[GregT]

"How do peoples timelines for these "end of civilisation" type things work?"

They don't. Civilizations always end in their own time, and they usually catch most people living in them, off-guard.

[dohboi]

Nicely put, Greg. And welcome to the fray!

[dorlomin]

"How do peoples timelines for these "end of civilisation" type things work?"

They don't. Civilizations always end in their own time,

So it might be 500 years from now then.

[onlooker]

Or five year from now

[dorlomin]

Or five year from now

Said everyone in 2008. How did that work out?

[dohboi]

Well, there's no getting around that kind of 'logic'!

Some undisclosed person made some uncited claim that the speaker claims did not come true;

therefore...all claims must be false.

Iron clad.

[dorlomin]

Some undisclosed person made some uncited claim that the speaker claims did not come true;

therefore...all claims must be false.

Who said all claims must be false my *** witted friend?

No one seems to be able to put a timeline on this collapse, that is rather different to how you have interpreted things.

Is there not some disease or natural disaster you can be salivating over?

[dolanbaker]

Or five year from now

Said everyone in 2008. How did that work out?

A global collapse of civilisation simply isn't going to happen, barring a full scale nuclear war or similar catastrophe of course! (so unlikely I'm not even going to factor it in)
Local collapses are a different story, there appear to be a number of places where there is a real possibility of a local collapse, parts of Syria for example seem to be completely lawless right now.

All that's happening in many western countries is a misconception that the loss of some aspects of an extremely energy rich lifestyle is related to a collapse in civilization. It is in fact only a reintroduction of limitations that cheap and abundant energy removed. The freedom of cheap motoring is being replaced by the freedom of cheap accessible communications that eliminates the need to travel in some cases.

[onlooker]

Is there not some disease or natural disaster you can be salivating over?[/quote]

Yes why oh why do we not have more devastating catastrophes for they are the life of the party . Can we not agree that nobody here wants tragedies and such. As for timeline, I would say that it is more like a devolution or in stages (slow motion collapse), which by the way is already happening , just turn on the news which at least does not hide some of the disasters now happening. So I would say to all you non-doomers lurking here, I almost admire you for your faith in this unmitigated disaster we call civilization.

[dohboi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhDL1kCUUVk#t=240

[ralfy]

How do peoples timelines for these "end of civilisation" type things work?

They usually work by looking at multiple factors vs. a JIT system that a global economy with interlocked economies requires to ensure steady sales of goods and services to a growing global middle class. These factors include peak oil, global warming, environmental damage, increased resource consumption, and increased armaments production and sales. Unfortunately, these factors may amplify each other, which means a timeline will be difficult to construct. In which case, it becomes logical for governments and businesses to prepare for these multiple factors immediately, and that will mean a significant reduction in energy and material resource use, something which will likely not happen as these organizations exist only with increasing production and consumption of goods and services.

[dohboi]

Wow, ralfy. That was a more thoughtful answer than he (or we) deserved.

"logical for governments and businesses to prepare for these multiple factors immediately"

Do you know of any governments anywhere in the world that are doing anything close to this? Some city governments are starting to talk about something like this full spectrum of predicaments we are facing, but most are either totally ignoring them all, or only doing a few things toward preparing for one or two.

[KaiserJeep]

KJ, we have been through this already. Just one month ago I said (in the 'Re: Interstellar review' thread):

KJ, "Knowledge is never lost" assumes infinite digital memory. But electrolytic capacitors have a limited shelf life if not used. Other components, such as carbon resistors tend to change values over time while sitting on the shelf. Oxidation, radiation (both natural and man-made), and chemical degradation of the dielectric, and probably several other aspects, degrade the ICs over time.

Do you remember that exchange? No? Well, you didn't respond then either, so one must assume not only did you forget then, but you even managed to meta-forget. So much of infinite intelligence.

pstarrr, do you REALLY want to discuss Electrical Engineering with me, who has been practicing that trade since 1978, and who was an electronic hobbiest back in the 1950's?

The asnwer to your specific questions are:

IC's have been manufactured with "passivization layers" to protect the on-chip circuitry, which for the most part is aluminum deposited by vapor deposition, from oxidation, since the 1970's. Ionizing radiation - not EMP - but hard radiation - has only a very very slow impact on semiconductors by inserting defects in monocrystalline matrices. We minimize such damage by storing media and devices underground in places like deep salt mines.

The cheapest carbon composition resistors do suffer from a lack of stability. Other resistor types that are quite stabile include wirewound, carbon film, and metal film resistors, which are fabricated on stable ceramic cores and then covered with another ceramic layer.

The cheapest aluminum film electrolytic capacitors suffer from electrolytes drying out and are only used in less critical applications such as power supply filtering. For actual signal circuitry we use more stable types of capacitors such as tantalum film electrolytics which use entirely dry electrolytes which are extremely stable.

When I design a computer I design for an active life of 25 years, and at least another 25 years shelf life as an archived system.

However, the vast majority of online data has always been stored in magnetic disks. Much of it is also found in tape cartidges which are not online but which are less than 30 seconds away from online status when they are selected and plugged into a tape drive by a robotic tape library.

Let me assure you that if you ever have great grandchildren, they will read every rude thing you ever said online, know how you spent your money online, and even your taste in movies, TV, and books. Not to mention what the various governments and police forces know about you already, which is what kind of pornography you like, and every term you ever entered into a search engine.

You strike me as an intelligent individual, surely you already understand that there is not truly anonymous online activity, and there never really was. The only thing that protects you is really that most governments only take a statistical interest in online activity.

[dorlomin]

How do peoples timelines for these "end of civilisation" type things work?

They usually work by looking at multiple factors vs. a JIT system that a global economy with interlocked economies requires

Where have I heard all this before? Oh yes Y2K and in 2008. Its the typical "and then and then and then...." narrative. And then oil prices do something and then JIT delivery collapses and then we are in The Postman.

Just In Time delivery can be unwound by growing stock reserves.
Does anyone have a time line for how civilisation will "collapse"? This thread is not titled "there is a possibility that...." but the usual lazy catastrojunky "Civilisation cannot and will not resume".

[dorlomin]

Local collapses are a different story, there appear to be a number of places where there is a real possibility of a local collapse, parts of Syria for example seem to be completely lawless right now.

Local collapses are something we can see and can explain. The descent of the DRC (the Ziare) under Mobutu Sese Seko is another classic case study. Tribal societies held together by a weak central state that only enriches the few, then when something pulls at the frayed edges you get Iraq post 2003, the DRC, Syria, Libya etc.

Stronger central states like Germany and Japan in 1945 showed they can survive small nuclear attacks\ total devastation and keep functioning.

Enforced power down is not an inevitable collapse of civilisation.

Sometimes I think that once well off people get to the point in thinking about the future where they will have to use public transport, their minds shut down and equate it with the collapse of civilisation.

[SeaGypsy]

So KJ, you predict that future government will give open access to meta-data, even though relevant current moves are in the opposite direction, with sunset dates for storage of such & mandated restrictions on use. Besides being not much of a doomer lol (internet forever/ tin can in space eternal human life). I am left guessing you can't see your own contradictions.

[Tanada]

Tanada: "I would like to know where you got the odd figure of 12,000 tons a year of spent fuel from."

Wikipedia, confirmed by other sources (NRC, IAEA):

"HLW accounts for over 95 percent of the total radioactivity produced in the process of nuclear electricity generation. The amount of HLW worldwide is currently increasing by about 12,000 metric tons every year..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste

All U.S. nuclear power plants store spent nuclear fuel in “spent fuel pools.” These pools are robust constructions made of reinforced concrete several feet thick, with steel liners. The water is typically about 40 feet deep, and serves both to shield the radiation and cool the rods.

As the pools near capacity, utilities move some of the older spent fuel into “dry cask” storage. Fuel is typically cooled at least 5 years in the pool before transfer to cask. NRC has authorized transfer as early as 3 years; the industry norm is about 10 years.

The NRC believes spent fuel pools and dry casks both provide adequate protection of the public health and safety and the environment. Therefore there is no pressing safety or security reason to mandate earlier transfer of fuel from pool to cask.
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the NRC issued orders to plant operators requiring several measures aimed at mitigating the effects of a large fire, explosion, or accident that damages a spent fuel pool. These were meant to deal with the aftermath of a terrorist attack or plane crash; however, they would also be effective in responding to natural phenomena such as tornadoes, earthquakes or tsunami. These mitigating measures include:

Controlling the configuration of fuel assemblies in the pool to enhance the ability to keep the fuel cool and recover from damage to the pool.
Establishing emergency spent fuel cooling capability.
Staging emergency response equipment nearby so it can be deployed quickly

According to the Congressional Research Service (using NEI data), there were 62,683 metric tons of commercial spent fuel accumulated in the United States as of the end of 2009.
Of that total, 48,818 metric tons – or about 78 percent – were in pools.
13,856 metric tons – or about 22 percent – were stored in dry casks.
The total increases by 2,000 to 2,400 tons annually.

http://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/faqs.html

'How long is spent fuel allowed to be stored in a pool or cask?"

NRC regulations do not specify a maximum time for storing spent fuel in pool or cask. The agency’s “waste confidence decision” expresses the Commission’s confidence that the fuel can be stored safely in either pool or cask for at least 60 years beyond the licensed life of any reactor without significant environmental effects. At current licensing terms (40 years of initial reactor operation plus 20 of extended operation), that would amount to at least 120 years of safe storage.

However, it is important to note that this does not mean NRC “allows” or “permits” storage for that period. Dry casks are licensed or certified for 20 years, with possible renewals of up to 40 years. This shorter licensing term means the casks are reviewed and inspected, and the NRC ensures the licensee has an adequate aging management program to maintain the facility.

The most recent waste confidence findings say that fuel can be stored safely for 60 years beyond the reactor's licensed life. Does this mean fuel will be unsafe starting in 2059 [60 years after Dresden 1's original license ended]? What if the spent fuel pool runs out of room even before the end of a reactor license? What is the NRC going to do about this?

The NRC staff is currently developing an extended storage and transportation (EST) regulatory program. One aspect of this program is a safety and environmental analysis to support long-term (up to 300 years) storage and handling of spent fuel, as well as associated updates to the “waste confidence” rulemaking. This analysis will include an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the environmental impacts of extended storage of fuel. The 300-year timeframe is appropriate for characterizing and predicting aging effects and aging management issues for EST. The staff plans to consider a variety of cask technologies, storage scenarios, handling activities, site characteristics, and aging phenomena—a complex assessment that relies on multiple supporting technical analyses. Any revisions to the waste confidence rulemaking, however, would not be an “approval” for waste to be stored longer than before—we do that through the licensing and certification of ISFSIs and casks. More information on the staff’s plan can be found in SECY-11-0029.

But here's the thing, Tanada. I have a background in nuclear power ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_P ... Curriculum ) . My former supervisor is a director of waste mitigation and disposal for a major energy company and, while he supports current strategies professionally (as a least worst short-term sollution), he has major concerns, personally, and admits that this problem is being "grossly minimised" by the NRC and the industry; "....f**ing complicit in ongoing long-term criminal conduct"... is how he stated it (admittedly, after a few beers). Considering his 35+ years in the industry, his background and education in this specialty, and my personal knowledge of his integrity, I think I'll defer to his opinions. Certainly not as casual an attitude as you project.

Part of our disagreement is you are conflating Spent Fuel and HLW. Spent fuel is one kind of HLW but is not all of it, so naturally the two numbers do not match. There are 435 working civilian nuclear fission power plant on Earth today. A modern plant with high burn up fuel discharges about 15 tons of Spent Fuel each year, except it is not done annually the cycle is more like 25-30 tons every 18-24 months. That comes out to about 6500 tons per year. The rest of that HLW is a huge range of materials, processing wastes, contaminated/activated materials and so on.

The other part is you believe the NRC is lax about rule making where I think they are hyper cautious and have requirements ten times the level required by the actual danger because their regulations are two-fold. Their first set of regulations is based on physics and what is needed for public safety. The vast majority of regulations since then have been based not on physics, but upon psychology. No matter how safe something is you can always add another layer of safety on top. The old belt and suspenders approach. Up to a certain point this is a good thing, no sensible person wants a single failure point in something like a nuclear power plant.

The problem is, every layer of safety precautions you install creates additional failure modes because any one thing can break in any system. If any of those multiple layers has a fault you have to shut the system down even though you have multiple additional back up option's in place. The media then breathlessly reports any shut down due to a 'safety concern' as if the power plant were on the very edge of destroying whatever country or state is is located in. The industry has responded too this psychology by spending tons of money doing maintenance on all those additional unnecessary safety nets to make sure they don't have any faults during power operations because shut downs are very expensive.

Your buddy is correct, what has happened with Yucca Mountain is gross mismanagement by the NRC/Congress. When President Carter by executive order closed all waste processing in the USA the Government created a long term waste storage problem. When confronted with that fact by the industry they passed a new tax to fund long term spent fuel storage in the early 1980's and promised to have a facility on line in a few years. They have been collecting that tax ever since, but still have not provided the facility they promised. The first thing the Industry had to do was expand their cooling pools at their power plants because the original plan was for elements to be cooled for 18 months and then shipped off for reprocessing back in the 1960's when most of these plants were planned and designed. So first they expanded their wet capacity as much as possible. When that expanded capacity started to get full they then went to the NRC and pointed out that most of the spent fuel in those pools was not HLW by then, it had cooled considerably. After much back and forth a dry cask design was created and built that allows cool spent fuel to be pulled out of the pools and put in retrievable storage in dry casks still on the utility property.

The fuel that has been in the pool the longest is the easiest to handle so in general that is the stuff that has been moved to dry cask storage, and because the pools are already built there is no reason not to leave spent fuel in them until you need the room for the next fuel exchange. So as the Congressional Research report you quoted shows the majority of spent fuel is still sitting in pools, some of it for over a decade. Taken in context those percentages take on a different meaning, if you had statistics for the year before Dry Cask Storage was allowed they would have shown all the spent fuel in pool storage because that was the only allowable option, and some of that stuff had been sitting in pools for over 20 years by the time approval came through and dry casks were manufactured. Dry cask storage is being expanded at the rate needed to give flexibility in the pool storage, not at the rate needed to move all the cool fuel into dry casks. Two main reasons, why build excess capacity when it is expensive to do so is one and the Government has been promising to take the cool fuel for decades and will eventually do so is the other. When the Government finally lives up to its promise and starts taking that spent fuel off the Utility storage systems the oldest stuff in the dry casks will be the first sent out, but most of the spent fuel in the wet storage pools can follow along right behind it.

The line in the primary source Wikipedia used for the HLW quote you gave above is something to consider, and something I have been saying around PO.com for a decade and other places for much longer.

The storage of nuclear waste is a political issue, not a technical issue. Disposal solutions are currently being developed for HLW that are safe, environmentally sound and publicly acceptable. The most widely accepted solution is deep geological disposal

I would go further and say solutions have been developed decades ago that can take care of the spent fuel, we just have a political system that refuses to live up to its obligations and promises to do so.

[Subjectivist]

Why Civilization cannot and will not resume:
I am posting this topic as we have already discussed greatly the drivers of a die-off and the likelihood of this occurring. I am curious as to what others see arising in it’s wake. I for one do not believe anything like the civilization we have can be preserved. First of all fossil fuels will be mostly exhausted, we need an abundant energy source to maintain this advanced civilization. Second the aftermath will be too tumultuous to retain any semblance of BAU, thirdly if war(s) break out too much devastation. But above all I think because the humans who make it through the bottleneck let’s say for arguments sake one billion will forsake civilization for something more akin to a Permaculture more simplified social organization as opposed to more advanced organization. So all signs point to our present civilization pretty much disappearing and surviving humans banding together hopefully retaining some technical and general wisdom and know how as they will certainly need it. It would be a complex transition with a wide range of possible best to worse case scenarios however, I am pessimistic because of the sorry state of the planet. Perhaps these remaining humans can come to settle an area relatively hospitable in terms of it’s food and water and be relatively uncontaminated. One caveat, nuclear waste disposal poses an especially dire and difficult challenge as of course our changing climate.

Was ancient Babylon a civilization? Ancient Egypt? If you mean everyone will be permaculture gardeners forever I think you are mistaken. When the western Roman Empire crumbled it took about a thousand years, but eventually people exceeded the knowledge stored in their highest achieving years. Time won't stop if our civilization crumbles, but the time to recover will be far longer than a human life time of years. Any coal, oil or gas our civilization doesn't burn now will still be there 1,000 years from now, and not all of it requires high technology to extract.

[onlooker]

Fair points Sub, however the one factor that potentially can set back life on Earth for a long time is Runaway Global Warming. If you research Extinction Events most of them were caused by this effect and yes Life did recover but only after a very long time!