Will the internet survive energy contraction?

[soylent]

The US has enough fissile material in spent LWR fuel and weaponsgrade Pu to make ~50 GW of IFR style fast reactors(specific fissile inventory of ~10 tonnes/GW). With metal fuel and with few years of cool down before reprocessing with electrorefining a 20-30 year doubling time is achievable. That's 86-130 years to go from 50 GW installed capacity to 1 TW installed capacity; tack on a couple of decades to build the first 50 GW.

That's assuming no additional natural uranium is mined to start fast reactors(at a tails assay of 0.2% you need ~2000 tonnes natural U to start an IFR style fast reactor) and assuming existing LWRs stop producing more "waste" that can be used to start up fast reactors.

That's just the US centric point of view. Russia, France and Japan could do it to. Sweden, Germany, Belgium, India and a number of eastern European countries have parts of the puzzle but various serious impediments(either strong ideological opposition, or not a lot of spent fuel, or not the knowledge base).

That's also ignoring molten salt reactors. With radial and axial thorium salt blankets and operating in the thermal spectrum an isobreeder could need as little as 1 tonne/GW of U-233 or U-235. You would only need ~200 tonnes natural U to start up such a reactor, which would then breed just enough, or a tiny bit more U-233 to run indefinitely with only thorium inputs. Current rates of uranium mining suffice to install 250 GW of such reactors each year and uranium mining is rapidly increasing to meet demand once weapons U is consumed, with uranium reasonably assured resource increasing just as quickly.

 

[excaza]

Not to mention that nearly 80% of France's power comes from nuclear reactors, and there's strong support in Japan for the same. Sorta shoots TFain's ridiculous "can't use renewables for industry" canard in the head.

But again, that's already been pointed out to him.

 

[TFian]

Because it's what you've done all through the thread. Hence the sarcasm from Roboramma. It would be nice if you didn't, but there doesn't seem to be much likelihood of that.

Yeah he already explained it

 

[TFian]

And I responded: from renewable energy sources like hydro, nuclear, solar, and wind. That's why we were talking about hydro, remember? Future computer-factories will be powered by (say) the hydro that's currently---right now, today, even though fossil fuel is still cheap---producing 20% of the world's electricity.

Solar has many problems. it’s intermittent (the sun doesn’t always shine), solar power can’t provide the always-on power that we’re used to. So, every time you put up a solar power installation you also need to build or pull in a dirty fossil fuel to back it up. That’s not so clean, is it? And it’s wasteful too, since you basically have to keep those backup plants running on standby 24/7.

Second, solar power is also expensive, not only because you need all those other plants just sitting around as back up, but also because making solar panels requires fancy-dancy materials like rare-earth minerals and costs money for many other reasons. Even with government subsidies, solar power still can’t compete today with coal rates.

Finally, even if you could store solar power at night or ship it over from sunny areas like Arizona to places that need the juice like New York City, the battery and grid technology is so far in the future that solar power won’t be able to scale up in any meaningful time frame to replace coal and other fossil fuels.

Wind has pretty much the same problems, albeit not focused on the sun. Renewables and other alternatives won't scale up.

 

[TFian]

The topic is the Internet and energy contraction. Let's keep that in mind.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: jhunter1163

Sorry about that, I won't derail the thread again and offend certain sensibilities.

 

[TFian]

OK, you're the manager of a 125MW, five-turbine power plant. Power is worth $1/kWh so this thing is earning the boss $3M/day. One of the turbines breaks down (it needs some welding; the welding machine draws 50kW). The plant's power output drops to 100MW and the revenues drops by $600,000/day. The boss calls you up and tells you to fix it. Do you:

a) Tell him that "it's kind of a non issue" since these repairs "are done" with petro feedstocks
b) Tell him that "theoretically" it can be repaired with its own power, but you'd rather live on a farm
c) Do the repair with some of the actually-available-right-in-front-of-you power

I'm not sure what you mean by a) Are you saying I think they repair themselves? If I had the petro energy available, of course I'd repair the power plant.

But to answer your question, it depends on what the situation is. Do I have to stay there? If so, by all means, I'd try choice c), or find some external power to repair it.

If I had a choice though, I'd pick b) since my job probably wouldn't be stable anyway.

 

[drkitten]

I'm not sure what you mean by a) Are you saying I think they repair themselves? If I had the petro energy available, of course I'd repair the power plant.

What if you have non-petro energy available?

To arc-weld, for example, takes lots of electricity, which can be generated by any of several means. If you're next to a big hydroelectric plant, you don't need 'petro energy' as you can use the energy generated by the plant itself.

But to answer your question, it depends on what the situation is. Do I have to stay there?

Yes. Its a hydroelectric dam; those are notoriously immobile.

If so, by all means, I'd try choice c), or find some external power to repair it.

If I had a choice though, I'd pick b) since my job probably wouldn't be stable anyway.

Because, of course, no one would have a use for the power generated by the dam....

Wow. Just wow.

 

[ben m]

Solar has many problems. it’s intermittent ... expensive ... can’t compete today with coal rates ... won’t be able to scale up

So it sounds like you're retracting the "no one will have a single joule" nonsense, as well as the "there's not even enough power to fix your broken turbine" and "you can't possibly run a computer fab". Can we agree on that?

All you are saying above is that renewable power is more expensive than fossil power. Fine! Everyone agrees on that.

Intermittent? Fine, I can use intermittent power to run a factory. I can use intermittent power to repair a dam, run a solar-panel factory, make optical fiber, and make microchips. Those are all the things you were saying were impossible without fossil fuels.

You may not know that many places are already on intermittent power. New York City, for example, only has the generation/transmission capacity for normal domestic loads. When there are external events---a spike in AC usage, or failure of a transmission line or power plant---Con Edison calls up its large-scale commercial users and tells them to start voluntary brownouts.

Scaling up? Are you trying to scale up to maintain 2010 US suburban lifestyles? That is indeed hard. Scaling up to maintain warm-climate urban-pedestrian lifestyles is not too hard. But this thread isn't about those lifestyles, this thread is about whether future society is so desperately energy-constrained, down to the last few watts, that computers (like horseshoes, and glass, and radios, and so on) pass into disuse. That doesn't require scaling-up at all, because we already have two terawatts of renewables right now.

 

[ben m]

But to answer your question, it depends on what the situation is. Do I have to stay there? If so, by all means, I'd try choice c), or find some external power to repair it.

Good! Then the dam is repaired, without petro energy. So your earlier statement "we won't have hydro in the future, because you need fossils to maintain it" is FALSE. By plugging the welder into the working turbines, you just maintained a hydro plant using only hydro power.

If I had a choice though, I'd pick b) since my job probably wouldn't be stable anyway.

Good! Then you're fired. The boss (who, remember, has $600,000 a day on the line) brings in a non-druid foreman, who fixes the turbine using only hydro power.

Either way, the turbine is now fixed.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Moral of the story: when you need to depend on your workers, don't hire druids.

 

[TFian]

Good! Then the dam is repaired, without petro energy. So your earlier statement "we won't have hydro in the future, because you need fossils to maintain it" is FALSE. By plugging the welder into the working turbines, you just maintained a hydro plant using only hydro power.

Sure, of course you can. I just don't see any future energy contracted scenario where people devote the hydro power to create computers, rather than power their homes.

Good! Then you're fired. The boss (who, remember, has $600,000 a day on the line) brings in a non-druid foreman, who fixes the turbine using only hydro power.

Either way, the turbine is now fixed.

Fine by me, I prefer the peaceful tranquility of a farmers life anyway.

 

[TFian]

Moral of the story: when you need to depend on your workers, don't hire druids.

I'm not a druid though.

And what does this have to do with the topic at hand?

 

[Garrison0fMars]

Moral of the story: when you need to depend on your workers, don't hire druids.

Or for anything science related...

 

[Garrison0fMars]

I'm not a druid though.

Aren't you a follower of the "Grand Archdruid" though?

 

[TFian]

Aren't you a follower of the "Grand Archdruid" though?

No I am not.

 

[ben m]

Sure, of course you can.

Once again, and I want to emphasize this as much as possible: you were wrong, or confabulating, or something, during the whole "you won't have one joule" phase of the argument.

I just don't see any future energy contracted scenario where people devote the hydro power to create computers, rather than power their homes.

First: you don't get allocated Ten Free Watts and then decide what to do with them. "Nine for making coffee, one for the electric razor---oh, darn, nothing left for the computer!" No, the power company has all of the power. They want to sell it to you, OR the computer factory, OR whoever will buy it at the highest price. Understand? If you want that nine-watt coffeemaker, you had better value that coffee at least as highly, in cash dollars per watt, as the computer company values their computer-manufacturing capability.

Then, back to UNITS MATTER: it takes maybe one watt, averaged over the year, to build a computer, and another watt to run it. Can you show me a household-energy-budget where you have something else which can actually make use of that one watt? It's not a drill, or a fridge, or a kettle, or a fan, or a horseshoe-nail-forge, or a two-way radio, or anything of much use other than a computer, or maybe an LED reading light. (An incandescent night light is about 4W.) It's a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of energy. Tiny. Do you understand that a watt is a tiny amount of energy?

 

[Garrison0fMars]

First: you don't get allocated Ten Free Watts and then decide what to do with them. "Nine for making coffee, one for the electric razor---oh, darn, nothing left for the computer!" No, the power company has all of the power.

Well, this is only partially true if we're talking about Iceland. Landsvirkjun, the company that generates most of the hydroelectric power there, is state owned. So it wouldn't be the same dynamic as it would be with a fully privatized energy company. I believe the Hoover Dam is publicly owned as well.

It does however, pretty much provide all the power it needs to run Iceland's industrial economy. The ArchStaphInfection is wrong, period.

 

[excaza]

Solar has many problems. it’s intermittent (the sun doesn’t always shine), solar power can’t provide the always-on power that we’re used to. So, every time you put up a solar power installation you also need to build or pull in a dirty fossil fuel to back it up. That’s not so clean, is it? And it’s wasteful too, since you basically have to keep those backup plants running on standby 24/7.

Renewables have never been presented as a baseline solution. That's what nuclear is for.

Second, solar power is also expensive, not only because you need all those other plants just sitting around as back up, but also because making solar panels requires fancy-dancy materials like rare-earth minerals and costs money for many other reasons.

Factually incorrect. Most high-output solar plants do not use photovoltaics, they use mirrors to heat up some sort of working fluid and use it to drive a turbine. All you need for that is a mirror and something with a higher boiling point than water. Nothing fancy there. Most PV panels are made from some sort of doped silicon, the second most abundant material in Earth's crust. An argument from you that isn't based in a lack of knowledge would be a refreshing change of pace.

Even with government subsidies, solar power still can’t compete today with coal rates.

So? It's not intended to.

Finally, even if you could store solar power at night or ship it over from sunny areas like Arizona to places that need the juice like New York City, the battery and grid technology is so far in the future that solar power won’t be able to scale up in any meaningful time frame to replace coal and other fossil fuels.

Factually incorrect. Billions of dollars are being invested in revamping our grid, because it would collapse in the next few decades otherwise. You didn't even hear about energy storage until I brought it up earlier in the thread, which you dismissed with your trademark "it won't be done by the end of civilization so why bother." An argument from you that isn't based in a lack of knowledge would be a refreshing change of pace.

Wind has pretty much the same problems, albeit not focused on the sun. Renewables and other alternatives won't scale up.

Yes, they do, but it's not worth the investment right now.

 

[Garrison0fMars]

Solar has many problems.

I guess you ignored my earlier articles disproving the notion we can't run an industrial society on renewables, eh? It's not a matter of "never", it's a matter of "When". http://www.energybulletin.net/node/52015

Plus, you do realize we can reduce our energy capacity to match what renewables can produce, yes? Europe only uses 1/3rd of our energy, yet has a higher living standard in many aspects than we do. Keep that in mind..

 

[Garrison0fMars]

Most PV panels are made from some sort of doped silicon, the second most abundant material in Earth's crust.

What, you never heard of peak silicon? We are so f***ed. Where are we going to get enough silicon to meet demand? Everything we do -- our entire society is based on silicon. We'll collapse without it. Time to go back to the farm and establish an agrarian society! /sarcasm