Battle_Scarred_Galactico wrote:How are you going build all these reactors ?
Battle_Scarred_Galactico wrote:How are you going to produce food for all these people with just nuclear power ?
Dezakin wrote:Aren't dams essentially permanent structures though? I mean given that most damable rivers are allready damed, the dam itself becomes a part of the ecosystem over time, does it not?
doly wrote:Battle_Scarred_Galactico wrote:
How are you going build all these reactors ?
Same way you build reactors so far, I guess.Battle_Scarred_Galactico wrote:
How are you going to produce food for all these people with just nuclear power ?
Same way food has been produced for ages: by cultivation.
Again how are you going to "mine" the Earths' crust ? I should imagine thats' damn hard at the best of times, let alone with a lack of oil to boot.
Doly is very brief here, cos he knows he can't actually answer BSGs questions. How will we build & fuel reactors without the massive cheap energy subsidy? - NOT 'the same way .. so far', however hard doly wishes.
Oh, except the stockpiling of waste at reactors - currently do it cos they've got no idea what else to do, in future they wont have any options at all.
Dezakin wrote:What do you think these things are made with... slave power ? machines need oil.
Which can be synthesized from biomass, limestone, or air and water given electricity as an input.
And its not that hard to imagine industrial equipment being mostly electrical either.
workforce transport, very high quality engineering (multiple metals, v.high temp refining, precision machining), abundant fresh water, lotsa concrete. True, each of these might just concievably be arranged in a declining energy supply world, but at huge opportunity cost, and with STILL NO SAFE WASTE DISPOSAL.What in the construction of nuclear reactors is so petroleum intensive that it is impossible to imagine it in the absense of cheap oil?
You think we can generate electricity using nukes built with electicity? Can you point us to a +10ton truck running on electricity?
workforce transport, very high quality engineering (multiple metals, v.high temp refining, precision machining), abundant fresh water, lotsa concrete. True, each of these might just concievably be arranged in a declining energy supply world, but at huge opportunity cost, and with STILL NO SAFE WASTE DISPOSAL.
Dezakin wrote:First, my thesis is that energy isn't 'declining'. Cheap liquid fuel is. Everything on your list is a vague commoditie without any details illustrating just why cheap petroleum alone can supply them. You're arguing from your gut here.
Finally, though I'm enamored with nuclear technology, I only advocate its use as an illustration of why we aren't running out of inexpensive energy. We are running out of inexensive fuel, which is an altogether different matter. I expect nuclear fission power will be replaced by something cheaper and more cost effective over the next century or two.
Dezakin wrote:Second, the waste disposal issue is vastly overrated. The volume of waste is so very small that you could stick the entire lot produced over a century in a number of warehouses. In fact thats my preferred method. Why do you need to treat nuclear waste as if you need to shunt it away for all time, when most of it will be as radioactive as dirt in a couple of centuries, and the actinides are likely to have market value by then anyways. Revisit the issue in fifty or a hundred years.
I think most do underestimate the lengths to which we are going to go to keep things going. We will synthesize fuel. We will go absolutely gang busters on nuclear and coal, and the environment is going to suffer for it. But what Dezakin is missing is the enormous, and I mean enormous upheaval that the loss of cheap oil is going to create.
We're going to try to replace it, but we are going to fall way short. In fact, we may be too late... did you see that the first nuclear plant won't be ready until 2014?!
That nuclear plant and many more need to be coming online well before we reach peak, which many are still forecasting to happen in the next few years. That is too little too late Dezakin.
I’m not going to touch that with a ten foot pole. Well, actually, where do you live? I’d like to propose building a waste storage warehouse right next to your place.
Dezakin wrote:Do I imply that there wont be consequences? There certainly will be at least a long recession as the economy contracts and restructures. It will not spell the end of civilization or the apex of human achievement however. In the big bad scenerio, which I honestly find laughibly implausible, millions die before the restructuring around nuclear electricity and expensive fuel. But we will restructure.
Dezakin wrote:Please illustrate why doing anything after the peak of oil production is futile.
Dezakin wrote:Given I'm quite familiar with the actual risks, I'd welcome the housing right next to me.
Cool! You can make a KILLING buying property! 'Cause no one else wants it.Dezakin wrote:I’d like to propose building a waste storage warehouse right next to your place.
Given I'm quite familiar with the actual risks, I'd welcome the housing right next to me.
gg3 wrote:And don't forget, coal is full of radionuclides, all of which end up in the air when coal is burned. (Coal has enormous value as an industrial feedstock, its use as a fuel should be limited to railroad locomotives using the new advanced steam engine designs.)
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