Where is the CRASH!

[Guest]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

Bill -

Your post rivals Bart's "succinct" chart-only post in brevity.

(And of course you are spot on. The cartoon is going straight into my "best of" collection.)

[Guest]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

I will now consider myself officially "tweaked" and shut up guys. :rolleyes:

[Rajiv]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

Maybe Farnsworth's ideas will be resurrected?

[bart]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

Then I will have to live up to my avatar's reputation and put on his hat wouldn't I?

And I'll have to add antennas to mine?

Nice tag team we make to get after that Lukester fellow.





And by the way Lukester, as far as "we'll even have another commodity up-cycle beyond this one", I've already put together the definitive cycle chart on hard vs. soft assets going all the way back to 1800 and Earth wouldn't dare make me wrong on my chart... ;)

[EJ]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

Well put. The Alt Energy Bubble will be led by nuclear energy.

The iTulip position on oil remains: "We have plenty of oil. But we're running out of cheap oil and there are no cheap alternatives." (See Energy and Money Part II: Can We Repeal the Laws of Thermodynamics?)

The question is how the end of the credit cycle, the ongoing dissolution of FIRE Economy V3.0, and the continued decline of the size of the oil unit of exchange (dollar) against which the value of oil is measured, will all interact with the decline in easily and cheaply accessed (politically) and extracted (geographically) oil.

Oil in the $200 range means either wage inflation will have to increase substantially, or automobiles will have to become far more efficient. We've explored the idea of rising wage inflation and while that will certainly address the household debt problem and allow oil prices to rise, a complete political transformation from Republicrat/FIRE Economy leadership to populist Production/Consumption Economy leadership is required for that to happen. Achieving $200 via further credit expansion also seems unlikely (I will pose this as a question to Dr. Peter Warburton when I interview him a week from Friday).

One way $200 oil is possible without high levels of wage inflation is if a new auto industry can be built in the US. Can you imagine a U.S. economy eventually looking more like Germany's today? The US goes back to doing what it used to do best, not attempting to compete with Asian auto manufacturers who improve on US technology at lower wage rates, but instead inventing the next generation of automobile technology, this time with public/private investment following a new industrial policy (think METI USA). Such a transformation of the US economy will require JFK style leadership and 1960s space race mentality.

Currently, the Military Industrial Complex and Big Oil are crowding these developments out both in terms of political will and financial resources. Such a transformation of the US economy is neither possible nor likely to occur until sometime after The Big Bet fails.

[touchring]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

Well put. The Alt Energy Bubble will be led by nuclear energy.

Uranium sounds right, but isn't the metal already very expensive? Besides, it is abundant in nature, or is it not?

[bill]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

Uranium sounds right, but isn't the metal already very expensive? Besides, it is abundant in nature, or is it not?

INFO:http://www.rcresearch.com.au/documents

[Rajiv]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

There is also an issue of Peak Uranium

See "Is there enough Uranium to run a nuclear industry big enough to take over from fossil fuels ?"

As supplies of easily recovered oil start to decline, (see Peak Oil ) world oil production will fail to meet world energy demand. This raises the question of which alternative energy supplies can be expanded to cover the increasing shortfall. One candidate is nuclear energy, which in turn raises the question of whether there is enough Uranium resource to fully take over from Oil. Will we run into Peak Uranium before we have coped with Peak Oil ?

and "Peak Uranium and Thorium"

and "Peak Uranium"

With the issues about either scarcity of fossil fuels or carbon emissions there have been discussions about Nuclear Power.

It is quite clear that there are constraints on the availability of Uranium.

There are arguments that there is only enough Uranium to produce three years of the world's electricity.

One of the problems with Uranium is that it takes quite a bit of energy to mine and process the ore such that it can be used.

What is needed is a proper full cycle analysis of the production of Uranium.

[touchring]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

Anyone here from the uranium industry? My impression of uranium is that power plants only need a bit of it to generate electricity. e=mc2? How much m is needed?

[Rajiv]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

Look at "WHY NUCLEAR POWER CANNOT BE A MAJOR ENERGY SOURCE"

NUCLEAR ENERGY
A Lean Guide

1. Nuclear energy could sustain its present minor contribution of some 21/2 percent of global final energy demand for about 75 years, but only by postponing indefinitely the expenditure of energy that would be needed to deal with its waste.

2. Each stage in the nuclear life-cycle, other than fission itself, produces carbon dioxide.

3. The depletion problem facing nuclear power is as pressing as the depletion problem facing oil and gas.

4. The depletion of uranium becomes apparent when nuclear power is considered as a major source of energy. For instance, if required to provide all the electricity used worldwide - while clearing up the new waste it produced - it could (notionally) do so for about six years before it ran out of usable rich uranium ore.

5. Alternative systems of nuclear fission, such as fast-breeders and thorium reactors, do not offer solutions in the short/medium term.

6. The overall climate impact of the nuclear industry, including its use of halogenated compounds with a global warming potential many times that of carbon dioxide, needs to be researched urgently.

7. The option that a nation such as the United Kingdom has of building and fuelling a nuclear energy system on a substantial and useful scale is removed if many other nations attempt to do the same thing.

8. The response must be to develop a programme of "Lean Energy". Lean Energy consists of: (1) energy conservation and efficiency; (2) structural change to build local energy systems; and (3) renewable energy; all within (4) a framework, such as tradable energy quotas (TEQs), leading to deep reductions in energy demand.

9. That response should be developed at all speed, free of the false promise and distraction of nuclear energy.

[bart]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

NUCLEAR ENERGY
A Lean Guide

1. Nuclear energy could sustain its present minor contribution of some 21/2 percent of global final energy demand for about 75 years, but only by postponing indefinitely the expenditure of energy that would be needed to deal with its waste.

2. Each stage in the nuclear life-cycle, other than fission itself, produces carbon dioxide.

3. The depletion problem facing nuclear power is as pressing as the depletion problem facing oil and gas.

4. The depletion of uranium becomes apparent when nuclear power is considered as a major source of energy. For instance, if required to provide all the electricity used worldwide - while clearing up the new waste it produced - it could (notionally) do so for about six years before it ran out of usable rich uranium ore.

5. Alternative systems of nuclear fission, such as fast-breeders and thorium reactors, do not offer solutions in the short/medium term.

6. The overall climate impact of the nuclear industry, including its use of halogenated compounds with a global warming potential many times that of carbon dioxide, needs to be researched urgently.

7. The option that a nation such as the United Kingdom has of building and fuelling a nuclear energy system on a substantial and useful scale is removed if many other nations attempt to do the same thing.

8. The response must be to develop a programme of "Lean Energy". Lean Energy consists of: (1) energy conservation and efficiency; (2) structural change to build local energy systems; and (3) renewable energy; all within (4) a framework, such as tradable energy quotas (TEQs), leading to deep reductions in energy demand.

9. That response should be developed at all speed, free of the false promise and distraction of nuclear energy.

1. Mere assertion, no facts.
Also, the waste issue is a bit of a red herring. Encapsulate it in glass blocks and drop it into a subduction zone is one answer.

2. The point is how much less is produced than with oil. Another logical fallacy.

3. "Pressing" is a weasel word. No facts.

4. France has seemed to do fine for decades.

5. So what... that's just a time, money & research issue.

6. Research is good... and the use of the word "potential" shows a likely bias in my opinion.

7. Mere assertion, no facts.

8. Conservation is always a good idea but TEQs is just another bureaucratic boondoggle, especially if there is no locked sunset provision.

9. "false promise" eh... well I guess that removes any doubt about a bias on the writer's part.




Bottom line - lots of assertions, few if any facts.

Good ideas - more research, conservation.

[FRED]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

Look at "WHY NUCLEAR POWER CANNOT BE A MAJOR ENERGY SOURCE"

Uranium is the least expensive part of producing nuclear energy, so even with large price increases, it's still economical.

Don't forget the competitive angle:

• Mainland China has nine nuclear power reactors in commercial operation, a further two units grid connected, four more under construction, and at least four more about to start constuction in 2007.
• Additional reactors are planned, including some of the world's most advanced, to give a fivefold increase in nuclear capacity to 40 GWe by 2020 and then a further three to fourfold increase to 120-160 GWe by 2030.

Can the US compete with China's nuclear ambitions? This sort of sizes up the problem :rolleyes:

[Rajiv]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

There is a good discussion of the uranium issue at the Oil Drum -- from both the nuclear industry side and from the other side.

Pro

Anti

See Also Uranium Resources and Nuclear Energy

See also On the road to ruin

[bart]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

Can the US compete with China's nuclear ambitions?

There's the prototype pebble bed reactor work going on at Tsinghua University in Beijing too.

[jk]

Re: Where is the CRASH!

The depletion of uranium becomes apparent when nuclear power is considered as a major source of energy. For instance, if required to provide all the electricity used worldwide - while clearing up the new waste it produced - it could (notionally) do so for about six years before it ran out of usable rich uranium ore.

key fallacy. we've never worried about the waste before. who says we will now?