Will The End Of Oil See The End Of My Town?

[Andrew J.]

I may not be a raving optimist, but I'm not about to consign myself to the fate of there only being a light at the end of the tunnel after all the badness has already passed.

Your cynic-fu is weak. The badness won't pass until every last human being is dead, dead, dead.

[Ender]

Skipping restrictions means less red tape which means it's a reactor I'm going to compare to the one that made a good impression of a mushroom cloud in '86.

Cherynobl was the result of personnel, not material. They were using a procedure written by an engineer who had never been to the site and who based it off a similar procedure for another reactor design without checking it against. They deliberately disabled the protective features, got told to procede with the test over the local reactor operators objections. Yes, a postive temperature coefficient of reactivity and horizontal control rods are fucking retarded, but they were not the root cause. There are a ton of reactors of the same design still out there running smoothly.

The fastest we've ever pushed a civilian plant is around 5 years, which was a Japanese plant from memory. If you want to cut back on these restrictions as you build the hundreds to thousands of plants needed to keep the world ticking over, I hope you also have a good load of iodine tablets and hazmat suits.

The only design failures for reactors are on research ones back in 1959.

The first SSFL was a design flaw that has since been corrected by the addition of a coolant purification system. The second was an experimental sodium cooled version that we then abandoned. Both were research reactors rather then implemented designs.

NRX (CANDU) was a material fuckup - one of the the CRDMs failed to drive the rod in (while the others all worked) and created a stuck rod casualty.

NRU (CANDU) was a QA failure - they used inadequate materials and the plate broke.

SL-1 was a flawed design, but the flaw was only exploited because those fuckwits played fast and loose with the procedure because it was holiday standdown (well, that was Naval Reactor's assessment anyways, the Army's "suicide by reactor because he was gay" report doesn't even deserve comment). And they damn well paid for it.

TMI-2 was the watchteam through and through - fuckers decided to blow in the fill pump mantenance, disregard the valve line up, took the alarm to cutout, and arbitrarily decided that their indications were wrong despite what they were telling them.

Cherynobl I covered above.

Cutting most restrictions will result in more spills (actually, likely less if we change the restrictions that define one) and a higher rate of crud production, but that is a far cry from a Faded Giant.

Besides, to build a reactor requires funding. The reason we're not building them like there's no tomorrow right now is because no one wants to sink cash into something that takes so long to pay back for itself and has so much opposition in public. It's really a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation with nukes as I see it, though I don't expect us to ignore them. That'd just be the height of stupidity.

Yes, but the demand would fix that issue.

As for how you get there, perhaps you can consider living next to it. You USN guys do that anyway, so it's not a big change, just now you're on dry land (unless we start building those funky Russian floating reactors).

There are zoning restrictions about living near one, hence why I had to live offsite at Saratoga. Ships don't fall under those restrictions for obvious reasons, though I expect what you propose would be the case.

[Sikon]

Regarding nuclear reactor build times:

If extreme public motivation eventually leads to taking the necessary measures to obtain again similar or better performance, my post in the older thread gave the example of the Maine Yankee power plant. It was built in just four years construction time between 1968 and 1972 for a cost of $231 million, which is about $1.14 billion converted to today's dollars, for the 0.92 GW nuclear power plant.

The dark blue text is clickable references.

While four years construction time is already relatively good, one may keep in mind that was an ordinary civilian reactor project, not like wartime construction, constructed without any extraordinary urgency. A little like having full-scale operations up to 24 hours a day and 365 days a year with a maximum workforce much increased the speed of some construction during WWII, obtaining even faster than 4 year construction time for a nuclear power plant is possible in principle. Sufficiently extreme public motivation might indirectly lead to such.

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I will mainly skip commenting on some other topics in this thread, including space settlement, since it is both time-consuming and unproductive if previous posts in other threads are repeated too much.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

If we can manage to build reasonably safe nuclear reactors in three years or so then we have some chances of doing something about this in time, but don't take that the wrong way--we're still way, way behind the curve.


We'd need Congress to approve about 100 nuclear reactors like that for immediate construction say, this year, to get a lead time on things. And ramp up from there.

The problem is that we don't have the materials in place for such construction. Which means it would still take years for construction to begin. But maybe we'd have those reactors online in the 'nick of time.

[Sikon]

Just to clarify, I am talking about a scenario after extreme motivation may develop, unfortunately certainly not this year but rather a potential possibility in a number of years, depending upon exactly when sufficiently extreme peak oil effects develop. Major nuclear reactor construction would be preferable now, but the example of the past three decades implies a tendency for vastly more than the current degree of fossil fuel troubles to be involved before the public's bias against major nuclear power expansion could be overridden

[Ender]

You know, this scenario onthe horizon really highlights the need to rebuild the countries failing infastructure. Estimate is what, 1 trillion over 5 years? That would have it rebuilt in time by most estimates in this thread. It will do nothing to head it off, but it will speed recovery at least, and maybe even prevent us from falling so far.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

You know, this scenario onthe horizon really highlights the need to rebuild the countries failing infastructure. Estimate is what, 1 trillion over 5 years? That would have it rebuilt in time by most estimates in this thread. It will do nothing to head it off, but it will speed recovery at least, and maybe even prevent us from falling so far.

A lot of that is road infrastructure which we can just let rot, fortunately. All of that money needs to be put into a massive reconstruction and expansion of the whole railroad network instead.

And canals. We can't forget canals. All old canals should be restored and new ones built where possible. They're INCREDIBLY efficient for moving goods.

[Sikon]

Just to add a little to my last post, a segment of a recent April 2007 news article provides a picture of the factors involved. This is about global warming rather than peak oil, but it is a related fossil fuel issue:

Americans in large bipartisan numbers say the heating of the earth’s atmosphere is having serious effects on the environment now or will soon and think that it is necessary to take immediate steps to reduce its effects, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll finds.

Ninety percent of Democrats, 80 percent of independents and 60 percent of Republicans said immediate action was required to curb the warming of the atmosphere and deal with its effects on the global climate. Nineteen percent said it was not necessary to act now, and 1 percent said no steps were needed. [...]

The poll found that 84 percent of Americans see human activity as at least contributing to warming.

The poll also found that Americans want the United States to support conservation and to be a global leader in addressing environmental problems and developing alternative energy sources to reduce reliance on fossil fuels like oil and coal.

But when it comes to specific steps to foster conservation or produce more energy, the public is deeply torn, the poll found. Respondents said they would support higher gasoline prices to reduce dependence on foreign oil but would oppose higher prices to combat global warming.

By large margins, respondents opposed an increase in pump prices of $2 a gallon, or even $1, to deal with environmental and energy-supply concerns.

When asked whether they would accept a nuclear plan[t] in their community, they said no, 59 percent to 36 percent. [...]

From here..

At least in the case of the related issue of global warming, it isn't so much that the public doubts the basic idea as that they lack much motivation as measured in quantitative terms so far. And figures like the 59 to 36 percent ratio for local nuclear power plant construction opposition versus support is what may eventually change in the future if sufficiently blatant, major effects develop.

Of course, the preceding figures are for the U.S., but some factors are going to be similar in some other countries as well.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

If I had control of the government right now I'd slap a flat gas tax of $1.00 a gallon on gas, increasing every six months indefinitely until it reaches a peak of $20.00 a gallon in ten years, and make it illegal for any states to reduce their existing gas taxes.

It wouldn't do much but it would force people to start implementing alternatives. I'd be doing more, within the power of the constitution, to prepare for mitigation, but I'd really need to be a dictator to get anything done.

[Darth Raptor]

I have to admit that it will be nice to see the more useless elements of society being reduced to a stature commensurate with their social worth.

Between busting my ass just to survive and fleeing from Fuhrer Buchanon's Morality Police, I will take great solace in the knowledge that every celebrity and athlete is in now the same situation. And all those brandy-drooling aristocrats who deliberately engineered this catastrophe, shocked and horrified to see their wealth transform into large piles of low-quality toilet paper overnight. It may just be where I draw my will to continue living.

[His Divine Shadow]

A rather key point I think most people are missing here:

We build nuke plants, even the existing ones, out in the middle of nowhere for saftey. If there are no cars, how am I and the other reactor operators going to get there?

That said, I forsee the lead time on nuke plants dropping sharply as we discard most of the restrictions when the shit hits the fan. I'll have a job at least, too bad about you schmucks.

Electrical cars.

[His Divine Shadow]

Well, from a finnish, rural perspective.

Right, and what do you think happens when no one can afford or even find gasoline?

This won't happen overnight. As gasoline gets more and more expensive individual houses here are already moving en masse from oil burning to pellet burning. As gasoline prices go up, those tomatoes or beef from Spain and Holland will not be cheaper than the finnish meat and tomatoes. This will happen on alot of areas and production will move back home where its close, because it will be profitable once again against cheap foreign stuff.

Do you think supermarkets and workplaces still get transport? No, they won't. Because when people can't get to work and stores can't get deliveries, you face something worse than a collapse like '29 which was artificial in nature anyway.

No I think the village store will get more local customers again as people will take their biycle there rather than go into the city and hit the mall. And probably the local dairy producer that used to operate in the area in the 1950s will reopen as the farmers are being competitive again.

If we haven't atleast partially adapted to some new tech like eletrical vehicles by the time oil becomes too expensive we'll probably be using wood gas again for the trucks that have to transport food from the farmers and the rails to local stations, people will probably also do the same with their cars, you don't need a new car of very sophisticated equipment or any fuel stations. Some local stores will probably have a village butcher again who directly gets meat from the local farmer.

Less energy to run things today means zero growth, means depression and bang goes your incentive for venture capitalists to invest in new energy infrastructure. The US gov't sure as hell can't afford it.

We're already investing in energy infrastructure here. Nuclear power plants and bio energy and local ehtanol production from our massive forrests and planting new forrests and logging in a way that forrest will regrow as quickly as possible.

[J]

Between busting my ass just to survive and fleeing from Fuhrer Buchanon's Morality Police, I will take great solace in the knowledge that every celebrity and athlete is in now the same situation. And all those brandy-drooling aristocrats who deliberately engineered this catastrophe, shocked and horrified to see their wealth transform into large piles of low-quality toilet paper overnight. It may just be where I draw my will to continue living.

Unfortunately, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have anticipated and completely prepared for the upcoming disaster. Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch exists completely off the grid and is self-sufficient in energy and food resources and it's pretty much the same situation with Cheney. They were both in the oil business and knew peak oil was coming long ago, and they've setup their lives so that they and their families will likely never have to worry about it.

[Admiral Valdemar]

HDS: I know the likes of Scandinavia are farther ahead than the rest of the world, which is a good display of foresight on their behalf. I still do wonder how economic meltdown will affect their efforts in future.

This summer, the US is set for $4 gas and shortages are happening already. This hasn't curbed demand by all that much yet, since now it is estimated a 15% price increase will cut demand by merely 1%. That is unacceptable.

By 2010, major effects will likely manifest, that's assuming no explosion in stockpiling, a new war or some other factor to drastically cut production. Planning and moving to alternatives simply must be done under emergency protocol now in order to have basic power and industry support in the near future.

The problem with a lot of crash programmes is no one knows whether others won't simply cut exports overnight or make grabs for nearby resources. War is often the result of plans for supplying ever greedy peoples, but the paradox of war also wasting an ever smaller commodity is lost on many. I'm not going to predict what the major powers will do. I will, however, keep in mind that panic can cause stupid decision making, and given no one has really started countering this threat bar under the related guise of halting climate change, it does make you wonder how reactions to the real shocks will evolve.

The fluster over nuclear by the now backpedaling environmentalists hasn't helped. Even France hasn't been building any reactors lately based on newer designs such as pebble-beds.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

My own belief is that large-scale disruptions won't begin to take place until 2020, with the full effects (disaster, I mean) around 2030, but Valdemar's pessimism should not under any circumstances be ignored. 13 years has us in no better situation than 3 years as things stand because nobody will do anything when the actual crisis starts, at which point we'll have, if we're lucky, some time to start personal preservation measures before the bottom falls out.

For a while we can limp along on rationing and other conservation measures, but ultimately the oil simply won't arrive, and the economy, unless we've successfully implemented replacements in that short timeframe (WHILE on rationing!) will collapse.

[Mr. T]

A rather key point I think most people are missing here:

We build nuke plants, even the existing ones, out in the middle of nowhere for saftey. If there are no cars, how am I and the other reactor operators going to get there?

That said, I forsee the lead time on nuke plants dropping sharply as we discard most of the restrictions when the shit hits the fan. I'll have a job at least, too bad about you schmucks.

Electrical cars.

I wonder if a mix of public transportation coupled with some sort of vast electric and/or hydrogen car taxi service could save some suburbs or rural areas that are more reliant on cars. Obviously making vehicles running on renewables to replace every single car today might be impossible, but maybe an expanded taxi-type service could work in concert with public transportation to save some towns or rural areas beyond major metropolitan centres.

Hopefully as well, the plan in the news to create a rail link between Russia and Alaska can be implemented so that there's a new possibility of transportation to Asia, Europe etc. aside from boats and airplanes.

Fortunately in Ontario very little of our power generation should be affected by this. The McGuinty government though is moronically deciding to expand natural gas plants by 2025 and eliminate coal plants. I can understand the decision behind eliminating coal but if "clean coal" actually is a viable thing, It would certainly be better to just upgrade our plants as opposed to putting up more natural gas plants. Considering Canada's abundance of uranium, I'd hope that more nuclear plants are built. There might be less opposition in Ontario to new one's as the public's biggest gripe with plants doesn't seem to be that they might explode, it's because of the history of cost overruns when constructing the plants. So if they can be done within a reasonable budget, it should be more palatable here.

As for most of the U.S, man I feel sorry for you guys...

[J]

Canada could be in serious trouble if the US decides to pursue the "last man standing" policy, of which its already carried out the opening stages with the war in Iraq and the ongoing attempts to lock up oil assets in the Caspian Sea region. We have oil, and they will want it very badly. As I mentioned a bit earlier Bush and Cheney are former oilmen, they've known about peak oil and its implications for many years now and the current wars they're waging are the opening phases in a scramble to secure the last of the world's oil. This is generally regarded as the worst possible scenario as sooner or later every nation will be trying to secure oil by force. In short, expect an armed conflict wherever oil is found in any quantity and wars between oil importing nations as they fight for the dwindling supplies of black gold.

While all this is going on the people are left safely ignorant of the situation, and are led to believe that everything will be just fine and gasoline prices will come down as soon as all the fighting dies down. Resources, and even more importantly, time will continue to be wasted as people continue blithely along with their lives until one day, their world falls apart in a spectacular manner leaving them in a world of hurt as there is no mitigation policy in place. The fall will be sudden and hard, with no safety net.


As for how Canada fares, we are unfortunately at the mercy of the US. If worse comes to worst they can and will grab all our oil fields & oil sands projects in Alberta, and possibly the Hibernia & White Rose oil fields off the Maratimes. In which case we will be even more screwed than they are.

[Mr. T]

As for how Canada fares, we are unfortunately at the mercy of the US. If worse comes to worst they can and will grab all our oil fields & oil sands projects in Alberta, and possibly the Hibernia & White Rose oil fields off the Maratimes. In which case we will be even more screwed than they are.

I think it's more probable that they'd simply use strong-arm tactics to buy up control over our fields as opposed to any sort of occupation of Alberta.

Maybe Canada should look in to aquiring nuclear deterrence if the situation gets really bad. I'd imagine we already have the technology and although doubtful nuclear weapons would be used even if we had them, it would make the U.S or anyone else more skittish of trying to take any resources from us.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Assuming a conservative decline rate of around 1.5% annually, from 2007 to 2010, you go from just under 85 mbpd to around 80 mbpd.

After that point (or even during), you're going to see nations start hoarding oil. It's happening now in Iran, KSA and FSU. That will dramatically increase pressure, more than likely destroying the global economy at this point (making any mitigation efforts via standard economic models null and void). International relations start turning for the more interesting real politik scenarios. This is all ignoring a) rising population, b) rising demand from industry growth, c) geo-political factors leading to loss of production e.g. the 600 kbpd just lost in Nigeria, the US' fifth major exporter.

Decline rates may well accelerate as more advanced recovery technologies increase efficiency, likely pushing from just over 1% to several percent within a handful of years. By 2020, we will be way beyond minor problems and well into fighting over what is left and/or implementing drastic plans to counter something already unavoidable. Nuclear will not be online in time to change this (and production bottlenecks exist for near to mid-term nuclear capacity usage too), nor will anything else. The only way to counter this onset is to cut energy usage drastically, impose population limits immediately and begin major programmes for rationing of liquid fuels for military and essential industry. Bio-fuel programmes should be scrapped and the funding, or whatever at this point since the US and most likely most other major economies will be eliminated, will have to go towards conservation planning. Die-off will occur in the First World as it does in the Second and Third Worlds if energy planning is not managed efficiently to maintain food supplies which means liquid fuels being used for agriculture e.g. tractor diesel and fertilisers and insecticides etc. Entropy does not care about political status.

Beyond that you need a crystal ball, though honestly you'd need that for just the next couple of years. The US and EU are looking at gasoline shortages this summer thanks to refinery capacity being met and multiple setbacks from fires to strikes to ageing machinery breaking down and storm causing anything over 90% output rates to be short-term at best.

Opportunist attacks on infrastructure as has been seen in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Iraq along with potential powder kegs in KSA and Iran mean their output, a great big chunk of global exports, cannot be relied upon either. Russia is more than willing to flex its muscle over NG and oil exports.

The worst things now are not technological or natural. They are human. NO major planning is happening. Nothing, nada, zilch. The best you can hope for is grassroots movements from the few PO aware people in the US, EU and some other nations. With the likes of CERA and market analysts refuting PO "doomsayers" with their "theories" in order to boost market confidence, and gov't subsidies for the less-than-useless bio-fuel movement or hydrogen, the only warning people will get to back major initiatives to counter this event will be long after the point where they could be anywhere near effective in time. The only baseloader strategies are nuclear and coal, both are polluting, adding to AGW and both have long lead times even without restrictions, to say nothing of coal production being at capacity in most nations today while energy content falls and nuclear fuel rising dramatically in price and becoming scarcer due to mining issues, despite Australia rescining restrictions on ore mining this week.

I reiterate. We have the technology and the know-how to stop such a catastrophic turn of events. Rather than applying the brakes to the car, the accelerator is being pushed instead as we head to the cliff. All these plans would do is make sure the airbag and seatbelts worked, while the idiot, blind driver drunk on power finally notices the cliff edge and panics, the brake going on killing the economy under protection.

[Ender]

So how long do we figure the dark times (pun intended) will last? 10 years? 15? Longer? Dependent on outside factors ? (eg global warming kicking in at the same time)

[The Duchess of Zeon]

So how long do we figure the dark times (pun intended) will last? 10 years? 15? Longer? Dependent on outside factors ? (eg global warming kicking in at the same time)

Educated guesstimate: 2030 - 2085.

[Sikon]

The only baseloader strategies are nuclear and coal, both are polluting, adding to AGW and both have long lead times even without restrictions, to say nothing of coal production being at capacity in most nations today while energy content falls and nuclear fuel rising dramatically in price and becoming scarcer due to mining issues, despite Australia rescining restrictions on ore mining this week.

This is too outrageous to not comment upon.

I know the polluting quote isn't technically untrue, insofar as a statement like "all methods of power generation are polluting" would be nominally true in a generous definition of the word "polluting," but, in practice, what it is aiming to imply about nuclear power not being worthwhile is obvious to a reader.

The rather common kind of thinking expressed in the above quote lumping nuclear together with coal as both polluting is indirectly a major contributing factor to environmental problems, slowing public progress towards recognizing the value of converting from fossil fuels to nuclear power.

The nuclear power plant pollution claim doesn't even specify the pollution, but let's counter some typical arguments:

• "Nuclear power plants pollute the environment with radiation."
  
  Public radiation exposure today is orders of magnitude less than from natural sources like radon, as shown in the nuclear power generation resources thread several months ago and elsewhere, little relative importance compared to greater concerns with fossil fuel dependence.
• "Nuclear power plants emit pollution through the fossil fuels used in their construction."
  
  Of course any power plant built before there is conversion away from an economy based on fossil fuels involves a little fossil fuel usage during its construction. But the way to switch away from fossil fuels is to build the nuclear power plants, as it is the net effect that is important. Convert to nuclear power, and, in the end, one shuts down the fossil fuel power plants emitting billions of tons of carbon dioxide and other pollutants.
• "Nuclear power plants produce waste heat pollution."
  
  Of course, to some degree (and so do other power plants). But it is vastly less than the effect of greenhouse gas emissions from an equivalent fossil fuel power plant as shown before here and here. Again, the value of nuclear power conversion remains.

If there was sufficient motivation, the nuclear power plant construction time obtainable is illustrated with the example in my post on the previous page of this thread.

Regarding uranium supply, understanding the big picture comes from understanding the many orders of magnitude difference between the energy content of nuclear fuel versus chemical fuel, fossil fuel. (It is analogous to how a nuclear bomb releases more energy than a conventional, chemical-explosive bomb). Even tens of dollars rise in the price of uranium per kilogram is not very important in the big picture because each kilogram of uranium has the energy content of many thousands of kilograms of fossil fuels. The economics of nuclear power are not very sensitive to uranium cost variance in a realistic range.

Let's illustrate again. Figures for reactor fuel expense often include the relatively significant enrichment and fabrication costs, but the cost of the original uranium itself is typically about two orders of magnitude less than total electricity generation cost, as illustrated in detail here. (It would be 3 to 4 orders of magnitude less if breeder reactors were used, not really necessary but with some advantages, though such could affect other economics of nuclear reactors to a moderate degree). Uranium from seawater isn't utilized today due to being not quite as cheap as mined uranium, but the factor of ~ 3 difference in uranium cost only increases total nuclear electricity generation expense by a mere several percent, as illustrated in detail here. More than the world's current energy consumption could be supplied by nuclear power for millions of years without running out of uranium in seawater, as illustrated here.

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Quite a number of environmentalists oppose nuclear power (or fail to actively support it in their environmental arguments to the public, which is practically also wrong), and think that is no problem because they support drastic population reduction and extreme energy conservation. I have seen such by many people in many places, online and off-line. Such has not led to very great accomplishments relative to its extreme popularity, a popularity existing much more in speech than in actions.

There is a need to understand human nature, to see what people realistically will and will not do, short of being forced to do so. And the public isn't much more willing to vote for extreme restrictions than to personally make really drastic changes.

Tell someone to have fewer or no children in order to drop population or to give up their vehicle, and, in practice, the bulk of the public ignores the segment of environmentalists demanding such, because they aren't willing to do something which is so painful to many people.

Likewise, for example, there isn't a large portion of the public displaying motivation for extreme energy conservation, such as on the level of vastly reducing or eliminating the single largest usage of electricity in the average household after heating & air conditioning: hot-water heating for warm showers, etc. (kilowatt-hour figures) And there certainly aren't many people immigrating from 1st-world countries to the countries with different lifestyles where there is an order of magnitude less energy consumption per person.

Some energy conservation is pleasant enough that many people personally implement it or may support a government bill in favor of it, like substituting compact fluorescent bulbs for regular incandescent lightbulbs, significant energy savings for little cost. Measures like that only moderately affect the overall situation, since fossil fuels run out sooner or later at any plausible consumption rate, like XY years versus ZW years, but such measures can help somewhat. However, even with such, to change the big picture, there is still a need to switch the energy source, e.g. to nuclear energy that never runs out with the unlimited fuel supply described before.

During the time of peak oil troubles, one can expect cutbacks in energy usage because the public is forced to do so, e.g. economics leading to automatic energy conservation then.

But, historically, advance preparation for peak oil and countering global warming has been damaged by many of those most concerned coming up with particularly unpleasant countermeasures to publicize.

In contrast, consider if a different approach had been taken, instead of decades of anti-nuclear propaganda by some major environmental groups.

Consider if the U.S. public had been instead informed by major political figures that 100% of fossil-fuel electricity generation could be replaced through a program paying for nuclear power plant construction with an expense of between several dollars per month per household and $20/month per household, for conversion over a 20 year period, except the net expense could be even less (or net gain) compared to the avoided expense of the fossil fuel power replaced.[1]

That is more like what could have been accepted as an affordable, acceptable price to pay for environmental benefits by the public, particularly considering the poll mentioned before about what most Americans would be willing to pay for the lesser pollution reduction involved in Kyoto compliance (63+% $32/month-per-household). But instead the public has been taught to have an anti-nuclear bias and hears more of environmental solutions that involve too much suffering for the public to actually willingly implement to a major degree.

This is an example of a measure providing great benefit, though only a minority of the total solution in itself. Electricity generation is a minority of total pollution compared to other energy usage, and peak oil affects transportation more than electricity generation. But, for dealing with replacing non-electrical fossil fuel usage, the past posts here and here give the general idea of examples of some workable measures, best read in combination. (Some use of renewable power occurs in any scenario converting away from fossil fuels, but, as for the economic disadvantages of avoiding using nuclear power at all, the short description is that there are reasons why the figures here for nuclear power generation versus non-hydroelectric renewables are more than one order of magnitude different).

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[1] U.S. fossil-fuel electricity generation is 2.915 billion megawatt-hours annually (2005). Let's use the example mentioned before, if a program had been taken with necessary measures to return to nuclear power plants with economics like that of the Maine Yankee power plant, 920 MW costing $231 million or $1.14 billion converted to today's dollars. At a capacity factor of about 90%, such corresponds to about $1.14 billion capital expense for annually (0.9 * 920 MW * 24 hour/day * 365 days/year), about $1.14 billion per 7.25 million megawatt-hours of annual electricity generation.

Replacing all fossil-fuel generation then costs around $458 billion. This is since the 2.915 billion megawatt-hour figure for fossil-fuel generation divided by the 0.00725 billion megawatt-hours per reactor annually means about 402 reactors are needed, each $1.14 billion.

Over the example of constructing the 402 reactors over a 20 year period, that is about $23 billion per year. It would be justifiable on national security grounds alone, being about 5% as much as the Department of Defense budget.

There are about 109 million total households in the U.S., a lot less than the 300 million population since the average household has multiple individuals. So $23 billion per year is $18 per month per household.

It is doubtful that net costs to the government would have to be more than tens of percent as much to make the reactors far out-compete the competition, since the competition is fossil-fuel power plants that also cost money, like the tens of billions spent per year on their fuel. So, potentially the nominal cost may be closer to several dollars per month per household. Or it may be less, indeed with eventual net savings being very possible.

Note the bulk of the cost of a nuclear power plant is its amortized capital expense, while subsequent annual operating & maintenance expense is low, less than the fuel-plus-O&M expense of fossil-fuel power plants. So when the nuke plant capital cost is affordable for this program, the rest of their expense is known to be low enough compared to the fossil-fuel power plants being replaced, fewer billions of dollars per year than current coal, natural gas, & oil costs in electricity generation.
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Alas, it is already the case that conversion to nuclear power tends to be unrealistic now, until after peak oil effects provide extreme motivation, because enough of an anti-nuclear bias has developed.

To be precise, beyond the usual no-math bias, there sometimes also seems like a general bias against looking for specific solutions in general as opposed to keeping discussion vague, perhaps often to avoid being expected to commit to supporting something specific, to avoid treating an environmental problem as solvable. There are even some people seeming to intentionally not want to find a solution, emotionally looking forward to a hypothetical doom scenario of modern civilization and human population collapsing, although let's assume they are a small minority.

Though not quite that extreme, likely future troubles are partially the fault of those who told the public more about the limited "problems" of nuclear power rather than describing its potential to solve real problems, to solve them for an affordable price the public could actually willingly pay if not for ignorance and if not for that bias.

[Admiral Valdemar]

That post doesn't state anything I don't already know. The price issue is a non-issue for the blindingly obvious reason that even the lowest estimates of EROEI for uranium ore are a couple of orders of magnitude higher than the purest fossil fuel, but again, that is from a technical viewpoint, not an economical one (which I'll highlight, is prone to irrational thinking more often than not). My comment on the price going up was a simple observation, and for some, it is seen as a disturbing trend, just as with other commodities going up has put many large industrial projects either on long-term hold or permanent dismissal. At $220/kg, the estimated ore reserves is around 40 MT. Even with twice that, the price of the ore needed for the lifetime of your average plant in operation today would barely be a tenth of its total price. But never underestimate the jitters put into human investors from rising commodity prices. Nuclear has a definite investment and funding issue today, despite all the so far rather empty pledges to boost its capacity around the globe today. I don't see anything being done on anywhere near a credible scale. On supply, that was not aimed at the fact that uranium will run out, indeed, oil will never run out. The present problems with oil aren't anything to do with reserves and only with EROEI in certain places. The problem is a production bottleneck. Stating nuclear will last us millennia is all well and good, but that's like being starving and waiting for your garden to grow if you don't have the production output needed to maintain demand (an issue being felt even today with miniscule new numbers of reactors being planned, the vagueness in my previous post was tiredness, apologies. More further down).

In order to build anything like the baseload from nuclear needed, you're going to expend far more energy than would be used in making the same number over a more leisurely time-frame. Look at the production of cars via large industrial production lines. They use several times more energy to produce a whole car in a day, than would be needed to make the same vehicle in, say, several days or weeks even. That so much waste exists is a function of the economy and consumer driving it so. The same problems will exist with any crash course in making up for lost energy production in the future, and nuclear can only go so far before you start running the risk of throwing plants together with ever less stringent safety checks. While coal is polluting in the extreme, the potential problem of waste leaks from poorly constructed nuclear containment facilities can be far worse, depending on type of material and type of leak. That alone, along with the proven backing behind coal, may push people to simply switch to coal and CTL, which would be rather like mending a cut finger by cutting off the head. There's simply no way we can carry on with current energy expenditure and not run headlong into critical global warming thresholds, some even say we've already passed them.

None of this changes the physical fact that there are huge issues regarding uranium production that need to be sorted out, and when a lot of people see uranium as being in a bubble like gold, they'll steer clear and let only those already heavily involved deal with it, which is quite simply not going to bring about the much needed plants we need within a reasonable timeline. If uranium investment had been not billions, but the trillions thrown at fossil fuels over the years, we'd not have this problem. But now we actually are facing the fact that environmentalist extremists are wrong about the overinflated dangers of nuclear and that it will be greener overall with newer technologies (and that there's no alternative like it for energy density), we're finding it's going to be just as gritty a resource fight for uranium as it's becoming with oil. Even if we magicked away the horrible bias still lingering with nuclear, one cannot reverse such neglect of the industry over the decades overnight, so someone, somewhere, is going to have to seriously bring some major expertise and capital in and get those troubled mines fulfilling their newfound roles in the future. That, hopefully, should give us a baseloader suitable to replace all the NG and coal used now.

To add briefly to the end of this. Should we finally get a totally fossil fuel independent energy network around the globe, things will not be as they are now or have been during the industrial age. The limits on growth and consumption would need to stay in place, likely even need to be harsher again as people find energy deficits shrink and basic necessities more readily available. The carrying capacity of this planet can only be met if either a) less people exist, but retain their higher standard of living as seen today, or b) we keep the current population (soon to go up a whole lot with the next generation of boomers coming of age), but restrict living standards greatly and improve efficiency and waste factors without then incurring Jevon's paradox and a rebound from such efficiency fuelling more growth. It will have to stop and change our way of living on this planet, because until we find another world like ours, we can't consume everything here. Many other problems will arise soon after the PO effects cause energy crisis management to come to the podium. Even assuming energy problems are negated overnight, the limiting factor will simply shift to food, top soil, water or climatological in nature. It is my hope that this wake up call will tell the masses once and for all that we cannot sustain the breakneck speed of growth we've enjoyed over the last two centuries. If we do not learn from the end of cheap energy, then we'll simply have done nothing but shift the inevitable die-off from growth a bit further back and on to another issue that, in all likelihood, won't be anywhere near as easy(!) to remedy as energy supplies which are essentially infinite with the needed infrastructure in place.

[Starglider]

Actually energy is the main limiting factor.

will simply shift to food

Given indefinite energy supplies (for chemical processing, construction and lighting) and unrestricted genetic engineering, vast amounts of food can be grown in a relatively limited amount of space (with hydroponics and quorn-type food reprocessed from fungi, bacteria and algae).

water

Large scale desalination becomes practical with abundant (i.e. lots of solar or fusion) energy.

climatological

This will be a short term issue as long as their are fossil fuels left. Once they're (essentially) all gone, either we pumped out enough CO2 to make the earth intolerably hot or we didn't - there probably won't be much we can do to make a difference (late stage carbon capture and reforestation will help, but not much). Assuming CO2 levels eventually return to normal without cooking the earth, waste heat is eventually an issue. By the time we get to that point macroengineering solutions such as sticking lots of IR-absorbing plates at the Earth-Sun L1 point will probably be practical.

Commodities shortages are not equivalent to energy shortages because they are not actually used up. When we dig up ore, refine it and build it into something we are turning a diffuse hard to get at source into a highly concentrated easy to get at source. It's not as if we're firing all this copper and iron and tungsten off into space - it's sitting around in highly refined form just waiting to be collected up and melted down. When the cost gets high enough to justify this, it will be. Whoever said early that the Greeks had it easier than post-apocalyptic humans would (finding fairly pure lumps of metal on the surface) was a moron - post apocalyptic humans rebuilding civilisation would find a vast amount of easily worked metal (and nice concentrated metal oxide sources) all over the planet. Shortages of things like fertiliser are a little trickier, because we spread those elements out a lot more, but it's nothing that abundant energy, chemical engineering and genetic engineering can't overcome.

Shortages of usable energy are the only carrying capacity type problem that rate as a major risk. If we get over that, things like biological warfare (or just superplagues), global nuclear war, militarised nanotechnology, self-enhancing AI and even asteroid impacts are a more serious threat to human civilisation.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

To add briefly to the end of this. Should we finally get a totally fossil fuel independent energy network around the globe, things will not be as they are now or have been during the industrial age. The limits on growth and consumption would need to stay in place, likely even need to be harsher again as people find energy deficits shrink and basic necessities more readily available. The carrying capacity of this planet can only be met if either a) less people exist, but retain their higher standard of living as seen today, or b) we keep the current population (soon to go up a whole lot with the next generation of boomers coming of age), but restrict living standards greatly and improve efficiency and waste factors without then incurring Jevon's paradox and a rebound from such efficiency fuelling more growth. It will have to stop and change our way of living on this planet, because until we find another world like ours, we can't consume everything here. Many other problems will arise soon after the PO effects cause energy crisis management to come to the podium. Even assuming energy problems are negated overnight, the limiting factor will simply shift to food, top soil, water or climatological in nature. It is my hope that this wake up call will tell the masses once and for all that we cannot sustain the breakneck speed of growth we've enjoyed over the last two centuries. If we do not learn from the end of cheap energy, then we'll simply have done nothing but shift the inevitable die-off from growth a bit further back and on to another issue that, in all likelihood, won't be anywhere near as easy(!) to remedy as energy supplies which are essentially infinite with the needed infrastructure in place.

Since Valdemar and I have been virtually tag-teaming this whole thread, I'm going to raise a small voice of disagreement at this point:

There is an alternate solution. If we can develop cheap ways of orbit-to-ground materials transfer, we can sustain growth on this planet for extremely long periods of time. Orbital food growth in artificial habitats which rely entirely on energy produced by the sun is entirely feasable. Numerous potentials for seeding other planets in this solar system with food-growing resources exist (For example we could infest Mars and Europa with edible algae fairly easily).

The asteroid belt provides essentially limitless metals, in combination with the rocky moons of the solar system, including the crucial uranium for our continued nuclear power development.

Most importantly, however, if we can build space elevators, then we can develop genuinely useful solar arrays in orbit for the deliverance of mass energy to the surface.

This, however, relies on the space elevator being viable technology at some point in the future; the other alternative is the systematic development of very large lift vehicles (And I am probably talking about Orion, which is highly polluting) which can get major infrastructure equipment into orbit, and the people to work it. The orbital population would then have to use this to develop on its own all of the machinery described above and to begin sending down simple re-entry vehicles on one way runs, laden with the bounty of space.

Frankly, if you want this to happen, you are going to need someone in charge of the government who has a planning horizon of about a century. In democracy the planning horizon is 2 - 7 years depending on the country, usually on the extreme lower end of that spectrum. We are going to need a form of government capable of planning and executing extremely long range development plans.

And they are going to have to do it using energy resources which could be diverted to bringing peoples' standards of living back up after this round of energy crises. They are going to have to make the conscious choice to ignore the short-term desires of the individual mass under them, and invest in the long-term future of the human species instead.

As far as I'm concerned the goal of the human species is to exist as long as possible, or more precisely until the universe itself physically collapses or loses all energy capacity on which we could have survived. That requires spreading like roaches across several galaxies, which is theoretically possible even without any magitech FTL. Obviously we will have become the most successful class of organism ever if we can achieve that, which would be a very nice end-goal for humanity.

But that is going to require leadership which is capable of maintaining a long-term planning horizon.

And this is why I am anti-democratic. The system may bring some very nice short-term benefits to the average person, but it leaves the direction of whole nations and by extension ultimately the whole species, essentially up to random chance and the disjointed effects of endless opinion polls.

Do you still want humanity to go to the stars? The polling place isn't going to take you there.

But there's no need for me to talk now, I suppose; my words will be ignored. On the other hand, I should have a merry time of things when the bottom falls out.