To:
From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Subject: Running out of oil? (responses)
Cc:
Bcc: Dorothy Tennov <tennov1@mchsi.com>, "The President of the United States"
<president@whitehouse.gov>,
"Governor Gray Davis" <graydavis@governor.ca.gov>,
T <macami@earthlink.net>,
Gaidine Oglesbee <goglesbee@worldnet.att.net>,
"Tony Boys (Aslan)"
<tonbo@green.ocn.ne.jp,
"Pat& Fred Frank"
<pff@fix.net>, Pdbsongs1@cs.com,
webhead@nuclearwitness.org, creedmail@cox.net,
SNetherby@aol.com, CBGHirsch@aol.com, psrsm@psr.org,
beckers@thegrid.net, "The New Forum" <TheNewForum@yahoogroups.com>,
Premise Checker <checker@mail.sheergeniussoftware.com>, California Senators
Dear Readers,
I received a number of interesting responses to my "Running out of oil" essay. They are shown below, with some commentaries. Also, the original essay, with some typos corrected, is also shown below.
Thank you,
Russell Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
Most recent item posted online: Suggested new Pledge of Allegiance:
www.animatedsoftware.com\environm\no_nukes\2002\pledge.htm
==============================================
FROM: Richard Wilcox (comments of: Tony Boys (Aslan) <tonbo@green.ocn.ne.jp>):
==============================================
Subject: Re: running out of oil
To: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
FROM: comments of: Tony Boys (Aslan) <tonbo@green.ocn.ne.jp>
re; RDH comments below on oil:
1) Yes, nuclear accidents are a big problem, at least partly for the reasons he states.
[[[I'm not sure what the author means by "at least partly for the reasons he states", but if he means there are a lot of other good reasons to shut the nukes down, we are in agreement. -- rdh ]]]
2) Yes, the private internal combustion engine "should be" phased out.
[[[ I was trying to be a bit more action-specific, saying it both can be and must be, not just that it should be. -- rdh ]]]
3) We are not talking about oil running out (it will, of course) but the currently more important phenomenon of the annual extraction curve peaking.
[[[ The "annual extraction curve", the sum total of all the oil removed each year, is a composite of many forces, (it's not simply "supply and demand"). Some forces are "natural" (oil gets harder and harder to find each year, and harder and harder to extract, as the easy oil is all found and taken). Some forces are "unnatural" (for example, failure to implement energy-saving measures cause this nation to waste -- and pay for -- four, five, maybe even 10 times the amount of energy needed for a particular end-product). -- rdh ]]]
4) No one has been able to show me yet that nuclear power (fission or fusion) can be kept operable after fossil fuels become scarce... i.e. nuclear power is maintained cheap and viable only if there are reasonably cheap fossil fuel (effectively oil) resources available.
[[[ I'm not sure what the writer is suggesting the connection is. Nuclear power might appear MORE viable as oil prices rise, but it's an illusion brought about by not accounting for the full costs of scattered deaths in the community, risk of catastrophic accidents, storing the nuclear waste for a million years, and so forth. -- rdh ]]]
5) Nanotubes? Sorry my ignorance. However, re natural gas: "no one has a use for it" does not seem to reflect energy usage of the last ten years or so.
[[[ Nanotubes are based on "Buckyballs", extremely strong molecular geodesic structures. In any event, what I was saying (and this was based on the comments of a person concerned about the oil running out) was no one has a use for all the small amounts of natural gas that are burned off at the sites of many oil production wells, because you can't transport the gas nearly as easily as oil, so they burn it or simply vent it to the atmosphere. Small generators and good energy transmission systems, or energy storage solutions (including fuel cells) could make these sources of natural gas viable energy producers for the planet, but right now, that fuel is being wasted. Certainly, everyone has a use for natural gas, what I was saying is that nevertheless, billions of cubic feet of it are wasted each year. -- rdh ]]]
6) Internet? Possibly. Have not seriously thought about the cost difference between privately owned books, CDs, etc and the public Internet.
[[[ If you can eliminate the product, and just transmit images and sound via wires (or better yet, fiber-optic cables), it will save energy. No shipping of products, no returns, no INDUSTRY based on the distribution of THINGS. Things cost vastly more energy to produce and distribute than electronic signals. Just the creative art (or news reports, music, whatever) should be what people buy. Right now, the video game industry is bigger than football, baseball, hockey, basketball, and the Hollywood movie industry combined (in fact, I believe Nintendo alone is bigger). The home movie distribution system, and the Nintendo game distribution system, the music distribution system, and the software distribution system, could all be done away with if more people were on the Internet instead (with FAST connections), and the net energy savings would be tremendous, if done properly. Similarly, shelves of books are kind of absurd in today's world (or at least, in a world with reasonable bandwidth for everyone, a basic human right, by the way). Sure, most of us still have lots of books right now -- but do we look at them as often as we search for information on the Internet, and in our own personal email collections of articles sent to us by friends and that we've downloaded for "safe-keeping" (i.e., in order to be able to find again)? Those of us with such collections use them voraciously. And nearly every American is now using the Internet, because it works. This is good, but it would be nice if it got much better, quickly. Hard drive space is still plummeting in price, per gigabyte. This is good, but it has a long way to go. -- rdh ]]]
7) Energy efficiency -- yes definitely, but I do not think that means North America and Europe (etc...) can run their economies on hydropower. Apparently Iceland can run on hydrogen from hydropower, but it seems to be a special case of advantageous resource endowment.
[[[ Most comprehensive renewable energy solutions requires a mix of energy sources. But yes -- I'm sure there's enough hydro potential in North America and Europe to supply the needs of the people who live in those regions. Hydro has its place, despite anything extremist environmental activists who know nothing about nuclear power, and the dangers it poses, might claim to the contrary, but more to the point, so does wind (especially offshore wind farms), wave, tide, solar, geothermal, biomass, and other renewable energy solutions. Coal and Oil need to be replaced, but not until after we slay the Nuclear Dragon (i.e., nuclear power plants, generators of a gazzillion tons of hot nuclear waste). Please see my essay on R. Buckminster Fuller's energy grid concept:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/geni/rh2000ge.htm
-- rdh ]]]
8) Vacation at home, more trains. Yes. Not sure about mag-lev trains. Japan has a project which seems to be approaching commercialization at about the same pace as fusion reactors. Why?
[[[ Japan's nuclear policies are more insane than our own (check out the facts about Hamaoka, Monju, or Tokaimura), but they are way ahead of us in magnetic levitation train systems for mass transit. -- rdh ]]]
9) Diet change. Yes. But at the same time we should remember that what is forcing us to do this is overpopulation -- too many people on a now too small planet with now too few "agricultural" (human energy producing) resources. These are being propped up by fossil fuels (oil) and as I have been pointing out for the last 7 or 8 years when the fuels become scarce (not "run out") we will be left to fend for ourselves with our manual labour on land with depleted fertility due to the chemicals we have been using to prop up the land/labour productivity. I think this is the real problem, and perhaps the "real" energy crisis. Have you ever come across any realistic, convincing, humane way of reducing the world's population???
[[[ Organic farming, with proper crop rotation, etc., has many long-term advantages for society. But ALL starvation in the last 100 years or so on this planet has been due to political problems leading to localized shortages. ("War" being merely "politics by less civilized means".) Stopping overpopulation in a humane way would slow down some uses of resources, unquestionably. But studies show that increasing people's access to basic human needs slows down population growth substantially! Less people would necessarily (in a world where everyone has free access to education) mean less graduates in each field. Thus, less population would also slow down the rate of increase of the overall level of human education. Less scientists, and less geniuses around to help us sort out our troubles. Of course, having babies and not educating them is even worse than not having them at all (if it can be avoided in a humane way), since the uneducated are unlikely to be much more than drains on society -- they probably won't invent the next great energy-saving device, although it's always possible. My point is that reducing overpopulation wouldn't necessarily be the panacea many people think it would be, even if it could be achieved humanely, which seems unlikely. Cherish every child by feeding it, clothing it, educating it, and letting its voice be heard. -- rdh ]]]
etc... So I thoroughly agree with some things (nuclear power and power station management problems, need for energy efficiency and cutting down on waste and frivolous uses, diet change), some things I am not sure about (nanotubes, mag-lev, Internet) because I do not have enough information etc. (my fault, I guess -- I'm willing to be convinced if pointers to info is given), and there are some things that I really find hard to take, like the oil problem which I think (as anyone who knows me already knows) is the really serious problem we face now. Financial meltdown is also a very serious possibility that we cannot ignore and could bring about the same result (or trigger) a massive energy crisis and it's consequences. At the same time I do not mean to belittle or de-emphasize the possibility of serious nuclear accidents. I simply cannot see the point of using the idea of trivializing the problems of the coming fossil fuel shortage to highlight the problem of possible nuclear disasters, as this article appears to do.
[[[ The financial "meltdown" is possible, but our money is all based on a false dream anyway -- that it has an intrinsic value, which it does not actually have (it's not even backed by its value in gold or silver anymore). People can't eat money. The oil problem has been growing steadily and continues to grow, but nothing catastrophic -- that is, on the scale of a meltdown at a nuclear power plant near a major population center -- is even possible, although oil spills are pretty nasty things. But compared to an airplane landing (accidentally OR on purpose) on a Spent Fuel Pool, or smashing into a Dry Storage Cask? Well, there really is no comparison. There are over 100 nuke plants around the country (over 430 around the world), and all are vulnerable to a wide variety of catastrophic failures. For example, Davis-Besse in Ohio nearly blew itself apart a few months ago. One of them is bound to catastrophically fail sooner or later, and the oil fires in Kuwait 10 years ago didn't produce nearly such an awful mess as Davis-Besse would have done.
In America alone, those 103 nuke plants produce about 10 tons of High Level Radioactive Waste every day. We have no place to put it, and each gram of that waste is enough for a very effective "dirty bomb" if the terrorists get their hands on it, or release it to the environment by attacking it where it sits.
-- rdh (Russell. D. Hoffman) ]]]
==============================================
From: goglesbee@att.net:
==============================================
From: goglesbee@att.net
To: downwinders@yahoogroups.com,
Gaidine Oglesbee <goglesbee@worldnet.att.net>
Cc: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Subject: 7-3-02 12:50 p.m.>> RE: FW: running out of oil (fwd)
Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2002 20:06:56 +0000
Message-Id: <20020703200657.LKEH19902.mtiwmhc22.worldnet.att.net@webmail.worldnet.att.net>
Thanks, Russell and Dorothy.
Great post which should be pondered and supported by all
list users of downwinders@yahoogroups.com.
NNP know-nukes, please do take note of the support that
is forwarded by the alliance to use as a valuable
resource at every opportunity. Know-nukes, keep on
hoarding as many of those so-called preventative
medicine pills and keep on making somebody rich by
buying any gieger counter just in case.
No one will escape the irreparable damage done by the
radiation monster the government allows to roam wherever
it pleases.
Gai Oglesbee, Independent Advocate
Retired, injured Hanford nuclear waste cleanup worker
and Northwest downwinder
==============================================
From: "Pat& Fred Frank" <pff@fix.net> (+ response):
==============================================
At 01:07 PM 7/3/02 , "Pat& Fred Frank" <pff@fix.net> wrote:
From: "Pat& Fred Frank" <pff@fix.net>
To: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Subject: Re: FW: running out of oil
Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2002 13:07:36 -0700
Mr. Hoffman:
Thank you for all the work you put forth on the NUC power issue. I
usually agree with your analysis. Your view of oil scam is probably about
right.
You seem to have a good understanding of mechanical systems. Are you an
engineer?
Fred Frank
Atascadero,Ca
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi,
Thanks very much for your letter (shown below).
Unfortunately I left college early, but then became a computer programmer and thus was introduced to "ruthlessly logical thinking", such as Boolean and other Assembler language tools. I worked for a bank for a while, where billions and billions of dollars went through my lines of code. (Correctly, of course, at least according to the accountants and auditors.)
Once you've developed things like ways to reduce a computer IF statement into AND, OR, XOR, ones, and zeros, you get a certain Zen peace with technology, because you know that with enough data and a fast enough processor, anything can be analyzed, and you're ultimate goal is to write the ultimate program, which can analyze every known tidbit of knowledge, and produce a logical conclusion to it all today, and a different conclusion tomorrow, when it has more data. [...]
Thanks again for writing!
Sincerely,
Russell Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
==============================================
From: Pdbsongs1@cs.com:
==============================================
From: Pdbsongs1@cs.com
Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2002 13:34:20 EDT
Subject: Fwd: FW: running out of oil
To: webhead@nuclearwitness.org, creedmail@cox.net, SNetherby@aol.com,
NCForum@aol.com, mfield1@san.rr.com, prcsandiego@igc.org,
laurah@environmentalhealth.org, CBGHirsch@aol.com, psrsm@psr.org,
beckers@thegrid.net, mollypj@yahoo.com, dlochbaum@ucsusa.org
Cc: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
Friends,
Forwarding a message from Russell Hoffman and his dialogue with another nuclear critic. I AGREE, and I like the dialogue.
Patricia Borchmann
==============================================
From: T <macami@earthlink.net> (+ response):
==============================================
From: T <macami@earthlink.net>
To: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Cc: Dorothy Tennov <tennov1@mchsi.com>
Subject: Re: FW: running out of oil
The eventual oil shortage problem may be alleviated by fuel cell technology.
NASA has developed a compact fuel cell that operates at ambient temperature,
and uses methanol instead of hydrogen (which has storage and transportation
problems). Methanol can be stored and distributed in the same manner as
gasoline. Methanol could be produced from biomass. Emissions would be only
water and carbon dioxide. This is an important step in making electric cars a
viable replacement for the oil using cars of today. This is of course assuming
that big (oil) business doesn't get in the way of progress.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2002/release_2002_94.html
and an article from 1997:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/97/fuelcel3.html
----------------------------------------------------------------
To: T <macami@earthlink.net>
From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Hi!
Thanks for your letter (shown below) and for the interesting links. Developing hydrogen storage techniques would probably be best in the long run, but methane storage and use is certainly an interesting possible intermediary step or additional option. Anything but coal, oil, and nuclear is pretty easy to justify from an environmental point of view. But economically, those three can hide their true costs to society much easier than most other energy sources can.
Sincerely,
Russell Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
================================================
(Note: in the version shown below, some typos have been fixed from the original):
================================================
cc:The New Forum <TheNewForum@yahoogroups.com>
At 11:29 AM 7/3/02 , Dorothy Tennov wrote:
Russell wrote: "And people will die, and those who argue about the finite
amount of oil will have a point, but it's not the main thing people should
be thinking about right now."
I am reminded of the Sherlock Holmes story about the dog that didn't bark,
about the profound significance of silence. Last night I caught Nightline's
coverage of the nuclear waste-Yucca Mt. issue. Never once did anyone, nor
can anyone in media or government, yet mention the increasingly obvious,
that the waste problem is more trouble than it's worth, and, therefore, the
only reasonable option is the one never whispered: to cease use of nuclear
power for any purpose.
Dorothy
----------
From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Date: Tue, 02 Jul 2002 23:00:09 -0700
To: Dorothy Tennov <tennov1@mchsi.com>
Subject: running out of oil
Hi!
Regarding the theory that we are quickly running out of oil, most writers
making that claim cite simplified mathematical equations, often to the
detriment of accuracy as to when this catastrophic event will occur (and it
will be catastrophic, and it will occur, don't get me wrong).
But in any event, I find it fascinating that most of them, when they list
alternatives, tend to pretended nuclear energy doesn't exist.
I like that, in theory, but it's utterly inaccurate, in practice, and a
major oversight.
Maybe in 50 years, or maybe in 250 years -- either way, if we don't solve
the nuclear problem, running out of oil will only be a relatively minor one of
many problems.
Some things we could do to quadruple (or whatever) the useful life of the
world's oil supply:
1) Develop nanotube technology, which can allow cost-effective cryogenic
transmission wires, which utilize superconductivity at vastly lower
friction losses (aka "line loses"). So you can generate the electricity
where the natural gas is, and transmit the power via electrons. Right now
billions of kilowatts of natural gas are burned off or even simply vented
to the atmosphere -- no one has a use for it.
2) CDs, books, videos, cassettes -- all useless trash in the Internet
age. Get rid of it. All everyone needs is their own personal RAID (aka,
automatically-backed up personal life-long hard drive). It doesn't even
have to be on-site.
3) Public transportation, yes, but more importantly: Electric trains, cars,
buses, and trucks. And grass cutters, leaf blowers, and -- ugh -- jet
skis. We can and must get rid of the infernal combustion engine! It
should be banned, especially anywhere it's cramped, especially if it also
gets dank and foggy, like when there's an "inversion layer", like downtown
San Francisco. If they banned combustion engines from San Francisco, other
places would do it too, when their citizens visit and see how nice it can
be.
(By the way, those new electric cars will kill thousands of pedestrians who
expect to be able to hear a vehicle approach, but they are so quiet, you
can't hear them at all sometimes (most of the time, actually).
4) Power-efficient motors, pumps, etc. Why don't we see efficiency as
being more important? Because energy is TOO CHEAP. Sorry, those who want
free gasoline for their SUVs, but gas should cost an arm and an
leg. Electrons in wires should be "too cheap to meter" -- but green,
too. It's possible. Huge hydroelectric dams may reshape the land, but so
did Chernobyl. Anyway, the world is full of much cleaner energy sources
than nuclear power. Did someone say Boulder Dam? It's already there; it
needs more efficient and modernized turbines.
5) Get people to vacation at home. Ban air travel except in
emergencies. Why? Because planes waste an enormous amount of fuel to do
what ground-based 400 mph mag-lev trains could do just as easily, just as
quickly, and vastly safer. (Our nation's current rail system doesn't have
even the archaic control system the airlines have, but it could.)
6) Convince America to eat at home more. Fast-food is killing this country
in so many ways. We drive to it, wasting gas and getting killed on the
highways for want of a hamburger. Consisting largely of beef, pork, and
chicken, it is some of the most uneconomical food on the planet, in terms
of the amount of waste which goes into producing food for X number of
people. And then there are the animal cruelty issues, which it suits
everyone involved just fine to forget about.
7) Etc.. There are lots of very big changes we could make as a nation to
get Big U.S. Oil and Foreign Oil off our backs. But many of the changes,
like off-shore wind farms, take the will of the people. And it's easy to
divide us and conquer us. Our own greedy corporations do it all the time.
Most of these running-out-of-oil people seems to just be complainers and
doomsayers, as far as I can tell. Maybe their math is close, but it seems
inaccurate to me, and it ignores the possibility that soon the nation might
be in ruins from several nuclear meltdowns. Terrorists covet the nuclear
plants, and tornados, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. can't miss every time.
America needs to come to grips with its energy mistakes. AND QUICKLY.
A lot of the running-out-of-oil people don't seem to grasp the financial
teeter-totter principles which keeps the whole mess going happily in the
hands of oil, coal, and nuclear and NOT in the hands of wind generators,
hydro dams, geothermal, biomass, etc. etc. etc..
How does it work? If the price of oil goes up too much, they can drop the
price of coal, delay refueling outages at nuclear plants, etc. to bring it
back in line. What's too much? It can be a number of things, including
whatever it takes to keep solar alternatives "just a little too expensive!"
What's too little? Is there such a thing? Yes. Many of the oil producers
are powerful American companies and they don't want the price to drop at
all, in fact, they want it to go up if there's a way to make more money
(they just don't want more tax dollars taken out of their oil money). But
just don't let it get so high as to enable renewables.
The nuclear power companies can compete at any price because they don't
have to pay for offsite deaths or nuclear waste problems (WE THE PEOPLE pay
for both of those, with our blood and with the blood of our loved ones, and
with our children's money, and their children's money). As with oil, the
nuclear power companies want the price of oil to be as high as possible
without enabling renewables, so they can charge a similar price per
delivered kilowatt or whatever of energy.
And guess what?
The nuclear power plants are piss-poor right now, and can hardly afford to
replace pumps, pipes, valves, etc. until they break. So what happens when
they inspect them or test them and find them faulty?
Ha! They don't inspect them, that's the way it works! My local plant was
just going back up to power this weekend, when -- poof -- some valves
failed and they had to SCRAM the reactor (they didn't use that term, but
that's what they did. It means, roughly, "emergency-drop the control rods
so fast the operators don't even know why it happened until afterwards").
The local newspaper CERTAINLY didn't use that term -- you can only SCRAM
the reactor so many times, before something's bound to break -- they don't
like to count (or publicize) SCRAMS.
Not only did they SCRAM the reactor, but they released pressure to the
atmosphere (again, not mentioned in the newspaper's version of
events). Here's a clip from the day's NRC report:
"All rods fully inserted into the core. Atmospheric steam dump valves
were used to maintained proper reactor coolant system temperature."
There are ALWAYS leaks between the primary coolant and the secondary
coolant (there are 18,000 tubes holding the two fluids apart [in the heat
exchanger], and something like 5% (or maybe it's as much as 25%) of
these tubes have already leaked and been plugged up).
So radioactive waste was vented to the atmosphere, AND the reactor was
SCRAMed, and they don't understand what the plant did. Quoting again from
the daily NRC report:
"Unexpectedly two additional steam dump bypass valves opened. When these
two additional steam dump bypass valves opened the first two open valves
initial (sic) started to close then they went full open...The licensee is
investigating why the two additional steam dump bypass valves opened."
Even if there's a catastrophic accident, most of the suffering would be
denied any payment, or would have to go through decades (yes, decades) of
court proceedings (setting several Supreme Court precedents along the way)
to get their money. Many will die in the meantime, without ever even
knowing who to seek restitution from, let alone, getting it.
So the nuclear power companies want the price of oil high, to increase
their profits, but not high enough to make renewable energy "the obvious
alternative", which it is, in reality, if this planet is to survive.
And people will die, and those who argue about the finite amount of oil
will have a point, but it's not the main thing people should be thinking
about right now.
Sincerely,
Russell Hoffman
rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
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(Dr. Dorothy Tennov is Russell Hoffman's mother)
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