Energy: How to have a Future Worth Having. By David Archibald.
The peak month of world oil production was back in October 2018. … With peak oil now in the rear vision mirror, the decades of declining production are now upon us.
This won’t mean that solar power and wind power become more competitive. Solar and wind facilities are manufactured and installed using energy from coal and oil. In a tight energy market in which different sources of energy are semi-substitutable for each other, the coal price and the natural gas price will rise to the oil price in energy-equivalent terms. …
So deciding between renewables and coal for power generation is a false choice. Because coal isn’t a long-term option. There are babies being born now who will see the end of coal. There is not much point agonising about coal-fired power stations. The better use for coal is producing liquid fuels for transport applications. There is only one source of energy that can replace coal for power generation and that is nuclear. The sooner we replace coal with nuclear for power generation, the longer our coal reserves will last and the higher the standard of living our children will have.
Fossil fuels got civilisation started and U235 is the match that allowed humanity to light the nuclear fire that will maintain civilisation at a high level until Judgement Day.
The solar panels and wind turbines we are installing at the moment will be carted off to landfill at the end of their lives and replaced by nuclear power. This is because the cost of nuclear power should remain at about the price it is currently, while the prices of all other forms of energy will go up with the oil price. And there will be no point in using power from nuclear reactors to provide the energy to make solar panels and wind turbines, because the price of the power produced will be at least five times that produced by the nuclear reactors in the first place. …
If our civilisation is going to have a future worth having, it will be powered by plutonium breeder reactors. The only alternative to nuclear power is to revert to wood and horses which will result in an 18th century standard of living. It will be easier to get that nuclear future while we still have some oil and coal to burn. It will be hard to build nuclear reactors if we are using energy from horses. So, the sooner we start down the right path, the safer and happier we will be.
Read it all for the details.
