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I'm disappointed that you dismiss uranium extraction from seawater as absurd without any argument. There's a recently-tested process which uses a treated polyethylene mesh to absorb uranium from seawater at a cost that would be more expensive than current uranium costs, but still well within the reasonable price range, and its energy inputs are small compared to the amount of energy you can get out of uranium, as it is an exceptionally energy-dense material.

(By the way, regarding the capital costs of building nuclear plants, it's possible to build current-generation nuclear plants in bulk for capital costs comparable to those of coal plants, and there are designs for fourth-generation plants that would have significantly lower capital costs. The issue here is not insurmountable.)

We use petroleum to fuel our cars not because it's a good source of energy, but because it's a good means to store energy (it has high specific energy, by volume and by mass), which is very important for cars. It will still be important even when producing a gallon of petroleum takes more energy than the said gallon contains.

EROEI of less than 1 doesn't mean that oil extraction is unfeasible, not at all. For example, every accumulator currently produced has EROEI of 0 (it has 0 energy before charging and it takes non-zero energy to produce it), and each charging of it has EROEI of less than 1. And it's still economically feasible.

I think you misunderstand the concept of EROEI. Oil extraction requires large energy inputs. This energy is currently supplied entirely by fossil fuels, and is probably not substitutable in the near future.

Given this constraint, aggregate EROEI even approaching 1 means insufficient oil to fuel exploration/extraction activities and power infrastructure, and that's just fundamental economics. Add to that the fact that large-scale integrated projects, such as oil field development, require enormous capital and human resources, which in turn rely on economic and political stability, which in turn rely on stable and plentiful energy inputs... I'm sure you can see the problem here.

Accumulators (e.g. batteries) are not primary energy sources like fossil fuels are; EROEI does not apply to them like it does to energy production.

> This energy is currently supplied entirely by fossil fuels, and is probably not substitutable in the near future

[citation needed], and [citation needed]. There are electric drilling rigs out there, pumping the oil out is often performed by electric pumps, and pumping water / gas in doesn't, AFAICS, require specifically fossil fuel power. I don't see anything than couldn't be done with electricity, coal, natural gas or whatever else.

So where do you think an oil platform gets its electric power? Solar panels? Or do you think they string a power line from the shore?

Where do you think Saudi Arabia gets the gigawatts needed to run its oil fields? How much of their electricity comes from oil and nat gas? I'll give you a hint; it rhymes with "all of it".

How do you think Suncor extracts oil from oil sands? Lots of squeezing?

Where do you think Pemex gets the electricity for the giant pumps that pressurize their gulf fields (and the nitrogen that they pump)?

Observe that natural gas is subject to the same economics as oil. Where the two are substitutable, low project EROEI can be flirted with. However, also observe that extraction of nat gas is largely coincident with that of oil, both geographically and industrially. They usually come from the same fields, often the same wells.

>"I don't see anything than couldn't be done with electricity, coal, natural gas or whatever else."

There is a difference between possibility and feasibility. Ask Transocean when they'll start selling coal-powered semi-subs.

Your Saudi example is especially unconvincing. Of course they get their electricity from oil now; why wouldn't they, when oil is so cheap and abundant there? Duh. Oil costs them, what, $10 to extract a barrel now? They would be fools to use anything more expensive to produce electricity. That doesn't mean they won't get their electricity elsewhere when it's economically unfeasible to use oil for that.

More or less the same applies to other examples, actually.

> Ask Transocean when they'll start selling coal-powered semi-subs

Whoa, where did that come from? Shelf drilling is a capital expense, it's not recurring costs. Whatever logic is there in EROEI argument, it doesn't apply here. Ask Transocean what share of their operating costs is fuel, and if they give a damn about fuel costs rising ten-fold.

>"That doesn't mean they won't get their electricity elsewhere when it's economically infeasible to use oil for that."

Again, possibility vs. feasibility. You talk about capital costs... what do you imagine it will cost to convert a significant share of Saudi Arabia's generating capacity to nuclear, for example. How likely is that to happen politically? And if the day comes that oil is so expensive that an Arab nation is actually considering going nuclear, how financially feasible will a nuclear program be? Remember, big construction projects drink a lot of diesel.

>"Shelf drilling is a capital expense, it's not recurring costs."

It's more accurate to say that platform drilling incurs massive up-front capital investment, as well as intense ongoing maintenance. Remember, we're not just talking about running the platform; we're talking about operating pipelines, refineries, etc. The large capital cost is part of the problem -- see my earlier comment about large integrated projects. But really, for EROEI purposes it doesn't matter when the money is spent; over its lifetime, an oil extraction project will consume a given amount of energy. That energy input comes overwhelmingly from oil and nat gas, and will continue to do so until the day we start seeing solar/nuclear/coal-powered rigs appear.

Turns out, Saudi Arabia actually is considering going nuclear, so we'll see my thoughts about feasibility tested for real.

>And it doesn't matter if we have tons of electric if all of our transportation infrastructure requires oil products. Converting all of that infrastructure is going to take lots of capital and energy.

I don't think biofuel represents a viable long-term solution, but butanol is practically ideal when it comes to the search for a short-term transition fuel. It runs in ordinary modern engines without modification, and vehicles from the '90s have been successfully run on 100% butanol without issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butanol_fuel http://nabc.cals.cornell.edu/pubs/nabc_19/NABC19_5Plenary2_R...

For the long-term:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Variations_...

why does it take so much capital to build a nuke plant? Sounds like a regulatory problem.

I really hope this was sarcasm.

Plutonium is not cheap. Uranium is not cheap. Redundant safety systems are not cheap. Pressure proof concrete vessels are not cheap. Industrial grade power turbines, also not cheap. The list goes on and on.

> Plutonium is not cheap. Uranium is not cheap.

Actually, they are, given the amount of energy that they contain.

> Redundant safety systems are not cheap. Pressure proof concrete vessels are not cheap. Industrial grade power turbines, also not cheap. The list goes on and on.

This line of "thinking" tells us to buy our dump trunks from Tonka, because Tonka's trucks are far less expensive than Caterpillars. (BTW - those items are a small fraction of the cost of a nuclear power plant. Add in the rest of what it takes to make power, safely control the plant, AND verify that you're doing so, and you're still at a small fraction of the cost of a plant.)

One can't make sensible decisions by looking at costs xor benefits in isolation.

A lot of that expense is redundant safety systems, inspections, etc. Which cost is born because of regulation.

Whether regulations like that are a problem or a solution is a source of endless debate depending on your political position. But given recent events in Japan, it is clear that we are headed for more regulation, not less.

I would hope they'd do most of that stuff in the absence of regulation.

A lot of people would hope that. However all available evidence suggests that people will and do cut corners until they get burned. And companies that refuse to do so will find themselves becoming less profitable than their less scrupulous competitors.

The result is public pressure for regulation.

Unfortunately economic theory and practice show that once an industry has come under regulation it becomes their priority to get control of that regulation. This process is called "regulatory capture" and inevitably succeeds. Once it has succeeded, the protections erode and the regulatory scheme is used to create barriers to entry for competitors. See the recent financial crisis for an example of this.

Depending on your politics you are likely to think that one of these failure modes is a bigger deal than the other.

The choice is often between a shaky regulatory structure and a melee between profit and common good. I usually prefer to take a chance on regulation unless someone comes up with a better option.

Sometimes the third option of going to an industry and asking them to do something does work, but not always. I'd always try it first, but it's not always going to work, and the consequences of inaction can be pretty bad.

Chernobyl proves that that's not a guarantee.

Is there a reason to believe they would?

I'm not sure why you were downvoted, as your guess was exactly right. The regulatory system for nuclear power (in the US, anyway) is incredibly screwed up, in ways too numerous to list. Just the delays from the bottlenecked building approval process can cause plant construction to run up billions of dollars in loan interest while they're waiting for the red tape to clear.

China is currently building CPR1000 plants cheaper than coal plants of the same capacity. These are not meltdown-prone clunkers; they are upgraded versions of French designs with a good safety record. They're also starting a buildup of Westinghouse AP1000 plants, built to the usual western standards of safety and redundancy, and they're doing it a lot cheaper than the US and Europe. We see similar things in South Korea, which gets a large portion of its energy from nuclear plants, and is now beginning to export them.

Considering how much safer nuclear power is than coal, paranoid regulations are actually making us quite a bit less safe by crippling our ability to build nuclear plants.

It's more of a public health issue - analogous to building sewer systems and clean water supplies.

ah, the joy of libertarian thought. Let a thousand meltdowns bloom.