[ExI] EP and Peak oil.

[Keith Henson]

On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 10:38 AM, John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:
> "Keith Henson" <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
>
>
> > 2 trillion is on a par with the Iraq war.  It's got to be a better
>  investment than that.
>
>  Yea but so is digging holes and then filling them up again.

74 million b/day x $100 /b is 7.4 billion a day.  Times 365 that's
$2.7 trillion a year.  I don't think the investment is close to two
trillion, but if it is, it's still a good investment.

>  >There is a lot of uranium considering how heavy it is, but it's
>  > rarely concentrated.
>
>  If we run out of uranium you can always switch to Thorium, you can make
>  reactors (and bombs) with that too and it's much more common than uranium,
>  about as common as lead in fact. Or you could make breeder rectors and use
>  plutonium, but that scares the hell out of me.

Why does it scare you?  Unless you take the trouble to make plutonium
without Pu 240 in it, the stuff isn't suitable for bombs.  (The 240
makes it detonate prematurely, with much less yield.)  The problem is
you can make pure Pu 239 if you set up to do so.

>  > The current choices are space elevator, lasers and rockets in
>  > order both  of decreasing efficiency and risk.
>
>  If you had a space elevator then power satellites would certainly make
>  sense because you'd have a much better way to get that energy down to earth
>  and could forget about those stupid microwaves that were always the
>  weak link in the idea.

I have been up on the subject since the mid 1970s and microwave
transmission was never considered a problem.  Why do you think it is?
 How do you think the space elevator could be used in the place of
microwaves?  (Making antimatter and bring it down in a bag is a
*joke.*)  Even if it could be, an elevator has to come down close to
the equator and there isn't much demand for power there.

Keith