Editor’s note: This commentary is by John Sales, a retired university professor who chaired an earth science department and had a career in a major oil company research lab. He lives in Danville.
[W]e’re in trouble! Fracked shale will peak in five years (U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Energy Outlook -2014 – Fig. ES-1). Behind the temporary fracked petroleum glut, all current energy sources will decline in unison. Renewables and conservation can’t handle it.
We need an energy-augment, the most logical is thorium — teamed together, renewables, conservation and thorium could handle it. The others are at least established, thorium we have to work on. There’s a thousand year’s supply. It’s safer and has less waste than uranium. A liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) ran flawlessly for four years a half century ago, mothballed, because thorium wouldn’t make bombs. Stonewalled since because the other energy sources (great media and lobbying clout) don’t want competition. It takes huge energy to deploy new energy. You can’t do it with energy from declining old sources, nor new sources not deployed — only with old sources, pre-decline — lead time is critical.
Russia and China are positioning to take advantage of the U.S. in the shortfall. Russia and the Middle East have conventional petroleum that will outlast our fracked shale. Russia is curtailing exports, the U.S. selling our temporary fracked shale glut overseas, hastening our shortfall and forestalling theirs. China is signing Middle East contracts that will also outlast U.S. fracked shale — we can’t fight a land war in the Middle East with China. China also will have a thorium-based economy, at the expense of the U.S. China now has near-monopoly on every technology for solving the energy and environmental crises. This won’t be available to the U.S. — global transportation will collapse. But the general public gets what they want us to hear — energy utopia. The reason is we’re on the wrong side of the frog parable: put a frog in hot water and it will leap to safety (the U.S. in World War II), put it in cool water, slowly turn up the heat, and it will end up cooked (the U.S. now). Here’s perspective:
Fracked shale wells decline 40 percent per year, after 10 years they are at 1 percent of initial production. Compare: Prudhoe Bay (conventional) wells after 35 years still produce, cumulative production 100 times greater than Bakken fracked shale wells. Because of the great number of fracked wells, the best spots are drilled immediately and the whole basin decline rapidly.
The Monterey shale basin in California, has brittle chert in the shale, shattered like a car windshield — naturally fracked and oil drained. Our fracking would contaminate agriculture and get little oil. The richest (Green River shale basins) have wax in the oil, and won’t produce. The best, Bakken and Eagleford Plays are being drilled too fast — they will peak early. To avoid decline, more new wells have to replace ever-more declining wells — finally impossible — rapid drilling insures rapid decline.
Hype says fracked gas will meet our needs for decades — not so. We will counter decline of all other energy sources with fracked gas. Gas is replacing coal environmentally and because the U.S. has a coal infrastructure bottleneck. Gas melts the tar sands — a questionable energy tradeoff. Gas replaces uranium plants as they retire, hydro plants due to drought. There’s big pressure to export gas, due to higher prices overseas, and Russia curtailing gas as a political weapon and to get a leg up on the U.S. in advance of the shortfall. Putin sits on huge conventional gas and oil reserves. They will be petroleum rich after we are petroleum poor — U.S. conventional gas has been in decline for decades, fracked gas replacing it too. Gas is over half the new additions to the grid, demand accelerating. We have to find a new Saudi Arabia every four years to stay even — we haven’t since 1985. Fracked gas can’t stand even 20 years of this.
Canadian Tar Sands, the single biggest petroleum accumulation, cover an area as big as New York state. But the rich core area is only as big as New York City, the tar already extracted from an area as big as Manhattan. Marginal areas will face more overburden, less tar sand, and more expensive extraction. Even the best area is barely energy-profitable. Marginal areas will be energy-negative. Contrast this with the huge Ghawar anticline, Saudi Arabia, where it only takes a cup of energy to get a barrel of oil. Tar sand-derived oil transport is a big risk. They use our cleanest fossil fuel, natural gas, to extract our dirtiest fossil fuel, tar sand oil. Temporarily low natural gas prices make it possible. When they escalate, both the energy and economic advantage will disappear.
China is signing long-term contracts for Middle East conventional petroleum, which will last longer than fracked shale or tar sands. A ground war with China in the Middle East over petroleum would be suicidal for the U.S. (China, with land supply routes, already has mobile stealth missiles covering the Indian Ocean.)
Saudi Arabia is “swing nation” in oil — able to open valves and make up for disruptions. But Russian production is nearly as big. They have the clout to cause energy disruption, and are curtailing petroleum to the EU — we’ll make up the difference. A business boom for the U.S.? It will drain our resources, advancing our own shortfall. Better we used this excess to get liquid fluoride thorium reactors going.
Accidents and poor storage have shaken confidence in uranium-nuclear. Lost plutonium, rogue nations, terrorists, and aging warheads are a concern. Uranium’s reserves are minimal, prices rising. Lower gas prices have forced closure of marginal plants, like Vermont Yankee. New plant costs are escalating.
Energy utopia is a myth based on misreading the EIA’s most-basic graph — mistaking peak petroleum’s most optimistic case for the most-likely case. America is basing its energy future on this flawed logic.
Shortfall will bring back coal, tar sands, and wood heat, as well as refracking and denser well spacing of fracked shale, all devastating to the environment. Solving energy would solve global warming. We can only do it with energy efficiency, renewables and thorium, as a team — all carbon-free.
Renewables can’t replace the other energy sources by themselves. They are poor for base-load, can’t meet demand spikes, have environmental concerns, and would require a massive redo of the electric grid. Solar (Southwest), wind (Great Plains), hydro-electric (Quebec). Such concentrations of production would force massive transmission lines and transmission losses, and leave the grid vulnerable.
A big renewable, Hoover Dam, is being shut down by drought — approaching cavitation, damaging the turbines. Glen Canyon Dam is not far behind. The Hoover, Glen Canyon and Grand Coulee dams are why there are only a handful of uranium-nuclear reactors west of the Great Plains. Now ample gas plants can compensate. As gas declines, this will be a problem.
Advances in technology and efficiency are great, but it’s not simple. There are two kinds — extractive and utilization technology. Examples in extractive technology are fracking and horizontal drilling, utilization technology — hybrid cars and hi-tech house insulation. That’s not simple either — all the rage in housing is rigid petroleum foam insulation. The energy and environmentally preferred alternative is cellulose — we can recycle and regrow that, and it’s made of present-day carbon. Advances in extraction get more total energy, but deplete the resource faster. It took less time to drill all of Bakken’s fracked wells than to find the first drop of oil in the North Sea, a conventional oil province, now in decline 40 years later. Fracked shale will decline faster.
Utilization problems: The rich get technology advances first and it “trickles down” to the poor. However, the poor have the gas-guzzling polluting cars, and drafty energy-guzzling houses, and there are more of them — it pays to subsidize the poor in energy efficiency. Money limits a resource. As it gets scarce, costs rise, but demand declines as less are able to afford it. Thus energy companies earn less, spend less on R&D, and the resource and economy go into recession.
Standardized assembly line-built 100 MW liquid fluoride thorium reactors, paired with existing electricity substations could be brought on fast, if priority. Liquid fluoride thorium reactors are inherently safe, have way less waste and shorter toxicity. We have a thousand years’ supply. New England contemplates a massive upgrade of its electric grid — a poor way to go. Better to add in dispersed 100MW liquid fluoride thorium reactors. They would re-localize the grid, negate wasteful long-distance trunk lines, and the grid would be super-resilient to disruptions.
Normally it’s 60 years to get new energy source going. We have maybe as little as five (EIA graph). However, America wrote the book on emergency mobilization. By 1944 a converted gigantic assembly line, was producing 400 four-engine Liberator bombers a month. Assume liquid fluoride thorium reactors are Liberator bombers: About 15,000 100MW liquid fluoride thorium reactors could replace both uranium-nuclear and fossil fuels. Teamed with renewables and energy efficiency, half of that, could prevent the energy shortfall, drastically reduce carbon, and insure the best energy mix. That’s two years of production, four years including building the assembly line. A liquid fluoride thorium reactor’s core is only 10 feet in diameter and 20 feet high, probably less of an assembly line challenge than a massive bomber.
In WWII, we were a frog in hot water. We’re now in cool water — it will be hard to duplicate post-Pearl Harbor with that mindset — Einstein pointed out you can’t solve a problem with the same mindset that caused the problem. It boils down to a lack of will: The NRC isn’t even licensing liquid fluoride thorium reactors until 2030. They wrongly harp on liquid fluoride thorium reactor corrosion – liquid fluoride thorium reactors can be shut down instantly and completely for maintenance. For uranium plants, it’s a major effort at best, a mega crisis (Fukushima) at worst. We need renewables, a massive effort in energy efficiency, and standardized liquid fluoride thorium reactors paired with existing grid substations, now!
Thorium comes with rare earth minerals, critical to high-tech. China monopolized rare earth’s and have all the thorium stockpiled for a liquid fluoride thorium reactor economy. They studied our prototype liquid fluoride thorium reactor, but thorium programs are on hold because fracked shale seemed easier, preventing a thousand-year solution, in favor of a questionable 20-year solution.
Decline will curtail global transportation. Energy black markets and hoarded resources will escalate. We won’t be able to sell or import goods overseas. If we still had production capacity and skills exported to China, we could rapidly ramp up, if we don’t waste the five years to decline. China now produces most solar panels, wind turbines and rare earths — now iquid fluoride thorium reactors? – these components, necessary to prevent energy shortfall and global warming, won’t be available to the U.S. in a crunch.
Energy utopia is a myth based on misreading the EIA’s most-basic graph — mistaking peak petroleum’s most optimistic case for the most-likely case. America is basing its energy future on this flawed logic. If we mobilize, we would have ample energy and time to sort out the right final energy mix. Global warming stresses would plummet. With business as usual, and misreading the most basic graph, we’ll be in energy and environmental hell. There’s no downside to mobilizing quickly — huge to doing it too late. If we act decisively, as in WWII, it could mean energy adequacy for a millennia — energy continuity is everything and it takes farsightedness and grunt!
