The Precarious Peace

In times of abundant resources and economic wealth, living in harmony, peace and civility is a relatively simple thing to do. In times of economic hardship and resource scarcity, the instinct of survival takes over. I suppose this is why the Obama administration wants to reduce the number of active nuclear weapons in the world as futile as the effort may be. Here's a brief look at the science and the politics of nuclear armament.

The Science
Several years ago, I read a book called E=mc²: A History of The World's Most Famous Equation. In Chapter 13, author David Bodanis provides an explanation of the events that occurred, from micro to macro at 8:16am in Japan when the first nuclear weapon was used against man. It is a visceral, awesome and terrifying account of the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.

Virtually every state possessing nuclear weapons developed them as martial insurance against a potential nuclear attack from another antagonistic nation with such capabilities...

The death and destruction caused in Nagasaki and Hiroshima makes the attacks of September 11th seem rather insignificant in terms of civilian death toll, injury toll and infrastructure destruction and long-term effects such as radioactive contamination. Yet these were only fission-based weapons delivering 15-20 kilotons of TNT equivalent. Since then, thermonuclear (fusion-based) weapons have been developed which will theoretically deliver over 100 megatons of TNT-equivalent energy. Tests of high-yield bombs are typically done below theoretical maximum yield to minimize both environmental destruction and for secrecy purposes; the mushroom cloud can be seen by anyone as far as 1000 kilometers of the blast and if below-ground tests are done, the seismic signatures can be detected. Russia's Tsar Bomba, the most powerful device ever built by man was tested at about 50 megatons or 2.1×10¹⁷ Joules. It's a bit hard to grasp what a megaton of TNT means, but the image of the mushroom clouds produced below may help put it into perspective.

Fat Man (1) is the 22.5 kiloton fission bomb that was detonated in Nagasaki, Japan while Castle Bravo (2) was the 15 megaton thermonuclear fusion device tested by the U.S. in the Marshall Islands. (Image: U.S. Federal Government)

The peak temperature is about 350,000,000 degrees Celsius--a temperature for which all matter exists in a state called plasma. Steel near the blast epicenter would be instantly vapourized and there would be no forensic trace of any humans unfortunate enough to be nearby. Those far enough to survive instantaneous death would receive severe third degree burns to any soft tissue with a line of sight to the bomb. Depending on wind directions, radioactive fallout could cause hair loss for people hundreds of kilometers from the blast site. My guess is that a single high-yield thermonuclear device could eradicate 20 million people if it were detonated in the right place.

The Politics
Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, the world has made well over 65,000 nuclear warheads of which over 10,000 are currently active (the weapons have 'expiry' dates). Ninety percent of these are held by the U.S. and Russia, with the balance in the U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan. Israel never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and thus does not report on its nuclear weapons program, but is believed to possess a significant stockpile of nuclear warheads. North Korea withdrew from the treaty and is believed to have successfully conducted a nuclear weapons test. Iran and Syria are following a similar path to that of North Korea, but are not believed to possess viable nuclear warheads at this time.

Virtually every state possessing nuclear weapons developed them as martial insurance against a potential nuclear attack from another antagonistic nation with such capabilities: The USSR as a deterrent to the U.S.; the U.K. and France in response to the USSR; China to counter the U.S.; North Korea to oppose U.S. nuke stockpiles in South Korea; Pakistan to retaliate against India's tests; and Iran and Syria to retort Israel.

Hopefully each and every person with the authority to deploy these weapons will hold them as a nothing more than a deterrent and never use them. Otherwise the world will find a new peace without too many humans, if any left in it.

The Black Gold Sands

Image: Terry Bain [cc]

Barring a complete catastrophic collapse of the global economy and credit markets (which happens not to be overly improbable), the Canadian oilsands will remain in a relatively strong position despite correcting oil prices.

In the absence of a breakthrough scientific discovery like cold fusion, there exists neither a viable alternative fuel source for oil, nor a likely prospective one in the near future. It certainly isn't impossible, but a cold-fusion type of discovery is highly improbable. The Manhattan programme and Apollo project are often cited as major scientific investments yielding results; but neither one required the kind of infrastructure overhaul that would be required to reduce demand for fossil fuels. With rising energy costs, nuclear, wind, solar and the other alternatives to fossil fuels will all become more competitive with oil. In fact, from a price-energy perspective, $100/bbl crude oil is already fiscally disadvantaged compared to its alternatives. One joule of oil priced at $100/bbl is even more expensive than the same amount of energy produced from wind energy. Residents of Hawaii paid 24 cents per kilowatt hour for their electricity because oil is the primary fuel used for electricity generation in the state (the cost of electricity produced from wind is on the order of 14 cents/kWh). The only reason oil remains so prominent is that it happens to be convenient (batteries are not well-suited to power cars) and current infrastructure, which will take decades to update, necessitates it.

A common mistake people make is to think that the rate of change of the consumer electronics industry can be replicated in the energy industry. The reason consumer electronics can evolve so quickly is mass (or lack thereof). Replacing a 20 ounce cell phone requires considerably less work than replacing a quarter-ton vehicle. This is because a cell phone has relatively little total intrinsic value in the materials used, which is in part why many electronics become cheaper as the become smaller (for example, a 1 GB flash card now costs less to make than a 1 GB magnetic hard drive).

How Long Will It Take?
In terms of energy substitutions, the change from wood to coal took 75 years. The change from coal to oil took 100 years. Natural gas took even longer because of the extensive pipeline infrastructure that was needed to accommodate it--in fact, over 28 trillion cubic feet of natural gas associated with oil wells has been discarded in the U.S. alone since 1936 (U.S. Department of Energy). The gas is simply burned at the wellhead or vented to atmosphere without capturing its useful energy because the pipeline infrastructure would cost more than the potential revenues from selling the gas. This does not happen much anymore in North America, but continues in places that have no market for natural gas such as deep offshore production and some middle eastern oil producing nations. Liquification of natural gas (LNG) and gas hydrates are emerging alternatives to pipelines, but both are expensive because of the energy inputs involved.

Transportation Industry
The transportation industry uses about 50% of the world's oil. The United States has about 250 million automobiles. Even if automobiles that didn't use fossil fuels were available today at a competitive price, it would take 9 years to replace most of them (9 years is the mean age of these vehicles, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Electric vehicles can't be competitively priced today without making significant infrastructure changes. Batteries that meet the range requirements for American automobiles are simply too expensive. Also, too many steps in the electrical conversion process make it an intrinsically inefficient way to turn wheels. The figure above shows potential paths to turning the wheels of motorized land-based transportation. Each step loses energy due to thermodynamic constraints (the fewest number of steps are often the best route). Ethanol and other biofuels have a lower energy density than hydrocarbons as well as other significant challenges (discussed below). Heavy trucks are nowhere close to using alternative fuel sources and the aviation industry does not even know of a potential alternative to jet fuel.



1970's Lessons Learned?

Those who are old enough to remember the oil shocks of the 1970's and early 1980's can recall long lineups at gas stations and the economic chaos it caused. It prompted everyone to rethink the dependency of crude oil because of the economic impacts it had on oil importing economies around the globe. The first crisis occurred in 1973 when the Arabic members of OPEC imposed an oil embargo aimed at countries that gave military and political support to Israel. A resolution was reached between OPEC members and the United States in early 1974, but the shortages it created would leave prices elevated for several years. In 1979 another crisis occurred the Shah of Iran was exiled. Oil production from Iran would fall 75% in the next two years as a result of political instability and the resultant war with Iraq. Over the next several years however, other countries were able to fill the supply gap as a result of higher prices. Virtually every oil consuming nation devised an energy strategy in light of these price shocks. It would be left up to the policymakers to see these strategies through to completion as an oil glut ensued and very cheap energy prices left the general public unconcerned about energy independence for the rest of the 20th century.

United States Strategy
Project Independence was a vision of President Nixon which never got much traction because of extensive costs. Another reason American politicians did not to want to reduce oil consumption was that at that time, the United States was the largest producer of crude oil in the world, meaning that oil production was a very large part of the domestic economy (U.S. oil production peaked just a couple years earlier in 1970). Instead, strategic political measures were favoured such as a strategic alliance with the Saudi's as well as military efforts to ensure unimpeded flow of oil from the producer nations.

France's Strategy
In response to the same crisis, France decided to invest heavily in nuclear energy over a period of 15 years. Today, France leads the world in Nuclear Energy production, and even exports electricity from its nuclear plants to surrounding nations such as Germany. This now leaves them in an economically advantaged position compared to its European counterparts; however, oil consumption per capita only decreased by about 35%. This is because the substitution was only made for electrical power generation and they did not attempt to replace oil the transportation industry (this would have taken much longer and have been much costlier).

Brazil's Strategy
Brazil actually did decide substitute foreign oil in its transportation industry following the oil shocks of the seventies. They used sugarcane ethanol to do it and this conversion took them 30 years to reach a degree of energy autonomy. Flex fuel vehicles are mandated to use the E25 blend of 25% ethanol, 75% gasoline; some can even use E100 (almost pure ethanol). The United States tried recently to model Brazil's strategy, but it is failing for two reasons:

1. Brazil is a developing nation and its average citizen consumes 1/5^th of the liquid fuel that the average American does. It can't be scaled up in an overpopulated world without creating serious food shortages, as we've already started to see.


2. Brazil intersects the equator, meaning considerably more energy is available for the process photosynthesis that ultimately creates the energy used in the biofuels. This is why sugarcane ethanol yields about 8 times the energy required to produce it, while corn ethanol in the continental U.S. hovers around breaking even (optimistic scientists say 1.5 while pessimistic ones say 0.7). This means that for every gallon of diesel a farmer uses to cultivate corn, the amount of ethanol can be processed from the crop contains no more energy than a gallon of diesel--but the farmer can still make money provided subsidies are paid by the government.

Where Prices Will Go From Here
Now it's quite possible (but not probable) that oil could return to $40 a barrel depending on the depth of the global recession (some have even forecasted $10 oil). Even if prices did fall below $40 a barrel, such low prices will not stick once the recession has ended. Sector-specific inflation has increased the cost of production quite dramatically. Production and labour costs are out of control and the cost of production for new oilsands projects now sits between $80 and $120 a barrel. This is far too high for receding demand, and it may need to deflate and correct itself along with the rest of the global economy. This will present short-term challenges and if oil did fall to $10 or $20/bbl, this unlikely scenario would certainly mean layoffs; but even so, long-term supply will remain under pressure. The other supply issue surrounds peaking production in the worlds largest oil fields as I discussed in the past. Saudi Arabia's spare capacity (oil it can produce during shortages) is now limited to sour heavy crude, which only a few refineries in the world can handle.

One problem with projections about the Canadian oilsands ultimate recoverable oil estimates is that they often assume demand for this commodity will remain unchanged through 60 years. Instead, its likely that the oil which is hypothetically recoverable at today's prices will simply be left in the ground. This is analogous to the way many coal reserves remain in the ground from when coal was partially substituted for oil. My best guess is that it will take at least 25-30 years to significantly reduce global dependency on oil. The change is happening though, and Fort McMurray could easily end up being Detroit north if city planners aren't smart about economic development of the future. In the transition period from this now disadvantaged fuel, the oilsands should remain profitable. If not by a windfall, then at least by a small margin.

Nuclear Power

Nuclear is one of those industries that sounds vastly different on TV, by people, and in mainstream than what it really is. Many reading this section are going to immediately have different pictures pop into their heads relating nuclear. I will classify them into 3 camps:

1. The anti-nuclear crowd has images of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and WMDs. They will recite stories of mutations, babies born deformed and other horrific images. Nuclear will be painted as a demonic technology that cannot ever be properly utilised and as a consequence will inevitably cause great harm. Vast caverns filled to capacity with spent fuel will ooze poison taking its toll on Mother Earth. We will call these [insert insult here], Greenpeace, WWF, David Suzuki Foundations, and hordes of other groups that say the same dribble.



2. This is a group of people who really don’t give a darn. They will have images of Homer Simpson, Superheroes, Godzilla, or other creatures that are born of radiation. They will have heard of nuclear accidents and think that nuclear is or is not dangerous, but does give lots of electricity. Feelings either pro or con will be minimal and thus little actual knowledgeable reading or educating will be done. Thus, a "gut feel" type conclusion will be made, yeah or nay.



3. The pro-nuclear crowd will mainly be composed of people who are actually in the industry (engineers, physicists, scientists), have lived near a nuclear power plant, or people who understand the experts. They will look at incidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and learn from the mistakes and further improve the industry. Stories of mutations, superheroes, and Homer Simpson will also be considered humorous while recognizing that such stories are removed from truth and science.

Now, like any good brainwashing of the masses, the only way to de-program the victims is to hit them with some knowledge (and please question me as much as you want, because I can prove you wrong). Please remember I am also simplifying the information into a digestible manner, so no snarky remarks about exact wording. Let us start with Chernobyl.

Chernobyl

What is considered to be the worst commercial nuclear reactor accident has been studied extensively by many organizations, reported on by hundreds of media outlets, and is a great source of horrific stories of mutations and the dangers of nuclear power. What was not provided to the masses in 1986 was the truth, being that:

• The Chernobyl accident in 1986 was the result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel and without proper regard for safety.


• The resulting steam explosion and fire released at least five percent of the radioactive reactor core into the atmosphere and downwind.



• 28 people died within four months from radiation or thermal burns, 19 have subsequently died, and there have been around nine deaths from thyroid cancer apparently due to the accident: total 56 fatalities as of 2004.



• An authoritative UN report in 2000 concluded that there is no scientific evidence of any significant radiation-related health effects to most people exposed. This was confirmed in a very thorough 2005-06 study.

Pages upon pages could be written on this incident, and they have been, so rather than repeat and bore you, I will provide you with the following link, and 2 images of the reactor before and after. Note that Chernobyl had no containment building, which all CANDU reactors have had since the first one ever built.

Now you may be sitting there wondering how can the big bad Chernobyl, the accident which brought fear and despair to the world and especially the nuclear industry and assisted in the fall of the Iron Curtain, have had only 54 deaths. Well it did; the media forgot to mention this fact FOR THE LAST 30 YEARS!! The same UN study mentioned in bullet 4, and provided in the following link, stated that more loss of human life and human suffering was caused by poor diets, poor lifestyle factors (smoking, etc.), poverty, and lack of access to health care than Chernobyl ever will.

Thus, the moral of the story is; the worst nuclear incident in the entire history of mankind, caused by poor reactor design, bad training, without regard for proper safety, killed 54 people. This incident brought the nuclear industry to its knees, and caused countries to abandon nuclear power and resort heavily on Coal. On a side note, in May 2005 a train derailment near Amagasaki, Japan caused at least 100 deaths, but there were no cries from Greenpeace to ban trains and shutdown existing train stations.

Now let us discuss Three Mile Island and what happened, or more importantly did not happen.

Three Mile Island

Three Mile Island is one of the funnier incidents in my mind. While the entire US media and public were demonizing the nuclear industry in 1979, the people that worked in the nuclear industry were giving each other high fives and saying “we partially melted the core, and caused no harm to the public. This proves that our safety systems and designs work”. Of course the media, Greenpeace, and other organizations jumped on this like crack addicts and painted a horrific picture. So instead of boring you again, I will provide you with the following bullets of fact and a link to read more about it:

• In 1979 a cooling malfunction caused part of the core to melt in the # 2 reactor at Three Mile Island in USA. The reactor was destroyed.



• Some radioactive gas was released a couple of days after the accident, but not enough to cause any dose above background levels to local residents.



• There were no injuries or adverse health effects from the accident.

Thus, the moral of the second story is; the second worst nuclear incident in the entire history of mankind, caused by a relief valve failing to close, and operators diagnosing the incident to late due to deficient instrumentation and inadequate emergency response, did nothing but scrap a companies equipment. This incident, due to a movie, "China Syndrome", being released brought the nuclear industry to a halt around the world, especially in the US. What makes it really funny is that actual truth and fiction from the movie began to blur, with more and more fiction entering news coverage. As a result, what all these countries did was turned to coal. I should add that over this past Victoria long weekend, 16 people died in car accidents while no cries for banning long weekends were heard from Greenpeace or other organizations.

Nuclear Bad Reputation or Bad Representation?

So far we have learned that the 2 most severe nuclear accidents in commercial nuclear reactors in the world have killed a total of 54 people over 20+ years. Yet somehow the masses have it engraved in their minds that nuclear is dangerous. So, let us apply this logic to other common things that should be banned:

• Trains, planes, cars, ships, and virtually all modes of transportation,


• Guns, knives, forks, spoons, swords, poles, pitchforks, about anything you can hold in your hand,


• Camp fires, swimming, smoking, drugs (the good kind), and virtually anything that can be inhaled or eaten...

Instead of figuring out everything that should be banned that killed more than 54 people, someone tell me something that was invented by man that has killed less than 54 people, that list will be easier to compile.

Nuclear Moneys

So is it all rose pellets, and singing….no. The single largest barrier to nuclear is Capital Cost. Current estimated from all the major nuclear companies put the cost of reactors at $1000 - $2000 per KW, which translates into $1.5 to $2.0 billion dollars. It should be noted that life cycle costs of nuclear power is the lowest, with coal in second place. Furthermore, the price to generate electricity is the lowest for nuclear. This is why France and Sweden have some of the lowest energy costs in Europe (France 80% nuclear, Sweden 50%). The table below includes in the prices, construction, operations & maintenance, fuel and decommissioning.

Source: International Energy Agency, "Projected Costs of Generating Electricity ", 2005.

As for return on investment, well I’m not privy to that kind of info, but the number that floats around the industry to keep a single reactor down for a day is $1 million. Using that number, a single reactor would make $350 million a year (remove some days for maintenance), and thus payback the initial capital in 5.7 years (assuming no interest). This can be done in various ways, public money, private money or a combination. But ask any investor and that turnaround is not fast enough, especially with something as tricky as nuclear power. In the past it has been public money, but governments are trying to create market environment to allow the private sector to take on this tricky deal. Why is it tricky you ask?

Long Time to Build?

Well of course silly, it is tricky because it takes 10 years to build a nuclear power plant... WRONG. It takes 54 months, at least for AECL on Qinshan Unit 1 in China on December 31, 2002. That is first-concrete to full power. So where does this 10 year number come from? Well it actually takes 10 years due to environmental assessments, town hall meetings, filing paperwork with the government, go to court against Greenpeace or WWF, having to redo the environmental assessment (come to same conclusion), redo town hall meetings, re-file paperwork, have a change in government so NDP or Liberal party who cancels/restarts project, have a union strike, go to court again against Greenpeace because on form 456578903 you forgot to cross the "t", re-file paperwork, have laws changed, etc...

I hope you have gotten the picture by now. Long schedule and high budget for nuclear does not come from the technology, but rather the cumbersome overburdening process that is continually forced by various special interest groups, who then argue that nuclear costs too much and takes too long. So what do countries do? They turn to coal.

How Much Nuclear Can the Grid Handle?

So now that budget and scheduling of nuclear has some truth put to it, I guess the anti-nuke crowd needs a new argument--they may try to argue that you cannot have too much nuclear on the grid because it cannot load follow. This argument is hogwash. France has 80% of its electricity generated from nuclear and it load follows quite well, why pray tell? Well nuclear power can actually generate power in the range of 60% to 100% of capacity, but of course the bean counters want to run at full tilt. Theoretically then, nuclear can economically provide 100% of a country’s power. Nuclear is meant to run full tilt all the time, base load, thus it would be advisable to have supplemental generating sources, like coal or natural gas, for peak demand (on a hot summer day for example). Load levelling can help with this issue, by pushing energy consumption from the day into the night, and thus have a more level energy demand.

This is where things like hydrogen or electrical cars could fit in nicely. Use the excess energy from nuclear at night to produce hydrogen or re-charge electric cars. I will not get too futuristic on you, but I will mention that CANDUs are not only good at producing electricity, but they can also be used for desalination plants (making fresh water from salt water), hydrogen generation, utilising spent fuel from US or French reactor designs, utilising actinides and greenhouse heating (done at Bruce in past) just to name a few.

So now with the anti-nukes are biting their nails, and wondering 'boy what is left to scare people about?', this leads us to nuclear waste, or as the industry likes to call it, "spent fuel" .


Spent Fuel?

Spent fuel is exactly what its name implies. For CANDU reactors the fuel stays in the core for about 1 year, it is the removed through online fuelling, and deposited into the storage bay (large pool), after 10 years they move it to dry storage. To date, in Canada all spent fuel from all CANDUs are kept on site and are continuously monitored. Now that may sound scary, but let me give you 2 images:

1. 40 years of spent fuel generated in all of Canada from 22 CANDU reactors is equivalent in volume as a soccer field pile 6 feet high.


2. The city of Toronto generates an equivalent amount of garbage to Canadian spent fuel is a single day.

Now you might all be thinking of that episode of the Simpsons when Mr. Burns pushed a barrel of radioactive waste into a tree trunk (don’t forget the squirrel with laser eyes). Now that is incredibly inaccurate, because not only does spent fuel not go in barrels, it is also not a liquid. Spent fuel looks exactly the same as fresh fuel, see figure. Every bundle is numbered, tagged, and it's location is known, and continuously monitored.

For some reason this is thought of as being scary, so let me make a comparison between spent nuclear fuel and municipal waste:

• Spent fuel comes in solid metallic bundles, which is eventually stored in concrete leak tight multi-layered containers, and are monitored regularly. Containers don’t corrode or react with the environment, and if they did they would be replaced (remember they are monitored), or


• Municipal garbage is anything and everything you throw into your trash (paint cans, used chemical bottles, batteries, food, metal, etc.) that is brought to a landfill and just dumped. It sits there for a prolonged period of time decomposing and reacting with whatever is around. Heavy metals leech into the ground, along with other chemicals.

One of these we regard as dangerous, the other is perfectly safe common practice. So which one is safe? I’ll leave that up to you to figure out, but I will say this; I would rather live near a spent fuel storage facility then a garbage dump.

I should also mention, that the reason spent nuclear fuel should not called waste is because the it can be reprocessed to produce additional fissionable material which can be extracted and re-used.

Summary

We have all been lead to believe that nuclear power is a big bad scary demonic technology that can only do harm. Thanks to the likes of Greenpeace, WWF, David Suzuki Foundation, and many other special interest groups, and due to their tireless efforts, and war on nuclear for 30 years now, they have accomplished a great feat. This is causing the construction of many dirty coal power plants around the planet that emit large quantities of air pollution. They have systematically blocked, cancelled, and prevented the expansion of nuclear power. They have subsequently caused the industry to superfluously increase safety standards (to a point that some may call ridiculous); blocked, prolonged, and took companies to court over environmental assessments, town hall meetings, and general paperwork; all which of unnecessarily add to capital costs.

Nuclear power is safe, clean, and generates cheap constant electricity. It is essentially the exact opposite of what the current mainstream public thinks about it. There are many other added benefits, and of course the above could be expanded upon greatly, which I will leave to next time, otherwise I won't have an excuse to come back and write in Kent’s Blog.

Up and Atom,
Laszlo Zsidai

The Alternatives

In recent days we've seen oil prices top $135/barrel. The market has begun to show a negative response to such high prices. Major airlines announced major cutbacks in staff, flights and effectively hiked prices. The Ford Motor company (NYSE:F) has announced that its bid to become a profitable company again won't happen until 2009 and that it would change its 'focus'. According to its annual reports, Ford's Automotive division has not turned a profit since before 2002. General Motors (NYSE:GM) shares hit a 34-year low (that's without adjusting for inflation).

Consumption data has yet to show an actual reduction in demand but with projected reductions associated with these types of announcements, it appears as though oil prices may come down at the expense of the U.S. economy. America needs to close the gap on its energy deficit. And soon.


Why hasn't the United States opted for Energy Independence earlier?
It pretty much comes down to cost. The financial cost of oil in the last century was so low that exploiting this allowed the economy to grow at a rate much higher than it would if more expensive renewable energy sources were used. For example, running a car on corn-based ethanol is much more expensive than running it on gasoline when you look at the overall costs. It also costs money to improve fuel efficiencies--few people will pay the extra cost of a hybrid because it simply doesn't pay out (this may change in the near future). American policymakers obviously didn't anticipate how quickly oil prices would rise otherwise they would have done more. Some did have this foresight, but for the rest of us, 'hindsight is 20/20' sums it up.


How do we measure energy cost?
There are several ways to do this. One very good indicator is Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROI or EROEI). It's basically a ratio of the energy produced by a particular energy source to the energy required to produce it. Think of it as a rough indicator of how much it will cost to produce one gigajoule of energy (higher number=cheaper cost). For example, in order to get gasoline, an oil well needs to be drilled, produced and the products refined. All of this takes energy, but for the case of oil, the energy output is about thirty times the energy required to get it out of the ground and produce it. High-quality (high EROI) oil reservoirs like the supergiants are the first to be exploited. As these become depleted, oil prices go up, which leads to lower quality (lower EROI) reserves like the oil sands being exploited. The key to this is that for non-renewable energy sources, EROIs always trend downwards and energy prices trend up. The following table lists rough estimates of the EROI for different energy sources.

Why is hydrogen negative?
Hydrogen is not a potential energy source. It is a potential energy carrier like electricity. It can potentially be used as a transport fuel but because of thermodynamic energy losses (nature's inefficiencies), some energy is lost in the process. I have heard some claims that cars can run on water. There are only two ways that a car will be able to 'operate' on water:

1. The car has some sort of very advanced 'charger' device. You fill it with water and plug it in overnight and it splits water molecules into its elemental hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis, and stores it in a tank for use by a fuel cell device while driving. The technology to do this isn't competitively priced yet and associated electricity costs are high.


2. The laws of thermodynamics are wrong.

More than 90% of industrial grade hydrogen is currently produced by ripping the molecule from natural gas. This method is much more economic than using electricity to split water, but it obviously doesn't reduce the need for fossil fuels.

What about plant-based ethanol fuels?
It's currently debated whether or not corn-based ethanol can net more energy than it requires to produce it. Even if it does, it's unlikely to make America energy-independent given such a low rate of energy return. It took Brazil 30 years to get to the point of using subsidy-free cane-based ethanol, which has a much better rate of return than corn does. Technology improvements will help improve the EROI but this will take years to do. And as we've seen, the huge farming areas required to produce transportation-grade ethanol can also lead to food shortages.


So what is the solution?
Most experts agree the future of energy will need to include some sort of balance between 'all of the above'. Wind and solar are still developing technologies and they have constraints that won't allow them to meet more than 20-30% of America's energy needs. For example, if the sun isn't shining, you won't produce any electricity with solar--this may be okay in some instances, but not if you're using it to heat your home. The other problem is that energy sources that generate electricity can't be used as transport fuels yet because electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are still 15+ years from being competitive on the market. The Chevy Volt looks promising, but they had to go back and redesign the lithium-ion battery (they had some issues with fires, explosions and such). It appears the only solution for Americans right now is to improve fuel economy standards and eliminate unnecessary driving.


What else can be done?
The policymakers need to look at the 'big picture'. If fossil fuels are conserved for applications in which there currently no feasible alternatives (primarily transportation), then the price of crude will come down. For example, heating oil and natural gas is used to heat many homes in America. This is the most efficient way of heating a home, but the simple alternative is electricity. The cheapest way to get electricity without the use of hydrocarbons is nuclear (in terms of EROI, hydroelectric is better but it is effectively maxed out). Nuclear is also the only proven technology that is 'market ready'. Nuclear may have some legitimate concerns, but for some reason it is no longer considered 'green' despite the fact that it has essentially zero emmissions. Plans are currently in the works to build a nuclear plant to power energy-intensive Canadian oil sands projects. The oil sands require steam for oil extraction, and hydrogen to upgrade heavy oil to lighter 'synthetic' crude, both of which are well suited for nuclear power plants. Currently, we are using natural gas for this. I think I'd rather save natural gas for the barbecue.

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Next up: guest writer Laszlo Zsidai will give us some of his perspectives on nuclear from his experience in the industry.


Additional reading:

1. Indiana Senator Lugar's answer to $100 oil


2. Wake Up, America...


3. "It's the flows, stupid!"