On Feb 16, 4:12=A0pm, Sean O'Hara <seanoh...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> In the Year of the Earth Rat, the Great and Powerful
> Willie.Moo...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
declared:
>
> > =A0The problem we have had is that the knowledge to adapt nuclear
weapon=
s
> > to nuclear power has been curtailed circumvented, contained - for
> > legitimate public safety reasons.
>
> No, it's been curtailed *in the US* because of some very vocal tofu
> munchers who've seen too many Jane Fonda movies.
>
> --
> Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
> Joker: How can you shoot women, children?
> Gunner: Easy -- you don't lead 'em so much.
> =A0 =A0 -Full Metal Jacket
Interesting timing about Jane Fonda's movie.
I wonder about that. Hubbert worked for FDR and estimated the fuel
supplies of the Axis powers and predicted at that time the US would
peak in its oil output in 1970. In 1954 then AEC commissioner felt
that nuclear power would be too cheap to meter. He was talking about
nuclear power at that writers convention. The atomic bomb was 9 years
old and the first commercial nuclear reactor was 3 years in the
future.
Consider that a nuclear weapons costs about $10 million and generates
1e+24 watts - that's about 1e+17 watts per dollar. If nuclear power
plants cost 1 trillion times as much as nuclear bombs you'd get a
kilowatt per penny! Power would be too cheap to meter.
JFK then LBJ both tasked the Brookhaven National Labs to come up with
a plan once the US entered secondary production. They produced a plan
for high temperature reactors that would produce hydrogen gas and
electricity and that hydrogen would be used to convert coal into hydro-
carbons at $2 per barrel.
Today's nuclear reactors cost $3 per watt and generate power at $0.03
per kWh. At the efficiencies they operate at that's $0.01 per kWh of
heat energy.
Oil has 1,694 kWh of heat energy per barrel. The median price of a
barrel of oil over the past 140 years of oil production is $16.41 ...
precisely $0.01 per kWh fuel cost.
Cost per watt is a function of energy per unit of exchanger area.
That is a function of the fourth power of temperature. Today's
nuclear reactors operate at 600F if they operated at 5,600F they'd be
1/1000th the cost per watt they are today.
When Nixon came to office nuclear power was sidelined and middle
eastern supplies were developed. The US entered secondary production
and became a net importer of oil, and became a debtor nation instead
of a creditor nation. Carter a nuclear engineer, vowed to do
something about this. Legislation was passed, money was allocated.
Then, after 20 years of trouble free operation in power plants - a
major release of nuclear material at Three Mile Island near Hershey PA
- and the movie with Jane Fonda came out, and with the news and the
public outcry, all talk of using nuclear power to end our reliance on
fossil fuels ceased - ended - was no more.
And the statement - too cheap to meter - rather than being a goal for
bright engineers to achieve with technologies at our fingertips -
became an embarassing over-statement.
Meanwhile, the price of oil which had fallen at 4.9% per year since
its first large scale use in 1870s - to $2 per barrel by the 1960s -
began rising at 9% per year since that time - all to the benefit of
major oil companies.
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