[Tanada]

To make steel from iron perhaps, but a carbon source is needed to first make iron from iron ore. You have to have a high carbon "reductant."

No you dont. This was covered several pages earlier.

Perhaps, some day in the future, but it is not yet technically feasible, which is what steelworld.com said.

Mr. Sadoway has two years to figure out if the process is technically feasible on a small scale. If the results are encouraging, much more work would be needed to determine if it can be commercialized.

"I think we're probably looking at at least a 10-year odyssey," he said.

Monte, perhaps you didn't notice in skimming the link, but the Sadoway report was published in 1995, 10 years ago.

[MonteQuest]

Let's shift this debate into an arena possibly not so rife with unknowable hypotheticals.

How much of this technological complexity can we maintain in a world that soon will not have fossil fuels in cheap abundance? Will the core remain complex and the outer fringes less so?

Will there be motorsports? Private autos/planes/boats/toys?

Can we grow the food and the biofuels for some soon-to-be 9 billion people while experiencing global climate change, and at the same time, not lose the biodiversity so critical for a stable ecosystem, service the debt and avoid economic meltdown, and avoid global conflict while doing so?

Seems to me to be a very tall order.

[MonteQuest]

Monte, perhaps you didn't notice in skimming the link, but the Sadoway report was published in 1995, 10 years ago.

Sure did.

My quote was from the Thursday, November 10, 2005 interview.

Ten years ago he wrote the report. Ten years later, he says it will be a 10 year odyssey to commercial feasibility.

[Dezakin]

Let's shift this debate into an arena possibly not so rife with unknowable hypotheticals.

How much of this technological complexity can we maintain in a world that soon will not have fossil fuels in cheap abundance? Will the core remain complex and the outer fringes less so?

Is this supposed to be a joke or some form of sarcasm? You want to shift the debate from a well known area of materials science and chemistry (which has unknowable hypotheticals almost entirely in the realm of economic comparative advantage given coal is cheap as dirt) back to the same old canard thats allways on this site that no one agrees on, and somehow thats 'not so rife with unknowable hypotheticals?'

I suppose I have my opinions on it, and its obvious enough that you do as well (one might imagine Montequest is surprised we managed to get to the industrial revolution at all let alone go so far with it) but I feel its safe to say that my opinion that the world will largely remain a rich complex society is more fraught with unknowables than alternative processes for steel production.

[Ludi]

Let's shift this debate into an arena possibly not so rife with unknowable hypotheticals.

How much of this technological complexity can we maintain in a world that soon will not have fossil fuels in cheap abundance? Will the core remain complex and the outer fringes less so?

Will there be motorsports? Private autos/planes/boats/toys?

Can we grow the food and the biofuels for some soon-to-be 9 billion people while experiencing global climate change, and at the same time, not lose the biodiversity so critical for a stable ecosystem, service the debt and avoid economic meltdown, and avoid global conflict while doing so?

Seems to me to be a very tall order.

I think that should be a separate thread.

[GHung]

???

Wayback Machine? (WABAC) What would Professor Peabody say? That population growth as enabled by copious uses of fossil fuel energy, is the underlying problem as said energy becomes short in supply => Fewer humans is the result. Sherman agrees!

[Subjectivist]

Wayback Machine? (WABAC) What would Professor Peabody say? That population growth as enabled by copious uses of fossil fuel energy, is the underlying problem as said energy becomes short in supply => Fewer humans is the result. Sherman agrees!

Sure population growth has a lot to do with fossil fuels, but not exclusively. The Green Revolution of the 1960-79 period didn't have much to do with fossil fuels, for the most part the intensive wheat breeding that took place in Mexico with dedicated hard work by scientists cross breeding strains.

The problem is people didn’t stop over producing children even when they were hungry and the Green Revolution meant those hungry peoples kids mstly survived and had children of their own, and so on, until now they are gettng hungry again.

[onlooker]

Have to agree with P, the Green Revolution was all about fossil fuels

[onlooker]

yes, the Monocrops that supply so much food around the world like grains, are particularly vulnerable to pests because of a lack of biodiversity. Some good points P, which I was not aware of.

[Subjectivist]

The Green Revolution of the 1960-79 period didn't have much to do with fossil fuels, for the most part the intensive wheat breeding that took place in Mexico with dedicated hard work by scientists cross breeding strains.

No.

New, high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of cereals, especially dwarf wheats and rices . . . in association with chemical fertilizers and agro-chemicals, and with controlled water-supply (usually involving irrigation) and new methods of cultivation, including mechanization. All of these together were seen as a 'package of practices' to supersede 'traditional' technology and to be adopted as a whole.[2]"

Don’t be daft. Clearly from context I am referring to India, where at the time of the Green Revolution on the order of 70 percent of farming was being done with animal drawn equipment and some labor was dedicated nearly full time to rat hunting to prevent massive crop losses to pests.

If I wasn’t clear enough earlier that is my fault, but I can remember learning about the Green Revolution when I was still in school and it was always presented in terms of India. I presumed that the rest of the schools in America did it the same way and I have the habit of assuming most people are my age. I know that the population on the Internet is all ages but I have the habit of thinking of people who believe in peak oil are like me in age and education.

[Tanada]

Post peak unless we act sensibly there will be a period of unpleasant events likely to include a great loss of human lives. However no such extreme period is a permanent condition. After a period of time, could be decades or possibly even a couple centuries, things stabilize as the elites of that generation seek stability over all else. After all if you are Elite and seek to remain Elite then your goal is to keep things stable so your position does not drop lower in the social order.

With stability comes the ability to plan for longer than the next harvest or next season, a skill our current Elites seem to have thrown away in favor of quarterly earnings reports.

This thread demonstrates that with some pretty low levels of technology, circa 1944 levels to be specific, humans can manufacture fission energy delivery systems. It doesn't require vast sums of high tech equipment, the USA did it in 1943-44 doing all the research and development from scratch and first principals. Even in the gloomiest scenario for the future the Elites are not going to destroy all the knowledge of what exists today, which means in the post peak world moving back up to fission based energy systems only requires applying knowledge, not creating knowledge from experimentation to discover how the universe works. Even Homer Simpson was able to explain the basics of what fission reactors do if not how they do it.

With 1943 level technology all those tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel already stored in scores of locations around North America and hundreds around the rest of the world can be chemically recycled into new fuel. They are just sitting there like the biggest banked energy supply you can imagine for the day when people can turn away from the insane radiation phobia levels of today and accept real science. You and I may be long dead and gone by the time that happens, but the longer that spent fuel sits in storage the less dangerous it is for our descendants to recycle it into new fuel. Therefor if the cowards who refuse to accept reality today succeed that just means our descendants get the benefit after the interregnum.

On the other hand if they grow up and accept reality some time in the next few decades the worst of the low energy die off period can be avoided. Either way, sooner or later, fission will be the primary energy source of our civilization.

[GHung]

Therefor if the cowards who refuse to accept reality today succeed that just means our descendants get the benefit after the interregnum.

Get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning Tanada? Is it cowardice to state that we have not come up with very long-term solutions for storing lethal nuclear wastes and by-products? Is it cowardice to point out that the first two new reactors to be built in the US in decades are severely over budget and behind schedule, with rate-payers on the hook for those overages? Or that Westinghouse went bust largely due to those $9 billion in overages? Is it cowardice to remind folks that US tax-payers are on the hook for liabilities because no companies will cover insurance risk?
I'm likely the only person on this board who spent years sleeping less than 50 feet from a reactor core, and really don't give a hoot if someone calls me a 'coward'. That shoe simply won't fit.

[GHung]

"I'm likely the only person on this board who spent years sleeping less than 50 feet from a reactor core, and really don't give a hoot if someone calls me a 'coward'. That shoe simply won't fit."

You seem okay for the experience? Have there been any long-term effects?

Who knows, but sleeping with my dosimeter was standing orders.



Much more here:

https://nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/f ... 0FINAL.pdf

Scroll down to see likely exposure rates. Mine would be between 1980-1985.

[Tanada]

Therefor if the cowards who refuse to accept reality today succeed that just means our descendants get the benefit after the interregnum.

Get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning Tanada? Is it cowardice to state that we have not come up with very long-term solutions for storing lethal nuclear wastes and by-products? Is it cowardice to point out that the first two new reactors to be built in the US in decades are severely over budget and behind schedule, with rate-payers on the hook for those overages? Or that Westinghouse went bust largely due to those $9 billion in overages? Is it cowardice to remind folks that US tax-payers are on the hook for liabilities because no companies will cover insurance risk?
I'm likely the only person on this board who spent years sleeping less than 50 feet from a reactor core, and really don't give a hoot if someone calls me a 'coward'. That shoe simply won't fit.

Yup, so you were in the service and it made you bitter. Not an uncommon reaction. The so called problem of storage for long term waste is a canard as you should well know. There are and have been technologies for storing materials for incredibly long periods for a very long time and in the most wasteful option glassification into a stainless steel cylinder is always an option, though our government is too backwards minded to even do that. The pods used by civilian nuclear plants are perfectly sound methods for retrievable storage and the government own millions of acres of unused land in the high desert where the climate is an additional preservative. Of course that is only necessary for those too cowardly to recycle spent fuel and retrieve all of the valuable chemicals within it including the next set of fuel and many metals both precious and common.

As for the BS excuse about civilian systems being over budget and under preforming that is an artifact of the American Legal System and politics, not physics or real world issues. No country that actually decided to deploy nuclear fission at the upper levels has these problems because they don't let the politics and ignorance rule how they behave.

A coward is anyone who runs away from a problem they can defeat if they stand up and face it. If that shoe fit you that is your problem, not mine. I did not call anyone a coward, I call out a group of narrow minded people who refuse to see reality due to blind fear based on Hollywood myths cowards. If you are part of that group, well that is your choice.

[GHung]

Therefor if the cowards who refuse to accept reality today succeed that just means our descendants get the benefit after the interregnum.

Get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning Tanada? Is it cowardice to state that we have not come up with very long-term solutions for storing lethal nuclear wastes and by-products? Is it cowardice to point out that the first two new reactors to be built in the US in decades are severely over budget and behind schedule, with rate-payers on the hook for those overages? Or that Westinghouse went bust largely due to those $9 billion in overages? Is it cowardice to remind folks that US tax-payers are on the hook for liabilities because no companies will cover insurance risk?
I'm likely the only person on this board who spent years sleeping less than 50 feet from a reactor core, and really don't give a hoot if someone calls me a 'coward'. That shoe simply won't fit.

Yup, so you were in the service and it made you bitter. Not an uncommon reaction. The so called problem of storage for long term waste is a canard as you should well know. There are and have been technologies for storing materials for incredibly long periods for a very long time and in the most wasteful option glassification into a stainless steel cylinder is always an option, though our government is too backwards minded to even do that. The pods used by civilian nuclear plants are perfectly sound methods for retrievable storage and the government own millions of acres of unused land in the high desert where the climate is an additional preservative. Of course that is only necessary for those too cowardly to recycle spent fuel and retrieve all of the valuable chemicals within it including the next set of fuel and many metals both precious and common.

As for the BS excuse about civilian systems being over budget and under preforming that is an artifact of the American Legal System and politics, not physics or real world issues. No country that actually decided to deploy nuclear fission at the upper levels has these problems because they don't let the politics and ignorance rule how they behave.

A coward is anyone who runs away from a problem they can defeat if they stand up and face it. If that shoe fit you that is your problem, not mine. I did not call anyone a coward, I call out a group of narrow minded people who refuse to see reality due to blind fear based on Hollywood myths cowards. If you are part of that group, well that is your choice.

Yup, so you were in the service and it made you bitter. Not an uncommon reaction.

You start out with a very false assumption. I enjoyed my time in the service and would do it again.
As for the options you mention for storage, etc. sure, there are options. My point is we aren't doing those things, at least, not on a scale that matters compared to the problem. We've been kicking that can for decades. Know this: If I lived somewhere near Yucca Mountain, I would have still been in favor of its completion and utilization because I know that, for now, it is the least worst choice for centralized sequestration of these wastes. Leaving them scattered around the country in various types of storage, mostly in open air facilities, is a bad call on a number of levels.

A coward is anyone who runs away from a problem they can defeat if they stand up and face it.

More dribble. When I decided that fission and coal didn't meet my long term criteria of current generations not foisting their indecision and poor decisions on future generations, I, more than most here, "defeated" that problem by changing my lifestyle and energy sources, at no small personal cost. Looking back, that took quite a bit of courage at the time.

Cowardice is trying to maintain one's short-term lifestyle and status quo while creating very real risks to those who don't have a vote as to whether or not they want accept those risks and costs. We have plenty of energy if we don't squander it, and if we use it wisely. I personally don't give a damn if someone makes their living putting up giant electronic billboards or want to ride their personal watercraft. Courage is calling out wasteful lifestyles that require growth on a finite planet. Courage is not dumping costs of that growth - for what are essentially chosen selfish concerns - on the future when the severe liabilities of those choices have yet to be addressed.

You want to promote those things? Solve those problems first, and get it done. Then we can have an honest conversation. I made my choices, and they generally include not dumping the consequences and costs on people I will never meet. There are no perfect choices, but some are less perfect than others. I at least try to take responsibility for my own energy sources and consumption. Most of you don't own it beyond writing a check and bitching about others who do.

/rant

[Tanada]

Fortunately not everywhere is as cowardly as the USA. France, Russia, China, India all deal with spent nuclear fuel in a reasonably intelligent manner instead of using a blizzard of lawsuits filed for political reasons to engage in paralysis rather than moving forward technologically. The USA was once the world leader in nuclear technology but thanks to the pseudo-environmentalists who oppose fission under any and all scenarios this leadership was ceded decades ago.

The good news is the rest of the world is in most cases not as cowardly as the leaders of the USA. Even though they have had bad experiences the Japanese are still operating a larger nuclear power percentage for their civilization than the USA ever achieved. Russia has a respectable fleet and is expanding it, India is doing the same and the Chinese have now taken over the leadership role in nuclear technology and are becoming quite successful because they let Engineers do the Engineering instead of lawyers and politicians.