blog.eliduke.com

i always get excited when the power goes out. it’s the unexpected, followed by uncertainty. out come the flashlights and candles, the TV stays off, the internet doesn’t work, and neighbors discuss things: usually the power being out, but maybe other things as well.

the power went out for about 8 hours on the Steig’s block the other night. i was on my way outside to take pictures of our dark block surrounded by city lights when the power returned. i was bummed, to say the least.

that got me thinking, of course, that eventually the lights will go out for good. whether it’s in 50 years or 1000, it’s going to happen. all the light bulbs and computers and refridgerators and TVs and cars will go lifeless and we (whoever we are when that happens) will have to live without all that stuff, again.

i’ve noticed that this possibility has become a bit more real in the past few years, and not because of some new development in peak oil news. no, it wasn’t the internet and it’s “conspiracies” that has peaked my attention again; it was hollywood, and two blockbusters to be exact: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Live Free, Die Hard.

a key component to both of these new movies is the “power going out,” followed by at least one of the characters saying something like, “we need to get these lights back on.” part (or all) of the resolution in both movies included the lights coming back on and everyone cheering and smiling.

let’s take a look back in time. when we thought there was a communist threat, they were the enemies in our movies. when we thought there was a nuclear threat, that was the danger in our movies. when we thought arabs were responsible for terrorist attacks, they were the bad guys in our movies.

but the two movies mentioned above are different. the bad guys are either from 1) outer space or 2) within our system (or a combination of both); and part (or all) of what they are trying to accomplish is to shut down our support systems. these “bad guys” represent the two-fold reality of the situation to come.

1. evil from outer space: there is a finite supply of fossil fuels, which was created millions of years ago. it may as well have been brought here by aliens. who knows exactly how much oil is left and who knows when we will truely start to feel the crunch. it’s completely out of our hands.
2. evil from inside our own system: we have become extremely addicted to a finite resource. if only we can just act responsibly and break that addiction, the casualties will be minimal. it is our own inability to change, despite the obvious need to, that will be our undoing. it’s compeletly in our hands.

and it’s these evil forces that do what we’ve collectively decided is the worst thing that can possibly happen: they shut down our system, they turn off our lights, they break our cellphones, and they “send us back to the stone ages.” AHHHH!!! NOT THE STONE AGES!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!

two weeks ago, hannah had her official birthday party over at her place. it was a great night of general funnery, accompanied by quite a bit of drinking and smoking by most involved. it is no suprise to the reader(s) of this blog that amoung those in “our” circle tyler can certainly consume his fair share of alcohol and then procede to talk loudly and frequently. but who really is to blame? no one, and i wouldn’t wish tyler to stop either; it’s part of what makes tyler, tyler.

in this particular situation, as the evening wore on and the crowd dispersed, the conversation turned toward Peak Oil. i know it sounds like a bad idea, but this time it wasn’t my fault. i walked into the kitchen to hear drew and tyler going on about something related and i chimed in. the conversation followed a certain pattern as drew and i danced from point to point, but there seemed to be a constant deterant: tyler. as brandon says, when tyler gets drunk, he says something and then says it again louder and slower. rinse and repeat.

the basic gist of the discussion was this: tyler and drew believe that at some point in the distant future (when oil is no longer an option) something else will jump up in it’s place and start pulling some weight. tyler thinks it’s should/could be nuclear and drew thinks it will be some currently unknown fuel source. [i say all of that with the utmost attempt at objectivity and hope that i have represented their opinions accurately] in my opinion, there never has been and never will be another fuel source quite like oil. start saying your goodbyes now.

regardless of the actual outcome of the evening’s discussion (nothing but love for you Ty), i did realize one thing: i am not very familiar with nuclear energy. some say that nuclear power is the solution to our energy problems and some say it will be the death of us all. i decided to do a little research. keep in mind that this is my best effort at a simplified view of things, so i may have left out a few bits here and there. either way, this is what i have found so far.

Nuclear Energy 101

the form of nuclear power that produces energy that we are all generally familiar with is specifically nuclear fission, fuelled by Uranium-235, which is an isotope of uranium. when one of those isotopes is bombarded by a neutron it splits in two, which then produces more neutrons that then split more atoms of Uranium-235 in a chain reaction that creates a huge amount of energy. this energy is used to boil water and the steam from that water is used to turn a turbine. that’s the basic idea.

this process sounds similar to the process that occurs when a nuclear bomb is detonated, and it is. that’s why the reaction has to be controlled by a “moderator,” usually just huge amounts of sea water. the moderator makes it more difficult for the stray neutrons to find the next link in the chain and is used to keep the reaction in check or stop it all together when the fuel cells need changing. the longer a fuel cell is in use the more “clogged” it gets with “radioactive impunities” such as barium and krypton, and after about 2 years the fuel elements need replacing.

most of the used fuel cell is composed of Uranium-238, which is incredibly radioactive (if you stand close to it for a few seconds you will die) and it must be disposed of somehow. some of the used fuel cell can be re-used to extract more energy, but eventually all nuclear waste must be disposed of, and this usually means burying it in a mountain. the only problem with this solution is that it never really goes away: Uranium-238 has a half life (the amount of time it takes for half of it to decay) that is just about as old as the earth – 4.5 billion years.

Can nuclear energy save us all?

there’s much more to the process than what i’ve mentioned above: mining and milling, preparing the fuel, creating and decomissioning reactors, and the list goes on and on. each step requires immense amounts of fossil fuels, but for the sake of brevity (have i already lost that?) i’ll only go into the mining and milling.

most of the time uranium exists in small quantities all over the earth. in some places it exists in concentrations as high as 1 percent, but that is rare and is usually found at levels at or below 0.1 percent (one part per thousand). this means that every 1000 tons of rock we extract yields only 1 ton of fuel. how much fuel does it take to run a standord 1GW nuclear power plant for a year? anywhere from 150 to 200 TONS. can you imagine how much energy is required to mine 200,000 tons of rock from the earth, extract the uranium, and then process that for use in a power plant? and that’s only enough for ONE plant for ONE year!

but let’s imagine for a second that we could find and process all of the fuel necessary to run all the nuclear power plants in all the world. let’s imagine that we could replace all of our current energy consumption (including transportation) with nuclear power. how many power plants would the world need to build in the next 25 years? over 6000. and once those are built we’d have to build about another 500 each year thereafter. that is simply impossible when you consider the amount of time (about 10 years per plant), resources, and energy it takes to build ONE new plant.

but let’s forget about the rest of the world for a second. currently, about 100 active nuclear plants in the US generate about 20% of our total electricity. if this were to be expanded to even 50%, about 150 new plants would need to be constructed, operated, and fueled (~30,000 tons of it each year).

what am i trying to get at here?

what we are really talking about here is energy, and since the beginning of time humans have been finding every means possible to “harvest” it from the environment. initially that came from encouraging the growth of wild foods that we enjoyed. then came agriculture, then domestication of animals, then whale oil and coal, then oil and natural gas and nuclear. the list goes on and on. but how much energy is actually contained in oil?

it really helped me to understand it’s true power when it was put into perspective for me. imagine one hour of hard human labor (are you imagining?). the amount of energy produced during that hour is approximately 100 – 200 BTUs. keeping that in mind, it’s pretty impressive to learn that a single gallon of gasoline contains ~125,000 BTUs. do the math and you’ll realize that’s about the equivalent of 6 weeks of hard human labor. 6 WEEKS in one gallon of gasoline, which costs $3.19 currently in Seattle. if we were to make things even, we’d either by paying 1/2 cent per hour for human labor or over $1000 per gallon of gasoline. we aren’t doing either.

if you extrapolate that even further, a barrel of refined oil produces about 20 gallons of gasoline (among other by products), and the US alone uses about 20 millions barrels of it every day. thats 400 million gallons of gasoline, which is about 250 trillion hours of hard human labor EVERY SINGLE DAY just to keep the country running. does that amaze you?

oil is an amazingly cheap, dense, and convenient energy source. it is incredibly portable and abundant, and our entire system depends on it (especially for transportation). it will eventually becomes to expensive for most of us to afford, and it simply cannot be replaced.