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Time and time again, financial approaches have worked to fix economic problems. Raising interest rates has acted to slow the economy and lowering them has acted to speed up the economy. Governments overspending their incomes also acts to push the economy ahead; doing the reverse seems to slow economies down.
What could possibly go wrong? The issue is a physics problem. The economy doesn’t run simply on money and debt. It operates on resources of many kinds, including energy-related resources. As the population grows, the need for energy-related resources grows. The bottleneck that occurs is something that is hard to see in advance; it is an affordability bottleneck.
For a very long time, financial manipulations have been able to adjust affordability in a way that is optimal for most players. At some point, resources, especially energy resources, get stretched too thin, relative to the rising population and all the commitments that have been made, such as pension commitments. As a result, there is no way for the quantity of goods and services produced to grow sufficiently to match the promises that the financial system has made. This is the real bottleneck that the world economy reaches.
I believe that we are closely approaching this bottleneck today. I recently gave a talk to a group of European officials at the 2nd Luxembourg Strategy Conference, discussing the issue from the European point of view. Europeans seem to be especially vulnerable because Europe, with its early entry into the Industrial Revolution, substantially depleted its fossil fuel resources many years ago. The topic I was asked to discuss was, “Energy: The interconnection of energy limits and the economy and what this means for the future.”
In this post, I write about this presentation.
The major issue is that money, by itself, cannot operate the economy, because we cannot eat money. Any model of the economy must include energy and other resources. In a finite world, these resources tend to deplete. Also, human population tends to grow. At some point, not enough goods and services are produced for the growing population.
I believe that the major reason we have not been told about how the economy really works is because it would simply be too disturbing to understand the real situation. If today’s economy is dependent on finite fossil fuel supplies, it becomes clear that, at some point, these will run short. Then the world economy is likely to face a very difficult time.
A secondary reason for the confusion about how the economy operates is too much specialization by researchers studying the issue. Physicists (who are concerned about energy) don’t study economics; politicians and economists don’t study physics. As a result, neither group has a very broad understanding of the situation.
I am an actuary. I come from a different perspective: Will physical resources be adequate to meet financial promises being made? I have had the privilege of learning a little from both economic and physics sides of the discussion. I have also learned about the issue from a historical perspective.
World energy consumption has been growing very rapidly at the same time that the world economy has been growing. This makes it hard to tell whether the growing energy supply enabled the economic growth, or whether the higher demand created by the growing economy encouraged the world economy to use more resources, including energy resources.
Physics says that it is energy resources that enable economic growth.
The R-squared of GDP as a function of energy is .98, relative to the equation shown.
Physicists talk about the “dissipation” of energy. In this process, the ability of an energy product to do “useful work” is depleted. For example, food is an energy product. When food is digested, its ability to do useful work (provide energy for our body) is used up. Cooking food, whether using a campfire or electricity or by burning natural gas, is another way of dissipating energy.
Humans are clearly part of the economy. Every type of work that is done depends upon energy dissipation. If energy supplies deplete, the form of the economy must change to match.
There are a huge number of systems that seem to grow by themselves using a process called self-organization. I have listed a few of these on Slide 8. Some of these things are alive; most are not. They are all called “dissipative structures.”
The key input that allows these systems to stay in a “non-dead” state is dissipation of energy of the appropriate type. For example, we know that humans need about 2,000 calories a day to continue to function properly. The mix of food must be approximately correct, too. Humans probably could not live on a diet of lettuce alone, for example.
Economies have their own need for energy supplies of the proper kind, or they don’t function properly. For example, today’s agricultural equipment, as well as today’s long-distance trucks, operate on diesel fuel. Without enough diesel fuel, it becomes impossible to plant and harvest crops and bring them to market. A transition to an all-electric system would take many, many years, if it could be done at all.
I think of an economy as being like a child’s building toy. Gradually, new participants are added, both in the form of new citizens and new businesses. Businesses are formed in response to expected changes in the markets. Governments gradually add new laws and new taxes. Supply and demand seem to set market prices. When the system seems to be operating poorly, regulators step in, typically adjusting interest rates and the availability of debt.
One key to keeping the economy working well is the fact that those who are “consumers” closely overlap those who are “employees.” The consumers (= employees) need to be paid well enough, or they cannot purchase the goods and services made by the economy.
A less obvious key to keeping the economy working well is that the whole system needs to be growing. This is necessary so that there are enough goods and services available for the growing population. A growing economy is also needed so that debt can be repaid with interest, and so that pension obligations can be paid as promised.
World population has been growing year after year, but arable land stays close to constant. To provide enough food for this rising population, more intensive agriculture is required, often including irrigation, fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.
Furthermore, an increasing amount of fresh water is needed, leading to a need for deeper wells and, in some places, desalination to supplement other water sources. All these additional efforts add energy usage, as well as costs.
In addition, mineral ores and energy supplies of all kinds tend to become depleted because the best resources are accessed first. This leaves the more expensive-to-extract resources for later.
The issues in Slide 11 are a continuation of the issues described on Slide 10. The result is that the cost of energy production eventually rises so much that its higher costs spill over into the cost of all other goods and services. Workers find that their paychecks are not high enough to cover the items they usually purchased in the past. Some poor people cannot even afford food and fresh water.
Increasing debt is helpful as an economy grows. A farmer can borrow money for seed to grow a crop, and he can repay the debt, once the crop has grown. Or an entrepreneur can finance a factory using debt.
On the consumer side, debt at a sufficiently low interest rate can be used to make the purchase of a home or vehicle affordable.
Central banks and others involved in the financial world figured out many years ago that if they manipulate interest rates and the availability of credit, they are generally able to get the economy to grow as fast as they would like.
It is hard for most people to imagine how much interest rates have varied over the last century. Back during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the early 1940s, interest rates were very close to zero. As large amounts of inexpensive energy were added to the economy in the post-World War II period, the world economy raced ahead. It was possible to hold back growth by raising interest rates.
Oil supply was constrained in the 1970s, but demand and prices kept rising. US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker is known for raising interest rates to unheard of heights (over 15%) with a peak in 1981 to end inflation brought on by high oil prices. This high inflation rate brought on a huge recession from which the economy eventually recovered, as the higher prices brought more oil supply online (Alaska, North Sea, and Mexico), and as substitution was made for some oil use. For example, home heating was moved away from burning oil; electricity-production was mostly moved from oil to nuclear, coal and natural gas.
Another thing that has helped the economy since 1981 has been the ability to stimulate demand by lowering interest rates, making monthly payments more affordable. In 2008, the US added Quantitative Easing as a way of further holding interest rates down. A huge debt bubble has thus been built up since 1981, as the world economy has increasingly been operated with an increasing amount of debt at ever-lower interest rates. (See 3-month and 10 year interest rates shown on Slide 14.) This cheap debt has allowed rapidly rising asset prices.
The world economy starts hitting major obstacles when energy supply stops growing faster than population because the supply of finished goods and services (such as new automobile, new homes, paved roads, and airplane trips for passengers) produced stops growing as rapidly as population. These obstacles take the form of affordability obstacles. The physics of the situation somehow causes the wages and wealth to be increasingly concentrated among the top 10% or 1%. Lower-paid individuals are increasingly left out. While goods are still produced, ever-fewer workers can afford more than basic necessities. Such a situation makes for unhappy workers.
World energy consumption per capita hit a peak in 2018 and began to slide in 2019, with an even bigger drop in 2020. With less energy consumption, world automobile sales began to slide in 2019 and fell even lower in 2020. Protests, often indirectly related to inadequate wages or benefits, became an increasing problem in 2019. The year 2020 is known for Covid-19 related shutdowns and flight cancellations, but the indirect effect was to reduce energy consumption by less travel and by broken supply lines leading to unavailable goods. Prices of fossil fuels dropped far too low for producers.
Governments tried to get their own economies growing by various techniques, including spending more than the tax revenue they took in, leading to a need for more government debt, and by Quantitative Easing, acting to hold down interest rates. The result was a big increase in the money supply in many countries. This increased money supply was often distributed to individual citizens as subsidies of various kinds.
The higher demand caused by this additional money tended to cause inflation. It tended to raise fossil fuel prices because the inexpensive-to-extract fuels have mostly been extracted. In the days of Paul Volker, more energy supply at a little higher price was available within a few years. This seems extremely unlikely today because of diminishing returns. The problem is that there is little new oil supply available unless prices can stay above at least $120 per barrel on a consistent basis, and prices this high, or higher, do not seem to be available.
Oil prices are not rising this high, even with all of the stimulus funds because of the physics-based wage disparity problem mentioned previously. Also, those with political power try to keep fuel prices down so that the standards of living of citizens will not fall. Because of these low oil prices, OPEC+ continues to make cuts in production. The existence of chronically low prices for fossil fuels is likely the reason why Russia behaves in as belligerent a manner as it does today.
Today, with rising interest rates and Quantitative Tightening instead of Quantitative Easing, a major concern is that the debt bubble that has grown since in 1981 will start to collapse. With falling debt levels, prices of assets, such as homes, farms, and shares of stock, can be expected to fall. Many borrowers will be unable to repay their loans.
If this combination of events occurs, deflation is a likely outcome because banks and pension funds are likely to fail. If, somehow, local governments are able to bail out banks and pension funds, then there is a substantial likelihood of local hyperinflation. In such a case, people will have huge quantities of money, but practically nothing available to buy. In either case, the world economy will shrink because of inadequate energy supply.
Most people have a “normalcy bias.” They assume that if economic growth has continued for a long time in the past, it necessarily will occur in the future. Yet, we all know that all dissipative structures somehow come to an end. Humans can come to an end in many ways: They can get hit by a car; they can catch an illness and succumb to it; they can die of old age; they can starve to death.
History tells us that economies nearly always collapse, usually over a period of years. Sometimes, population rises so high that the food production margin becomes tight; it becomes difficult to set aside enough food if the cycle of weather should turn for the worse. Thus, population drops when crops fail.
In the years leading up to collapse, it is common that the wages of ordinary citizens fall too low for them to be able to afford an adequate diet. In such a situation, epidemics can spread easily and kill many citizens. With so much poverty, it becomes impossible for governments to collect enough taxes to maintain services they have promised. Sometimes, nations lose at war because they cannot afford a suitable army. Very often, governmental debt becomes non-repayable.
The world economy today seems to be approaching some of the same bottlenecks that more local economies hit in the past.
The basic problem is that with inadequate energy supplies, the total quantity of goods and services provided by the economy must shrink. Thus, on average, people must become poorer. Most individual citizens, as well as most governments, will not be happy about this situation.
The situation becomes very much like the game of musical chairs. In this game, one chair at a time is removed. The players walk around the chairs while music plays. When the music stops, all participants grab for a chair. Someone gets left out. In the case of energy supplies, the stronger countries will try to push aside the weaker competitors.
Countries that understand the importance of adequate energy supplies recognize that Europe is relatively weak because of its dependence on imported fuel. However, Europe seems to be oblivious to its poor position, attempting to dictate to others how important it is to prevent climate change by eliminating fossil fuels. With this view, it can easily keep its high opinion of itself.
If we think about the musical chairs’ situation and not enough energy supplies to go around, everyone in the world (except Europe) would be better off if Europe were to be forced out of its high imports of fossil fuels. Russia could perhaps obtain higher energy export prices in Asia and the Far East. The whole situation becomes very strange. Europe tells itself it is cutting off imports to punish Russia. But, if Europe’s imports can remain very low, everyone else, from the US, to Russia, to China, to Japan would benefit.
The benefits of wind and solar energy are glorified in Europe, with people being led to believe that it would be easy to transition from fossil fuels, and perhaps leave nuclear, as well. The problem is that wind, solar, and even hydroelectric energy supply are very undependable. They cannot ever be ramped up to provide year-round heat. They are poorly adapted for agricultural use (except for sunshine helping crops grow).
Few people realize that the benefits that wind and solar provide are tiny. They cannot be depended on, so companies providing electricity need to maintain duplicate generating capacity. Wind and solar require far more transmission than fossil-fuel-generated electricity because the best sources are often far from population centers. When all costs are included (without subsidy), wind and solar electricity tend to be more expensive than fossil-fuel generated electricity. They are especially difficult to rely on in winter. Therefore, many people in Europe are concerned about possibly “freezing in the dark,” as soon as this winter.
There is no possibility of ever transitioning to a system that operates only on intermittent electricity with the population that Europe has today, or that the world has today. Wind turbines and solar panels are built and maintained using fossil fuel energy. Transmission lines cannot be maintained using intermittent electricity alone.
Basically, Europe must use very much less fossil fuel energy, for the long term. Citizens cannot assume that the war with Ukraine will soon be over, and everything will be back to the way it was several years ago. It is much more likely that the freeze-in-the-dark problem will be present every winter, from now on. In fact, European citizens might actually be happier if the climate would warm up a bit.
With this as background, there is a need to figure out how to use less energy without hurting lifestyles too badly. To some extent, changes from the Covid-19 shutdowns can be used, since these indirectly were ways of saving energy. Furthermore, if families can move in together, fewer buildings in total will need to be heated. Cooking can perhaps be done for larger groups at a time, saving on fuel.
If families can home-school their children, this saves both the energy for transportation to school and the energy for heating the school. If families can keep younger children at home, instead of sending them to daycare, this saves energy, as well.
A major issue that I do not point out directly in this presentation is the high energy cost of supporting the elderly in the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed. One issue is the huge amount and cost of healthcare. Another is the cost of separate residences. These costs can be reduced if the elderly can be persuaded to move in with family members, as was done in the past. Pension programs worldwide are running into financial difficulty now, with interest rates rising. Countries with large elderly populations are likely to be especially affected.
Besides conserving energy, the other thing people in Europe can do is attempt to understand the dynamics of our current situation. We are in a different world now, with not enough energy of the right kinds to go around.
The dynamics in a world of energy shortages are like those of the musical chairs’ game. We can expect more fighting. We cannot expect that countries that have been on our side in the past will necessarily be on our side in the future. It is more like being in an undeclared war with many participants.
Under ideal circumstances, Europe would be on good terms with energy exporters, even Russia. I suppose at this late date, nothing can be done.
A major issue is that if Europe attempts to hold down fossil fuel prices, the indirect result will be to reduce supply. Oil, natural gas and coal producers will all reduce supply before they will accept a price that they consider too low. Given the dependence of the world economy on energy supplies, especially fossil fuel energy supplies, this will make the situation worse, rather than better.
Wind and solar are not replacements for fossil fuels. They are made with fossil fuels. We don’t have the ability to store up solar energy from summer to winter. Wind is also too undependable, and battery capacity too low, to compensate for need for storage from season to season. Thus, without a growing supply of fossil fuels, it is impossible for today’s economy to continue in its current form.
@Herbie Ficklestein:
I really love the video of the bear not taking care you posted 2 pages ago.
I want to pick that up here for the flow.
I have been thinking if a goat knows something about physics.
There seems to be a difference in symbolic representation of physics on a sheet of paper and what a goat does.
Basically a goat jumping up a pile of rocks does what is “right”. It does not need to calculate on that with a sheet of paper.
And even if there was a misunderstanding the goat will immediately adjust the movement to get on top of the hill.
This topic of “natural law” is elaborated on for the human sphere by Mark Passio very well.
We humans have a natural sense of what is right or wrong.
Your video shows me that this seems to be inherent in all living beings, only the better!
As a human we are creators. We are co-creators. Every living thing does it’s part on creating something hopefully better for the future.
For some unknown reason the creation of landfills for profit is the highest value in our civilization. I know that to create some stuff, I will have to spoil some other things and maybe create waste but I try to keep it small whereas the capitalist society must keep it big as in externalization of costs.
What we have come about with symbolic representation as some sort of a “structural fabric” of a society that emerges when many people are packed in a small location.
We need some “engineers” that manage flows and so on.
For some reason these engineers left off for the occult because they thought that either we are to stupid (as the bear in your video?) or it serves some interest in gaining money and power.
We all share a common knowledge of “the good or the bad” . We just need to speak up and act up for it as the bear in your video. Thank you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69vvxM0Mg3Q
Exactly!
patterning, the first and last law of biology in action. see, do, see, do. do, see, do, see. everything that we are emerges from that. we’re living emergencies. the bear righting the traffic cone is an emergency of the polymerase in the cell growing the rest of the gene onto the end of the primer, which itself is an emergency of nucleic acids much less reliably doing their thing in natural harbors around ocean vents.
Relax, nut just everything is a gene.
Some things just create joy.
I would not say that the bear patterns what he has seen before.
Even if, the bear must have a sense of:
“Ah, I prefer this pattern over all other patterns”.
Don’t tell to relax just because you may or may not be mistaking my explication of biology for a ‘materialist’ formulation, which it’s not. Or just because you ‘started’ the conversation.
‘Everything’ biological is an emergent property of the unitary intelligence that began with the primordial soup out of which genes emerged. Genes are the consolidation of complex consciousness, which are the foundation of cellular life. If you’re able to Reason otherwise then have at it.
Saying without any context that some things just create joy doesn’t mean anything.. it’s a platitude. Of course the bear only patterns based on what he has seen before. The bears patterns into the future based on the past. That’s life.
reante, you don’t think some patterns are inherently more pleasing than others, for reasons other than blind mimicry?
“Joy” might be described (by me, today) as when things just click and seem right, like seeing kids playing without anxiety, or seeing a warmly-lit window from a snowy outside, the patterns in a flower, or watching dancers in time with a band. If reproducing joyful things were just a matter of pushing a button on a copy machine, why do these moments seem so rare? Admittedly a big part is that we just don’t notice a lot of these opportunities, but on other levels there are many extremely active and intentional thieves of joy.. as many, if not more, elements engaged in malicious ruination as there are in conscientious construction.
Lidia
Absolutely I do. By calling the bear’s righting of the cone, patterning, I was in no way suggesting ‘blind’ mimicry. When we strip away all the noise, patterning is the ONLY intelligent function that biology performs. Patterning is how we characterize intelligence. Patterning is the learning system that compiles observed causes and effects in the local ecology, and intelligently puts those observations to work towards the future as the future turns into the past. (The Present is a metaphorical concept that does not actually exist because time, as we all know, is a continuum.)
Patterning is dynamic. Biologies and ecologies are dynamic. Dynamic patterning is joyful because we can only perform it when we are in obsevational conscious resonance with local biologies and ecologies. It feels incredible to dynamically feel like you truly belong. That a wild bear can feels such mammalian dynamic belonging that he will right a piece of shit traffic cone for the sheer pleasure of it is exactly the same thing as the dynamic primordial belonging that manufactured free nucleic acids in a PCR test feel when they are placed into a bacterial polymerase along with the sample genetic material that’s being tested for ‘covid’ primers: the primordial, intelligent, resonant, shared conscious belonging between the three biological formations — the polymerase, free acids, ‘coronavirus’ primers/templates — results in the inner, nested pattern of the diagnostically ‘confirmational’ complete ‘covid’ strand (the target strand in lab lingo) that only exists in the primer as a pre-emergent evolutionary potentiality, evolving at the speed of genetic evolution (fast!, much faster
than bacterial evolution) into an actual, living holographic ‘covid’ strand that ‘confirms’ the ‘diagnosis.’ The three biological formations of biochemical consciousness resonate with each other in conscious joy and in doing so an emergent new conscious being we might call ‘towards covid’ evolves in realtime out of the intelligent, patterned memory that lay within the primer but not physically.
Where does that joyful patterning reside if not physically/holographically? In dark matter which is field/source consciousness – otherwise known as gravity. Conscious gravity. The polymerase has the unique biochemical dynamism to interact with the dark matter (gravity field) that otherwise does not interact with holographic reality but for the other exception which is that dark matter interacts weakly with pure light. The gravity field pulls on light because light is light as a feather, and polymerase can pull on the gravity/consciousness field — nay, it can tap into it — because it is so supremely reactive. As I’ve said before, gonadal polymerase is an order of magnitude more biochemically reactive than all other cellular polymerases because vertical gene transfer, for obvious reasons –it’s patterning a two whole genomes in order to build a third genome — is way more consciousness-intensive a tapping-into dark matter than is that which is performed during either cell division or horizontal gene transfers.
Reactivity is the metric for conscious density on the biochemical level. On the one end you have highly reactive proteins and on the other you have fats, whose function is to not react, is to preserve. On the human or organism level, reactivity is also the metric for conscious density. We call that adaptivity. Adaptivity in the time of collapse is a patterned skill that runs the gauntlet by organizing free future opportunities (free nucleic acids) onto the end of the template of one’s life which contains nested within it the greater patterns of potentiality, as handed down through vertical gene transfers and further honed by direct experience. I got to rambling there.
Joy is an inflation riot!
“We humans have a natural sense of what is right or wrong.”
And yet we don’t react to the most extreme of outrages: injecting babies with virtually untested gene therapies; elections clearly stolen in highly visible ways; sexually mutilating minors as “affirmation”; releasing violent criminals and illegal immigrants without bail or recognizance; media that support illegal wars and fawn over the pedophile politicians and celebrities of the month; the worst people promoted and the best run off and ruined, college seminars teaching young women how to promote themselves on OnlyFans…
There are a lot of humans who aren’t creators, but destroyers., and there are as many things to offend any normal person’s sense of “right and wrong” as there are hours in the day, and yet most people are passive in the face of such assaults.
https://nypost.com/2022/10/18/video-of-drag-queen-gyrating-next-to-child-sparks-backlash/
“My p—y good / p—y sweet /p—y good enough to eat,” go the lyrics as the drag queen gyrates.
I’ve stuck my head above the local parapet a few times, but have come to the conclusion it just isn’t worth it. If this is what people want to do to themselves, then they deserve it. But I don’t have kids, so I don’t have as strong a stake in the outcome as I might. If I did have kids, I’d be in jail or in a mental institution.
How true Lydia, perhaps OFW and other sane sites keep us out of the madhouse!
The depths of degradation in officially-promoted ‘culture’ are astonishing, even to those who see themselves as cynical and unshockable.
I’ve been fortunate to have made some beautiful things in my life – with some little talent and a lot of effort – but if this collapses tomorrow I will feel that the warnings I gave to parents about the poison injections when all the ‘authorities’ were cheer-leading for them and lying without shame will be the justification of my life.
All beautiful material things inevitably fade and fail (it’s also part of their beauty) but altruistic, and truthful actions justify themselves forever – despite Norman’s mockery and ‘jokes’.
There does always seem to be something that actively delights in mocking, degrading and destroying the good and beautiful. Call it Satan, or what you will…..
sharp sticks are double ended eddy
but don’t let that stop you from revealing your own inadequacies
in whatever subject is under discussion (every comment you make does that. Most illuminating)
(from the 2 minute gaps in your comment rate, I can only assume your kb must be laden with crumbs and teastains)
+++++++++
Lidia17 – or maybe at a school board meeting? Scrolling these clips of a rambunctious scene in Dearborn, Michigan gives a sense of it. One could also recall that some of these upset people were involved not all that long ago in relocating a statue of a long-dead mayor who represented his voters in a more energy sufficient time to the best of his ability. How times change, along with the predictable nature of humans
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dearborn+public+schools+board+meeting
The NuScale reactor design was approved by the NRC this year. The first units are scheduled for completion in 2028.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power
This reactor design is suitable for factory mass production. The entire nuclear steam supply system is small enough to be shipped by road or on a railway carriage, but large enough to produce 77MWe of power. Power plant capital cost is estimated at $4200/kWe.
These powerplants are also about the power output to propel a container ship, a cruise ship or a destroyer.
Will they be available on Amazon?
It seems like I have been hearing about these since 2008. A few concerns about these:
(1) These are still made with fossil fuels. Any fossil fuel problem impacts their production.
(2) No regulator will want to allow a new nuclear device in their area without a long track record of safety. This will greatly slow down the approval rate.
(3) How does a community ensure the safety of these systems? Do they need 24-hour a day staffing to keep away wrong-doers?
(4) The nuclear power stations still need transmission lines. The maintenance and upkeep of these lines depends on continued fossil fuel use.
It seems Gail never worked for Mr. Burns as Homer did.
Point 4. Lines should be easier to maintain, shorter, easier to access.
Dennis L.
I agree that the lines could be very short indeed.
The NRC has approved the design. It is now good to go in the US. The ONR are presently reviewing the design in the UK.
Decay heat removal from the shutdown core is achieved by natural circulation. The vessel sits in a concrete sleeve within a large pool. This makes decay heat strategy rather easy.
Whilst these units are indeed made using fossil fuels, the high net energy return of nuclear systems provide options when it comes to dealing with this problem.
Problems with SMRs stem from their small size. Smaller cores are less efficient. These include poorer neutron economy, higher enrichment required and more radioactive steel to decommission. There are also questions around whether reduced economy of size can be compensated by increased production volumes. Most SMR groups are banking that mass production can bring down costs.
For all engineers I love, the social engineers I love most.
I just bought a new Rayburn – this model has a small compartment to insert one kg bricks of spent nuclear fuel — this can heat a home for 500 yrs.
So no need to buy any coal or wood ever again!
Now that’s innovation innit.
Thats the gamma rayburn model xx666 isnt it? Best get a lead puppy sweater for Hoolio
norm was called out of retirement to write the manual…
Eddy, if you recall I have the patent on nuclear waste for home heating.
@Peter Cassidy, How many people are needed to operate one SMR? Please include all security as well in the number..
From here…
https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/small-nuclear-reactors-come-with-big-price-tag-report/
“A new report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) pulls no punches when it describes the small modular reactor (SMR) project NuScale is building for the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS). It the first and only SMR design to receive design approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“Too late, too expensive, too risky and too uncertain.” That, in a nutshell, describes NuScale’s planned small modular reactor (SMR) project, which has been in development since 2000 and will not begin commercial operations before 2029, if ever.”
The number of times I’ve read about a new cheap technology, only for the final cost to be much larger is too many to count.
I’d wager the actual cost of one of these things to cost well over $1B or over $12,000/Kw of capacity making them completely unviable, because the EROEI is way too high, especially when they try and charge for all the r&D that’s gone into them up to now. That’s part of the energy cost that most want to leave out of calculations.
I think
“Too late, too expensive, too risky and too uncertain.”
describes the situation perfectly.
How knowledgeable you are on the specifications!
Musical is the trasposition of Opera in movies.
And that is a wonderful example.
Incredible high performance of dance, sing, music, choreagraphy.
Thank you for reminding me.
Greenhouse gas emissions associated with transmission line projects.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Embodied-GHG-emissions-of-typical-transmission-line-projects-in-2017-a-Embodied-GHG_fig3_350642224
HV transmission lines are galvanised steel frames, glass insulators and aluminium alloy wires.
Average CO2 emissions are 500 tonnes per km. That is 159 tonnes oil, 6400GJ/km.
This link gives details of UK transmission lines (England and Wales) of different voltage.
https://www.emfs.info/sources/overhead/
For the US, the lengths of transmission lines will be longer.
Peter – Love the enthusiasm but you are getting all worked up over solving something that is only a small part of the problem and as usual it creates as many problems as it solves.
You are focused on allowing global civilization to keep barrelling ahead at full speed. That only guarantees a worse collapse.
Focus on how to change humans because thats where the fundamental change needs to happen for there to be any hope of a future.
We sincerely made up our minds and we found that growth simply is the best thing to do.
I am fully aware that it is impossible to sustain a growth based system on a finite planet. And the next decade will probably see a reverse of all of the supposed wealth accumulated since the 1990s.
But just because growth is impossible, doesn’t mean that there is no point looking for ways for prosperity to survive at more modest levels. Nuclear power could be a significant part of that. It is far more sustainable, clean and safer than fossil fuels. And it could be a cheap way of producing electricity and bulk heat. Assuming that is that one of those mass produced SMR designs emerges as the equivalent of the Model T Ford. I don’t expect it to prevent the collapse of global capitalism. But an abundant source of energy coukd make the aftermath more tolerable.
Some people are into prepping … some are into mini-reactors.. it’s nice to have choice when it comes to hopium!
@Peter Cassidy
You are right. Nuclear is a way to energetically maintain a sophisticated civilization but I must tell you that our civ is nothing more than an empty hull left over from the quest for that civ you are talking about.
As LTG said: A lot of things were possible.
A lot of people came up with these things.
They were all deemed baseless.
Now we are left with the cold “soupe des faits accomplis” and any energy source will not solve the wounds in our souls.
A very sad story indeed.
Of course, once we get those space-based solar power plants into orbit, all our troubles will be over. Keith’s done the math. All we need is the political will to make it so.
/sarc
Perfect for terrorists!
What problem does a small nuclear reactor solve? Why not just build some big ones if we are able to build them at all?
Mini Reactors.. more hopium for the MORE-ONS who believe this is a way out of a situation that has no way out …
These are no more realistic than EVs for All…
But they will believe it – just like some people believe mountains can stop easterly winds laden with radioactive toxins.
A SME is on the customer premise and a plant needs to buy land. That is a no go for profitability.
‘Small’ usually means <300MWe, rather than 1000+ MWe. By making the reactor smaller, they can be produced in large numbers in factories and then shipped to site as pre-assembled units by road and rail. That should make powerplants quicker and cheaper to build
You need highly specialised steel to make reactor vessels which is only made in a limited number of places which are already busy making large reactor vessels for existing orders. No other steel will do.
It’s not just reactors being big that’s the problem.
As far as I understand in Europe the reactors are being scanned on a regular basis with X-Ray to find the smallest cracks in any (!) tube.
I bet that makes sense for a >1GW block but for your backyard a battery lamp examination must do.
Do you think they could strike a deal with IKEA and you buy a Reactor in a Box… with video instructions to help with assembly? Of course all owners would need to attend a 30 minute safety briefing before they got their operating certification …
Not that it matters cuz we know reactors are not actually dangerous — the safety briefing would be for show.
They are safe and effective
I think that one thought was that the cost small reactors could be much lower, if these devices could be factory assembled.
One question I would have relates to the steam turbines that normal reactors usually use as part of their electricity generation process. Wouldn’t these be impossible on the small scale nuclear? Without the steam turbines, wouldn’t we end up with electricity that doesn’t really “fit” on the grid, without lots of other turbine-generated electricity with the proper “inertia” to keep the grid system going, as expected?
without turbines you end up with no electricity at all
nuke reactors =heat=water to steam=turbines=electricity, there are no short cuts.
Same applies to hydro. Sun heat = water to vapour=rain=fills reservoirs=turbines=electricity.
the same would apply to fusion if that ever comes to pass
it is a complex process to make and bring electricity to the point where it can make whizzy things go round.
as i keep trying to point out, energy isn’t the problem, putting it to work is the problem.
Siemens produce steam turbines in sizes as small as 10kW and as large as 1900MW.
https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/offerings/power-generation/steam-turbines.html
Steam turbines in the 50-100MW range are quite common. Thermodynamic machines do improve in efficiency as size increases.
Your compensated by NuScale in some manner?
Michael Levin has a three hour pod cast with Lex Fridman on YouTube. I found it interesting in that he sees(please forgive if I do not get this exactly correct) a universe in which what we see is part of the fabric of that universe. Mathematics is mentioned and in my feeble attempts at theoretical math(I got through Madison and made it into grad school, became a dentist when I saw reality) I once noticed abstract algebra crossing analysis when coming from entirely different directions. Chance was very unlikely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3lsYlod5OU&t=107s
Michael sees DNA and evolution as more engineering than underlying principles. Again, this is a three hour interview.
Watch if you like, he is a prof at Tufts, I looked at a couple of his publications. He has a view of biology that seems consistent with Gail’s ideas about self organizing systems. They just are, we may push them off course for a bit, but the course is part of the universe and better to go with the flow.
Dennis L.
Titles do not impressive me. Professors of this and that from here and there doesn’t affect me a bit if the self-proclaimed polymath is talking bullshit.
Some people cannot accept their own deaths so they theorize things to the extreme. The whole infinity scheme is an attempt for such people to fantasize that they can cheat death.
I listened to part of the video. It is quite good. He experiments with skin cell, taken outside the usual wrapper they are found in. I found this outline of the 3 hour talk:
OUTLINE:
0:00 – Introduction
1:40 – Embryogenesis
9:08 – Xenobots: biological robots
22:55 – Sense of self
32:26 – Multi-scale competency architecture
43:57 – Free will
53:27 – Bioelectricity
1:06:44 – Planaria
1:18:33 – Building xenobots
1:42:08 – Unconventional cognition
2:06:39 – Origin of evolution
2:13:41 – Synthetic organisms
2:20:27 – Regenerative medicine
2:24:13 – Cancer suppression
2:28:15 – Viruses
2:33:28 – Cognitive light cones
2:38:03 – Advice for young people
2:42:47 – Death
2:52:17 – Meaning of life
Michael Levin has a website:
https://drmichaellevin.org
On this page of his website he has some answers to Frequently Asked Questions.
https://drmichaellevin.org/resources/
The “resources” page gives some written documentation that sort of goes along with his talk.
The only point to watch for UK’s first Hindu Prime Minister would be whether his term will exceed Truss’ term.
He was going to be the PM sooner or later, and the only relieve is his term will be short.
You may be correct; the problems that the UK needs to solve are basically unsolvable.
The good point I see for UK to have a prime minister of Indian origin is that maybe UK could be less willing to push for war in Ukraine, but maybe I’m too optimistic.
Why should this be the case?
Also keep in mind that Sunak has deep WEF ties…
Surprise,. They’re BACK!
We’re seeing everything come back with a vengeance,” said Dr. Alpana Waghmare, an infectious diseases expert at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and a physician at Seattle Children’s Hospital.
Most cases of COVID-19, flu and RSV are likely to be mild, but together they may sicken millions of Americans and swamp hospitals, public health experts warned.
“You’ve got this waning COVID immunity, coinciding with the impact of the flu coming along here, and RSV,” said Andrew Read, an evolutionary microbiologist at Penn State University. “We’re in uncharted territory here.”
The vaccines for COVID-19 and flu, while they may not prevent infection, still offer the best protection against severe illness and death, experts said. They urged everyone, and especially those at high risk, to get their shots as soon as possible.
Older adults, immunocompromised people and pregnant women are most at risk, and young children are highly susceptible to influenza and RSV. Many infected children are becoming severely ill because they have little immunity, either because it has waned or because they were not exposed to these viruses before the pandemic.
Posted at my place of work URGING us all the get the 😷 Covid booster and flu shot asap….of course, it’s for your own good…do it now before it is mandated!
I wonder why nobody ever raised a flag on the topic of
“prevent … death”
My 88yo father died Sept. 29 from Covid-19. At least that is what is on the death certificate. He had gone on a family vacation to California in August. Shortly after he got back he tested positive. His doctor prescribed Paxlovid. After taking the Paxlovid he went into a sort of zombie state where he was unresponsive. They took him to the hospital where they had to strap him down because he was thrashing around. He stopped eating. After a few weeks with much agony and suffering he finally died. He was also fully vaccinated and had two boosters.
This article by Dr. Tenpenny explains what I think happened:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/unsettling-research-links-covid-vaccine-parkinsons/5795926
My mother after getting her second booster last December had a racing heart beat and painful swollen extremities. She also had to be hospitalized.
Woodchuck, I’m sorry your parents suffered so much as a result of their run-ins with the Medical Industrial Complex.
Thank you for sharing Dr. Tenpenny’s article, which details some of the ways in which the Covid “vaccines” can damage the brain.
You want to get people to boost? Ministry of Truth memo to the MSM – hospitals are full lots now so no need to fake it – just send your camera crews down and get some footage … look for some young healthy people who are in the ICU and focus on them…
Then call up some experts from the list we provided and have them do interviews insisting people get booster Or Else…
Offer more donuts and other freebies.
Remember – these are MORE-ONS… no need to try to be too clever.. it’s not necessary
Look at that norm guy in the UK… he’s your typical target demographic
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this has to be the ultimate in Saudi bonkersness
https://archinect.com/news/article/150318412/the-line-the-largest-part-of-saudi-arabia-s-ambitious-neom-project-looks-like-a-total-fantasy
It looks like fantasy operates around the world:
We see to live in a fantasy world wherever we go today.
When did this trend toward a fantasy world start? Long ago, according to some. The military has long taken a lead at deception. Make it look like some other country is attacking you, when you are attacking them, for example.
Ducks all swim in a row. Some say the laws of physics are behind this. Similarly, the laws of physics are behind the way ducks fly. Maybe the laws of physics are behind the push toward a fantasy world.
seems to me that the fantasy-trend started when we began using the leverage in fossil fuels, to supersede muscle power and other available natural forces.
The Saudis have already executed people who have protested against it.
Fairy tales come with all sorts of fantasy.
But their stories never contain
“Multi Million Dollar”-Thingies.
Uhm gold coins, yeah…
“while helping the state preserve some 95% of NEOM’s total existing land.”
hahaha. preserving exactly what? miles and miles of sand dunes and barren hot rock.
Good point! Most of Saudi Arabia’s land is not worth preserving.
That’s a point of view. But remember, those sand dunes and barren hot rocks are somebody’s home. Pick up one of those rocks, while wearing oven gloves if need be, and you may be surprised at what’s living under it.
You are simply too stupid to understand that this is the perfect site for a healthy sustainable living.
No, Doomphd is being sensible. He lives in Hawaii, a place for healthy sustainable living, for a few anyhow.
NEOM, as a concept, has been around and publicized for years, since at least 2019. Are you catching up with Eddy’s recycling of years old stories? I will say this though, they chose a beautiful place for this thing.
yes, i’ve seen this story before, i thought it was worth another airing, re our current level of insanity
Gaslighting. The House of Saud floats this fantasy in order to maintain the fiction that Ghawar still has a long way to run because if Ghawar doesn’t have long to run then neither does the world. Like if fracking doesn’t have long to run neither does the world. Like if Russian oil doesn’t have long to run…
The House of Saud conmen gaslight with this fantasy city, and they play their assigned ‘act tough’ roles during to a tee during falling-out, like MbS’s cousin did last week, and they get their cut after they’re deposed.
i’ve no doubt you are right
there is no hope of delivering such madness–but it gives the proletariat something to salivate over
much the same daftness as cities on mars
The house of Saud is invested in the USA (*cough*) from previous resource extraction.
The current state of Ghawar is irrelevant in this.
But wait, why did Aramco not go public on the US stock exchange?
Maybe the’ll do it with NEOM.
MM, what do you mean by your first paragraph?
Update:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/mbs-mocks-biden-mentally-challenged-us-saudi-relations-continue-sour-wsj
If you calculate the billion rillion barrels that have been extracted from Ghwar and the money transferred, you need to invest it and that was the USA.
What Biden wants from MBS does not matter for NEOM and it’s investment opportunities.
It is a new market segment, you know, as in bio engineered vaccines or insect burgers.
An old investment product dies and a new one is born.
It is just natural.
Sure, Ghawar always has been a Standard Oil play, with Aramco as the shell company getting a generous cut. And, yeah, NOEM gaslighting can be monetized. Hopefully I didn’t miss anything.
@reante
Monetizing as in “the higher the risk, the higher the risk premium”
Nothing can go wrong here, no?
Yeah, nice, the high risk in the ‘high risk premium’ in NOEM will manifest when Saudi Arabian society takes a dump into economic depression here shortly, resulting in a loss of faith of the citizenry in the House of Saud due to the dashing of artificially inflated (gaslighted) expectations, which will ease the local tumult surrounding its deposing. The same dynamic will be going on around the world as the engineered national socialisms are ushered in.
This is an article, today, no less!
It’s fake – just like the all – EV world of 2035…
This is the MSM offering the hopium pipe to the MORE-ONS… for them – this is all real… cuz the MSM says so…
It’s no more real than the moon landings.
Almost everyone believes in the transition… the BBC said so …
And as norm is fond of telling us … you can trus the Beeb hahahaha
But then norm trusts Super Snatch when she tells him she dunnae gooo out back tha dumpster with newone else but im…
10 .36, 10.38 10 40.
holy smokin’ keyboards!!!
i can’t keep up eddy, aged person that i am
Thank you for the post!
(Israel National News)
‘Bombshell documentary: ‘Fauci lied to the American people’
A new film alleges Fauci made a fortune by knowingly lying about COVID-19.’
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/361548
This 5 minute video introduces a new film, ‘Fauci lied to the American people.’ It alleges Fauci made a fortune by knowingly lying about COVID-19. It goes through Fauci’s prior history of pushing high-priced ineffective drugs over less expensive, effective drugs.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s film, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” Part 1, can now be viewed—I think still for free. I watched it a couple of days ago. Must-see. I think you can still register to see it for free here:
therealanthonyfaucimovie.com/trailer/
Thanks!
So many “bombshells” but no victory as in Ukraine.
Some folks need to adjust their targets.
BREAKING Agrawal et al.: “Severe COVID-19 outcomes after full vaccination of primary schedule and initial boosters: pooled analysis of national prospective cohort studies of 30 million individuals
in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales”; found an increased risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes beginning 10 weeks after completing the primary vaccination schedule
https://palexander.substack.com/p/breaking-agrawal-et-al-severe-covid
Solution? more Boosters – of course! cuz it’s like a phone battery
Thank you FE.
the actual journal: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01656-7/fulltext
I see elevated risk post-9-weeks relative to earlier post-vaccination, but I do not see a comparison anywhere with unvaccinated individuals. Did I miss this or did they intentionally obscure or avoid showing this data? Sorry, I just want a sanity check here, I don’t really feel like reading this in depth.
A couple of useful things from the Finding section, even with this limited sample:
“Individuals with a history of COVID-19 infection were at reduced risk (infected ≥9 months before booster dose vs no previous infection; aRR 0·41 [95% CI 0·29–0·58]).”
This sounds like a person actually having COVID-19 is protective, contrary to initial views on this subject.
The Findings section also says:
” Older adults (≥80 years vs 18–49 years; aRR 3·60 [95% CI 3·45–3·75]), those with comorbidities (≥5 comorbidities vs none; 9·51 [9·07–9·97]), being male (male vs female; 1·23 [1·20–1·26]), and those with certain underlying health conditions—in particular, individuals receiving immunosuppressants (yes vs no; 5·80 [5·53–6·09])—and those with chronic kidney disease (stage 5 vs no; 3·71 [2·90–4·74]) remained at high risk despite the initial booster.”
So, the boosters don’t really solve the problem of severe outcomes for very high-risk individuals.
Well that’s not true!!!
COVID-19 vaccination has substantially altered the course of the pandemic, saving tens of millions of lives globally. However, inadequate access to vaccines in low-income countries has limited the impact in these settings, reinforcing the need for global vaccine equity and coverage.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00320-6/fulltext
Hmmm… now that’s odd.. check out the countries with low vax rates here – they have almost no deaths
https://metatron.substack.com/p/covid-requiem-aeternam?s=r
Peter Cassidy, et al, I have written before a few articles back but I am going to say it here again.
The best and only time to implement new energy sources is when the population realizes that their existing energy is finite and not when the energy is almost exhausted. Assuming in a parallel dimension where homo sapiens are rational and sane, they would probably figured out in the 1960s that FF is finite and steps must be taken to ensure the survival of the species. That means coming out with alternatives that are good and lasts as long as possible without pollution or any other problems. This new energy schemehas to be implemented before their existing energy (which is FF) runs out. They figured that it might take 20-50 years to completely switch over to the new energy scheme.
Back to our present realm where homo sapiens do not have critical thinking, we press the pedal to the floor. We use debts to substitute for the oil. Difficult to drill oil can be drilled because of printed money and to heck with EROEI (i.e. is it worthwhile to extract difficult oil if one needs 0.5 barrel of oil to extract one barrel of oil?). Debt increased tremendously when USD went off gold standard and it is NOT a coincidence that peak conventional oil hit USA. If anything is not worthwhile to do it energetically, then debt is used as a substitute. Best example is fracking. We lied to ourselves.
Debt cannot be cancelled. It will cause the entire financial system to implode instantly. If I don’t pay my mortgage or it is cancelled, then what happened to the bank? The value of the stock goes down and it impacts the pension funds. Oh, you can say that government comes in and print money to help everyone. Hyperinflation anyone? Again money is the claim for future energy use. I save $10,000 and hope that in 2 years time, I can use that money to travel around the world thus burning fuel in the process in exchange for the money that I have worked hard to save. I exchange my physical hard work for some tokens in which I want to redeem in future.
We are so a washed with debts that there is simply no way out. Cancellation of debts does not work. Printing more money can buy us some time (particularly since 2007) but it seems that that is also running out. People straddled with debts cannot take on more debts as they are choked with monthly payment. Going bankrupt simply means someone has to eat the losses and that could be pension funds or anyone else. Energy that someone wants to spent in future is now gone.
So, coming back to nuclear, space satellites, zero point, fusion, perpetual energy, etc. At this point of time, it does not matter anymore. If there is a country in the world right now, today, finds that there is a big patch of land with the best crude oil and it can be easily extracted (i.e. straw in the ground) and that the greenies are magically gone, will it make a difference to the world? NO it will not make a slightest difference because the debt cannot be diffused by cheap energy. Will the guy who are loaded to the gills buy another car?
So, let us cut the chase, any talk about fusion, nuclear, etc makes ZERO impact on what we are heading. If you think that it will help even if the energy is like 10 years in to the future, then I have a 100% safe and effective vaccine for you.
People just love to be comforted by delusions and lies
lots of money has been thrown at fusion and solar and wind, and this will continue as long as “they” are trying to show that they are “doing something about it”.
I agree that using FF energy to research and build more of this stuff will have an impact of about zero.
meanwhile, coal and natural gas and 4 billion gallons per day of oil (“all liquids”) will continue the bAU level of prosperity in the Core for a little longer, maybe a few more years.
TPTB has a financial house of cards that could bring down the “real” economy at any MOMENT, but lessons learned from 2008/2009 are such that “they” know to throw a bunch of digital money at any Big Bank problems that pop up.
debts/finances are only going to get worse.
surplus energy supplies are only going to get worse.
at this late stage, in the Endgame, there might be many New Ideas to be proposed, but it’s unlikely that there will be any real gamechanger.
Maybe your mortgage can’t be canceled but student loans can??
I surely hope you are jesting, Sam.. student loan forgiveness is only in USA and it is only a small amount and the biggest provider is the US government…. in the grand scheme of things, this forgiveness is nothing
Your Pension can!
Perhaps they have already redefined your pension as “you loan fund managers money”
In Germany we call that innovation:
“Riester Rente”
intorduced in 2001.
It is “state backed private investment”. (*cough*)
energy isn’t the problem
finding ways to use it is the problem.
Each household might have a permanent supply of ‘energy’, but if materials did not exist (or cost too much to use), then energy itself could not be used.
We use energy, (from whatever source) to change material from one form to another—trees into furniture, iron ore into cars–and so on. That is how wages are created.
But access to infinite energy will not increase availability of materials by which we could use it.–that is the problem in a nutshell, and why ‘infinite energy’ dreams will remain just dreams.
Money is only tokenised energy, so there would be vast amounts of ‘money energy’ chasing too few physical goods.–thus hyper-hyper inflation.
I do not doubt that our situation is grave. But you are quite wrong to say that a new source of energy is irrelevant. Clean GDP is directly proportional to energy consumed. A new lower cost source of energy could allow us to grow our way out of debt. I agree that there probably isn’t sufficient time left. And the people in charge do not seem to understand the problem.
Actually we have grown out of any problem for the last 150 years.
the last 150 years takes us right back to the first commercially viable oilwells
coincidence or what?
It was just the plan of my family.
my family did the same
they were primary energy producers, slaves in all but name
their efforts gave me a life of comfort they could not even dream of
but it’s still the accumulated results of fossil fuels
they were primary energy producers, slaves in all but name
coal mining family?
yes—miners for generations
One problem we grew out of was the problem of mountains horse manure clogging the streets of major cities.
there is no ‘lower cost source of energy’
the energy required to move a ton of metal from a to b is fixed.—we can ‘borrow’ energy from elsewhere and call it ‘cheap’–but that is part of our grand self delusion.
we ‘borrowed’ fossil fuels from our past, and used them to destroy our future, but the amounts of energy involved remain fixed.
and yes–politicos do understand the problem, but have no more idea what to do about it than you or i do.
Your statement of
“energy from a to b is fixed” is baseless because you assume that we need trucks with tires instead of hovering tech.or something else I am currently invested and can not disclose as it is illegal to promote investment advice here.
lol
i respect your ‘investment’ knowledge, and I am no physicist,
but
If i have a 40 ton truck, and have to shift it 100 miles, (a to b), I know that that requires xxx amount of energy input to overcome the rolling resistance of air, tarmac, engine energy losses and so on. As well as gravity trying to stop it moving at all. Tyres are the best we have right now.
Taking that to the next stage, ie, overcoming gravity altogether, will require yet more energy to lift it off the ground. ‘Hover engineering’ in other words.
Hovering requires reactive forces, reactive forces require energy input, relative to the weight being lifted. This is in addition to the energy needed for forward movement.
not being facetious, but the current laws of physics would make such an investment risky i think. Unless you’ve cracked anti gravity?
Antigravity forcefield propulsion still requires the forcefield to be constantly powered within Earth atmosphere. In resistance-less space locomotion does not require constancy. In the book “Unconventional Flying Objects,” it was determined through process of elimination that power generation — for UFO performance specs, anyway — must be supplied by a positron-electron annihilation reactor. 🙂
I’m afraid I’m out of my depth there, (though I am assuming you jest)
Life has been difficult enough since they took away all the phoneboxes , I have nowhere to change my clothes
Not kidding actually. I believe the best explanation is that the towers were ‘dustified’ on 9/11, presumably by electron-stripping, remember? (sorry to disappoint you.) If I hadn’t seen something in the night sky that I don’t believe is possible of earth industrialism, then I wouldn’t believe in DEWs but since I have, I do. DEWs, the “new weapons” banned spoke of WRT Ukraine, that Medvedev referenced and in his doing so they made their oblique, public debut.
There’s also no earth industrial explanations for crop circles, right? That’s the gateway phenomenon for those that haven’t seen UFOs.
We must always hew to Reason no matter where it takes us.
How many helium filled balloons do you need to lift 40tns? What’s the price of helium right now? Then just give it shove in the right direction!
assuming your reply is laced with humour Tsubion, i know a few blowhards who might help it along
The politicians don’t let others know that they are aware of the real problem, but you can bet the military of nearly all countries understands the energy problem. They are the ones who have been concerned about the problem for a long time. They have been looking for low-energy ways of fighting wars, for a long time. They know that fighting is inevitable if there are not enough resources to go around.
The politicians are basically MORE-ONS put in place to pretend to run countries… so that the Elders can pretend to provide democracy…
Does anyone seriously think TruDUNCE – a high school drama teacher — and Ardern – a drug-addled former DJ… run jack shit hahahaha as IF!
The politicians are corrupt clowns on ego trips — think Kim Kardashian… without the fake body parts…. useless MORE-ONS…
Very similar to news presenters… notice how both of them read their lines off of teleprompters…
The appointed people – we call them bureaucrats or even The Deep State – are the people who make it all happen – they carry out the orders of the Edlers.
And they know very well the true nature of the problems we are facing…
Your ‘clean gdp’ idea of paying down debt has no basis in reason in a debt-based economy. Show us a period in industrial history when abundant fossil fuels paid down debt? Abundant energy is just more collateral for more debt.
The oil, the coal, the gas, they’ve never ACTUALLY paid for themselves.
You haven’t done all your homework yet, so you’re bargaining with the predicament. In order for your bargain more honestly, now you need to include the incorporation of a cultural revolution into your energy revolution. An anti-debt cultural revolution. Unfortunately for your fantast a debtless society has never existed in civilization and never can, because markets are debt structures. Hell, even the USSR had a mountain of external debt when it collapsed.
To elaborate on the topic of collateral if you are interested:
In Austria the roads are owned by a private company called ASFINAG.
In Vienna there is currently a dispute on a new road through a natural reserve at the Danube called “Lobau”.
Asfinag has bought up the land when it was marked by the government as a “development area” that it has not been before.
So with that Asset they can go and have more debt even if the road that was the primary objective does not exist yet.
Unfortunately “they” now have a little problem with assets deemed a collateral for debt that has been already spent so there is not a good way out of that besides pedal to the metal.
There is a professor in TU Vienna by the name of “Hermann Knoflacher” that tries for ages to communicate this to the public to no avail.
Peter….
A new lower cost source of energy could allow us to grow our way out of debt…..
how much time we have to develop this clean source and how much time we have to grow our way out?
[glancing at my watch]…. say can we do it before Europe freezes over in 2 months max?
General Motors is now running and on the all electric New GMC Denali massive pickup truck with 754HP and a range of 400 miles will showing it towing a boat. I’m waiting for reality to set in.
Then of course will be the astronomical purchase price followed by the price shock to replace the battery module when it fails.
Are the batteries in the boat?
No they sell an option trailer with a 2000kg battery that you pull behind you if you want to haul something in the bed of the truck more than 100 miles.
Cost is another $40,000 for that option
I see, The $107K GMC Sierra EV Denali electric pickup ‘sold out’ in 15 minutes
Reservations book full for the full-size electric pickup
Hahaha – all good if you plan not to use to haul anything more than 100 miles.
This is where delusion runs into reality – and despair…
I give you … hyper stoopidity:
Netball in turmoil as Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting pulls ‘ground-breaking’ $15m sponsorship
A week from hell for Netball Australia has taken another twist after Rinehart’s mining giant pulled out of the historic deal.
Gina Rinehart’s mining empire Hancock Prospecting has withdrawn its controversial $15m sponsorship deal with Netball Australia after it sparked a week of turmoil in the sport.
Players were reluctant to embrace the mining giant’s backing and wear its branding on their playing dresses after Indigenous player Donnell Wallam voiced concerns over comments made by the company’s founder, and Rinehart’s father, Lang Hancock.
The players’ questioning of Hancock Prospecting’s ideals relating to climate change further made them uncomfortable with the association.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/10/22/climate-activist-aussie-netball-players-wipe-out-their-own-funding/
Great – now they can walk to their matches … hahahaha
All kinds of supposed ways to save the world!
they know:
“Battery Airplanes? Nope!” – Robert Bradley Jr. in WUWT reports that according to an article in MIT Technology Review, in order for electric planes to go any useful distance, energy density would need to quadruple.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/10/21/battery-airplanes-nope-mit-technology-review/
Fake
Air Canada orders 30 electric-hybrid aircraft for takeoff in 2028 https://www.freethink.com/environment/air-canada-electric-hybrid
No matter who you are and what your education background is, anyone who believes that there will be an electric airplane and it uses battery are the same set of people who will defend “safe and effective”. Basically, no thought process at all.
@banned solved this riddle for me:
The batteries are in the boat the aircraft drags behind with an electrical cable.
So this is what I call a genius!
Obviously .. they know:
Net Zero Bombshell: The World Does Not Have Enough Lithium and Cobalt to Replace All Batteries Every 10 Years – Finnish Government Report
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/10/22/net-zero-bombshell-the-world-does-not-have-enough-lithium-and-cobalt-to-replace-all-batteries-every-10-years-finnish-government-report/
That would be Simon Michaux as he is working for the Finnish Govt.
According to Chris Martenson as well as others in the know. We don’t have enough rare earth materials to convert to all electric, just once. Let alone keeping the EV infrastructure serviced and maintained.
Going full electric is just a pipe dream but it gives the masses hope because next they will be sold on more hopium that we will have flying cars and spaceship cities. All powered by clean wind and solar. It ain’t gonna happen folks. It all ends with fossil fuels and coal.
I agree! Exactly!
Of course it does. We know what happens if you try to run a consumer economy on renewables.
The best you can do is something like the Roman Empire and the long period of peace in the empire led to total disaster because the land could no longer produce food after centuries of farming and Europe was deforested.
It took 1,000 years for Europe to recover from that period of peace.
We have physics, chemistry and globalisation.
We can turn Ukraine (plus Russia if you like or plus Europe) in a huge compost heap and grab some for every year in spring to put on our fields as fertilizer.
We have a huge advantage over those Romans!
physics and chemistry define the laws of what we can do
they do not provide the means of our doing
Basically, renewable energy projects, such as Vineyard Wind, are vanity projects.
Tourism = stimulation and enrichment.
OFW = end of tourism.
Without enough oil, it is hard to maintain tourism.
Alberta is deliberately erasing hospital records of vaccine injury…
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/alberta-is-deliberately-erasing-hospital
And their new ‘Desantis-like’ premier does nothing about this ..
Theatre she is … just like Desantis
This gives the anti vax hordes hope that justice will be served hahaha… see how easy it is to fool people
This is definitely not the message I just received.
Namely (From Reclaim the Net email feed, which I hav e no reason to doubt: https://reclaimthenet.org/alberta-premier-danielle-smith-vaccine-passports-amnesty/ ):
“New Alberta Premier Danielle Smith apologizes for vaccine passports
During the United Conservative party’s annual general meeting, Alberta’s new Premier Danielle Smith is seeking legal advice on pardoning Canadians that got arrested or fined for violating COVID-19 rules such as not having a vaccine passport.
“We are human beings,” said Smith. “We are not QR codes,” she said, adding that she wanted to “purge” the QR database.
[[Related link: How vaccine passports are crushing freedom, privacy, and civil liberties]]
“I believe that Alberta Health Services is the source of a lot of the problems that we’ve had,” she said.
“They signed some kind of partnership with the ***World Economic Forum*** [[ding ding ding]] right in the middle of the pandemic; we’ve gotta address that. Why in the world do we have anything to do with the ***World Economic Forum?*** That’s got to end [[[Yes yes yes.go, Danielle!!]].
“The things that come to top of mind for me are people who got arrested as pastors (and) people given fines for not wearing masks,” Smith said. “These are not things that are normal to get fines and get prosecuted for. I’m going to look into the range of outstanding fines and get some legal advice on which ones we are able to cancel and provide amnesty for.”
Smith also doubled down on her promise to amend the Human Rights Act to ban discrimination based on Covid vaccination status. She said the amendment would focus on Covid vaccines because the issue is not medical, it is political.
“Since it was a very specific reaction to a very specific vaccine mandate, we’re going to be very precise when we write the legislation,” she said.
“We have to get back to an attitude of ‘you take a vaccine to protect yourself.’
“[But] we have to get away from this attitude that you demonize those who make a different choice.”
Smith is a vocal opponent of vaccine passports and mandates, especially the Alberta Health Services (AHS) for not allowing people to work if they are not vaccinated against Covid. According to the premier, people not vaccinated against Covid are the most discriminated against she has seen in her life.
Smith vowed to reorganize the AHS governance system and fire the entire board.
“The system, my friends, is broken,” she said. “Most of those managing AHS today are holdovers from the NDP years. They have had their chance to fix this bloated system and they have largely failed on almost all accounts. Failure is no longer an option.”
+++++++
What say you, FE?
Wow! Someone who is willing to try to fix the discrimination against the unvaccinated, to the extent she can.
Same as Desantis… good guy bad guy … if she stops the health ministry from lying about the data and hiding it… wake me up.
Hmm, looks like you will remain asleep. Forcing the “healthy industry” to stop “lyiing about its data” is probably not within her ability as a regional premier to do. But she has established a beach head, and what is important, and should be to you, sleepyhead, is that she has done so.
So, no, I won’t be “waking you up”–you can wake yourself up! Sounds to me like ” DeSantis!” functions for you like “Trump! Putin!” for those who don’t actually want to talk about the war in the UKriaine!
“Exposed: How Anthony Fauci tortured vulnerable children in his obsessive hunt for an HIV vaccine” – Read the shocking story in TCW Defending Freedom, an excerpt from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book on the U.S. Government official.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/exposed-how-anthony-fauci-tortured-vulnerable-children-in-his-obsessive-hunt-for-an-hiv-vaccine/
“Swarm of Covid sub-variants show ‘increased transmissibility and immune escape’” – More than 300 Omicron off-shoots are circulating the globe, but reduced surveillance limits efforts to understand them, the WHO has said, according to the Telegraph.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/swarm-covid-sub-variants-show-increased-transmissibility-immune/
They sure are trying hard at this … so far no Jack Pot strain though (DC666 in the lingo…)
Probably none of them very virulent, however.
I bet they were saying that until Marek’s hit the chickens!!!
BTW – Marek’s is a permanent thing – all chickens need to be vaxxed or else… I remember when we had chickens in Bali – they all suddenly died.. they’d not be vaxxed cuz it’s bali + we did not know about Mareks.
There’s no vaccine that stops Covid — or Demon Covid – when it arrives. So…
There’s no vaccine that stops covid when it’s here.
Full stop.
Luckily the techies worked hard to bring it about.
Otherwise we needed to invent it.
Karen Kingston interviewed by Mike Adams. Vaccine patents are reviewed. Lipid nanoparticles are described as having “cognitive function.” This woman is fascinating but all over the place. I find her hard to listen to. Probably my problem. I recommend skipping to 45:00 to 50:00 but there is a lot of information in the whole interview. The level of technology in these injections is through the roof. The patents are listing 10 or more functions of the substances.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/gkWiRiU5wf0E/
https://www.brighteon.com/0baeff43-2a1d-4df9-8e02-454a459ee9ae
Adding AI cognitive functions to humans by injecting them with so-called vaccines is bizarre.
“Cases of BQ.1, BQ.1.1 COVID variants double in U.S. as Europe warns of rise” – U.S. regulators estimated BQ.1 and closely related BQ.1.1 accounted for 16.6% of Covid variants in the country, nearly doubling from last week, as Europe expects them to become dominant in a month, reports Reuters.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/covid-variants-bq1-bq-11-make-up-over-16-us-cases-2022-10-21/
I am patiently awaiting the variant DC666….. can we also get some Super Fent + a Nuke with that
U.K. Regulator Mulls Covid Vaccination for Babies Despite High Injury Rate – as Moderna Trial Finds Vaccine Can Cause Diabetes in Infants
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/10/21/u-k-regulator-mulls-covid-vaccination-for-babies-despite-high-vaccine-injury-rate/
What’s to mull — millions of babies will be saved by the shots — boost and blast away asap – Save Millions of Lives – Safe and Effective!
This video is two weeks old, but I think still accurate, and if anything the situation is worse.
The Mississippi River levels are so low now that it is really impacting shipping.
This shipping guy goes over an article from Bloomberg and at 5:53 talks about which commodities are affected like soybeans, crude oil, fertilizer and coal. At 10:55 he talks about New Orleans being a huge port for shipping not by containers but sheer tonnage. The problem area especially is the Mississippi River near Memphis and the Tennessee border.
This is a 16 minute video about the low water level on the Mississippi. The low water level is caused by widespread drought–rivers flowing into the Mississippi are mostly at a low level. Barges can only expect a draft water level of 9.5 feet, rather than 11.5 feet normally, so they need to be light loaded to make it through the river. The number of barges available becomes exhausted when they are only partly filled. This affects grains, coal, oil, and fertilizer shipped down the river.
So we have 1% of the population lying through their teeth to the world and 98% of the population saying “please tell me more comfortable lies.
And meanwhile, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham are both having health issues that are forcing them to cancel concerts.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/music/2022/10/05/stevie-nicks-postpones-phoenix-concert/8187461001/
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/lindsey-buckingham-cancels-european-tour-dates-health-1234604033/
Over the past month or so there’ve been a number of OFW comments concerning what’s going on in Sri Lanka – always running out of petrol tomorrow, etc. I follow reasonably closely whats going on there from four news sources and they give me some food for my own thought. My interpretation is this – that the IMF has said to temporarily back off to creditor entities since the president fled and the new one installed. Success on the part of the installers and the ops team moved on. Even the old presesident was allowed back so as to not reveal the bodies. Now it’s the implementation phase
https://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2022/10/15/moving-the-centre-of-the-protest-to-teheran-from-galle-face-green/ G.F.= Maidan
this article, amid much waffle, details the role of NGOs in these events.
But it was not the only successes this year – Pakistan, then Sri Lanka, and on to Tehran with less result (yet)
So, now the MSM voluably sings the praises IMF assistance as though it was a fait accompli. Maybe it is, but at the moment there’s an IMF team in there ruling everything up for privitisation and collateralization, eerily resonating with what Putins had been saying in Astana about the West’s ongoing colonialisation through international organisations (cough, UN, cough) for the benefit of all we can imagine whom.
https://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2022/10/21/committee-report-on-restructuring-energy-sector-to-be-submitted-to-national-council-soon/
In a recent story bewailing the lack of medicines and supplies in the medical industry, at the end was an observation on the IMF’s schemimg
“In April, Sri Lanka suspended repayment of nearly $7 billion in foreign debt due this year out of a total foreign debt of more than $51 billion. On Sept. 1, the International Monetary Fund announced $2.9 billion in loans ‘to restore macroeconomic stability and debt sustainability while safeguarding financial stability, reducing corruption vulnerabilities and unlocking Sri Lanka’s growth potential.’
“The loans, however, are not expected to restore Sri Lanka’s ability to import medicine quickly. In the meantime, Direct Relief will continue assisting the country to the fullest extent possible, with additional medical aid shipments already underway. (Colombo Gazette)”
https://colombogazette.com/2022/10/09/sri-lanka-heading-for-a-humanitarian-disaster/
When the problem’s debt the solution is more debt. Meanwhile, to encourage the dissipation of doubt, the IMF makes ugly noises
“She (Anne-Marie Gulde, foghorn for our darling elders and Deputy Director, Asia and Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund) said that the initial disbursement of the program will only come after the IMF board meeting.
“‘Sri Lanka’s debt is assessed as unsustainable at this stage. And for the board to approve, we will need two specific financing assurances. The first would be from official bilateral creditors, we would need assurances that they will restore debt sustainability in the context of the program. And we need assurances that there are good faith efforts underway to deal with the private sector debt. So, Sri Lanka is currently working with their legal and financial advisors on this debt element’, she said.”
It seems there’s a pause till January when our boy is to knuckle under and sign the last clawed sludge from the bottom of the barrel
Lucky Sri Lankans, but that we last that long, too.
She also added that “we all hope that we will be able to work very fast to end the suffering, especially the suffering of the poor and vulnerable.”
Om mani padme hum
Some other Sri Lanks news sources with a stronger pro-rentier flavour
https://www.dailymirror.lk/
http://colombopage.com/
It sounds as though the Sri Lankan situation is not really fixed. With the amounts the article gives
It is hard to see how this little bit of additional debt is going to fix anything. Without cheap fossil fuels, Sri Lanka cannot operate its economy.
Sri lanka at 51 billion has 00.16% of the USA’s debt of 31 trillion.
Thats the official debt.
Unfunded liabilities- veterans benefits- social security are probably 3x that.
Catherine Austin Fitts says we have 94 trillion off the books.
They say the republicans will cut social security next year.
How about we cut “defense” spending and build back better renewable spending along with SS? How about we get rid of the state department? How about we get rid of the CDC and NIH? Crazy Idea. How about a balanced budget? Ok now Ive gone off the deep end. They passed that then couldnt even do it for one year. How did they get it passed? NEXT year we must have a balanced budget. All in favor AYE. When next year rolled around they tossed the balanced budget faster than a three week old mcnugget.
CDC budget is 10 billion. I say we can the CDC and get Sri Lanka paid off in five years. Who is with me!!!
(crickets chirping)
Blue clown team spends.
Red clown team spends.
No soup for you.
The thing is..
When the guy with the baseball bat comes to collect… you point a nuclear missile at his head and inform him he needs to f789 off — and come back with an offer of another trillion in credit – or else.
A term JHK might like?
“Soupe des faits accomplis”
Sri Lanka sounds like the direction the UK is headed
The main issue I have is “news sources”. It may or not not even be representative of what is happening. For your reference, please go to China. What you read likely not what is happening.
As I am always skeptical of everything, I find it hard to believe anything now. How many times I have been lied to by “news sources”
Thank you moss
For those with access to Science Direct, this is an interesting paper.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957582017300782
If people had stayed in the most heavily ceasium contaminated zones around Chernobyl after the accident and had not evacuated, they would have lost an average of 89 days of life expectancy due to external radiation between 1986 and 2060. This compares to 9 months (270 days) life expectancy lost due to a lifetime exposure to air pollution in London. So spending a lifetime in London, is 3x worse for your health than living in the worst areas of the Chernobyl exclusion zone immiediately following the accident. The average resident of Tokyo loses far more life expectancy to fossil fuel air pollution, than a person living in the most contaminated areas around Fukushima Daiichi.
Globally, fossil fuel air pollution kills 7-8 million people every year. The radioactive contamination from Chernobyl is estimated to cause about 4000 additional fatalities in total between 1986 and 2060. By this point, even the longest lived ceasium isotope, Cs-137, will have gone through 2.5 half-lives. For Fukushima, the fatality figure is in the hundreds, climbing to the low thousands if no one were evacuated. The three nuclear reactors that melted down at Fukushima, together released about 30% of the contamination released by Chernobyl. Had there been no evacuation of contaminated areas around Chernobyl, the link above suggests that additional cancer mortalities might have been doubled, to perhaps 8000. One thousand times that many people die every single year from fossil fuel air pollution on Earth. So Chernobyl had the same mortality as just 4 hours of global air pollution, and would have risen to 8 hours if no one had evacuated.
This tells us something about nuclear power. There is a lot of concern in some circles about building nuclear reactors because of the small risk of a nuclear accident. There is concern about fuel ponds leaking radiation if all cooling and water addition were lost. These figures show us that the danger of nuclear accidents is more hype than real. People have an enormously exagerated impression of the risk of radiation releases. The reality is that for a modern PWR, there is one chance in several million each year, that the plant will release enough radioactive pollution, to create a pollution problem on a few hundred square miles of land. If you remain living there after the accident, the pollution will be a health hazard comparable to urban air pollution. Boo hoo. Millions of people live with that hazard anyway, for their entire lives. There are over 400 nuclear power reactors in the world, most of them light water reactors. If every single one of them melted down this year, in the way that Fukushima 1-3 did, the resultant radioactive pollution would be equivalent to about 40 Chernobyl accidents. The number of global fatalties would not reach even 10% of the number killed by fossil fuel air pollution in 1 year.
A world powered by nuclear energy would be a much safer place to live in. Fossil fuels are horribly polluting in comparison. Living with urban air pollution is a lot more dangerous to human health than living in Pripyat.
The Chernobyl accident was relatively minor, involved no spent fuel ponds, and was controlled by pouring cement onto the reactor. This was breaking down so a few years back they re-entombed.
Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe from radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16628547/
This should not be a difficult concept to grasp
You have a bit of a thing about spent fuel ponds. But the fact is that for most of the fuel the decay heat is low and the pond is inside a building. If water boils off ahd the fuel does overheat, release fractions will be low, much lower than the open air graphite core fire at Chernobyl.
Thanks for putting my mind at ease! I gave up my doomie prep because the nuclear physicists that I came across in my research indicated these ponds would end all life if BAU collapsed.
I’ll abandon QT and move back to the rural north part of the island next week.
1 spent fuel pond = ok
2 spent fuel ponds = ok
4000 spent fuel ponds = ?
If there is a huge problem with spent fuel pools, would having 10 times as many as we have make any difference? 100 times? I have to wonder.
The self-organizing ecosystem we are part of will adapt to any kind of disruption, given sufficient time. It will adjust in an optimal way. We think we know more than the laws of physics supporting our system, but I wonder.
I notice this abstract ends with:
Earlier, it says that the expected effect was tiny.
This article is actually free to all, so anyone can read it on Science Direct.
The abstract says that not nearly as many people needed to be relocated as were actually relocated:
Peter; This is you correct?
https://integralenergy.co.uk/team-member/peter-cassidy/
Usually when people arise on this forum who are saying its safe to swim in fuel ponds they have or are receiving compensation from the nuclear industry. Not saying thats the case with you. Is integral energy associated with nuclear energy? I see it is a renewable energy company.
FE even offered one chap round trip airfare to Japan after Fukushima so he could swim in a fuel pond like he said was safe! Ah those were the days! But he never took him up on it. He was out of the Idaho nuclear industry as I remember. A lifer.
Analysis that Chernobyl killed close to one million people. Cancer rates rose 40% in Belarus following the release.
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2010/09/04/scientists-conclude-chernobyl-killed-nearly-1-million/
IMO the truth lies in between. A little radiation is not a death sentence. The sun delivers a lot. IMO saying Fukushima and Chernobyl were nothing is BS.
Not me. My name is actually a pseudonym.
Chernobyl caused a lot more casualties than the 4000 caused by radiation. People were forced from their homes. Women were coerced into unnecesary abortions. A lot of the evacuated suffered depression and deaths from alcoholism were high even by Soviet standards. Almost all of the suffering could have been avoided.
But 1 million casualties due to radiation is implausible. We actually have good data on radiation risk factors. If Chernobyl had caused 1 million casualties, then people living in places with high backgrouhd radiation, like Cornwall and Colorado, would be dropping like flies.
There are 4000 Spent Fuel Ponds Around the Globe…
If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies.
One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl.
http://science.time.com/2011/03/15/a-new-threat-in-japan-radioactive-spent-fuel/
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in pools in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo.
https://energyskeptic.com/2017/the-devils-scenario-near-miss-at-fukushima-is-a-warning-for-u-s/
The Chernobyl accident was relatively minor, involved no spent fuel ponds, and was controlled by pouring cement onto the reactor. This was breaking down so a few years back they re-entombed.
Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe from radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16628547/
Peter, thanks for your very sensible response.
There is also the interesting case of Ramsar—famous as the site of the Ramsar Convention, but perhaps less so for having the highest levels of natural radioactivity of literally any inhabited place on Earth.
Ramsar a city on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran hosts the highest measured natural background radiation levels in the world. These are due to the local geology and hydrogeology and, in some places, deliver radiation doses far in excess of those recommended for radiation workers. A population of about 2000 is exposed to average annual radiation levels of 10.2 mGy/yr and the highest recorded doses are about 260 mGy/yr. These high radiation levels are due to the deposition of 226R in local rocks and, because these ocks are used in the construction of many local houses, interior radiation levels are often similar to those found outside.
The presence of areas such as Ramsar raises an interesting public health policy question: Is it necessary to relocate the inhabitants to areas of lower natural background radiation levels in the interests of public health? According to the linear, no-threshold (LNT) hypothesis, there is no doubt that relocating the population of Ramsar will result in a reduction in cancer incidence. Therefore, under any reasonable policy based on the LNT hypothesis, the public health is best served by relocating many of Ramsar’s inhabitants to other areas along the Caspian Sea.
At present, there is no reliable epidemiological data on cancer incidence among the inhabitants of Ramsar’s high background radiation areas (HBRAs), but local physicians feel that local cancer incidence rates are lower than in neighboring cities. Furthermore, preliminary results indicate that there is a statistically significant radioadaptation in the inhabitants of Rarnsar. Interestingly, it seems that the frequency of chromosome aberrations in the lymphocytes of the inhabitants of Rarnsar is no higher than the control areas. This important finding suggests that the cancer rate in Ramsar should be no higher than in other comparable parts of Iran. In other HBRAs such as Yangjiang, China it has been reported that mortality from all cancers and those from leukemia, breast and lung is no higher than in control areas.
https://aerb.gov.in/images/PDF/image/34086353.pdf
Oh Praise the Creator for proving us with another “cosmic coincidence” !
A new commenter here writes about nuclear and renewables passionately and giving out potential solutions to all our earthly problems. Some are OK, some are off but nevertheless passionate.
That some commenter selected a pen name that matches the name of the founder and MD of Integral Energy, a consulting company that focuses on renewables…
Praise the Creator !
Your skin is pretty good at blocking alpha particles that have been slowed down by our atmosphere already.
Beta and gamma mainly pass through “unnoticed” by statistical terms but not with 0 risk. (X-ray)
If you ingest a nano particle that has an alpha decay in it’s chain of decays, you will have a very high risk of getting cancer or having a genetic modification in your offspring(s).
That is why a claim on radioactivity is baseless, if you do not look at the elements involved.
For example around Chernobyl there is a huge problem with Americum because Americum is water soluble.
Other elements released at the accident site mainly have high atomic weight and will not travel far. That is a positive…
That does not apply for Caesium or Iodine so you have protection if your levels are up when your body does not “build it into your building blocks” because it has the same chemical features.
Also a lot of radioactive elements behave like “heavy metals” and they (as all) tend to block the natural N/P/K/C/O chemistry in your body and can not be “exhaled” thus creating a permanent high risk burden.
You could join Gail’s arguments that for all needs and purposes radioactivity is something that nature has in the cards for “life” to give it a try in the game of chances but I would suggest that I am ok with the level we already had (and did not even know of less than 150 years ago)…
First Chernobyl covered the entire European continent.
Still today wild forest animals and mushrooms in Europe need to be checked and or destroyed.
The number of people died can not be calculated by statistical means because as you say, people in Europe suffer from many environmental stressors.
Air pollution kills your lungs and that was it. Radioactivity pollutes the gene pool and for decay times of several 100-1000 years you can not make any significant statistical claim on genetic stability.
You make claims on “if people had not been evacuated”.
Uhm, where exactly is your control group?
You seem to bee pretty good at manipulating symbolic representations but you have no gist to your claims.
People say: look at the wildlife in Chernobyl.
Yes, but will that wildlife be there as in a stable breeding population for let’s say 10.000 years or do we only see wandering animals taking refuge in an area with little humans? You do not know.
I am pretty sure you can have land for free in Prypiat if you write to the Russian Embassy. Why does nobody do that ?
Ah I see, you want to stay in cosy USA.
Why does the European Union spend millions and millions on building a cask over the site when the danger is actually zero?
What should humans do that survive the bottleneck and stumble across the ruins of Chernobyl and say, uhm quite warm here from the ground.
After the realize that they are getting sick quite bad, they might have risked the survival of the entire group.
There is actually an other group of concerned scientists (H/T to reante) on figuring out a way to make people in 10.000 years stay away from sites like Chernobyl.
And so on and so on.
You pick a single fact, give it a fancy name as in J factor and make people believe that is all they need to know about it. Nice try.
“Your considerations about dangerous future events are baseless”
That is for all purposes the main element of propaganda.
Ukrainian Embassy.
Maybe it was a make work project — nothing to do with safety…
In 2015, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) stated that the international community was aiming to close a €100 million funding gap, with administration by the EBRD in its role as manager of the Chernobyl decommissioning funds. The total cost of the Shelter Implementation Plan, of which the New Safe Confinement is the most prominent element, is estimated to be around €2.15 billion (US$2.3 billion). The New Safe Confinement accounts for €1.5 billion.[6]
Prototype for “Impressive Empty Construction” later successfully exported to China.
Awesome pair of comments, MM. Peter you’re confidence-manning a topic on which you either don’t understand the cellular biology or you don’t care to understand it. The former endeavor is a fool’s errand and the latter is of extremely low character.
See what you did there, Reante?
From where I viewed it, you attempted to invalidate another person’s opinion on a controversial topic by attacking the person’s style of presentation (“confidence manning”) and then moving on to attacking their understanding (of which you are unaware and can only guess), questioning their desire to understand (of which again, you are unaware and can only guess), and finally questioning the person’s level of intelligence and moral character (which is irrelevant to the facts at issue and).
I hope Peter will see and respond to the points MM made—either accepting each one or else attempting to refute them or explore their implications. And I hope he will do so without resorting to ad hominem attacks.
Remember, we are supposed to discussing the findings of a scientific paper here, not putting anybody on trial for heresy or blasphemy.
but the penalties for heresy and blasphemy have greater entertainment value for the masses who come to watch.
Thanks Tim. I’m well aware of what I did and why I did it. I’m sure you’ll agree that I’m not one to lean on ad hominem by substituting it for reason -based arguments I’m unable to come up with. And now you know that I’m not averse to calling a spade a spade when a spade chooses to ignore inconvenient truths that threaten all of biology while plowing ahead with his fearful fantasy everybody else be damned. If you want to join Peter in exploring the pros of nuclear salvation then that’s your business but don’t be surprised if you come down with a real bad case of wetiko.
You sound like a sore looser. You do not like what I am advocating. You cannot refute my points on a logical basis, so you start slinging mud and being insulting. That is rather teenage of you. Forgive me if I am not prepared to speak falsehoods to spare your feelings.
welcome to the club
Yet you are the one using the teenage slur “loser.” The Trumpian slur.
If you go back through the history of your visit, here, you are the one not addressing my objections. You still have not addressed the union of concerned scientists’ material. You still have not addressed criticality. You still have not addressed biology in a meaningful way. You still have not addressed cultural dynamics, nor collapse dynamics.
You’re shilling singlemindedly for a ‘solution’ using the same thinking that got us into this mess in the first place, and this is a systems-oriented website populated by people who give a damn about the truth and don’t want other people’s short-sighted mistakes coming back to bite them in the ass. Nuclear is the poster child for that. How many people have to suffer from forced relocation before you question the ethics of nuclear power?
Answering evey objection with honesty is how you’ll get respect around here when advocating for a deeply controversial subject. So far you’ve been dishonest.
I think it is well worth exploring the pros of nuclear salvation, regardless of whether it is feasible or even physically possible to achieve such salvation.
More to the point, I don’t think it is very productive to make personal attacks on people just because they might want to discuss things that I think are off the wall, beyond the fringe, or even round the U-bend.
Of course, I do make personal attacks from time to time. When I am frustrated that a moreon just doesn’t get it, there is a certain amount of catharsis to be found in that.
If I suffered from wetiko, how would I know? I am never going to adopt Keith’s enthusiastic stance toward space-based solar but I don’t mind discussing how it might. And while I can see that nuclear has considerable potential as an energy source, I doubt very much that nuclear is going to save our present global civilization from collapse.
I would like to note that back when Hubbert produced his famous curve showing world oil production peaking, he assumed that nuclear would take the place of declining fossil fuel output and keep us up and running indefinitely. Peter Cassidy seems to retain Hubbert’s optimism for nuclear, which puts him in a small minority these days. But it doesn’t mean that what he says should be discounted.
Perhaps the Elders have decided that after rightsizing the population to eliminate the 85% that they have no further use for, it would be a smart idea to go fully nuclear in order to provide the stable energy supply they require to keep their highly mechanized new world running? How would I know? They don’t invite me to their meetings.
“I think it is well worth exploring the pros of nuclear salvation, regardless of whether it is feasible or even physically possible to achieve such salvation.
More to the point, I don’t think it is very productive to make personal attacks on people just because they might want to discuss things that I think are off the wall, beyond the fringe, or even round the U-bend.”
You’re first sentence is self-contradictory. There can be no rational exploration of nuclear salvation if it is deemed not feasible/possible. Right?
If you have been reading his comments carefully you will have seen that Peter is approaching nuclear salvation from an Elder, ‘hunger games’ cultural perspective. He has no apparent qualms with what it would take to get from here to there – just so long as some humans, himself included, get to continue living high on the hog at the continuing expense of others. If you don’t find that morally reprehensible and deserving of opprobrium then you and me have very different values.
Like I said to him days ago, if he prefaced his comments as necessary with caveats that they are thought experiments, then I wouldn’t have a problem with it. I gather that this is how you are approaching his content. Knock yourself out.
The J-curve technique calculates average loss of life expectancy, by multiplying external dose rates due to ceasium deposition and internal doserates due to ingestion, by known radiation risk factors. This is about as scientific as it is possible to get. There is nothing ‘unknowable’ about the radiological consequences of nuclear accidents. The same approach can be used to calculate what the consequences would have been under different scenarios.
What these facts are telling us is that the excess mortality resulting from the Chernobyl accident is about 4000 radiation induced deaths. This is not an insigificant number. But it is small when compared to other causes of mortality. It is small compared to the mortality caused by air pollution in Europe across the same period, which runs into the millions. It is small compared to road traffic deaths. This tells us that the perceived risk of nuclear accidents is greatly out of proportion to the real risk, which is tiny.
These are the facts reached by following scientific process. I am sorry if you do not like them. They do not respect your personal ideology.
We cannot power the world with nuclear energy. I would be surprised if we are able to build more than a handful of new nuclear power stations.
I’m sorry, but I doubt that data from Soviet Union (Ukraine territory) can be reliable regarding that horrible incident.
We can all talk about the minutia of modern civilizations systems and the possible work arounds but it is my opinion that once the global population understands even a bit of the reality of a finite world, diminishing resources and the collapse that is happening because of it … it is all over… chaos the world over the next day… black friday at walmart X 1000000.
I am doubtful that people will ever, in general, understand the reality of a finite world. People have an incredibly difficult time understanding that the future might be less good than in the past.
Also, leaders have to try to keep order. They will never explain the real problem to people. It will always be, “We are trying to . . .” and end with problem and solution of the day. It might be keeping people in side because of a disease, or punishing Russia for invading Ukraine, or trying to prevent global warming.
Leaders know that they cannot talk about anything outcome that is too bad. Universities can’t talk about the possibility that their degrees will not be worth very much in the future. Advertisers cannot talk about the fact that their cars will not really be driven as many miles in the future.
Dissipative structures tend to dissipate as much energy is available. The only way this would seem to be possible is if citizens tend to go on with their daily life in as normal a way as possible, buying things that seem to be available, perhaps using a new local currency.
People would rather not accept the uncomfortable truth. The more intelligent they are, the more sophisticated excuses and vigorous defence they would come up with to cover their denial .
Yes, the more they think they understand more than others.
As they lead them down the garden path . . .
Our “renewable energy” committee is laying extensive plans with Eversource, the local electric power company. They are creating a renewable energy plan and our location is going to be a test area.
Me: Don’t throw out the big diesel-powered generators until the end of the “test.”
Man drives up to the gas station.
“Dude, we have no fuel here!”
“But, but, I have to drive to work?!”
Guess you’re asking leading questions you already answered.
A better thought is, how many had the brains to not take it, but still did; to keep their job, support the family and pay the death pledge?
With all good intentions, injections seemed like a choice, but were not.
Now for the entertainment of observers and inflictors they perform.
This is truely sad and evil.
Beguiled, self inflicted, delayed assisted suicide.
For some people, taking the crap seemed less self defeating.
It’s amazing in the worst sense, they were actually officially killed by premeditating self exonerating murderers in public.
better question for you to ponder Eddy is this.
What do murderers do wth witnesses?
You are always on my mind… you are always .. on my mind
https://youtu.be/R7f189Z0v0Y
Finally!
norm posts a joke that funny.
I need to change as I’ve pissed meself
had i known you had a continence problem—i would have lent you one of my adult diapers eddy
Lent?
i can’t afford to give them away
Maybe clickkid thinks you should have said “loaned.” But in my world “lent” is correct.
Norm,
Appreciate if you can add value to the comments here by giving out links or articles related to whatever you are interested in. FE is giving a lot of information on COVID and its vaccines.
By posting jests and insults do not help much in the discussion.
thank you
CTG
if you care to read all the threads in context, instead of cherry picking, you might—just might– realise that I only make humourous comments reactively.
I never make them proactively.
The ‘adult diaper’ joke thread has been running a long time.
Do yourself a favour and check back to where it started??
Thank you.
(Reuters)
“Russia’s Shoigu holds second call with U.S. defense secretary in three days”
[…]
”Moscow provided no details on the conversation with Austin, which came after the two men spoke on Friday for the first time since May. Its readouts on the other calls said Shoigu had said the situation in Ukraine was worsening.”
[…]
“Shoigu’s ministry said he had told his French, Turkish and British counterparts of Moscow’s concern that Ukraine could detonate a “dirty bomb” – a device laced with radioactive material.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/russias-shoigu-holds-second-call-with-us-defense-secretary-three-days-2022-10-23/
We live in a strange world!
Shoigu is a conspiracy theorist?
Is conspiracy theory the driving force of the Russian elite?
https://www.crisismagazine.com/2022/the-bizarre-conspiracy-theory-that-might-be-driving-russia
Shoigiu said:
1. That the ship “Moskva” will be sunk.
1. That Northstream would be blown up.
2. That a truck will explode on the Krim Bridge.
He is definitively in the know and it is very important that every human on this planet knows as well. Just to make up your mind.
Nobody is scaring you to death so you will obey and do whatever it takes. No really not.
Why not? It’s a simulation anyway.. just strap the MSM on and make it 24/7 delusion.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F475c19d9-1bce-4129-8a19-77cdef71ef90_800x824.png
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbf1ae7b-18ab-4696-8cd1-2a14ad0243c7_1002x932.png
The sheep don’t think. That is why they took the jab….
When was the last time you met a person whom you can talk to seriously without thinking of punching them in the face?
With each passing day, the jab looks more and more like a “filter” to filter out those who can think critically from those who cannot. For whatever end game that might be. Perhaps it is a “test” after all by a higher power….
Good point! And for the oldest (and sickest) people in the group, it might be that taking the vaccine is the optimal route.
I have been working in a home for the elderly and they all loved to be fed as in “modern times” and taken care of alone for months not able to go for a walk alone and shitting in their pants.
Yes, definitively a way to go!
Yes it is a test but I will certainly not join the remnants in Klausi’s world.
“I just called because we seem to have a problem in our AI system”.
“Yeah, I bet! But I have become a garbage collector, that helps my neighbors better, sorry”.
MM, think out of the box. Perhaps the world is not what you think. I am sure you have come across “brain in a vat”
You’d think the MOREONs would start to realize we are running low…. but nope – most of them insist we are transitioning to thorium / solar wind… EVs…
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0bbb4917-b8be-4bdf-bc94-c25a722d6ae5_1388x988.png
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1e605a67-1635-4fc7-949c-39aa51cec648_678x462.png
For vaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death — if you’re vaccinated — for themselves, their families, and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm.
But there’s good news: If you’re unvaccinated, you’re protected from severe illness and death — period.
We will see. It is easy to think that we know more than we really do.
At this point, France, UK and Italy are reporting big increases in COVID hospitalizations. The US and Israel are not.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/current-covid-hospitalizations-per-million?country=GBR~USA~ISR~FRA~ITA~NLD
Of the following countries, none are currently showing recent increases in COVID hospitalizations.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/current-covid-hospitalizations-per-million?country=CAN~POL~SWE~AUS~JPN
Gail, I regularly read Israeli newspaper lately, because they sometimes talk about things that are forbidden or (wrongly) not considered here in Italy.
I can tell you that no newspaper talks about the number of Covid cases in Israel.
They just talk generally about the vaccine.
My impression is that they are not tracing Covid anymore inside the Country…
And my additional impression is that it happens because Israel, during Covid-19 pandemic was, let’s say ‘mainly’, trying to solve the Covid issue with the vaccine to avoid excess number of Covid-19 patients in the Hospitals.
While Europe was doing that, not only for the above reason, but it was also counting a lot on passports and new digital ways to control people.
Israel doesn’t need to control its people, because they can have inside different ways of view, but it is an united population which, let’ say, ‘obeys’ to authorities without many problems.
The share same values and they are ready to ‘sacrificies’ for a common objective.
They have to face a great danger for its existance every day.
Paradoxically they would need, on the contrary, a way to control better the Arab minority inside the Country or Palestinians which enter the Country.
While Europe is an overpopulated and declining Country which is facing an epic economic and social collapse.
Consequently European leaders, in my view, think they need to control people to avoid anarchy or revolutions.
European leader would be pretty happy to find a digital way to control the fragmented and potentially dangerous european populations.
I am not sure but could you please elaborate on the topic of:
“They have to face a great danger for its existance every day.” ?
So either all humans have this problem and the claim does not make any difference and does not apply for “people living in Israel” or no human has this problem in principle and some do and what makes the difference here exactly?
Although we might tend to see them as all-powerful oppressors of Arabs, the Israelis see themselves as a small embattled nation under threat.
My Israeli neighbour, in an area under regular attack from Palestinians , found it too stressful and miserable so he left.
Thanks! I think that Israel’s climate is enough warmer than that of most of Europe that it is not seeing what we think of as winter illnesses yet. Also, in the US, high COVID incidence is so mostly in the Northeast. This is a link to a site that shows the CDC’s view of COVID incidence by county.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view?list_select_state=all_states&data-type=CommunityLevels
The Northeast is known for being highly vaccinated and fairly cold.
Mass and Vermont very jab-compliant.
Not sure about Maine.
RI was also maniacal about “vaccines.”
I live in a warmer area of Mass and am unjabbed, so I am not worried.
Actually, I never was worried about covid-19.
Unless GVB’s predictions come true.
https://www.redvoicemedia.com/2022/10/the-vaccine-spreaders-of-misinformation-bill-gates-fauci-company-deserve-to-be-laughed-at-video/ref/8/
Red Voice Media (https://www.redvoicemedia.com/2022/10/the-vaccine-spreaders-of-misinformation-bill-gates-fauci-company-deserve-to-be-laughed-at-video/ref/8/)
The Vaccine Spreaders of Misinformation: Bill Gates, Fauci & Company Deserve to Be Laughed At
see the image hahaha .. norm ‘ya but it saved 21m lives so who cares’
A digression, but has any reliable source (other than his former date who said that Gates asked her what her SAT scores were) actually verified Bill Gate’s SAT scores, high school and college GPA (before he dropped out,) how much money his family donated to Harvard? Everyone seems to accept that he is so “smart,” but his record seems to be as evasive as Barry Sotero’s digitally 5 layered birth certificate. And how was his chess game? Magnus Carlson took Gates down in fewer than 6 moves, with no time limit for Gate’s to move. And while we’re at it, any documentation of his escapades in Boston’s infamous “Combat Zone” while he was at Harvard? James Corbett of Corbett Report compiled an interesting four part documentary about Gates. It seems like there is a common theme behind Clinton’s, Gate’s, and Epstein’s ascendancy.
You can not rise politically unless you can be “controlled.”
That is the very essence of elite manipulation of the collective inside the holography. Everything you witness in mass media for the next 17 years will be about preparation for the Phoenix phenomena arrival.
This is straight out of the book of Revelations.
Please explain what you are saying.
fascinating
But what exactly are you going on about?
Unidentified Flying Objects…
Possibly flown by aliens…
over Phoenix, Nevada…
with technology advanced enough…
to create a toupee that doesn’t get laughs!
We may never know how Hu screwed up. I guarantee you every single person in the CCP elite knows. That was a lesson demonstrated.. Hu’s reluctance to go was easily the Chinese equivalent of screaming dont tase me bro and being dragged out. His pleading with XI was heartbreaking. Xi was pissed a non entity was speaking with him. You know the score old man. Everything in Hu’s body language said -I DO NOT WANT TO GO. The escort controlling the elbow shoulder arm was absolutely a physical control of Hu. There is zero doubt in my mind Hu was extracted against his will. Is he going to room 101? Coming from a western perspective I cant imagine that degree of physical force being applied on a respected ex head of state but times they be a changing. The legacy of poobah respect is important. Its seldom violated as the principle is asserted that every leader is a hero. Every eye and all attention of every congress person in the CCP was on Mr Jintao as he was escorted out. IMO any idea that this was a casual event is incorrect you could cut the angst in that room with a knife. And that red folder. What did that contain I wonder? Something has gone down in China. OR. It may just be the old supreme leaders presence is offensive to the new supreme leaders authority. The freaking CCP is terrifying.
The Chinese are very efficient. No committee needed.
https://rumble.com/v1p74fk-chinese-leader-xi-has-his-predecessor-hu-jintao-removed-from-ccp-summit-on-.html
I wonder if Xi can see how badly things are going. There really isn’t enough inexpensive fossil fuels for everyone in the world. In fact, even in China, there isn’t enough to go around. When things are going badly, tolerance for those who cannot help solve the problems is very low.
The Rope & Road initiative. The devil is in the detail.
Prominent individuals who would reveal the leadership can’t solve problems won’t be tolerated either. It’s amazing this exact scenario is repeated throughout human history, Once again we sit in silence and know the signs.
Events become more pronounced when resources are stretched and civilisations hit walls.
If by decree, the current supreme avatar allowed himself to lead indefinitely, Hu’s tenure would automatically extend to his death and overrule the occupying placeholder by default. Doesn’t look good, so the semblance and image of ‘the other supernal figure in the room’ must be swept away.
America on the other hand solves the ‘same problem’ by removing the figure head altogether, appointing a geriatric, (GOTUS). Pliable and without mind so the shadow hand is free to rule unchallenged. We sit in silence and know the signs.
Which is more dangerous, open absolute power or putting the invisible man in charge when resources are a bit tight?
Food for thought, before we all start fighting over it perhaps.
It is called “The Priest Class” and unfortunately in our civ it is quite large.
That does not bode well as with other historical priest classes.
What elite Chinese “know” is that the Phoenix phenomena ( solar micro nova, dust shell impact, lithosphere displacement is strongly likely to most devastatingly impact Eastern Asia. The precise cyclicity and level of destruction is known within certain parameters. China is toast,….. literally.
The America’s will get smashed 6 years later with the arrival of Nemesis.
China will probably lose nearly 100% of its population. Revelations predict 25% loss of global population upon the opening of the 6 th seal.
Explain, please.
Something about Star trek and 6 seals that are coming to china. One of them is going to open up about it and let rip 😂.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRj0AFJg9gMpq8Lxrl4qavdDXatgpCpUXw2qg&s
Cromagnon has mentioned something about the inevitability of a ciranal mass ejection that makes methane hydrate burps nd currency cascades look like nada.
Coronal mass ejection, my bad
I would be very concerned if the holosphere manifested a truly massive methane cladrate out gas event like that of the early Eocene. It just does not appear to be in the cards.
My research seems to indicate one of two options climatically.
1) we get hit by “the cataclysm” and have a rapid entry into the next deep glacial cycle. Temperature plunges on the order of 10-15 C within a decade and stays there.
2). Biblical stories are documentary and we see the rapid reinitiation of a true planetary vapor canopy. This would probably require seismic activity of a truly massive level to unlock water reserves from mantle rock ( oceans of the great deep need to be opened).
All our creation myths are bed rocked in cataclysm. Even objective reading of original bible translations reveal the truth. “The Gods” were in fact extremely advanced technological humans arriving into the Middle East after a Phoenix event destroyed North America,….Younger Dryas event…..
There are protocols inside protocols like the design of nested dolls. Phoenix,Nemesis, Dark Satellite,……
I believe elites have much knowledge but not all knowledge. I think most do not accept the truly metaphysical implications of what reality is. They psychologically accept that recurrent cataclysm occurs (full stop) and that it is a “ force of nature” and that wealth and preparation can be used to avoid it.
I think that is not the case. The Phoenix protocol seems directed…. not precise but focused on populations that have wealth, power, influence ( those who aspire to god hood). Pliny states 2500 yrs ago that it targets the city dwellers and leaves the hill shepherds alone.
Nemesis is a whole other kettle of fish that scares the s, outta me. With the Nemesis comes true bizarreness and the open revelation to human survivors that we are in a simulation.
Discussing it is to creepy and supernatural for this venue.
i am a primitive early human, (a cro magnon if you like)
my world is full of things trying to kill me, one way or another. Volcanoes spout balls of fire, lightning strikes at random, tidal waves try to drown me, snakes hate me, great big hairy things want to eat me. (and that’s just the neanderthal neighbours in the next cave)
I try to make sense of it all.
i decide to invent ‘external forces’—it makes sense then, that ‘others’ are responsible for my situation, not me. (sounds familiar?)
if i incur the displeasure of those ‘gods’, then i am likely to meet an unpleasant death.
this mindset has been with us for millenia—dressing up in smart clothes, driving around on personal wheels doesnt change what we were and are—superstitious primitives, looking for the intervention of superior beings to put our world right—after we’ve messed it up.
Humankind is the only species suffering from such hallucinations. No other animal suffers as we do in this respect, no other animal destroys that which it needs for survival, or seeks to deny it to other animals.
this is why we face extinction.
we wrecked the living environment of everything else….or tried to.
@Comagnon
The cosmos “created” me and why should I then fear the cosmos “destroying” me?
The leaves of the trees here are falling down. The tree is actually “dying”.
Very sad, isn’t it ?
can’t remember where I read it but there was a good theeeory:
Hu was much more lenient tolerant to a status quo independent Taiwan.
Xi has become more outspoken about keeping every option (including military) open for reincorporating Taiwan into the whole of China.
a more hardline Xi is probably the result of what he has seen in the actions of the woketard USA/NATZO towards their amped up “fighting” against Russia through their proxy war in Ukraine.
so the highly visible removal of Hu was symbolic, probably more a symbol to be viewed by the West than by the Chinese.
this gives some info:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/former-china-president-abruptly-escorted-party-congress
“As a reminder, Hu advocated maintaining good relations with the U.S., and was also an opponent of a military solution to the Taiwan issue. As SouthFront suggests, the former CPC Chairman’s escorting out of the hall is a clear demonstration of the renewed anti-Western foreign policy of Beijing, which, apparently, is ready for all measures, defending its sovereignty and the role of a superpower in the modern world.”
Good points!
In my view what happened during the congress is a sort of day of reckoning for what has been (in my view, not correctly) reported in the following link.
I don’t think that it happened what is described in the article, but something has happened for sure…
‘Military Coup in China, Xi Jinping under house arrest, General Li Qiaoming next President, say social media rumours’
https://zeenews.india.com/india/military-coup-in-china-xi-jinping-under-house-arrest-general-li-qiaoming-next-president-say-social-media-rumours-2513977.html
Perhaps we will find out more in the next few days.
Or it was theatre?
The theatre was evident in how the front row were excused masks; I guess they are the power elite, while the minions behind all had masks.
Wasn’t it Animal Farm where some were more equal than others…
I am afraid you are right.
I think that the explanation that the old man was not well is just as likely. I could see him tottering. And I am by no means a China defender. What difference does it make at this point? their energy supplies are low, Xi or Hu.
Hu was going to collapse?
Vax injury?
The incident certainly seems to be of no importance in the scheme of things. It doesn’t matter who runs China just as it doesn’t matter who runs the US or UK
For a very different and, in my very humble opinion, far more plausible view of what happened to Mr. Hu, please listen to this very short explanation.
According to this view, the idea that Hu was forcibly removed from the People’s Congress is just another Western claim to disparage China. Apparently, Hu is old and not doing very well physically, and he had to be escorted INTO as well as OUT OF the hall, and he was even perplexed about whether to sit down or not.
Hu was seated next to the current leader as a matter of respect. Xi would not have removed him from power in this clumsy theatrical way if it was part of a coup. What we have is a totally innocuous incident and the Western media hyping it into another “Look how barbaric China is!!!” moment.
https://rumble.com/v1pjqsx-china-what-happened-to-hu-jintao.html
Tim, in these sad times, thank you for bringing common sense!
PS Someone should have done the same with that old man over in the US …
15 Seconds Until Nuclear Armageddon
As war wreaks hell in Ukraine – and the threat of a nuclear confrontation between superpowers continues to intensify – NATO is in the process of prepping for the end of the world.
“When militarism is addressed as a psychosocial disease, the absurd irrationality of its symptoms is clearly exposed.”
These words are from a 1992 essay by N. Arther Coulter published in a journal called Medicine and War. Who would have guessed? They’re as relevant now as they were three decades ago.
God bless Armageddon.
As war wreaks hell in Ukraine – and the threat of a nuclear confrontation between superpowers continues to intensify – NATO is in the process of prepping for the end of the world. It’s an annual two-week training event called Steadfast Noon – a nuclear practice run that gives European flight crews a chance to practice loading and dropping “non-strategic” nuclear bombs. Russia is expected to conduct its own annual nuclear drill, known as Grom (that is, Thunder), soon as well.
I can’t read about this without summoning what I call “the big why?” from deep within. Endless resources are devoted annually to nuclear deterrence, a.k.a., the big bluff: “If you mess with me, you’re gonna get it.” The point, allegedly, is to prevent war, which is absolutely paradoxical in a global political system based on the psychosocial disease of militarism, i.e., the pursuit of national interest and the maintenance of safety primarily via force and violence.
No matter that this is the nuclear age, that force and violence could – oh so easily – go too far and wreak horror on everyone. The preparation for nuclear war continues unabated, while the voices of opposition remain merely cries from the political margins. There’s no actual “debate” here, just a lot of powerless anguish, or so it seems.
https://original.antiwar.com/robert-koehler/2022/10/21/15-seconds-until-nuclear-armageddon/
“I can’t read about this without summoning what I call “the big why?”
1) There’s this thing called a $1 Trillion US defense budget. Eventually you have to stir up sh*t to justify that budget even if everyone else is constipated.
2) US World hegemony. They see the inevitable that nations wants a multi-polar world and the US is hellbent on not allowing that to happen.
3) The braindead politicians have now convinced themselves that you can survive a nuclear war.
Even Chris Martenson believes that. https://peakprosperity.com/the-evils-of-nuclear-war-can-be-survived-heres-how/
Chris Martenson has a video talking about how nuclear bombs can be survived. Near the end, he talks about people living downwind from above-ground nuclear testing sites in Utah and surviving, but with higher rates of thyroid cancer.
He says time and distance are your friend. Stay in as protected areas as possible for at least the first 7 hours, better yet 7 days. In a basement with soil protecting it and one or two stories above it is good.
Even after the initial time, ingesting particles are the big problem. You need an N100 mask (not N95). (I am not sure how you breathe, however.) Also, food can be contaminated for a long time.
Everyone who writes about all this says either they are straight up evil or they are bungling idiots. Neither is true.
Want to know why? Just look at the results of all of what they do/have done.
War – demand destruction
Coups – demand destruction
Austerity – demand destruction
Invasion (AKA bomb back to the stone age) – demand destruction.
Sanctions – demand destruction
Addressing “inflation” – demand destruction
Through all of the above “the West” has suppressed growth, consumption, and development for 80% of the population of the planet including populations IN the west.
They know the world is finite…DUH!
All these things seem to work together. People staying at home because of illness of the work, or because of vaccines that cause side effects, or because they lose their jobs because they refuse to get the vaccines, also contribute to demand destruction.
“Divide and conquer” is one saying. Maybe it should be “Divide and reduce demand.”
With all of the world’s complexity, we seem to think we need to get ready for everything. Simulating nuclear bombs being dropped is sort of like simulating a more harmful virus circulation. Pretty stupid, if you are interested in keeping business as usual. Perhaps a way of shaking things up.
When the goal is extermination (to avoid ROF)… why not do whatever it takes…
Why not include the nukes? This is an all or nothing proposition so you throw everything at it …
Super Fent is not an accident — duh — does anyone think dealers would want to sell stuff that knocks down an elephant? What would be the point — you’d be out of business having killed all the addicts
It is often most difficult to see that which is directly in front of us
After regular premeditation, practice, even failed attempts, individuals hell bent on killing themselves succeed.
Suicide is a stupid way to threaten others or get attention, whether pulling a trigger or pressing a button, those that remain get the death sentence and suffer most.
The mind behind the nuclear option, is even more insane. It says ‘If I can’t have anything you’re not! It’s even more selfish too, because it forces the other side to play the same game. double or nothing jeopardy; at least, because there are more than two nuclear players living in the room under the sky.
Demon Covid finished with Super Fent and nukes… makes for a tasty meal
Lets just say the USA pulls a rabbit out of a hat and Russia is decimated and the USA is not hit. Could be. Stranger things have happened. Or visa versa. What sort of world is left? Both obliterated. What sort of world is left? We havnt answered that question or even considered it but the people calling the shots have. Were are proceeding into this blind because we dont matter. To assume all are blind is naive. They have gamed this for a long long time. We are proceeding down this course for a reason. Someone or something thinks this course is desirable and all outcomes have been considered. They have their best guess but all outcomes considered. This course is being chosen. It might be considered a intervention as it is preferable to the outcome with no action by whatever decides. This course and these actions are because someone or something thinks the outcome is more desirable than the outcome of not taking this course and these actions. They decide. It may be “the elders”. IT may be AI. It may be “the devil” . Maybe its the Elks club who knows. (no offense). It may be something outside of our understanding. Their or its motives. We dont matter. Casualties have been evaluated for all outcomes. Were painting by numbers now. Running the game plan. Its war. All other considerations are not applicable. Fundamentally were looking at a lot less humans as a outcome. Why not just push the button now? I think if either Biden or Putin was to order a launch right now the order would disobeyed and they would be removed. We have to be tricked into wiping ourselves off the planet and that process is called escalation. The protocols and doctrines are clear. If you want it to go down you create the conditions and circumstances of those protocols and doctrines. Then everyone can exterminate ourselves with a clean conscious. A monkey banging a stick could have assimilated Russia post 91. Someone or something didnt want that.
Nuclear deterrence is just a facade for the guys in the big club so that you won’t figure out that they all work together on a single thing:
No guillotines in no cities nowhere.
They need it to keep your mind occupied, not theirs.
Once in a while some bread crumbs for the MIC:
“We want to have something like an economy and we need a reason for more debt, you know?”
Norman I congratulate you on your not engaging in your “eddywar”! You do realize that tabulating times and places of individuals is obsessive stalking behavior? Gails fine contribution matters. Love you Gail. The OFW comment section doesnt matter. We are not writing the old testament here. You have given me advice before. “lose the anger”. Thats certainly fine advice!! If I may respond in kind. Consider the “whatever” philosophy. Only a small percentage of the population read this blog. Of those only a small percentage read the comments. Most read the comments and go “whatever”. I think thats healthy. Eddy writes this writes that. You and I write this or that. Whatever. Now that doesnt mean that contemplation of our situation is unhealthy. Au contraire. Balance is however healthy. How long is it after you wake up that you think of Eddy? We all have a tendency toward obsession as humans. Why? I dont know. Your better than this. You are ending your participation in the “eddywar”. Congratulations! It shows your mettle! Many are unable to discard their obsessions! Now shine! But realize- it doesnt really matter all that much!
Eddy is a conflicted individual… has not come to terms with his own demise and the demise of the system we are in. So he tries to focus on the vax and how angry he is about cep. It doesn’t make sense he hates people he should be happy of the extermination of people; instead he rants like a child about it. 🙄. I agree with the anti vax but so be it it is done… I just don’t want to discuss it all the effing time!
From where I sit he sounds like a trust funder who has never had to work a hard days labor…. Where I live they are everywhere and always ranting about something….if you can’t argue your point without being a rude a hole than you probably are a trustee
So we have FF depletion making energy less available and more expensive and at the same time most all of the other critical resources required for a modern civilization are becoming harder to produce requiring more energy.
This double whammy is a feed-back loop that feeds each other accelerating decline and insuring there will be no major build out of a brave new world.
Cheers!
Collapse is unlikely to be sudden and all at once. And it is driven by demographics and geopolitics as well as resource depletion. This means some countries will collapse before others. Russia and China are in particularly bad positions, because their demographics are so far past terminal. China is critically dependant on globalisation for access to resources and as a disposal route for its exports.
The world is already struggling without Russian industrial output, leaving it short of fertiliser, crude iron, neon and many other resources. If China experiences collapse, the world loses a large chunk of demand. This could leave a lot of resources temporarily cheap. But the world would lose a large part of its manufacturing base. We could find ourselves in the situation where iron and copper ores are very cheap again, but steel and copper metal are in short supply.
The next 50 years is going to be a very tough time for most of the world. Most countries will experience food shortages. But the experience will depend very much on where you are. China faces a very bleak future. Some countries will buck the trend. North America will not necessarily be a bad place to be a few decades from now.
What is sudden? What is all at once? Sudden and all at once for one individual, or sudden and all at once for a global community?
As our global industrial consumer society goes away, we will have a few points where it will feel like sudden and all at once, for lots and lots of people at the same time.
Derivatives
When interest rates rise enough, inflation booms enough, stocks go down enough and pension funds falter enough, there will yet come a time when the derivatives go Ka-Boom. We have seen some hyper central bank money printing in the last decade, that has so far saved our currencies, our banks and our pension funds. But at some point in the future, when growth goes away, there will be a point when the derivatives finally really go Ka-boom. And at that same time currencies, banks and pension funds will also go bye-bye.
This “financial event” will not be the end, to the majority, but it will “feel” like The End, for a whole lot of people, for sure.
But that wont yet BE the end for the majority.. solutions and small tricks will be done. A finger in each crack of the damn etc. etc. Surely there will be some sort of SDR cryptocurrency with central banks as the replacing banking system. We will lose most of our individual freedoms and a free market will be replaced with cupongs and strict rationing.
But as our currencies and banks go away for the first time, so will investments in new mines and new shale oil wells go away for good. So.. pretty fast after the big financial event, major shortages of everything will emerge. These shortages will be.. forever
And after the big financial event we will begin a rapid decline in Gdp, wealth, living standards and life expectancy. Read.. four horsemen of the apocalypse
We will begin to salvage resources from existing infrastructure. Cannibalize, yup, sure. But new mines.. new oil wells.. nope..
We have a really really long way to go.. we are just about 8 billion now.. and when the ride is finished.. maybe a few hundred million.. maybe extinction.. maybe a few million here and there. Who knows? Most of us wont be there, most of us will be passing along much sooner.
WWII was bad.. it was really really bad.. WWII took out 3.2% of the global population.
What we will be facing is ten times worse than WWII, over and over and over again.. at some point.. well.. most of us propably would wish it was.. all of a sudden and all at once..
I think you are about this:
.
I also think you are right about this:
I think that people forget that there are two different things that our financial system is good for:
(1) Enabling and easy form of barter.
(2) Making promises for the future (debt, derivatives, sale of shares of stock, etc.)
After the financial system goes kaboom, Part (2) of the financial system pretty much goes away. But it is easy to develop a local currency that enables an easy form of barter. Enabling major investments is a lot harder, and probably cannot be done. This is why new investments are likely to drop to zero, as you say.
I’m going to use processor chips for trading when I go veggie shopping this winter ;-ך
No use without electricity.
Unfortunately, that is pretty much the way it is.
The people who say that you can survive nuclear wars, live without banking and financial world, prepping are probably the same type of people ho believed in “safe and effective”.
If you start to think hard and deep, you will realize that practically all homo sapiens take for granted shoes, food from supermarkets, clothes and candles.
Thailand – basically the whole country is dependent on something modern – shoes and shirt are some examples.
Zimbawe or Congo – almost the same as Thailand but perhaps more people are “food self sufficient” but shoes and clothes?
Does anyone here on OFW know that without shoes, you can be dead very soon (i.e. cuts and bruises can lead to infection and sepsis sets in…)
Primo Levi made just that point about life in Auschwitz:
‘You won’t believe it, but many people died because their issued shoes didn’t fit properly. Their feet were injured, they got infected, and that sealed their fate’.
Actually, I doubt they died slowly of infection, as once they couldn’t walk they were finished off.
Of course, peasants with hardened feet were much better of in the old days, but foot coverings are more or less universal and hence presumably vital.
Shows are important. For sure. Question is…… who k ow how to make shoes with any modern conveniences? Who in your city can do it without having to import leather, rubber or any raw materials? (I.e. sourced locally), do it without electricity of diesel?
You got to be delusion even if you say “one”. People take it for granted that shoes and clothes are always available cheaply. This no one ever bothers to learn how to do it without modern conveniences. (Not that anyone would want to so it anyway)
And shoes are not even in the FE Challenge!
DPrepping is a massive delusion — no different than the people who believe they are being kept safe by the injections… and that they are not dangerous
Let us take it one step further (seriously out out of the box)…. shoes… how can early homo sapiens travel around so easily (as depicted romantically in illustrations in encyclopedias) in the savannahs, jungles or steppes without shoes. How easy for them to make shoes? Let us throw away any scientific papers (remember “safe and effective”?) and think hard. Early modern homo sapiens have to hunt, take care of kids, avoid predators and make shoes. Do they have the tools or raw materials to make shoes for everyone?
Does anyone know that if you walk past shrubs and bushes (especially those with thorns), you can be scratched badly and if there are poisonous or plants with irritants (like ivy) nearby, you can be dead in short order?
Think hard..
Actually I am currently investigating the topic if a “concentration camp” existed.
The German word for it is “Konzentrationslager” and the German abbreviation system would make that a “KL” or an “Arbeitslager” as in work camp with the abbreviation of “AL”. Not like a “KZ”.
I am also not sure if German state documents contained “KZ”.
like this :
“amtliche Abkürzung KL Dachau” ???
So yes, the official German term is actually “KL” so why the heck does everybody use the term KZ ?
Do not get me wrong here but I was not present at that time, so I might want to ask some question about historic “facts”.
Not many people were hanged in Nuremberg trial.
Most of them were doctors. cough.
23 medical doctors is pretty few compared to the number of people that must have been involved with working at the “camps” for example shooting people that wanted to flee and so on.
Standard Oil had a contract with IG Farben on synthetic rubber being produced in the largest chemical factory in Auschwitz..
It is a delicate topic but you could say that in principle the Germans would have wanted the people in the camps to work, not die.
People might have died also because they could not be properly “managed by their slave owners” (Shoes here of China there ???)
As it is today, no ?
Look: in Germany 185 people were executed after WWII.
Do you think that applies if a similar trial would take place today? I doubt it. But killing a person is not my primary goal.
If you ask me a person that for example goes by the name Bill just needs to be exposed and isolated.
In Germany the villages and cities had something like “permanently throwing an unwanted person out of the city walls”
There even exists a German word for it that I do not find now, I will get back on this…
Indeed, shoes are extremely important, as is some form of energy to cook food.
You mean as in “shoes to be cocked”?
I saw it in the cinema!
I doubt a shoe provides a lot of heat besides it is a plastic shoe from China. Ah now I begin to understand…
Could we use nuclear energy to build new nuclear reactors? Will this technology cease to be viable as fossil fuels become less available?
That is a hard question to answer. Presumably, we would need to be able to use nuclear energy to make synthetic fuels to power mining operations. We would need to make hydrogen to reduce iron ore and heat cement kilns. We would need to power electric furnaces that turn crude iron into steel.
The most energy intensive component of all powerplants is steel. A 1000MWe PWR nuclear powerplant, requires about 36,000 tonnes of steel (mostly carbon steel) and iron. That works out at about 40 tonnes of steel per average MWe.
Metal and concrete inputs for several nuclear powerplants.
http://fhr.nuc.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/05-001-A_Material_input.pdf
The embodied energy of fresh steel is about 30MJ/kg. Recycled steel, about 20MJ/kg. It is an energy hungry material. This is why structural engineers love concrete so much! Assuming fresh steel is used, for each average MWe of nuclear power, some 1200GJ of energy must be invested in steel production. How long would it take a nuclear powerplant to pay for its own steel?
T = 1,200,000MJ ÷ 1 MJ/s = 1.2million seconds = 13.9 days.
Assuming an operating lifetime of 60 years, the plant will return over 1500 times the energy needed to make the steel used in its construction.
Renewable energy powerplants require 10-100x as much steel per average MWe. They require backup and storage on top of this and their lifetimes are closer to 20 years, instead of 60 years. It may be difficult to build renewable energy infrastructure using renewable energy, once fossil fuels are gone. The net energy return is too poor to cover their construction energy with comfortable margins, especially if we must synthesis synthetic fuels to carry out mining. But the same limitation is unlikely to apply to nuclear reactors. With nuclear power, there is energy to spare.
Peter – You are leaving out 10 to 100 times the information required to make the comparisons you make. All minerals, metals, and every other natural resource on the planet are becoming much more energy intensive and expensive to produce, including cement.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191108-why-the-world-is-running-out-of-sand
Jef, I picked the highest energy consuming material first. But you are correct, many other materials are needed in smaller quantities. If you go to chapter 10 of the Quartenary Energy Review produced by the DOE, you get a breakdown of the materials needed per TWh for each energy source.
https://www.energy.gov/quadrennial-technology-review-2015
You mentioned sand, which is needed for concrete. A 1000MWe PWR requires about 90m3 (180 tonne) of concrete per average MWe. The embodied energy of concrete is ~1.1MJ/kg. So concrete adds another 200GJ to the energy cost of each average MWe of nuclear power. That is one-sixth the cost of the steel. If we had to grind up rock to produce the sand, the energy cost would be higher, but the conclusion wouldn’t change.
We could do the same thing for copper, glass, aluninium and plastics using the DOE information. But the conclusion wouldn’t change. And that conclusion is that nuclear powe plantsr produce ample surplus energy to cover the embodied energy cost of the materials needed to build the plant. For wind and solar power, that conclusion is far more doubtful. The low power density of renewables makes them look highly dubious as sustainable forms of energy.
We don’t have time for a transition to an all-electrical way of handling things, besides not having the materials to build the nuclear power plants, now or in the future. A huge number of nuclear power plants would need to be built, all at the same time. I think we are kidding ourselves about what is possible.
It’s not just time Gail, none of the man made energy sources return a positive amount of energy at all. They all leave out the biggest cost of energy in the calculations, that being the normal operating of the system in the background. There is no allowance for the energy input into the roads, the trucks, the factories that need to be operational to build something like a NPP, or solar or wind.
The easiest example is the difference between the Vogtle NPP at $US15,000,000,000 per reactor (estimated) to return ~374 million Mwh over a 40 year life, while the $US400,000,000 Leer South coking coal plant will return 1,600 million Mwh over it’s 25 years of mining reserves.
The upfront cost is the best estimate of energy inputs as it accounts for all the background energy . Just looking at the energy in the steel, concrete etc doesn’t come close to the total energy used in building such a plant. Even the engineering has a huge energy cost in educating all the engineers and designers in the background as part of the energy cost.
The real energy cost of something like the Vogtle NPP is close to 344 million Mwh, with O&M costs over 40 years making it very negative.
I use to think Nuclear had around a 100:1 return of energy, the problem being it’s all electricity, until I did the real calculations. I’ve been stunned at the results..
Do not forget about 100 years of student education and research for such tech.
Unfortunately some things seem to have been left out of the curriculum.
As Gail rightfully says:
It will not be good for the university if it tells the students that their education will not really pay off (the student debt).
Under Xi Jinping’s rule, every night, thousands of people are being dragged into Covid quarantine camps
https://twitter.com/songpinganq/status/1583773491144581124
The Chinese were very succesful at keeping COVID out of their country. Unfortunately, that means they now have no natural immunity. And their vaccine doesn’t work at all. Delta is more infectious and more lethal than previous variants. Xi knows that if he allows Delta to run loose in China, there will be millions of fatalities.
Perhaps, but not if the population is in relatively good health.
The Western vaccines don’t work at all either. All the boosted people in the UK are catching the virus again and again.
The virus in any of its forms has never been anything I would call ‘lethal’. ‘Millions of fatalities’ sounds absurd.
More likely the lockdowns are nothing to do with public health and never were.
China has a population of 1.2 – 1.4bn, depending upon which set of population figures you believe. And probably around 1/4 of those people are over 60. If a large fraction of those 300m old people catch a highly contagious strain of flu, then losing several million of them in one year is not unrealistic.
You could argue that most of those dying are probably not long for this world anyway. But when a lot of people die all at once, from the same thing, it tends to get noticed. And because Xi has established a cult of personality around himself, he will get the blame if he fails to control this disease.
That does not mean that locking the country down is a rational decision that is in the public interest. Dictatorships are not really known for rational decision making.
Dictatorships are not really known for rational decision making.
Do you believe that you live in a democracy and you have rights?
I live in the UK, so no I do not. At best it is a ‘managed’ democracy.
democracies survive only so long as prosperity survives
remove prosperity (for the majority) and that majority will eagerly embrace the promise of fascism.
Even though it is an illusion.
Real – fake … how can we know.
Entertaining? Yes!
High-quality genuine fake, or shoddy pseudo fake?
WALLACE HOOKER – EMBALMER AND FUNERAL DIRECTOR SPEAKS OUT ABOUT THE ‘CLOTS’ (THAT AREN’T CLOTS)
https://www.bitchute.com/video/noYwnJFrnlyq/
This is an embalmer talking. Embalmers have been seeing soft clots that look like current jelly for years. What they are seeing now is white fibrous formations that really aren’t clots. Pathologists are finding that these are protein structures. They are often 6 to 8 inches long. Someone found one that was 30 inches long. They seem to take on the shape of the veins that they were formed in.
Remdesivir seemed to have been given to a pregnant woman and killed the fetus. The cause of the death was written as if it were COVID.
Talks about other topics as well, such as more young people dying.
Those are the devil’s tentacles that broke off when he reached into their hearts and took their souls
Sun, October 23, 2022 at 7:40 AM Reuters
RIYADH (Reuters) -Saudi Arabia’s crown prince on Sunday launched an initiative to attract investments in supply chains to and from the kingdom, with an aim of raising an initial 40 billion riyals ($10.64 billion).
The initiative by Prince Mohammed bin Salman will include allocating about 10 billion riyals in incentives for supply chain investors, state news agency SPA reported, without elaborating.
The Gulf state last year announced it would invest over 500 billion riyals in infrastructure, including airports and sea ports, by the end of the decade in a bid to become a transport and logistics hub under an economic diversification plan.
The latest supply chain initiative includes establishing a number of special economic zones, said a statement on SPA that also referred to ongoing “legislative and procedural” reforms.
“The Global Supply Chain Resilience Initiative will leverage the Kingdom’s resources, infrastructure and location to bring greater resilience to economies and companies across Europe, the Americas and Asia, while further enhancing Saudi Arabia’s position in the global economy,” the statement added.
“Saudi Arabia also offers access to oil, gas, electricity, renewable energy and human resources at competitive costs,” it said, noting blue and green hydrogen production projects by the kingdom, the world’s top oil exporter.
Prince Mohammed’s Vision 2030 plan aims to modernise Saudi Arabia and wean its economy off oil revenues.
Wean off oil???? No oil no supply chain or hub!!!
Who wrote up this business plan? Oh, definitely an Economist
I will believe blue and green hydrogen projects when I see them, not before.
Norman, do you really believe that this forum is ruined and that it is no longer informative?
Personally, I find it very informative. For instance, only today I found out that OFW has about 24,000 subscribers. That’s a lot! I might never have found that out if you hadn’t informed me. And you might never have informed me if you hadn’t provoked yourself into responding to FE’s “silliness”.
FE moves in a mysterious way. His wonders to perform.
The end of more and oil story — is a conspiracy norm… nobody believes either is possible
So what are you on about? OFW is an conspiracy
Regarding the question on spent fuel pool performance if left without power, cooling or top up water. I am finding it very difficult to source accurate information on pool dimensions, design and fuel packing density. So I cannot properly answer the question at present.
But the NRC requires about 8m of cover water over spent fuel. And these ponds are 12m deep. Assuming that fuel has a packing density of about 3t/m3 (i.e same as reactor) and average decay heat is about 1kW/t for fuel that is high burnup and 10 years old on average, then each square metre of the pond would be generating some 12kW of decay heat. Assuming no other heat loss mechanisms other than boiling and latent heat of boiling of 2.2MJ/kg, it would take 17 days to uncover the top of the fuel. A pond with a temperature of 100°C would of course lose substantial heat by conduction through its walls. And some water vapour would condense on the walls of the enclosure, returning to the pond. But without detailed design knowledge of the facility, it is difficult to quantify the effect of these factors on grace time.
What would happen after fuel uncovery is hard to say. We are dealing with low deday heat fuel, but it is densely packed in racks, which will make radiative and convective air cooling less efficient. Will the cladding fail in a significant fraction of the fuel? Hard to say.
But ‘worse than Chernobyl’ is a bit melodramatic. That accident was caused by a reactivity excursion fault. It shattered the fuel pellets, blew apart fuel rods as power surged ~200x rated maximum and then blew whole lumps of the core hundreds of feet into the air. What remained was immersed in a lump of burning graphite, which burned in open air for days. It would be hard to replicate those conditions with a spent fuel pond. Even if cladding melts, most fission products will remain trapped within the fuel. And the structure surrounding the pool will plate out all but the most volatile fission products.
The spent fuel rods would likely heat enough to vaporize radiactive iodine and caesium. Of course, this is only a small fraction of the fuel rods.
Vaporized iodine and caesium would quickly lose their heat and turn into airborne dust. The question is how far this dust can be transported by winds before it settles on the ground.
Chernobyl had a very violent graphite fire pushing these product far up in the atmosphere. This made it easier for the fallout to transport far.
If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies.
One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl.
http://science.time.com/2011/03/15/a-new-threat-in-japan-radioactive-spent-fuel/
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in pools in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo.
https://energyskeptic.com/2017/the-devils-scenario-near-miss-at-fukushima-is-a-warning-for-u-s/
The Chernobyl accident was relatively minor, involved no spent fuel ponds, and was controlled by pouring cement onto the reactor. This was breaking down so a few years back they re-entombed.
Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe from radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16628547/
Zirconium does not catch fire. If it gets hot enough it will oxidise. But it will not catch fire, because it cannot sustain flames. Fire is a vapour driven phenomena.
For all the fuss about spent fuel ponds, there never was any serious fuel damage in the ponds at Fukishima Daiichi. The radioactivity came from core damage in units 1-3. In fact, at no point did temperature in the ponds reach 100°C. This is a theoretical problem.
Yes of course it won’t. You know best
Zirconium does burn, it is used in incendiary weapons.
It would seem that common plastic tanks holding water that would be able to supply the fuel ponds via gravity would be a inexpensive and easily achieved safety measure. If the ponds are low enough natural water sources could be used to resupply the tanks also via gravity. It appears to me that natural water sources are almost always present at nuclear reactors. These are relatively cost effective solutions. A centralized underground storage is the only really cost effective solution long term for cooled rods. Providing security for each individual facility alone is problematic although those teams are pretty impressive to say the least. A central depository could be made impenetrable. For the life of me I cant understand why this has not been made a priority.
Norm, I can sympathize with your plight or view….
For better or worse, Fast Eddy is a fixture here and I, myself, have learned to live with it. Others may have left because of it…I’m not sure..
Gail even pointed out she was tired of the Covid rant of individual deaths and still seeing them posted endlessly.
I’m over it really. If folks get injected…that’s their choice and maybe it’s for the best in view of the alternative…ROF as FE calls it.
I got shot for work after they approved children being given it…
Felt if they are willing to sicken them intentionally for profit, we live in a sick society and really have no desire to escape.
Be as it may…if there are only 2,400 subscribers and a few dozen contributors here …seems this is a venting outlet as much as a idea forum.
I post mainly because want to give back to those that provide value and am grateful to Gail for her own tremendous work she has provided.
Really has changed the way I see the reality of the situation!
So, let Fast Eddie do his thing…he’s harmless unless you let him get to you
After oildrum I revisited OFW last yr to see if anything changed on peak oil.
All the comments were on vax. CEP? What’s that?
My head does a Linda spin. Is possible ? What do I know of the world except history is littered in agony. & Gail says like the world doesn’t work the way one might think. Not possible. Nyettt!
The scary meme makes you think. Ok I’m paranoid.
This coordinated blitzkrieg is not by chance.
For some reason this forum being hijacked informs me on most serious issues than academic parlor energy talk.
I can parse comments.
There seem to be many worrisome things going on at once. A very strange response to Covid-19 is (or was) being used to hide an energy problem. Now the world economy can’t open up again fully. There are not enough resources to go around. The world economy acts strangely.
The war on European soil must not make us forget our climatic requirements and our imperative to reduce CO2 emissions,” he added.
The Energy Charter Treaty was signed in 1994 and has more than 50 signatories, including the European Union, and is meant to promote “international cooperation in the energy sector.”
But it has been criticised for protecting fossil fuel companies from state regulations that could impact their potential revenues.
German energy company RWE filed a lawsuit against the Dutch government in 2021 for €1.4 billion in damages over the decision to phase out coal.
The Netherlands announced it would withdraw from the treaty earlier this week, while Spain, Poland and Germany are also reportedly planning to leave the treaty. Italy withdrew from the controversial treaty in 2016.
An agreement was reached to amend the treaty in June 2022, with the European Commission saying the modified treaty would “facilitate sustainable investments in the energy sector.”
Dutch energy and climate minister Rob Jetten said that, despite the changes made to the treaty, it continued “to offer too much protection to the fossil fuel industry.”
Martin Dietrich Brauch, an economist at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, said that the reform process for the treaty “missed the mark in nature, scope, ambition and speed” to address the treaty’s risk for climate goals.
Macron’s decision to withdraw from the treaty came after France’s high council on climate said a coordinated exit would be the “least risky option for respecting national, European and international commitments on the climate.”
My Europe
EUROPE NEWS
France announces it will withdraw from controversial energy treaty Access to the commentsCOMMENTS
By Lauren Chadwick •
Well, it looks like another nail in the coffin of BAU guys…no fossil fuels, no modern chussy life……looks like the handwriting is being etched on our foreheads…
Also, Macron can see he has no fossil fuels to waste on trying to fight climate change.
Europe is in desperate straits this winter. Hope for ending its energy crisis hinges on a weakened China
Tristan Bove
But China’s struggles have eased some of the pressure. Shuttered factories and a souring economy mean that China doesn’t need as much natural gas as before and can therefore resell some of its excess liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to Europe.
“The zero-COVID policy of China has been possibly one of the best allies of Europe in this current energy crisis, because the Europeans had to basically rush to get LNG to replace the Russian volumes,” Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow focusing on energy and climate policy at Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, told Fortune.
But with its energy crisis likely to last longer than just one winter, Europe is starting to worry about what China does next. A harsh winter in China or an improved economy next year could cause its demand for energy to rise again, and leave Europe in the cold.
The stakes are huge for Europe, whose own economy and citizens are hanging in the balance over the energy shortage. Any small change in energy supplies, either more or less, could have a huge impact on prices, increasingly fractured domestic politics of individual countries, and on the continent’s future.
….China’s natural gas consumption is already expected to increase 5% in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency. And while much of that depends on the direction of China’s economy and its zero-COVID policies, Europe is starting to plan ahead.
…The drop in demand in China has opened the door for European nations to pounce on the leftover global LNG. European countries have signed big deals this year with suppliers including the U.S. and Qatar.
Europe has also been able to tap China for some of its excess imported LNG. Given how high spot-market prices for natural gas have been this year, Chinese energy companies were often able to resell their supply at a huge profit.
….But anticipating economic growth and preparing for the winter heating season, the Chinese government has reportedly asked energy companies to stop reselling LNG overseas and to keep it for domestic use, Bloomberg reported this week, citing internal sources.
…..Europe will have to refill its energy reserves next summer yet again, but with China stopping its reselling of excess LNG, European countries would be under even more “pressure” than this year according to Kpler’s Rasidi, adding that a cold winter in China this year could push the country to buy more natural gas from the spot market, depleting global supply for next year.
….There is a recognition that we are now entering a situation where the most difficult part of the task is next year,” Bruegel’s Tagliapietra said.
….“China will be a key determinant for our energy security for the next 12 months, and that is something that I think before we didn’t really focus on at all,” he added.
Talk about the razors edge and walking in a tightrope at the same time..
Enjoy your last days of BAU …you all don’t have many more left…sorry to say
“Remember George Carlin? The seven words you can’t say on TV? Well now you can say all of those words on TV. Here are the six words you can’t say on TV right now. You can’t say: nitazoxanide, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, fenbendazole, and chlorine dioxide.”
— Dr. Lee Merritt
https://rumble.com/v1ot6r5-dr.-lee-merritt-and-kate-dalley-expose-the-rise-of-the-medical-technocracy.html
Dr Merritt has some fascinating observations and speculations here. Among the things she brings up are that dozens of researchers the world over have have examined the jab juice and the jabbees and have been unable to find any mRNA at all in them. So, she concludes it may not be there.
However, the jabs do contain hydrogel, and graphene, and metallic contamination, she goes on. And she thinks that this stuff or something else can compromise our normal immune function to the point where various parasites that live inside most of us but are kept under control most of the time, can come out and play and thereby cause a variety of pathological symptoms.
If this is the case, then it is no surprise that the six words you can’t say on TV right now—which are all effective in getting rid of parasites—may work in ameliorating the symptoms that sometimes follow jabbing.
As for Covid-19 itself, detoxing, sunspots, 5G, water molecules having a “memory”, the benefits of getting out in summer sunshine, and why you shouldn’t take drugs to bring down a fever, you’ll have to sit through the video and put up with several breaks during which Alex Jones will attempt to sell you some supplements. You may think this is rank disinfo mixed with cheap sales pitches—and you can get that sort of thing 24-7 on Fox or CNN. But I thought it was worth the trade-off for the chance to listen to Dr. Merritt being interviewed by the vivacious Kate Dalley.
https://rumble.com/v1ot6r5-dr.-lee-merritt-and-kate-dalley-expose-the-rise-of-the-medical-technocracy.html
I am hoping that the rise in medical technocracy will be followed by a fall in medical technocracy.
Certainly, when international trade falls off, we cannot be subject to this same silliness.