The Energy Crisis

[iCraig]

How bad is it? Or more accurately, how bad is it going to get?

Some people seem fairly relaxed, others have starting campaigns to save the planet.

How is the world's energy system going to work in 50 years time? What will be the most likely solution? Nuclear power?

What if nothing is done until the last of our oil and coal reserves runs dry? Does anything need to be done? Or should we just sit back and let our social evolution continue, relying on a new renewable, cost effective energy solution to be conceived?

The crisis is still at least 30 years away isn't it? Is that figure taking economic growth into consideration? How long do we truly have left until something really needs to be done?

[Mark]

I could do without getting Peak Oil rammed down my throat here as well as on other forums. :)

Anyway, as things stand with the US leadership not giving a damn and developing nations like China and India wanting every last scrap of energy and materials they can get, we're probably screwed, despite anything the UK government might want to do.

For the UK, our previous staples, North Sea Oil and Gas, are dwindling. So, we're now totally reliant on overseas supplies of gas for the forseeable future. That's way short of ideal, especially with gazprom throwing it's weight around with Russia's neighbours.

As for Electricity, I see nuclear and renewables being a must-have. There's going to be massive push-back from activists on both of those, but if we don't want California-style rolling blackouts, then we'd better ensure we have enough energy supply. Relying on gas isn't a good idea given that our gas supplies are already problematic, and coal isn't going to last forever either.

[kaiowas]

IMO we're gonna have to go nuclear at some point but there'll be some big hardships on the way. The public at large will only allow sufficient numbers of nuclear power stations to be built when they realise that it's the only viable way.

As I see it somewhere down the line there'll be 1 or 2 incidents causing fossil fuel prices to jump very sharply. The resulting chaos will convince people that we need to find another way sooner rather than later and there'll then be a 5-10 year period of hardship whilst we franticly try and rush build the power stations that we should be building now. I'm sure that somewhere amongst all that there'll be growing numbers of wind turbines etc erected but ultimately nuclear is where our dependancy will lay.

[Zirax]

Agreed with the above on the nuclear point. Its just got to happen, there really isn't anything that can do it well enough at the moment. The general masses are very set against nuclear and so the government will have to manipulate those people's opinions slowly. The fusion reactor that is being built is certainly interesting but its a test and there are far too many legal ramblings at the moment.

I have taken a lot of interest in what Penski was doing with his old 50's single cylinder engine. Those things will run on anything and he was saying he can power a heck of a lot from it.

There is a lot of "head in the sand" going on at the moment. While we have secured some gas from Russia at the moment, it'll only take a bomb or someone to piss off Putin for it to stop. Certainly if things start taking a turn for the worse I will be looking at what Penski is doing again. Hell if I get my own place and get bored it would be something to do :)

[kaiowas]

I know SB118 regulalry posts about his efforts to go off grid, is Penski at it as well or are you just getting mixed up?

[Zirax]

I know SB118 regulalry posts about his efforts to go off grid, is Penski at it as well or are you just getting mixed up?

Sorry, you are right I meant SB118

[Will]

Nuclear's the way to go. Though the only problem is the waste that it causes :( Though we're getting better at storing it and getting rid of it - I think they ought to research more ways of sorting out nuclear waste. Nuclear energy for a start is so very much more efficient and cleaner than fossil fuels.

If China and other 3rd world countries as well as the US were to stop burning oil for electricity I think it would be a good step in the right direction.

I'm very interested in the nuclear fusion reactor they are going ahead with in France. France have been a leading country for nuclear power and IIRC sells a large part of it's production around Europe and to the UK.

The problem is renewable energy is cost prohibitive and isn't efficient enough for our uses at the moment. However in cyprus and mediterranean countries we do use solar panels to heat the water and it works throughout the year (ok the climate's more taylored to it) - but even in the winter, the sun can cut the chill off the water enough to have to use less electricity/gas to warm up the water - which is only a good thing.

However if a renewable initative was plugged and maybe subsidised more then even if you can help reduce the call for coal and oil by 10% you're already making a huge step in the right direction. However of course to produce all the equipment might negate the savings in the first place.

The people plugging the energy crisis unfortunately come from nations of great hypocricy. I haven't really seen any bills or proposed plans of action to help this "problem".

[Messiah Khan]

As a few people have said. the bulk enery is very likely to come from Nuclear fission. I have absolutely no problems with this technology as long as the waste is thought about and taken care of properly. Nuclear fission has gained a bad reputation due to a few nasty incidents(Three Mile island and Chernobyl), but with modern reactor design, incidents like those should not be possible at all. The damage to humans and nature is probably going to be far far worse in the long run if we stay with coal and oil, than if another nuclear accident did happen.

But Nuclear fission is only a small part of the solution. I very much would like to see a push towards decentralised renewable energy production. IMO, governments should put pressure on building regulations to start including solar panels, small wind turbines etc on all new houses. A greater push towards increased energy efficiency is needed as well. Its going to be very hard to pursuade the public to change their habbits, but many things can be done to increase efficient use of energy without needing to change habbits. Wall cavity insulation, energy efficient light bulbs etc are all examples of this. Other less obvious things like better designed street lighting, and better designed 'standby' modes on electronic equipment should also be encouraged through government grants and legislation.

But ultimately the future of energy production lies not in nuclear fission, but nuclear fusion. The French experimental ITER TOKAMAK reactor is a very important step towards this future. The downside is that this reactor isn't likely to be finished for another 50 years, and public energy producing ones probably won't be around for another 20-30 years after that.

The energy crisis is likely to be one of the toughest challenges mankind and the environment have faced, but we have to find a solution somewhere.. because we don't have any other option otehr than to live in darkness.

[Zirax]

Interesting that you mention street lights. In Chelmsford there is an article about the council switching off street lights between 12am and 5am. Now technically this is a great idea with the savings this offers. There are a few problems with this:
1. When walking back from a pub at 2am battered will be a heck of a lot harder and certainly a lot more dodgy.
2. There is some weird legal loop hole meaning that if the lights are switched off in 30 zones then the road becomes an "unrestricted" speed limit. This could be tosh but it was mentioned in the Essex Chronicle.
3. Just thinking more of the personal safety, normally well lit areas will become no go areas for women at night due to being completly dark.

Something else which I just thought of, why not turn off every other street light during the time?

[Mark]

I reckon they could switch off *some* street lights without too much problem. Maybe every other light, particularly on some of the brighter lit roads. It'd save energy without having a huge impact.

[Messiah Khan]

That would be an option. I was more thinking of the design of street lighting. If you look at a lot of them, they are designed to spread the light quite a bit, resulting in a lot of wasted light. This also affects light polution(Which is a sad issue on its own.. I want to see the stars again:( ) If they designed street ligting with shorter poles and more focuses beams, they could save a fair bit of energy i recon.

[Zirax]

That would be an option. I was more thinking of the design of street lighting. If you look at a lot of them, they are designed to spread the light quite a bit, resulting in a lot of wasted light. This also affects light polution(Which is a sad issue on its own.. I want to see the stars again:( ) If they designed street ligting with shorter poles and more focuses beams, they could save a fair bit of energy i recon.

Problem is if they had shorter poles you know what will happen. Just thinking about the design again. Having seen some that were vandalised with the internal switch exposed, the one I saw worked like this:-
Switch either was 'on' or used the light sensor. I wonder if they have them hooked up centrally or something?

This could be the reason for their decision to turn them all off.... ie its easier to cut the power to the lights in a street than rewiring them all.

[Feek]

The light thing is interesting, before sensors were nailed on the top of lamp posts they used to be controlled by a time switch accessible through a plate in the bottom of the post.

They were never kept working reliably though. I clearly remember a lamp post near where I used to live in Harlow that was lit during the day and off at night. It was like that for as many years as I can remember.

[killerkebab]

I'm all for nuclear myself, and not just because France is a nuclear powerhouse (Over 80% of total electric production is nuclear if I remember right) :p

I've been reading up on the ITER they're building down in Cadarache and I'm hopeful the nuclear consortium can get it working before it is too late.

One thing I don't know about though, is how it works. The way I understand it, ITER will support 500MW of energy for 500 seconds... so what happens after 500 seconds? Do we just switch the machine back on?

Also saw something which I found slightly disturbing: According to wikipedia, ITER will represent the third most expensive scientific venture ever, falling behind the Manhattan Project and the Internation Space Station, and will cost €10bn, or something along the region of £7bn. Fair enough.

Then I thought about it some more, and it struck me. £7bn for the third most expensive scientific venture of all time... or £25bn for a new nuclear weapon. Oh dear :(

[Messiah Khan]

I agree its depressing the amount of money spent on increasing the efficiency of killing each other.:( The TOKAMAK ITER by the way is only a experimental fusion reactor. It isn't designed to produce a sustainable fusion reaction, only to be able to run short tests to enable future energy producing reactors. In fact I think the experimental one actually uses more energy than it produces, but it will hopefully carve the way forward for cheap, clean eneergy production. But as I said in my last post, don't hold your breath as its likely to be near the end of the century before we see them on a large scale. I'll leave you all with a pic of one of the current experimental TOKAMAK machines, as it looks so cool IMO:) ;

http://www.isfrt-erice.enea.it/images/ImPg2JET.jpg