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[Leafsnail]

Well... it's meant to be about 200 years worth of currently economically accessible uranium.  That'd clearly go down if we started relying on it more, but then again, it's really just a matter of digging deeper and deeper if we want more...

Although come to think of it, the uranium grid wouldn't really solve the transport problems.  It's more the transportability of oil that makes it really useful (unless we're gonna be having miniature reactors in our cars...).  I guess they'd be electric cars, but wouldn't they just continue to be powered from coal fired stations, thus releasing even more greenhouse gases?

We'll be growing coffee in West Virginia and sugar cane in Indiana. Goodbye trade imbalance, hello export crops. Meanwhile our biggest trade rival, China? Their entire industrial base is underwater.

Its all part of the vast right-wing conspiracy.

Well, if it got to that point, there'd be too many hurricanes for anyone to care .

[Nikov]

Well... it's meant to be about 200 years worth of currently economically accessible uranium.  That'd clearly go down if we started relying on it more, but then again, it's really just a matter of digging deeper and deeper if we want more...

Key words. I've been in a gold mine that contained gold no longer 'economically accessible' after being shut down in the 1910's. You could literaly see gold-bearing minerals in strands as thick as pencils in the wall. It actually was a richer deposit than most active mines in Africa, but the cost of labor in the US ruled out operation. Now, surprise surprise, they're considering reopening it. Not to mention new technologies reveal new deposits.

Kind of odd how this thread about politics went to economics, where usually threads about economics are turning into threads about politics.

[Zrk2]

Nuclear power is the only way to go. Oil will run out eventually, 'Green' sources are unreliable... The only other possibility is Hydrogen Fuel Cells.

And, well, not like nuclear energy is sustainable either .

By the time you get onto the time scale where nuclear power is 'unsustainable' technology will have developed far enough that we should definitely have other options available. Following this logic humanity itself is unsustainable.

Well... it's meant to be about 200 years worth of currently economically accessible uranium.  That'd clearly go down if we started relying on it more, but then again, it's really just a matter of digging deeper and deeper if we want more...

Key words. I've been in a gold mine that contained gold no longer 'economically accessible' after being shut down in the 1910's. You could literaly see gold-bearing minerals in strands as thick as pencils in the wall. It actually was a richer deposit than most active mines in Africa, but the cost of labor in the US ruled out operation. Now, surprise surprise, they're considering reopening it. Not to mention new technologies reveal new deposits.

Kind of odd how this thread about politics went to economics, where usually threads about economics are turning into threads about politics.

Exactly my point. Capitalism drives technological development, and technological development leads to newer, more efficient technology, making 'economically inviable' resources suddenly viable.

[Leafsnail]

By the time you get onto the time scale where nuclear power is 'unsustainable' technology will have developed far enough that we should definitely have other options available. Following this logic humanity itself is unsustainable.

Well, running out of uranium in sensible places.  Yeah, we can keep digging deeper and deeper and deeper (although we don't have any real way to locate it far down at the moment), but it'd start to get to the point where extracting it uses more energy than you get out of it (not to mention the waste products...).

And it isn't really a replacement for oil, unless you're mounting reactors on cars...

[Phmcw]

Nuclear power is the only way to go. Oil will run out eventually, 'Green' sources are unreliable... The only other possibility is Hydrogen Fuel Cells.

That's an annoying misconception. There is no accessible hydrogen in nature. Hydrogen fuel cells are only a green battery, not an energy source.

And it isn't really a replacement for oil, unless you're mounting reactors on cars...

Or use hydrogen fuel cell.
1) Hydrolyze water
2)use hydrogen to power car
3)
4)profit.

But fuel cell need platinum, and there is not nearly enough platinum on hearth to replace all car.

There are also breeder reactor, that will solve the problem.

[Leafsnail]

Hydrogen fuel cells have the rather nasty problem of being ridiculously inefficient, though.  I mean, normal batteries convert the energy far better, which is probably the way we'll end up going (more weight-efficient batteries).

That's an annoying misconception. There is no accessible hydrogen in nature. Hydrogen fuel cells are only a greed battery, not an energy source.

Before Nikov responds, I should point out we're talking "On the sun" levels of inaccessibility here.  It's not an energy source.

[Nikov]

Actually it doesn't have to involve digging deeper at all. When a businessman considers if he should build a mine, he goes through a list of expenses. How much will it cost for a rail line, how much for machinery, how much for the buildings, how much for the electric, how much for the enviromental impact studies, how much for attracting the workers, how much donated to local towns for goodwill, how much will they tax me, how much will the state tax me, how much will the fed tax me.

Then he compares that to how much ore is on site, how many years it will take to extract, and how much he can sell that for. Total revenue - total expenses > 0? Economical to extract.

There are countless deposits considered 'uneconomical' not because they're half a mile below the surface but simply because there's not enough there to pay off the initial investment of machinery and infrastructure at the current prices and tax rates. Fields of iron ore, thousands of tons each, sit untouched in Minnesota simply because it takes millions of tons to pay off the investment.

Curiously I've read something about the moon being an excellent source of hydrogen isotopes for fusion. On the sun my ass!

[Earthquake Damage]

RE Hydrogen

Surely the yield from fusion far exceeds the expenditure necessary to extract hydrogen from water.  Or do the rest of you know something I don't?

[Phmcw]

Wait, what are you all talking about "fusion"? I was talking about fuel cell.

Fusion would be awesome, but is nowhere near our reach. It may be in 50 years, and digging up the rarest element needed for it  from the moon would be cool beyond words.

Ok, now I understand : Nikov, we are speaking of fuel cell, not of fusion. A fuel cell just burn hydrogen, reachable fusion fuse tritium nuclei. Gathering the hydrogen for fuel cell on the moon wouldn't be efficient, and there wouldn't be enough for fuel cell (but it may work for fusion.)

[Earthquake Damage]

Wait, what are you all talking about "fusion"? I was talking about fuel cell.

Derp.  Nikov (anyone else?) brought up fusion and I apparently lost track of the conversation.

[Nikov]

Oh, I know the difference between a fuel cell and fusion. There's quite an order of magnitude between the two. But say we use fusion power (or burning cow farts, fat people on treadmills, I don't care) to charge our hydrogen fuel cell cars? When you need a portable power source, its worth the inefficiency making that source for the efficiency concentrated in what you actually put in the vehicle. Worth it, of course, so long as the market forces are allowed to play. If electricity from a grid is cheap and refined fossil fuels are expensive, you can 'waste' a little electricity as the premium paid for affordable portable fuel cells.

I'm not partial to fuel cells or fusion or anything in particular, but I'm just pointing out there's nothing flawed about fuel cells if the cost meets the value in a certain scenario.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Although come to think of it, the uranium grid wouldn't really solve the transport problems.  It's more the transportability of oil that makes it really useful (unless we're gonna be having miniature reactors in our cars...).  I guess they'd be electric cars, but wouldn't they just continue to be powered from coal fired stations, thus releasing even more greenhouse gases?

Actually, the electric cars we had about a decade ago had engines that used sufficiently less energy to achieve higher performance than normal combustion engines that they end up cheaper and cleaner to operate overall. That was a decade ago. The only problem with electric cars are current batteries: they're low capacity, expensive, and slow to recharge. The rest of the car's all sorted out, we just need better batteries for it to become widely feasible.

Hydrogen is a fucking terrible storage medium: it's extremely expensive to produce (in terms of energy), you don't get back nearly as much energy no matter how you use it (barring something miraculous, like fusion that doesn't require more energy to maintain than can be harvested), the methods of getting it back are either pointless (simple combustion) or obscenely expensive in and of themselves (fuel cells), and it's physically impossible to even match the storage capacity of modern batteries with it (you know, those things that are still too low-capacity to be feasible? Yeah, they have a higher capacity than the amount of hydrogen that is physically possible to safely contain in a car (which is to say, under ideal conditions that aren't in and of themselves physically possible to achieve)). I wouldn't even call hydrogen fuel cells a pipe dream; they're more like a smokescreen to divert funds away from improving actual solutions.

[Leafsnail]

Oh, there's nothing wrong with electric cars.  It's just that their power will have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere seems pretty likely to just be more fossil fuels.

[Siquo]

Oh, there's nothing wrong with electric cars.  It's just that their power will have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere seems pretty likely to just be more fossil fuels.

Nope: Less fossil fules.

Fossil-fuel-powered electric cars (electricity from fossil-fuel electric plants) are more efficient than normal gasoline cars (if you consider the whole well-to-wheel process). And the pollution isn't concentrated in populous areas (like cities). When looking at any energy source, you must incorporate the energy cost of every step. Uranium comes out pretty badly in that aspect, it costs a lot to mine, transport, enrich, burn, and store the waste.

[Leafsnail]

More as in "In addition to the stuff we're already using".  Like, if I ask for "more water" after a meal, it doesn't necessarily mean I want a bigger glass than I had the first time around .