From: Walter Hicks (wallyshoes@mindspring.com)
Date: Wed Nov 27 2002 - 20:24:57 EST
Glenn,
If you do this for fission, how much does this improve?
Walt
Glenn Morton wrote:
> Blake wrote:
>
> >Not to mention all those Road Warrior movies...
> >
> >You sound a bit overly Malthusian when the world is
> >sitting on 500+ years of fission power at current
> >energy consumption growth rates.
> >
> >BTW, IIRC China and India have larger standing armies.
> >
>
> I am a bit Mathusian in this regard. There are several things wrong with
> your number of 500+ years of uranium. You have mixed up resources with
> reserves. Resources are what is out there, reserves are what is
> economically capable of being extracted. One clearly can't expend more
> energy extracting uraniium from the resource than he gets back from it when
> it is fissioned. We have around a 500+ year resource, but most of that
> isn't economically viable. We have about a 40-50 year reserve.
>
> "The present energy-generating capacity of nuclear power is expected to
> increase slightly between 1995 and 2010 as existing and planned construction
> comes to completion (17). At current consumption rates, there is about a
> 41-year supply of uranium reserves to fuel these reactors (18). Proved
> reserves of uranium have declined in recent years, primarily because of mine
> closures after an excess supply caused uranium prices to collapse (19)."
> http://www.wri.org/wri/wr-96-97/em_txt3.html
>
> I once did a model to see how many Nukes we would need to build over the
> next few years to replace oil. I used a 700 Megawatt
>
> 6.29 bbl = 10.9 megawatt-hour
> http://ecen.com/eee13/equive.htm
> 1 bbl = 1.73 megawatt-hour
> 700 megawatt = 404.6242775 bbl/hour
> http://www.cameco.com/investor_relations/annual/2001/glossary/index.php
> Megawatt (MW): megawatt-hour (MWh) A
> megawatt equals 1000 kW. One
> megawatt- hour represents one hour of electricity consumption at a constant
> rate of 1MW.
> 6132000 megawatt-hour = 3544508. bbl/yr
>
> 30,000,000,000 bbl/yr
> 8463. 700 MW plants
> 1,250,000,000 dollars per plant
> $1.05797E+13 investment
>
> Now, this 10 trillion dollar investment for the replacement of oil is
> equivalent to the Gross domestic product of the United States. Compare this
> with the GDP's of various countries (millions dollars):
>
> Country GNP Per Oil Consumption Number of
> Cost % of GNP
> (millions) Capita per yr 700MW plants (millions)
> USA $10,533 $38 7165875000 2021
> 2526 23.98%
> Japan $4,852 $38 1980673220 558
> 697 14.37%
> Germany $2,242 $27 1023597660 288
> 360 16.06%
> Britain $1,544 $26 602058220 169
> 211 13.67%
> France $1,543 $26 741537120 209
> 261 16.92%
> China $1,329 $1 1839934800 519
> 648 48.76%
> Italy $1,260 $22 710184940 200
> 250 19.84%
> Canada $760 $24 708367710 199
> 248 32.63%
> Brazil $715 $4 680691880 192
> 240 33.57%
> Spain $651 $16 550343680 155
> 193 29.65%
> Mexico $578 $6 661783020 186
> 232 40.14%
> South Korea $515 $11 815779460 230
> 287 55.73%
> India $510 $0.5 756151800 213
> 266 52.16%
> Australia $444 $24 308530920 87
> 108 24.32%
> Netherlands $429 $27 345852620 97
> 121 28.21%
> Taiwan $363 $16 283204200 79
> 98 27.00%
> Argentina $300 $8 680691880 192
> 240 80.00%
> Switzerland $286 $39 102259400 28
> 35 12.24%
> Sweden $275 $31 118888800 33
> 41 14.91%
> Belgium $264 $26 122624050 34
> 42 15.91%
> Russia $252 $2 896459000 252
> 315 125.00%
> Austria $226 $27 93969700 26
> 32 14.16%
> Turkey $212 $3 241725580 68
> 85 40.09%
> Poland $188 $5 148436100 41
> 51 27.13%
> Indonesia $174 $0.8 399721700 112
> 140 80.46%
> Thailand $132 $2 260557400 73
> 91 68.94%
> The GDP data from http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/gnp.html
>
> Clearly the world is going to have trouble investing this much money in
> nuclear plants. Look at the last column, the percent of GDP. If countries
> try to build that many plants, you can basically say that the government
> must tax that percentage of the income in order to finance the effort. That
> means that in the US, everyone's income would decrease 25%. In china it
> would be 48%, Indonesia 80%. Such an effort wouldn't happen because of the
> riots in the streets.
>
> There are also terrorist dangers. Allowing everyone to go nuclear means
> that some really nasty regimes would have the ability to build bombs. Not a
> great idea in my opinion.
>
> And if we increased the demand on uranium by several thousand times, that 41
> year reserve life would last just a few months, the price of U3O8 would go
> up dramatically, more supply would be brought to the market, but not 500
> years worth.
>
> Now, while oil will probably peak this decade, natural gas probably will
> peak about 2020-2040 which means that in a couple of decades we must replace
> gas also. To do it with nuclear plants will require about another 4000
> nuclear plants.
>
> glenn
>
> see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
> for lots of creation/evolution information
> anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
> personal stories of struggle
-- =================================== Walt Hicks <wallyshoes@mindspring.com>In any consistent theory, there must exist true but not provable statements. (Godel's Theorem)
You can only find the truth with logic If you have already found the truth without it. (G.K. Chesterton) ===================================
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