20 replies to this topic

[Steel Samurai]

Not a BSG Reference.

Just watched this documentary on the health dangers of oil fracking:

For anyone who doesn't know what fracking is:

Hydraulic fracturing is the propagation of fractures in a rock layer caused by the presence of a pressurized fluid. Some hydraulic fractures form naturally, as in the case of veins or dikes, and are a means by which gas and petroleum from source rocks may migrate to reservoir rocks. Induced hydraulic fracturing orhydrofracking, commonly known as fracking, is a technique used to release petroleum, natural gas (including shale gas, tight gas and coal seam gas), or other substances for extraction.^[a][1] This type of fracturing creates fractures from a wellbore drilled into reservoir rock formations.

Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracking

Basic points of the documentary are:

• Fracking involves use of a well-bore with concrete walls
• This concrete is the only safeguard from the chemicals and gas released during the process of fracking escaping into the water supply
• The concrete is failing, releasing radioactive chemicals as well as natural gas and other oil products into the water supply

So far as I can tell, the evidence seems to be fairly incontrovertible. But, with natural oil deposits slowly declining, the world is going to be entering an energy crisis soon.

What is your reaction to the documentary, or the summary above?
What do you think we can do to provide the world with enough power that 3rd world countries can still develop and attain reasonable standards of living?

Edited by Steel Samurai, 25 June 2012 - 05:01 PM.

[J-Roc]

I feel in danger of getting permanently affixed with the label of "Forum Troll" but I don't think anyone in a position of power would care to see that we were able "to provide the world with enough power that 3rd world countries can still develop and attain reasonable standards of living?"

The third world reminds us all the value of working, (since we have the ability to, being blessed to live where we do). And thus the worker ants made them all billions.

[Steel Samurai]

They will if it will make them money.

[J-Roc]

They will if it will make them money.

True. As for environmental impacts, I doubt it much worse then the oil sands projects which aren't one of those super bad things to do to the environment. Changing anything is obviously unnatural, but I doubt it will have any long term impact.

[Oberon Storm]

This was Bill Maher's show this past Friday. It includes some back and forth on the fracking issue.

[SOAP]

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity

All this fracking business, all I see is a greedy corporate desperately and quite literally scrapping the bottom of a barrel for a energy source that's not going to sustain us for much longer. Is it safe or is it merely easy and profitable? If obtaining wealth outweighs the health of the people and the environment we live in then something is seriously fracked up i this country. Because we can do it now with the technology we have is bullshit. We can only live on this planet now. If we fuck it up too much, what will happen in the next generation or too when we can't live here anymore but we still can't leave? We are already suffering from the effects our actions today, but still nothing is being done about it. We just keep scrapping down more to feed our greed instead of looking our for our health. It's just slightly smelly, flammable, cancer-causing drinking water. No big deal. Keep digging down and we'll dig our own grave.

But why do I bother? As long as our country worships big big corporations, nothing will change.

[Egann]

I'm really not a fan of this guy's style. The man won't hold a shot for three seconds, almost none of his cuts have common elements to smooth the transitions, and just about all his visuals are shaky-cam. That, and the visuals are so parenthetical it may as well be an audio interview.


I am increasingly of the opinion that you should not drink tap water habitually. It's not that our local municipalities don't try really hard to make the water drinkable...but that it's just not cost-effective for them to do as good a job as a cheap Britta filter on the spigot can.

Tap water is what you shower with, what you water your garden with, what you wash your laundry or dishes with. Maybe in a good situation 0.01% of the "tap" water a local water works cleans will become drinking water for people. Is it worth it for them to do a good job? Not really. Certainly not like a private bottled water vendor, where 98% or more of their water will become drinking water.

Standards for drinking water are arbitrary, and there is good reason to set those standards REALLY high, and purification is expensive. Expecting water supplies to be up to human drinking standards isn't practical anymore.

The eventual future of humanity is nuclear power. This is not a choice; either we will switch to using nuclear power, or we will run out of fossil fuels and slowly regress back to the middle ages.

No, I'm serious. This "use less energy and go renewable" fad might look responsible, but its very destructive in the long run. Societies are best measured by the energy source they use. Is it portable? How much energy does it contain? How efficiently can you utilize it? Here, check this visual I threw together in Excel to see what I mean.



I don't call the nuclear power civilization a "space colonizer" for nothing. I've done the math; with that kind of energy, traveling to the planets is about like buying a plane ticket to Hong Kong...with some reasonable, but optomistic technology assumptions.

I say this to put things in perspective; when you see what the future must be, the path for the present becomes obvious. If we switch to "renewable" energies right now, humanity won't have an energy source strong enough to develop past where it is. In fact, it will probably regress economically and culturally. Wealth will be shuffled around, nations rise and fall, but for five thousand years nothing really important will happen. Conversely, Nuclear power isn't quite ready for prime time. Thorium reactor designs aren't agreed upon yet, and, barring that rumor India is building a 30 MW fusion reactor right now, fusion isn't ready, either. We need Earth's fossil fuels to last just long enough to smoothly transition us to nuclear power, and, just guessing, I put that transition at least twenty years out. If fracking's what's necessary to do that, so be it. It's better than the alternative.

[SOAP]

I'm for Nuclear power but if we aren't ready for that just yet, wouldn't it make more sense to switch to a renewable source in the meantime than to keep depending on a nonrenewable source that has shown to have adverse affects on our environment? You say we can't develop past the point of technology we're at with solar/wind/ect and things will remain uneventful for thousands of years. Great! Plenty of time to improve on Nuclear energy. How is that worse than carrying fracking and potentially harming our environment. Besides it's nonrenewable so what if we really do run out but we haven't worked out a feasible alternative yet? It seems more logical to have something renewable we can fall back on and at least ween ourselves off oil and gas until we find a better solution, however long that takes, than to keep consuming a limited resource at alarming rate until there's nothing left, hoping that something save our asses before that time comes.

[Egann]

Well, the catch with renewable energy is that it is so expensive to collect and make it usable, you can't really do much with it afterward. Let me use solar power as an example.

As that solar cell prices are falling, lets assume that a new home in 2020 will be made solar cell roof tiles, and for the sake of argument we will flat out assume this will meet the house's energy needs over a whole year, even though that's unrealistic. Free energy, right?

No. In order to power a home at night or durring cloudy weather you need a battery bank, and a big one at that. If you are going to try to power the home over the winter (when days are shorter) you need an insanely big battery. And let's not forget that Lithium prices are rising dramatically because of the demand for Li-ion batteries. End result? Your solar cells are free with household construction. That battery bank will take an entire level of the home and, depending on the assumptions you make, cost between several hundred thousand and several million dollars.

An extra story to the home and a $100,000 (minimum) cost increase. The cost of building a home nowadays around where I live is about $80,000 for an entry level, one story home, so we're talking about tripling the price of a new home or more.

And remember; we assumed the solar cells were free or no extra cost AND could provide sufficient power over a whole year. Using solar power would trigger a staggering drop in the standard of living.

This isn't to say solar power is useless; it's used to power cell towers in India where gasoline is trucked in at $20 a gallon, or to power portable televisions for 3rd World countries where there is no grid. It makes perfect sense in these contexts, but to replace our energy consumption? It just can't do it.

Edited by Egann, 27 June 2012 - 08:34 AM.

[SOAP]

Oh really. So it costs too much, that's your problem? Mmmmhmmm. Well it costs me too much in taxes so big oil companies can get insanely cushy tax subsidies and tax write off that other businesses don't get. Homie don't play that shit!

Either way, even if that were the case, solar power could work to ween us off oil dependency at least. You say it's not sufficient enough power a house during the night or winter months but what about during the day time and the summers when people are most likely running their AC's the most and other activities that deplete lots of energy. Solar power shave off a lot of need for energy that would otherwise would have been spent on a nonrenewable source like oil. During nighttime and winters, the houses energy would simply switch back to the power grid since that infrastructure already exists. Combined with other renewable energy sources like wind, there'd be no reason NOT to ween ourselves off oil and it'll be insane to wait until the oil runs out to turn to alternatives that haven't had time to develop yet. Better to transition now while we still have enough oil to fall back on take take that leap.

Let's put it another way. Say you live at house with a farm. Let's assume you have enough land, resources, and, most importantly knowledge to grow enough food to sustain yourself. Let's also assume your house is walking distance from McDonalds (or your favorite place to eat). Let's also assume you have a job that gives you a stable monthly paycheck and after mortgage payments, utilities, ect. you have a limited but sufficient amount of money to keep up your own personal farm as well as eat out every once in a while. You could say screw the farm, that's too much work, and just eat out, but you have only so much before you run out. What happens when it's all gone and you can't buy more food and your next paycheck comes in. You could use that money responsibly and spend part of it investing on food for tomorrow while spending the other part on food that's feasible right now.

Nonrenewable energy is like blowing money on fast food. It fills in a need right now but used unwisely it screw you over in the long run. Also neither one is particularly good for your body. Renewable energies are a investment that takes hard work and commitment to make, but will only be much harder and may even be impossible when you wait too long and you have no other choice. It will be trying to grow your own food while starving and broke.

Also, found this website if anyone's interested.

Edited by SOAP, 27 June 2012 - 09:42 AM.

[J-Roc]

I don't see all this concern about "keeping the human existance going". If the debate is how to save the planet, I got a brilliant notion...

[SOAP]

I don't see all this concern about "keeping the human existence going". If the debate is how to save the planet, I got a brilliant notion...

Because as stupid as it sounds I want to able to leave this world knowing that I helped in some way to make it better for the next generation. If it's small as reducing my own carbon footprint then so be it. That's what gives me value in my life knowing the next generations will have it easier than we did and be able to to spend their energies enjoying their experiences in life without worry about having air to breathe, water to drink, or food to eat. Because the thought of children in the future being born into the world with immediate death sentence where they can't breathe clean, drink clean water, and either have kill each other for food or starve to death because we today prefer to do things the easier, less expensive way. Because we are humans living in a inhumane world were big banks, big corporations, and big governments supersede big hearts and that keeps me up at night. Because everyone should have shelter, access to food, water, and air and I have no right to take any of that away from them.

[Egann]

Even if you move over to using wind and solar power as a supplement, that still leaves us depleting the supply of fossil fuels before we move on. In the big picture, we'll still be using as much oil and fossil fuels. In fact we could possibly wind up using more fossil fuels because supplementation would give the oil companies time to R&D extraction techniques like fracking and float longer after peak oil.

I'm not sold on Carbon Dioxide causing damage to the Earth's climate, in part because atmospherics are notoriously impossible to model, in part because polar ice cap analysis says that CO2 levels follow temperature and not the other way around (warmer temperatures cause a more vibrant Carbon cycle) ...but mostly because no one has any idea what the Earth's optimum temperature is. But let's assume that CO2 is a detriment and is causing climate change which is causing damages. Switching over to a different energy source would be disastrous for our economy at the moment, and supplementation will only drag the transition out more than change the amount of oil/ coal we use. The only solution I see is to power through the available fossil fuels and *force* a transition to nuclear power by making the peak oil point painfully obvious.

[J-Roc]

Do you really think Nuclear power is that practical right now, Egann? I understand where you are coming from, but worldwide implementation seems like something of a pipe-dream.

[SOAP]

Even if you move over to using wind and solar power as a supplement, that still leaves us depleting the supply of fossil fuels before we move on. In the big picture, we'll still be using as much oil and fossil fuels. In fact we could possibly wind up using more fossil fuels because supplementation would give the oil companies time to R&D extraction techniques like fracking and float longer after peak oil.

I'm not sold on Carbon Dioxide causing damage to the Earth's climate, in part because atmospherics are notoriously impossible to model, in part because polar ice cap analysis says that CO2 levels follow temperature and not the other way around (warmer temperatures cause a more vibrant Carbon cycle) ...but mostly because no one has any idea what the Earth's optimum temperature is. But let's assume that CO2 is a detriment and is causing climate change which is causing damages. Switching over to a different energy source would be disastrous for our economy at the moment, and supplementation will only drag the transition out more than change the amount of oil/ coal we use. The only solution I see is to power through the available fossil fuels and *force* a transition to nuclear power by making the peak oil point painfully obvious.

Better to drag things out in the short run than to power through our oil resources and only change at last possible second. What good would that bee only change when absolutely have to, only to be where we're at now, with no alternative available, except then there'd no oil to fall back on. If making a switch now would be harmful, it would absolutely horrific if we wait too long and still no solutions haven't arrived. Better to prepare for tomorrow rather than dowhateverthefuck today hoping something will magically come and save our asses before have to start paying the consequences.

Besides, back to my original concerns, it's not just the environmental effects that bother me, it's the distinct lack of any responsibility or accountability such industries seem to have. You see it all the time when businesses become "to big to fail" they don't seem feel the need to take responsibility for any harm they cause towards others nor does anyone seem to hold them accountable. It would had been a totally different stories if someone from these companies said "You know what? We're deeply sorry for the damages our company has caused local communities. It was not intention and is just unfortunate and unavoidable part of the nature of our work." Something, anything along the lines of an official apology or recognition of peoples' legitimate plights would have been nice. Instead we get this "Well gee, it wasn't our fault so....KTHANXBAI!"

[Egann]

Better to drag things out in the short run than to power through our oil resources and only change at last possible second. What good would that bee only change when absolutely have to, only to be where we're at now, with no alternative available, except then there'd no oil to fall back on. If making a switch now would be harmful, it would absolutely horrific if we wait too long and still no solutions haven't arrived. Better to prepare for tomorrow rather than dowhateverthefuck today hoping something will magically come and save our asses before have to start paying the consequences.

Besides, back to my original concerns, it's not just the environmental effects that bother me, it's the distinct lack of any responsibility or accountability such industries seem to have. You see it all the time when businesses become "to big to fail" they don't seem feel the need to take responsibility for any harm they cause towards others nor does anyone seem to hold them accountable. It would had been a totally different stories if someone from these companies said "You know what? We're deeply sorry for the damages our company has caused local communities. It was not intention and is just unfortunate and unavoidable part of the nature of our work." Something, anything along the lines of an official apology or recognition of peoples' legitimate plights would have been nice. Instead we get this "Well gee, it wasn't our fault so....KTHANXBAI!"

It's not that I disagree with your rationale, but that it's incomplete. Sustainability and planning for tomorrow are arguments I usually appreciate, but in this instance it doesn't work too well. In the really long run, no energy source is truly sustainable, whether we're talking about running out of coal in a hundred years or so, or the sun becoming a red giant seven billion years from now. Put simply, research and development are key components to any long term energy plan; the resources are finite, so technology can't remain static for long. This is one of the reasons we haven't run out of oil already; R&D for oil companies invented more efficient methods of extracting oil as the need arose, like horizontal drilling or, in this case, fracking.

So the technology of the present is almost secondary compared to the R&D, at least when it comes to minding the long term, because you always need to be mindful of what the next step will be. Just best guessing, this is how I think the picture looks.

Present: Oil and Coal----- possibly causing climate damage, but it's a short-lived energy source

Next Step: Nuclear Fission, starting with Uranium, and probably eventually Thorium---- Fissile fuels are reasonably rare. We'll hit peak fissiles, eventually, too, but it'll take time.

Step after that: Nuclear Fusion: Uses some of the most common elements in the universe, so this is a good long-term energy source. Still, the time will come when this won't provide enough energy per gram, and the universe is slowly running out of Hydrogen. Very. Slowly. So even fusion probably won't be our energy source for forever.

TL;DR: technological dynamism is probably more key to our future energy sources than sustainability.

Do you really think Nuclear power is that practical right now, Egann? I understand where you are coming from, but worldwide implementation seems like something of a pipe-dream.

France has been running at over 80% nuclear power since before 2000, so the technology already exists for fission to provide most of the world's energy. Oh, and as that France didn't sign a non-nuclear proliferation treaty, they can reprocess their spent fuel and put it back in the reactors (they call the reprocessed stuff MOX fuel.) Basically, they get a lot more energy out of their Uranium and produce a fraction of the nuclear waste, which they responsibly bury, anyway.

Aside from a few capacity issues, France is decades ahead of the curve on this one. Or at least they were until they elected Francois Hollande and decided to start phasing out nuclear energy in favor of the green stuff.

My point is that fission is an eminently practical power source with current technology only, but let's go beyond that.Nuclear power is not exactly like petroleum or coal; you use petroleum, it's gone; you need more. With nuclear fuel, after you've used it, most of the original fuel is still there, just laced with nuclear poisons. Increased Uranium and waste disposal prices will decrease incentives to buy new fuel, and increase incentives to develop ways to more efficiently recycle nuclear waste.

Basically, today's highly toxic nuclear waste is quite possibly tomorrow's recycled nuclear fuel. That's a trick petroleum could never do.

[Showsni]

Certainly nuclear is viable in first world countries; but how many of them are willing to share the technology that could see worldwide implementation of nuclear power?

I suppose less developed countries have less need of electricity. I really have no idea of the maths involved as to how much electricity various countries use.

[Oberon Storm]

I'm not even going to pretend I know anything about nuclear energy or its waste. If it really is as great as you make it out to be, Egann, why wait? Would it not be more beneficial to start the process of changing to nuclear now? If we wait til the last minute or even after we've already run out of fossil fuels will we not go through rough time because we didn't have the infrastructure in place? I imagine nuclear plants take time and money to build. And if nuclear power is that much less harmful then reducing the damage we're doing to the environment now, even if you don't think it is that big of a deal, is a plus.

[Egann]

It kind of already is being adopted, but unfortunately our foreign policy makes it difficult. Savannah River (the first nuclear plant to be built in the US since the 80's) is basically an Americanization of French recycling technology, and will convert weapons grade Plutonium into MOX fuel for commercial reactors to use.

The basic jist is that fuel recycling does indeed produce Plutonium which is usable for weapons, and so falls under the Nonproliferation treaty's jurisdiction. It's not exactly a bomb in the making, but it can be used to make one with some careful chemistry, so this first reactor will do the opposite; take weapons Plutonium and make fuel out of it while making energy. My impression is that it's a mix between a proof of concept and a demonstration of good will.

Certainly nuclear is viable in first world countries; but how many of them are willing to share the technology that could see worldwide implementation of nuclear power?

I suppose less developed countries have less need of electricity. I really have no idea of the maths involved as to how much electricity various countries use.

It's hardly like nuclear power needs to take over the universe quickly. Research into things like subcritical reactors would be very useful for developing nations, but it's hardly necessary. Developed nations need a lot of power, need it reliably, and would prefer it to be cheap, so if the U.S. were to "go green," for example, vast swaths of land would need to be converted to windmill farms, solar arrays, or battery banks.

Developing nations aren't like that. Per capita energy requirements are tiny by comparison; the need isn't for something powerful or even reliable so much as available. To give you an idea of how drastically different the situation is, solar TVs with rabbit-ear antennas are very popular in Africa, Asia, and Latin America because they provide information or entertainment and don't require any infrastructure. No sun? No TV, either. That would never fly here in the land of 500 24/7 Pay-Per-View channels in every Motel room (ugh. Really?) but it works perfectly there. The economy will figure out what its ideal energy source is far better than us telling it what it should be.

[Toan]

It kind of already is being adopted, but unfortunately our foreign policy makes it difficult. Savannah River (the first nuclear plant to be built in the US since the 80's) is basically an Americanization of French recycling technology, and will convert weapons grade Plutonium into MOX fuel for commercial reactors to use.

The basic jist is that fuel recycling does indeed produce Plutonium which is usable for weapons, and so falls under the Nonproliferation treaty's jurisdiction. It's not exactly a bomb in the making, but it can be used to make one with some careful chemistry, so this first reactor will do the opposite; take weapons Plutonium and make fuel out of it while making energy. My impression is that it's a mix between a proof of concept and a demonstration of good will.

Where do you get that SRS is the "first nuclear plant to be built in the US since the '80s"? SRS has been around since the '50s with five historical reactors enriching plutonium and tritium, facilities to conduct research (they discovered the neutrino), and (nowadays) cleaning up their mess from the 50's.

Shaw AREVA MOX Services is a contractor with SRS for the MFFF (Mixed-Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility), and they're building this facility on SRS land in F-Area (where most of the plutonium operations and storage already takes place), but it's not a reactor. As far as the technology goes, it's far from a proof of concept - it's been going on in Europe for 20+ years, and it works, so why not?

Some more links, in case anyone wants to read up on it:

http://www.areva.com...-river-usa.html
http://www.moxproject.com/about/
http://www.srs.gov/g...farea/index.htm

...I worked at SRS for two summers, and I distinctly recall them making a big stink about the MFFF groundbreaking in 2007. It was cool stuff.

[Egann]

I was under the distinct impression that the new MOX facility at SRS would control a nuclear reaction. I'm not entirely certain it was ever slated to produce power (although I thought it was) but still, that qualifies it as a "new nuclear reactor." I did not mean to imply Savannah River is a new site.

But if you know something I don't, I'm all ears. What I do know is that 1) France and the UK use recycling to actively break down used nuclear waste to produce more nuclear fuel, and 2) for Nonproliferation reasons, the United States has opted out of all recycling options altogether. Even the Savannah River facility will only be reducing weapons grade Plutonium into MOX.

I just don't understand the reason why the US isn't recycling fuel. What good is it doing anybody? The US has an active roster of about 35,000 nukes. Enough to destroy the planet ten times over, I grant, but we've also been in between four and seven wars since WW2 (depending on which ones you count) and never used a single nuke. Not only did disposing of fuel at Yucca Mountain (or similar places) cost about $300 a pound, but the stuff we keep there is still usable.

Edited by Egann, 13 July 2012 - 06:20 PM.