[TheDude]

MST3k, funny stuff.

Hubbert in later life was an advocate of solar power instead of nukes.

Radon adds to danger in many local homes | theleafchronicle.com | The Leaf Chronicle

Radon is a naturally occurring gas derived from uranium that can seep into homes through cracks and openings in their basements or foundations.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, radon is the No. 1 cause of lung cancer among non-smokers in the U.S. and is the second-leading cause of lung cancer.

"Imagine a big chunk of Swiss cheese with all the voids and holes," he said. "If you cut down into the crust under Clarksville, take it out and look at it from the side, it would look like Swiss cheese."

It is that porous subterrain that allows radon gas to quickly surface from Chattanooga shale rock below. The black shale, which was named after the Tennessee city, contains uranium that decays to form the gas.

[shortonsense]

MST3k, funny stuff.

Hubbert in later life was an advocate of solar power instead of nukes.

Count me in with Hubbert, solar or nukes.

[Tyler_JC]

To be fair, solar photovoltaic wasn't discovered to be viable until after Hubbert wrote his landmark report on Peak Oil.

[shortonsense]

To be fair, solar photovoltaic wasn't discovered to be viable until after Hubbert wrote his landmark report on Peak Oil.

Viable smiable.

PV technology came along before Drake found oil....everything since then has simply been a waiting game for us big picture thinkers. Long term, PV is where its at!!! Throw in some nukes for baseload, maybe some solar towers, and I gotta ask....how do peakers BEAT this stuff?

I'm betting oil becomes obsolete before we run out....heck...it may be obsolete already and just doesn't KNOW it yet.

[thylacine]

70ppm is very low grade for a uranium mine. If the grade were 5-10 times higher, people might look at it seriously for an In Situ Leach (ISL) operation. I think it's one of those projects that looks great at first acquaintance, but gets uglier the longer you look at it!

[MD]

...
I'm betting oil becomes obsolete before we run out....heck...it may be obsolete already and just doesn't KNOW it yet.

Don't overrun yourself, son. Let's not forget all of the other product streams that we enjoy from harvesting fossil fuels. We'll be scraping the stuff out of the ground and cooking out plastics, fertilizers, asphalt, and other goodies with solar power thousands of years from now...if we're still here that is.

Plus you need to cancel the dismissive posture regarding ERoEI. It's certainly not as critical as some make it out to be, but it is completely relevant to economic cycles and changing energy mix. You just can't claim that in the absence of cheap sweet light, that the way we use energy will continue as usual. It will have to change, and ERoEI lives right at the heart of that change.

Really now, if there was an abundance of sweet light pressure domes ready to pop and produce all over the world would we be screwing around working on producing all of the expensive stuff?

Try and find some balance. You occasionally make some valid points, but you take too many extreme and unfounded positions to get any more credibility from me than I give to the extremist whackos in the other corner.

[Homesteader]

I'm betting oil becomes obsolete before we run out....heck...it may be obsolete already and just doesn't KNOW it yet.

Now there is a bold prediction!

[shortonsense]

Plus you need to cancel the dismissive posture regarding ERoEI. It's certainly not as critical as some make it out to be, but it is completely relevant to economic cycles and changing energy mix.

Sorry, but no way, no how. I tend to be a literal kind of guy, and certainly no measure of ENERGY returned on ENERGY invested has anything to do with economic cycles without converting all those ENERGIES into value at which point....it has not much to do with energy anymore. I understand why it might have a vaguely academic/scientificy appeal about it, and therefore is of interest to those who would rather stick with a hard science measure rather than a "dirty" one, but taken at face value its a nonsensical form of measure in any economic system.

You, as the author of the famous "energy isn't money" quote, should know this better than nearly all others in this place. If you were to replace your "EROEI" word with "efficiency" or something similar, well, THEN we could talk. But as long as people insist on a strict energy measure...sorry...it just doesn't work.

You just can't claim that in the absence of cheap sweet light, that the way we use energy will continue as usual. It will have to change, and ERoEI lives right at the heart of that change.

EROEI is irrelevant. The rate at which we dig deeper into the resource pyramid and the economic efficiency with which we do so matters....EROEI does not.

If the cost for me to convert 2 units of resource energy into 1 of usable energy unit is $50/net unit, or I can convert 3 units of resource energy into 1 usable energy unit at $100/net unit, which one do you think I will concentrate on?

Try and find some balance. You occasionally make some valid points, but you take too many extreme and unfounded positions to get any more credibility from me than I give to the extremist whackos in the other corner.

I am a huge fan of bending but not breaking. With EROEI however, because of the way it is designed, there is simply no compromise with the definition. Until someone can modify it to incorporate the value of the energy form, there is simply no way I can retreat from using the actual definition without a valid reason, and in nearly 2 years of looking now, no such reason has been provided.

As far as other valid points, well, testing thought experiments along the line of "what will peak oil cause" can be extreme, but I'm not sure I have ever ventured an unfounded position, I am a thoroughly grounded kind of guy. But thanks for the hint.

[Tyler_JC]

EROEI only matters when you're talking about using X amount of oil to get less than X amount of oil.

If you are using one energy source (solar electricity) to get another source of energy (coal), the calculations breaks down.

The relative values of each energy source determine what the market will decide to do with each resource.

There was a time when refineries threw away the gasoline they produced and were required to pay to have to removed. Refiners would joke with each other at parties about their various schemes for avoiding the waste disposal fees. Natural gas used to be burned off as a dangerous and worthless waste product of oil production.

[Dezakin]

70ppm is very low grade for a uranium mine. If the grade were 5-10 times higher, people might look at it seriously for an In Situ Leach (ISL) operation. I think it's one of those projects that looks great at first acquaintance, but gets uglier the longer you look at it!

I agree. Rossing in Namibia is a hard rock pit mine with an ore grade of roughly 300ppm, a little under five times that, and there's been very little exploration for more uranium this side of fifty years. If the price actually shoots up enough to make this profitable, I'm betting there are quite a few ore bodies more profitable than this for centuries. Uranium is just too damned common.

Now if they harvest it as a byproduct, perhaps it will change the economic outlook.

[rangerone314]

It will cost about a TRILLION dollars to build 45 nuclear plants which will barely cover the ones that will be decommissioned by 2030.

The energy used by the US vehicle fleet in one day is enough energy to power 2 million homes for a YEAR.

Maybe we should build 500 nuclear plants for about 10 trillion dollars. LOL!

That will ensure we have transporter beams and replicators and escalators and moving sidewalks in all the cities in the future right?

Maybe Bill Gates should check in his seat cushions. I'm sure he has 10 trillion sitting somewhere.

[shortonsense]

It will cost about a TRILLION dollars to build 45 nuclear plants which will barely cover the ones that will be decommissioned by 2030.

Speculation in the future is tricky...want to bet some of those plants are already past the point where they were supposed to have been decommissioned already? And I wonder...when I see articles like this.....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 82176.html

if the big, centralized power unit is really the solution for a world which can cover the roof's of all new residential construction with PV's?

The energy used by the US vehicle fleet in one day is enough energy to power 2 million homes for a YEAR.

Wow. And some small fraction of the planets surface collects enough energy to power all of mankinds needs for a year. Interesting factoids both.

Good thing this isn't peakenergy.com but rather a place which claims that lack of oil will cause a global meltdown and dieoff, otherwise we can't even use such interesting factoids very well.

Maybe we should build 500 nuclear plants for about 10 trillion dollars. LOL!

Maybe we won't need to. LOL!

Certainly no one has recently claimed that we need many nuclear plants at all, considering all the natural gas we have available to use instead. LOL!

[Dezakin]

It will cost about a TRILLION dollars to build 45 nuclear plants which will barely cover the ones that will be decommissioned by 2030.

For some reason you're estimating over 20 billion per power plant. Some might cost that much with cost overruns, but its unlikely if you commit to building 45 that they will cost anything close to that much, as France's experience has shown.

[mcgowanjm]

It will cost about a TRILLION dollars to build 45 nuclear plants which will barely cover the ones that will be decommissioned by 2030.

For some reason you're estimating over 20 billion per power plant. Some might cost that much with cost overruns, but its unlikely if you commit to building 45 that they will cost anything close to that much, as France's experience has shown.

Of course we still have zero idea where all the
Holocene Era lasting waste will be going.

How about we use it to frack wells. Anything toxic
seems to work just fine:

Two of the world's largest oil-field services companies have acknowledged to Congress that they used diesel in hydraulic fracturing after telling federal regulators they would stop injecting the fuel near underground water supplies.

Halliburton and BJ Services acknowledged to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in January 2008 that they had used diesel in the controversial process that has expanded access to vast natural gas plays. "