Anybody know a good average figure? Trying to figure out how much electricity it takes to replace 160 million barrels of crude.
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How many kilowatts in a barrel of crude oil?
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Steve
En-Route
From http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/energy-content-d_868.html
1 Barrel Crude Oil =5800000 BTUs
1 Btu (British thermal unit) = 1055.06 J = 107.6 kpm = 2.931 10-4 kWh = 0.252 kcal = 778.16 ft lbf = 1.0551010 ergs = 252 cal = 0.293 watt- hours
So 5800000 BTUs = 1,699,400 watt-hours = 1699.4 Kw-hrs
271,904,000,000 kwhrs = 160,000,000 barrels
Assuming 100% efficiency, which is pretty rare.
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mantakos
Final Approach
Sounds like you're looking for a measure of energy, not power, so you're really looking for kilowatt-hours (or joules).
According to this:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2009/BennyWong.shtml
... a barrel of oil has about 6.1 GJ. Googling for "6.1 gigajoules in kilowatt hours" yields 1694 kilowatt hours.
So sayeth the interweb tubes.
-harry
According to this:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2009/BennyWong.shtml
... a barrel of oil has about 6.1 GJ. Googling for "6.1 gigajoules in kilowatt hours" yields 1694 kilowatt hours.
So sayeth the interweb tubes.
-harry
denverpilot
Tied Down
Watt really should be capitalized since it is a dude's name... But I know it's gotten short-shrift forever and no one does it.
Same pet peeve with Hertz when folks type "mhz" or "Mhz". Poor electrical engineering types get no respect. Should be "MHz", and thankfully my iPhone even corrects that one.
Same pet peeve with Hertz when folks type "mhz" or "Mhz". Poor electrical engineering types get no respect. Should be "MHz", and thankfully my iPhone even corrects that one.
rpadula
En-Route
Cool, so 7 Los Angeles class subs running at 70% power providing hydrogen (figuring in a 75% energy loss making the hydrogen) for fuel cells can replace all the oil imported from Saudi Arabia. Thanks guys.
JeffDG
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Part of it depends on the grade of crude too. West Texas Intermediate is the "standard" IIRC. A barrel of bitumen out of Ft. McMurray is a lot less than WTI for example.
mantakos
Final Approach
According to the interwebs, we import about 1.3M barrels of oil from Saudi Arabia every day. Based on the earlier number of 1694kwh/barrel, that's a daily total of 1.3M barrels/day * 1694kwh/barrel = 2.2B kwh/day.
Also according to the interwebs, the nuclear reactor on a Los Angeles class sub produces about 165MW. So in the same 24 hour period, that provides 165000 kw * 24 hrs/day = 4M kwh/day.
If we ignore efficiency, you need about 550 subs.
-harry
Piloto
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Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe
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JeffDG
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And since only 62 were ever built, we're a bit short, by almost an order of magnitude (assuming 100% efficiency)
Matthew
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Accordign to the NEI:
http://www.nei.org/howitworks/nuclearpowerplantfuel/
1 uranium ceramic fuel pellet has the energy equivalent of 149 gal of oil.
At 42gal/barrel, that's about 3.5 barrels
http://www.nei.org/howitworks/nuclearpowerplantfuel/
1 uranium ceramic fuel pellet has the energy equivalent of 149 gal of oil.
At 42gal/barrel, that's about 3.5 barrels
Everskyward
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Everskyward
The US has much more coal and natural gas...But the US has a much stronger nimby movement.
Matthew
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Yep - and as long as it's cheap, that's what we'll use.
My daughter took this picture last week when we were on a lunch flight to TOP. This is the power-plant just east of the airport. It's not an especially large generating facility. You can see the coal field; it probably gets fed by two mile-long coal trains per week, every week.
Somewhere, I remember seeing a chart that shows the fuel budget for the US. It showed that, even if we didn't use any oil for power generation or heating, we would still be an importer to just meet our transportaion needs.
Attachments
Around 1% of our electricity comes from oil. ~85% of oil is used for transportation or home heating purposes, with home heating being a small chunk in there.
Even small improvements in transportation use get magnified because it also decreases the amount of fuel used up moving fuel to users, in the refining process, etc.
Once battery/capacitor technology makes a big enough leap to make electric a reality for transportation, we'll be worried about running out of battery goop in 20 years instead of oil and we'll have more oil and oil infrastructure than we'll ever need again.
Even small improvements in transportation use get magnified because it also decreases the amount of fuel used up moving fuel to users, in the refining process, etc.
Once battery/capacitor technology makes a big enough leap to make electric a reality for transportation, we'll be worried about running out of battery goop in 20 years instead of oil and we'll have more oil and oil infrastructure than we'll ever need again.
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
Right now, one big downside of electric vehicles is they are pretty much powered by coal. Currently, we are swapping gasoline powered cars with coal powered cars.
Somebody once ran some numbers - for the amount of $$ we poured into Iraq, over the decade that we did that - had we spent that $$ and time building nuke-plants, we would be independent of foreign oil. (The assumptions were that we COULD get the permits and construction complete within 10 years.)
steingar
Taxi to Parking
I dunno. Get a really bad blizzard, and stuff could break. Or a flood. Or any number of things. Those plants operated in Japan for many, many years. But when they went FUBAR, they did it big. That's the problem with nuclear. Perhaps it never happens in France, but if it does, kill a good-sized portion of the country goodbye, pretty much permanently.
airguy
Cleared for Takeoff
No - the problem in Japan wasn't nuclear - the problem was short-sighted engineers who thought they knew everything when they designed the nuclear plant. They built a 19-foot seawall to protect against earth-quake generated tsunami, in the most seismically active region of the world, on a tectonic plate that was known to DROP during earthquakes, and then they acted surprised when a 49-foot tsunami came over the seawall and flooded the plant.
Even then, they would have been fine if they had the foresight to install the backup diesel generators on top of one of the buildings instead of at ground level - what caused the problem was loss of backup power, due to the seawater flooding out the backup generators. The problem was not nuclear - it was human error in the design stage.
If they had stopped and thought about a tsunami coming over the seawall the answer would have been obvious. "We don't think it will ever happen, but just in case it does, let's put the backup power supplies way up high." We do the same thing in every other part of our lives - I don't think a house fire will ever happen to me - but I still have smoke detectors and fire extinguishers. My car has airbags, but I don't plan on having a wreck. My boat has extra life jackets but I don't plan on sinking.
As for blizzards and floods causing problems - that applies to everything else in life as well, better just stay in bed for the rest of eternity, just to be safe.
Better yet - instead of being afraid, how 'bout we just be prepared.
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steingar
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First, the Japanese made plans for a sufficient seawall. The reason it failed is the ground sunk beneath it.
Second, the only engineer who really has thought of everything is Odin. Beyond that, you can't know what you don't know, and can't think of what you can't think of. And that's always what you get.
You can't prepare for the unexpected, you have to deal with it as it comes. And everyone is an imperfect human being. Thus the stakes are very, very high for nuclear power, and potential for unseen disasters. If you like it so much we'll put the plant in your neighborhood.
Speaking of neighborhoods, don't get me started on the waste.
Second, the only engineer who really has thought of everything is Odin. Beyond that, you can't know what you don't know, and can't think of what you can't think of. And that's always what you get.
You can't prepare for the unexpected, you have to deal with it as it comes. And everyone is an imperfect human being. Thus the stakes are very, very high for nuclear power, and potential for unseen disasters. If you like it so much we'll put the plant in your neighborhood.
Speaking of neighborhoods, don't get me started on the waste.
Steve
En-Route
A better fuel than uranium
http://energyfromthorium.com/
As far as risks from current nuclear technology I would like to see the numbers on increased somatic and genetic damage attributed to the fossil energy fuel cycle compared to the nuclear fuel cycle before I'd make any subjective statements on their relative "riskiness".
http://energyfromthorium.com/
As far as risks from current nuclear technology I would like to see the numbers on increased somatic and genetic damage attributed to the fossil energy fuel cycle compared to the nuclear fuel cycle before I'd make any subjective statements on their relative "riskiness".
steingar
Taxi to Parking
Certainly. The level of radiation generated from combustion of fossil fuels is insufficient to cause mutation in human cells, as is the level of carcinogens in the exhaust of a properly functioning automobile.
As is the level of emission of a properly functioning nuclear plant. The problem comes when any of these stops functioning properly. Cars are an annoyance. Nuclear plants are a disaster. And we still have no idea how to dispose of the waste. Even if the government's multibillion dollar Yucca Mountain boondoggle were opened it wouldn't hold all the waste we own, no less the stuff we're generating. So it sits, poisoning everything around it. And there is no other plan.
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe
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Steve
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That is a statement based purely on emotion. Even the Sierra Club acknowledges the environmental advantages of nuclear power. Hundreds of thousand utility workers have been safely employed for decades at nuclear power plants in this country. Even the worst industrial accidents at nuclear power plants in the U. S. have had minimal offsite releases of radioactive materials.
Your one dimensional arguement neatly avoids addressing the effects of pollution, industrial accidents, including mining, drilling, and transportation accidents, and end use accidents that accompany use of hydrocarbon based fuels. Ignoring the truth does not diminish it's reality.
Anthony
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Anthony
And that's exactly why we don't build nuke plants, and oil refineries anymore. How did France do it?
I've got a nuke plant less than ten miles from me. You'd never know it was there unless you look for the water vapor plume from the cooling tower, and still I have to be typically in the air to see it.
mantakos
Final Approach
Is the nuclear record, in terms of human and environmental impact, better or worse than oil and coal?
-harry
steingar
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In the US, yet. There have been catastrophic disasters elsewhere.
If you call no reasonable suggestion to deal with the waste one-dimensional, then we have no grounds for agreement, nor discussion.
steingar
Taxi to Parking
That is a reasonable question. Put another way, is the potential focal catastrophic contamination better or worse than the contamination caused by drilling and transport of fossil fuels. I would say that nuclear wins, only because of the greenhouse warming caused by fossil fuel combustion.
That said, most conservatives here, who would likely be the first to trumpet the virtues of nuclear power, loudly, passionately, and frequently deride the conclusions reached by the scientific community about climate change. Take that out of the equation, and fossil fuels win, big time.
mantakos
Final Approach
I'm not so sure, even if you ignore CO2. Fossil fuels release pollution other than CO2 that lead to smog and respiratory problems, coal mining is a dangerous occupation with frequent fatalities, oil spills have wreaked havoc on coastlines, there are dubious questions surrounding fracking, there was a big ash flood in Tennessee a couple years back.
The real question is hard to answer, which is "how many people have died as a result of respiratory problems triggered by fossil fuel exhaust"? It's hard for people to get a handle on these questions because the cause and effect are so loosely coupled.
It's a complicated comparison, I'm not sure if I've seen it attempted in a comprehensive way before.
-harry
steingar
Taxi to Parking
In places prone to atmospheric inversions, when using outdated technology. These are repairable problems.
You think coal mining is bad, try mining uranium. And talk about leaving behind environmental contamination!
and are biologically remediatable, given time measured in decades in the CONUS. Nuclear contamination is not biologically remediatable in any time frame.
Concerns about frakking are mostly devoid of any scientific basis. Sorry, floods have become a rather routine aspect of our existence of late.
Couple that with the thymic lymphoma sufferers in Europe. Odin only knows what they'll suffer in Japan.
Agreed. Really, the trump card comes with the expendability of fossil fuels, sooner or later they will be gone. Of course, the same thing can be said of Uranium.
The real problem is you're comparing relatively minor chronic complaints to the potential for catastrophic damage from nuclear power stations. That is a very hard comparison to make, since you are comparing an actual something to a potential something.
I don't have the confidence many of you do. The utilities that run these things are out to make money, many will do the bare minimum they have to in order to get by. The near disaster at 3MI was borne of this, as was the one at Davis Besse, not far from the ancestral Steinholm. I just don't trust them with something that dangerous, and I never will. We assume in these debates that everyone acts with the best interests of the public at heart. But we've seen recently and spectacularly that not everyone does that. Lots of people will just keep doing what they do until it all falls apart. And when it all falls apart with nuclear materials, it does so catastrophically.
And we still don't know what to do about the waste.
COFlyBoy
Line Up and Wait
Amen.
We could do our dirtiest to Mother Nature with petroleum and she can probably get it cleaned up within 100 years. Its a naturally recoverable process.
Screw it up with fission and you have a problem that is going to last longer than recorded human history.
Can I interest anyone in some real estate in Pripyat?
Fill up the 78 oz Mountan Dew corn syrup brominated stew, get into the car and catch up on Facebook on your iphone at 15 mph over the speed limit, don't use the seatbelt because it's safer to be thrown clear of an accident, eat all of the french fries you can stuff in your mouth, and make sure you take a few smoking breaks on some cool menthols in between. But whatever you do, avoid radiation exposure ... that stuff is DANGEROUS. Oh well.
mantakos
Final Approach
Half of the pilots hired in 1918 to fly air mail for the USPS had died in crashes by 1920.
The world has had commercial nuclear power plants for about 55 years. The two major incidents are from designs that are 30-40 years old.
So are we evaluating the risk of new power plants based on the (relatively minor) accidents of plants built 30-40 years ago?
-harry
steingar
Taxi to Parking
The pilots who died knew it was dangerous and only took out themselves. A nuclear power station goes kaplooey, and lots of folks get taken out.
Again, it is the potential. And new power stations, while better and more wonderful, have new problems and pitfalls that we don't know yet. Fission is complex, understood by few none of who work in government, emergency response, or upper level management of utilities. Sorry, it just sounds like a recipe for disaster.
And the waste. I know I keep bringing it up, but after a half century we still don't even have a plan what to do with it, other than let it sit where it's been generated. And the stuff is dangerously toxic.
steingar
Taxi to Parking
Drinking a soft drink is a matter of choice. Lots choose not to. Speeding is a matter of choice. Lots don't. French fries are matter of choice. Plenty of people don't touch the things. Smoking is a choice. I think only an ignorant idiot dipsh!t would touch the things, smart people don't.
Radiation exposure from a plant blown by natural disaster or mismanagement, both of which we've seen in the last 50 years, exposes lots of people who had no damn choice. Destroys their homes too.
COFlyBoy
Line Up and Wait
Risk should be evaluated by looking at both the likelihood and the consequence. The likelihood of a nuclear meltdown is very low, but the consequence is devastating.
I think it is likely that nuclear energy will be a part of our energy solution. It can provide huge amounts of energy, but we cannot ignore the possibility of disaster.
I think it is likely that nuclear energy will be a part of our energy solution. It can provide huge amounts of energy, but we cannot ignore the possibility of disaster.
Geico266
Touchdown! Greaser!
We live, we die. Since we are here we cannot change the latter. Enjoy life while you can.
We also import petroleum from Mexico, Venezuela, Canada, and other places so we need still more subs. We actually import more from Canada than from Saudi Arabia.
http://205.254.135.24/pub/oil_gas/p...ons/company_level_imports/current/import.html
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
Here's where our energy comes from, how it's used, and where it goes:
http://futureenergyinvesting.typepad.com/future_energy_investor/energy-efficiency/
Diagram #4 shows the US energy consumption.
http://futureenergyinvesting.typepad.com/future_energy_investor/energy-efficiency/
Diagram #4 shows the US energy consumption.
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mantakos
Final Approach
The point, of course, is that we shouldn't plan our future actions based on the risks that existed long ago if significant improvements have been made since then. If we looked at the record of air mail pilots we'd determine that flying is too dangerous to attempt.
-harry