This morning’s author is a chemical engineer with nearly 50 years of experience. His article is a more technical paper than usual for CommUnity of Minds, but the topic addressed is an important one for humanity’s future.

His conclusion after a careful analysis is that Nuclear Energy obtained by fission is significantly limited. In the best case scenario, it could provide only 28% of power we need for our current energy demand. It could supply this power for a maximum of 1,724 years.

This is a significant energy resource, but it does not solve our energy crisis; and it brings with it, many environmental and security problems. The details follow:

Future Energy: The Nuclear Fission Option

Donald B. Halcom

Gertrude Stein once said, “A rose, is a rose, is a rose”. Paraphrasing the old girl, “A Neutron, is a Neutron, is a Neutron” and “A Joule, is a Joule, is a Joule”.

On this planet there is only one naturally occurring fissile element and that is Uranium 235 (U235). Mankind has learned how to make two new fissile elements and these are Uranium 233 (U233) and Plutonium 239 (Pu239). Both of these manmade elements are made by “neutron capture” from the fission of a fissile element (e.g. U235) followed by the spontaneous neutron beta minus decay to form new fissile elements. U238 is converted to Pu239 and Thorium 232 (Th232) is converted to Uranium 233 (U233). Observe that one must sacrifice one fissionable material to make another fissionable material. There is no free lunch. U238 and Th232 are called “fertile” elements. Notice the “odd” and “even” relationships.

The starting amount of U235 initially present and the amounts of U233 and Pu239 that can be formed are of primary interest to mankind. Our future, in part, depends upon them. Electric power generation will be highly influenced by the finite amounts of these fissile materials. Mankind keeps demanding ever increasing amounts of electricity. The purpose of this analysis is to estimate how long “nuclear” materials can supply such power.

Inventory Time

Figure One shows the availability of Uranium on the planet (this Uranium contains 0.72% U235 and the rest is U238).

As of 2011 there is about 7.3E6 metric tons of recoverable Uranium on the planet. Notice how the price of Uranium recovery is “sky rocketing”. The harder it is to find the greater the expense to harvest.

With 0.72% U235 in the 7.3E6 metric tons of Uranium for 2011, we get:

U235                        5.26 E4 metric tons (fissile) = 52,600 metric tons

U238                        7.25 E6 metric tons (fertile)

Th232                      2.81 E6 metric tons (another fertile element)

Th232/U235 = 53.4 There is much more thorium than U235.

U238/U235 = 143.7 There is even more U238 than Th232.

As you can see the element that is the most crucial is the least available. Everything depends on this element.

Fuel Recovery

The spent nuclear fuel as of 2009 is:

Spent fuel                               2.4 E5 metric tons with 0.8% U235 and 1.2% Pu239 (240,000 metric tons)

U235 (0.8%)                          1,920 metric tons

Pu239 (1.2%)                        2,880 metric tons

Here is the most crucial numbers I found on the internet:

Current world spent fuel rate = 10,500 metric tons/year

World number of Nuclear Reactors = 437 (these are mainly slow neutron light water reactors)

World total electric power from all reactors = 372,210 megawatts

As of now there are:

52,600 metric tons of virgin U235

1,920 metric tons of U235 in spent fuel

2,880 metric tons of Pu239 in spent fuel

500 metric tons of weapons grad Pu239

There is one quick way to check the above data for accuracy. This method involves “back calculation” from the megawatts of electricity (372,210 megawatts = 0.372 terawatts) generated by all of the light water nuclear plants on the planet. First, electrical generation from the heat of a nuclear reactor is limited by the entropy of the process. In the real world, one cannot take “random” heat and produce “ordered” electricity without paying a price. The efficiency of such a process is limited to about 34% based upon entropy. Simply stated, it takes 100 joules of thermal heat to produce 34 joules of electrical energy. Sorry folks but that is the way nature works. Now how much thermal energy do we have to spend the get 0.372 terawatts of yearly electrical energy? The answer is 0.372/0.34 = 1.094 terawatts.

Now 1 watt = 1 joule per second and there are 3.15572E7 seconds in a year. This means that we require the following amount of thermal energy in a year from nuclear fission to produce the required electricity.

1.094E12 watts X 3.15572E7 seconds = 3.453E19 joules

The people who know about nuclear fission have measured that for U235, the heat released is 7.28E13 joules per kilogram of reacted U235. How many kilograms of U235 is this? It is 3.453E19/7.28E13 = 474,313 kilograms or 474.3 metric tons of U235 that must disappear per year. Now the next time that someone asks you how much U235 is consumed to run a nuclear electric plant of some fixed capacity, you can tell them. It ain’t that complicated.

Now compare the number presented above with one that I will derive using 10,500 metric tons of spent fuel being generated per year. I did not make this number up, it was published in 2009. I computed the new numbers using more complicated calculations than I used to compute the above 474.3 metric tons per year. The agreement will be spectacular.

The Future

Assume:

The current spent fuel rate is equal to the current yearly feed rate of fresh fuel = 10,500 metric ton/yr.

Fresh fuel has a typical value of 4.5% U235.

Then:

Fresh Fuel In       (0.045X10,500) = 472.5 metric tons of U235/yr into the world’s current nuclear reactors.

Spent Fuel Out  (0.008X10,500) = 84.0 metric tons of U235/yr out of the world’s current reactors.

(0.012X10,500) = 126.0 metric tons of Pu239/yr out of the world’s current reactors

The future requires more than 437 plants, so assume a 5% compounded growth rate of similar plants.

Here is where the presentation gets more technical. I have developed an equation (that can be evaluated on a spreadsheet) to calculate how long the world can run its total number of nuclear plant before the world supply of U235 is exhausted.

I will present it as easily as possible:

Let:                           U235Zero = the starting VIRGIN reservoir of U235 in the world = 52,600 metric tons

U235Time = the amount in the reservoir at any time in metric tons

G = the compound growth rate as a fraction=0 (No growth) or 0.05 for 5% growth (or other rates).

DT = the nominal time scale = 1 year

ConsU235 = the yearly consumption rate of VIRGIN U235 in metric tons per year

^ = Exponent

Then:

U235Time = U235Zero – ConsU235 *DT* [1 + (1 + G) + (1 + G)^2 + (1 + G)^3 + (1 + G)^4 + ……   ]

To solve this equation set U235Time = 0 (this is when the fuel runs out), then:

U235Zero =  ConsU235 *DT* [1 + (1 + G) + (1 + G)^2 + (1 + G)^3 + (1 + G)^4 + ……   ]

Set:         Coeff = ConsU235 / U235Zero

This means that:  1 = Coeff * DT* [1 + (1 + G) + (1 + G)^2 + (1 + G)^3 + (1 + G)^4 + ……   ]

Remember that DT = 1 year

When the right side of the above equation reaches 1.00 then the VIRGIN U235 is exhausted.

I have created an Excel program that will solve the above equation in short order.

Calculation Results

This table shows the results from calculations for various conditions. Zero growth means no new plants.

The total spent fuel at the end of the exhaustion of all of the U235 would be about 1,428,000 metric tons yielding about 17,136 metric tons of Pu239. This is significantly less than the 52,600 metric tons of U235 currently in the ground. Current light water slow neutron nuclear plants are not long range solutions to the power requirements of the future. This recovered Pu239 plus weapons grade Pu239 could also be used in modified plants somewhere along the time line to extend the exhaustion time a little.

There are currently 437 nuclear plants. If we use 5% growth and recycle U235 then at the point of exhaustion the number of plants equals (1.05)^42 * 437 = 3392 plants of the current equivalent sizes. Sounds reasonable? The amount of power being generated at that point would be (1.05)^42 * 372,210 = 2.9E6 megawatts = 2.9 terawatts.

Remember when we were kids back in the late 40s, there was a Saturday morning children’s radio program called “Let’s Pretend”. Well let us return to that era and play Let’s Pretend.

Assume that we could instantly build 1,000 new Fast Neutron Breeder Reactor plants incorporating metallic U238 or Th232 (fertile). Assume that we use all of the current U235 and Pu239 (fissile) in the world in these 1,000 plants. Further assume that these plants have liquid sodium as coolant with electric power generation equal in every plant. Now in theory we can calculate the power generation by using the fissile fuel in all of the plants and dividing the result by 1,000 to get the power per plant. This is what we will do. Hey, this is Let’s Pretend.

Please examine the following titled “Plutonium Breeding Ratio”. Examine especially the part about “doubling time”. Doubling time is the time required to produce “new” fissile fuel equal to the quantity of consumed fissile fuel originally in the breeder reactor. It says that the target is to obtain this value after about ten years of operation. The word “target” means that it is not actually known whether this can be achieved or not. But hey, this is Let’s Pretend.

Plutonium Breeding Ratio

In the breeding of plutonium fuel in breeder reactors, an important concept is the breeding ratio, the amount of fissile plutonium-239 produced compared to the amount of fissionable fuel (like U-235) used to produce it. In the liquid-metal, fast-breeder reactor (LMFBR), the target breeding ratio is 1.4 but the results achieved have been about 1.2 . This is based on 2.4 neutrons produced per U-235 fission, with one neutron used to sustain the reaction.

Here are the data that we will need to do some more calculations. First of all, here is the world’s current consumption of energy. All of this concerns fast neutron breeder reactors with a replacement ratio equal to 1.0.

World’s Current Consumption of Energy = 16.4 Yearly Average terawatts = 5.18E20 joules/year. Includes nuclear, hydro, fossil fuels, solar, wind etc.

Total current fertile nuclear fuel:    U238 = 7,250,000 metric tons                                                                                                                                                                                 Th232 = 2,810,000 metric tons (will make U233)                                                                                 Total Fertile = 10,000,000 metric tons

Total Current fissile nuclear fuel:   U235 and all Pu239 including weapons grade Pu239 = 58,000 metric tons

An aside is needed here. From the internet, I obtained the following data:

U235 atomic heat of fission = 202.5 Mev (Million electron volts used in fundamental work)

Pu239 atomic heat of fission = 207.1 Mev

For U235 the heat of fission per kilogram = 7.28E13 joules/Kg

But: Pu239perKg/U235perKg = ((207.1)(235))/((202.5)(239)) = 1.0056 = 1

Assume: Heat of fission per Kg U235 = Heat of fission per Kg Pu239 = Heat of fission per Kg U233 = 7.28E13 joules/Kg

This makes life simpler.

Now here comes our next magic simplification. Our reserve of unused fuel becomes the unused fertile material and not the unused fissile material. We now have a reserve of 10,000,000 metric tons and not 58,000 metric tons. This is because we “brew” the new fissile material in the breeder reactor to replace the fissile material we just burned. Sounds like magic and in some sense it is. We will repeatedly consume 58,000 metric tons of fissile material until the fertile material supply runs dry.

Now here is where the “doubling time” comes in. We will assume this time to be 10 years as mentioned above. This means that our yearly fuel consumption rate is 5,800 metric tons per year.

With the afore mentioned heat of fission: 5,800,000 Kg X 7.28E13 = 4.22E20 joules/yr

4.22E20/3.15576E7 (seconds per year) = 13.4 yearly average terawatts of thermal energy

BUT we have to calculate the electric energy generated using the thermodynamic efficiency factor of 0.34, thus:

(0.34)(13.4) = 4.56 yearly average terawatts of electricity from breeder reactor nuclear technology.

This number is the absolute maximum electric power that can ever be obtained by nuclear, PERIOD. Compare this to the current world demands for energy of 16.4 yearly average terawatts. This nuclear electric power is only 28% of the current energy demand. I do not call this a solution to our future problems. It will certainly be helpful but not the total solution.

The life of this nuclear supply is in its favor and is:

10E6 metric tons/5,800 metric tons/yr = 1,724 years (not too bad!)

This is good, but who cares when it would not even meet our current requirements. Sorry, but there is no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. Breeder reactor nuclear technology will not save our bacon.

The size of each of the 1,000 fast neutron breeder reactors would have been 4.56 gigawatts of electricity.

 Erie, PA, March 2013

Don Halcom has a Ph.D in Chemical Engineering. He is in his mid-70s, and retired.  He is available to respond to any follow up questions you may have. You can reach him here: drdon (dot) halcom (at) verizon (dot) net

You can read three  earlier essays of his here: The Re-Creation, The Return to Feudalism, What Makes You Think We Can Grow Out of This?

Wise woman Ellen Brown’s latest article re-posted from the February 25th, 2013 issue of Common Dreams.

Quantitative easing (QE) is supposed to stimulate the economy by adding money to the money supply, increasing demand. But so far, it hasn’t been working. Why not? Because as practiced for the last two decades, QE does not actually increase the circulating money supply. It merely cleans up the toxic balance sheets of banks. A real “helicopter drop” that puts money into the pockets of consumers and businesses has not yet been tried. Why not?  Another good question . . .

When Ben Bernanke gave his famous helicopter money speech to the Japanese in 2002, he was not yet chairman of the Federal Reserve.  He said then that the government could easily reverse a deflation, just by printing money and dropping it from helicopters. “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent),” he said, “that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.” Later in the speech he discussed “a money-financed tax cut,” which he said was “essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous ‘helicopter drop’ of money.” Deflation could be cured, said Professor Friedman, simply by dropping money from helicopters.

It seemed logical enough. If the money supply were insufficient for the needs of trade, the solution was to add money to it. Most of the circulating money supply consists of “bank credit” created by banks when they make loans. When old loans are paid off faster than new loans are taken out (as is happening today), the money supply shrinks. The purpose of QE is to reverse this contraction.

But if debt deflation is so easy to fix, then why have the Fed’s massive attempts to pull this maneuver off failed to revive the economy? And why is Japan still suffering from deflation after 20 years of quantitative easing?

On a technical level, the answer has to do with where the money goes. The widespread belief that QE is flooding the economy with money is a myth. Virtually all of the money it creates simply sits in the reserve accounts of banks.

That is the technical answer, but the motive behind it may be something deeper . . . .

An Asset Swap Is Not a Helicopter Drop

As QE is practiced today, the money created on a computer screen never makes it into the real, producing economy. It goes directly into bank reserve accounts, and it stays there.  Except for the small amount of “vault cash” available for withdrawal from commercial banks, bank reserves do not leave the doors of the central bank.

According to Peter Stella, former head of the Central Banking and Monetary and Foreign Exchange Operations Divisions at the International Monetary Fund:

[B]anks do not lend “reserves”. . . . Whether commercial banks let the reserves they have acquired through QE sit “idle” or lend them out in the internet bank market 10,000 times in one day among themselves, the aggregate reserves at the central bank at the end of that day will be the same.

This point is also stressed in Modern Monetary Theory.  As explained by Prof. Scott Fullwiler:

Banks can’t “do” anything with all the extra reserve balances. Loans create deposits—reserve balances don’t finance lending or add any “fuel” to the economy. Banks don’t lend reserve balances except in the federal funds market, and in that case the Fed always provides sufficient quantities to keep the federal funds rate at its . . . interest rate target.

Reserves are used simply to clear checks between banks. They move from one reserve account to another, but the total money in bank reserve accounts remains unchanged.  Banks can lend their reserves to each other, but they cannot lend them to us.

QE as currently practiced is simply an asset swap. The central bank swaps newly-created dollars for toxic assets clogging the balance sheets of commercial banks. This ploy keeps the banks from going bankrupt, but it does nothing for the balance sheets of federal or local governments, consumers, or businesses.

Central Bank Ignorance or Intentional Sabotage?

Another Look at the Japanese Experience

That brings us to the motive.  Twenty years is a long time to repeat a policy that isn’t working.

UK Professor Richard Werner invented the term quantitative easing when he was advising the Japanese in the 1990s.  He says he had something quite different in mind from the current practice.  He intended for QE to increase the credit available to the real economy.  Today, he says:

[A]ll QE is doing is to help banks increase the liquidity of their portfolios by getting rid of longer-dated slightly less liquid assets and raising cash. . . . Reserve expansion is a standard monetarist policy and required no new label.

Werner contends that the Bank of Japan (BOJ) intentionally sabotaged his proposal, adopting his language but not his policy; and other central banks have taken the same approach since.

In his book Princes of the Yen (2003), Werner maintains that in the 1990s, the BOJ consistently foiled government attempts at creating a recovery. As summarized in a review of the book:

The post-war disappearance of the military triggered a power struggle between the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Japan for control over the economy.  While the Ministry strove to maintain the controlled economic system that created Japan’s post-war economic miracle, the central bank plotted to break free from the Ministry by reverting to the free markets of the 1920s.

. . . They reckoned that the wartime economic system and the vast legal powers of the Ministry of Finance could only be overthrown if there was a large crisis – one that would be blamed on the ministry.  While observers assumed that all policy-makers have been trying their best to kick-start Japan’s economy over the past decade, the surprising truth is that one key institution did not try hard at all.

Werner contends that the Bank of Japan not only blocked the recovery but actually created the bubble that precipitated the downturn:

[T]hose central bankers who were in charge of the policies that prolonged the recession were the very same people who were responsible for the creation of the bubble. . . . [They] ordered the banks to expand their lending aggressively during the 1980s.  In 1989, [they] suddenly tightened their credit controls, thus bringing down the house of cards that they had built up before. . . .

With banks paralysed by bad debts, the central bank held the key to a recovery: only it could step in and create more credit.  It failed to do so, and hence the recession continued for years.  Thanks to the long recession, the Ministry of Finance was broken up and lost its powers. The Bank of Japan became independent and its power has now become legal.

In the US, too, the central bank holds the key to recovery. Only it can create more credit for the broad economy. But reversing recession has taken a backseat to resuscitating zombie banks, maintaining the feudal dominion of a private financial oligarchy.

In Japan, interestingly, all that may be changing with the election of a new administration. As reported in a January 2013 article in Business Week:

Shinzo Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party swept back into power in mid-December by promising a high-octane mix of monetary and fiscal policies to pull Japan out of its two-decade run of economic misery. To get there, Prime Minister Abe is threatening a hostile takeover of the Bank of Japan, the nation’s central bank. The terms of surrender may go something like this: Unless the BOJ agrees to a 2 percent inflation target and expands its current government bond-buying operation, the ruling LDP might push a new central bank charter through the Japanese Diet. That charter would greatly diminish the BOJ’s independence to set monetary policy and allow the prime minister to sack its governor.

From Bankers’ Bank to Government Bank

Making the central bank serve the interests of the government and the people is not a new idea. Prof. Tim Canova points out that central banks have only recently been declared independent of government:

[I]ndependence has really come to mean a central bank that has been captured by Wall Street interests, very large banking interests.  It might be independent of the politicians, but it doesn’t mean it is a neutral arbiter.  During the Great Depression and coming out of it, the Fed took its cues from Congress.  Throughout the entire 1940s, the Federal Reserve as a practical matter was not independent. It took its marching orders from the White House and the Treasury—and it was the most successful decade in American economic history.

To free the central bank from Wall Street capture, Congress or the president could follow the lead of Shinzo Abe and threaten a hostile takeover of the Fed unless it directs its credit firehose into the real economy. The unlimited, near-zero-interest credit line made available to banks needs to be made available to federal and local governments.

When a similar suggestion was made to Ben Bernanke in January 2011, however, he said he lacked the authority to comply. If that was what Congress wanted, he said, it would have to change the Federal Reserve Act.

And that is what may need to be done—rewrite the Federal Reserve Act to serve the interests of the economy and the people.

Webster Tarpley observes that the Fed advanced $27 trillion to financial institutions through the TAF (Term Asset Facility), the TALF (Term Asset-backed Securities Loan Facility), and similar facilities. He proposes an Infrastructure Facility extending credit on the same terms to state and local governments. It might offer to buy $3 trillion in 100-year, zero-coupon bonds, the minimum currently needed to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. The collateral backing these bonds would be sounder than the commercial paper of zombie banks, since it would consist of the roads, bridges, and other tangible infrastructure built with the loans. If the bond issuers defaulted, the Fed would get the infrastructure.

Quantitative easing as practiced today is not designed to serve the real economy. It is designed to serve bankers who create money as debt and rent it out for a fee. The money power needs to be restored to the people and the government, but we need an executive and legislature willing to stand up to the banks. A popular movement could give them the backbone.  In the meantime, states could set up their own banks, which could leverage the state’s massive capital and revenue base into credit for the local economy.

This mornings essay is from a long time reader and careful thinker.

The Re-Creation

Donald B. Halcom

In the next sixty years the entire world will be forced to re-create itself. This is not a prophecy of doom but a fact.  The single event that will require this re-creation is the exhaustion of fossil fuels. The world consumption of energy per capita grows faster, with respect to time, than the population growth. This predicts the exhaustion of fossil fuels sooner than the optimists calculate.

The entire infrastructure created by the exploitation of fossil fuels will have to be replaced by a new one. Literally everything will need to be changed. The clothes we wear, the food we eat, the houses we live in, the lights we use, the heat we need, the transportation we use, the roads we use, the medicines we need, the energy we use — everything about the infrastructure will have to be re-created.  We are that dependent upon fossil fuels.

The desperation of this event cannot be minimized. Politicians, economists, businessmen, philosophies, governments, armies or the clergy will not solve this problem. Only one institution has any chance of performing this re-creation and that is science. Without science, all the other institutions are useless for this task.

Science and the exploitation of fossil fuels created our current infrastructure. Science and something new will have to re-create a new infrastructure. Any other path will only lead to a total collapse of modern civilization. If you believe that this is an exaggeration, then you are part of a group that does not understand the current world we live in. It is very easy to take our surroundings for granted and assume they will always be the same. The existential event that is about to confront mankind will swamp any other disaster in the history of the world. If you do not believe me just hide and watch it happen. If you do believe me then get involved with the re-creation. Procrastination will only lead to a condition that will not allow the re-creation to occur in a peaceful manner. We must have sufficient motive, resources and time to accomplish the re-creation. It is a problem of bootstrapping ourselves to a new world.

Get Involved

The major problems for the new world are all about new energy sources and substitute raw materials. “Frac Baby Frac” is not a solution to our long term problems. It drives the fossil fuel energy bus over the cliff even faster. It is a futile effort to maintain the status quo. People involved in politics and business have a vested interest in the status quo; they are not imaginative enough to work us out of this dilemma. Politics and business will be valuable in the implementation of the new infrastructure but will be next to useless in the creation of that infrastructure. People with a Law or MBA degree possess little understanding of what will be required for the creation of the new infrastructure. It is not all about economics. It is about reality.

Economics drive the current philosophies for the development of fossil fuels alternatives. Fossil fuels have essentially been a “free lunch” over the past two hundred years. The cost of getting fossil fuels out of the ground is currently the major cost; the costs of converting them to fuel or other raw materials are the minor costs. The businesses that produce the fossil fuel energy would like to perpetually maintain a monopoly on all the forms of energy from these sources. They would also like to monopolize any and all energy from future sources. This produces a conflict of interest in the development of future sources of energy. These companies would delay the conversion to future forms of energy until the world essentially exhausts the supply of the current fossil fuels. This would maximize their return on investments. This would also produce a condition where the development of future energy sources would be stymied by the lack of enough energy to transition from the old to the new forms. It is a Catch 22.

The conversion of the planet from a fossil fuel infrastructure to a non-fossil fuel infrastructure is a feat that boggles the mind. It dwarfs anything that mankind has ever accomplished. Most of the people on the earth are not even conscious of this fact. This ignorance, if not corrected, will destroy most of us. We are going to need new scientists to solve our problems. These scientists are not off the shelf items.

The emphasis should be that the education of the new scientists must be in areas that are not particularly popular at this time. Computer scientists, although useful, will not create the next “new” world. Scientists who are willing to get their hands dirty will be required. Thinking outside the box will be required. Applying old world solutions to new world problems will not always solve the problems.

A “new” scientist is not grabbed by the neck and forced into these professions. He or she must seek it throughout their entire education. We must learn that the true heroes of society are not the athletes, rock stars, movie stars, generals, commentators, bankers or politicians but the people who create the necessities of life. They may not get rich doing this, but their place in history will be there longer than any banker or rock star.

The current mantra is to improve the education system for math and the sciences; this is needed but alone will not produce the scientist. Epithets like geek, twerp, nerd and dork are not encouragements to learn math and science. The ignorant hate the educated. The reverse is also true. Neither position solves anything. Peer pressure is a powerful force.

The New Sciences

New raw materials will be the most difficult problem to solve. The solutions for new raw materials will require the exploitation of plant life. All forms of plant life would have to be considered. The seas and land are the only places we have for plant life. The uses for plants are first to supply the oxygen we breathe, second the materials we need and third the food we eat. The first and third are mandatory and the second is optional. Since we will be out of fossil fuels in the future, the second optional choice becomes mandatory.

The sciences that become dominant for materials production are inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry and engineering. Math is a pre-requisite for all of these sciences. Sorry about that, you can’t indulge in science without math. It would be like getting a music degree without being able to read music. All the sciences and math require the use of verifiable logic. This logic must comply with the laws of nature and math.

The non-sciences do not have these restrictions. You can’t just make up stuff and have it be scientifically true. Many believe that this can be done, which is totally unproductive. The economists, in particular, fall into this trap. Others like the financial manipulators are also guilty; consider, for example, the Black-Scholes equation that the hedge fund managers worship; there is no science there either.

Oil refineries, that will be obsolete in the future, must be replaced with entirely new technologies that use plant life as the sources of some fuels and new organic raw materials. The biochemists will be useful in order to identify the plants which may supply useful organic compounds (or pre-cursors) in the future world. Organic chemists will have to invent new processes that will economically extract or convert the useful plant compounds to useful end products. Inorganic chemists may also be useful in these new processes, developing new catalysts are examples. Chemical, Mechanical and Electrical Engineers will be needed to scale up these new processes using new types of large scale equipment. Much of this equipment may be revolutionary and some adapted from old technology.

Vast amounts of energy will be needed to produce the new and old industrial chemicals and process equipment. The production of the new electrical energy will mainly come from wind, solar panels, hydro-electric dams and portable fuel sources. Electricity from nuclear plants will be useful but is limited by finite sources of uranium. Solar sources of energy are finite. This may surprise a lot of people who probably believe that solar energy is infinite. When fossil fuels are gone, the people of the earth will have to make do with the yearly supply of sunshine. We foolishly burned up the stored energy that took nature millions of years to produce. We must learn a new survival skill and live within our means. The days of “infinite” expansions of our economies will be gone forever. It is unrealistic to believe otherwise. The “American Dream” will be over. Instead of living within a “Fossil Fuel Bubble” we will have to live under a finite “Sunshine Umbrella”. Sunshine will be the energy source of all of the organic materials, portable fuels and most of the electrical energy.

The Competition for Sunshine

The greatest problem with converting sunshine energy to electrical energy is that electrical energy cannot be stored as is. The best way to store electrical energy is “chemically” and the next best is mechanically. Hydro-electric dams store energy mechanically. Various kinds of fuel can store the electrical energy or solar energy chemically.

Solar panels, wind mills and to some extent hydro-electric are moderated by average hours of sunshine per year, wind speed and rainfall respectively. These are events that mankind cannot control. They are all produced by sunshine. Solar panels especially are limited by day/night, seasonal and cloud variations. Wind mills are subject to not enough or too much wind and seasonal variations. Droughts and flooding can produce hydro-electric supply problems. Nuclear electric energy is rather constant and is not subject to the previously mentioned problems.

Chemical storage of solar energy will be required in the future. It will be necessary for at least two purposes. The first purpose will be to “steady out” power delivery on the electric grid; coal and gas currently supply energy for these functions. The second purpose will be to supply portable fuels for ships, aircraft, farming and land transportation.

Here is another Catch 22. Everything that I have just described about creating electricity and then converting it to chemical energy is very inefficient. There are too many steps and each step produces efficiency losses. There is a better way, use plant life and direct sunshine. Some of the first instruments mentioned earlier would be used to create electricity only and the electrical energy would not be converted to stored chemical energy. The direct conversion of sunshine energy to plant life energy is better. This is known by another name and that is farming.

Growing Transportation Fuels and Backup Electrical Power Fuels

I would like to present a proposal for “a” new source for portable chemical energy. This source of energy is not really new but is currently being worked on by scientists all over the world. I am going to do this in order to demonstrate, beyond question, the finiteness of our planet. After this finiteness is shown, it is hoped that a new awakening will occur concerning our future. The new survival infrastructure will not be what most people are wishing will happen but a grounded solution.

The first assumption I would like to make is that we set up a program (over time) to eliminate all gasoline powered engines and replace them with the equivalent diesel engine. If we do this then all forms of future transportation can be run with one type of fuel. This fuel is called BioDiesel and it is produced from plants that supply triglyceride oils.

Hexane solvent is used to extract the triglycerides from these plants. This process is what is currently used and will not need further development. Hexane will also have to be produced from an appropriate plant material but that is just another problem to be solved by another future process. See how things get complicated. Right now let us concentrate on making BioDiesel.

The French are working on a new continuous process for making BioDiesel that kills many birds with one stone. The chemistry for the BioDiesel production is as follows:

The methanol can be made from waste plant material (like saw dust, corn cobs, etc.) in another Bio to methanol process that also needs development. Here is another complication; see again how the world is going to change. This only hints at the beginning of our future problems.

For those of you familiar with chemistry, note that the molecular weights of the triglyceride and the methyl ester differ by only four hydrogen atoms. The molecular weights of the starting triglyceride and finishing esters are all quite high and differences of four hydrogen atoms in the masses are negligible. For that reason, assume the weight of triglyceride into the process equals the weights of the methyl esters out of the process. This simplifies calculations enormously and makes translation of the starting triglyceride compound to the BioDiesel compounds (methyl esters) a snap.

In order to give credit to the developers of the process that will now be discussed, here are their names:

Here also is a pictorial presentation of their continuous process:

A short description of the benefits of this process is given here by the mentioned authors.

In my opinion this process is as close to perfect as can be expected. It should even be possible to burn some of the glycerol that is formed in the process as fuel to supply the steam heat needed to run the process. This process is better still in that the burning of the BioDiesel and even the glycerol are “carbon neutral”. The carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere by burning these fuels is recycled to new plant life and nature stays in balance. Methanol could even be mixed with the glycerol to enhance burning in a steam generator.

I then used the principles of this process as well as other data to do some simple calculations. I obtained crop yield data for the most prevalent types of triglyceride sources (palm oil, rapeseed oil, soybean oil and sunflower seed oil, etc.). I converted the yield data to the yearly kilograms of triglyceride per hectare of farm land. In the real world the palm oil can only be grown within +- 10 degrees off the equator. Because of the nearly identical relation between kilograms of triglyceride and BioDiesel, I could make the two equal. These calculations are shown in Tables 4 and 5. Some of the data in Table 4 are used to calculate results in Table 5. These two tables are presented this way for compactness in the presentation. Table 5 is about the current consumptions of crude oil derived fuels.

Table 4

Table 5

The most startling information from all of the calculations is in the highlighted cells in Table 4 and Table 5. These are highlighted in blue and red. They show that the current world production of triglycerides occupy about 3.27% of the total agricultural land of the earth. This seems reasonable.

The big surprise is that to produce BioDiesel to replace the current jet fuel, kerosene, diesel and gasoline would require about 60.23% of the world’s agricultural land. This is astounding and clearly indicates the finiteness of our planet. This situation is something that we can never allow to happen. We still have to eat and produce other chemicals from organic matter in order to have raw materials that will disappear with the extinction of fossil fuels. We literally cannot have our cake and eat it too.

The combination of plant DNA and sunshine is absolutely the most magical thing that ever happened to this planet. If we think that science can create a more efficient system than this one, then we are dead wrong. Solar panels and wind mills cannot capture the conversion of sunshine to electricity followed by the conversion of electrical energy to “chemical” energy nearly as efficiently as the plant DNA/sunshine combination. Entropy will not allow it. DNA and sunshine will trump anything that mankind can conceive. Sorry folks but this game is rigged. Do you think that God may have had something to do with it? Certainly evolution was at work.

Summary

The most important conclusion is that massive energy consumption is the creator of population growth. We cannot support 7 billion people (or more) without the use of fossil fuels energy. There is only a finite amount of sunshine and land to create the future energy requirements.

We must reduce our current crude oil energy equivalent consumption by an estimated 80%. About 20% of our current crude oil energy consumption should support a world population of about 1 billion with a life style similar to our current system.

Here is the most difficult part to execute; we must initiate controlled population reduction in a planned way over about the next sixty year from about 7 billion to about 1 billion. Population should stabilize at about 1 billion. Our grand children demand it. Religion will be the major obstacle here. In my opinion, wars are not ethical solutions.

About 12% of the earth’s agricultural land could be devoted to BioDiesel production. This is about four times the current land used for cooking oils. Remember that at least 60% of the earth’s agricultural land is required to maintain the current status quo of crude oil based energy equivalence. I did not include coal and natural gas in these calculations which will also become exhausted in the future. To replace the latter two will require even more agricultural land. The game only gets more intractable. We will have to determine the plants we want to use to replace the coal and natural gas. Got any good ideas? I will guarantee that no “computer” scientist or economist or banker or politician or stock market analyst or pure mathematician or justice of the Supreme Court will solve these problems.

Diesel engines and jet turbines will be the only engines in the future. Electric motors/generators will also be used.

We are no longer going to have the energy resources to employ all of our current working population when fossil fuels become extinct. We are already seeing hints of this. All of the infrastructure will be smaller as well as the goods for sale from such a system. All of economics is the result of the real physics of the planet and not the reverse. We can only use what we are given.

Failure to abide by the above suggestions will result in the ugliest set of wars we can imagine and will kill most of our grand children in a short period of time. Stupidity is not an excuse.

I apologize for presenting such a dark calamity but it is better to know about it now than to wake up one morning and find WWIII erupting outside our windows. It will happen if we do not wisely execute the transformation of our existing infrastructure and that begins now, not 50 years from now. Time and resources are the enemies.

I fully realize that our current ways of thinking and living are opposed to this transformation ever occurring. We do not live on a planet chocked full of infinite resources. I repeat; stupidity is not an excuse. Our current crop of politicians and economist may, in fact, be that stupid. Infinite growth requires infinite resources which do not exist on this planet. If your daddy told you that this is not true, then your daddy was wrong. Do your own thinking. Make it scientific thinking this time and not just another fairy tale about the princess and the knight in shining armor living happily ever after. We cannot have everything, we only imagine we can. This is dangerous thinking. The world is changing too rapidly to day dream about the good old days. Make our dreams about tomorrow realistic. Please help modulate our lusts.

Erie, PA, December 2012

Don Halcom has a Ph.D in Chemical Engineering. He is 74 years old and retired.  He is available to respond to any follow up questions you may have. You can reach him here: drdon (dot) halcom (at) verizon (dot) net

You can read two earlier essays of his here: The Return to Feudalism, What Makes You Think We Can Grow Out of This?

This essay was written by a mother who has a power insight into why some of our young men are becoming murderers. It is well written and deeply disturbing. She tells us that: In the wake of another horrific national tragedy that killed 20 children and 6 adults, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.

This essay has been posted and re-posted around the web. It first appeared at The Blue Review and The Anarchist Soccer Mom.

I am Adam Lanza’s Mother

Liza Long

 Three days before 20 year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then opened fire on a classroom full of Connecticut kindergartners, my 13-year old son Michael (name changed) missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants.

Michael on a good day

“I can wear these pants,” he said, his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue irises.

“They are navy blue,” I told him. “Your school’s dress code says black or khaki pants only.”

“They told me I could wear these,” he insisted. “You’re a stupid bitch. I can wear whatever pants I want to. This is America. I have rights!”

“You can’t wear whatever pants you want to,” I said, my tone affable, reasonable. “And you definitely cannot call me a stupid bitch. You’re grounded from electronics for the rest of the day. Now get in the car, and I will take you to school.”

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.

A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7 and 9 year old siblings knew the safety plan — they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.

That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn’t have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist.

We still don’t know what’s wrong with Michael. Autism spectrum, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant or Intermittent Explosive Disorder have all been tossed around at various meetings with probation officers and social workers and counselors and teachers and school administrators. He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work.

At the start of seventh grade, Michael was accepted to an accelerated program for highly gifted math and science students. His IQ is off the charts. When he’s in a good mood, he will gladly bend your ear on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to the differences between Einsteinian and Newtonian physics to Doctor Who. He’s in a good mood most of the time. But when he’s not, watch out. And it’s impossible to predict what will set him off.

Several weeks into his new junior high school, Michael began exhibiting increasingly odd and threatening behaviors at school. We decided to transfer him to the district’s most restrictive behavioral program, a contained school environment where children who can’t function in normal classrooms can access their right to free public babysitting from 7:30-1:50 Monday through Friday until they turn 18.

The morning of the pants incident, Michael continued to argue with me on the drive. He would occasionally apologize and seem remorseful. Right before we turned into his school parking lot, he said, “Look, Mom, I’m really sorry. Can I have video games back today?”

“No way,” I told him. “You cannot act the way you acted this morning and think you can get your electronic privileges back that quickly.”

His face turned cold, and his eyes were full of calculated rage. “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said. “I’m going to jump out of this car right now and kill myself.”

That was it. After the knife incident, I told him that if he ever said those words again, I would take him straight to the mental hospital, no ifs, ands, or buts. I did not respond, except to pull the car into the opposite lane, turning left instead of right.

“Where are you taking me?” he said, suddenly worried. “Where are we going?”

“You know where we are going,” I replied.

“No! You can’t do that to me! You’re sending me to hell! You’re sending me straight to hell!”

I pulled up in front of the hospital, frantically waiving for one of the clinicians who happened to be standing outside. “Call the police,” I said. “Hurry.”

Michael was in a full-blown fit by then, screaming and hitting. I hugged him close so he couldn’t escape from the car. He bit me several times and repeatedly jabbed his elbows into my rib cage. I’m still stronger than he is, but I won’t be for much longer.

The police came quickly and carried my son screaming and kicking into the bowels of the hospital. I started to shake, and tears filled my eyes as I filled out the paperwork — “Were there any difficulties with… at what age did your child… were there any problems with.. has your child ever experienced.. does your child have…”

At least we have health insurance now. I recently accepted a position with a local college, giving up my freelance career because when you have a kid like this, you need benefits. You’ll do anything for benefits. No individual insurance plan will cover this kind of thing.

For days, my son insisted that I was lying — that I made the whole thing up so that I could get rid of him. The first day, when I called to check up on him, he said, “I hate you. And I’m going to get my revenge as soon as I get out of here.”

By day three, he was my calm, sweet boy again, all apologies and promises to get better. I’ve heard those promises for years. I don’t believe them anymore.

On the intake form, under the question, “What are your expectations for treatment?” I wrote, “I need help.”

And I do. This problem is too big for me to handle on my own. Sometimes there are no good options. So you just pray for grace and trust that in hindsight, it will all make sense.

I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am James Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.

According to Mother Jones, since 1982, 61 mass murders involving firearms have occurred throughout the country. Of these, 43 of the killers were white males, and only one was a woman. Mother Jones focused on whether the killers obtained their guns legally (most did). But this highly visible sign of mental illness should lead us to consider how many people in the U.S. live in fear, like I do.

When I asked my son’s social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. “If he’s back in the system, they’ll create a paper trail,” he said. “That’s the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you’ve got charges.”

I don’t believe my son belongs in jail. The chaotic environment exacerbates Michael’s sensitivity to sensory stimuli and doesn’t deal with the underlying pathology. But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in U.S. prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006, and it continues to rise — in fact, the rate of inmate mental illness is five times greater (56 percent) than in the non-incarcerated population.

With state-run treatment centers and hospitals shuttered, prison is now the last resort for the mentally ill — Rikers Island, the LA County Jail and Cook County Jail in Illinois housed the nation’s largest treatment centers in 2011.

No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, “Something must be done.”

I agree that something must be done. It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal.

God help me. God help Michael. God help us all.

Ron Paul speaks his truth about the futility and danger of Obama’s escalating Drone Wars. Re-Posted from The Eurasia Review.

Drone Wars

Ron Paul

Earlier this month we learned that the Obama Administration is significantly expanding the number of covert Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) agents overseas. From just a few hundred DIA agents overseas today, the administration intends to eventually deploy some 1,600 covert agents. The nature of their work will also shift, away from intelligence collection and more toward covert actions. This move signals a major change in how the administration intends to conduct military and paramilitary operations overseas. Unfortunately it is not a shift toward peace, but rather to an even more deadly and disturbing phase in the “war on terror.”

Surely attacks on foreign countries will increase as a result of this move, but more and more the strikes will take place under cover of darkness and outside the knowledge of Congress or the American people. The move also represents a further blurring of the lines between the military and intelligence services, with the CIA becoming more like a secret military unto itself. This is a very troubling development.

In 2010, I said in a speech that there had been a CIA coup in this country. The CIA runs the military, the drone program, and they are in drug trafficking. The CIA is a secretive government all on its own. With this new expanded Defense Intelligence Agency presence overseas it will be even worse. Because the DIA is operationally under control of the Pentagon, direct Congressional oversight of the program will be more difficult. Perhaps this is as intended. The CIA will be training the DIA in its facilities to conduct operations overseas. Much of this will include developing targeting data for the president’s expanding drone warfare program.

Already the president has demonstrated his preference for ever more drone attacks overseas. In Pakistan, for example, President Obama has in his first four years authorized six times more drone strikes than under all eight years of the Bush Administration. Nearly three thousand individuals have been killed by these drones, many of those non-combatants.

President Obama said recently of Israel’s strikes against the Palestinians in Gaza, “No country on Earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.” This announcement by the administration amounts to precisely that: the US intends to rain down ever more missiles on citizens overseas. I believe what the president says about Israel is true everywhere, so what about those overseas who live in fear of our raining missiles? How will they feel about the United States? Is it not possible that we may be inviting more blowback by expanding the covert war overseas? Does that make us safer?

An exhaustive study earlier this year by Stanford and New YorkUniversity law schools found that US drone strikes on Pakistan are “damaging and counterproductive,” potentially creating more terrorists than they kill. Its recommendations of a radical re-appraisal of the program obviously fell on deaf ears in the administration.

Thousands of new DIA spies are to be hired and placed undercover alongside their CIA counterparts to help foment ever more covert wars and coups in foreign lands. Congress is silent. Where will it all end?