I keep hearing different estimates as to when the oil reserves will run out (anywhere from 80 to 200 years by some estimates), but most seem to agree that one day the oil reserves will either run out, or at least become increasingly difficult to find and drill. Is mankind preparing for this day? Why haven’t we started a “Manhatten Project” to perfect fusion?
Based on the laws of supply and demand, oil will never ever ever ever run out. Based on consumption growth rates in the 1970’s, it was predicted that chrome would be gone in 95 years, nickel in 53 years, tungsten in 28 years, copper in 21 years, and tin in just 15 years. Now three of those deadlines have come and gone and there is still plenty of tungsten copper and tin to be mined. This is because as resources become scarcer, prices rise, and alternative sources of energy are found. You are also making another assumption that we have found every oil reserve on earth, when in fact their are known oil reserves just sitting undrilled because it isn’t economically sound for the companies to do so. So no need to prepare, it’ll never happen.
Personally I don’t believe the people who say it will just plain run out either, but I do realize that it will get harder and more expensive to find and drill. I think what I really wanted to ask is why there is not a giant rush or “push” by mankind (similar to the creation of the atom bomb)to come up with a easily renewable, clean source of energy (fusion is the one that comes to mind)?
Your example of the Manhattan project is an interesting choice. That was done to build a weapon before Germany did, the ultimate example of a “drop dead date.” No such thing exists for replacing oil energy sources but there are many projects for alternative energy, some already in use. Keep in mind there is not a big monolithic “they” that makes all the decisions in the world.
They’ve been trying to perfect controlled fusion since the 1950’s; so far all they’ve done is chop some zeros off the order of magnitude by which their test reactors fail to reach the breakeven point. Physicists have a cynical saying: “Fusion is the energy source of the future- and always will be”.
There was an interesting article in Wired two months ago about a guy who claims oil will never run out, because there is hundreds of times as much oil as most people predict. He says we are just tapping into the “surface” oil, which is constantly being replenished by deeper, larger reservoirs. He also predicts that there is a deep, hot, biosphere living off of this oil and it is much larger than the surface biosphere. Incidently, this is the guy who guessed correctly for what quasars were…
Here is the article.
Fuel’s Paradise
Fusion is neither renewable nor particularly clean. The fuel reserves for fusion are vast, so renewable is probably not an issue, but cleanliness certainly is. All fusion processes create a certain level of radioactive waste. Perhaps it will be a manageable amount, perhaps we will develop some technology to deal with it, but at the moment a fusion reactor would be about the same as a fission reactor in terms of need for protection and containment.
There are vast reserves of coal in the earth, containing much more energy than all the oil reserves combined. But coal is ecologically disastrous to mine and to burn.
The long term answer is, of course, to reduce our consumption of energy to what is truly renewable, which ultimately boils down to solar energy, although it may be disguised as hydroelectric, tidal, or wind power. But that is much more a societal problem than it is a technological one.
Fusion produces radioactive waste? This is news.
The basic fusion process, merging hydrogen nuclei to create helium nuclei, seems to be clean. But then again, theoretically if I burn gasoline in my car the only results are water and carbon dioxide. The reality is different: nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons, soot, etc. The combustion process in my automobile engine is not perfect, and the high temperatures involved cause side reactions to occur.
The radioactivity in fusion reactions comes from similar effects, scaled up to nuclear processes. Any time you have nuclei colliding some of them are going to collide with other than their intended targets. Some of these collisions will result in the formation of radioactive isotopes. These isotopes then need to be disposed of, contained, or otherwise provided for.
IIRC, the issue with radioactive waste from fusion was tritium. Part of the problem is that tritium, being hydrogen, migrates through or into anything you try to contain it with (again, IIRC). This seems reasonable: strip just one electron from it, and it’s much, much smaller than any other atom.
The fusion reaction will cause bombardment of the containment vessels, the equipment used to collect the energy, etc. This stuff will become radioactive. Eventually it will have to be replaced and disposed of.
A Fission plant has two types of waste: “High Level” waste, which is the spent fuel rods. They are extremely radioactive, but they don’t mass much, and can be re-processed as in breeder reactors. “Low Level” wastes are things like tongs, gloves, lab coats, and other things that become radioactive through exposure to the environment. “Low Level” wastes make up the vast bulk of waste from fission plants, and a lot of that will still be created in fusion plants.
The marketplace will take care of of us if oil begins to be scarce. We have plenty of alternatives to oil, it’s just that they are more expensive. As the price rises, several things will happen: It will stimulate futher R&D in alternative energy, it will stimulate conservation measures, it will cause people to move to alternative energy, and it will stimulate exploration for more oil. If the price continues to rise, it will start to pass thresholds where alternatives are cheaper, and its use will stop for that application.
A good example of the market in action was the recent price spike in Gasoline. After a short lag time, sales of fuel-efficient cars began to rise, and sales of SUV’s and cars with big engines started to decline.
I’ve posted a few times on this before. To summarize, we really do have plenty of energy, regardless of what Peter Jennings and USA Today say. The real quetion is just whether we can afford the pollution (SOx, NOx, CO, CO2, O3, HAP’s, VOC’s, fine particulates (PM 2.5), heavy metals, etc.) that goes along with it. We will not run out of fossil energy this century, and probably not the next. But we may not want to use the resources we have due to the environmental damage.
We won’t have to do anything about energy or environmental problems if George W. Bush is elected because they officially won’t exist!
That aside, you can always improve the environment and energy efficiency. IMO we are a pretty energy wasteful country, but our environment is not nearly as bad as the TV (which never lies) would lead us to believe.
One could counter the quoted opinion by saying if Gore is elected, environmental and energy regulations and policy will rely on junk and made-up pseudoscience touted by liberal special interests, implemented by “Kennedy Cult” employees staffing the DOE and EPA. IMO though.
Um, Anthracite, do you just happen to have a vested interest in this question? :).
Seriously, the trouble isn’t really with supply per se, it’s the lag between price spikes and changes in behavior. Here in New York we’re experiencing pretty serious price spikes in our fossil-fuel-powered electricity (my bill was up almost 50% in July over last year, yet this year’s July was one of the coolest on record). That inspires me to be more careful about burning lights and keeping my A/C to a minimum, which is good. The inconvenient part is that it still isn’t enough to keep my bill down, and it may take several years before either new power plants are approved to meet the demand, or enough people and businesses conserve enough energy to have an effect on prices. (Plus, I’m ignoring the troubles low-income people may have paying their bills.)
I agree with Anthracite that a lot of the environmental damage is exaggerated; self-righteousness is perhaps the most immutable cause of blindness, especially to considerations lying outside one’s particular monomania. I’m not endorsing a return to filthy coal-burning plants, but the public’s willingness to swallow whatever some half-informed nitwit screams is A Terrible Risk To Health is awfully depressing.
Actually, I was trying for humor when I countered the Bush comment. But IMO what I said was somewhat true. The DOE and EPA both have been largely staffed by pseudo and junk-science liberal activists during the Clinton reign of terror. Under Bush and Reagan, the DOE and EPA were staffed by corporate executives and energy robber barons who let things go wild in the opposite way. Neither situation was/is very good.
One minor point - there isn’t really a return to coal plants per se, as they never left. Coal plants still contribute between 50-58% of our electricity, depending on what metric is used.
Unless of course you are just talking about the “filthy” plants, which, like nun beating, is difficult for anyone to support. 
I once again recommend the PBS Frontline special on energy which ran a couple months ago. I thought it was pretty well balanced overall, in fact surprisingly well balanced for being on PBS. Did have one funny part - the environmental activist who couldn’t pronounce “nuclear” properly, yet was a supposed “expert” in the field.
[Homer Simpson]“It’s pronounced ‘nuke-YOU-lure’.”[/Homer Simpson]