By 2025, we're going to be back in the Stone Age.

[4dsc]

http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events.html

Well ladies and germs, if we are indeed at peak oil, don't hold your collective breaths about any miracles occuring in the next 20 years.. Interesting read for sure..

Since we have passed the peak without initiating major corrective measures, we now have to rely primarily on methods that we have already engineered. Long-term research and development projects, no matter how noble their objectives, have to take a back seat while we deal with the short-term problems. Long-term examples in the proposed 2007 US budget (Feb. 9, 2006 New York Times page A-18) include a 65 percent increase in the programs to produce ethanol from corn, a 25.8 percent increase for developing hydrogen fuel cell cars, and a 78.5 percent increase in spending on solar energy research. The Times reports that solar energy today supplies one percent of US electricity; the hope is to double that to 2 percent by the year 2025.

By 2025, we're going to be back in the Stone Age.

[Ezlivin]

1. I'm getting ready by starting my own Cargo Cult

We're going to make faux gas stations, complete with pumps and everything. (Including the rubber hose that rings a bell when you drive over it.) Some of us have discussed making oil delivery trucks.

Then we'll sit and wait. Just like a real cargo cult would.

[hunter]

6. Anyone who drives up, they are what's for dinner!

You just sit in your pretty gas station like a spider in its web.

[Ezlivin]

8. That's clever

I was thinking in pure Cargo Cult terms, never realizing what a wonderful trap that would be!

Your idea recalls the science fiction movie "Species" where an alien culture uses beautiful women to deceive humans; men are easy prey.

[Theres-a]

2. Nothing but flowers

Once there were parking lots
Now it’s a peaceful oasis
You got it, you got it

This was a pizza hut
Now it’s all covered with daisies
You got it, you got it

I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy queens, and 7-elevens
You got it, you got it

And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
You got it, you got it

[Double T]

3. Time to subscribe to Mother Earth News, hone a new club,.......

and watch reruns of 'MAD MAX' the movie.

[Dogmudgeon]

12. All back issues are available on-line

I once got a ZIP file of all of them on a P2P network.

Don't knock the Survivalists, either. They have a lot of interesting pages if you avoid the black-helicopter rhetoric.

--p!

[Double T]

13. We are all going to need to become survivalists if this administration....

continues in power. Rhetoric??......the black helicopters are hovering just over the hill.

[Talismom]

4. My favorite Einstein quote:

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." — Albert Einstein

[phantom power]

5. The "surviving enclaves of civilization" model seems plausible.

Something akin to city-states, built around surviving power sources. Out here, maybe the hydropower stations on the Colorado, Salt and Verde reservoirs. Assuming we see any rain, ever again. Or the nuclear power plant down the highway. Maybe in the Appalachians, it will be coal, if they can still get at it without too much heavy industry.

France might be well positioned, with all their reactors. Maybe they can take another go at that Maginot Line idea.

[jpak]

9. France inports all of its uranium - mostly from Africa and Canada

All the major investors in nuclear power are major importers of uranium...

US, Japan, UK, France, Germany, S. Korea, and China.

and the "minor" ones too...

Findland, Sweden, Latvia, etc...

They are not "sitting pretty" here....

[NNadir]

15. So the theory is that all of the world's borders will close? So what?

The United States has 75,000 MT of spent fuel. Of this 95% is uranium and enriched uranium at that.

The energy content of the uranium in spent fuel is about 5,400 exajoules, or 54 times as much as the current annual demand for energy in the United States.

The United States in addition has lots of dumped thorium from the mining of monzonite, the raw material for the lanthanides used to manufacture color television sets for the last several decades. One could always go back to the dump and recover it, if desired.

The United States only imports uranium because its current reserves are not economic to mine at $60/kg. It's a very different ballgame at $120/kg.

Uranium is energy dense. It is the most energy dense fuel known, except for thorium. I note that the entire inventory of spent fuel for the entire history of the United States could easily be contained in the area the size of a football field. The energy content of 1 kg of uranium is the equivalent of roughly 600,000 gallons of gasoline.

Opponents of nuclear power always trot out the claim that uranium resources are near depletion, which makes one wonder why, exactly, they are so panicked by the fact that the world is completely ignoring them and expanding nuclear power by leaps and bounds. One would think that their constant fretting belies their confidence in their predictions, since if uranium is about to run out, those who live in irrational fear of all things nuclear will see the resource end without their intervention.

Of course, people have been predicting the end of nuclear energy with great confidence for many decades, while the production remains near its maximum output.

The planet, in fact, has billions of tons of uranium and thorium.

[jpak]

16. Russia has already curtailed uranium exports

If Canada, Australia, Ukraine et al., follow suit (to meet their domestic requirements), there will be serous "issues" with uranium supplies.

75,000 tons of uranium in US spent fuel with an average 235U content of ~2%, contaminated with 233U and 236U ain't a great resource.

...and grinding up mountain loads of granite and sloshing around tens of thousands of cubic kilometers of seawater ain't gonna happen either....

[NNadir]

19. The claim on U236/U233 is disposed of by basic nuclear engineering texts.

U-233 is of course, a desirable nucleus that most people think will be of extreme economic importance should humanity survive global climate change. The technical achievement of separating hundred kilogram quantities of U-233 from fission products was demonstrated by Alvin Weinberg at ORNL back in the 1969 when he accomplished the task in 4 days, when he separated 218 kg of U-233 from metric ton quantities of molten salts, decontaminating the uranium 5 billion-fold with respect to its radioactivity.

(Cf. Weinberg, The First Nuclear Era American Institute of Physics Press 1994.)

2% U-235 can be used directly (after removal of fission products) in CANDU reactors with no further isotopic separation. In this respect spent uranium is slightly superior to the natural uranium sometimes used since the presence of U-236 invariably leads to the production of U-238, further lowering the proliferations risk.

I have long proposed that all uranium be mixed with some spent fuel for exactly this purpose. U-236 does induce a small reactivity penalty, since it is a parasitic nucleus. However the huge advances in reactor physics in the 1980's and 1990's, which led to higher fuel burnups and reduced loss of operating time to refueling, show how advanced reactor physics concepts have become. (Part of this is due to the huge increase in computational power that occurred in the last decades.)

The chief impediment to doing any of this now, including recycling fuel is that uranium is so cheap.

Stacey (Nuclear Reactor Physics, John Wiley and Son, copyright 2001) covers the physics of recycling fuel in Chapter 6, specifically mentioning the reactivity penalties due to U-236, Np-237, Pu-242, and Am-243. After one cycle the reactivity penalty (BWR) for these isotopes (cf page 208) are respectively 0.62%, 0.13%, 0.65% and 0.36% and after 3 cycles, they are 1.12%, 0.73%, 2.04%, and 0.89%. The effects of these reactivity changes are managed through the use of burnable poisons and control rod placement. None of this represents insuperable difficulties although they may raise fuel costs. I note that the presence of all 4 nuclei result, during burnup, in problems for any would be weapons designers by enhancing heat and radiation effects in the resulting actinide elements, further lowering the already low risk of weapons diversion.

People who irrationally oppose nuclear power often point to the modern practice of the "once through" fuel cycle as evidence that recycling doesn't work. What is especially amusing is when the same people claim that the world is running out of uranium (generally ignoring thorium). Actually the two factors work in inverse. When uranium is plentiful, as it is now, recycling is not economic. Should uranium ever become in short supply - something that will not happen in the lifetimes of anyone reading this - then recycling becomes economic. The interplay of these forces assures that one way or another, fission power will be available for many tens of thousands of years, if not infinitely available.

I believe that recycling should be undertaken now simply to establish the infrastructure, including a regulatory infrastructure. (I also believe that such a practice would minimize the risk of nuclear material diversion for weapons purposes.) It would, of course, require subsidy to do that, but I think it would represent a wise subsidy. I note that the energy densities of actinides are so high that fuel costs have trivial effects on electrical generation costs. Raising the cost of reactor fuel from $60/kg to $1000/kg (recycled plutonium cost) would only raise generating costs by about 5% to 10%. Uranium at $60/kg is the equivalent of gasoline at 0.01 cents/gallon whereas plutonium at $1000/kg is the equivalent of gasoline at 0.1 cents/gallon. It doesn't make much difference. Since nuclear power is already so cheap, such a cost is trivial. Future generations, if there is a future beyond global climate change, will certainly need the actinides, and we can provide for them by doing the work now rather than leaving it for them to dolater. The matter is just a matter of courtesy to our grandchildren.

As for Russia, it has only the seventh largest reserves of uranium, after Australia, Kazakhstan, Canada, South Africa, Namibia and Brazil. Russia could shut off all of its uranium supply tomorrow with very little effect on the availability of uranium. One hundred metric tons of low enriched uranium will run a reactor for almost two years. Thus uranium is less susceptible to daily fluctuations in availability that are so apparent in less energy dense fuels like oil.

No one has actually looked for more uranium since the world supply is so very large. There are probably huge undiscovered reserves.

As I have pointed out many times, Japan has already piloted the removal of uranium from seawater using aldoxime resins. I am not really interested in whether anti-nuclear activists believe this or not, since their arguments are so tortured as to be absurd. Basically they believe only what they themselves want to hear. Mostly these arguments are just noise now. They have been rejected by international consensus.

Some Japanese argue that Japan should undertake this operation right now for security purposes, but Japan simply continues to purchase uranium on the world market, just like everybody else, since no one really expects a restriction on the uranium supply.

There has never been a resource war over uranium comparable to the regular wars over oil. This is because uranium and thorium are easy to get.

[jpak]

21. LOL!!!!

Again, 233U is a gamma emitter and 236U is a fission poison.

The former makes reprocessed U a little too hot to handle and the latter is a fission poison which requires reprocessed U to be further enriched at additional expense.

This is the reason no country that reprocesses spent fuel uses the reprocessed U.

But I guess charlatans and nucular wackos could use the stuff in their super-secret molten salt breeder reactor....

:)

[NNadir]

23. Whatever. I gave the references. They are clear.

Anyone who is educated in nuclear issues can read and comprehend them.

LOL. Chimpco. Cheney. GOP. :rofl:

[jpak]

24. But....but....but...

What about the Super-Secret Charlatan Molten Salt Breeder Reactor??????

:rofl:

[NNadir]

25. Here is some French work on Molten Salt Reactors.

Many types of molten salt reactors are possible besides this one, which largely looks to scale up the reactor that operated at ORNL from 1964-1969.

http://lpsc.in2p3.fr/gpr/english/MSR/MSR.html

The mathematics here are very basic reactor engineering, and shouldn't be difficult for anyone who actually knows something about nuclear technology. This generally excludes people with an irrational fear of all things nuclear however. You hear silly things from these people, all of whom, when they try to discuss topics in nuclear engineering, end up sounding like Mrs. Malaprop: http://www.bartleby.com/59/6/malapropmrs.html

LOL Chimpco Bush Cheney nuclear radioactive

Many people at ORNL are still impressed by the performance of the MSR, which was an extraordinarily successful experiment. This recent presentation suggests the reactor for hydrogen production. It is a Gen IV accepted design.

http://gif.inel.gov/roadmap/pdfs/molten_salt_reactors.pdf

Here is the Wikipedia article on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor

I didn't write it, but I could have. ;-)

GOP. What a crock. Chimpco.

[jpak]

27. But this should make them fabulously rich, yes????

:)

[NNadir]

28. Probably. Technology that works well usually enriches everyone.

It's a win all around.

[rman]

29. Technology doesn't work for all on its own accord

More often then not technology is used in such a way that it benefits a few, at the expense of many.
That's not to say there's something wrong with technology per se, just that there's something wrong with some people.

[NNadir]

30. I don't know if I would say "more often..."

I note that the world population of middle class type people (which is not the majority of the world population by any means) greatly outnumbers the entire population of the world in the last century. At the end of the nineteenth century almost everyone lived in what we would today describe as abject poverty. Life expectancy was half of what it now. Most people didn't eat what we would today consider to be a nutritious diet. Treatment for most diseases did not exist. My own grandmother died from a simple bacterial infection that today would have involved a simple prescription.

Middle class people today are fabulously wealthy. I can do things in my living room that Henry VIII could not have done with all his wealth. There are probably close to a billion people who have as much power as I do.

There is a cost for all of this, of course, but it happens that nuclear reactors minimize that cost. Nothing can eliminate the cost though.

[rman]

42. Most people still don't have a nutritious diet

That's why i say "more often..."

[jpak]

46. LOL!!!!!!

No one has built a molten salt breeder - anywhere.

The MSBE was a simulation - as was the so-called French program.

Charlatans often brag about their own designs for these things too...

:rofl:

[NNadir]

60. The MSRE operated from 1966-1969, as a breeder from '68 to '69.

Nobel Laureate Glenn Seaborg was present in the control room at the startup of the year long breeder operation.

Cf. Weinberg, "The First Nuclear Era" American Institute of Physics Press, copyright 1994, pp 125-127.

Description of the Breeder Experiment can be found, among other places in this reference:

M. W. ROSENTHAL, P. N. HALBENREICH, and R. B. BRIGGS. "The Development Status of Molten-Salt Breeder Reactors," ORNL-4812, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (1972).

H. G. MacPHERSON, React. Technol., 15, 136 (1972).

Briggs was the lead engineer on the project. It was his design, his baby.

In general, the strongest opponents of nuclear power are precisely the people who have the least technical ability to comprehend the technology. It is understandable that such persons are unaware of the history of nuclear technology and what has and has not been accomplished.

[jpak]

66. Bullshit - the MSRE wasn't a "breeder" experiment

as no fertile material was used, and the Molten Salt Breeder Reactor was never built.

http://home.earthlink.net/~bhoglund/mSR_Adventure.html

<snip>

The conceptual design of the MSRE was arrived at as follows. To keep the reactor simple we intended to simulate only the fuel stream of a two-fluid breeder reactor, so that no thorium fluoride was included.

<end snip>

[NNadir]

69. A breeder "experiment" need only demonstrate a breeding ratio

greater than one. That is all that is necessary and sufficient. This is entry level nuclear engineering stuff, first course. One can put any target nuclei in the path of neutrons that has a sufficiently high capture cross section and demonstrate breeding.

The actual presence of thorium (or some other target fertile nucleus) is peripheral to the question of how the reactor operates.

Again, the point is that nuclear opponents have a very low understanding of nuclear technology, to which the remarks I am responding represent an obvious case of "QED."

The MSR reactor operated with U-233, most of the world supply at that time. Personally, I cannot help it if the peanut gallery doesn't understand what that means.

Breeder reactors, it has been learned, will not be needed for many decades (if then) because of the abundant supply of uranium and thorium.

If however, they do become necessary, MSR will be a readily available choice for them.

As Alvin Weinberg noted, the MSR reactor is not a physics problem, so much as it is a chemistry problem, having to do mostly with the chemical potential of various species in the reactor. Neutron diffusion is a relatively elementary problem in statistical mechanics, accessible more or less to undergraduate physics students or even advanced high school student. The chemistry of the questions are far more interesting. Because the periodic table contains 100 elements that could potentially be of interest in the reactor, the question is one of chemical combinatorics, and in fact, the MSR can be thought of as a subclass of reactors that are essentially infinite in number. I note that over 30 elements are fission products, and two of these elements are obtainable on a macroscale only a fission products. This is a huge part of the power of these reactors, which will certainly play a huge technological role in the increasingly improbable case that humanity survives global climate change.

I note that there are several elegant approaches to certain problems in molten salt chemistry that have not been published. Actually it would be surprising if all approaches were published.

However the concept of molten salts is not new. In fact, a molten salt, cryolite, which happens to be a fluoride salt, :-) has been in use for over one hundred years on a vast scale. This is the basis of the entire aluminum industry. However, I do not expect that some of the more beautiful MSR's in the future will wholly depend on molten fluorides.

As Hoagland notes, the number of possible reactors, even excluding MSR reactors, is rather large. Because of the extraordinary success industrial sucess of the PWR and BWR, which operates fine on a "once through" cycle - a cycle of which I am not personally fond since I regard it as wasteful - because uranium and thorium are so abundant and so cheap, only a tiny fraction of the number of possible reactors have been explored.

PWR and BWR's have produced hundreds of exajoules since their invention. Right now each year the existing capacity produces as much energy as is annually used in all of South and Central America.

However most people who actually know something about nuclear technology expect that eventually a time will come when breeders are necessary. The time keeps falling back as measured in decades, but it will come eventually. I argue that since it will come, it is best addressed now, in deference to the future generations we have already screwed so badly. We owe it to them to present the full package, fully developed for many thousands of years of energy. When that time comes, should humanity survive global climate change, the MSR will be there and be ready. I note that certain problems in nuclear engineering (really problems of nuclear politics - since the technical questions are relatively trivial) may assure that MSR's are built before any breeding is required.

Although I am comparitively sophisticated in my understanding of nuclear technology, and certainly am not some credulous rube stumbling about self-referential anti-nuclear websites and googling my way to more serious websites in an amusing Malapropist and futile effort to prove points of religious dogma, nuclear politics, not nuclear technology, is what I do best.

[jpak]

70. I know all about nucular technology

and use radioisotopes and uranyl acetate...

and I know charlatans when I sees 'em too....

:)

[NNadir]

71. Oh gee, I am impressed.

My personal opinion is that operating a micropipet is somewhat different than understanding nuclear technology, but I'll leave that to readers to decide.

One doesn't even need to know the radioactive decay law, for instance, to use some isotopes, like tritium, for instance, something that is intuitively obvious to anyone following some nuclear debates that go on around here. In fact, the claim that using a micropipet is the same as understanding nuclear technology is in and of itself a nuclear malapropism of the first order.

For instance the half-life of tritium is sufficiently long to avoid seeing pronounced decay effects on a short oil hauling cruise. Perkin Elmer (formerly New England Nuclear) or ICN gives you a little handy chart to save people from having to do anything more than use the "times" key on their calculators.

One of the hallmarks of people who make their living from nuclear hysteria, as well as those who perpetuate it, is a claim to understand nuclear phenonmena. Most of them try to talk in some kind of mindless esoterica, trusting that no one in the room can actually independently judge what they say. If however one actually does understand nuclear phenomena, one can easily dismiss the arguments without much effort. They are silly on their face. One need only read some Sternglass type tripe about baby teeth to appreciate this, although there are a billion silly websites citing him with amusing seriousness. (I find it all very embarrassing, since I grew up on Long Island.) I suppose that Sternglass, Candicott et al make their living from the fact that their audience consists entirely of credulous rubes who do not know how to think for themselves and who buy such nonsense wholesale.

(Not to malign this noble profession, because there are some who know some physics, but I've noted that biologists are over represented in the class of people who buy into this puerile stuff.

It is really fun to see the self-declared experts among them who intone self seriously about a few microcuries of radioactivity: Some of them just go gah-gah when their allowed to play - gasp - with an isotope.)

And now here are the tritium decay numbers for anyone who is on a useless cruise carrying a vial of tritiated nucleoside and doing an experiment that takes more than a day, more than a few hours on the shaker, to complete:

0.9998461 1
0.999692224 2
0.999538371 3
0.999384542 4
0.999230737 5
0.999076955 6
0.998923197 7
0.998769463 8
0.998615752 9
0.998462065 10
0.998308402 11
0.998154762 12
0.998001146 13
0.997847553 14
0.997693985 15
0.99754044 16
0.997386918 17
0.99723342 18
0.997079946 19
0.996926495 20
0.996773068 21
0.996619665 22
0.996466285 23
0.996312929 24
0.996159596 25
0.996006287 26
0.995853002 27
0.99569974 28
0.995546502 29
0.995393287 30

[jpak]

72. LOL!!!!!

self-declared experts indeed

and their Super-Secret Molten Salt Breeder Reactors...

and their radio-iodine contaminated thyroids...

and their fibs about BP-Solar salesman...

:rofl:

[NNadir]

73. I have established openly that molten salt reactors are not secrets.

A reader can judge for themselves the accuracy of my statements and those of my critics.

I am pleased to note again, character assassination aside, that the world is much closer to my position than it is to the anti-nuclear position that grows weaker by the hour.

Here, to re-iterate, are some of the main points made continuously by those who make the anti-nuclear argument:

1) The nuclear industry is dying. Wrong. (178 new reactors in various stages of development.)

2) So called "nuclear waste" is deadly. Wrong. (Not one death has resulted from the storage of commercial spent nuclear fuel.)

3) Nuclear energy is a cause of the Greenhouse effect. Wrong. (See the IPCC mitigation reports I have cited.)

4) Nuclear war is an inevitable consequence of the use of nuclear power. Wrong. (Not one incidence of nuclear war since 1945.)

5) Nuclear reprocessing presupposes a police state. Wrong. (Japan, UK, France...)

6) The solar industry will drive the nuclear business out of business. Wrong. (Solar energy has yet to produce an exajoule.)

7) The renewable industry is capable of making an accurate prediction about itself. Wrong. (I have listed many historical inaccurate solar industry predictions about itself dating over 50 years.)

8) The nuclear industry is uneconomic. Wrong (I have conclusively shown that nuclear energy has among very lowest busbar costs among scalable continuous on demand sources of energy and that its external cost is definitely the lowest of all such forms of energy.)

9) The immediate crisis of global climate change can be addressed by cute renewable strategies available some decades from now. Wrong (Carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise while people wait for exajoule quantities of renewable energy other than hydroelectric.)

10) That nuclear terrorism is a real concern of comparable risk to global climate change. Wrong (Many people are dying from global climate change; no real nuclear terrorist plot has ever been uncovered, nor has there been a single incident of nuclear terrorism.)

And so on...

Increasingly nuclear opponents here are becoming more shrill, anxious, and are compelled to adopt an ever weaker and more desperate debating style, devoid of technical appeal but relying entirely on arguments about personality with ever wilder claptrap about everyone from our buckshot firing Vice President to me. Very clearly the world as a whole has summarily rejected the claims of the anti-nuclear position and is pressing ahead with nuclear development. Moreover the world is doing so on environmental grounds. Very clearly the proponents of the anti-nuclear argument are ill prepared emotionally (or for that matter, technically) to gracefully take the rejection of their weak arguments.

I feel vindicated by the turn of events. I have been waiting for 20 years to see what I am seeing now. I merely hope it is not too late.

On a personal level, I am very pleased with the public and private response to my writings at DU and am inspired to continue them, confident in the overall ability of DU readers to intelligently assess what I say and to judge whether or not I am correct. I feel that I am making excellent progress. In these dire times, in this sense at least, I have found some measure of personal reward.

[Dead_Parrot]

74. All right, but apart from that...

You've just brought to mind Monty Python's Romans sketch:

All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

If nuclear power produced infinite electricity with no fuel, some people would still complain that the reactors were the wrong colour.

[NNadir]

82. Was that from "A Life of Brian?"

I know I've seen that sketch, but I can't recall where...

It is a funny one. It's apropos too.

[Dead_Parrot]

83. Yup... nt

[jpak]

77. Pack of Lies

178 new nuclear reactors?????

Only 27 are currently under construction and both the IAEA and the DOE projects no more than 60 GW of new nuclear capacity will be built between now and 2025....

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/electricity.html

http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2005/electricity_production.html

Nuclear waste not "deadly'????? I guess we need not invest in shielding for spent fuel - huh....

The IPCC forecast of 11,000 nuclear reactors is a joke - there isn't enough uranium to support a fraction of this number.

Nuclear power is economical???? No US nuclear plants were ordered since 1978 and 110 were canceled. Why???? Because the last few nuclear plants built in the US came in at ~$6-7 billion a piece. And we won't talk about the hundreds of billions of dollars in stranded costs that rate payers will shell out for canceled plants, or why 6 new US nuclear power plants require $6 billion in production credits to be economically viable, or the $65 billion price tag for Yucca Mountain.

Nuclear proliferation is indeed directly related to nuclear power (India, North Korea, South Africa, etc.) ChimpCo is going to attack attack Iran over its "peaceful" nuclear power program - will they use nuclear weapons against these facilities???? They certainly have lowered the bar on this one...

Legal scholars in the US and UK have concluded that the advent of a Plutonium Economy will seriously threaten civil liberties.

Renewables will overtake nuclear in the next 20 years - wind and solar electric capacity added >2500 MW to the US grid last year and beat *hands down* the 0 MW growth in new nuclear capacity. Growth in renewables will have a greater impact on US GHG emissions than nuclear in the next 25 years.

California nuclear power plants were on the original target list of the 9/11 terrorists - so sez the 9/11 Commission.

And those that claim they have developed a molten salt breeder reactor that will make them fabulously rich - when they have not - are indeed charlatans....

[4dsc]

78. With the era of CHEAP OIL over

The cost associated with any new buildings, be it nuclear or other power stations, is going to go up and keep going up as oil becomes scares in the coming years..

That's the point that most of the posters are missing at this point. Building more power plants of coal or nuclear power plants should have been done when oil was cheap, it was not and we're all going to pay for it..

that's why the ramifications of less oil will mean severe hardships for most of us that are living in 20 years.. But the affects will start long before that..

[NNadir]

80. Self deleted, placed in wrong spot.

[NNadir]

81. Somehow I think you have never been to an Indian construction site.

This post in response to the remark about the end of cheap oil and construction costs.

[NNadir]

79. Whatever. I stand by what I have written but will elaborate a little more

I am singularly unimpressed by the usual list of fiat declarations.

For the record, my list of 178 new nuclear reactors in process is from here:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.htm

It is in convenient tabular form, and my claim of 178 reactors includes 24 under construction, 41 on order or planned, and 113 proposed. If the laws of arithmetic still hold, 178 = 113 + 41 + 24. I've been following this table for a year or two and note that the number of reactors proposed is increasing rapidly (I would not say "exponentially" since I am serious about numbers) as the world wakes up to the reality of global climate change, global climate change being, again, a matter that is best addressed by serious, realistic people.

I repeat from my post #14 from this thread, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=42325#42498 the following that shows how ridiculous the "death of nuclear power" claim is:

Here is a list of new nuclear power plants that came on line in 2005:

Higashidori 1 - TOHOKU (1067 MW(e) BWR, Japan) began commercial operation on 8 December
Kalinin 3 (950 MW(e) PWR-WWER, Russia) began commercial operation on 8 November
Khmelnitski 2 (950 MW(e), PWR-WWER, Ukraine) began commercial operation on 7 September
Shika 2 (1304 MW(e), ABWR, Japan) was connected to the grid on 4 July
Tarapur 4 (490 MW(e), PHWR, India) was connected to the grid on 4 June
Higashidori 1 - TOHOKU (1067 MW(e) BWR, Japan) was connected to the grid on 9 March
Hamaoka 5 (1325 MW(e), ABWR, Japan) began commercial operation on 18 January
Ulchin 6 (960 MW(e), PWR, South Korea) was connected to the grid on 7 January

Here is a list of the plants that came on line in 2004:

Qinshan 2-2, 610 MW(e), PWR, China, (March)
Hamaoka 5, 1325 MW(e), ABWR, Japan, (April)
Khmelnitski 2, 950 MW(e), PWR (WWER), Ukraine, (August)
Rovno 4, 950 MW(e), PWR (WWER), Ukraine, (October)
Kalinin 3, 950 MW(e) PWR (WWER), Russia, (December)

I reference my comments on that thread in comparing this new capacity to capacity that has shut down.

QED again.

There is no point repeating my extensive writings on these subjects in response to this post, except I should add number #11 to the list of things that I have shown to my own satisfaction, and the satisfaction of many of my correspondents, to be false:

#11. The world is running out of uranium and thorium. Wrong. (Uranium and Thorium supplies could easily supply the world's energy for many millennia, if not eternally.)

I do note that should uranium and thorium resources prove to be finite is some far distant future, and who knows, they could be, it is important to continue our efforts to change the hype about renewable energy into reality, as poor as the renewable industry has been in delivering on its promises. (I note that it is too late for renewables to prevent global climate change now as it is happening now.) Who knows, with a few thousand years of breathing room, renewables could manage to do quite well in the long run. In the short run, some renewable energy efforts may well help ameliorate some problems with nuclear, especially the serious one relating to nuclear's (current) poor suitability for addressing peak loading requirements. As I have detailed many times, with the exception of wind power, nuclear has a lower external cost than most renewables, but I think our generation should accept this additional risk in order to provide future generations with as many resources as is possible.

[jpak]

84. Crappahola and cherry picking

Why is the nuclear industry seriously concerned about the pending uranium supply shortfall????

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9069-1735134,00.html

and.....estimates of life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions from the nucular fuel cycle span an order of magnitude - the same estimates for PV span nearly 2 orders of magnitude.

One can cherry pick numbers and conclude anything one wishes....

http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=2&catid=260

Here's some cherry pickin's...

PV = 13 g CO2 equiv. per kWh

nucular = 59 g CO2 equiv. per kWh

Someone else could easily pick these cherries....

PV = 731 g CO2 equiv. per kWh

nucular = 2 g CO2 equiv. per kWh

One can be as disingenuous as one wants to be with these values - and charlatans usually are....

[NNadir]

86. Again, I stand by what I have written.

I have referenced the facts many times, and am satisfied that I have represented them well.

Any short term fluctuation in uranium pricing will simply create new capacity since the planet has billions of tons of uranium and thorium. I expect to hear the usual whining about the matter, but it is easily dismissed.

A typical reactor runs on 100 MT of fuel for almost 2 years and the trend in reactor performance has increased the energy yield for fuel loadings from under 30,000 Mw-day/MTHM by more than a factor of a third.

I note that every PWR on earth could easily be converted to a thorium burner in the Radkowsky configuration and achieve burn-ups much higher, close to 100,000 MW-day/MTHM in the thorium blankets. The concept, which was demonstrated in the first commercial nuclear reactor, the one at Shippingport, is now being confirmed at the Kurchatov Institute in Russia.

There are many options for fueling nuclear reactors, many of which only become attractive at much higher prices.

People have been talking about uranium shortages for half a century, and this was the guiding principle of the entire breeder reactor program which was undertaken when uranium was thought to be a rare element, before it was known that it is as common as tin. Basically this program, the breeder program, did not work (economically) because uranium was too available and too cheap.

I note that the world's existing plutonium contains the energy content of the entire earth's energy demand for about 8 months. However nuclear energy is not yet called upon to produce the world's entire energy supply. Plutonium burned in MOX settings, even in PWR's, is not completely destroyed, more plutonium is necessarily created in each burning. Currently nuclear energy provides less than 10% of the world's energy, although we can reasonably anticipate that this share will grow should humanity survive global climate change.

What the nuclear industry is whining about is prices. I note that nuclear fuel is still the equivalent of gasoline at 0.01 cents per gallon. But nobody likes to pay more for anything. In business, every price is too high.

I am very much enjoying the desperation of the anti-nuclear argument by the way.

[4dsc]

92. Everything is up to debate

http://www.fraw.org.uk/mobbsey/papers/oies_article.html

At the current level of uranium consumption (67,000 tonnes per year) known uranium resources (2.8 million tonnes of uranium) would last 42 years – a fact highlighted by the European Commission in their Energy Green Paper . The known and estimated resources plus secondary resources (such as the military inventory), a total of around 4.8 million tonnes, would last 72 years. Of course this assumes that nuclear continues to provide just a fraction of the world's energy supply. If capacity were increased six-fold then 72 years would reduce to 12 years. This is because nuclear energy, in terms of global energy supply, must increase by a factor of four to eight to make any significant difference to the use of fossil fuels around the globe. Consequently the expected lifetime of the uranium resource would fall by a similar factor.

[hunter]

94. The article you cite is disingenuous.

Assuming we are using existing sorts of reactors and configurations, then yes, within those narrow margins, there may be some truth to it. But the notion that nuclear power depends entirely upon the supply of uranium-235 and whatever amount of uranium-238 just happens to be converted to plutonium-239 is entirely misleading.

From the article you cite:

The bulk of the uranium resource, made up of the isotope uranium-238 (238U), does not take part directly in nuclear fission. However some of the 238U is converted to plutonium-239 (239Pu) whilst inside the reactor and this is also fissioned to produce additional energy.

This is a delibrate distraction. It is a misleading concession that "yes, yes some of the uranium-238 is fissioned to produce additional energy."

But the entire truth is that there are many possible fuel cycles in which the bulk of the energy will be produced by uranium-238 or thorium.

That "depleted" uranium-238 we are currently killing people with in Iraq is a potential energy source, and thus we compound our crimes against humanity when we use it to kill people.

[NNadir]

95. There is considerable confusion about "once through" vs. recycling.

Recycled, the fuel is very near infinite. There really isn't a "debate," since a price rise in uranium would require a relatively simple adjustment in technology that is already well understood.

People like to point to the "once through" cycle that exists now (when uranium is very cheap) and pretend that this technology is written in stone and is irreversible. This is nonsense.

If one calculates based on the existing inventory of "U-235," then one can possibly imagine a 72 year supply. I note that the inventors of nuclear technology imagined that the world supply of uranium would only last for a few decades and so sought to develop breeder technology. Breeder technology failed mostly for economic reasons, because the supply of uranium was much larger than anyone imagined.

I note that the world supply of plutonium is already up to 8 months supply of world energy demand, and this has happened because nuclear energy supplies a rather modest amount of the world's energy. Most PWR have a breeding ration of between 0.7 - 0.9. Thus an eight month supply is easily transformed into a 0.7 * 8 = 0.56 supply and so on. Many nuclear reactors are known that provide breeding ratios much higher than one. They are not not built, again, because there is too much uranium.

People like to pretend that plutonium doesn't exist, but, in fact, it does, on a thousand metric ton scale. Moreover it will exist for many thousands of years. I find it rather incredible that people predict that future generations will ignore this resource because of the pedestrian, ill considered fantasies of the generation that blindly consumed all of the world's petroleum in an orgy of stupidity and myopia. In fact, the current generation, as I observe every day, knows doodly squat about energy. They seem to think it comes from outer space and is provided at the gas station and the electrical outlet. It doesn't in fact. Energy must be produced and it takes a highly educated group of technocrats to produce it. Modern human beings haven't thought the matter of energy through at all, which is why we are in dire straights.

In fact, earlier, literate, generations, dreaming that uranium would run out, developed much of the technology that proved it would not run out. They thought uranium was rare but that was only because few people were interested in looking for uranium in their times. It was, relatively recently thought that all of the world's uranium occurred only in the (then) Belgian Congo and (then) Czechoslovakia. In fact, the Congo and the Czech deposits are now considered relatively trivial.

Breeding was demonstrated over 30 years ago. It is not economical now but it will be whenever uranium prices rise above about $1,000 kg^-1. I note that such a price increase would only raise the cost of nuclear electricity marginally, since it is the reactor, and not the fuel, that costs much money.

The argument in your link that says "no viable commercial design for a fast reactor has yet been produced" is frankly dumb. No "viable commercial design has been produced" at uranium prices of under $100/kg. If uranium is over $100/kg, then suddenly what was not viable is viable. The statement contains its own refutation. As an example, I note that no offshore oil platforms were built in the 1930's. This was not proof that offshore oil platforms were impractical or that they were impossible. They didn't work when oil was under $5/barrel, but they certainly work now, albeit at enormous cost to the atmosphere whenever the oil is recovered and burned.

It is relatively easy to calculate how much energy 2.8 million tons of uranium represents, and by the way, the amount of crustal uranium on the planet is 1000's of times larger, and thorium supplies even larger than that. Suppose there were 2.8 million tons and this was all that humanity could recover. Assume too that reactors were converters and not breeders, i.e. their breeding ratio was exactly 1.0. 2.8 million tons is 2.8 billion grams which is 7.1 X 10³³ atoms. Each fission releases about 190 MeV of recoverable energy or, for "2.8 million tons," 1.3 X 10⁴³ eV or roughly 2.2 X 10²³ J. This represents at 440 exajoules yr^-1, about 500 years of earth's current total energy demand, not allowing for the presence of magical renewable forms of energy or other inputs. Again, world thorium resources are three to four times as large as world uranium, and thorium is a better reactor fuel than uranium.

However uranium supplies are not just 2.8 million tons. The 2.8 million ton figure refers to uranium that is available at prices of under $200/kg from virgin ores. However uranium resources are much larger than those found in ores. They are on the order of billions of tons. Most of the geothermal energy on earth derives from the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium, and the specific activity of uranium is extraordinarily low meaning that there has to be vast amounts of uranium and thorium to account for the heat we observe say, at Mount Saint Helens. The ocean alone has 3 to 4 billion tons of uranium, and its recovery has been demonstrated at pilot scale.

In any case the point is moot. No one here on this website will live long enough to see uranium depleted. The world has decided to build huge nuclear capacity and this is a good thing, since humanity's only shot at survival involves this choice. There is simply no other choice that is readily available. People like to pretend that alternatives exist, but it is all wishful thinking.

My personal opinion is that without nuclear technology, the question of future generations existing at all is rather dubious. Global climate change is that serious.

[4dsc]

96. Actually you should be talking about

RECOVERABLE Uranium and that's what the article I posted clearly states and you don't..

Just how much uranium do you believe will ever be recovered from the ocean?? What a laugh!

[NNadir]

97. Several billion tons.

Nothing funny about it. It's pretty standard ion exchange chemistry, not rocket science, really.

Again this technology has been demonstrated several hundred years before it will be needed.

Your article is wrong.

Here is an article that has a different point of view:

http://www.nea.fr/html/pub/newsletter/2002/20-2-Nuclear_fuel_resources.pdf Note that these figures do not substantially disagree with what I have calculated in my previous post.

In any case, the point remains true that there is no rational alternative to nuclear energy, at least while the planet has 5 billion people on it.

One of the interesting claims of this particular form of "nuclear exceptionalism" is that somehow nuclear energy is easier to deplete than all of its alternatives. This is the last refuge of the already discredited and rejected opposition to nuclear power.

It is of course nonsense. Even if nuclear resources really were only available for 50 years, and they are available for periods much, much longer, we still would have no choice but to exploit it. Now other technology is capable of meeting the challenge of global climate change right now.

In any case, you may laugh, but I'll bet you have never taken an advanced course in inorganic chemistry. These folks, one of a small set of people funded in a time of low uranium prices, are not chuckling, but then clearly they have taken advanced courses in inorganic chemistry:

http://chem.hannam.ac.kr/professor/csh_paper/international/32.pdf

Neither are these folks laughing:

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/iecred/2000/39/i08/abs/ie990474a.html

Nor these:

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/iecred/2003/42/i23/abs/ie030157a.html

Nor these (excerpted):

2.1 Polymers
2.1.1 Modified PAN coated silica sand (PANSIL)
The material reported first is a polyacryloamidoxime resin derived from polyacrylonitrile (PAN). There is considerable published research on the use of PAN based fibres for complexing various metals, including the removal of uranium from seawater (McComb and Gesser 1997, Vernon and Shah 1983, Suzuki at al. 2000). The research on PAN based fibres indicates that PAN resin can show a degree of selectivity for heavy metals, for example preferentially removing gold in the presence of first row transition metals (Weiping et al. 1993b). In a study involving 30 days immersion in seawater off the coast of Japan, modified PAN based fibres were shown to preferentially adsorb uranium, vanadium, cobalt, nickel, iron, manganese, in the presence of similar concentrations of copper and zinc, and far larger concentrations of calcium and magnesium (Potts et al. 1990). In another study on amidoxime resin, the resin showed great affinity for U(VI), some affinity for Pb(II) and Cu(II), but less affinity for Cd(II), Cr(III), Hg(II) and Zn(II) (Rivas et al. 2000). However, modified PAN fibres were considered unsuitable for use in PRBs due to their reduced mechanical strength after reaction (Weiping et al. 1993a), low water permeability, and the difficulties that would be associated with designing a PRB employing fibres to achieve a particular groundwater residence time. Instead a powdered form of PAN was reacted with hydroxylamine hydrochloride to form the active resin and this was deposited from solution onto the surface of quartz sand to form a thin film coating. Consequently the overall mechanical properties...

http://www.perebar.bam.de/PereOpen/pdfFiles/PANSIL_Report.pdf

Nor these:

http://www.ans.org/pubs/journals/nt/va-144-2-274-278

Nor these:

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/downloaddoc.asp?id=1204

Nor these:

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/104032723/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0


If however, some can demonstrate some alternative to nuclear energy that is as safe as nuclear energy and produces energy on the same scale without raising the risk of global climate change, one would love to hear about it.

[druidity33]

35. no offense...

but everyone i know who is opposed to Nuclear Power is not opposed because it is a finite resource... they are opposed to it because it is a hazard to the health of our population. It is only a matter of time before something catastrophic happens to a reactor in this country and it won't be because some fool strapped a bomb to it... it'll be because safeguards are lax and plants are old and workers are undertrained and overworked. And what have we decided is the best thing to do with the waste? Put it in the desert for the Hopi to look after?

Renewable energy sources that do not leave hazardous waste products are the way to go. Let the planet keep its billions of tons of uranium and thorium.

[Dead_Parrot]

37. No offense will be taken, I'm sure...

The "hazards to health" of nuclear are, however, hugely misrepresented.

The number of people killed by nuclear waste to date is zero: maybe one if you count the protester run over by a trainload of the stuff in Germany.

Total deaths from the Chernobyl disaster to date is around 50, less than the fire at Bradford city football club

Total possible future deaths from Chernobyl might get as high as 2,000 - comparable to sinking of the Doña Paz, which no-one at Greenpeace has ever heard of.

On the other hand, 700,000 people die each year from fossil fuel pollution. So if you want to suggest that we wait 50 more years while renewables get close to taking up the load, and that the deaths of 35 million people is a price worth paying to avoid another Chernobyl, go ahead.

Personally, I won't be listening. I'm not in favour of industrial genocide.

[druidity33]

44. i disagree

Don't nuclear weapons come from "waste" or spent fuel? Isn't the intention of a nuclear weapon to kill as many people as possible? What about Depleted Uranium in munitions? Did you read how many people are coming back from Iraq only to father children with birth defects? I'm not worried so much about dying from nuclear stuff... i'm worried about living in a contaminated wasteland. When i said "hazard to the health of the population"... i was talking about living hell. Also, you are going to have a hard time convincing me that PEOPLE IN OUR GOVERNMENT are going to be responsible about this stuff for the next 10 million years while we wait for the piles to become less radioactive. Sounds to me that like anyone else who's personally invested in a technology you see right through the horror of its implications... as for me, i'll not try to change your mind, i'm sure we're both "dead set" in our opinions. Good luck with yours.

[NickB79]

49. Well, the only two nukes ever used were built before nuclear power plants

There were no nuclear power plants to be had in 1945, when Nagasaki and Hiroshima were bombed. If you factor them into the mix, that means that nuclear power, including nuclear bombs, has killed ~250,000 people over the past 60 years. If coal and other fossil fuels have killed an average of 500,000 people per year over that same timeframe, that's 30 million dead.

But, if you want to factor in nuclear weapons into the death count, you shold also factor in all the dead over the wars we've fought for cheap oil to be fair. Let's see, the first Iraq War killed something like 150,000, plus the 500,000 that died of sanctions. We've killed another 100,000 in the second Iraq War going on right now. Basically, we've killed as many people over oil in the past 15 years with conventional weapons as we did with nuclear warheads.

[Dead_Parrot]

53. Living hell?

OK, if the dead don't concern you lets look at the living. Here's a map of the Bangladesh coastline, at 2000 and 2100 AD:



You'll notice there's a lot more water in the second one. The cities of Mongla, Khulna, Barisat, & Chittagong no longer exist. About 50 million people are now looking for other places to live: They will be suffering from thirst, starvation and disease, probably for the rest of their lives until they die of malnutrition or cholera.

That's just one patch of coastline, of course: The same will be happening in Indonesia, India, Europe - even the US. Refugees from climate change will probably top a billion.

So no, you won't change my mind. And when your kids are watching the slow death of millions unfold on thier solar-powered TV, I hope they get a nice warm feeling from knowing at least they didn't join the dozens who died from nuclear power plants.

Edit: You're right. Those dying every day with lungs full of ash and smog shouldn't concern us at all. They're the lucky ones.

[druidity33]

54. y'know what

I never said i loved fossil fuels or smog or greenhouse gases or global warming and you never asked. You also didn't even try to address any of the issues that i brought up. I distinctly remember saying we should focus on renewable energies. I dispute that solar and renewables cannot be made to work better/as well as nuclear on a large scale. If we funded solar/renewable projects on the scale we do nuclear than it would be possible.

I certainly never said "Those dying every day with lungs full of ash and smog shouldn't concern us at all." so i don't know what the f#$* is up there. BTW, no reason to bring my kids into this... kinda crosses a line if you ask me.



And honestly if you think bringing nuclear power to Bangladesh is gonna stop global warming you're way out there.

[Dead_Parrot]

55. You can't dispute facts

Working from the bottom up:

No, nuclear power is going to stop the Bangladeshi plain going under. Nothing is. The difference is, whether it happens in the next 50 years of the next 500, and how much farther the waters rise after the 5m I've put on that model. Easing the pain will help a lot of people.

Your kids will have to live through whatever we do. So will mine. I'm more interested in acting for their sakes than I am In being proved right or scoring points: I would hope the same of you. Having said that, I did cross a line in anger, and appologise...

...and also if I misunderstood "When i said "hazard to the health of the population"... i was talking about living hell.", which is where my "fuck the dead"(para.) comment came from. Perhaps you could expand this point a little

Disputing the fact, that renewables cannot produce the same amounts of power as nuclear is futile. It is not a matter of a difference of opinion, They simply cannot do it at this point. Hopefully in 50 years (or 50,000,000 deaths - whichever) we can switch over to renewables as the mainstay, but it is simply not feasible now: Excluding hydro and rounded to the nearest figure, renewables account for 0% of our energy. If we go after the decimal point, I believe it is 0.2%.

We have a three-way choice: Fuck the entire biosphere while we wait for renewables to do something useful, go back to c.1645 for our technology, or switch to nuclear power.

As to funding, a typical PV setup costs $30k per KW, nuclear power $2k. There is not enough money in the world - literally - to switch everybody over to just renewables.

No-one is going to argue that nuclear waste isn't dangerous - even NNadir - but nuclear waste is solid, containable and transportable. Burying it under a mountain is not recommended (especially since it can be recycled), but it's preferable to what we're doing at the moment - and what we'd have to do for decades waiting for renewables to become realistic alternatives. Carbon waste is in every breath: I'm breathing in NZ exhaust fumes from CA at this very minute. It also lasts for millenia, but you can't get away from it. That why the ice caps are melting and the reefs are dying.

The only real difference is, CO2 doesn't kill people, just the environment.

Me, I'm on the planet's side. I don't like nuclear power - I'm originally from the UK's Lake District, and lived downwind of the Sellafield plant: It brings me out in a rash just thinking about it. But it's an irrational fear, and if you look behind the emotion to the facts, I hope you'll realise the same thing.

[druidity33]

56. too much

for me to respond to right now. I'll have to think a little, find some links, etc. I am interested in a dialogue and i would like to elaborate on some points, but it will have to wait as i have an early day tomorrow and much to do before then. I am noticing this sentence:

"Me, I'm on the planet's side. I don't like nuclear power"

and am glad you can acknowledge there are safety issues with the material and human manipulation/handling of it. To put it bluntly, i don't trust humanitys ability to maintain nuclear facilities and to manage the waste properly... one little mistake could spell MAJOR catastrophe. I am also abhorred by the placement of nuclear waste (ie. poorer/minority neighborhoods, Native lands, Gov't/PUBLIC lands, etc)... there are many issues here.

I will look for scientists who dispute the assessment that renewables can't compete...

for peace on earth

[Dead_Parrot]

58. Good!

In a nice way... :-)
So long as we're thinking and talking about it, there's a chance for the species yet...

As you say, a mistake at a nuclear waste depot could be major. But in enviromental terms, we're well beyond "major" - we're into "catastrophic", "cataclysmic" and "paroxysmal".

An enviromental disaster that's only major would be a bit of light comedy relief at this point...

[Dogmudgeon]

64. Nuclear issues

I'm personally not set in my own opinions. It's just that after having followed the resource and climate issues since the 1970s, I've become convinced that there is no way in hell we can convert to enough renewable resource based energy fast enough to prevent a major die-off once the gap in energy supply and demand exceeds about 50%. At the point when the world needs two but can only get one, the life-and-death struggle will begin.

In other words, about a decade or fifteen years after we discover we are at post-peak-oil, the production of energy will have dropped so deeply that agriculture will begin to suffer. That "suffering" will come from simply being "cut off" from patented miracle plant seeds, gasoline to run farm equipment, and cheap fertilizer, all of which are supplied by the developed countries, which will be hunkering down to avoid a similar fate.

Developed-country food production will not plunge quite as fast, but as energy prices soar, there will be less high-tech farming done in the USA and Europe, too. Combined with drastic climate changes, there could be years without significant harvests anywhere in the world -- in as little as two decades. Nuclear energy will allow us to shift the burden of our energy demands around, allowing world-wide agriculture to proceed without as much interruption.

The reason why I think that renewables won't be useful is because the required investments won't be made until well into the era of crises. Plenty of companies are bragging that they are producing wind plants and subsidizing solar power scientists, but we need something on the scale of the investment made during World War Two to defeat world Fascism -- investments that are not being made. Even if thousands of small businesses started up to make money in renewables, the banks would throttle their investments back to prevent too many businesses from being built, in order to "maximize" profits. That way, a few big businesses could become ungodly rich, and still not provide enough of an energy resource to prevent disaster.

Only nuclear generators can be built fast enough and in large enough numbers with enough energy output to prevent a die-off, at least the way things are going now. The nuclear industry has plenty of pre-accumulated capital, and can demand loans at favorable rates. The downside is that the nuclear industry would become politically very powerful, but at least we would have energy and avoid resource crashes and die-offs. The best "half-a-loaf" solution the anti-nuclear advocates have will be to demand strict inspections and rules to keep reactors as safe as possible -- and to make investment public by law. Even pro-nuclear advocates should be considering the political side (as many -- but not enough -- of us are).

There's also the underappreciated issue of whether nuclear scientists can devise a way to neutralize nuclear waste. In theory, this should be possible, and not too difficult. Recycling would eliminate most of the bulk of nuclear waste, but from my reading, there appears to be a small number of isotopes that remain highly toxic for extremely long lengths of time. I've never heard this issue discussed in nuclear power debates pro or anti, but it seems obvious that such a technology should be pursued and promoted by both sets of partisans.

If we want to commit to renewables rather than nuclear energy, we have to make sure money pours into it within the next year or so, encouraged by tax advantages and personal tax rebates, and with a major PR blitz. (We should do so anyway, but that's an entirely separate line of reasoning.) Even then, it is debatable whether we can build enough of a distributed/intermittent energy infrastructure fast enough, AND keep the major energy companies in business so they can collect and distribute the energy on the grid.

We don't have a lot of time to dither around with these problems, either. If we wait until we know we've passed Peak Oil -- some pessimists in the oil industry claim we have about a year or two before we realize we've passed the peak and are on the downward side of the curve -- we won't have enough time to prevent the inevitable downswing from doing a significant amount of damage to the world's economic system, and more importantly, to a lot of people.

I have no real disdain for anyone's point of view, but we have run out of time to be able to pick our favorites, and we are running out of time to spare millions of people deprivation and death. There will be a lot of ad hoc decisions made, and many of them won't go to our liking, no matter which side we're on. And with every day we waste, we will lose more and more control over those decisions.

--p!

[LSK]

93. those Chernobyl death rates were given by the Soviets

They are WAY WAY WAY OFF. This is the Soviet Union official statistics we are talking about here.

There are entire cities that are now vacant in that area and cannot be lived in for over 300 years minimum.

That disaster created a dead zone of several hundred square miles.

Go visit www.kiddofspeed.com to view the devastation.

[lvx35]

7. Dude, I'm seriously making the focus of my life green computers.

We really, really need solar powered computers and networks (low energy consumption) if the information age is going to survive the end of the industrial age... I don't give a damn if we go back to the stone age so long as I can still read DU in my cave.

[hunter]

11. Laptops and solar panels are a pretty easy match.

My equipment isn't permanently configured this way, but if the power goes out I can have my laptop, my wireless network, a radio, and a few LED lights running off solar power within an hour or two.

[lvx35]

17. Sweet.

Now all we need to do is to make a network of parabolic dishes that extends across the country using unamplified wifi. I just read you can do it at 124 miles, so its suprisingly possible. :)
http://www.enterpriseitplanet.com/networking/news/article.php/3524491

[hunter]

20. 30 watt solar panels suitable for a Mad Max future are $250.

The charge controllers to go with them are about $30.

Before fiber optics, much of the nation's long distance telephone traffic was carried by microwaves.

;)

[lvx35]

43. Very doable

I was just reading about power consumption on laptops, and one of those panels could power one. Incidentally, so could a bicycle:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question658.htm
It looks like some companies have put out very low power PCs, with super efficient processors. Now I just have to figure out how I'm going to power mine here in Washington state where it rains all the time and I never see the sun! :)

Interesting about the microwave transmition, I didn't know that.

[AuntiBush]

10. ...

No wonder area gas & electric companies hit us 3, sometimes 4 times higher then usual this unusually warm winter. Something about "commodities," never seen on prior bills.

Heard *1 invested heavily sometime last year in solar energy. Why is it that * is ready to head into war w/Iran over that pipeline and loss of at Wall Street, when we could be investing in ourselves, and futures with Solar energy, hydrogen fuel cell cars, ethanol - something I heard a lot about decades ago but no one bothered with it.

Guess BIG OIL CORPS want their very last profits, and very last drop of oil before calling it a day. :puke:

What worries me the most, is those that won't be able to afford these alternatives. Much less the loss of their cars, and how to get to work, etc., etc.

What a fricked mess. Heck of a job *! sarcasm seriously on.

[toymachines]

14. I am reading the Long Emergency

The converging catastrophes of the 21st century. It is really putting shit in perspective for me. This is the most important thing for our society to be discussing, and there is a pervasive silence. It is my main topic of conversation now. Our culture will radically change in a short time. It makes issues like abortion seem inconsequential. Scary stuff...

[Strelnikov_]

38. Highly Recommend "Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed"

By Jared Diamond.

The conclusion I have reached, after reading this book, is that collapse may be inevitable due to the poor leadership we now have a a critical nexus. I still believe that with massive conservation efforts, transition from a hyper-consuming society, and dedication of all excess production capacity to development of alternative energy, we could effect a Powerdown to a rewarding and sustainable society. What makes me a Kunstlerian doomer is when I consider our current 'leadership', and observe the actions of the 49% of the electorate who are too stupid to pour piss from a boot if the instructions were written on the heel (a.k.a. those who vote GOP).


As our fifth strand, we have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the human peasants to support all those activities. Like most leaders throughout human history, the Maya kings and nobles did not heed long-term problems, insofar as they perceived them.

. . .

Like Easter Island chiefs erecting ever larger statues, eventually crowned by pukao, and like Anasazi elites treating themselves to necklaces of 2000 turquoise beads, Maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster, reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEO's. The passivity of Easter chiefs and Maya kings in the face of the real big threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels.

From Chapt. 5, 'The Maya Collapses'

[depakid]

40. An even better work is Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies

His approach is more comprehensive and revolves around the notion of diminishing marginal returns- something that many technocrats take for granted.

There's a decent summary & commentary on the work here:

http://anthropik.com/2005/10/thesis-14-complexity-is-subject-to-diminishing-returns/

He also co-authored another work called Supply Side Sustainability that argues for managing for whole systems in situ- as opposed to quota's of outputs (such as is done with most fisheries). An interesting, multi-disciplinary work- though probably a little too esoteric for most people.

[Strelnikov_]

41. Diamond Touches Upon Tainters Work In His Book

And I have read a few articles on Tainters work and the concept of diminishing marginal returns, which I agree with.

The second work you note looks interesting, as I am trying to educate myself as to how we can turn this thing around. Been meaning to do some reading about Roosevelt's NRA also, as I think we will be entering a partial command economy dynamic if we are to mitigate the worst effects of what is coming.

Things look bad, but I plan to go down trying to turn things around.

[Fovea]

18. Back in the 19th C.

using coal a lot.

We will be using steam tractors, rail traction, and you may even see the return of horses and mules.

The real question to my way of thinking is, at what point will todays urban population be re-rusticated to corporate farms?

Because with peek oil comes the end of the 20th C 'green revolution' which was actually, an ammonia and petroleum based insecticide revolution.

[hunter]

22. I don't think urban populations have to worry...

They will be able to walk, bike, or take public transportation to work. Trains will still run in and out of the city.

But people living in the suburbs won't be able to commute, and they won't have enough land to support themselves. The suburbs may become very grim places as gasoline becomes more expensive.

[Dead_Parrot]

26. Population will be a factor...

IIRC, the population of London got stuck at around 5 million towards the end of the 19th C., due to the logistics of getting food into the middle. Without cheap motor transport the same factors will come in to play, which will be bad news for most of the world's biggest cities.

[hunter]

31. If we can't even build ships and railroads anymore, we are doomed.

Even steam powered trains can feed a big city, although electric trains may be more likely.

Wood and other sorts of fuel pellets are an interesting possibility. Imagine a big combine that had two bins, one for the harvested grain and another for pellets made from the grain stalks.

Small scale fuel pellet mills that might fit inside a combine do exist:

http://www.coedcymru.org.uk/woodpelletenergy.html

Maybe we just need to figure out how to slow our economy down gently. A train going 25 miles per hour can cross the United States in less than a week. My sister once rode her bicycle from California to New York. We don't need airplanes and cars.

[Dead_Parrot]

33. I think the problem with trains, is tracks

Most cities don't have the sort of space availible for a comprehensive internal rail system - hence the development of the world's undergrounds - And shifting those sorts of weights by hand is just not going to happen.

There might be scope for a steam-powered tram system, shifting people by day and goods by night. We're into untried territory here, but I can't see any reason why it couldn't work...

[IrateCitizen]

48. But where will urban residents get their food?

Food for NYC is no longer grown across the Hudson in New Jersey -- it is shipped from California and Florida and Chile and so forth, just like food from everywhere else.

Without nearby farming hinterlands to supply food to the majority of cities, where will their residents find food? They may still be able to walk, bike or take public transit -- but they may starve in the process.

As for the suburbs, there are some significant portions which could actually subsist if they converted useless lawns to condensed gardens -- and underwent a values shift toward a more cooperative living arrangement rather than a false sense of "rugged individualism". I'm not saying this to boost the suburban lifestyle, just trying to think out loud on how land could be used there....

[hunter]

52. Going back to the old ways of storing and preserving food...

No refrigerators and freezers and no fast transport doesn't mean no food. The food they get would be mostly canned and dried. Trains can carry a lot of food into a city.

Maybe we will melt down all the useless old cars and trucks to make trains and railroad track.

I imagine many sprawling suburbs would condense down to small cities with dense urban centers, while the majority of houses on the outskirts of these new urban centers would be torn down and recycled.

[Odin2005]

32. Yikes, to many doomers in this thread.

Like a poster on another forum I post at says, PO is a liquid fuel crisis, not an energy crisis. We have some tough economic times ahead, but industrial society ain't gonna colapse.

[Dead_Parrot]

34. That poster has a blinkered view...

Without wanting to turn into Kunstler, peak oil is not just a liquid fuel crises: It's also a heating crises, an infratructure crises (bitumen for roads, tires, the plastics on your car), a food production crises (fertiliser) and distribution crises (A lot of food only makes it to you fridge because it's in an airtight plastic bag: With no plastic, all you have is compost).

Many - maybe most - oil based products can be made from other sources (like concrete for roads) but with a much higher energy cost. We're choking the planet on what we use now - imagine doubling the global energy generation to process hemp/corn/wood into our daily needs, and see what happens to the icecaps then...

None of which, AFAIK, solves the fertiliser problem: That's going to be a biggie. Maybe even Hugh.

[NNadir]

36. All of the things you cite can be produced with access to energy.

I don't see any problem with producing bitumen, noting that "asphaltene" is a problem/by product not only in oil refining, but in many reactors that process biologic based fuels too. I have seen a lot of papers that complain about asphaltene formation that have nothing to do with oil chemistry.

I can't for the life of me think of a plastic that can't be made from syn gas which can be made from hydrogen and carbon dioxide if need be.

Heating could easily be electrified. In many places it already is.

The Haber process is still used to make fertilizers - it was originally invented for making gun powder for Germany during World War I. (Fritz Haber was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention.) Originally the Haber process relied on coal, not petroleum or natural gas. Natural gas is the main source of fixed nitrogen today. This fixed nitrogen does not depend on carbon at all. The carbon compound is used to obtain hydrogen through the thermal reductive decompositon of water.

I do note that excess nitrogen fixation is a real problem for the environment and represents yet another reason why the human population is too high. (Much of the world's biomass now depends on industrially fixed nitrogen.) I note that one of the main constituents of smog is fixed nitrogen, and yes, one of the things that smog does is to make the rain into a fertilizer. The problem as I see it is not to maintain the high quantity of fixed nitrogen, but to find a graceful way to reduce fixed nitrogen. It is killing the planet. It represents a big reason why an area the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico is almost totally deoxygenated.

(In a sad footnote to history, Haber's process also laid the foundation for the industrial manufacture of cyanides. These same cyanides - in the form of Zyklon B or Prussic acid - would later be used to murder Haber's relatives in Germany. Haber was a Jew.)

Fluid fuels for trucks and cars can be manufactured from carbon dioxide if we still want them, but I think electrified trains are a better solution for the most part.

[Dead_Parrot]

39. Fixing nitrogen...

...is nicely done with legumes (beans), which is where the old-fashioned idea of crop rotation comes from. Reducing nitrogen may present problems for many crops, but keeping a healthy quantity can be done without resorting to chemicals - you just need to manage the soil a bit better.

Going a stage further, the actual fixing is done by bacteria (rhizobia) living in the roots of legumes: Whilst I hesitate to suggest it, there may be a way of engineering rhizobia to live in the roots of other plants, and eliminate the need for rotation or fertilizer. Not something I'm in favour of, but it will doubtless be considered.

All hydrocarbons are based on common elements, and can be manufactured so long as we have a good supply of power to shuffle them together. Unfortunatley, I think we're recognising this far to late in the game to avoid a nasty crunch: I hope I'm wrong...

[NNadir]

45. This is true. But legume nitrogen did not support 6 billion people.

To my thinking, the excess nitrogen that must be industrially manufactured to support six billion people is a real problem.

[IrateCitizen]

47. Not to mention the fresh water and arable soil supplies...

Both of which are rapidly diminishing, according to the UN Millenial Report on the World's Ecosystems....

As an example, significant portions of the Midwest that had over 2 feet of topsoil just 150 years ago are down to less than two inches. What happens to farming those areas when cheap nitrogen fertilizer is no longer available?

An inevitable result of the liquid fuels crisis will be the return of localized agriculture. Even with that shift, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a fair amount of starvation as foods can no longer be transported 3,000 miles to arrive fresh at your supermarket....

[NNadir]

50. You're right on. Do you have a link to the UN Millenial Report?

Thanks.

[Dead_Parrot]

51. Sadly, yeah...

Just trying to be optimistic for a change :). I think you, me, Knunstler and Malthus have all reached a similar conclusion.

[Strelnikov_]

57. Couple Of Articles That Provides Some 'Food' For Thought

Can Organic Farming "Feed the World"?
http://www.energybulletin.net/1469.html

Small Is Bountiful
http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/Small-Farm-Benefits-Rosset.htm#F1

My opinion, at this time, is that the Peak Oil impact on food production is overstated, if we make adjustments. Petroleum/natural gas shortages will make the current factory farm dynamic untenable, and if we continue to force this model, it could bring on disaster.

The model presented in the articles is back to the smaller, more intensively managed farms of the past. As the articles note, this type of farming yields more net food per acre. The downside of this model is increased labor, and lower production rates of a single crop relative to modern factory farms.

The concepts presented are consistent with conversations I have had with older farmers, and my experience on the farm decades ago.

My conclusion at this time, we can probably feed ourselves (with leadership, for another discussion), but countries counting on our exports
will be hurting, and we had better start thinking about population controls.

We are going to need some sort of a government program to re-establish the quarter-section midwestern farm, if there is to be stability in the food supply system. I just don't see the current large farms, being managed by tenant labor, as being tenable. The future will require the sort of land stewardship that can only come from ownership.

On edit:
As others note in this thread, though, the bigger problem may be getting the food from the agricultural regions to the population centers on the periphery. Simmons proposals regarding expansion/revitalization of the rail freight system could mitigate this somewhat.

[Dead_Parrot]

59. Encouraging news - thanks...

...although from a quick read-through, none of the studies took into account the reduction of yields imposed when switching from fertilised to organic soil, which might be a killer...

I don't know why you're worring about leadership - Bush spends half his time "clearing scrub on the farm" anyway: Leading by example! :D

The answer might lie in co-operatives - cast an eye over http://www.fonterra.com/default.jsp">Fronterra and imagine a US version for grain (and bare in mind there are no subsidies to speak of involved).

[Dogmudgeon]

67. Good articles -- but they imply some changes

This same model applies to energy. It will be relatively easy to produce residential energy from renewable resources, but the energy for industry won't be eo easily replaced. Similarly, with the passing of factory farms, small-scale local farming will undergo a renaissance, but there will be a secondary "crop" of problems.

First, with so much small-scale agriculture happening, where will the all the crops for biodiesel and ethanol be grown?

Second, areas that can not sustain agriculture are going to be transformed into Las Vegas style towns, with a raw workforce of poor people catering to the rich folks, as much of the population migrates to other areas. I suspect that more than half of the population of the Southwest would migrate west into California's central valley and east into Texas -- unless those states developed restrictive policies and sent them elsewhere. It is possible that we could have a long-term domestic migrant "problem" in this country if agriculture, resource, and climate problems hit. That would be 20 million people or more, on the move, for five years or more. In America.

Third, this won't exactly be a "back-to-the-land" venture. We will have to re-organize the way we do things in North America (and probably Europe, Japan, and Australia, as well) to de-suburbanize, re-ruralize but avoid the pre-WW2 problems of rural society, and change our transportation system. But the biggest changes will be seen in the finance and economic system of the USA, which is now so dependent on artificial economies and finance markets for trading "paper" and making money from the derivative values of (declining) real wealth. Re-ruralizaion may not be so bad, but lots of people are going to bristle at re-blue-collarization, if it comes to that.

Sadly, I think we all went astray at the end of World War One in building a consumer economy. Fascism was the first big problem such a society spun off; an energy and resource collapse may be the next monster birthed by a cancerous economic system. Overall, we will have to consider how to "cure the cancer" without making billions of lives worthless -- or painfully brief.

--p!

[rman]

62. "can be", sure - question is: when will it be? nt

[rman]

61. Right, it's just that the vast majority of the energy we use

comes in the form of liquid fuels.

[Boomer]

63. Myths of home gardening

In most threads of similar topics, inevitably someone will naively suggest that suburban lawns be turned into gardens as a source of food. This thread was no different. Sounds like such a sensible, obvious solution, doesn't it? Dirt is dirt, so use that dirt for something more useful than grass.

Only it's not that easy.

Dirt is NOT the same thing as fertile topsoil, and just because you can grow grass doesn't mean you can grow anything approaching a staple food crop. Vegetable gardens require several inches of good topsoil with good drainage, moderate temperatures, decent amounts of rainfall, and a range of ph and minerals levels that are not necessarily available once you strip off all that grass. (And good luck with that chore, btw. Grass is hardy and persistent.) Not to mention the possible toxic hazards from years of lawn treatment chemicals.

My partner and I started a garden on top of some old flowerbeds, which already had some good topsoil to begin with, and we have spent YEARS developing this small plot of land into one capable of growing vegetables. In the process we've bought hundreds of pounds of topsoil to add to what we've got, as well as created our own compost. That's only the physical labor and financial expense -- there has also been accompanying learning curve to study how to grow a wide range of plants, to rotate crops, to deal with pests and disease and variable weather conditions.

So any suburban family that has illusions about turning their green lawn into a food source had better give themselves at least 2-3 years of lead time before they stop relying on the grocery store. And that assumes that there is any topsoil left to buy after everyone else decides they want to do the same thing.

Eventually, home gardens will have to be part of the solution, but the transition to that era is going to be a rough one because millions of people are going to wait until we are in the midst of food shortages and famines before they try to cultivate food themselves. And they won't have the luxury of years worth of effort and learning before they can eat their own produce.

[Dogmudgeon]

65. It will be a fast, harsh, painful learning curve

Most of the depleted soil we have isn't completely shot. When I was a kid, I planted a garden for my family, and asked around about how to do it. Some local farmers whose kids I went to school with told me that I'd have to fertilize the soil after the first year, or the next year's crop would be stunted -- and that I'd be wise to fertilize immediately, AND to make sure the pH was good, which I did.

It took me three years, easily, to get most of the big rocks dug up and "optimize" the ground with fertilizer and powdered oyster shells. The garden succeeded for about another four years. Then everybody in the neighborhood got lawn services, and the weed killer being distributed in the soil ruined the garden. But I'm sure that even 25 years after it last grew food, that patch of ground is the most fertile thing in a mile's radius. Some of my mother's friends still live in that neighborhood, and nobody has gardens anymore. But they all have lawn services.

The only bright spot I see is that the USA will not be hit by food shortages and famines as quickly as the "less-developed" countries. We will have a few years' lead time to get prepared. Local municipalities should then immediately ban weedkiller use (or restrict them to use those that don't kill food crops, if they exist). Of course, in some areas, the year-round climate is not conducive to gardening or farming -- the Southwest, for instance. They should also take hunting into consideration, since the first big food shortages will send millions of Dick Cheneys out into the woods at night with cheap shotguns and cheaper beer.

Fortunately, I know how to grow food now. I also know how to breed rabbits (but anyone with a rabbit hutch and a supply of rabbit food can do that just as easily!) I've never hunted nor even discharged a firearm, but I know enough to read up on it first, and make my first outings with experienced hunters.

People in fear and need don't have the presence of mind to learn their skills the slow, sure way. They will need food right away, and won't stop to think about how it's done. It will result in a fast, harsh, painful learning curve. My own rule of thumb is that as soon as people in Africa and India start dying because the agricultural sector can't afford gasoline for their farm equipment, we in the USA will have about three years left. I don't forsee that happening for at least a decade, but it never hurts to get an early start on learning "survival skills".

And even if we do manage to turn things around at that point, gardening and hunting are supposed to be very healthy hobbies -- Mr. Whittington nonwithstanding, or standing at all!

--p!

[Boomer]

68. That's exactly why we started gardening now

>> People in fear and need don't have the presence of mind to learn their skills the slow, sure way. They will need food right away, and won't stop to think about how it's done. It will result in a fast, harsh, painful learning curve. <<

Just a few generations ago, everyone with a patch of ground had a Victory garden. If I walk the back alleys of my neighborhood (originally settled in the late 1800s), I can still see the remnants of many gardens, although most have gone wild by now and only a few families have kept them going. The skills of how to do it are also long gone, much less the knowledge of how to can and preserve the produce. Essential survival skills, developed over centures, abandoned in just a few decades. What fools we be.

My partner and I decided that we had to learn how to grow food NOW, when we had the luxury of making mistakes and learning slowly, rather than later when the crunch begins. Each year we clear out a new patch of ground in the back yard and add a new raised bed, try a different kind of seed to see if it's better suited to our climate, order a new rain barrel, etc. We also try to learn more about canning, preserving and keeping a cold cellar.

We started three years ago and figured we had between 5-8 years before we would REALLY need that garden to supplement our diet. I think that timeline is still pretty accurate. And we still have a lot to learn, especially with the wild variations in temperature and rainfall that have plagued our region. Future plans include building cold frames to extend our growing season.

Our other big concern is building a supply of heirloom seeds, which we hope we can keep untainted with the hybrids that don't reproduce. The reckless mucking about with plant genetics for commercial profit is one of the biggest threats to agriculture and our species survival.

[Dead_Parrot]

75. Bullshit!

Literally - the soil will improve a lot faster if you can get some good old-fashioned dung in it. If you can't get any from bulls (or cows, horses, sheep etc), you could do worse than build an earth-closet and put your own in. A quick google should educate you on the basics, and if you can get over the shock factor it will do the garden the world of good...

A possibility if you've got any sheep farmers nearby, is to get a lamb and let it munch through your non-veg until butcher time. In the UK, A local farmer 'gave' us a lamb, arranged for dips etc... In return for fattening it up off our grass, we got lots of dung, plus 1/4 a sheep for the freezer. Very nice if you're not screamish about meat. Cows are a bit more demanding, but if you have a big garden it's worth considering. Raising chickens might also be worth a look - eggs, meat and fertiliser in one small package.

[Boomer]

76. Shock factor?

Heh! We're not that squeamish. As it happens, we already use a mix of cow manure and topsoil, with a dash of mineral dust (which works WONDERS). Also, since last year, a good shovelful or two of our own compost made from kitchen scraps. I've considered using humanure, too, but we simply don't have a large enough plot of land to accommodate another composting bin.

The area in which I live is very rocky, with a thin layer of poor soil, so it's probably taking us longer than you might expect to develop a good growing mixture. We use raised beds to provide drainage, so it's also taking longer to build the frames than it would if we simply dumped everything on the ground.

As for the lamb, please bear in mind that city zoning tends to frown on livestock! I live in the center of a small town and even a chicken would be prohibited.

The focus of this particular discussion is to illuminate the hurdles that an urban or suburban homeowner would experience in trying to grow their own produce out of land that is not suited to that purpose. It takes time, much more time, than most people seem to realize.

[Dead_Parrot]

85. Ahh, zoning laws...

I forgot you had them. :P It might be worth probing the edges: Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs are a quite popular pet (not necessarily in the US) - small, friendly, can be house-trained, and will eat stuff even a dog will turn down... You'd need a heart of stone to turn Mr. Snuffles into bacon, though.

Sounds like you're doing all the right things given the piss-poor soil you're stuck with, so I'm sure you'll get there :) The only other thing I might suggest - if you're not using one already - is a raised worm bin for the compost. You can buy them, although an old bathtub on bricks covered with tarpaulin will work at a pinch. It keeps the compost drained and the worms in situ, making the process faster: just remember to keep some of the worms when you empty it out.

The liquid that drains out (worm piss, basically) makes a good liquid fertilizer to boot.

[Boomer]

87. Oooh, maybe I AM a bit squeamish

>> The liquid that drains out (worm piss, basically) makes a good liquid fertilizer to boot. <<

:puke:

>> Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs are a quite popular pet (not necessarily in the US) - small, friendly, can be house-trained, and will eat stuff even a dog will turn down... <<

:rofl: Obviously you've never met our dogs, who don't turn down enough to keep a worm alive.

[Dead_Parrot]

88. Yeah, I wondered about that bit when I wrote it...

...but there must be somethings a dog won't eat...

...?

OK, maybe not :D

[hunter]

89. We've got a dog like that.

She eats worms, apple cores, insects, anything, even these:



In many cultures dogs are expected to fend for themselves, and I think she's that sort of dog. We got her at the SPCA.

Oh hell, now I'm reminded of A Boy and his Dog, which is an appropriate movie reference for this thread.

[Pooka Fey]

90. Why should I worry about learning how to grow a garden

when I can just come around late one night and steal the food out of your garden? That way I don't have to waste my time when I could be watching NASCAR or WWF instead of getting my hands all dirty and handling what used to be shit.

I'm sorry I just inadvertently channeled the mindset of one of my students. Maybe one or two of them. Three, at the most - no more than three of my students would ever say anything like that...

[Boomer]

91. Actually, we've thought of that, too

We've already thought of that particular issue, and we're weighing whether to buy some handguns and shooting lessons.

We've also debated whether we want to make that kind of commitment to living in a world in which high fences and a few dogs aren't enough protection. I've over 50, childless, and have no enthusiasm for living in a Mad Max world. If things get to that point, we may just bow out gracefully and leave the desperate scrambling to the young.