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Page added on April 18, 2015
Any notion that nuclear power is clean is obsolete
The world must phase out nuclear power because it is absolutely not clean from the mining processing of uranium to the generation of high-level radioactive waste, Kevin Kamps for the radioactive waste watchdog Beyond Nuclear, told RT.
It’s been four years since the most powerful earthquake in Japan’s history struck the Fukushima nuclear power plant. All of Japan’s 43 operable reactors have been shut down since 2013, because of safety checks required after the accident. The operator of the nuclear plant has sent a second robot inside the Fukushima reactor to collect data from it. The first robot became immovable after recording some footage from inside the reactor.
RT: Since the disaster, Japan has allocated more than $15 billion to an unprecedented project to lower radiation in towns near the power plant. However few locals believe Tokyo’s assurances that the site will eventually be cleaned up. Do you think their fears are reasonable?
Kevin Kamps: Yes, it is an unprecedented catastrophe. Of course there was Chernobyl, but in this area of Japan – it is so densely populated all over. So when they are trying to clear the landscape down to a certain depth, it is going to be more and more expensive. When you add all of the projects from decommissioning of the nuclear power plant to trying to clean up the landscape to loss of economic activity – we’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars all together. It is going to be very difficult for anything like normal life ever to return there.
RT: In addition to massive radioactive remains, Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise following the increase in coal-fired power. Should environmentalists sound the alarm here?
KK: Just in recent days there have been the admissions by high-ranking Tokyo Electric officials that the decommissioning of the nuclear power plant could take more like 200 years because of the lack of technology to do the job. They are going to have to invent all of these robotic systems and engineering processes to try to remove the melted cores at Fukushima Daiichi because that is their current plan unlike Chernobyl with the sarcophagus. The current plan in Japan is to remove those melted cores to somewhere else – perhaps to geologic disposal, they haven’t said. But it is going to be very challenging.
RT: How has the country been handling the shortage of nuclear energy so far?
KK: It is high time for Japan, but I should also say the US and many other countries, to do what Germany is doing – which is to make the transition in its energy sector to efficiency and renewables. Germany will phase out the nuclear power by 2022. This is a direct response to Fukushima. And it will also largely phase out fossil fuel by the middle of the century, by 2050. Germany is the fourth largest economy in the world. So if Germany can do it, so can other developed countries in the world. It is high time that we do this so that dangerous nuclear power plants can be shot down, and we don’t have to turn to polluting fossil fuels.
RT: What is the main importance of nuclear power phase-out in your opinion?
KK: I think it’s very important that world turned from the nuclear power. It is absolutely not clean from the mining and processing of uranium to the generation of high-level radioactive waste. Then the routine radiation releases is even from normally operating nuclear power plants. But then certainly you have the disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. Any notion that nuclear power is clean is obsolete at this point.
RT: On Tuesday, a Japanese court halted the restart of two reactors at the Takahama plant in Fukui prefecture citing safety concerns. Why did the judges issue such a ruling?
KK: They are having a very difficult time. Just in recent days again a judge in Fukui prefecture ruled for the second time against the restart of atomic reactors in their prefecture, this time at Takahama. Two reactor units were blocked by this judge’s ruling from restarting. And last year he ruled against two reactors at the Oi nuclear power plant. So the local population, the local governors of prefectures, and local elected officials like mayors have put a stop to these plants restarting reactors in Japan.
RT: Do you think this latest move by the court is a major blow to the Prime Minister’s attempts to return to atomic energy?
KK: Yes, and in this particular case in the last couple days the judge in Fukui prefecture ruled that the new regulations – supposedly based on lessons learned from Fukushima by the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority – are irrational and do not guarantee protection of public health and safety and the environment. So it is a big blow to Prime minister, [Shinzo] Abe’s plans to restart reactors.
RT: All 40 reactors in Japan are shot down at the moment, aren’t they?
KK: That’s right; all 40 reactors in Japan are currently shot down. And this has been the case largely since the Fukushima catastrophe began. There have been a few exceptions but for very short periods of time.
RT: If the court comes up with further restrictions that would eventually extend the countrywide shutdown of the reactors. What are the consequences likely to be for Japan’s economy?
KK: It has made it. There have been challenges and difficulties; there has been a crash course in energy efficiency and also in energy conservation… And … there have been imports of fossil fuels, natural gas and coal. That is why I said [that] it is important for Japan to as quickly as possible transition to a renewable energy economy. In fact, that prime minister who served during the beginning of the catastrophe, Naoto Kan, implemented laws that would make that renewable transition happen more efficiently.
RT: Are there any achievement that have been made by the Japanese government trying to tackle the problem? Any good news?
KK: The good news is that renewables, especially efficiency, are very quickly deployable. You can establish a large scale solar photovoltaic facility in a matter of months, the same with wind turbines and efficiency is even faster than that. You have companies in Japan that are poised to do this kind of work…So there is a real promise in renewables; Japan has tremendous resourcesboth domestically, but also for the export and the installation of renewables around the world. And you have to always remember that the devastation caused by Fukushima Daiichi is a very negative thing for the Japanese economy. So you could have 40 good years at a nuclear power plant like Fukushima Daiichi, and you can have one bad day that is now tuned into four bad years, and there is no end and sight- this will go on for very long time.
RT: Everyone in Japan and all over the world understands that it is very dangerous industry and something should be done to prevent future catastrophes. So why are Japanese authorities slowing down all these processes?
KK: It is a form of addiction; it is a form of political power that is very deeply ingrained. The Japanese nuclear power industry dates back to the 1950’s. The Liberal Democratic Party of Prime Minister Abe, one of its founding planks and its platform was pro-nuclear power. Apparently, it is very difficult for these powerful elites to learn lessons and to change their ways. But I think the Japanese people are showing that they have had enough of these risks to their country: first suffering the atomic bombings of 1945 and now also suffering the worst that nuclear power can deliver as well.
40 Comments on "Any notion that nuclear power is clean is obsolete"
Makati1 on Sat, 18th Apr 2015 8:27 pm
“Technology To Clean Up Fukushima Plant Doesn’t Exist Yet”
http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Technology-To-Clean-Up-Fukushima-Plant-Doesnt-Exist-Yet.html
Nuff said…
dissident on Sat, 18th Apr 2015 10:12 pm
This discussion is nonsensical. It’s not nuclear power, it’s the rubbish 1950s water cooled reactor designs that all need to be shut down. They are intrinsically unsafe yet they are still being built. These reactors, their non-closed fuel cycle and the accumulation of “waste” should be consigned to history.
Go Speed Racer on Sat, 18th Apr 2015 10:17 pm
What dissident said. the water cooled reactor design is garbage. For those who Might, just maybe, dare to try and know the difference between a proton and a neutron, then here is why:
Water slows down neutrons. The neutron hits the water molecule and bounces off it, slowing it down. Slow neutrons are great for making nuclear waste, such as plutonium for bombs. But the slow neutrons are lousy for producing energy.
What do they want? Do they want energy? Or do they want bombs & nuclear waste? Answer: They want the bombs. That si why our reactors are filled with nuclear waste.
A real reactor involves ‘fast neutrons’ that’s how they start out from the split atom.
Since its VERY important that no problems be solved and society sinks like the Titanic, then its VERY important that only lousy slow neutron reactors are built. Those make little energy and lots of nuclear waste. Yay!
Go Speed Racer on Sat, 18th Apr 2015 10:20 pm
Hey everybuddy,
Check out this link, Somebody Post it will ya? I can’t post nothing around here.
Its all about how the big fat american pigs are making gigantic mountains of discarded fridges and other kitchen appliances
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/19/worlds-mountain-of-electrical-waste-reaches-new-peak-of-42m-tonnes
wow !!
Dont blame me I recycle that stuff, i have picked up many fridges for recycling before, and hot water tanks too. It’s revoltingly trivial to do it right but the fat american pigs can’t be bothered, they have to dump it in a heap.
gdubya on Sat, 18th Apr 2015 10:54 pm
I am entirely in agreement that the present 40 year old reactor fleet is a rediculous design run by people more concerned with profit than safety. But I am not convinced that the alternatives are a) safer or b) possible.
For those of you who expound the benefits of thorium or breeder reactors why don’t you build one? There is no reason why one person cannot round up the experts, arrange financing, find a feasable site and build the thing. That’s what we do as a society; and Bill Gates, Juan Tripp, Bill Boeing and Henry Ford are just a few examples. Get off your ass, stop wasting your time commenting and make it so. When it works you will be the richest being on earth.
Personally I think breeders, reprocessing, actual long-term waste storage, thorium and fusion are all equally probable in 50 years, that is, not at all, but anything is better than the current fossil fuelled catastrophe. PV technology is probably the best we are going to get, and although it is not going to provide enough power to ship Chinese plastic crap around the planet it might keep us from collapsing back to the wood age with its ensuing ecological catastrophes.
Davy on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 6:19 am
Quit crying over spilled milk. It is what it is and what we have is what we have. As the bumpy plateau of economic stagnation and less affordable oil transition into the bumpy descent of economic turmoil and accelerated oil depletion we will have new concerns like keeping the lights on.
Vital support systems will destabilize in dysfunction and economic abandonment. Delusional hopium of the BAUtopians will continue to grasp onto technology and increased complexity to solve problems even as the system is flying apart. Talk about surreal what could be more surreal than pushing technology when technology is failing. Let’s use technology that is failing to fix technology.
Very little NUK power will be built out here on out. Some planned and in the construction phase will be completed at huge cost overruns. Existing plants will begin the end of life decay that is unavoidable. You can refurbish somethings but other refurbishments are too costly. It is cheaper at some point to build new and new is too costly. That my friends is a catch 22.
There will surely be more accidents as the descent gathers pace and resources become strained. The grid will destabilize at some point further pressuring NUK operation. Liquid fuel and food insecurity will destabilize NUK employment.
What we need now is a concerted effort to take existing waste and stabilize it at least for a longer term than the current arrangement. Do something and try to be cost effective. Of course this is not being done as it should be because of the cost. Cost are going to get worse whether that is inflation or deflation IOW there will be less with less one way or another.
NUK is truly a liability at this point and one we should be prioritizing for danger mitigation. We can’t hardly shut NUK down at 15% electricity contribution and 20% in the US. BAU can’t take that kind of hit and the end of BAU is collapse. Renewables will never scale to mitigate that number. We are stuck with what we have. We only have a few years of BAU anyway so we should make the best of what we have. What choice do we have?
We can bitch and moan like I read constantly. There is nothing we can do just like there is nothing we can do about population, AGW, and fossil fuel dependence. The only thing we can do is begin the process of natural rebalance with mitigation and adjustment policies.
Instead the BAUtopians will continue their belief in exceptionalism and progress through knowledge and technology into a surreal world of dysfunctions, lies, and decay. The BAUtopian exceptionalists will be crowing like Baghdad Bob about how all will be OK. We have the means to solve all our problems as the ship is sinking. That is sickly hilarious like a pulp fiction. What a friggen joke our best and brightest are now. The hubris and pride of the cream of society we put our trust in blindly. We sheeples will allow these false prophets to kill us slowly in a blind descent that will be ugly, painful, and deadly.
Dave on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 7:22 am
Short of fusion power(which is only 10 years away),nuclear generation going forward is in big trouble. One problem that doesn’t seem to get much press is the apparent inability of nuclear power plants to quickly power up and down. I would think this will be critical as we move to incorporate the renewables in a smarter grid. This in addition to cost and safety concerns really puts fission power on the chopping block imho.
Davy on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 8:28 am
Daver, please explain a smart grid with people that do not act smart, can’t get along and are broke. That my friend are the BAU people. Tell me how this fusion illusion is 10 years away? Per what source do you base your predictions? Tell me how in 10 years if it is possible we are going to build out hundreds of these monsters that are untested. How are we going to build out these hugely expensive monsters with decaying infrastructure?
Your huge AltE and smart grid build out will be a source of enormous carbon emissions if theoretically it could be built out. The fusion illusion many times more carbon then the fake green AltE and dirty smart grid. The payback is years away with the fusion illusion, fake green AltE, and the dirty smart grid. This means debt financing.
Daver, do a little research on the amount of debt in the global system now. I am curious how we are going to add trillions more to that debt and call all that debt capital investment. NOo made that comment about all that debt being capital investment. NOo also mentioned you have to spend money to make money. I wonder if spending money you don’t have to make money works too NOo. . I wonder if Ponzi schemes we call the markets today can produce real wealth or just transfer wealth.
Insanity is expecting technology to solve problems technology is creating Extending and pretending we are not broke as a global system is no different than a gambling addiction, also known as compulsive gambling. We have no hope with folks like the BAU people in charge. BAUtopians with their fantasy hopium are leading us to slaughter through browning grass telling us the grass is greener just over the hill.
marmico on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 8:35 am
As the bumpy plateau of economic stagnation and less affordable oil transition into the bumpy descent of economic turmoil and accelerated oil depletion we will have new concerns like keeping the lights on.
More word salad from Doomer Davy-boy.
Peak oil what? Peak petroleum affordability what?
You are a word salad goat shit on your boots nutter.
Kenz300 on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 9:00 am
The cost to clean up and store the nuclear waste at Chernobyl and Fukishima is enormous. Those disasters continue today with no end in sight. The technology to clean up the sites does not exist.
Chernobyl’s new shell – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJSpDAwEtjA&spfreload=10
Davy on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 9:07 am
Marmi, if it is word salad why do you respond? Why don’t you load me up on some Freddy fluff cotton candy. What flavors do you have today? Dumb or dumber or maybe lies with some deceit. You are a part of the sheeple brigade walking proudly to your unfortunate meeting with reality.
Nony on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 9:17 am
Davy, peakers are a dying movement. This is because unlike you, most people eventually face facts. Like oil not peaking in 2005-2008. Like the shale boom. Like being at 55 instead of 105.
Look at the graph, Davy.
https://www.google.ca/trends/explore#q=richard%20heinberg%20
Davy on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 9:40 am
NOo, I could give a rats ass about your preoccupation with PO. I love to see you explain away generalized doom. I picture a comedian laughing off death when he is looking down the barrel of a shotgun. You are such a dork. Wake up NOo and quit living in fantasy. The only thing supporting your fantasy is corrupted statistics and false marketing.
apneaman on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 10:32 am
Nony-marm thinks reality is a popularity contest. His econ 101 hero’s are batting ZERO at predicting crashes of any sort EVER, yet the marma-nony’s hang on their every word as gospel. They throw out their graphs and charts like a Christian fundamentalists does chapter and verse. The reason they never get it right is because their conclusion is already pre-decided. Let us take a look at what the bankers, captains of industry and eco 101 heavy hitters of yesteryear were saying before and during the Great Depression.
1927-1933 Chart of Pompous Prognosticators
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2014/10/16/permanently-high-plateau/
DMyers on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 10:58 am
“Just in recent days there have been the admissions by high-ranking Tokyo Electric officials that the decommissioning of the nuclear power plant could take more like 200 years because of the lack of technology to do the job.” [quoting KK in the interview]
Just to mention a few inferences that may be drawn from this statement. First, there has, admittedly, been no comprehensive preparation for foreseeable breakdowns. Other than laziness and obsession with profits (and prophets?), that encourage short term approaches, I detect another factor in this situation. Beyond foreseeable breakdowns, lies a plethora imaginable possibilities that lack foreseeability. To prepare for the foreseeable, therefore, seems futile and in vain, as that would be the least likely problem to occur.
This is probably the situation to be found in most other existing nuclear installations (i.e. “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it”).
And let us partake in a moment of silence in memory of M.K. Hubbert. Recall his valiant effort to cast a light of hope on the darkness of peak oil by drawing a graph showing nuclear power climbing like a great oak tree out of the peak of the famous bell curve and leading energy plunder to new heights. Only in that was he wrong.
My mind is open, and I want to believe, but nuclear energy has failed its promise. And the current oil price mystery has nothing to do an oil glut, but is the result of a very complicated set of circumstances, of which actual peak oil is a factor.
zoidberg on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 11:06 am
Well we just can’t give up on new and better tech just to go back to grubbing in the dirt again. Keep your chins up peakers. If we fail we can always do plan b. Onwards and upwards.
Nony on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 11:24 am
Davy,
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=matt%20simmons%2C%20%2Fm%2F03flrg%2C%20hubbert%2C%20dieoff%2C%20kunstler&cmpt=q&tz=
Down, down, down!
P.s. you missed me when I was gone. 😉
Davy on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 11:32 am
NOo, I like you friend. Your a smart guy. I appreciate your understanding of the oil complex. That does not mean you have a clue about life. It just means you can read a book and work a calculator. IOW you are like a Bot without critical thinking just repeating mindless BAUtopian rants.
Nony on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 11:37 am
Oh…let’s just a room! 🙂
apneaman on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 2:02 pm
We are all just externalities of industrial civilization. Some are just paid better.
As Researchers Tie Fracking and Radon, Pennsylvania Moves to Keep Drilling Radioactivity Data Under Wraps
http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/04/19/pennsylvania-keeps-radioactivity-study-data-under-wraps-johns-hopkins-researchers-report-correlation-between-fracking
Perk Earl on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 2:03 pm
“Delusional hopium of the BAUtopians will continue to grasp onto technology and increased complexity to solve problems even as the system is flying apart.”
Davy, as an illustration of what you wrote above, here is an article about China raising their reserve ratio. On the surface it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, however these incremental alterations, and if you will capitulations to greater monetary risk, are what is occurring worldwide. Almost everyday there are articles about changes like this in a desperate attempt to continue growth.
What they will add up to is a point in time when it won’t take much to cause panic due to something in which the camel’s back has been broken in one regard or another.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/19/chinas-central-bank-cuts-reserve-ratio
‘China’s central bank cuts reserve ratio’
The latest cut, the deepest single reduction since the depth of the global crisis in 2008, shows how the central bank is stepping up efforts to ward off a sharp slowdown in the economy.
“The size of the cut is more than expected,” said Shenwan Hongyuan Securities analyst, Chen Kang. “It’s going to release around a trillion yuan (in liquidity) at least.”
shortonoil on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 2:36 pm
Risk = Cost of failure x Probability of occurrence. A simple equation that is well known to any Professional Project Manager. Fukushima is an excellent example of that equation. Even TEPCO is admitting that it will require 200 years to clean up this accident. Other wise, cost will be approaching infinity; it will be approaching an astronomical value. In that case, no amount of Probability of occurrence is small enough to be acceptable. A cost effective nuclear power plant can not be built.
Further more, nuclear power plants are extremely complex systems; the chance of eventual failure is almost guaranteed by that complexity. It is amazing that such a simple evaluation of the cost/reward aspect of nuclear power has escaped the human race. The ability to produce technological advancements is diffidently not proof of power for rational assessment. As a species we are clever, but cleverness, evidently, does not precede wisdom.
apneaman on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 3:10 pm
Louisiana five years after BP oil spill: ‘It’s not going back to normal no time soon’
The oil giant says the environmental disaster caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blast is nearly over. That’s not how it feels to Gulf coast residents
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/18/lousiana-bp-oil-spill-five-years-not-going-back-to-normal?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=dlvr.it
Nony on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 3:13 pm
waah, waah, waah. BP is a shitty oil major, not Exxon’s class. But this whole beating a dead horse is getting old. The Gulf is fine. We are becoming like Russian kleptocrats nationalizing assets.
Leave BP alone!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmvkRoEowc
Perk Earl on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 3:22 pm
“The ability to produce technological advancements is diffidently not proof of power for rational assessment.”
Short, mankind has just enough information to be really dangerous.
Or as the chaotician (chaos theory) character, Dr. Ian Malcom played by Jeff Goldblum in ‘Jurassic Park’ said,
“I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here: it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility… for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you’re selling it.”
Nony on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 4:49 pm
Davy,
I’m going to try to go back to my NYR. I don’t change anything of what I think. I just feel bad after messing with you folks (about how I behave). If you all want a place to chat with like minded people, that is totally cool.
Peace, brah. Feel free to say I ran off.
shortonoil on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 5:25 pm
Short, mankind has just enough information to be really dangerous.
The ability to develop technology was an evolutionary adaptation. It was our species primary survival mechanism, and it has nothing to do with intelligence. It was the ability to mimic what others had discovered; often by accident, or observation of the natural world around them. It provided a means to preserve that discovery for future use without it being necessary to re-discover it each time it was needed. It is no coincidence that technological advancement has paralleled human population growth.
Copying is instinctual; children copy everything around them. From language to food preferences, attitudes, and belief systems. “When in Rome do as the Romans do”. Nature gave humanity the instinctive capacity to develop technology, it did not give us the instinctive capacity to use it wisely. That capacity can only be derived from long term societal training, and that often lags technological development by centuries. We are a species who has been given a very powerful survival mechanism that could easily turn out to become the antithesis for what it was intended. When an animal’s instincts begin to betray them, they have begun the journey down the extinction road!
Davy on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 8:37 pm
NOo, I am going to let you in on a secret. I went off my asshole meds many months ago. I am a certifiable asshole and know it all. I did this because the end days are near. Not the end of the world but the end of the world we have known.
People don’t listen to nice guys. Everyone is a nice guy today. Nice guys just give people comfort but they don’t shake people up the sooth. Corporations have phony customer service departments that try to cheer you up while they screw you over. Optimism is a religion and hopium is required to be popular.
I say frigg that shit. I am telling it like it is and I am going to spit in people’s faces when I hear cat piss. I know just enough to be dangerous with doom. I am getting very good at the art of prep. It is my passion and way of life. I have some good mitigation and adaptation ideas that will not be followed until too late. I do best at calling out shit. I am a hypocrite and not happy with that but I am stuck in BAU not by choice but by circumstance.
NOo, I like you man and I feel you and the Marmi are good for this site. We need corns to get us doomers pissed. I don’t have a corner on the truth. I want to get closer to it and I need opposing views to get me closer. “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain.
NOo, I don’t agree with you and Marm but you guys keep me on my toes and you guys call me out when I am sloppy. You guys are smart and good with numbers. Anyone that is smart is helpful on a site like this.
NOo, I think you will be back because it is hard to leave a site like this which is dealing with profound issues. If you leave been nice knowing you and sorry if I ruffled feathers but it was all in friendship. I know it is an odd way to be friendly. I have found that soldiers become attached to their adversaries. There is often a bond between warriors. Good luck NOo.
Davy on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 8:51 pm
Great point short and one that should bring pause to the BAUtopians who preach technological progress and hopium of human exceptionalism. It is very possible our large brains will be our end. There is more to that though because there is profound spirituality in humans that points to a higher power or connection. We have failed as a species on one level but on another we have connected with the universe. What that higher power or spirituality is well that is beyond a little comment but it is something special about our species.
We may go through a bottleneck and that bottleneck may be transformative. We may become a new species at least at the level of spirituality. Once our complexity and energy availability has been pissed away in a huge entropic blow out of unbelievable proportions we may return to a much smaller species within a greater natural ecosystem. This is what we should be.
It appears we are an extinction tool of nature. We are not much different than an asteroid strike. There is no human exceptionalism. That is just our delusional dualism. There is no separation from the universe. Our religions and technology have been distorted for the most part leaving us separated from our connection.
The most profound time in human history is nearly upon us. The end days are near. This could be many generational event but my point is fossil fuel industrial man is about over. Something new is approaching and soon. I have no idea the speed of this change and how but we are at the beginning of this transition or paradigm shift.
Makati1 on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 10:20 pm
Attention Maryland! Do you know what is happening in your neighborhood?
“…one in Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, in America.”
“New UK nuclear plants under threat as ‘serious anomaly’ with model found in France”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11546271/New-UK-nuclear-plants-under-threat-as-serious-anomaly-with-model-found-in-France.html
Glad the closest one to the Ps is in China and always downwind. LOL
Perk Earl on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 11:32 pm
Short, the chart your website has with affordability dropping from over $100. per barrel in 2012 to looks like about 10-12 dollars a barrel in 2020, suggests consumer affordability dropping ~80 dollars in 8 years due to depletion.
Depletion I agree with as well as consumer affordability dropping over time, but affordability dropping that much, that fast an is questionable.
Oil’s been in use for ~150 years, but suddenly over an 8 year period consumer affordability drops off a table to $10-12 dollars?! Do you have a link to the math being used to reach that conclusion?
Perk Earl on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 11:49 pm
Short, are you familiar with the poster below, Jeffrey J. Brown. He use to go by the moniker Westexas on TOD. He is someone that crunches numbers on oil. Have you run that graph by him?
This partial post below was copied/pasted is from Ron’s site, Peak oil barrel, and has nothing to do with the question at hand, but is an example of Jeff’s posts with data.
Jeffrey J. Brown says:
April 19, 2015 at 3:53 pm
“I focus on estimates for CNE (Cumulative Net Exports). For example, for the Six Country Case History*, if you extrapolate their 1995 to 2002 rate of decline in their combined ECI Ratio (Ratio of production to consumption), they would have approached zero net exports about 20 years after 1995. Annual net exports at peak were 1.0 Gb/year (in 1995).
So, based on the 1995 t0 2002 rate of decline in their ECI Ratio, Estimated post-1995 CNE were:
1.0 GB/year X 20 years X 0.5 (area under a triangle), less 1.0 Gb (net exports at peak in 1995) = 9.0 Gb
Actual post-1995 CNE were 7.3 Gb”
marmico on Mon, 20th Apr 2015 4:40 am
You guys are smart and good with numbers. Anyone that is smart is helpful on a site like this.
The U.S. economy is not toppling. Two monthly numbers you should look at are the CFNAI and the ADS Business Conditions Index. The April CFNAI number is reported later this morning.
Both series have good track records and beat the crap out of the zero dead head bloggers.
Makati1 on Mon, 20th Apr 2015 4:54 am
Marmico, the Us is already a 3rd world country masquerading as am ‘exceptional’, ‘indispensable’ country. They call people with that problem, crazy. The printing presses are all that has kept it alive since 1971. That and exporting war and death. The rest of the world has caught on to the lie and is turning away.
You can read what you want, but reality is a lot different than you seem to believe. Look around at the real UFSA with out your rose colored glasses and blinders. Stop drinking the Ministry of Propaganda cool aid before it is too late.
Davy on Mon, 20th Apr 2015 5:26 am
Look, Marm, I will die and go to heaven if all your positive news is reality. Unfortunately I cannot believe statistics, financial numbers, and the talking heads anymore. Both sides are suspect. Both doomer and corns are engaged in agendas. Something is not right when I read between the lines on data in aggregate. Doomers are getting it wrong in the short term but corns are looking lame longer term with foundational stability.
I do not see resilience or sustainability longer term. The message I am seeing is the end of growth and increasing decay of a global structure that all locals are now dependent on. I see a system unable to go to a steady state by a nature of required growth. Nothing I see in Nature continues in a state of exponential growth. BAU is a system that must continue exponential growth which eventually is not possible per natural laws even though economist and TPTB say it is possible through substitution and innovation.
I am seeing exponential decay of ecosystems, climate, and resource depletion in the meantime. Population still growing with food and water resources in stress. Geopolitical and financial instabilities at a global level with an interconnected global system. My little mind can’t get around this wall of doom. It is stuck with numbers that don’t add up.
So, Marm, my agenda is wanting to believe your message at one level because my life is great but on another level I see numbers, scenarios, and conditions that just don’t add up. I am basically an optimistic pessimist. I love incongruous juxtapositions. What that means is I can go either way but I am pessimistic by nature because entropy always wins with an organism or system. I have optimism for the here and now. I wake up happy despite the Davy doom and fire and brimstone Davy sermons of doom. I am going to remain doomer until you guys prove me wrong with solid tangible evidence not digital abstract representations I get indirectly over a network by people I do not know personally.
I am optimistic now. The birds are doing their morning songs and I believe the sun will come up soon so no pessimism right here right now. When I read the news the doom will surely turn on but thanks Marm for trying and I wish the best of luck for a message of hope at least for a few.
Kenz300 on Mon, 20th Apr 2015 6:21 am
Nuclear energy is snake oil sold to the public by nuclear hucksters……….
Too costly and too dangerous…………
What will it cost to clean up Fukishima and Chernobyl and store the nuclear waste forever?
Davy on Mon, 20th Apr 2015 6:40 am
Kenny, the way you preach your AltE song is snake oil too. Get real boy you don’t really think it will make a difference do you? At 5% market share and no hope of self-replication how do you think it will replace fossil fuels?
Kenny, i have never seen a response out of you to comments. I am wondering if you are some kind of environmental Algo that comments as a bot with standard messages per the topic. Show some humanity and engage yourself in conversation or is that too dangerous when you are preaching snake oil?
shortonoil on Mon, 20th Apr 2015 8:55 am
Depletion I agree with as well as consumer affordability dropping over time, but affordability dropping that much, that fast an is questionable.
The reason that affordability now appears to be falling so fast is because it rose fast. We didn’t notice that rise was happening because for the first part of the oil age it was rising faster than production cost. The second graph on this page demonstrates that:
http://www.thehillsgroup.org/depletion2_022.htm
Consumer affordability hit its maximum in the year 2000, and has been declining since then. In 2012 (the energy half way point) the affordability curve crossed the production cost curve, and the spread between them is now increasing rapidly. The math to explain that is on the page above, but we will be updating that page this week to make it a little more explanatory.
At the present price level ($56 for WTI today) a good part of the world’s production is operating below their cost of production: shale $90, bitumen $80, ultra deep water $100+, arctic $100, and high sulfur extra heavy $100+. There is almost no new conventional coming on line. The only possible source is infill drilling in existing fields, which is very expensive. It is merely picking up the small amounts that were left behind when the fields were first operated. They were left because they were not very profitable to extract at that point in the fields development.
At this point we are very reliant on a few very old giants; about 60% of the world’s production is coming from 1% of its fields, and they are on average more than 60 years old. Ghawar, the world’s largest is more than 90% depleted, as indicated by its water cut. Its original 350 foot oil seam is now less than 30 feet. As the last few barrels are scraped out of these old fields their cost of production will increase. As the cost increases the utility of the oil produced goes down for the general economy. The energy in a barrel of oil is fixed by its molecular structure so as the energy to produce it increases the amount remaining goes down, and what the consumer can pay declines. In essence, there is very little oil remaining in the world’s reserve that is worth taking out of the ground. Whether it is estimated from a BTU perspective, or on a economic bases the outlook does not look good in the long term for petroleum.
http://www.thehillsgroup.org
apneaman on Mon, 20th Apr 2015 1:12 pm
Gonna need that power for AC this summer.
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As 2015 Begins With Record Warmth, is the Pacific Primed to Dump Huge Amounts of Heat Into the Atmosphere?
“It’s official: According to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, the first quarter of 2015 has set a new record, with the January through March period coming in as the warmest such period on record across the globe’s land and ocean surfaces.”
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/2015/04/18/2015-begins-with-record-warmth-pacific-primed-to-dump-heat-into-atmosphere/#.VTUf8vAV2g7
Perk Earl on Mon, 20th Apr 2015 1:35 pm
That all makes sense, short, but keep in mind this is 2015, so 2020 is only 5 years off, equal to the rest of Obama and the 1st term of whomever is next and splat goes the economy, because consumer affordability of only 10-12 dollars a barrel means the consumer is on the ropes along with the rest of the economy. Even if affordability is 40 dollars in 2020, it still points to the exit signs for BAU.
My bigger point was Ron’s site, ‘Peak Oil Barrel’ which is a data crunching, graphs site. Have you run that graph by them? If not, it might be interesting to see what kind of responses it gets.