Price of oil went up $10 today - should we go nuclear/renewable before it's too late?

breadmonkey

I know this will probably generate a huge amount of discussion that will most likely have been previously been teased out in this forum but this is a bit of a shock:

Story here

Oil price soars as US woes mount
Oil rigs in California
Oil prices have jumped amid increasing production worries

The price of oil has made a record jump to nearly $139 a barrel, amid reports it could reach $150 by July because of rising demand and political tension.

Crude oil in New York gained more than $10 to hit $138.54.

The spike in oil prices coincided with a dollar slump, plummeting share prices on Wall Street and US unemployment suffering its biggest rise in 20 years.

Correspondents say oil prices were also pushed up by Israeli threats to strike on Iran over its nuclear programme.

Light crude set a high of $139.12 in after-hours trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange after hitting $138.54 at the regular session.

Crude oil hit a record high of $135 a barrel last month.


If Iran continues its nuclear weapons program, we will attack it
Shaul Mofaz
Israeli transport minister

Israeli minister threatens Iran
Analysis: Growing talk of attack

The BBC's North America Editor, Justin Webb, says the gloomy figures are a reminder to all Americans that the nation faces serious economic problems and perhaps even a recession.

Oil prices were given a boost on a report by Morgan Stanley analyst Ole Slorer, who suggested the price of oil could rocket to $150 as early as July.

Some analysts have suggested that prices would reach as high as $200 a barrel during the next 18 months.

The price of the benchmark light, sweet crude oil has already seen rapid gains over the past months and has gained more than 40% over the year.

It is more than twice the price it was a year ago.

The market was also responding to a statement by Israel's transport minister that an attack on Iran was "unavoidable" after sanctions to prevent Tehran from developing its nuclear capability had failed.

Investors hedging oil against the weak dollar has also pushed up the price of oil.

Fears that workers at Chevron Corporation in Nigeria may go on strike and subsequently disrupt production and access to oil are also adding to market jitters.

Sustained demand?

Oil prices had recorded losses earlier this weak after doubts about future demand took hold of the market.

Both the Indian and Malaysian governments have raised fuel prices in order to cut the subsidies they provide.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), an adviser to 27 industrialised countries, had said it could lower its 2008 demand growth projection further, after having already more than halved it to 1.03 million barrels per day.

But several analysts have proven bullish about future prospects.

Harry Tchilinguirian, oil analyst at BNP Paribas in London, said demand would be sustained by expanding Asian nations.

"World oil demand growth is still accounted mostly by China, the Middle East and Latin America - and through the summer, there is no reason to expect a material slowdown in demand growth in these areas," he said.

Nuclear concerns

Despite widespread international concern over Iran's nuclear programme, Tehran insists it is developing its technology only for civilian purposes.

Israeli transport minister Shaul Mofaz told the Yediot Aharonot newspaper an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities seemed inevitable.

"If Iran continues its nuclear weapons program, we will attack it," he told the daily.

All of my lecturers in 1st year (4 years ago) swore blind that Ireland would be forced to go nuclear eventually. Whatever about the environmental impacts of being dependant on oil, surely the financial consequences should be of equal concern?

Why don't we brand the push for renewable/nuclear in a more "capitalist" manner? i.e. not being slaved to oil prices that are beyond our control, rather than the "green" spin which can't ever be as effective imo.

copacetic

where would we build a nuclear power station?

breadmonkey

copacetic wrote: »

where would we build a nuclear power station?

Obviously I've missed something. Would you care to elaborate?

copacetic

breadmonkey wrote: »

Obviously I've missed something. Would you care to elaborate?

politics is all local, in Ireland there is nowhere a govt could build a station that wouldn't see them lose power the next election. It will never happen imo, or if it does oil would have to be 1000 dollars a barrel first.

breadmonkey

copacetic wrote: »

politics is all local, in Ireland there is nowhere a govt could build a station that wouldn't see them lose power the next election. It will never happen imo, or if it does oil would have to be 1000 dollars a barrel first.

Ah ok. I thought there were some sort of engineering requirements for the location of a station that I was unaware of.

So you reckon bureaucracy will doom us to a reactive (as opposed to proactive) policy by which time we'll be well and truly ****ed?

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Nuclear is inevitable, but I think we are also going to see a situation in the future where Uranium prices go through the roof as well, with China etc jumping on the bandwagon.

copacetic

breadmonkey wrote: »

Ah ok. I thought there were some sort of engineering requirements for the location of a station that I was unaware of.

So you reckon bureaucracy will doom us to a reactive (as opposed to proactive) policy by which time we'll be well and truly ****ed?

it's nothing to do with the planning process, it's the fact that no-one wants to live near a nuclear power station and we are a tiny country.

However funnily enough the engineering requirements like grid links and distance from potential flood plains along with the serious drop off in cooling capability if cold seawater is not available means there are a tiny amount of suitable locations in Ireland for a station. All near major urban centres.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

copacetic wrote: »

it's nothing to do with the planning process, it's the fact that no-one wants to live near a nuclear power station and we are a tiny country.

However funnily enough the engineering requirements like grid links and distance from potential flood plains along with the serious drop off in cooling capability if cold seawater is not available means there are a tiny amount of suitable locations in Ireland for a station. All near major urban centres.

The unfortunate thing is though that a large part of the general public seem to regard nuclear power as extremely risky, and wont want it in their backyard.

If it's properly implemented, it's clean and safe. The french are over 80% nuclear and the US, over 75% AFAIK, and I don't think I've ever heard of an incident from either.

copacetic

Sean_K wrote: »

The unfortunate thing is though that a large part of the general public seem to regard nuclear power as extremely risky, and wont want it in their backyard.

If it's properly implemented, it's clean and safe. The french are over 80% nuclear and the US, over 75% AFAIK, and I don't think I've ever heard of an incident from either.

well look up three mile island, but it is windscale that has had a huge effect on Irish opinion of nuclear power.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

copacetic wrote: »

well look up three mile island, but it is windscale that has had a huge effect on Irish opinion of nuclear power.

Bit before my time, but if wiki is to be believed there doesn't seem to have been any serious fallout (excuse the pun) from Three mile island.

/edit: I think it would be fair to say however that we have come a long way in 30 years although maybe it would be prudent to wait longer.

copacetic

Sean_K wrote: »

Bit before my time, but if wiki is to be believed there doesn't seem to have been any serious fallout (excuse the pun) from Three mile island.

/edit: I think it would be fair to say however that we have come a long way in 30 years although maybe it would be prudent to wait longer.

Not trying to be smart Sean, but it was the second worst nuclear accident ever and you have never heard of it? The apparently safe outcome was dumb luck.

I'm not saying nuclear power isn't safe, but we have had bad experiences as a country and we are at least a generation away from acceptance imo..

homah_7ft

I think there are plans for us to receive nuclear power by proxy from Britain, thus neatly sidestepping the location headache.

AngryHippie

Ah ok. I thought there were some sort of engineering requirements for the location of a station that I was unaware of.

So you reckon bureaucracy will doom us to a reactive (as opposed to proactive) policy by which time we'll be well and truly ****ed?

I've heard the farmers of North Mayo are fairly approachable about their back yards, they might turn a blind eye to a nucular power plant...:D


ha ha ha, never gonna happen, not until all the turf, trees and furniture had been burnt by the ESB....

anyways, there was this place called Easter Island:rolleyes:

ART6

As a director of a company that builds biofuel plants I am obviously an advocate of biofuels. But I am not innocent enough to think that they, or wind, wave, and hydro power will preserve our then much higher energy demand when oil and gas finally run low. We could turn back to coal, but at what environmental cost? IMO nuclear will have to come into Ireland sooner or later even if, as has been pointed out in this thread, it means building plants near urban areas. It will be that or candles.

mumhaabu

Ireland needs to further develop our fossil fuels, there is coal reserves in Argina, Co. Roscommon, and we have practically all the midlands and west of Ireland filled with bogs as are Clare, Cork and Kerry.

We need to develop our own homegrown fossil fuels and do it fast as it will stop us sending millions overseas to pay for foreign imported petroleum. Our entire Oil and Gas reserves were signed away for a pittance by Ray Burke who was found to be corrupt. Ireland apparently has over 1billion barrels of Oil and no matter how difficult it is it is now economically feasible to extract them in the period of $150 barrel oil.

By developing our coal and peat deposits we could distill our own Oil using the Fischer-Tropsch process as we could be self sufficent. However this must be dictated by the market and there must be no government intervention.

Carawaystick

Coal power plants cause more radioactivity to be emitted than nuclear power plants.

trace amounts of Thorium and Uranium in coal get concentrated and become either fly ash or bottom ash yet are more concentrated

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

I saw something before which i can't find now (but am searching) that reckoned the radiation from 3 mile island is emitted every day by coal power plants.

Timmaay

Back when I was in 4th yr of Mech Engineering, one of our leacturers (who was very pro nuclear), said the probable outcome of this whole nuclear power here is going to be the refuseal of any attempts to build nuclear powerstations here, but more than likely there will be undersea power cables from france/uk, piping in electricity from their grid, generated from nuclear anyway! The sort of unique irish solution to our problems

Fighting Irish

Price of oil went up $10 today - should we go nuclear/renewable before it's too late?

Ye fook it, lets go :pac:

jimogr

Timmaay wrote: »

but more than likely there will be undersea power cables from france/uk, piping in electricity from their grid, generated from nuclear anyway! The sort of unique irish solution to our problems

That's already happening with the north south interconnector, and the north's interconnector with Scotland.

When the east west interconnector is built we'll be importing a lot more nuclear power.

jimogr

copacetic wrote: »

where would we build a nuclear power station?

Excluding the politics of it. The moneypoint site would be a good option for a nuclear plant. The station currently there needs to be retired soon.

Danno

Put it on Rockall Island. Away from everyone.

Húrin

copacetic wrote: »

politics is all local, in Ireland there is nowhere a govt could build a station that wouldn't see them lose power the next election. It will never happen imo, or if it does oil would have to be 1000 dollars a barrel first.

Most Irish people oppose nuclear. Many of them don't even know why they oppose it, and many others oppose it for false reasons.

copacetic wrote: »

where would we build a nuclear power station?

Carnsore Point of course!

ART6 wrote: »

As a director of a company that builds biofuel plants I am obviously an advocate of biofuels. But I am not innocent enough to think that they, or wind, wave, and hydro power will preserve our then much higher energy demand when oil and gas finally run low. We could turn back to coal, but at what environmental cost?

At what environmental cost must we suffer biofuels? At what human cost?

mumhaabu wrote: »

Ireland needs to further develop our fossil fuels, there is coal reserves in Argina, Co. Roscommon,

Burning fossil fuels is causing our planet's climate to become unstable. All further extraction of these fuels should be avoided if at all possible.

homah_7ft

homah_7ft wrote: »

I think there are plans for us to receive nuclear power by proxy from Britain, thus neatly sidestepping the location headache.

Good idea, unfortunately the UK Nuclear power programme is a bit morribund at the moment. The UK is currently too dependant on Russian gas for their electricity!

As it is buying Nuclear generated electricity from the UK may be seen as hyprocritic by some and a sellout by others.

Húrin

Húrin wrote: »

Burning fossil fuels is causing our planet's climate to become unstable. All further extraction of these fuels should be avoided if at all possible.

If the combustion process is complete enough then the exhaust gasses should contain few toxins, but a better way would be to investigate further other methods of extracting the energy from the fuels rather than just burning it and converting the heat into steam and then into kinetic energy then into electricity.

Just imagine if you could develop a coal "battery".

Húrin

Húrin wrote: »

At what environmental cost must we suffer biofuels? At what human cost?

renewable electricity and biofuels FTW, biofuel hybrids and electric cars.
In the US they are growing algae in 2 days instead of growing 6 month crops.
This isnt algae in the sea that needs to be harvested but intensive factory farming of algae. Growing it in bottles with lights shining on them basically.

Anyway what about all the land fallow here in Europe, the EU food mountain?
And the human cost? We cant keep increasing the human population indefinitely which is what is happening in the 3rd world - unpopular to say but its the truth.

oil from algae that grows in 2 days
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24556686#24581695

100mpg cars
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24556686#23723053

USAF aim to be able to bomb not matter what the cost of oil
http://biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2008/03/06/darpa-says-ahead-of-schedule-to-produce-jet-fuel-from-biomass-at-less-than-3-per-gallon/

algae bloom at sea:

bonkey

jimogr wrote: »

Excluding the politics of it. The moneypoint site would be a good option for a nuclear plant. The station currently there needs to be retired soon.

That would depend on how you define "need" and "soon".

A major refusbishment has been approved for Moneypoint which will make it cleaner (or "less dirty" if it will annoy you less) and extend its lifespan for another 20-25 years.

Húrin

Deleted User wrote: »

If the combustion process is complete enough then the exhaust gasses should contain few toxins, but a better way would be to investigate further other methods of extracting the energy from the fuels rather than just burning it and converting the heat into steam and then into kinetic energy then into electricity.

Just imagine if you could develop a coal "battery".

We simply don't have the time to wait thirty or forty years for amazing new technologies to be invented and spread worldwide. Let them be researched by all means, but this cannot be claimed to be something which will help stabilise the climate. The cuts in carbon emissions must be deep and soon.

It's all well and good trying to reduce emmissions in the west, unfortunately these reductions are being reversed by increased emmissions in developing countries.
Buying locally produced goods (yes I know they don't exist anymore) would have a significant impact as these thirdworld countries would only need to produce for their local markets. New production plant in the west should be constructed to have minimal emmissions.

Just been watching Fíorscéal on Tg4 about peak oil, nothing new in the programme but just a reminder that cheap oil will never exist again.

The measures needed to reduce co2 emmissions are likely to happen regardless of environmental issues, but simply because the principal cause (oil) is rapidly depleting!

If new coal power stations are constructed, they will of course (hopefully) be as clean as is practibly possible, unlike their smoky predecessors built in the mid 20th century.

It will be back to 19century living for the future generations.

Kama

A key problem with nuclear which isn't usually touched on is its uninsurability.

While nuclear safety has (we hope) improved, to where the risk of a serious accident is lowered, the effects of said accident are so very large that commercial insurance can't cover it, and the State is obliged to step in as Insurer of Last Resort. In the early days of niclear power in the USA, this was called the Price-Andersen Act. The nuclear industry at the time claimed it would be a temporary measure until the technology improved. :rolleyes:

An additional problem is that given the time it takes to bring a reactor online (typically 15 years or so) it fails as a short or medium-term solution to the current energy crunch, never mind its vulnerabilities with respect to terrorism or other unforeseen disruptions.

A follow-on from this is whether its an economical investment, in either money or energy. Bell Labs developed photovoltaics in the 1950s; if anything like the level of subsidy had been thrown into the technology as was thrown into nuclear the US could well be self-sufficient in energy by now, utopian as that might sound in our current climate.

more tea vicar

Ireland would be mad to try to tackle the nuclear electric hot potato issue.

It already has Britain helping out to supply nuclear via undersea cables without dirty big plants being built over here and all the technical hurdles needed to be overcome.

France could also cable over their nuclear power to ireland, again without ireland dirtying its hands trying to cope with such a big job as building a nuclear plant.

Too many farmers and rural folk used to turf and burning logs would never accept such a worrying technology as nuclear. Turf has been a tradition here for centuries, and there are still major swathes of bogs that can be cut and burnt to provide fuel.

If the Lisbon Treaty was hard to understand, nuclear would be far harder. There are just too many technical aspects to comprehend to get anyone to go for it.

Although French or British nuke plants hit by terrorist planes or bombed by some other means like secret tunnels dug underneath using semtex by moslem extremists, the situation may be as bad as Chernobyl and a lot nearer, especially france being off our south coast with 80% nuclear plants probably 100's of plants that could be hit simultaneously ... but it will be their problem, although we may even get supplied by them, it will be them who gets the blame for having nukes and using nukes, ireland will still not have any on the soil here, and therefore cannot be called daft irish by the brits if we had a nuke plant cock up.

Leave well alone, leave it to those who are already into it, ireland won't be ready for it in our lifetimes.

we have plenty of turf.

more tea vicar

more tea vicar wrote: »

Although French or British nuke plants hit by terrorist planes or bombed by some other means like secret tunnels dug underneath using semtex by moslem extremists, the situation may be as bad as Chernobyl and a lot nearer, especially france being off our south coast with 80% nuclear plants probably 100's of plants that could be hit simultaneously ... but it will be their problem, although we may even get supplied by them, it will be them who gets the blame for having nukes and using nukes, ireland will still not have any on the soil here, and therefore cannot be called daft irish by the brits if we had a nuke plant cock up.

Leave well alone, leave it to those who are already into it, ireland won't be ready for it in our lifetimes.

we have plenty of turf.

To do this sort of damage would need the airforce of a major power wilh a large number of heavy bombers, fully laden with "bunker buster" type Ordnance. A group of extremists can't do this or dig several hundred metres of tunnel to plant several tonnes of high explosive under the reacter.

Ireland is better off just continuing to buy nuclear generated from the UK (& France) via the interconnectors. But will have to avoid being hypocritical of foreign nuclear policies.

The UK has plenty of coal, they should start building coal powered power stations, using modern techniques they will be much cleaner than any turf power station.

stink_fist

Wasn't the first car run by hemp?

stink_fist

stink_fist wrote: »

Wasn't the first car run by hemp?

Yep! Fred Flintstone driving while smoking!

Kama

Hemp for victory tbh

Belfast

nuclear/renewable produce mainly electrical power.

The problem with oil is a problem with a shortage of liquid fuels.

I do not see how nuclear/renewable help with this problem.

Kama

Hydrogen and Biofuel, inc. 3rd gen such as algal is the wet-dream, and yeh, transport is the real issue.

Most biofuels, esp. the corn-ethanol ones Europe/US are pushing have terrible EROI, even before the food price effects, and Brazilian sugar cane has a significantly better one.

Algal synth-oil production is also seen as a contender.
Tech in early days, but very promising. Its where Craig Venter has his money.

Alternately, battery technology will improve, and plug-in hybrids/EV's will get more common. Huge retooling/changeover costs make this unlikely in the medium-term, for anything other than an ecological minority...the Prius Effect. Don't see it as a 'solution' to the transport problem.