From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of LizR
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 4:21 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Climate models
On 2 April 2014 12:10, Chris de Morsella <cdemorse...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Why has LFTR development essentially stopped for forty years?
Apparently they can't be used to make bombs.
Sure there is that, and no doubt that was why - at the height of the cold
war to put it in context - LFTR was dropped. That explains the then, but it
does not explain the essentially complete absence of any LFTR R&D anywhere.
I've read more than most on LFTR, and as far as breeders go it seems to me
to be the way to go for a number of reasons, including that the fuel
re-processing can be accomplished chemically rather than needing to spin it
out by centrifuge as is needed for uranium (same element, different
isotopes). LFTR power stations could have onsite fuel re-processing and thus
contain these deadly materials in a relatively few well secured sites.
However even with LFTR you do still have a waste problem - as has been
pointed out. Much less of a problem than you do with single pass nuclear
power in use today, but a serious long term cost and potential risk - that
requires extremely long term mitigation, containment solutions. What is the
current day cost of that amortized future cost? What do we need to set aside
up front baked into the price that is charged, in order to adequately fund a
containment project with a duration measured in millennia.
But beyond all of this, there is the problem of logistics in the current and
moving forward increasingly stark reality of fossil energy depletion, which
is breathing down the worlds neck despite what folks like John would have us
believe. The production collapse of Cantarell (one of the largest oil fields
ever discovered) in just a few short years should be an eye opener to anyone
with eyes. Ghawar the biggest field ever discovered has also peaked and is
now being squeezed - just like Cantarell with steam injection and other
tertiary recovery techniques. Now on to Shale Oil - it is a mirage. The oil
majors have all discovered this harsh lesson - at great cost to their
shareholders, and they are all heading for the exit trying to offload their
unconventional oil holdings. Perhaps the major oil companies in the world
know something that John Clark has not been made privy to (or that he
willfully ignores), but a massive collapse in capital expenditure is now
underway in the shale oil and shale gas sectors. Why, why are all the
insiders stumbling over each other on their rush to get out of their shale
plays. Could it be because after burning huge sums of capital -- some of the
Majors like Shell dropped more than forty or fifty billion dollars (I forget
which) - they are discovering that the reality of Shale is that it has very
low rates of marginal return and is a capital expenditure sinkhole. They are
also discovering that fracked wells (for both gas & the oil like kerogen)
begin to reseal after just a few years, and need to be re-fracked (a
significant cost in both energy, water and money). The insiders know this.
Just follow the money, the sharp dry up of new capital speaks volumes.
Fracked fields also have shorter periods of peak production and begin
entering depletion sooner than traditional oil & gas fields. Furthermore
when these formations do go into depletion their rates of depletion are
higher than those of traditional oil & gas fields. This is a key factor,
because the initial rush of hundreds of billions of dollars of capital into
the fracked shale (both gas & oil) plays was justified using well production
assumptions drawn from statistics gathered for traditional oil and gas
fields.
For example the typical decline curve for Bakken shale oil wells (it is the
biggest shale play) is a decline of 69% in the 1rst year; 39% - 2nd; 26% -
3rd; 27% - 4rth; 33% - 5th. After just five years the fracked well produces
1/20th its rate when first fracked. Numbers like these are what is driving
the capital flight from this sector.
Now back to LFTR - keeping this context of collapsing marginal supply of
energy clearly in mind. How does the entire LFTR logistical chain from mine;
to refine; to power; to repository ever get built. It could have been built
even ten years ago perhaps, but now the era of energy scarcity is about to
hit.
Accept for a moment the most widely stated (perhaps optimistic) figure I
have heard of. that oil has entered an era of 5% depletion rates. Compound
that decline for ten years and try to imagine the word working on the much
smaller rate of energy production that remains. In a regime of shrinking
energy supplies the GDP will also shrink. A shrinking GDP is also known as a
depression.
Only the government could ever assemble the needed capital and resources,
but the government will be stretched thin as well and more concerned with
the next energy war than LFTR.
There is no LFTR, nothing, except a few back of the napkin ideas. It takes
rivers of billions of dollars to build a large scale energy infrastructure,
and I have to ask where is all that going to come from when everyone will be
belt tightening?
Chris
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
