What Happens when Oil Runs Out?

[eclipsenow]

----we dont really know how long oil will last

So it's a good thing Elon Musk will create an oil 'glut' that will make extra oil production irrelevant by around 2025, and permanently depress world oil prices, eventually bankrupting the oil market. It's a good thing that he is also announcing electric long-haul heavy trucking (which must have some sort of quick battery-swap system to make it viable).

----there has been speculation of peek oil running out for the last 50 year-

Well, yeah, and yet no one has listened, and they're not listening now even when experts point out that many fracking fields only last a year or 2!

--we are in a better position for oil independence in 50 yrs

For now.

----we are currently producing more oil than US has produced in its history

For now.

-----gas at the pump is down half to 2$

For now.

----oil price per barrel is down half to 50$

It's going to go down further, hurting the viability of many fracking fields that are more expensive to produce.

-----just 10-15 years ago they said we had peaked and oil could be running out..and the worle panicking

True, and I heard many talks about how fracking wasn't going to produce enough oil fast enough. Some people hitched their wagon to the doomer brigade, and that was annoying.

-----we have doubled oil production int texas and the us in only 8 years

Or is that gas production?

----arabia tried to put frackers out of business by overproduction of oil and lowering the price
This did not lower oil production in the US

True.

----cost of fracking has gone down 80-90% in recnt years

Really? This one I have trouble with. Do you have a source for that?

----- fracking has made the differerence and will continue

Not if Elon Musk and other car majors continue to make electric cars cheaper, because electricity is about half the price of oil on a per distance basis.

---1 fracked well produces 1000-1500 bpday

I fracked well only lasts a year or 2, then pack up and move on.

-----for the next 20-30 years this trend will continue

Electric cars are growing exponentially, and will create a glut of 2 million barrels a day by 2025.
Then ROBOT TAXIS will displace buying cars, with 1 ROBOT TAXI displacing 10 family cars.
How's that oil trend going to look after this happens?

So get your superannuation out of oil and out of conventional oil cars, because the extreme reduction of both could be just over a decade away!

 

[Radrook]

Electric cars are growing exponentially, and will create a glut of 2 million barrels a day by 2025.
Then ROBOT TAXIS will displace buying cars, with 1 ROBOT TAXI displacing 10 family cars.
How's that oil trend going to look after this happens?

So get your superannuation out of oil and out of conventional oil cars, because the extreme reduction of both could be just over a decade away!

Just curious. What will protect those robo cars from vandalism? I parked my car in NYC and found it with its the front wheels gone and went to call the cops and when I returned the two back wheels were gone. Waited for the police for three hours and they never showed. So how are these robo cars going to avoid criminal activity of that kind?

 

[eclipsenow]

Just curious. What will protect those robo cars from vandalism? I parked my car in NYC and found it with its the front wheels gone and went to call the cops and when I returned the two back wheels were gone. Waited for the police for three hours and they never showed. So how are these robo cars going to avoid criminal activity of that kind?

Every trip will be logged. When you get in a car, you'll have a quick look around and if the car is a mess or damaged, you'll report it. The previous user will be implicated in the enquiry.

There may be CCTV in-car video (in non-American countries where 'PRIVACY' is not enshrined at the expense of public safety).

 

[pat34lee]

Why nuclear power isn't the green answer:

"A typical nuclear power plant in a year generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. The nuclear industry generates a total of about 2,000 - 2,300 metric tons of used fuel per year

Over the past four decades, the entire industry has produced 76,430 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. If used fuel assemblies were stacked end-to-end and side-by-side, this would cover a football field about eight yards deep.."
Nuclear Waste Amounts & On-Site Storage - Nuclear Energy Institute

What can we do with it? Store it and hope it doesn't leak for the next 500 years.
Didn't take that long.
https://www.usnews.com/news/washing...ps-out-contents-of-leaking-nuclear-waste-tank

 

[Radrook]

Why nuclear power isn't the green answer:

"A typical nuclear power plant in a year generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. The nuclear industry generates a total of about 2,000 - 2,300 metric tons of used fuel per year

Over the past four decades, the entire industry has produced 76,430 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. If used fuel assemblies were stacked end-to-end and side-by-side, this would cover a football field about eight yards deep.."
Nuclear Waste Amounts & On-Site Storage - Nuclear Energy Institute

What can we do with it? Store it and hope it doesn't leak for the next 500 years.
Didn't take that long.
https://www.usnews.com/news/washing...ps-out-contents-of-leaking-nuclear-waste-tank

Here is a dandy of an accident in relation to nuclear waste disposal involving the wrong brand of cat litter.

Workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory used organic cat litter to clean up nuclear waste. The litter triggered chemical reactions that later caused a drum to burst. Department of Energy/Flickr
Official Report: Nuclear Waste Accident Caused By Wrong Cat Litter

 

[eclipsenow]

Why nuclear power isn't the green answer:
"A typical nuclear power plant in a year generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. The nuclear industry generates a total of about 2,000 - 2,300 metric tons of used fuel per year

Hi Pat,
Here's the answer: those 20 tons are not waste! I understand your concerns, but dealt with them on previous pages. But I don't mind copying and pasting to help alleviate these fears. I used to hold them myself.
I feel your concerns. About 6 years ago I was totally anti-nuclear, and totally ignorant of the real potential in the many hundreds of ways of configuring a nuclear reactor. Here's the real reversal in my thinking: nuclear waste is not the problem, it is the solution! Burying nuclear waste for 100,000 years is like digging up your best sweet crude, refining it into A-grade jet fuel, and then trying to bury it. How about using it instead? Nuclear waste only stays radioactive for 100,000 years because there is so much energy left in it. If we reprocess the spent fuel rods and stick them in breeder reactors, Dr James Hansen's "Science Council for Global Initiatives" says breeder reactors will eat the nuclear waste.
Our Mission | SCGI
Here is the wiki.
Breeder reactor - Wikipedia

Breeders are an old technology. Read the wiki above. In summary, there are 2 breeder reactors that eat nuclear waste: 'fast' reactors and 'thermal' reactors. Nixon shut down the promising thermal reactor, the Molten Salt Breeder reactors (that cannot melt down because they're already a liquid). Then Clinton shut down the Integral Fast Reactor research program called the EBR2. If Clinton had funded that research to completion GE's PRISM reactor could have been burning nuclear waste to run half of America by now.
GE Hitachi PRISM | The Future of Nuclear Energy

Nuclear ‘waste’ in America alone is said to be worth about $30 TRILLION dollars, because it could power America for 1000 years. As the poster says, "Nuclear waste is not the problem, it's the solution!"
nuclear-posters

Once breeder reactors eat all the extra energy (the actinides) in the used fuel rods, there are easy answers for the final waste (called fission products). They are so radioactive they burn themselves out in just 300 years. We can store them safely if we melt them down into ceramic blocks that are waterproof, so that a sudden water mains burst cannot spread radioactive material everywhere. We simply bury them in a bunker under the reactor park. 300 years later, your kids could play with it. We don't tend to do it with today's reactors because it is expensive, but once breeder reactors take over and extract another 90 times the energy *and money* out of the uranium we've *already mined*, the cost of vitrifying the waste into ceramic blocks is trivial. Here’s a 4 minute video that explains it all.

 

[Radrook]

Hi Pat,
Here's the answer: those 20 tons are not waste! I understand your concerns, but dealt with them on previous pages. But I don't mind copying and pasting to help alleviate these fears. I used to hold them myself.
I feel your concerns. About 6 years ago I was totally anti-nuclear, and totally ignorant of the real potential in the many hundreds of ways of configuring a nuclear reactor. Here's the real reversal in my thinking: nuclear waste is not the problem, it is the solution! Burying nuclear waste for 100,000 years is like digging up your best sweet crude, refining it into A-grade jet fuel, and then trying to bury it. How about using it instead? Nuclear waste only stays radioactive for 100,000 years because there is so much energy left in it. If we reprocess the spent fuel rods and stick them in breeder reactors, Dr James Hansen's "Science Council for Global Initiatives" says breeder reactors will eat the nuclear waste.
Our Mission | SCGI
Here is the wiki.
Breeder reactor - Wikipedia

Breeders are an old technology. Read the wiki above. In summary, there are 2 breeder reactors that eat nuclear waste: 'fast' reactors and 'thermal' reactors. Nixon shut down the promising thermal reactor, the Molten Salt Breeder reactors (that cannot melt down because they're already a liquid). Then Clinton shut down the Integral Fast Reactor research program called the EBR2. If Clinton had funded that research to completion GE's PRISM reactor could have been burning nuclear waste to run half of America by now.
GE Hitachi PRISM | The Future of Nuclear Energy

Nuclear ‘waste’ in America alone is said to be worth about $30 TRILLION dollars, because it could power America for 1000 years. As the poster says, "Nuclear waste is not the problem, it's the solution!"
nuclear-posters

Once breeder reactors eat all the extra energy (the actinides) in the used fuel rods, there are easy answers for the final waste (called fission products). They are so radioactive they burn themselves out in just 300 years. We can store them safely if we melt them down into ceramic blocks that are waterproof, so that a sudden water mains burst cannot spread radioactive material everywhere. We simply bury them in a bunker under the reactor park. 300 years later, your kids could play with it. We don't tend to do it with today's reactors because it is expensive, but once breeder reactors take over and extract another 90 times the energy *and money* out of the uranium we've *already mined*, the cost of vitrifying the waste into ceramic blocks is trivial. Here’s a 4 minute video that explains it all.

Thanks for the written info and the video. I noticed that he video mentions a 500 year period for the nuclear waste fuel to lose all its radioactivity while you say it is only 300 years. Why is that?

 

[eclipsenow]

Just different degrees of safety margin that I've noticed around. I've quoted 500 years myself in different places. The main points to remember are:-

• The final true waste (fission products) are a tiny volume compared to any other source, even the wastes from solar power, when compared to the sheer energy volumes from nuclear energy (1 golf ball for a person's entire lifetime supply of energy!)
• We'll vitrify it into STABLE ceramic plates that get stacked carefully underground and covered in concrete
• In 500 years it's completely safe, and not 100,000 years like so much media regurgitates
• With this technology a reactor park can manage all its waste on site
• Nuclear bombs and barrels of nuclear waste go in, and nothing comes out ever again!
• Old reactors can be shut down for 50 years to 'cool off' (called SAFESTORE) and then demolished and parts buried in the same bunker.
• OR those parts can be put in an old barge and the old barge scuttled at sea!
• This will not poison the entire ocean, as radiation halves every 15cm in water. A lethal dose is barely detectable by the height of the average man.

 

[Radrook]

Just different degrees of safety margin that I've noticed around. I've quoted 500 years myself in different places. The main points to remember are:-

• The final true waste (fission products) are a tiny volume compared to any other source, even the wastes from solar power, when compared to the sheer energy volumes from nuclear energy (1 golf ball for a person's entire lifetime supply of energy!)
• We'll vitrify it into STABLE ceramic plates that get stacked carefully underground and covered in concrete
• In 500 years it's completely safe, and not 100,000 years like so much media regurgitates
• With this technology a reactor park can manage all its waste on site
• Nuclear bombs and barrels of nuclear waste go in, and nothing comes out ever again!
• Old reactors can be shut down for 50 years to 'cool off' (called SAFESTORE) and then demolished and parts buried in the same bunker.
• OR those parts can be put in an old barge and the old barge scuttled at sea!
• This will not poison the entire ocean, as radiation halves every 15cm in water. A lethal dose is barely detectable by the height of the average man.

As the human mutant leader said in in the film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes just before he ordered an attack against the ape settlement:

"We may be irradiated but we are still active!!

 

[eclipsenow]

Hey, I'm loving the recent reboot of Apes, and looking forward to the new movie. It's my favourite post-apocalyptic thing since Book of Eli.

 

[Traveling teacher]

i remeber wactching the origial planet of the apes in the 1960s
They dont make clasics like that anymore
those were the days

 

[eclipsenow]

i remeber wactching the origial planet of the apes in the 1960s
They dont make clasics like that anymore
those were the days

The punchline in front of the Statue of Liberty was so good. One of the loneliest men in history!

 

[Radrook]

i remeber wactching the origial planet of the apes in the 1960s
They dont make clasics like that anymore
those were the days

You think the film Avatar is inferior to it?

 

[pat34lee]

Thanks for the written info and the video. I noticed that he video mentions a 500 year period for the nuclear waste fuel to lose all its radioactivity while you say it is only 300 years. Why is that?

500 years was off the top of my head. An estimate.

 

[eclipsenow]

So this is a thing now.

All new cars launched by Volvo from 2019 onwards will be partially or completely battery-powered, in what the company called a “historic end” to building models that only have an internal combustion engine.

Between 2019 and 2021, the firm will introduce five 100% electric models, and ensure the rest of its conventional petrol and diesel range has a hybrid engine of some form. It is the first major manufacturer to make such a bold move.​

All Volvo cars to be electric or hybrid from 2019

 

[curiouskay]

China is joining France and Britain in announcing plans to end sales of gasoline and diesel cars.

China's industry ministry is developing a timetable to end production and sale of traditional fuel cars and will promote development of electric technology, state media on Sunday cited a Cabinet official as saying.

France and Britain announced in July they will stop sales of gasoline and diesel automobiles by 2040 as part of efforts to reduce pollution and carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.

Communist leaders also want to curb China's growing appetite for imported oil and see electric cars as a promising industry in which their country can take an early lead.

China passed the United States last year as the biggest electric car market. Sales of electrics and gasoline-electric hybrids rose 50 percent over 2015 to 336,000 vehicles, or 40 percent of global demand. U.S. sales totaled 159,620.

https://tinyurl.com/ycsg6xb6