One of the discussion pathways for Peak Oil and Global Warming has focused on the Hydrogen Economy. More specifically, recently, was the contention that the ultimate Hydrogen Economy will be powered by controlled fusion (there is, of course, a respectable hard core convinced that renewable energy has sufficient energy return on energy input to compete over the next few decades using conventional hydrogen gas). For those not totally aware of this, the sun fuses hydrogen, while our scientists are close (well, maybe in a decade) to attaining net positive from two isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. Chuck Helsely has a heavy ion fusion concept different from the ITER magnetic confinement project in France and you can contact him for details. I thought it would be interesting to analyze the volumetric fuel difference of oil and fusion.
The world has thus far used a trillion barrels of oil and will probably extract, at higher cost, another trillion barrels. The Sun runs on fusion energy (you can find where the hydrogen came from by reading my Chapter 4 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity). Our Sun is around 5 billion years old and has about 5 billion more years of life.
A trillion barrels would fill a cube 3.4 miles on each side (38 cubic miles). According to fusion scientists, ocean water about the volume of a 200 meter cube (0.002 cubic miles) could supply the deuterium to run our society for a year. One part in 6400 of the hydrogen atoms in water is deuterium. At current consumption, the volume of oil used so far would be able to supply deuterium for 20,000 years of fusion.
Lake Geneva, it is said, can provide sufficient deuterium for about a million years of fusion. An interesting paper by J. Ongena and G. Van Oost on “Energy for the Future Centuries,” reported that there is sufficient deuterium in the oceans (a volume equal to a cube about 690 miles on each side) to supply all the energy (at some point in the future we will have 10 billion people and an annual energy consumption of 30 TWyear—this is 3 times the current usage) for 150 billion years. As our Sun is only good for 5 billion more years, there should not be a problem with Peak Deuterium.
I noticed there was a factor of ten discrepancy comparing the upscaled 200 meter cubed tally with the Ongena/Ooost number, but even if O/O were too high by a factor of ten, that would still leave 15 billion years of deuterium at three times the current energy consumption.
The world has thus far used a trillion barrels of oil and will probably extract, at higher cost, another trillion barrels. The Sun runs on fusion energy (you can find where the hydrogen came from by reading my Chapter 4 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity). Our Sun is around 5 billion years old and has about 5 billion more years of life.
A trillion barrels would fill a cube 3.4 miles on each side (38 cubic miles). According to fusion scientists, ocean water about the volume of a 200 meter cube (0.002 cubic miles) could supply the deuterium to run our society for a year. One part in 6400 of the hydrogen atoms in water is deuterium. At current consumption, the volume of oil used so far would be able to supply deuterium for 20,000 years of fusion.
Lake Geneva, it is said, can provide sufficient deuterium for about a million years of fusion. An interesting paper by J. Ongena and G. Van Oost on “Energy for the Future Centuries,” reported that there is sufficient deuterium in the oceans (a volume equal to a cube about 690 miles on each side) to supply all the energy (at some point in the future we will have 10 billion people and an annual energy consumption of 30 TWyear—this is 3 times the current usage) for 150 billion years. As our Sun is only good for 5 billion more years, there should not be a problem with Peak Deuterium.
I noticed there was a factor of ten discrepancy comparing the upscaled 200 meter cubed tally with the Ongena/Ooost number, but even if O/O were too high by a factor of ten, that would still leave 15 billion years of deuterium at three times the current energy consumption.
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The Dow Jones Industrials climbed 59 to 8175, still about a 7% drop for the year. World markets were mixed. Crude dropped about $3.50/barrel to $42.24. Gold slipped a buck to $902/toz.
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This was not a hurricane, but gusts up to 95 miles per hour killed 15 in Spain and France over the weekend. Otherwise, the world oceans are relatively calm.
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