Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

'Distilling it with acid' is not a bad description for some of the processes involved in petroleum refining, where hydrogen fluoride and superacids are used to induce chemical rearrangements of hydrocarbon chains.

Posted by Paul Dietz at June 8, 2007 02:47 PM

Even a compact finite sphere can seem infinite if as you approach the edge, you slow down, the sphere grows, or your direction changes.

A classic example of this very thing is hyperbolic space.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at June 8, 2007 03:32 PM

While markets are self-correcting over the long-run, catastrophic shortages are nevertheless possible in the short-run. It's prudent to have large reserves, to invest heavily in seeking new technologies and improving current ones, and to have alternatives rapidly available on a large scale. Moreover, it can't be overstated just how badly oil companies gouge consumers, so the market equilibrium price isn't necessarily as high as the profit-maximizing price, and governments shouldn't be afraid to examine antitrust actions if matters become too egregious.

As for predicting the power source 150 years from now, barring radical new science, the only real candidates are fusion, solar, and hydrogen. Any or all of them could easily support an advanced, spacefaring civilization, although hydrogen and/or fusion would be increasingly emphasized with distance from the sun. All three draw from effectively infinite resources, so the result of mature technologies and economies in any of them will be limitless energy--and that, in turn, means that the bounding factor on economic growth will be something else, with exciting and unknown consequences. Given practically free, unlimited energy, what do people then do with it? We can vaguely envision some rather staggering accomplishments--feats of engineering and creativity that would, today, seem gruesomely wasteful and impractical. I can't wait.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 8, 2007 07:33 PM

"Moreover, it can't be overstated just how badly oil companies gouge consumers"

Yeah, that ~10% profit is so extreme. It is a nightmare!

The government makes more in taxes off each gallon than the energy companies who produce and refine it make. And what does the government do exactly to produce it?

Need to worry more about the profits of big cola. Bet they make at least 30-40% per gallon.

Posted by Mike Puckett at June 8, 2007 09:12 PM

"And what does the government do exactly to produce it?"

Not much help producing it. However, the U.S. government finances the U.S. Navy fleets that keep the high seas safe for the transport of hydrocarbons.

Posted by John Kavanagh at June 8, 2007 09:57 PM

Mike: Yeah, that ~10% profit is so extreme.

Yes, it is. With that kind of volume, 10% is virtually impossible without massive price manipulation--similar industries make half a percent in a good year. Since the market is rigidly inelastic, the profit maximizing price is far above the market equilibrium price--i.e., the price can be set arbitrarily high within absolute limits, and isn't affected by the intersection of supply and demand curves.

The government makes more in taxes off each gallon than the energy companies who produce and refine it make.

Yes, but taxes actually do something for the people who pay them, and the government in fact gives the oil industry billions in net subsidies. The vast bulk of oil company profits have no effect on the market, do not increase supply as would happen with real businesses, and just artifically dump money into the hands of investors and executives. Basically, it's a form of looting, and it inflicts massive costs on the economy that aren't accounted for by the actual commodities delivered.

And what does the government do exactly to produce it?

One could write a thousand-page report on all the things the government does to facilitate energy production, and not all of them are legal. In fact, the oil industry is massively subsidized at every level--they get more of your tax money than every welfare recipient combined, and not a cent of it goes into the supply. It goes straight to dividends, and into the pockets of men like Dick Cheney.

Need to worry more about the profits of big cola. Bet they make at least 30-40% per gallon.

Cola isn't a commodity, it's a branded consumer market. If Coca-Cola's patent expired and its formula became public domain, then you would have commoditization and profit margins would shrink to the low single-digit percents. But since nobody has to buy cola, and the entire economy doesn't depend on its affordability, it doesn't matter what profit margins are associated with it.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 8, 2007 10:59 PM

Concerning the "finite resources":

I have these constant discussions with friends of mine - hard-core socialists - who always claim that our economic system is doomed because we (the "West") are only exploiting the finite natural resources of the poor countries and that we are "keeping them down" because if they had our know-how, they would't need us any more while we would still depend on their precious natural resources.

Now, I consider myself a moderate libertarian and thus strongly disagree with them on this but while I am a strong believer in innovation and technological progress, the argument about finite resources does give me pause at times. What about industrial metal ores etc...?
Could we not at some point simply run out of materials to use?

I would really appreciate it if someone here could enlighten me on this or point me to where I could read up on this issue.

Posted by Florian at June 9, 2007 12:01 AM

Florian I recommend starting with this link since it dismantles the implied assumption of the question; the zero sum fallacy.

Posted by at June 9, 2007 01:01 AM

Oops last post was me...

Posted by Habitat Hermit at June 9, 2007 01:02 AM

Already happened. The US ran out of easy to mine ore back in the late 19th century. And Brian, if the oil companies aren't making reasoning profit in good years (what you call "gouging"), then where is the money for infrastructure improvements supposed to come from?

Posted by Karl Hallowell at June 9, 2007 01:21 AM

Sorry, "reasonable" not "reasoning".

Posted by Karl Hallowell at June 9, 2007 01:22 AM

As for predicting the power source 150 years from now, barring radical new science, the only real candidates are fusion, solar, and hydrogen.

There's also fission, wind, hydro, geothermal, and coal.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at June 9, 2007 01:25 AM

Brian, have you found a source of free elemental hydrogen? Please tell us who owns it - I'll invest straight away!

Of course, the real truth is that hydrogen is a way of transmitting and storing energy, not producing it - and a pretty damned dangerous and inefficient one at that. Certainly much more dangerous than electricity. Hydrogen needs for its transport pipes much better sealed than those for natural gas; either that or cryogenically-cooled ones, which have their own costs and dangers.

As an automotive fuel, there may be some point to hydrogen, but I suspect that it would be more efficient and safer to use the hydrogen as a process gas to create something else, perhaps methanol, and burn that fuel in a fuel cell.

Primary sources? Well, add to the list ocean thermal, tide and wave power and electrostatic-confinement fusion a la Bussard.

The real answer, however, is of course fusion. There is a fusion reactor in existence that has a predicted service life of five billion years without maintenance or refuelling, and an output power of four hundred trillion terawatts.

Accessing that output will have other collateral benefits, including living space for quadrillions of people and enough resources to plate the USA a metre deep in steel if we wanted. And several billion extra baskets to put our priceless eggs in.

"Earth is the cradle of mankind - but one cannot live in the cradle forever."

Posted by Fletcher Christian at June 9, 2007 05:27 AM

Brian, have you found a source of free elemental hydrogen?

There is some free hydrogen produced in deep, hot rocks, probably by reaction of water with Fe(II) ions or from radiolysis of water. Some methanogenic bacteria get their energy from reaction of this hydrogen with CO2.

It's also been suggested that Earth's core contains reduced hydrogen equivalent to up to 100x the hydrogen in the hydrosphere.

http://arjournals.annual reviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.earth.29.1.365

(space added to get around spam filter)

I've occasionally wondered if there would be a way to exploit all the Fe(II) in the crust, getting useful energy from its oxidation. This would ultimately be limited by depletion of atmospheric oxygen, of course.

Posted by Paul Dietz at June 9, 2007 06:14 AM

Hey! Let's just send a spaceship to Jupiter, and pick up some fresh hydrogen there!

*runs*

Posted by Big D at June 9, 2007 07:34 AM

June 9,

thanks for the link. A lot of interesting material there.

Posted by Florian at June 9, 2007 01:04 PM

Florian: who always claim that our economic system is doomed because we (the "West") are only exploiting the finite natural resources of the poor countries

I hold more to the technocratic view that scarcity, as it were, is a limited mechanism.

Karl: "And Brian, if the oil companies aren't making reasoning profit in good years (what you call "gouging"), then where is the money for infrastructure improvements supposed to come from?"

Eliminating the billions in net subsidies the oil industry gets every year would pay for quite a lot, as could antitrust actions to recommoditize gasoline.

There's also fission, wind, hydro, geothermal, and coal.

I assume the existence of a solar system economy. Wind, hydro, geothermal, and coal obviously wouldn't cut it; fission doesn't seem particularly likely given the scarcity of fissile material; and whatever energy advances are made in space would naturally be fed back into Earth-based systems. We wouldn't continue burning coal just for the hell of it if there are cheaper, more efficient, and more powerful technologies. Hydrogen, solar, and fusion are close to being fundamental sources of power, whereas most of the things you mention are far downstream--i.e., hydrogen and helium isotopes are used as fuel in fusion reactors, and the Sun is just a natural fusion reactor, so the three systems I mention are pretty basic. Wind is largely just solar energy stored in the kinetic energy of gas; hydrothermal is solar energy stored in the gravitational potential energy of water; and coal is solar energy stored in organics. Geothermal isn't derivative, but it also isn't likely to be competitive with gigantic economies of scale for hydrogen and solar.

Fletcher: Brian, have you found a source of free elemental hydrogen?

I didn't say the sources were free now, I said they were limitless, and that eventual economies of scale are so large the energy derived from them would be effectively free. Of course, this simply means that people's wants and expectations will expand to meet the new potential, hence my statement about absurd feats of engineering. Provided they have the ability to control and direct it, which should reasonably follow the ability to produce it, that kind of power should make old SF dreams like flying cars, aerial cities, hypersonic vacuum tube transport, slidewalks, and space elevators workable. Energy underpins all economics, and when its availability explodes, so do the possibilities.

Hydrogen needs for its transport pipes much better sealed than those for natural gas

We're talking about 150 years from now, and I'm speaking under the assumption of extensive settlement and development of space resources. Of course hydrogen won't be the big ticket if fusion proves efficient and down-scaleable, but if otherwise it's the best possible chemical option. First off, the ideal case isn't to transport hydrogen, but to use hydrogen as a storage medium for solar energy in stable but renewably accessible materials. Secondly, given the stated assumptions, we can reasonably assume that either (a)worldwide electrical grids, (b)highly efficient long-distance "WiTricity," or (c)large-scale orbital reflectors would make solar a 24-hour power source, and therefore hydrogen wouldn't necessarily be significant on Earth.

As an automotive fuel

Again, 150 years. I would be personally ashamed of the species if anything resembling a (ground) automobile was still in general use 150 years from now. We can get away with not rising to the challenges posed by SF over the past 50, but 150 more is just inexcusable.

Big D: Let's just send a spaceship to Jupiter, and pick up some fresh hydrogen there!

It will happen, at least in terms of the Galilean moons--Callisto in particular.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 9, 2007 01:04 PM

Again, 150 years. I would be personally ashamed of the species if anything resembling a (ground) automobile was still in general use 150 years from now.

Absolutely! Air cars will replace them, and the typical commute will be about 500 miles round trip. ( 1/2 :) )

Posted by Paul Dietz at June 9, 2007 01:51 PM

What about industrial metal ores etc...?
Could we not at some point simply run out of materials to use?

The common ones (which are, not coincidentally, also the ones used in large quantities) are essentially inexhaustible. This includes iron, aluminum, and nickel. In all, about 30 elements are in this category. For the remainder, most are substitutable with greater or lesser ease. The biggest problems might be with phosphorus (in fertilizer, not substitutable) and helium (no substitute for deep cryogenic applications). We might eventually import helium from space.

Right now, the big problem is substituting for hydrocarbons, which are the bulk of 'demandite', the fictional average ore.

Posted by Paul Dietz at June 9, 2007 01:57 PM

Air cars will replace them, and the typical commute will be about 500 miles round trip.

To say the least. With cents on the megawatt-hour, routine magnetic launch of personal vehicles into suborbital trajectories would be trivial, as might hypervelocity vacuum tube transport. Also, while I don't know just how cheap power would have to become, eventually it will be cheaper to do most things with precision control of fields than mechanically. And once that begins to happen, we'll be entering some very weird and exciting territory.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 9, 2007 03:40 PM

Brian, it was the scientist in me talking. :)

"Free elemental hydrogen" in this context was intended to mean uncombined hydrogen. The supply of this is estremely small.

In any case, well before the 150-year mark you mention, solar energy will indeed become practical, because industrial nanotech and the Singularity will have been a fact for a century or more.

The trick is not to kill Earth and ourselves with our own filth between now and then.

As for the point about automotive fuel; well, people will want to travel, and will want to travel at their own convenience rather than that of a faceless entity, be it State-controlled or otherwise. Hence; "automotive" in this context may be taken to mean "personal transport". Barring teleportation a la Star Trek or Niven, that isn't going to change any time soon, and some variety of car will exist for the foreseeable future.

Posted by Fletcher Christian at June 9, 2007 04:10 PM

Fletcher: In any case, well before the 150-year mark you mention, solar energy will indeed become practical

It's practical now, it just isn't price-competitive. I can see there being three stages in solar power development:

1. Competitiveness - Its performance meets and begins to exceed that of other alternatives.

2. Ubiquity - It comes preinstalled in most facilities.

3. Triviality - The marginal cost of additional production falls beneath the threshold of economic significance, and can be sold only in the most massive volumes.

Once triviality is reached, the only consumers who actually pay for it would be governments or manufacturers of secondary products, because individual consumption would (for a while) be beneath the monetary threshold. Slowly but surely, governments and entrepreneurial businesses would begin to realize the potential of all that power, and technology would take a turn for the gargantuan.

the Singularity will have been a fact for a century or more.

I don't buy into the Singularity. It ignores the fundamental nature of both technology and economics. We may eventually become immortal, augment our minds with artificial cortices, and then become pure information, but (a)that won't happen in 150 years, and (b)it wouldn't be characterized by Singularity anyway. Implications of any one thing may elude us temporarily, as they often do, but there will be no single, all-encompassing moment where the progress of our own technology completely escapes us. We will never become the victims or wards of superhuman machine consciousness, because we will never succeed at creating such a thing except by becoming it ourselves.

The trick is not to kill Earth and ourselves with our own filth between now and then.

The trick is also not to "disappear up our own brain stem," the paradox articulated by various Singularity theorists. If you exist in an environment totally controlled by will, what stops you from pursuing all desires to maximum until your mind dissolves into white noise? Or even if you impose controls on direct stimulus, isn't it easier to simply direct all your efforts into simulated realities while losing contact with real ones? The answer, courtesy of Frank Herbert, is to remain firmly committed to a core idea of humanity.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 9, 2007 06:36 PM

that isn't going to change any time soon, and some variety of car will exist for the foreseeable future.

Yes, I just meant we shouldn't still have wheeled ground transport powered with "fuel." With an energy economy at the Triviality stage, you could have personal vehicles powered externally that move slightly above ground at the speed of jetliners, but in addition to onramps and offramps would be launch ramps that send your vehicle off into the sky on a suborbital trajectory. They might also be moved through the air along any trajectory at slower speeds within cities, where fields could be tightly controlled. Of course humans wouldn't actually be driving these things, but you would set the destination and any arbitrary requirements, and your car would communicate with various external systems to negotiate its path in real-time. It sounds painfully precarious, but no doubt past eras would have trembled at the thought of America's freeways--no doubt something out of Dante.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 9, 2007 07:19 PM

"As for predicting the power source 150 years from now, barring radical new science, the only real candidates are fusion, solar, and hydrogen. "

Sigh. Hydrogen is NOT A SOURCE OF ENERGY! Not unless you live on a planet where it sits around in cryogenic seas. Come to think of it, such a planet wouldn't have an oxygen atmosphere to burn it with.

BTW, why is everyone so down on fission?

Posted by at June 9, 2007 07:20 PM

PS, our deepest mines for metals don't even qualify as scratches on the surface of the Earth's crust. A world where we have run out of resources would have to be one where, somehow, for whatever reason, we have mined tens to hundreds of miles into the surface and piled all that crap on top.

Humanity isn't even a soap film on the Earth's surface. How in the world could we be running out of metal?

Posted by at June 9, 2007 07:24 PM

Hydrogen is NOT A SOURCE OF ENERGY!

Neither is oil.

BTW, why is everyone so down on fission?

Fissile material is scarce, the waste will be lethal for 100,000 years, and operations and waste storage both demand extreme security precautions.

PS, our deepest mines for metals don't even qualify as scratches on the surface of the Earth's crust.

Costs rise pretty fast beneath a certain depth, and you don't know where to find what you're looking for unless part of it comes relatively close to the surface. Gravity and pressure mapping don't even begin to address that.

A world where we have run out of resources would have to be one where, somehow, for whatever reason, we have mined tens to hundreds of miles into the surface and piled all that crap on top.

No, it would just be one where the difficulty of obtaining important metals has increased far faster than our technology improves, and massive recessions occur as economies are forced to scrounge around junkyards for what they need. Asteroid mining would prevent that from ever happening, at least for most metals, and there would be no environmental concerns. I figure it's probably cheaper to slowly shave an asteroid to nothing than figure out how to safely and responsibly drill huge mineshafts miles into the Earth's crust.

Humanity isn't even a soap film on the Earth's surface. How in the world could we be running out of metal?

It's economics. Geology stratifies different materials into contiguous veins that can be efficiently mined, but once metals are put into machines and consumer products they're broken up into these tiny increments among other materials. Any metal you could name is probably available at the local junkyard, but in tiny little pieces scattered throughout a lot of other stuff. You would have to figure out how to find those pieces, how to break down their substrates to the molecular or even atomic level, and then separate those materials in an efficient manner. Unfortunately, this demands more heat than current machinery can withstand--you basically need to build giant plasma chambers, convert millions of tons of miscellaneous crap into free atoms, separate them by mass, and then somehow get rid of the heat from the operation.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 9, 2007 09:02 PM

Brian, as usual you display impressive scientific/technological acumen alongside an understanding of economics roughly on a par with Pacfic island cargo cultists. I see this a lot with leftists. It's a sort of Chom*sky Effect; someone sharp to brilliant at one thing but possessed of childishly nonsensical ideas about human social organization.

With that kind of volume, 10% is virtually impossible without massive price manipulation--similar industries make half a percent in a good year.

Please. The 12 oil refining companies in the 2006 Fortune 500 had an aggregate profit margin of 8% last year. The 15 metal refining companies in the 2006 Fortune 500 had margins of 6.9%. The profits are reflective of the considerable technological, political, lead time and "dry hole" risks of these businesses. Mining typically has less "dry hole" risk than oil drilling. All other risks are roughly comparable. Hence the quite comparable rates of return.

The retail grocery business is one with famously slim margins. The dozen supermarket chains on the 2006 Fortune 500 list had aggregate profits of just 1.1%. But that matches the relatively thin risks involved in the business. The technological risk in putting up one more A&P isn't even in the same order of magnitude as inventing a way to, say, drill for oil through three miles of water and five more of solid rock, then establish volume production and get the oil or gas found back to shore.

Oil company profits are not out of line and are required to cover the considerable R&D and venture risk associated with the business. The absolute numbers - 930 billion in revenue, 75 billion in profits - are, to be sure, huge. Even a razor-thin sliver of the smaller of these huge numbers winding up in an individual pocket is enough to make ordinary mortals swoon at the prospect.

Since the market is rigidly inelastic, the profit maximizing price is far above the market equilibrium price--i.e., the price can be set arbitrarily high within absolute limits, and isn't affected by the intersection of supply and demand curves.

Two points here:

1. There are no instances in which the law of supply and demand does not function.

2. The demand for petroleum is far from inelastic. I don't know about you - though I suspect not - but I lived through the oil idiocies of the 70's as a car-driving adult. Trust me, when the price got high enough, people drove less. I sure did. The fact that Americans haven't curtailed driving this year as gas went from $2.50 to $3.25/gal. just means that the new price doesn't pinch enough to actually incite cutbacks in use yet. This is perfectly rational. In inflation-adjusted terms, today's gas is still roughly half the price it was in 1975.

The government makes more in taxes off each gallon than the energy companies who produce and refine it make.

Yes, but taxes actually do something for the people who pay them, and the government in fact gives the oil industry billions in net subsidies.

My gas taxes are supposed to get me more roads to drive on. Here in sunny SoCal, what they mostly get me are deferred maintenance on 50-year-old freeways, whole good lanes taken out of effective service for "high-occupancy vehicles" and endless construction and operating subsidies for the unionized hacks of the mass transit/industrial complex.

If you have some specifics to offer, we can discuss these alleged "subsidies" the government gives the oil companies. Otherwise I'll just regard this as the usual substance-free neo-Marxist gas passing.

The vast bulk of oil company profits have no effect on the market

They have effects on lots of markets. They tend to increase the price of oil company shares on the stock market, for example. They also lower the cost of capital to the oil companies for spending they will do to increase supply. More money to increase supply means good times for rig builders, oilfield services, and everyone, down to the individual roughnecks on the rigs who draws a paycheck in or around the oil patch. When the new supplies come on-line, the effect is to lower end-user prices or moderate their increase. Not exactly "no effect" from where I'm standing.

do not increase supply as would happen with real businesses

Oil company profits paid to figure out how to do computational seismic geology, build deep-water exploration and production infrastructure, do directional drilling, enhance recovery from existing fields and all the other hyper-necessary and quite expensive things that keep oil products available at historically quite reasonable inflation-adjusted prices. Without the massive reserve and supply increases made available through modern exploration and extraction technology we might have to do something a lot more expensive and less pleasant for our oil - like fight the Chinese for it.

and just artifically dump money into the hands of investors and executives. Basically, it's a form of looting

Nothing "artificial" about it; it's how capitalism is supposed to work. It's not looting if it was the investors' money that paid to develop and use the technology that allows the production from which the profits in question derive. It's called return on investment.

and it inflicts massive costs on the economy that aren't accounted for by the actual commodities delivered.

I suppose it would be impolite to ask for a specific or two here?

And what does the government do exactly to produce it?

One could write a thousand-page report on all the things the government does to facilitate energy production, and not all of them are legal.

And a 10,000-page report on the things the government does to get in the way and muck things up - not all of them legal either. Your point?

In fact, the oil industry is massively subsidized at every level--they get more of your tax money than every welfare recipient combined,

No it isn't and no they don't. Unless you're one of those people who think that taxation at rates below 100% constitutes a "subsidy."

and not a cent of it goes into the supply.

Yes, in fact that's mainly where it goes, as I've already explained.

It goes straight to dividends, and into the pockets of men like Dick Cheney.

I have no idea whether Mr. Cheney still has any current equity interest in oil production and, as his major assets are in a blind trust, I don't think he does either. I can guarantee you, though, that a lot more retirees are pulling in oil company dividends than are current or former Vice Presidents of the U.S. Oil stocks, in aggregate are a significant slice of the total equity market and a huge chunk of this is owned by mutual funds and even outfits devoted to the future welfare of your beloved government employees like Cal-Pers and TIAA-CREF.

Need to worry more about the profits of big cola. Bet they make at least 30-40% per gallon.

I don't know what the margin on cola syrup is, but the Coke and Pepsi entities on the 2006 Fortune 500 had aggregate profits of 10.5% - about 30% better than the oil giants.

Not that it's especially relevant to the overall nature of this post, but the Coca Cola formula is not patented, it's a trade secret. Patents are public. If Coke had ever been patented, said patent would have expired well before the outbreak of WW1.

Now, might I also make so bold as to point out that gasoline is also a branded consumer product? It's economics are not entirely those of a generic commodity, at least in part owing to that always helpful government "subsidy" by which various eco-jurisdictions require 17 or so different custom blends that can only be sold in particular geographic regions. If gasoline acually was a location-fungible commodity, it would cost less.

From most lefties I expect nothing as they are obvious innumerates and ignoramuses. No sense trying to teach a pig to dance, as someone once said, as it can't be done in any case and only annoys the pig. But Brian, you have demonstrated more than occasional episodes of technological acumen and mathematical eptitude. Put aside the nitwit catechisms of the capering witch doctors of leftist "economics" and apply your analytical skills instead. Go toward the light.

* - question for Rand - why is "em-es-kay" a verboten string in comments? This was the stumbling block in just the first of three initially failed attempts to post this comment. You have got to do something about that brainless spam "filter" or nobody is going to comment here about anything pretty soon.

Posted by DickEagleson at June 9, 2007 10:27 PM

Any metal you could name is probably available at the local junkyard, but in tiny little pieces scattered throughout a lot of other stuff. You would have to figure out how to find those pieces, how to break down their substrates to the molecular or even atomic level, and then separate those materials in an efficient manner. Unfortunately, this demands more heat than current machinery can withstand--you basically need to build giant plasma chambers, convert millions of tons of miscellaneous crap into free atoms, separate them by mass, and then somehow get rid of the heat from the operation.

Brian, Brian, Brian! What possesses you to keep saying such silly things? Have you never been to a junkyard/scrapyard? Have you no access to search engines?

The majority feedstock for production of all industrial metals is scrap, not refined ore. In the case of aluminum, the scrap percentage is at or above 90%. Iron and steel scrap have been big business for over a century. Scrapyards don't need to melt everything down and pass it by Maxwell's Demon in order to generate a quite useful resmeltable product. Mechanical shredding and magnetic/eddy current separation works just fine to sort initially mixed copper, aluminum and iron/steel from scrapped autos into piles of each metal at very acceptable rates of purity.

Of course, there are companies ginning up industrial-scale plasma melters because the technology and economics now look attractive, but it is hardly a prerequisite for metal recycling on a massive scale. We've been doing the latter very nicely since the 19th century.

In future, we're more likely to recycle substances that are currently harder to find or present in trash streams in only very low concentrations by using exactly these new plasma melter technologies on the undifferentiated contents of existing landfills. Unlike new mines, which require expensive exploration to establish suitable sites for, and which only produce one or two economically useful outputs, plus requiring a lot of expensive infrastructure building in remote areas, landfills are close by and filled with "ore" having many economically important trace elements. The future of mining is garbage, man, garbage!

Posted by Dick Eagleson at June 9, 2007 10:49 PM

Mr. Eagleson,

Thanks for the primer. As you note, Mr. Swiderski is quite capable of posting intelligently, but he has to WANT to stoop to that level of discourse.

More commonly, he lords over us his vastly superior intellect by making assertions that, to many of us lesser minds, appear to be ad hominems, non sequiturs, and loro ipsa(TM).

BTW, Mr. Swiderski, thanks for the feedback on Mr. Hersh. Do you now consider me a liar?

Submitted with all respect due to the recipients,

Posted by MG at June 9, 2007 11:23 PM

Dick: an understanding of economics roughly on a par with Pacfic island cargo cultists.

A finer description of libertarianism has never been written.

someone sharp to brilliant at one thing but possessed of childishly nonsensical ideas about human social organization.

An economy isn't a "social organization," it's a physical system. Human psychology determines what is sought, not what results from any given approach to seeking it, and I constantly hear libertarians and conservatives respond as if specific businesses are indistinguishable from the very concept of business.

To state that a massively profitable industry is bad for the economy is, in their eyes, heretical and paradoxical, because their understanding of and interest in economics ends at the bottom line. "Profit = good," as far as they're concerned, and you risk offending them if you imply anything deeper going on.

The 15 metal refining companies in the 2006 Fortune 500 had margins of 6.9%.

Revenues for metal refining are an order of magnitude lower than oil. There is simply no way to make 10% on $339 billion in revenue in a functioning commodity market, regardless of what Exxon-Mobil thinks is a "fair" price for its risk. In this industry, the firms set the prices, not the market, and that cannot be the case with their product unless (a)vertical integration has given them undue leverage, (b)they're colluding, (c)the market is too inelastic, or (d)some combination thereof.

The profits are reflective of the considerable technological, political, lead time and "dry hole" risks of these businesses. Mining typically has less "dry hole" risk than oil drilling.

The top oil firms, which represent the vast majority of volume, have virtually no risk. Demand is guaranteed within broad limits; if supply increases they can set a lower profit-maximizing price and still make the same profit; if supply decreases, they can set a higher profit-maximizing price that actually increases both revenue and profit; and their volume is far too large to be effected by "dry-well risks," which easily average out. That third point is why a strong incentive exists for the industry to restrict output, and to "encourage" such restrictions in national producers overseas.

dozen supermarket chains on the 2006 Fortune 500 list had aggregate profits of just 1.1%. But that matches the relatively thin risks involved in the business.

It means that supermarkets are commoditized, because consumers can buy identical products anywhere at very similar prices. The slim profit margin doesn't reflect low risk, it is a risk: A huge level of resources must be devoted to winning and defending every tiny increment of return. Now, if they were set up like the oil industry, the supermarket chains would own the food they sell instead of renting out shelf space, would own the fields that grow it, the factories that make it, and the trucks that deliver it, and then they would be able to squeeze out a higher percentage from their consumers.

Their one concession to free market economics is the franchising of gas stations, but franchise holders have to set the prices they're told or be blackballed, and quite a few over the years have tried to fight the oil companies over this--never with any success. Can the libertarian imagination grasp such a thing--small business owners fighting for the right to charge LESS? Yes, I know, they must be Communist infiltrators.

There are no instances in which the law of supply and demand does not function.

Nor are there any where it functions perfectly. Every market deviates to some degree from equilibrium pricing, and oil deviates massively due to vertical integration of firms, inelasticity, and price manipulation.

Trust me, when the price got high enough, people drove less.

Yes, when it reached the limits I mentioned. Inelasticity refers to weak responsiveness to price changes, not its complete absence. Fully commoditized markets are the most elastic of all, and oil is among the least.

My gas taxes are supposed to get me more roads to drive on.

There's no entitlement to a convenient commute. Gas taxes pay to maintain existing roads, spatula idiots and their victims off the roadway, slowly update earthquake retrofitting, and various other expenses needed just to keep things going as they are, and then new construction is paid for out of what remains. If you insist on more, Sacramento will just pass another bond issue instead of paying for it with taxes, because conservative and libertarian voters wouldn't stand for spending money they actually have.

Here in sunny SoCal, what they mostly get me are deferred maintenance on 50-year-old freeways, whole good lanes taken out of effective service for "high-occupancy vehicles" and endless construction and operating subsidies for the unionized hacks of the mass transit/industrial complex.

I've lived in both SoCal and NorCal in recent years, so I can say this from experience:

1. Maintenance is deferred because Californians don't want to pay for it, and the chickenshit bond issues don't cover it.

2. Carpool lanes are a good thing, because we don't want to build entirely new 8-lane freeways every five years.

3. Of course you hate union contractors: Libertarians and conservatives believe only business owners and executives should be allowed to be sleazy, greedy, and parasitic. How dare guys in jeans and workboots behave above their station in life, and god forbid, be able to put their kids through college. We need better infrastructure, but we get that by paying for it--not by hiring some incompetent, non-union scumbag to dish out the work among illegal aliens.

If you have some specifics to offer, we can discuss these alleged "subsidies" the government gives the oil companies.

1. The government has used, and is using the United States military and intelligence services to acquire oil resources, both by overt force and covert operations against uncooperative leaders. Since there is no national oil company, the resources acquired through these activities are channeled into powerful, connected firms. How many tens of billions have been spent to date on those operations is a matter of arbitrary delineation.

2. Vast numbers of tax credits allow the oil industry to get away with paying roughly half (11%) the average (18%) despite having by far the most profit, and tens of billions are directly spent by local, state, and federal governments facilitating the exploration, refining, and transportation of oil and gasoline.

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/fuel_economy/subsidizing-big-oil.html

Actually, this source is a little out of date, and refers back to the early '90s when the "tax and spend" Democrats were still "sticking it" to American business. Eleven years of nearly continuous Republican Congresses, and six of virtual dictatorship under Texas oilmen have surely changed those figures.

They tend to increase the price of oil company shares on the stock market, for example.

I refer to the oil market, not the stock market. Oil stocks climb when dividends climb, which are a function of profit, and that in turn results from higher prices--i.e., investors benefit when the rest of the economy suffers. Every time consumers pay record prices at the pump, the oil industry sees record profits, and that behavior doesn't exist in free market economics at this volume of business.

[More later]

Posted by at June 10, 2007 02:31 AM

The above is me, BTW.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 10, 2007 02:32 AM

"The above is me, BTW."

Like we would never have know if you hadn't told us...............

Posted by Everyone Else in this Thread at June 10, 2007 09:11 AM

Like we would never have know if you hadn't told us...

A few wouldn't, or would accuse me of being anonymous.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 10, 2007 06:05 PM

Thanks for telling me now.

I find your distinction to be useless. Even fissionable material originally came from a fusion/gravitation collapse powered supernova. And the minor remant came from torque of the original primordial dust cloud. So rechnically, there's only three power sources in the Solar System, gravitational and fusion power, and the rotational energy of the solar system. Every scrap of energy we use eventually came from one of these sources.

But where and how the energy source is used is quite relevant. So wind and hydro are distinct from solar and gravitational power because of the environment and complexity of the system. And I certainly resist any attempt to lump them in with solar power since they also depend on either rotational energy or gravitational potential of the energy.

Finally, while coal is unlikely to be a prevalent power source in a Solar System civilization, the same cannot be said of fission, particularly if fusion cannot be made to work on the small scale. There are plenty of fissionables in the Solar System to power such things.

And of course, there's gravitational energy and the energy of the solar wind (not to be confused with solar power and solar sails) which can be harnessed for moving mass around the Solar System. I'd say in fact that most of the energy generated in the Solar System outside of Earth orbit has been in the form of gravitational boosts of varios probes. No idea the actual fraction, just a feeling.

Geothermal has potential on most planet-sized bodies (planemos right?) in the Solar System either as a modest energy source or as heat storage.

My take is most energy production on Earth will be seen in space.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at June 11, 2007 04:25 AM

Any or all of them could easily support an advanced, spacefaring civilization

That was once said about oil supporting an industrialized civilization. I'm glad you know what it will take to support a future civ Squiddie.

i.e., the price can be set arbitrarily high within absolute limits, and isn't affected by the intersection of supply and demand curves.

A higher supply of oil would not do us any good. We haven't built a new refinery in years, and the ones we have are running as normal, except a few that have had maintenance, or repairs. This is also the heavy demand part of the year for the US. We demand more, the price goes up because dwindling supply...pretty simple picture there Squiddie. If we had more supplied oil, not the light-sweet crude from the ME either, it would mean nothing because the refineries are currently at or close to capacity. But, since you're the master of time and space, exactly how do we increase gasoline supply with a finite number of refineries?

Posted by Mac at June 11, 2007 05:37 AM

[Continued]

More money to increase supply means good times for rig builders, oilfield services, and everyone, down to the individual roughnecks on the rigs who draws a paycheck in or around the oil patch.

Top oil firms are vertically integrated to a large degree, meaning increases in supply capacity--which in no way guarantee an increase in supply--just reduce internal costs that are weakly (if at all) reflected in price at the pump.

When the new supplies come on-line, the effect is to lower end-user prices or moderate their increase.

Answer me this: If record prices = record profits, and if as you claim increased supply reduces the price significantly (i.e., elastic demand), what incentive does a firm have to increase supply? In a normal market environment, higher prices bring in new firms that add to supply, but the barriers to entry of a vertically integrated industry are too extreme for that to be practical.

Money spent on R&D isn't profit, it's an expense. That 10% goes into dividends, and virtually everything else is written off.

we might have to do something a lot more expensive and less pleasant for our oil - like fight the Chinese for it.

For the past 35 years, oil has been exactly 10 years of strong national commitment to alternatives away from replacement, but that commitment never happened because the industry has a stranglehold on our economy and politics. Every time some near-horizon threat like electric vehicles comes along, they take a small fraction of their yearly profit, create hundreds of fake consumer and scientific organizations to harangue local, state, and federal governments to stop it; flood the media with fake, purchased commentary falsely questioning and attacking every technical, economic, and logistical difficulty; sick their Sauron's legion of lawyers on every law, regulation, and private firm involved in promoting it; leverage their bought politicians to make life hell for anyone in Congress or state Legislatures with a serious chance of advancing that agenda; and so far they've succeeded in keeping us tied to Theodore Roosevelt-era technology.

Were the industry fully commoditized, it would still be powerful, but no more so than many others--it would no longer have veto power over our nation's agenda, and no longer dictate every aspect of how we approach business and the world. The vertically integrated firms need to be broken up into many smaller, horizontal firms at each level of the process. Each would add its own profit at each step, but the product would remain commoditized throughout the process, and total profit at the end would be something like 1%-3%. Now, that alone doesn't translate into huge savings at the pump, but it does make the industry price elastic and market efficient, which in turn would ensure that the only way to increase profit is to cut prices and/or increase supply. It would also remove the industry's overbearing and destructive political power, which would allow resource transitions to occur sooner and more efficiently.

Nothing "artificial" about it; it's how capitalism is supposed to work.

Capitalism is only the enabling mechanism by which free markets are grown, not the principle by which those markets operate. An investor or entrepreneur wants maximum ROI, but the most efficient, mature, and commoditized markets tend to minimize it. The oil industry more than made its upfront ROI in the Rockefeller days, and should have settled into low-profit commoditization, but vertical integration has allowed them to artificially force entrepreneurial-level returns out of the market decade after decade.

It's not looting if it was the investors' money that paid to develop and use the technology that allows the production from which the profits in question derive. It's called return on investment.

It was money squeezed from consumers and suckled from taxpayers that paid for it, and it's called "Exxtortion."

I suppose it would be impolite to ask for a specific or two here?

What kind of specifics would be relevant? An economy is like a circulatory system in some ways, and the difference between efficiency and inefficiency is how long and in what quantity capital resources linger in a given location. Heavily commoditized industries are smooth, rapid, highly evolved systems that money moves through quickly, while relatively undeveloped ones need to be "incubated" for a while: The oil industry, despite being heavily developed, has this bulbous "pustule" of excess resources devoted to it by virtue of its business structure alone. The exact size of the excess would require a lot of work to find out, but we can say simply that it's the difference between current profit margins and those were the industry forced to become commoditized.

And a 10,000-page report on the things the government does to get in the way and muck things up

Name five.

Unless you're one of those people who think that taxation at rates below 100% constitutes a "subsidy."

Having the entire national security policy of the United States centered on oil profit is a subsidy, as are the tens of billions spent at every level of government facilitating it. And yes, paying half the effective tax rate of most other industries while being the most profitable industry on Earth is also a subsidy. The United States economy is milked like a dairy cow by big oil, not the other way around.

Oil stocks, in aggregate are a significant slice of the total equity market and a huge chunk of this is owned by mutual funds and even outfits devoted to the future welfare of your beloved government employees like Cal-Pers and TIAA-CREF.

And if oil were commoditized, it would still be a significant slice of the total market--it just wouldn't undermine the rest of the economy, rape consumers, sabotage our political system, or prevent technological and infrastructure advances.

I don't know what the margin on cola syrup is, but the Coke and Pepsi entities on the 2006 Fortune 500 had aggregate profits of 10.5% - about 30% better than the oil giants.

Yes, and that's feasible in a branded consumer market of non-identical products whose highest revenues are two orders of magnitude lower than those of Exxon-Mobil. And BTW, you should know better than to cite a figure as a percentage of a percentage.

the Coca Cola formula is not patented, it's a trade secret. Patents are public. If Coke had ever been patented, said patent would have expired well before the outbreak of WW1.

Point taken, but my own point stands. Were Coke to publicize its formula, and the market were flooded with different firms selling identical cola, the product would be commoditized and profit margins would evaporate.

It's economics are not entirely those of a generic commodity, at least in part owing to that always helpful government "subsidy" by which various eco-jurisdictions require 17 or so different custom blends that can only be sold in particular geographic regions.

If the blends are geographical, then they can't be branded: The same grade of gasoline in the same country is identical to the consumer across all firms selling it, and most of the globe uses the same generic blends, so it should be the most commoditized market in the world regardless. Furthermore, while the added expense of blending might contribute to higher prices, it certainly doesn't explain higher profits--unless you're literally suggesting that blend requirements have resulted in a subsidy.

From most lefties I expect nothing as they are obvious innumerates and ignoramuses.

This seems to be the standard refrain from the right when they're not referring to the Bible for science curricula, invading other countries at random, or dismissing climatology as an environmentalist hoax. Liberals tend to be highly literate, informed, and intellectually curious people, and pride themselves on it, while their antagonists are marked by fervid anti-intellectualism and deliberate ignorance. Your bizarre, doublethink-ridden characterization of the left is just one example of the latter.

Put aside the nitwit catechisms of the capering witch doctors of leftist "economics" and apply your analytical skills instead.

Presumably to understand the genius of concepts like "voodoo" and "trickle-down"? As I've said, I regard economics as a physical system, but you and others on the right regard it (and everything else) as a way to rationalize doing what you would do anyway. The right originally used Darwin to justify brutal class inequities, racial segregation, and genocide, but ignored the adaptive benefit of compassion and cooperation. In business, they tried to use early market theory to justify complete laissez-faire, but ignored externalities that caused terrible suffering among workers and created horribly polluted cities. Then, of course, workers began unionizing, and the right suddenly discovered the benefit of government intervention--the beginning of fascist economic theory, which would come to be known by various aliases under Republican administrations. Since owners and investors are considered morally superior to consumers and employees, the purpose of conservative economics is to justify all policies that reflect and enhance this superiority. Needless to say, that isn't how I see things--an economy is a tool for maximizing the possibilities for a maximum number of people, and the study thereof ought to be observational and/or experimental.

The majority feedstock for production of all industrial metals is scrap, not refined ore.

Scrap comes from other large industrial metal products, like cars, airframes, and I-beams, and I doubt very much the level of scrap recycling compares with all the aggregate metal that's discarded in nails, bolts, screws, foil, springs, rivets, wires, paperclips, staples, and countless other small or medium products.

Scrapyards don't need to melt everything down and pass it by Maxwell's Demon in order to generate a quite useful resmeltable product.

Nor did I claim they did. I said elemental recycling would be necessary to replace mining, because most of the metal we use ends up in small fragments scattered to the four winds. And while composites reduce the need for metal, they also distribute it even more thinly.

Of course, there are companies ginning up industrial-scale plasma melters because the technology and economics now look attractive

I was not aware of that, but I'd remain skeptical of their applicability even so. While it's possible today to melt any metal, temperatures aren't high enough to decompose general materials. Feeding trash into such a system would just wastefully burn off the organics, or react them with the small amount of metals and create a bunch of useless, largely toxic compounds. There's also a matter of economics--even when we have the technology to create and control sufficiently high temperatures, and to bleed off or use the waste heat, there's no guarantee the power put into doing so would be worth the recycled materials. Once again, I suggest our best bet for this century is asteroid mining.

MG: BTW, Mr. Swiderski, thanks for the feedback on Mr. Hersh. Do you now consider me a liar?

That depends what effect my reply had. You called one of the best journalists in America a liar because, according to the article you cite, he engages in speculation in public speeches and admits to protecting his sources in informal settings by using aliases and minor changes to details. I know how political prejudice works, and don't begrudge people the occasional foot in the mouth if they understand they screwed up, but a lot of people on the right attack Hersh precisely because he is a great journalist who does groundbreaking work. Now, I had posted a link to Hersh's New Yorker article about the White House arming and funding al Qaeda to oppose Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the response was dead silence--except your attack on Hersh, which we both know wouldn't have happened if his article had been MSM-style trivial criticism rather than a highly credible, searing account of specific acts of treason.

Karl: So wind and hydro are distinct from solar and gravitational power because of the environment and complexity of the system.

The point was efficiency, scaleability, and applicability to space civilizations. No matter how efficiently you build windmills, they only make sense in relatively few places even on Earth, and will never achieve significant economies. Windmills built for Earth wouldn't make sense on Mars or Titan--you would need a totally different design. Hydro is also a very limited power source, since it's not scaleable at all--you can only use rivers that nature provides, since otherwise you're feeding energy intothe system, and they often require huge feats of disruptive engineering to harness. The Three Gorges Dam being built in China--one of the most awesome large-scale engineering projects in history, dwarfing the Hoover Dam by a factor of five, and whose construction displaced millions--will only provide roughly the amount of electricity Los Angeles consumes.

There are plenty of fissionables in the Solar System to power such things.

Where? Obviously they exist out there, but in what abundances, and how likely are we to find them in accessible places? I don't know what levels of fissionable material are to be found in asteroids, but I can't imagine it being enough to sustain pervasive fission power. If there are significant, accessible quantities on Mars, they would still likely be far scarcer than on Earth. And out in the gas giant moons, rare heavy metals would be beneath kilometers of ice.

My take is most energy production on Earth will be seen in space.

My guess is it will be the reverse. The off-world economy will eventually be so much larger than Earth that technologies only applicable to Earth or a few other places won't be able to compete with massive, ubiquitous production of solar. You can use solar on Earth, on Mars, on the Moon, or any point in space in the inner solar system, and beaming it to the outer system with relays would be an option. Imagine it: Instead of power lines snaking across the desert like today, you have invisible cordons of tremendous energy strung between huge arrays every AU or so.

Mac: That was once said about oil supporting an industrialized civilization.

And it was true, but we're moving beyond that. To call the eventual product of this transition "industrial" would be woefully inadequate, like calling a modern steel foundry a "blacksmithy." There are qualitative changes underway that go beyond mere scale, and we need cheap and efficient energy before their full potential can be realized.

I'm glad you know what it will take to support a future civ Squiddie.

Thinking about it is half the fun. Without preconceptions, where's the joy in discovery?

We haven't built a new refinery in years

Of course not--profits increase with price, so there's no incentive to expand operations.

We demand more, the price goes up because dwindling supply...pretty simple picture there Squiddie.

Of course the price goes up with increased demand, but it goes up more than demand accounts for. In an inelastic industry, decreases in supply or increases in demand both yield price increases substantially above the scale factor. This happens because firms are able to set the profit-maximizing price, which is itself a scale factor of equilibrium pricing in an inelastic industry. In other words, they don't set prices as equilibrium +, they set them as equilibrium *. So, for instance, if fair market price increased by 1%, their price increases 2%; if fair market went up 4%, they would increase 8%. And they do that because the inelasticity of the market causes the profit-maximizing curve to behave that way, within limits. Now, that would be okay if it were because of inherent properties of the industry, but it actually just results from vertical integration of the firms--an antitrust issue.

But, since you're the master of time and space, exactly how do we increase gasoline supply with a finite number of refineries?

We don't need to make do with the same number: A commoditized oil industry would have an incentive to open more refineries.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 11, 2007 10:08 PM

Where? Obviously they exist out there, but in what abundances, and how likely are we to find them in accessible places?

Actually, the Earth is one of the best places we know to mine uranium (and thorium) in the solar system. Geological processes have helpfully concentrated these elements in the continental crust by three orders of magnitude or so over the chondritic averages, to the extent that average continental crustal rocks have the equivalent of 20 times their mass in coal in energy (comparing fission energy w. breeding vs. combustion energy of the coal).

It may be the case that concentrating mechanisms will have occured on other highly differentiated bodies. Io (shades of Outland!) may be a good place to look for various ores, given the constant volcanism there.

Posted by Paul Dietz at June 12, 2007 06:58 AM

our best bet for this century is asteroid mining

If the past is any guide, our economy will only be 8 times as big in 90 years and have no trouble making do with Earth materials for Earth activities. The population in space is more likely to be like Antarctica's now than Alaska's now in 100 years.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at June 12, 2007 08:12 AM

Paul: Actually, the Earth is one of the best places we know to mine uranium (and thorium) in the solar system.

Which doesn't bode well for the future of fission power off-planet.

Io (shades of Outland!) may be a good place to look for various ores, given the constant volcanism there.

It would be a bit ironic, dying of acute radiation poisoning while in search of nuclear fuel. Kind of like wading into a tire fire to retrieve a bag of charcoal--even Sean Connery might be a little intimidated.

Sam: If the past is any guide, our economy will only be 8 times as big in 90 years and have no trouble making do with Earth materials for Earth activities.

My hope is that we won't have to.

The population in space is more likely to be like Antarctica's now than Alaska's now in 100 years.

Antarctica is limited by treaty to scientific exploration, and both are finite environments with very little fundamentally exotic about them. Whatever we build in space will be totally new, totally of our own creation, and utterly exotic to the human condition, not to mention being a sought-after status symbol. Can you vividly imagine what it will feel like, having the ability to go literally anywhere, in any direction? An infinite universe all around you, limited only by how much time you're willing and able to spend reaching it, and all but the tiniest, most insignificant portion of the accessible places have ever been seen by human eyes; but you can see them, set foot on them, imprint your glove into their 4 billion-year-old dust, if you just choose to Go. Forget about Antarctica, forget about Alaska--there will be a billion people off this planet in 150 years, and all the peoples of the Earth who still long for the horizon will pour outward in ranks of decreasing wealth and increasing volume. To feel that joyous surging of humanity all around you, to feel your entire species grasping out toward the infinite, is something I can almost imagine. It's something I know in my bones to be inevitable, and I also know it doesn't have to be 150 years from now if we decide to make it happen sooner.

The places those people settle will not be like Alaskan oil towns--tired, hollowed places--but will burn with concentrated life, and instill a sense of mission into their children. Colonials and pioneers knew the awe of building a nation with their own two hands; those space settlers will know the awe of building entire worlds, and it will change them forever, marking the cultures that spring from them in novel and unforeseeable ways. What I'm saying is, space is irresistible whether people know it yet or not, and there will be a generation in the next century that finds itself future shocked by an explosive exodus. I really want to be there when it happens, but probably won't.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 12, 2007 10:59 AM

Which doesn't bode well for the future of fission power off-planet.

I expect uranium and thorium would be exported from Earth for a long time to come, if there's a demand for it in space. They're energy dense, so you save little by trying to mine them in space as long as they're available down here. They (along with transuranic fissionables) might be exported in the form of spent fuel, with reprocessing done in space, primarily for environmental reasons.

The lunar crust is also somewhat enriched in uranium vs. chondritic averages, although not as much as Earth's continents. I expect any differentiated asteroid to also show some enrichment in the silicate portion.

Posted by Paul Dietz at June 13, 2007 09:16 AM

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