Shale oil and fracking

[BenThere]

http://www.realclearenergy.org/articles ... 10215.html

I'm quite optimistic about the ability of the shale and fracking business to upend what we've come to expect for a generation - ever increasing energy prices, and balance of payment imbalances that went to the Middle East and OPEC. Thanks to current and developing technology there is a gusher of energy at affordable cost flooding the market, much to the chagrin of the ayatollahs, Chavistas, and Saudi princes who have lorded it over us for so long. I take pleasure in that, and also hold a bit of smug gratification that the green movement that supported vast government expenditures to promote and subsidize, with incredible amounts of taxpayers' money, wind and solar schemes that have killed billions of birds, desecrated the landscape, and wasted billions of funds on a white elephant.

Shale and fracking have only scratched the surface of their potential world-wide. Additionally, nuclear power, the cleanest and safest energy ever available, remains able to take on an increased part of the energy mix. There is also an almost limitless supply of coal to compete for the BTUs the world demands.

Petrodollars have funded Jihad, ISIS, and dysfunctional regimes for far too long. The end of that is coming, and rapidly.

As the sham of global warming is revealed a new, energy fueled prosperity is dawning.

[Chuks]

"Additionally, nuclear power, the cleanest and safest energy ever available, remains able to take on an increased part of the energy mix." Ben, I assume that you have heard of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. If those examples show you something that's not just clean and safe but "the cleanest and safest ever," then I guess we can see what you must see in Donald John Trump, our 45th President.

Holy three-eyed mackerel, Kingfish!

[John Hill]

Additionally, nuclear power, the cleanest and safest energy ever available, remains able to take on an increased part of the energy mix.

You must know Benny that not all countries are permitted to have nuclear power stations.

[Magnus]

TMI deaths? None.
Fukushima deaths? None.
Chernobyl deaths? 31 directly attributable. Speculation regarding the number of premature deaths lies in the range 0-200,000, the latter being based on non-peer-reviewed papers.

Now, how many deaths have been caused in horrendous molybdenum mines (if you want to use wind)? How meany deaths have been caused by the toxic and highly acidic runoff from them? How about the toxicity of materials used in solar panels?

Nuclear still looks pretty good to me.

[unifoxos]

Petrodollars have funded Jihad, ISIS, and dysfunctional regimes for far too long. The end of that is coming, and rapidly.

Can't come soon enough for me.

[Sisemen]

And here in Oz the greenies have effectively halted fracking, coal mines, exploration for gas/petroleum/minerals and the gas from fields that were discovered and opened before the loonies started to run the asylum is being flogged off to furriners!

And funny old thing.....they've effectively run out of gas for the Eastern States.

Where to turn to? Western Australia where we still realise that a proportion of the gas we collect has to be reserved for the domestic market and the State is not averse to exploitation of resources.

The Eastern States are, apparently, upset when we say it's going to cost them!

[obgraham]

As was often stated back in the day:
"More people have died in the back seat of Ted Kennedy's car than from accidents at US nuclear power stations."

[Chuks]

As was often stated back in the day:
"More people have died in the back seat of Ted Kennedy's car than from accidents at US nuclear power stations."

That's good for a laugh, if you are that way inclined, but, sadly, it's factually incorrect: Three people died in an accident at a US nuclear power station: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1

My apologies for stepping on your laugh line there, obgraham.

If you bother to read about what happened at Three Mile Island, we escaped catastrophe by one rch. Anyone who wants to think of nuclear power as safe would probably be happy to put Trump into the White House. One is as safe as the other.

[Chuks]

http://permalink.lanl.gov/object/tr?wha ... 95-4005-13

[Rwy in Sight]

we escaped catastrophe by one rch.

. We escaped we did. We learned our lessons and this makes nuclear electricity production safer. There were just three major nuclear accidents on electricity produced plants and some would say the Chernobyl one was 100% avoidable - I am trying to locate a report about it to post it here.

[BenThere]

Ben, I assume that you have heard of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima

So more coal minor deaths in China in a good month exceed the total number of nuclear power-related deaths since the 1950's and you claim victory. Further, the one serious incident, Chernobyl, was at a facility run by Russians operating under Socialist priorities, not Western standards.

Dozens of advanced economies have operated nuclear facilities without serious incident for a generation. But that's not good enough for you, is it, Chuks? You had to go all the way back to the 1950's to find what you wanted. I suggest you go even further to find stories about desert soldiers slurping beers on backyard lounge chairs watching nuclear weapon tests in outback Nevada. Those blasts gave them a nice tan. But the technology, while halted by 'China Syndrome' in the last century, is now reasserting itself as a practical and significant component of meeting global energy demand. The fact is, basic nuclear energy costs, stripped of compliance and lawsuit expenses, are competitive, purely green, and offer enormous benefits. One of the great conundrums of my life is why the Left eschewed rather than embraced nuclear energy. Maybe they just didn't like Reagan.

[obgraham]

Apparently you cannot read, Chuks.
Here's what I wrote:

"More people have died in the back seat of Ted Kennedy's car than from accidents at US nuclear power stations."

What you described was a military experimental reactor, not a US nuclear power station.
By your standards, I guess we could consider Hiroshima/Nagasaki victims as also "killed by nuclear power".

But carry on living in Germany where Frau M pissed her pantsuit over Fukushima and decided Germany would rather be dependent on Putin and the wind for its energy.

But yes, you are correct in that I did vote for Mr T, and I do live in a community with a 75 year history of nuclear research, not to mention causing the surrender of Japan.

[Chuks]

What can I say? The SL-1 was a US nuclear power station, albeit a very small one operated by the US Army. It fits the exact description used by obgraham, and it killed three people, two more than died on Chappaquiddick in the back seat of Teddy Kennedy's car.

I guess you needed to slice your baloney a bit thinner there, obgraham, and tell us that nobody's died in such an obviously horrible and sudden way (irradiated and nailed to the ceiling sounds about right for a slasher movie) from an accident with a civilian US nuclear power station. Three Mile Island was merely a near-catastrophe with a US nuclear power station, escaped by one rch, so that there's nothing to worry about there unless you are the sort of person who tries to think things through and draw general conclusions about the safety of nuclear power.

Chernobyl and Fukushima are both full-scale, on-going disasters. If you like to think that whatever mistakes were made by stupid Russians and clever Japanese to cause those disasters could not be made by Americans then I guess you need to read up a bit on the history of the US nuclear industry.

Google "Diablo Canyon" for the history of a plant built in an area prone to earthquakes, when workers used a set of blueprints that were backwards (left for right, so to speak) to reinforce parts of it. (Be fair now. Doesn't that read like something Russians would do, forget to flip their blueprints to make the blueprints match the other half of what they are working on?)

We can match the stupid Russians when it comes to making stupid mistakes, and we can match the clever Japanese when it comes to making clever mistakes; you can depend on that.

Oak Ridge, Tennessee?

You like your Teddy Kennedy jokes. Here's one New Englanders tell about Tennessee: "Cletus, if'n you and me wuz to git dee-vorced, would we still be brother and sister?"

[Magnus]

October 1966, Aberfan in Wales. 116 children and 28 adults died when a coal bing collapsed on a primary school. Per GWh produced, nuclear power has only caused a fraction of the deaths and serious injuries other sourced have.

[Chuks]

Magnus, people still live in and around Aberfan, I suppose. Does anyone live anywhere near Chernobyl? Are the two disasters really comparable despite the much higher loss of life in Aberfan? (You might as well tell us that nuclear power is safer than flying on the Boeing 747, just going by the number of fatalities per accident.)

I have no plans to work in a Chinese coal mine, so that what happens there to "minors" is of little concern to me, really. (I have been there, and China, from what I saw of it, is a Communist-run dump!)

On the other hand, I once had a flying job in Coal Country, USA, when the level of environmental damage, caused by this particularly nasty sort of strip mining where they bulldoze off the tops of small mountains or big hills, was impossible to ignore. Too, the lives of the miners did seem to be classically "nasty, brutish, and short." Again, not really my problem, and I think that Trump cares even less about their problems than I do. He'll be back there in Trump Tower when they are still living in "some dark hollow."

I understand that some people do live near Fukushima, but for the most part the inhabitants have cleared out because of radioactive environmental contamination. The ones who are left there are mostly too old to worry very much about that, I guess.

[Magnus]

Chuks, what was then the Coal Board stabilised bings deemed a risk after Aberfan. People don't live near Fukushima because the government is covering its collective arse. People, despite warnings from the Ukrainian authorities, continue to live (and survive) in and around Pripyet 31 years after Chernobyl went off. I live a few miles from a nuclear power station and am happy so to do. If you don't give a flying fcuk about Chinese miners, why would you care about Welsh ones or their children?

[Chuks]

Magnus, what do you want from me? I am not an SJW (Social Justice Warrior), someone who needs to wear his heart on his sleeve for Chinese coal miners, nor for Welsh victims of random disasters. (Thinking of people merely being forced to live in Wales would exhaust my limited supply of compassion, I fear.) Is that disappointing? You were expecting perhaps Mother Teresa in drag?

All I want to point out here is that nuclear power in real terms is literally a hot mess. I was raised, as you were too, I assume, with the Fifties and Sixties propaganda about nuclear power stations run by white-clad technicians operating to the highest standards. This was a guarantee that nothing could possibly go wrong in generating electrical power "too cheap to meter." Three Mile Island was our reality check for that dream.

Here in Germany there's one hell of a fuss about a nuclear waste facility that turns out to be a leaking salt mine filled with heaps of corroding drums of waste. Yet again we discover that "Germans are just Italians in a bad mood," but this time it's that they are making a mess of storing highly dangerous nuclear waste that might enter the ground water table.

People get it wrong, all of us: Russians, Japs, and Americans too. When someone gets it wrong in a nuclear way that can have very, very grave consequences. We still do not have coherent plans for dealing with nuclear waste in the long term, for instance. Factor that in and what looks like cheap, clean power turns out to be alarmingly expensive and dirty. Of course taking the Trumpian short-term approach, the "This will not be my problem even if you can somehow force me to see it as a problem ... which I do not," approach still has nuclear power as a very attractive option.

[obgraham]

Couple more points, Chuks:
**Not all radiation kills you. See Harold McCluskey and Americium 241.
**Tell me again how many people have died at Diablo Canyon from radiation? And how many Russians have died in industrial petroleum accidents to provide you and your German pals with their energy needs?
**I actually do know what an rch is, having seen a lot of them over the years.

[Chuks]

"Not all radiation kills you." No, I just survived a chilly garden party when I was taking every chance I had to be bombarded with infrared radiation. That doesn't mean that I am off to have an adventure holiday at Chernobyl later this year, though. You first, obgraham.

Diablo Canyon ... your point being that we should wait for the earthquake and then worry about the risks from this nuclear power plant? You lost me there.

What is it with this notion that I am murdering poor old Ivan by burning Russian gas here at home in Germany? If Russia and China have crap industrial safety standards how should that inform our consumption of Russian gas or Chinese coal? Actually, if Russia and China become more prosperous through the sale of gas and coal that should enable increased investment in industrial safety. Not that it will, just that it should ....

I did not assume that you were ignorant of the rch; it used to be a rather common unit of measurement for those of us who found the micron to be a bit poncey.

[BenThere]

But Diablo Canyon (also San Onofre) hasn't ever hurt anyone, has it? And there have been a number of earthquakes in the vicinity over the years - I think it was built in the late 70s or early 80s.

During the same time frame we've had several large tanker spills, massive oil derrick malfunctions, natural gas explosions, pipeline failures, oil train derailments, massive windmill and solar bird kills (at great cost), thousands of coal miner deaths, and other unpleasantnesses that seem to be okay with you, Chuks, but nary a scratch on the arm of anyone that you can lay the blame for at the feet of nuclear power in the Western world, which you seem to detest.

Think about that. If your desire truly is safety, can you logically reassess your position?