Alden Link is a Libertarian candidate for the Libertarian presidential nomination. He’s an older gentleman, and his main emphasis seems to be on nuclear power. He claims that nuclear power plants can produce enough gasoline to end our dependence upon foreign oil.
I’m no scientist, but I don’t understand how nuclear power plants can produce gasoline. Perhaps someone reading this can explain if the following is possible:
A nuclear power plant has the energy to produce about 15 thousand barrels of gasoline a day.
Given the following equivalents:
• 1 watt equals 3.4 british thermal units (BTU)
• 1 nuclear power plant produces 1,000,000,000 watts
• 1 barrel of gasoline contains 42 gallons
• 1 gallon of gasoline is equal to 125,000 btu
• 1 day has 24 hours1) 1,000,000,000 watts / hour x 3.4 btu = 3,400,000,000 btu/hour
2) 3,400,000,000 btu/hour divided by 125,000 btu/gallon =27,200 gallons per hour
3) 27,200 gals./hour divided by 42 gallons per barrel = 647 barrels/hour
4) 647 barrels per hour x 24 hours = 15,542 barrels of gasoline per dayThe raw materials needed for this process are carbon from recycled atmospheric carbon dioxide and hydrogen from water. This process is therefore non polluting and actually cleans the air
The United States imports about 13,000,000 barrels of oil per day. Some of it is used to run electric generating facilities. Most is used as motor fuels.
If the US builds 900 nuclear power plants for converting energy to fuel we would be energy independent. and not need ANY imported oil. More power plants than that and we could export petroleum products.
Texas is the 5th largest oil producing entity. If restrictions were eased we could use Texas oil & help our economy as well.
There has already been an increase of gas drilling along the Burnett Shell. This is in the N. Texas and a very populous area. Much of the oil drilling was done in West Texas which has very low population.
Well gasoline is a molecule that can be synthesized just like any other, but it’s a question of efficiency. The math above assumes 100% efficiency for synthesizing the gasoline from raw materials and completely ignores the astronomical energy cost of extracting CO2 from the air, then breaking it apart to get the carbon, then the cost of gathering and breaking the water. There are a lot more efficient ways to get carbon and hydrogen.
If you’re looking to use nuclear power to produce a liquid fuel for vehicles, there are much more efficient ways to do it in general such as liquification of coal.
If you’re looking to show how great nuclear power is, it’d make a lot more sense to calculate how much oil we’d save by eliminating oil fired power plants.
Maybe you could use the heat for thermal depolymerization to make fuel, but I don’t think his idea would work. But, what do I know? As long as he pays for it out of his own pocket (or gets investors) I would be curious to see if he could pull it off.
As far as the form letters, you’re probably very correct, I should personalize them but I avoid them simply because it’s the kind of mind numbing drudgery that I associate with this application thing. If my ADD was so happy as to be appeased by trying to think of something interesting to say, than life would be so much better. I’m thinking of slowing down vastly though, and personalizing. Others have suggested it, and you were my icing on the proverbial cake. Instead of going for bulk, I may just put a lot of effort into fewer choices. Of course it will mean that much more disappointment when rejected, but I can deal with that. I appreciate your insight, it’s nice to have someone else do a bit of critiquing from the outside.
Also, Badspot is quite right. The technology to do what this guy talks about is there, but in such an unrefined way that to power the machines he’s talking about to “clean the air” would actually require ridiculous amounts of energy, which would pull power away from oil production and drastically drop the number of barrels in his calculations. Add to that the social stigma against nuclear plants (especially 900 of them) and I see little chance of this getting off the ground in the near future.
I think the benefit of what Alden Link is saying is not in the specifics of the plan, which are sketchy at best, but to give us a handle on the scale of the issue involved.
Presently nukes are a political third rail, but fighting wars to gain control of others oil fields doesn’t seem all that popular either. If we are going to continue the society we have developed, we need lots and lots of energy. – Lots of it.
By the way, it would be nice if using the energy didn’t ensure that we would destroy the planet as we know it, which the burning of fossel fuels seems to be doing.
OK, where to get the energy.
The sun is a good idea. We can build solar panels and generate electricity, at least during the day. So we need really big batteries to store the power at night. – There’s a technology that doesn’t appear promising in the scale we are talking about.
Wind seems a little better. It blows at night as well as during the day. It just doesn’t always blow.
Even wave energy has promise, but in fact the waves sometimes have more energy, and sometimes less.
So, when the wind is not blowing, the sun is not shining and wave energy is low, what do we do? Go to bed, snuggle around a candle and read a good book. Thats fine for an individual, but our entire society can’t just stop.
Sooner or later even staunch environmentalists (such as myself) are going to get around to the reality that 1) Nuclear power has a great safety track record (ignoring chernbyl, which was a reactor without safeguards and a simply stupid concept).
In the US, we are still operating OLD reactors. New reactors would be safer yet. They would have fewer moving parts, and more safeguards.
Fuel reprocessing would reduce the volume and hazardous level of the waste. Yes, it costs more money than just mining some more uranium, but its the sensible thing to do.
The real travesty of America’s nuclear power system is that we are storing large quantities of relatively high level nuclear waste right beside our major water-ways. This is the problem that must be solved, but NIMBYism is rampant.
And so, the people in the center of the country will continue to insist that offshore drilling is the answer, because they have no shore line to loose. The rich will continue to insist that we can get lots of oil from the middle east, since they can afford to not only pay $5 per gallon, but their kids aren’t being slaughtered to keep the flow of oil high. T Boone Pickens will make a few more bucks creating a wind energy company, and we will still be in the position of needing LOTS and LOTS of base energy (energy available 24/7).
Political reconciliation around how to deal with the very real issues of nuclear power (safety, security, waste) is what is needed. It can be done, and we can create a world that our children and grandchildren can enjoy.
But its alot easier just to borrow money they will have to repay to purchase the oil that will pollute the air that they will have to breath than to really take on the overall energy issue with open minds and a commitment to the generations that follow us.
Unclewink: I apologize that your comment did not post immediately, but it got caught in the spam filter. I am not at all sure why it would have been flagged, since it doesn’t meet any of the predetermined criteria for assumption of spam.
I do very much appreciate your input.
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