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Stopping Global Warming's Advance
OIL,
General
(Add to the pool of atmospheric CO2) (Do not add to the pool of atmospheric CO2)
3A
3B
3
OIL is found in 5 different general forms: Pumpable, Unconventional from oil sands and oil sludge, re-formed synthetic from coal and natural gas, [Carbon Neutral] completely synthetic using CO2 from the air and hydrogen from water, and [Carbon Neutral] re-formed synthetic oil using carbon from wood and other natural biomass.
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_____ What Are Nuclear Oils? _____
"Nuclear Oil" is the name I've given to one non-fossil fuel and several fossil fuels that can be made into ultra-clean oils and gasoline by using nuclear, rather than fossil-fuel heat, for their manufacture. This is because we must minimize our burning of fossil carbon simply to make heat - fossil carbon is far too valuable as a feedstock for fertilizers, medicines, plastics, and vehicle fuels.
Nuclear oils fall into much the same category as foods processed using nuclear electricity as their cooking energy.
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Nuclear Oils have four enormous advantages:
1. Nuclear heat avoids burning the precious fossil fuels themselves to convert fossil fuels such as coal into clean oils.
2. Nuclear oil production creates little or no greenhouse gas.
3. Nuclear oils will make much less CO2 per year if burned over 600+ years as vehicle fuels only.
4. Nuclear oils can be "Made In The USA". (We are importing oil at the rate of $400,000 per minute.)
This is a simple "Fossil-Fuel Frugal" strategy to maximize the world's fossil energy reserves while reducing Global Warming.
http://www.cns-snc.ca/events/CCEO/nuclearenergyindustry.pdf Canadian paper on using nuclear heat to extract oil from Canadian tar sands.
You may not believe what I've written on this web site. You may believe them.
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Chapter Three, Part 3A: Getting our emissions and energy goals on the same page:
Conservation is not a solution - it is a trap.
Not Conservation, but Conversion, from Oil, Coal, and Gas to Nuclear Electricity.
Converting eliminates Global Warming CO2 while freeing up the fossil fuels for SLOW conversion to oil.
Our
Nation's Carbon Footprint: Total
U.S. Fossil Fuel Use
This is our big chance to end much of our CO2 production while also escaping the trap of conservation.
KEY: Ending CO2, Coal, OIL, and Gas: It's very important we understand that we need to make much more nuclear electricity in the near future than we ever did fossil fuel electricity in the past because the time has come for the world to shift as much of its energy burden as possible to non-Global Warming electricity.
All countries have a "National Carbon Footprint Grid."
The "United States' National Carbon Footprint Grid" (right) by Jeffery Winters clearly shows big opportunities where we might substitute nuclear electricity for CO2-producing fossil fuels, often that fuel is oil. The chart shows in great detail the carbon dioxide (and equivalent warming from other gases) emitted across the entire United States economy, as determined by a draft report of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released in February, 2007.
Each square represents 10 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions and there are 726 of them for just the United States.
(This chart would make an excellent educational table place mat at environmental and energy conferences.)
In 2006, the United States was 20% of the entire world's economy. That gives you some idea of how much of the world's oil could be saved and fossil fuel CO2 eliminated if the entire world both converted to, and then grew, its nuclear electricity energy base. Above chart from the April, 2007, Mechanical Engineering Magazine feature article "Carbon Loaded" by Jeffery Winters. Read his idea-filled article: http://www.memagazine.org/april07/features/pwindow/pwindow.html
After being displaced by electricity, those large "re-assigned" petroleum components, while still ending up making CO2 in the transportation sector, won't increase the transportation CO2 and will help the world substantially in its efforts to reduce its dependence on pumpable oil.
Nature is absorbing about 20 billion tons of man-made CO2 each year (per NOAA). KEY: If we get rid of ALL 11 billion tons per year of the CO2 that is being unnecessarily produced by fossil-fuel power plants while making electricity, nature might then be able to absorb CO2 from other combustion engine sources that cannot function efficiently without emitting some CO2 - such as automobiles, trucks, and airplanes.
This seems quite feasible since road and air transportation produces about 15% (perhaps 2 billion tons per year) of the world's man-made CO2. Electric trains are common and practical for busy tracks. Large ships, which currently consume about 5% of the world's oil and produce about 3% of the world's CO2, could easily be powered by pebble bed reactors.
Further, converting the world's fossil fuel power plants to nuclear for CO2 emissions mitigation, along with building additional generating units at existing plants, will enable the world to practice oil consumption mitigation by shifting stationary consumption of energy from fossil fuels to electricity.
KEY: Residential, commercial, and industrial heating can be shifted from natural gas and oil to electricity very rapidly and inexpensively - just as we shifted rapidly from coal to natural gas for heating immediately after WWII - if sufficient inexpensive electrical energy were available. In addition to reducing CO2 emissions, Peak Oil demand, and the need for a big fleet of liquefied natural gas tankers from the mid-east to keep our natural gas pipelines full, nuking our heating needs would have a rapid beneficial impact on the Consumer Price Index while also keeping dollars in the United States.
Electric heat can be used to make synthetic oil from coal without producing massive amounts of CO2.
There must be two parts to our synthetic oil program: 1. Sufficient electrically heated coal-to-oil conversion equipment for 200% of military oil energy needs running at all times with unneeded synthetic oil being sold into the civilian market. (At about 500,000 barrels/day, the U.S. military uses as much oil as the entire country of Greece), 2. Sufficient electrically heated coal-to-oil conversion equipment for 100% of civilian oil energy needs built, tested and ready to run at all times.
Just One Example:
Many city buses have already moved from oil to electricity.
Electric Trains give an enormous payback: "Twenty BTUs of diesel fuel for one BTU of electricity is the energy trade by shifting from heavy trucks to electrified railroads. Replacing 2 million barrels/day of heavy truck diesel fuel will take just 1.4% of US electricity." --- Quote and photo from: LightRailNow.org
United States Energy Sources in Quads
(A Quad is a unit of HEAT. One Quad = 1015 BTU or about the heat from 167 million barrels of oil. The United States uses about 1/4 Quadrillion BTUs each day.)
The REALLY BIG picture: Excellent IPCC diagrams showing all the world's major energies and the CO2 they make: 2004 .pdf 2030 .pdf
The above is downloadable information. When you add it all up, the information economy requires massive amounts of solid electricity.
(The above charts would make excellent educational table place mats at environmental and energy conferences.)
We will need abundant ELECTRICITY to survive climate change. Examples: Air Conditioning, Plug-in hybrids, Reverse Osmosis Water Desalination.
Note the 'Second Law of Thermodynamics' impact on efficiency as expressed in "Lost Energy (far right)." This always occurs when heat energy is converted to mechanical energy. Unavoidable thermodynamic losses are why we will always need huge amounts of heat to move the machines that provide our food, transportation, and electricity. A 100% efficient heat engine will have an exhaust temperature that is the same as the air being drawn into it. Direct heating, such as heating a house, is almost 100% efficient as is demonstrated by the presence of plastic exhaust pipes on the high-efficiency furnaces. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics
In the United States, 10 calories of fossil fuel are consumed by all the various machines involved in the production of 1 calorie of food.
A gallon of gasoline contains about 31,000 calories.
ExxonMobil’s massive refinery in Baytown, Texas. With a capacity of 562,000 barrels per day, it’s the nation’s largest.