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there is an excellent wikipedia entry for the Fukushima plant that is being continuously updated. It is, by far, the most accurate and detailed report i've seen that is readily accessible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_plant
thorium may have received it's bad name from radiology. It was injected as a contrast medium in the 30's 40's and 50's. It sat in peoples liver and the constant low level radiation caused people to develop fatal angiosarcoma's in frighteningly high proportions
ob,
i carefully omitted another 3 mile island as a possibility, however, there are literally many orders of magnitude difference (by several measures) between Chernobyl and three mile island. These have some reasonable comments regarding comparison:
http://library.thinkquest.org/17940/texts/nuclear_disasters/nuclear_disasters.html
and http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=36046 (c.f. alchemy's note)
the reuter's article is an excellent example of why i greet most mass media reports of scientific topics with great disdain. There are huge differences between things not operating in a preferred or expected manner (current state of affairs for reactors in Japan), making a difficult to repair or unrepairable but non-catastrophic mess (~3MI), and a catastrophic, global disaster (chernobyl).
I have yet to hear a single 'news' person discuss the source(s) of released radiation from the japanese reactors. If you hear a news person mention the source and form of radiation, then that would be a person to pay attention to. If they start talking about curies, roentgens, or rem dosages, and at what distance from the reactor then you can be impressed.
as a side note to give perspective and demonstrate the power of societal senility: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire
regards,
Charlie
yeah, CNN is also loosely throwing about the 3 mile island and chrnobyl words. Last i heard all the affected reactors were shut down prior to or at the time of the earthquake so between that and the differences in reactor design another Chernobyl is impossible.
communication majors should at least attempt to take a chemistry or physics class.
the release of radioactive vapor in Japan would be a particularly sensitive issue.
CT,
sorry but i quit paying attention to anything regarding nuclear technology many years ago.
cheers,
Charlie
If environmental regulators think thorium is hazardous, as they evidently do, then from an investment standpoint, it might as well be hazardous.
regarding thorium: its half-life is longer than the age of the earth so the author's comment
a slightly radioactive element called thorium
i hadn't heard that whine before.
one might be inclined to discern the source of the ozone since natural gas does not contain ozone and natural gas production does not create ozone. As writings of such unobjective and uneducated whiners are prone, this story includes several pieces of propaganda for each part of fact. For example, from http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/2010/report/ozone.pdf:
a. Note that the high concentration shown in Wyoming occurred at one site due to an unusual combination of local emission and atmospheric conditions on a winter day
don't know what Heckman does with their water. If they treat the water, then it wouldn't surprise me if the water went back into surface water bodies. There are multiple ways of handling waste fracturing water including recycling. Dealing with water produced from any oil and gas well, whether it be from stimulation or production operations, is becoming a big (expensive) problem.
re: "Fracking" disposal
note that subsurface disposal of aqueous wastes is regulated differently than injection for natural gas production purposes. In addition, it is not the natural gas exploration and production companies doing the waste injection and the waste companies do not have nearly the same self-interest in appropriate reservoir selection and avoiding unintentional over-pressurization (fracturing) of the injection reservoir. I suspect the geophysical scrutiny of the waste reservoir and over-lying rock is substantially less rigorous than that given to areas being developed for gas production. Unfortunately, the waste companies are probably discovering unmapped faults by effectively using injection as a probe.
Subsurface injection of industrial liquid hazardous wastes has been practiced for decades in places in Ohio without causing earthquakes or objection from the population or any comprise to their well-being.
a few of my co-workers and i were looking at this today. not really impressive when the numbers start getting crunched. Being extremely generous on the space usage they would generate about 200k bbs/sq mile/year. To meet even 10% of US annual oil consumption would require over 3000 sq miles of the algal units. That might actually not sound like much but it's not like the growth frames could be set out in fields like corn. Their per bbl cost estimates are unrealistically low.
and while deepwater GOM exploration makes a hill of beans difference now i don't think what's going on in Libya is unrelated to the permit issuance.
btw: my comment several days ago about western oil folks probably being safer in the desert vs making their way to the coast was wrong. Even when Qaddafi's 'troops' weren't a threat, banditry was (and probably is) running rampant. Folks in the camps were absolutely terrified and short of water and food.
ya beat me to it.
see also http://www.boemre.gov/ooc/press/2011/press0228.htm
the current tankers are from the Eisenhower era
regarding the refinery bit: you're probably thinking of more sophisticated refineries than what i'm thinking of. A bunch of refineries were thrown up around the US in the mid-1970s that weren't much more than a bunch of atmospheric distillation units. I think many were operational within 1 yr of starting construction.
There's no argument that any large facilities would have become bombing targets but making diesel isn't much more complicated than making moonshine. I don't know how long the Germans controlled parts of coastal Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia but if they had any spot for 2 continuous years, then they could've supplied themselves (assuming they could've drilled the wells which is probably a bad assumption).
of course, one could also argue about the Caspian campaign which would've made Libyan oil irrelevant. The Caspian was known oil producing region and had existing refineries. mania is sometimes a good thing.
bit of a correction to my earlier post:
In 1914, methane was detected in a water well at Sidi el Masri at a depth of 150 m [480 ft]; gas was also noticed subsequently in other water wells.
The Italians continued their scientific endeavors in Libya after World War I, ...working under the leadership of Ardito Desio...demonstrate[d] that a working petroleum system existed in Libya. In 1938 Desio found enough "blackish drops of crude oil" to fill a bottle in a water well drilled near Tripoli. This led to a 2-year reconnaissance campaign...in the area then known as Tripolitania and the drilling of a dry hole.
Desio identified the Sirt basin as being the most favorable area for hydrocarbon accumulations.
By the summer of 1940, the war ...put a stop to petroleum exploration...
'll bet that German geologists knew that there was oil under the sand...
i doubt if he has the capability to damage the production infrastructure to any significant extent; however, he could damage port, pipeline, and storage facilities and that might be worse.
ahh... but the supply and pipelines are in those states and at least 2 of those states are financially sound. Conversely, the NE US is broke, until recently didnt have natural gas, and they're afraid of natural gas operations so building pipelines and storage facilities as well as just getting the gas out of the ground is problematic.
i suspected the intended subject was CNG for vehicles but i like to make people suffer for their lack of clarity ;^)
i don't see how a gov't subsidized infrastructure build is affordable or warranted in the US. If my memory is correct a subsidized intrastate operation in the western US (i think Utah but might've been WY or CO) had to be shut down last year because it failed to live up to projected demand and cost. The transportation industry isn't the "field of dreams" that some folks naively make it out to be. Of course, I also have difficulty understanding how a high speed train between Tampa and Orlando provides value to anybody but the folks who build the train and the tracks.
Do you ever see a day when nat gas will be embraced by the US govt? Seems like China has become pretty fond of it lately.
probably wisest for me to fore-go comments on specific companies and certain countries but the divergence betw/ the commodity price and O&G production/service company stock prices says to me that no sane people expect long term delivery problems in the world market. As i said before the spike up in the commodity futures price will be short-lived and countries with one trick economies will do everything they can to keep the pony fit. Jockeys are relatively cheap. I think today is just one of those days where a large number of investors/speculators caught loony fever (as exhibited and encouraged by the author of the article bladerunner posted).
oil price changes related to the political upheavals in Libya will probably be short-lived. Whatever gov't establishes control will be compelled to re-establish oil production as quickly as possible.
Most of the oil production is in areas very remote to where the violence is and at the moment i suspect those workers are probably in greater danger during transit to and through the coastal cities as opposed to being in danger at the well sites. I suspect the contractor and production companies are more worried about the development of hostage situations and inability to perform due to supply problems.
i heard last week that Kuwait is now giving citizens a food allowance of $3500/mo. I don't know if it's true; if it is I'm guessing that is per household.
just a wee nitpick that doesn't negate your point. I think the 140 number is more than a bit high, at least for a single continuous fracturing job on a single well. 100 rail car loads of sand would be about 450 truck loads and i don't think a single well sees anywhere near that number for a continuous fracturing operation. This http://www.marcellus-shale.us/Marcellus_FRAC.htm shows what i think is a more typically sized operation. If fracturing different stages involves moving trucks in and out, then wells that are seeing multiple fracturing stages (sometimes dozens of stages) could see that many truck/rail loads of sand. I'm guessing that the latter situation is where the 100+ rail car load number comes from, however, i don't think these are typical cases.
don't know about 'never' or non-US exporters but at least in 2009 and 2010 China did not import significant quantities of wheat from the US.
chk out "Top 10 U.S. agricultural export markets for wheat, corn, soybeans, and cotton, by volume"
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/FATUS/#monthly
i don't know how 'volatile' the grain export data are but China imported nearly 10x more corn from the US in 2010 vs 2009
China is, by far, the largest importer of US soybeans in the world.
the other biggie crop export from US to China is cotton (again China largest importer)
that article was about 30% truth and a 70% mix of error and plagiarized gibberish from "Gasland" so it doesn't surprise me that they missed the part about HES
ok, you're a Saudi prince who still doesn't know what he's talking about. btw, you might want to go back and checks your "facts" about what country is world's largest oil producer.
i have doubts that al-Husseini actually said what Forbes claims. i'd bet there is some sloppiness or lack of understanding in the use of the word "reserves". It's plausible (although still very unlikely) that aramco could be off by 40% on projected resources (probable or potential reserves) across the entire country but their proven reserves are a very tightly guarded secret and it's extremely unlikely that they are off by 40%. Much of Saudi has not been explored or only lightly explored and there are several large but untouched reservoirs. That article looks more like a YMB post than serious journalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proven_reserves
He was uncomfortable having to admit that the USA was the good guy in this. I guess the message hasnt got out in the third world with the usual press bias.
What I do not understand is why such relocations are disproportionally common in the oil-services industry. Do you have an explanation
Listening to the Shale Revolution
Often the only 'reform' needed is a plan to remove obstacles to innovation.
By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR
concur on the REE mythology claim.
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/rare_earths/mcs-2010-raree.pdf
China does have the largest reserves; however, the definition of reserve involves what is economically viable. Because labor and other mining costs are substantially lower in China, larger reserves do not equate to greater quantities of materials or more of a particular grade of ore.
As for other natural resources, China ranks low on coal and oil and middling in iron ore reserves. Overall, I'd say they aren't as well off as the US in spite of the higher extraction costs in the US.
U.S. Allows Planting of Genetically Modified Sugar Beets
By SCOTT KILMAN And BILL TOMSON
The Agriculture Department, trying to avoid a shortage of U.S. sugar, said Friday it would allow U.S. farmers to resume planting the widely used genetically modified version of the sugar beet plant that a federal judge has effectively banned....
Anyone else read the Florida ruling yet?
each of your arguments were addressed by Judge Vinson. Why do you not simply read his decision rather than arguing with Tinker in this forum?
to quote from Judge Vinson's ruling:
I previously rejected the defendants’ argument that this penalty was really a tax, and that any challenge thereto was barred by the Anti-Injunction Act. My earlier ruling on the defendants’ tax argument is incorporated into this order and, significantly, has the effect of focusing the issue of the individual mandate on whether it is authorized by the Commerce Clause. To date, every court to consider this issue (even those that have ruled in favor of the federal government) have also rejected the tax and/or Anti-Injunction arguments.
Israel is a small smidgen of land, with no resources...