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  1. Greed is everywhere and we also know that Big Oil companies are overstating reserves on their books so that they can keep on drilling. (I don’t recall the reason why, but there is a correlation between the stated book reserves and the amount of oil a company is allowed to drill out).

    This practice hurts nuclear.

    At the rate we are consuming oil, we could face a crisis sooner than we think. This is a lie that must be uncovered.

  2. One of the things a lot of people don’t seem to understand about nuclear energy is that it is a disruptive business model. It’s a lot like how Google upended Microsoft’s business dominance of the email market with Google Apps with a different business model. Having your own onsite mail server, two on-call staff techs to service it, heavy fat email clients that users don’t know how to manage well and need tech help for all the time was an eventual recipe for failure when put up against a system that changes all of that.

    The ability to do more with less would shrink the business volume of the total energy market should nuclear gain even more market share. Maybe some economists would argue the commodity fuel intensive energy market is better for the economy, but if everyone had lower energy bills, there’d be more money to go elsewhere in the economy as well. Apparently enough Americans feel that even a slight bump of $40-50 extra per month is enough to make a big difference in their household budget.

    I’m not saying a nuclear dominated energy market would necessarily mean lower energy bills, but it would probably be in a better realm of possibility compared to other energy strategies.

    This makes me think of a facebook friend who said she loves her new Chevy Volt and hasn’t filled it up with gas since she got it last December. Instead, a 4 hour charge for $1.40 takes her 40 miles. Some people have panned the Volt, but the results of a happy customer speak for themselves. I just wonder how long it will take the oil companies will respond when millions of car owners have “gas optional” cars that only require a fill up about 8 times or less a year.

    1. And that beautiful Chevy Volt was probably charged from the electricity of a coal fired plant. Very green indeed. Batteries are a store of energy, not a source.

      1. Daniel, this particular Chevy Volt I’m referencing is in Southern California which like the rest of California has only a small portion <10% of coal generated electricity. However, that's beside the point. Saying batteries are not a source of energy is a moot point, so is gasoline.

        The point of dinging a Chevy Volt or any other electric or hybrid plugin type of car as not being green or green enough for not having the ultimate green energy supply behind it doesn't hold any weight. Nor does it bolster the argument for nuclear very much.

        If we know the CO2 grams per KWh for a given electrical supply, the total KWh's consumed per mile for a Volt or other electric, we'd then have the figure of CO2 grams per mile. Someone has already calculated this and found out electric cars still come out ahead in grams of CO2 per mile compared to gas cars even when the electric supply is mostly coal.

        Cars like the Volt show that with the right engineering approach we can have the benefits of an electric car for the most part while augmenting its weakness in range and charge time with a small gas engine on the side. Until better battery technology comes along, I'm sure this is going to be the most practical approach for quite a long time for green cars.

        If consumers shift their demands in the type of cars they want to buy and those cars turn out to have 100% or better milage than their previously owned vehicle, in just 25 years we would see a dramatic shift in the population of gas guzzling vehicles on the road. As to how the oil companies will respond to a shift in demand because of more efficient vehicles is yet to be seen.

        Now that gas prices are high, I’ve spoken to a few fairly new truck owners (who really didn’t need a truck actually) who are very unhappy about the gas bill. On the other hand quite a few hybrid owners I’ve spoken to couldn’t be more pleased with themselves. Only time will tell how this all plays out but one thing is certain, their is a definite higher demand for fuel efficient, hybrid, and electric vehicles.

    2. $50 per month times roughly 100 million households ~ $5 BILLION per month or $60 Billion per year.

      That is not small change. It would be enough to increase the total revenue of the fast food industry by 50%.

  3. Well it may be off topic, but its really time to wake up, put your egos aside and effing take some responibility for the poisons you are promoting.

    See if you can get through 19 minutes of the reality that you dont effing hear about on the 9 o clock effing news.
    This is JAPAN, on the ground level. This is whats going down, it may not effect your family now but we are headed for the apocalypse. is your personal success really worth the suffering that will undoubtedly be the long term result?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5p283KZGa8&feature=youtu.be

    WAKE UP!

    1. Joe- You are a simpleton, and ignorant simpleton at that, who’s ignorance is only exceeded by the size of your ego. What makes you think that anyone that reads or participates in these threads cares what and other stupid people that don’t have a grasp of the fundamentals of this subject think?

      Don’t you get it? Your ignorance is not equal to our knowledge. You have mistaken the right to air your opinions like everyone else, with the belief that they are of any value. Let me disabuse you of that notion: just because you can find others who’s understanding of this subject is as deficient as your own, does not make any of you worth paying attention to.

      The only coin that has any value in the debate over the benefits and potential dangers of nuclear energy are scientific fact. Those that ignore this and make the wrong decisions, be they individuals or authorities, are the ones that are at fault if the outcomes of those choices are wrong, not nuclear per se.

      Thus the only one here that needs to wake up is you.

  4. Daniel says:
    February 25, 2012 at 8:10 AM
    “Greed is everywhere and we also know that Big Oil companies are overstating reserves on their books so that they can keep on drilling.”

    What is your problem with greed? Where do you think your Iphone came from and practically every other invention that makes our lives so comfortable?

    1. Overstating is an understatement. I just put a model together that puts global proved reserves in November 2011 at 666 Gbbl, and 698 Gbbl yet to be found. This is a total reserve of 1364 Gbbl. EIA reported global proven reserves at 1341 Gbbl in 2009.

      The definition of Proved Reserves is:
      “are the estimated quantities of all liquids defined as crude oil, which geological and engineering data demonstrate with reasonable certainty to be recoverable in future years from known reservoirs under existing economic and operating conditions.

      Reservoirs are considered proved if economic producibility is supported by actual production or conclusive formation test (drill stem or wire line), or if economic producibility is supported by core analyses and/or electric or other log interpretations. The area of an oil reservoir considered proved includes: (1) that portion delineated by drilling and defined by gas — oil and/or gas — water contacts, if any; and (2) the immediately adjoining portions not yet drilled, but which can be reasonably judged as economically productive on the basis of available geological and engineering data. In the absence of information on fluid contacts, the lowest known structural occurrence of hydrocarbons is considered to be the lower proved limit of the reservoir.”

      If you look at the countries that are the worst offenders, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia combined state proved reserves that are 84% of what my model shows. The amount of oil that they tell their people they have is a social promise, and is used as a tool to keep their populations in check so the dictators and kings can sleep at night. We are going to have a some very interesting years coming up.

      BTW the total available oil for production in 1859 was 2640 Gbbl.

  5. DV8XL,
    You sound a little liverish today but thanks for trying to educate Joe Sixpack!

    I don’t worry about anti-nuclear hysterics as they will come around when fossil fuels get expensive

    1. “they will come around when fossil fuels get expensive”

      What do you mean “when”? It’s already “did”.

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