h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Is it possible to build, run and maintain a nuclear power station if you don't have any oil? I'm meaning right from uranium mining through to disposal of nuclear waste to eventual decomissioning of the plant when it's too old.

What I am asking is if the power from the plant can be used to run the mining machines, manufacture the building and gear, or power the ships that transport the waste, that sort of thing.

No, any more than it's possible to have a cheese sandwich without using oil.

I think the relevant question is 'Do nuclear power stations provide a surplus of energy when you include the costs (including CO2 emissions) of building and decommissioning it, and dealing with the waste. And is this cost-effective, with the inevitable government subsidies, and other social costs, when renewable energy *may* well be a much better way to generate energy in the long-term?'.

I think possibly a time-machine may be useful in the construction part of it.

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Ummm... actually it's easily possible to have a cheese sandwich without using oil.

Possible, but I don't think it's easy. You'd have to walk to the cow, to start with .

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Yeah, if organically fed cows, locally bred, who eat purely grass, and you don't drive to the local farmer's market to buy them, and he used an airship (powered by methane from cow farts) to get them to the place where you bought them.

Never mind the wheat for the bread...

>>You'd have to walk to the cow, to start with<<




I'm fairly sure that people used to eat wheat bread and cheese sandwiches before the invention of the internal combustion engine So I guess the question is can we *still have a cheese sandwich without oil

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I think the relevant question is 'Do nuclear power stations provide a surplus of energy when you include the costs (including CO2 emissions) of building and decommissioning it, and dealing with the waste. And is this cost-effective, with the inevitable government subsidies, and other social costs, when renewable energy *may* well be a much better way to generate energy in the long-term?'.
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Add into that the rising cost of oil. I'm not so much asking if nuclear energy is sustainable economically in its own right, as if it's possible at all given that oil is about to get very expensive and scarce.

The secondary question to that is: is it possible to extract hard to get to oil if you don't have any cheap oil?

oil in a cheese sandwich thats a bit posh, whats wrong with good old fasion LARD....this oil stuff is overated if you ask me, it won't hold the black crispy bits in it when you spread it on bread

<< The secondary question to that is: is it possible to extract hard to get to oil if you don't have any cheap oil?>>

What was the primary question?

Yes, if the price of oil is higher than the price of extraction and transport etc.

kea, that's an important question - as a corollary/restatement, I think it's important to consider that the world as we know it now is geared toward use of fuels/energy derived from oil. So it would be possible, in theory, to do what you describe.

For example, for the mining/drilling machines, they could in theory be completely electrically powered, or the energy/heat/electricity from a nuclear power plant could be used to generate a liquid fuel that could be used in these machines.

Question 1: can you have nuclear power without oil?

Question 2: can you have expensive oil without cheap oil?


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Yes, if the price of oil is higher than the price of extraction and transport etc.
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But you have to factor in the whole cradle to grave thing plus how interdependent all oil-based technologies are on each other. It's not just the economics in a straight line like you said. You have to take into account the manufacture of the machines that extract the oil and what happens when those flow-on industries become unviable. The price of metals is rising fast (because of China I think), so it's not just the price of oil, it's the price of everything. This is the what peak-oil analysts are saying - that *everything is dependent on oil.

I've also been hearing things like companies can't currently keep up with the production of the massive tyres for the machines used in mining. Now if we had an abundance of cheap oil you'd expect market forces to eventually sort that out. But we don't have cheap oil any more, so what's going to happen?

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For example, for the mining/drilling machines, they could in theory be completely electrically powered, or the energy/heat/electricity from a nuclear power plant could be used to generate a liquid fuel that could be used in these machines.
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Thanks Arnie. I wasn't sure if you could power all that stuff that uses oil by using electricity instead (I thought electrical power was less powerful in some way, eg why electric cars are going to be quite different from petrol ones).

Do we know then if it's possible in reality? Does the technology exist currently to do that? And is it reasonable, or would we have to build a nuclear power plant on every block to make it work?

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On industrial scales, you can't have anything without oil.


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I don't understand this bit. The obvious answer is yes, but I don't get it.

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That has been my (badly expressed) point. Our whole economy is based on oil and fossil fuels, so it's to be expected that you can't do anything without oil. Everything *is* dependent on oil.


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BP, Exxon, Shell, etc, have all posted gigantic profits recently. But their share prices didn't rise (as you'd normally expect), because their production volumes either didn't change, or declined. Same as the last few years. Oil companies can't keep up with demand, never mind tyre manufacturers. If there's no cheap oil, there's no cheap energy. So that means no easy economic growth.

Food prices will rise (and they have risen hugely in the last coupla years), metals prices will rise, the price of pretty much everything will rise, which will slow economic growth. Not *too* much trouble for the West, but it will probably mean starvation for some in the 3rd world. IIRC, the UN thinks available calories will drop by 5-8% in Africa in the next decade.

I think we're coming up against absolute ecological limits, not really in terms of energy, but in terms of *all* resources. We're in for interesting times.

perhapse we should look to the past for our energy needs

wind mills and water mills were used for power in the past

with advances in technology what is wrong with each town having its own mill on the stream providing electricity instead of flour...a lot safer than a nuke on each corner

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There simply wouldn't be enough.

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I think we're coming up against absolute ecological limits, not really in terms of energy, but in terms of *all* resources. We're in for interesting times.
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Yes, precisely.


I'm less optimistic about the West than you. There's already alot of poor people (relative to the country they live in) in the West, and I think people will reach a point of civil and societal unrest within our lifetimes.


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I don't understand this bit. The obvious answer is yes, but I don't get it.
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One of the arguments against peak oil is that there is plenty of oil left it's just harder to get at. So theoretically I accept that it's possible to get that oil, but I'm not sure that we can now that the easily accessible oil is getting so expensive. The things that might stop that from happening are all the ones mentioned, including the bit you said about absolute ecological limits

enough what??

streams, places to put a water wheel, villages??

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There simply wouldn't be enough.
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There would be if we used less.

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I don't think many people will starve to death. In the West. We might all get a bit poorer though. Getting a bit poorer in Africa means dying at 30 instead of 60 though. It sucks.

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About the first thing I learned doing economics was that oil wouldn't disappear, it would only get too expensive before it got replaced by something else. If oil was £400 a barrel, we'd probably have wind power already.

In fact, what do you mean about 'the arguments against peak oil'? The only arguments I know against it are that oil is inexhaustible, which is not really the common view.

<<There simply wouldn't be enough.
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There would be if we used less.>>

That really depends on population density. Maybe we'd all starve to death if we had the same energy production we had in the 14th century.