Re: OT: Gas Prices
 

Fast Neutron Reactor Wikipedia Link

It's fast-neutron reactors I was thinking about. I've included a link to get you started.

They are capable of 'burning' spent nuclear fuel from conventional thermal reactors, and rendering such spent fuel much less toxic at the same time.

Re: OT: Gas Prices
 

It might have been the 'Integral Fast Reactor' actually. This is a specific type of 'fast neutron reactor' designed to completely use up the fuel and leave very little radioactive waste. The US project to develop this was in the news in the early nineties and that's where you might have heard of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor

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That could easily be the reactor I was thinking of. I actually read about it in the Dec. 2005 Scientific American, but I can't remember the exact content of the article. Might be they were planning on resurrecting the project.

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Someday our descendants are going to discover a use for our nuclear "waste" and will be annoyed at us for making the stuff so difficult to recover. (No smiley; not kidding.)

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The begining of an alternative?

Granted it is still a long way off but if it can be perfected and refined...

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?????

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He's not joking; remember how you posted....
Well, if that becomes quite successfull, and we've tossed all our nuclear waste into the sun, we can't get it back to power the new plants.....

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Ahhhh.

I was just being a little dense I guess, not seeing the obvious. Thanks for the clarification! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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Some of this is re-tread, but still, I thought it worth mentioning.

1. The Oil companys are ripping us off.
2. Gas should be more expensive.
3. We need to stop burning things to provide energy.

I am sure that I need to clarify #2 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I think that gas taxes need to be higher and that the additional proceeds be used to shore up our transportation infrastructure and to provide research into alternative energies.

This approach has two main advantages.
1. Roads and other Transportation Infrastructure can be used to support even alternative energy cars.
2. At the same time we ramp down the use of fossil fuels, we would be encouraging the development of their replacements.

Recently there has been a lot of push in the media for bio-diesel and other fuels made from crops. While these fuels are an improvement over dependence on fossil oil, it still has some major drawbacks, most notably that they still release poisonous gasses into the atmosphere.

While bio-fuel is a good interim step, it does not (IMO) represent a long term solution.

Personally, I think that the hydrogen fuel cell is the future of portable energy and that a combination of solar, wind, hydro, nuclear and tidal energy is the ideal way to provide the raw energy for "refueling" those cells.

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1. The Oil Companies are ripping us off. True, but so is everyone else.
2. Gas should be more expensive. Anything useful that they are not making anymore will rise in price as demand goes up and, as stated, supply goes down.
3. Stop burning things... Well, maybe. Give me a better, cheaper solution and I will. Taxes on gas will make the old solution more expensive and new better technology seem more reasonable.

I filled up my gas tank this weekend. Man it was expensive. Over $30 dollars for a month of gas. I still wonder how I was able to put 11 gallans into my 10 gallon tank. The gas was 10 cents cheaper than the other stations... Hmmmmm.

In case you are wondering, here is my car. Lifetime average of 53.1 miles a gallon and rated SULEV or Super Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle. I have had it four years and counting. Still loving it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif (see attachment)

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Everyone might be ripping us off, but the Oil Industry is making them all look like amatures. The problem is demand is going up and up and and they can keep raising prices. If you increase taxes on it, people will still pay.

It's like walmart syndrome.

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Actually, I wasn't talking about some theoretical nuclear waste tossed into the the sun, but about the glassified waste that we're currently producing as a storage solution.

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You want lower fuel bills? Get one of these: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4930794.stm

I've been wanting a Smartcar for ages, but it's just a little too small for me & my wife to have it as our only vehicle.

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I wouldn't fit very well in the front seat and I'm not sure I can beleive anybody but a midget could fit in the back.

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I heard something interesting and something worrying too.

An analyst on CNN attributed rising gas prices to demand from China as well as the oil industry gouging. At first I thought that was harmless, but then the what-if, paranoid thought entered my mind that maybe China is forcing gas prices up intentionally. They don't have to worry about loosing money on paying higher gas prices since most of the US's merchandise and goods are currently being produced in china meaning china gets the money to pay higher prices.

Just a paranoid thought.

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There's a lot of people in china.

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And there's some scary people in charge of China...

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FYI,
over here one litre of gas (not diesel, lead-free) costs exactly 1,63 $ atm. You can see where your prices are going within the next months, should the iran-issue further escalate.

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Yes, but they don't need to do anything to make their populace consume a lot.

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China is #2 in petroluem usage, having recently passed Japan, but that doesn't tell the whole story. The US is still way out ahead of China in total usage at over 20 million barrels a day while China 'only' uses about 6.5 millions barrels a day. Incredibly, the increase in USA oil usage over the last decade has been about as much as China's total usage today! Looks like the lessons of the 1970s oil shocks have not been learned. Americans just cannot seem to learn the meaning of 'conserve'... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Interesting statistics and info: http://www.gravmag.com/oil.html

http://www.energybulletin.net/15185.html

How's this for nerve? The leader of a country that consumes more than 20 million barrels of oil a day is warning the leader of a country that consumes some 6.5 million barrels not to try to lock up world oil resources. When President Bush welcomes the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, to the White House today, the American complaint will be that China's appetite for oil affects its stance on Iran, Sudan and other trouble spots.

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I think it's even more sad when you consider that China also has more than 4x the population of the US...

Unfortunately it's almost as bad per capita north of the border... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

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Of course, most of China is still a 3rd world country... The big cities are modernizing, but most of the people have no access to automobiles.

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Give it time, China is industrializing.


But the paranoid thought in the back of my head is a scenario where gas prices drop to 60 dollars a barrel and china says "Nope, we'll give you 70 instead!".

But that's just a paranoid thought, the reality is that we americans preach conservation one hand and consume with the other.

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Wow...

I just did a bit of a search for information on the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada, since I know there's a tremendous amount of oil there. I just never knew how much oil...

According to estimates, there is 1.7 to 2.5 trillion barrels of oil in the tar sands. That's 1,700,000,000,000 to 2,500,000,000,000 barrels! Enough to supply the US at its current rate of consumption for nearly 250 years!

The catch is that it is very expensive to recover the oil from the sands. Only about 10% of that oil is economically recoverable. Still, having an oil reserve of 170-250 billion barrels in just that one oil field (compared to the US having 21 billion barrels reserve) is quite something.

I wonder how many tons of living matter had to have died in that general area to have ended up as that amount of oil....

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Wasn't that part of Alberta part of an inland sea back at the time of the dinosaurs?

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Happy birthday, R13!

On the subject of tar sands, you're completely on the target there... if we want oil, we'll find a way to get it. People will see that there is a cheaper way soon enough; here in Utah, the Gov's been eager to set up new mining operations, and they're resuming uranium mining and exploration, not to mention tar sands. And they're finally starting to collect natural gas from current coal mines, which previously was simply vented into the atmosphere. And we complain about farting cows... :roll:

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Thanks a lot Morkilus! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

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I filled up my car with gas today. $1.195 per liter! It seems that once the price exceeded $1, it just keeps going higher.

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You have to blame your governments excessively high tax on that one. You pay about the same per barrel of oil as we do but you have a very high gas tax.

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And we all have to blame the oil companies for gouging everyone.

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There are already cries to increase both state and federal gas taxes because they are loosing money since people are cutting back do to the high prices. This is the same BS that the electric companies love too pull on us.

"We need you to conserve 20%" - we do and they sell that extra 20% to some other state and make [censored] loads of $$$$ off of it, then cry that domestic sales are down by 20% and raise rates by 20%. So now your not only using 20% less, but your now paying 20% more for using less.

It would be a criminal act, and should be viewed as one, to impose a new tax, or raise any gas taxes in an effort to exploit the current situation.

Any politican that thinks raising the gas tax will improve our economy is not worth voting for.

My $0.02 worth.

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OPEC uses a cartel to hold up prices, we need to form a cartel to hold down prices. When gas is over $2.50, we only buy it on odd days.

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Unless you actually reduce the amount of gas consumed, that'll do nothing.

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Well actually it would throw a monkey wrench into the supply on demand system that is now being used. To increase profits, the oil companies keep inventories at absolute minimums to meet demand. While consumption of gas in the US has risen every year, storage capacity has fallen. They now use these “on demand” inventory numbers to influence price. And of late, they have manipulated the amount of fuel in storage downward so as to pressure the price upwards. If no one bought gas every other day, it would create a huge glut of gas and force prices down. It would also cause some spot shortages on “buy” days, but also create a net lowering of gas consumption. The three stations that my family owns are being held at minimum storage on site. The oil company used to almost force us to keep the tanks full. Now they penalize us for extra deliveries. Each station pumps more than a tanker a day, so at least twice a week we need two deliveries a day. We now pay extra for the second tanker. In the past, we got a discount on the additional loads. They are also holding our credit card receipts and extra day now. That cost us over a 100K in lost cash flow. And the maximum credit card charge at the pump is $70 dollars, which won’t fill up the vehicles that many people around here drive, this drives people to top off, which further stresses limited supplies. The oil companies are using every trick in the book to keep supplies tight and prices high.



If everyone cut their usage by 10%, it would also cause an inventory back up. So go burn your neighbors gas hog SUV to the ground and force the price down http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

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Gas is so expensive lately! Today I bought gas and it was $1.27 per liter. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]

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It's even more atrocious than it was this time last year (when the thread was first created). I hesitate to drive for anything other than absolute necessities, it's too bloody expensive.

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It's $3.20 (a gallon) here, I got gas last monday it was 2.85, by thursday it was 3.20. The experts are saying $4.00 by mid summer. I bet we'll hit $4 by memorial day and $5 before the end of the year. This is getting outrageous. It's pretty bad when it costs you almost half a hours work (if not more) just to pay for the gas to get there.

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I live close to San Francisco. It hit $3.20/gal a month ago. The station down the street is at $3.60/gal. In the city itself I've seen $3.85/gal.

No doubt in my mind that the average price around here will hit $4/gal by the end of May.

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Note that despite the "harsh" circumstances forcing the gas price increase Oil companies are making record profits.

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Who'd have thought that supply and demand actually applied in the real world...

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Its about $2.90/gal here. On a business trip I saw it for $2.72/gal in SC. I have noticed E85 (an ethanol blend) pop up at a few stations. I heard ethanol is more expensive to produce than gasoline (I am sure it will come down in time..). Problem is that it raises feed prices, causing a ripple effect. There is an effort to produce enzymes (cheaply) that convert crop waste into a fuel...

GB

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As always your insight is "helpful." The overall point with gas prices being the social trap that's been created to force people to need it. Unless you think for some reason we haven't been able to come up with anything better for 100 years.

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From the gas company side:

http://www.conocophillips.com/newsro...il_profits.htm

Looking for an opposing link right now...

This one is ok: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=5367090

Still haven't found a good site that opposes the oil viewpoint with good data.

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It is a tough situation. They tried to tax the oil companies more in the past (1980) and it had the effect of decreasing domestic production and increasing foreign dependence, which isn't what we want.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/1168.html

An alternative energy source is preferable and they are at least starting to look at things like Ethanol. Now Ethanol is not the best solution but progress will not be made overnight.

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The problem with the oil company "support" article is that they fail to take into account that their "modest" price increases and maintainence factors into just about every other category of expense they claim is higher because of transportation costs.

As for foreign dependance, one of the biggest problems America has is thinking it can produce everything and fully support itself. No economy can do that, we only want to think we can with oil because we've pissed off all the major suppliers of oil.

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We probably cannot produce everything by ourselves, but I think that is a good goal to strive for. Ethonal might be a good idea for us then. We grow a lot of food (i.e. corn) and we are strong in pharmaceuticals/genetic engineering. I would hope we can use that to our advantage in producing plenty of ethonal. There are a bunch of issues right now with corn Ethonal but its a start. I think a Prius that runs on E85 would be a good thing.

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Ethanol will be a nice stepping stone, but I don't believe it's the "wave of the future." The cost of production for ethanol limiting on how effective it will be right now, unless as you mentioned we engineer something to reduce that.

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Yep, its a start and thats exciting. I think Gas prices will be high for a long time now. It is gonna cost $$$ to convert to a non-oil based infrastructure.

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Hah, here in Norway we've been at $4'ish/gal for years O_O

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Yes, but there should have been alternatives for a long time now. We're the only developed country out there that hasn't been concerned with fuel economy and the US is also the only country that didn't do the right thing after the gas shortage of the 70's.