Hi ASA
Before I pitch into describing a possible alternative Scientific American
did an issue on the Oil Crisis in 1998 [?] and suggested several
alternatives of a conventional variety. I personally think that methane
powered fuel cells aren't too far away, but we're idiots for not introducing
gas-electric hybrids in the 1980s as envisioned in the '70s. Hmmm... who
voted for the Reaganite clowns?
>From: glenn morton <mortongr@flash.net>
>To: asa@calvin.edu
>Subject: End of Cheap oil
>Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 20:24:40 +0000
>
>Before I move I thought I would say something about some possible events
>that will transpire within the next 10 years which will have profound
>effects upon the world long term. Sometime between 2004 and 2010 the world
>oil production will peak out at something like 30 billion barrels of oil
>per year. After that will come a slow, inexorible decline in world oil
>production. Very little that we do will be able to turn that decline
>around.
>
>I write this as a person whose responsibility it is to find new oil
>sources. While we have been wildly successful over the past 3 years, my
>group hasn't been able to change the facts outlined below by much more than
>a dent.
>
>
>While this post sounds incredibly pessimistic, I am optimistic that
>something will be discovered that will allow us to avoid this crisis, like
>the discovery of coal mining allowed the Rennaisance world to avoid an
>energy crisis coming from the deforestation of Europe during that time. The
>failure of our species to find a solution to this problem is too awful to
>contemplate. Whatever it will be, it must come quickly.
>
>
>
>glenn
>
Fusion is the only really powerful alternative, though fission power could
take up some of the slack, except it's so easily abused. An engineering
friend of mine has told me horror stories from what he's seen in the nuclear
power industry of slack management and dangerous cost cutting. His personal
thoughts on the best and safest are thorium boiling-water reactors.
What sort of fusion should we try for? Tokamak fusion? Now why has the US
dropped funding in that regard??? Because it's probably a big waste of time.
Why so?
Well a deuterium-tritium cycle fusion reactor produces power by fusing the
two isotopes into helium and heating a lithium jacket via neutrons. Several
safety issues result - neutron activation of the reactor materials for one
and the disastrous consequences of containment failure. A fusion tokamak
requires super-conducting magnets to produce the necessary fields and the
field energy stored up in such is something like half a kiloton of TNT
equivalent. Imagine that being released in one burst when the cooling system
fails - it would vaporise the lithium jacket [several hundred tons worth of
material] which would then ignite in a very big fuel-air explosion.
Nasty stuff.
He3-deuterium, often promoted as aneutronic and safe, isn't aneutronic due
to deuterium-deuterium reactions that happen at the same time. The neutron
output is about x 30 lower which means less energy for the heat exchanger
and bigger-scale fusion is then required.
What if they could fuse truly aneutronic reactions? Two exist -
hydrogen-boron and lithium-lithium - both of which produce just alpha
particles [i.e. helium ions] as by products. An unstable carbon nucleus
decays into 3 heliums in both reactions after the fusion. A helium exhaust,
since it is charged, can be tapped for electricity directly with up to 95 -
99% efficiency.
So why don't they try to do that? Because it can't be done with magnetic
containment. However electrostatic containment might work. And several
groups are working on such systems around the world including a group lead
by Dr Robert Bussard [of fusion ramjet fame, as seen in "Star Trek" - that's
what those funny lights on the front of the warp nacelles are.]
Inertial Electrostatic Confinement fusion is the official term. It works by
creating an electrostatic potential deep enough to get a whole load of ions
together close enough for fusion. Working IEC reactors have been built for
over 40 years BUT so far take-up more energy than they produce via fusion.
Even so IEC reactors are being developed as neutron sources for all sorts of
applications.
Dr Bussard hopes to by-pass the problems of previous IEC designs and achieve
real IEC fusion power - will he do it? The simulations say "yes" but the
reactors as yet aren't big enough.
So there's one possibility.
Adam
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