10 years.

 

[Chi Meson]

I was not rounding 100 to ZERO, nor five to twenty, nor 1 to twelve. Nowhere have I tried to make such a claim.

I had already modified my last response after misinterpreting your meaning.

I think we are mostly in agreement regarding nuclear energy. My father was Captain of a nuclear sub and I learned about nukes at a very early age from him. He has equally harsh words for the uneducated environmentalists who opposed nukes in the 70's and 80's as with the corporate CEO's who ran the nuclear plants at the same time.

He did work at the Millstone (CT) plants and the Peachbottom plant (PA) and a few others and found that the mindset was fixated on maximizing profits. A few years ago the Millstone folks realized that they had "lost" two spent fuel rods. At the same plant, several safety valves were found to be missing or not working (That one's now shut down).

There is plenty of blame to go around. Let's move on from this point.

For everyone who missed it the first time, I think this essay from the left of the left (Patrick Moore, of Greenpeace) is very important to see.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html

 

[russ_watters]

No you are not correct, and yes you are sounding hostile. I did misspeak, before: the first plant went online in the late fifties, but the oldest plant currently working went online in 1969. So ALL of the currently operating plants have been built in the last forty years. The five newest plants were built in the 90's...

Minor nitpick, but since it takes around 20 years to buld a plant due to regulations, most of that construction happened in the '80s. The way I have understood it, no new construction began after TMI in 1980.

And while TMI killed nuclear power domestically, Chernobyl killed it globally:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nuclear_Power_History.png

 

[quadraphonics]

My point is that we have squandered the opportunities we had to have access to greater amounts of safe nuclear power.

Yeah, not really. You don't have to build more plants to get more nuclear generation capacity; you can upgrade existing ones. And, given the resistance of NIMBY's to the siting of new plants, and the large number of plants already in operation, this is exactly what the United States has done. The USA generates far more commercial nuclear power than any other country, although that only amounts to 20% of our electricity consumption. And, anyway, new plants are now going up, so...

 

[Chi Meson]

The new economy isn't here yet, so until it gets here we need to deal with the problem. How we deal with the problem today (as for the past 40 years) will determine what the new economy looks like in 10 years.

I was referring to "this" new economy, the one we already have. Perhaps you are referring to the "next" economy. :grin: And I couldn't agree more. What we do now will determine what is next.

 

[Chi Meson]

Minor nitpick, but since it takes around 20 years to build a plant due to regulations, most of that construction happened in the '80s. The way I have understood it, no new construction began after TMI in 1980.

OK, point taken.

I would argue that it might be a good thing that we had the hiatus on building plants. The new plant designs are superior to those that existed in the 80s.

Can someone fill me in on this: President Carter had suspended reprocessing spent fuel; was this a treaty agreement?

And, for a third time, look at this, and send a link to the closest anti-nuke green you can find
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html

 

[seycyrus]

Every part of that statement is untrue...

No, only ONE part is untrue. The *most* part.

All the people that have discussed this with me have been of the *at, or past peak* ilk. The references they use and snippets they quote are the 4 or so past-peak references that the wiki article mentions. Especially Cohen's book.

 

[seycyrus]

Yeah, not really. You don't have to build more plants to get more nuclear generation capacity; you can upgrade existing ones. And, given the resistance of NIMBY's to the siting of new plants, and the large number of plants already in operation, this is exactly what the United States has done. The USA generates far more commercial nuclear power than any other country, although that only amounts to 20% of our electricity consumption. And, anyway, new plants are now going up, so...

I stand by my statement. Squandered. NIMBY is but one example of a reason we gave to squander it.

Upgrades could just as easily been applied to 150+ plants instead of 100+ plants.

 

[GRB 080319B]

Is there an underlying cause for the increase in the price of oil e.g. speculators, supply shock, increasing energy demand, depreciation of the US$ wrt other currencies, or something else?

 

[Evo]

For everyone who missed it the first time, I think this essay from the left of the left (Patrick Moore, of Greenpeace) is very important to see.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html

Great article Chi.