User:Emesee/Clippings

Some problems facing practical exploitation
One practical problem with the muon-catalyzed fusion process is that muons are unstable, decaying in about 2.2 microseconds (in their rest frame). Hence, there needs to be some cheap means of producing muons, and the muons must be arranged to catalyze as many nuclear fusion reactions as possible before decaying.

Another, and in many ways more serious, problem is the notorious "alpha-sticking" problem mentioned in the previous section, which was recognized by J. D. Jackson in his seminal 1957 paper. The α-sticking problem is the approximately 1% probability of the negatively charged muon "sticking" to the doubly positively charged alpha particle "ash" that results from the deuteron-triton nuclear fusion "burning," thereby effectively removing the muon from the muon-catalysis process altogether. Even if muons were absolutely stable, each muon could catalyze, on average, only about 100 d-t muon-catalyzed nuclear fusions before sticking to an alpha particle, which is only about one-fifth the number of d-t muon-catalyzed nuclear fusions needed to produce break-even, where more thermal energy is generated than the electrical energy that is consumed to produce the muons in the first place, according to Jackson's rough 1957 estimate.

More recent measurements seem to point to more encouraging values for the α-sticking probability, finding the α-sticking probability to be about 0.5% (or perhaps even about 0.4% or 0.3%), which could mean as many as about 200 (or perhaps even about 250 or about 333) muon-catalyzed d-t fusions per muon. Indeed, the team led by Steven E. Jones achieved 150 d-t fusions per muon (average) at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility. Unfortunately, 200 (or 250 or even 333) muon-catalyzed d-t fusions per muon are still not quite enough even to reach "break-even," where as much thermal energy is generated (or output) as the electrical energy that was used up (or input) to make the muon in the first place. This means, of course, that not nearly enough thermal energy is generated thereby to be able to convert the thermal energy released into more useful electrical energy, and to have any electrical energy left over to sell to the commercial electrical power "grid." The conversion efficiency from thermal energy to electrical energy is only about 40% or so. Also, some not inconsiderable fraction of that electrical energy (hopefully not all of it) would have to be "recycled" (used up in deuteron particle accelerators, for example) to make more muons to keep the muon-catalyzed d-t nuclear fusion fires burning night and day. The best recent estimated guess of the electrical "energy cost" per muon is about 6 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), using deuterons that are accelerated to have kinetic energies of about 800 MeV per nucleon, with accelerators that are (coincidentally) about 40% efficient at taking electrical energy from the alternating current (AC) mains (the plugs in the wall) and accelerating the deuterons using this electrical energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Muon-catalyzed_fusion&oldid=193102361

Energy Information Administration and USGS 2000 reports
The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects world consumption of oil to increase to 98.3 million barrels a day in 2015 and 118 million barrels a day in 2030. This represents more than a 25% increase in world oil production. A 2004 paper by the Energy Information Administration based on data collected in 2000 disagrees with Hubbert peak theory on several points:
 * Explicitly incorporates demand into model as well as supply
 * Does not assume pre/post-peak symmetry of production levels
 * Models pre- and post-peak production with different functions (exponential growth and constant reserves-to-production ratio, respectively)
 * Assumes reserve growth, including via technological advancement and exploitation of small reservoirs

The EIA estimates of future oil supply are countered by Sadad Al Husseini, retired VP Exploration of Aramco, who calls it a 'dangerous over-estimate'. Husseini also points out that population growth and the emergence of China and India means oil prices are now going to be structurally higher than they have been.

Colin Campbell argues that the 2000 USGS estimates is a methodologically flawed study that has done incalculable damage by misleading international agencies and governments. Campbell dismisses the notion that the world can seamlessly move to more difficult and expensive sources of oil and gas when the need arises. He argues that oil is in profitable abundance or not there at all, due ultimately to the fact that it is a liquid concentrated by nature in a few places having the right geology. Campbell believes OPEC countries raised their reserves to get higher oil quotas and to avoid internal critique. He also points out that the USGS failed to extrapolate past discovery trends in the world’s mature basins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peak_oil&oldid=200428004