BC: PEAK OIL SOLUTION SCENARIO
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For all the cornucopian's out there I would love to discuss your scenario up front and honestly, but first let me sum up what I think you believe will happen. The USA currently has about 180 large coal fired electric power plants that consume about 780 million metric tons of coal annually. The USA also has 103 large operating fission power plants. Coal generates about 52% of USA electric demand, Fission about 20%.
The scenario I see most often goes something like this, France gets 77% of their electric power from Nuclear so clearly this is economic and possible. Therefore as oil peaks the USA will build 150 new large fission power plants replacing the coal fired plants. The 780 million tons of coal will then go through liquefaction via F-T or TCP at new facilities built in the current coal power plant locations. These power plant locations already have the coal infrastructure in place so this saves a huge amount of investment. Under F-T conversion a modern liquefaction plant each metric ton of coal into 3.89 tons of synthetic liquid fuel. 1 metric ton of liquid syntroleum fuel equals 7.33 barrels of petroleum fuel. 780*3.89*7.33 gives 22,240,686,000 bbl/syntroleum fuel per year or 60.93 million barrels per day.
Currently the USA consumes about 21 mbpd of crude which results in about 19 mbpd of refined products, the remainder is consumed to power the refineries.
Therefore the cornucopian's claim, the USA will be able to convert from importing 15 mbpd just by converting from 20% fission electric production to 35% fission electric and shifting coal to 37% electric with the saved coal going to synthetic petroleum production. 225 mmt coal saved becomes 17.5 barrels of syntroleum every day, which allows for decline of domestic oil, increase demand from the growing economy, eliminates crude oil imports to the USA, removes demand from strained international oil markets and best of all as byproduct's you get the sulfur, lead and radioactives that would have been released by the coal power plants. Average USA coal is 1.3 ppm Uranium and 3.2 ppm Thorium so converting the 225 mmt coal to syntroleum to replace imports produces 292.5 metric tons of pure Uranium and 720 tons Thorium, enough material to fuel 1 large LWR fission plant or 337 Molten Salt Breeder Reactors per year.
But .... Do we have the time ???? |
