Donate Bitcoin

Donate Paypal


PeakOil is You

PeakOil is You

Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Collapse

Discussions about the economic and financial ramifications of PEAK OIL

Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Collapse

Unread postby vox_mundi » Wed 03 Sep 2014, 14:33:33

Dmitry isn’t the only one thinking about economic collapse. FEMA & DoE published this study awhile back. Surprisingly good agreement with Orlov’s assessment in the “5 Stages of Collapse” with some insights he missed.

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA216447 Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Cataclysm (PDF: 10.4Mb)

Pg 79 - Sec 7.1 Worst Case: Life without Civil Society

In this scenario more than any other, the loss of institutional continuity and customary patterns of social organization combine with extreme competition for resources to make the survival of practical pre-attack values and expectations of consistent human behavior highly unlikely. This is in accordance with our argument about the vulnerability of so-called core values in chapter one.

Given the loss of vital resources, there will be a number of binding time constraints within which actions must be taken, or population survival cannot be assured.

The loss of institutions is assumed to include the collapse of currency and the banking system. With no records of debt and property ownership, possession is likely to become the principal determinant of ownership. Pre-attack contracts, therefore, would be likely to fall into abeyance. The absence of law-enforcement infrastructure to uphold even rights of possession would exacerbate both the insecurity of property ownership and the risks of attempting to trade, already increased by the collapse of insurance and producer/consumer legislation. Monitoring, dispute settlement and enforcement would rest with individual traders or fall upon individuals and groups with the physical power to coerce.

Private property owned by anonymous shareholders, e.g., corporate property or unclaimed lands, is likely to be a prime candidate for redistribution.

Units of law-enforcement agencies and military regiments may act as independent economic units, collecting their own taxes on the movement of goods and appropriating services. Their strength relies partly on their possession of firearms.

Gang leadership is likely to be a major outlet for entrepreneurship of a certain sort. Other kinds of enterprise would be opened up by the removal of pre-disaster institutions and interregional markets, alongside a wholly changed demand/supply environment. … Citizens wishing to protect themselves from predatory gangs and who are unwilling to accept the patronage of social bandits may well choose the collective self-help option of organizing their own defense. The vigilante solution to the problem of maintaining civil order where the formal legal institutions are weak has been a ubiquitous feature of American history.

In summation, subsistence, prestige, and peasant-market exchange structures, all heavily influenced by intimate and criminal associational exchange, are likely to displace almost, if not all, formal market activities in the event that the worst case is realized.

Where currency is in limited supply or has limited credibility, but labor services are available, transaction costs will be lower if a trader can swap labor for goods directly. (umm … Sorry, the brothel's full)
User avatar
vox_mundi
Intermediate Crude
Intermediate Crude
 
Posts: 3939
Joined: Wed 27 Sep 2006, 03:00:00

Re: Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Colla

Unread postby SILENTTODD » Fri 05 Sep 2014, 04:22:06

The one thing I see that is missed in any discussion of an economic and societal Götterdämmerung is who, or what will take care of or service the over 100 spent fuel cooling ponds in the United States, over 400 world wide.

Forget about currency, commerce, or setting yourself up in some remote, self sufficient farm or commune in Arkansas or Montana. If someone or something is not maintaining these structures, currently at every nuclear power plant. You will effectively have over 100 Fukashimas in the U.S. alone.

This, without even considering who had control of the thousands of nuclear warheads in existence, would cause the extinction of every human in the northern hemisphere.
Skeptical scrutiny in both Science and Religion is the means by which deep thoughts are winnowed from deep nonsense-Carl Sagan
User avatar
SILENTTODD
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 928
Joined: Sat 06 May 2006, 03:00:00
Location: Corona, CA

Re: Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Colla

Unread postby americandream » Fri 05 Sep 2014, 06:52:34

SILENTTODD wrote:The one thing I see that is missed in any discussion of an economic and societal Götterdämmerung is who, or what will take care of or service the over 100 spent fuel cooling ponds in the United States, over 400 world wide.

Forget about currency, commerce, or setting yourself up in some remote, self sufficient farm or commune in Arkansas or Montana. If someone or something is not maintaining these structures, currently at every nuclear power plant. You will effectively have over 100 Fukashimas in the U.S. alone.

This, without even considering who had control of the thousands of nuclear warheads in existence, would cause the extinction of every human in the northern hemisphere.


No one basically. Collapse of capitalism into barbarism will see a complete meltdown of social organisation across the board.
americandream
Permanently Banned
 
Posts: 8650
Joined: Mon 18 Oct 2004, 03:00:00

Re: Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Colla

Unread postby Pops » Fri 05 Sep 2014, 08:24:48

It is a nuke war aftermath paper from right before the USSR collapsed. Likely in a big exchange there would be nothing to do about those fuel rods since I assume reactors are up there on the hot one hundred targets list and they would be scattered hither and thither.

Good news is there wouldn't be many nukes left in storage for terrorists to get ahold of...
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
User avatar
Pops
Elite
Elite
 
Posts: 19746
Joined: Sat 03 Apr 2004, 04:00:00
Location: QuikSac for a 6-Pac

Re: Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Colla

Unread postby Scrub Puller » Fri 05 Sep 2014, 16:19:57

Yair . . . There is lots of stuff/talk/hype around about the vulnerability of the US power grid to terrorist attack . . . this applies to any power grid in the world.

To me this is the biggest potential problem with nuclear power. If the grid is down big time in the middle of winter how will all the cooling continue for the spent fuel pools.

I have asked that technocopian Kaiser Jeep the question but have missed his reply if he responded.

I am talking a ongoing 9/11 style assault on a countries electrical distribution system. It would be very easy to carry out with prepositioned equipment. With a bit of research and planning I reckon I could shut half of Australia down with a few determined men.

Cheers.
Scrub Puller
Lignite
Lignite
 
Posts: 296
Joined: Sun 07 Apr 2013, 13:20:59

Re: Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Colla

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 05 Sep 2014, 19:14:03

Scrub Puller wrote:Yair . . . There is lots of stuff/talk/hype around about the vulnerability of the US power grid to terrorist attack . . . this applies to any power grid in the world.

To me this is the biggest potential problem with nuclear power. If the grid is down big time in the middle of winter how will all the cooling continue for the spent fuel pools.

I have asked that technocopian Kaiser Jeep the question but have missed his reply if he responded.

I am talking a ongoing 9/11 style assault on a countries electrical distribution system. It would be very easy to carry out with prepositioned equipment. With a bit of research and planning I reckon I could shut half of Australia down with a few determined men.

Cheers.


Mindless fear mongering. The fuel rod storage pools were never designed for permanent storage, nor does cooling remain a requirement after the rapid decay of the short-lived isotopes.

The original BWR's were designed to utilize reprocessed fuel. Since reprocessing never took hold in the US, the pools began to fill up with rods that were no longer even warm to the touch. Then the planned storage facility at Yucca Mountain was declared unusable, the NRC began granting "specific licenses" for fuel rod storage in dry casks.

There are in fact 65 storage locations in the USA where dry casks are placed containing spent and cooled fuel rods. Depending upon how large the fuel storage pool is, at some point most power plants must go to the extra expense for dry casks.

The general public was never told much about dry cask storage. The sites are secret and security is tight. Many de-commissioned reactors no longer hold any fuel whatsoever and the pools are empty, but the reactor shells and piping remain protected because they contain longer lived metallic isotopes. Both the dry casks and the reactor vessels are safe without any active cooling requirements.

There is also a variation on dry cask storage where the fuel pellets from inside the fuel rods are embedded in glass rods, then the glass rods are enshrouded in 400+ ton concrete shrouds, and buried deeply. These sites require no monitoring or security beyond satellite observation from orbit.
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001

Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.

Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0
KaiserJeep
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 6094
Joined: Tue 06 Aug 2013, 17:16:32
Location: Wisconsin's Dreamland

Re: Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Colla

Unread postby Tanada » Sat 06 Sep 2014, 11:02:43

Scrub Puller wrote:Yair . . . There is lots of stuff/talk/hype around about the vulnerability of the US power grid to terrorist attack . . . this applies to any power grid in the world.

To me this is the biggest potential problem with nuclear power. If the grid is down big time in the middle of winter how will all the cooling continue for the spent fuel pools.

I have asked that technocopian Kaiser Jeep the question but have missed his reply if he responded.

I am talking a ongoing 9/11 style assault on a countries electrical distribution system. It would be very easy to carry out with prepositioned equipment. With a bit of research and planning I reckon I could shut half of Australia down with a few determined men.

Cheers.



Pretty much what KJ said in his post, of the 74,000 tons of spent fuel in the USA only about the freshest 2000 tons needs any sort of cooling at all. Of that 2000 tons the cooling cycle outside of the reactor is only critical for the first six months after extraction, after that the fuel is cool enough it won't melt even if it dries out, it will just be really hot. In your proposed scenario because humans work in cycles and try and do most of their hardest work in the summer time almost all of the fuel in the pools in mid winter is already more than six months post removal, plus being the winter time passive cooling will help out a lot. Fukuhima had massive Tsunami damage and one of the reactors was preparing for permanent shut down, so it was basically full of the hottest spent fuel you can ever get. Lots of things can be learned from Fukushima, but it is important to learn from the facts and not from media speculation.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
User avatar
Tanada
Site Admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 17050
Joined: Thu 28 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
Location: South West shore Lake Erie, OH, USA

Re: Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Colla

Unread postby vox_mundi » Sat 06 Sep 2014, 13:38:29

T … of the 74,000 tons of spent fuel in the USA only about the freshest 2000 tons needs any sort of cooling at all. Of that 2000 tons the cooling cycle outside of the reactor is only critical for the first six months after extraction, after that the fuel is cool enough it won't melt even if it dries out, it will just be really hot.


From http://www.gao.gov/assets/600/593745.pdf pg 13

(That would be closer to 10-14,000 tons needing cooling) Typically, according to NRC officials, spent fuel must remain in a pool for at least 5 years to decay enough to remain within the heat limits of currently licensed dry cask storage systems. Spent fuel cools very rapidly for the first 5 years, after which the rate of cooling slows significantly. Spent fuel can be sufficiently cool to load into dry casks earlier than 5 years, but doing so is generally not practical. Some casks may not accommodate a full load of spent fuel because of the greater heat load. That is, the total decay heat in these casks needs to be limited to prevent the fuel cladding from becoming brittle and failing, which could affect the alternatives available to manage spent fuel in the future, such as retrieval. In recent years, reactor operators have moved to a slightly more enriched fuel, which can burn longer in the reactor. Referred to as high-burn-up fuel, this spent fuel may be hotter and more radioactive coming out of a reactor than conventional fuel and may have to remain in a pool for as long as 7 years to cool sufficiently.

… The amount of spent fuel stored on-site at commercial nuclear reactors will continue to accumulate—increasing by about 2,000 metric tons per year and likely more than doubling to about 140,000 metric tons—before it can be moved off-site, because storage or disposal facilities may take decades to develop.


KJ … The general public was never told much about dry cask storage. The sites are secret and security is tight.


The public is incurious. Satellite Eyes on (secret) target(s): http://cryptome.org/eyeball/isfsi/isfsi-eyeball.htm scroll down. And http://www.gao.gov/assets/600/593745.pdf

P … Likely in a big exchange there would be nothing to do about those fuel rods since I assume reactors are up there on the hot one hundred targets list and they would be scattered hither and thither.


NRC (or DoE, DoD?) did a study way back when, on the effect of a nuclear bomb blast on Nuclear Power Plants. They modeled two 1.0 Meg burst on NPP w/Spent Fuel Storage in Ohio and Illinois. Result: 15 million in the 1000+ Rad plume; 85 million exposed to 300 Rad or higher. (Permanent?) Loss of 30% of agricultural land.

If NPPs are on the top 100 list then the result would be somewhere between Nevil Shute’s On the Beach and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove with a heaping helping of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Bad news for anybody living in the Northern Hemisphere and probably the Southern, also. Definitely an E.L.E.

Study was publically available up to 2011 but then the gov shut down the site (in the interest of budget efficiency and transparency?). Might still be available on http://adams.nrc.gov/wba/ .
User avatar
vox_mundi
Intermediate Crude
Intermediate Crude
 
Posts: 3939
Joined: Wed 27 Sep 2006, 03:00:00

Re: Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Colla

Unread postby Scrub Puller » Sat 06 Sep 2014, 15:25:06

Yair . . . Hoo boy. From the linked documents . . . .

To help facilitate decisions on storing and disposing of spent nuclear fuel
over the coming decades, we recommend that the Chairman of the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission direct agency staff to develop a
mechanism that allows individuals with appropriate clearances and the
need to know to easily identify and access classified studies so as to help
ensure that institutional knowledge is not lost.
. . . . in other words they know sweet fuck all about what they are doing, hope that things are going to be okay and that some smart bastard to come up with some answers.

It seems that nuclear is an inexact science and despite what the resident gurus on this site would have us believe there are problems, technical problems, logistical problems, and of course the problems of cost.

Unless the cost of storage/transportation of waste and decommissioning of the facilities are included in the cost per unit of generated power any figures/studies showing the cost competitiveness of an immature technology are meaningless and do nothing to advance the case for nuclear generation . . . in my opinion.

Thanks to vox_mundi for the links and it is well worth the time to study them in full.

Cheers.
Scrub Puller
Lignite
Lignite
 
Posts: 296
Joined: Sun 07 Apr 2013, 13:20:59

Re: Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Colla

Unread postby Tanada » Sat 29 Oct 2016, 11:39:02

Nuclear energy is based on physics and sound engineering. Unfortunately politics and fear mongers have distorted reality in the minds of many of the very intelligent people who still opposed nuclear power.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
User avatar
Tanada
Site Admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 17050
Joined: Thu 28 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
Location: South West shore Lake Erie, OH, USA

Re: Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Colla

Unread postby GHung » Sat 29 Oct 2016, 11:51:40

"Nuclear energy is based on physics and sound engineering."

That statement is blatantly simplistic.
Blessed are the Meek, for they shall inherit nothing but their Souls. - Anonymous Ghung Person
User avatar
GHung
Intermediate Crude
Intermediate Crude
 
Posts: 3093
Joined: Tue 08 Sep 2009, 16:06:11
Location: Moksha, Nearvana

Re: Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Colla

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sat 29 Oct 2016, 13:34:49

KaiserJeep wrote:The general public was never told much about dry cask storage. The sites are secret and security is tight.

BS on that one.
VT Yankee has dry casks right at the plant and plans are to build enough more to empty the cooling pool over the next couple of years.
http://vtdigger.org/2015/12/17/vermont- ... t-in-2017/
User avatar
vtsnowedin
Fusion
Fusion
 
Posts: 14897
Joined: Fri 11 Jul 2008, 03:00:00


Return to Economics & Finance

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 33 guests