Why Oil Is a Fossil As Fuel
Toward an Electrifying Future
By: Yuri Tuvim - Jan 01, 2008
After the oil embargo by OPEC in 1973 President Nixon said: "At the end of this decade, in the year 1980, the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need to provide our jobs, to heat our homes, and to keep our transportation moving."
In January 2006 President Bush said: "Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technologyÂ…"
How we are doing now? The only visible initiative and solution revolves around ethanol. We are building dozens of plants producing ethanol from corn in Midwest and aiming to import sugar cane ethanol from Brazil. Price of tortillas in Mexico went up and price of groceries in America as well. All the reasoning revolves around the gasoline which is necessary to power our cars and trucks. If we are not able to change this paradigm we are doomed one way or another.
The time has come though belatedly to realize that to maintain and advance our way of life we don't need to consume different fuels through reaction of oxidation, i.e. burning, releasing greenhouse and acid rain gasses.
An advanced technological society needs an enormous amount of energy. The best and versatile kind of energy is electricity. Electricity is the key to the future. It can satisfy almost all the energy needs of our society short of fueling jetliners. On the other hand, oil is indispensable as raw material for the chemical industry from fertilizers to plastics, rubber and pharmaceuticals. That is exactly what the great Russian chemist Mendeleev had in mind when he said more than a hundred years ago: "Oil is not fuel, you can burn bank notes as well."
Do we have enough electricity? – Not at all (blackouts).
How do we produce it? – Poorly, fifty percent by burning coal, polluting air and soil, releasing carbon dioxide, mercury, nitrogen oxides etc.
What about tidal generators? – A drop in the bucket.
Wind and solar? – Much too expensive and weather dependent, too far from the end users. (This does not mean that I am against all these sources. However, they are supplemental and will remain as such forever).
Hydro? – All harnessed already.
Only nuclear is underused (19%) to our shame and disadvantage. This country needs a national crash program to build dozens of advanced nuclear power plants of the fourth generation. The same type being built in Finland, China and Libya by the French.
Moreover, there is a real possibility to put in service power plants on fast neutrons which produce significantly more energy from uranium, and can burn depleted uranium fuel from existing plants. They create a minuscule amount of nuclear waste which does not need to be sequestered for thousands of years because it will decay to safe levels in several hundred years.
The science part of these plants is fully known. The technological part needs some development which does not present an insurmountable obstacle. The real obstacle on the road to energy independence belongs to the uninformed and scared public opinion and the lack of vision by policy makers. Unfortunately, we have too many politicians and not enough statesmen.
An abundance of electricity will allow:
1) Production of hydrogen which will power fuel cells for cars and busses (Berlin's busses are already running on fuel cells). Right now fuel cells are too expensive to put in cars because the very expensive membrane has a limited life. However, a recent development of doping the membrane with microscopic gold particles increases its life three-fold.
2) Electrification of railroads thus eliminating smoke belching diesel locomotives. Electric locomotives have: 2/3 lower maintenance, twice the economic life, and 1/2 the out of service time.
In short: science and technology are ready to give America energy independence but vision and will do not exist. The old paradigm must be discarded. Colonies on Mars and the moon can wait. America must free itself of oil, enter the twenty first century and conduct foreign policy according to its own interests.