quote:

Actually, we are about to bury enough U-238 in Yucca Mountain to power the US, at current levels of energy consumption, for 200 years. Of course, it would take about $1 Trillion worth of infrastructure to do this. If we were to have a $2/gallon tax on both diesel and gasoline for three years, we could pay for it all.
At the end of the day, the NIMBYs may be at fault for blocking solutions, but it's ultimately consumption and an entitlement mentality about $1.25/gallon gasoline that are the problems.

quote:

ORIGINAL: freakofnature
Once a tax always a tax. So just throw on $2.00 more a gallon and watch the American economy come to a screeching HALT. No one will go anywhere. We couldn't afford to even go to work.

quote:

If these nuclear power plants can come on line by 2015, there will be a huge drop in demand. Prices of Oil would be greatly reduced.

quote:

I don't blame
1) American men and women just trying to live their lives, just like all of the rest of us.

quote:


It would be like a tax on stagecoach horses. And of course people could afford to go to work. $1.25/gallon gas is not an entitlement; neither is $3.50/gallon tax.

quote:

ORIGINAL: blessedinnyc

quote:

ORIGINAL: freakofnature
Once a tax always a tax. So just throw on $2.00 more a gallon and watch the American economy come to a screeching HALT. No one will go anywhere. We couldn't afford to even go to work.

It would be like a tax on stagecoach horses. And of course people could afford to go to work. $1.25/gallon gas is not an entitlement; neither is $3.50/gallon tax.

quote:

quote:

If these nuclear power plants can come on line by 2015, there will be a huge drop in demand. Prices of Oil would be greatly reduced.

The five nuclear plants coming online in 2015 would represent about a 5% increase in generation capacity. This is roughly 0.45% of the US's energy consumption, or about half the wind production capacity the state of Texas has installed in the past three years. More importantly, though, how do we make the electricity produced by these plants an effective substitute for gasoline?

quote:

quote:

I don't blame
1) American men and women just trying to live their lives, just like all of the rest of us.

I hate to state the unpopular but obvious truth, but these people consume gasoline. There is no entitlement in this country to getting anything at a certain price, so if these people consider $3.50/gallon gasoline a problem, it is their problem, not the government's.

The government can help a bit by opening up ANWR or help a lot by helping us improve efficiency or transition us off oil, but it's not the government's job to supply cheap gas.

quote:

ORIGINAL: mapachito13
I saw an interesting story on this morning's newscast about how the struggling economy AND high gas prices are keeping more people off the freeways thus reducing people's commutes on certain freeways. Let's raise the price of gas to 10 bucks a gallon and it'll be smooth sailing from now on.

quote:

My brother and I were talking about this the other weekend and he brought up an interesting point. If we ran our nuclear generation facilities like the French, (yes I am serious) we actually would make nuclear power generation more economical and we would cut the time it takes for the fuel rods to become inert from centuries to decades.

quote:

Oil is the most strategic asset a country has. I think that the government's job is to make sure that certain companies aren't manipulating the supply of this strategic asset to insure that the economy is well oiled (pun intended). Also it should be enacting legislation to insure that vehicle manufacturers are not wasting this resource by continuing to make inefficient designs.

quote:

Wind energy is one of the least efficient and most land inefficient forms of power generation. And that's not mentioning the tens of thousands of birds that it kills every year; chopped up in their rotor blades. So truthfully it is NOT environmentally friendly.

quote:

I hate to state the unpopular but obvious truth, but these people consume gasoline. There is no entitlement in this country to getting anything at a certain price, so if these people consider $3.50/gallon gasoline a problem, it is their problem, not the government's.

The government can help a bit by opening up ANWR or help a lot by helping us improve efficiency or transition us off oil, but it's not the government's job to supply cheap gas.

quote:

And of course people could afford to go to work.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Sophie11

So even through this maybe you say that we are still to blame. Fine. But then let me ask you what should we do then? We have never had much, we have enough just not any extra! But we have been living the same as everyone else in this country long before the gas prices went sky high. So when they did, we had no money to buy the expensive housing closer to my husbands job. And with what money would you have us buy a hybrid? We have a small 4 door car that gets pretty good gas mileage, and no payment (which is the best thing about that car!).
What more should we do?

quote:

I am encouraging the "We have to drill for our own oil now until a suitable replacement is in place and affordable" argument.

quote:

ORIGINAL: freakofnature
So you propose to make it the governments problem by adding another $50.00 to the already strained weekly budget of American families trying to survive as it is.

quote:

ORIGINAL: blessedinnyc

ORIGINAL: freakofnature
So you propose to make it the governments problem by adding another $50.00 to the already strained weekly budget of American families trying to survive as it is.

quote:

If they can't make it with $5/gallon gas now, they won't be able to survive $5/gallon gas in five years. Let's get it over with now, while inflation isn't totally out of control, yet.

quote:

ORIGINAL: freakofnature
So just to make sure the knife is in all the way and well we can't afford it anyway, let's just throw on $2.00/gallon more. That is great domestic policy. I heard the president of an airline the other day saying that soon, travel will once again be a thing for the superrich. Well, it seems going to work and trying to live will be a thing of the superrich to with $2.40/gallon taxes. Why bother???

quote:

First, it's $2/gallon.

quote:

Second off, if you can't afford $5/gallon now, you certainly won't be able to in five years.

quote:

Third, we should gas prices peak at $5/gallon, not $10.

quote:

And when gas prices are at $10/gallon, people like you will still be resisting the extra $2/gallon it will take to replace oil. We need a solution, and the only solution is replacing our existing infrastructure so that we don't have to depend on Iran being nice to run the country

quote:

The problem is that demand has not risen very much at all, relatively, in the past decade or two, yet gas prices have almost quadrupled in the past twenty years. Demand isn't the answer.

quote:

We have the eneegy reserves to be oil independent for over 50 years and in that time could develop alternative energy sources.

quote:

I wonder how families managed before the invention of mini vans.

quote:

I asked you earlier is this on top of the taxes already applied???

quote:

I don't know where I will be in 5 years, do you? If we deflate the economy by adding another tax liability, you are right, I would not be able to afford $5.00/gallon in 5 years, because we will all be out of work. I will hopefully be close enough to a soup line that I can walk. AND you aren't taking into consideration the cost of any other products and services. Food is on the rise, health care, education. Also, gas won't be $5.00 a gallon in 5 years it will be $15.00/gallon, so it is okay to make it $17.00/gallon because.... well why not, your already paying through the nose.

quote:

I'm sorry??? UHHH??? WHAT???

quote:

I happen to agree with this statement.. in principal. It is the how I am concerned with. Why do we have to raise taxes. Why can't they... CUT SPENDING??? In other areas. I think you and I have had this argument/discussion before. It is all dejavu!!!

quote:

ORIGINAL: freakofnature

quote:

And of course people could afford to go to work.

They could afford to go to work, but by the time they filled up the gas in the automobile at say the current amount of $4.00/gallon, a 15 gallon tank that is $60.00 so add another $30.00 in taxes ( BTW is this on top of the already $.40 per gallon tax we currently suffer through)??? Eitherway now we are talking about $90.00 to fill up your car. $90.00 to you in NY may be just another $90.00. To me, father of 4, living modestly in a 3 bedroom house in a small town in Florida that is called a burden. $360/month in gas. Now I have to make a choice between my kid playing football at $85/month x 2 boys so $170 /month or getting gas to get to work. Then my two daughters, tennis and soccer do I pay for their soccer stuff and tennis raquets, tennis shoes/balls and other required items or gas for my car. I know for you living in NY who cares. For me and countless others it is a heartwrenching decission.

quote:

ORIGINAL: blessedinnyc

Well, there have been some criticisms that breeder reactors- used for recycling fuel- are expensive to operate, but I do think that if U-235 gets expensive enough, it might make sense.

I will say that we have to plan out the design of the reactor very carefully and site it in a place that won't affect the economy too badly if anything happens. I would be perfectly fine living next door to a western LWR. I'm not sure if I'd want to live next door to France's Phoenix breeder reactor. One of the main problems with breeder reactors is that you can't convert U-238 to Pu-239 using a water-moderated reaction. This provides a lot of inherent safety most commercial nuclear plants- the reactor needs a moderator to operate, and the laws of physics gaurantee that no matter what happens, if the reactor loses coolant, it shuts down.

An example where a reactor lost coolant but didn't shut down would be Chernobyl, and one of the things that kept TMI from turning into a disaster was the fact that the reaction shut down immediately. So this inherent safety feature is something that we should think very carefully about before we start building breeder reactors. However, if we can make breeders about as safe as existing reactors, I'm all for it.

quote:


That's a great point, but I think it's much more likely that countries would manipulate supply than companies. The five largest oil firms produce less than the single largest producer in OPEC.

quote:

They could afford to go to work, but by the time they filled up the gas in the automobile at say the current amount of $4.00/gallon, a 15 gallon tank that is $60.00 so add another $30.00 in taxes ( BTW is this on top of the already $.40 per gallon tax we currently suffer through)??? Eitherway now we are talking about $90.00 to fill up your car. $90.00 to you in NY may be just another $90.00. To me, father of 4, living modestly in a 3 bedroom house in a small town in Florida that is called a burden. $360/month in gas. Now I have to make a choice between my kid playing football at $85/month x 2 boys so $170 /month or getting gas to get to work. Then my two daughters, tennis and soccer do I pay for their soccer stuff and tennis raquets, tennis shoes/balls and other required items or gas for my car. I know for you living in NY who cares. For me and countless others it is a heartwrenching decission. My boys have aspirations of playing in the NFL, do I take away that dream by taking them out of sports because I can't afford to get them to practice, get them to their games, get them the uniforms and supplies just so I can pay $90.00 a week for gas. I know I know, entitlements. No I am not encouraging the entitlement argument, I am encouraging the "We have to drill for our own oil now until a suitable replacement is in place and affordable" argument. Tell me blessed, what is my choice? Football/soccer/tennis or gas money??? Your choice... I know decissions decissions, tough. How many kids you got blessed????

quote:

live itn itty bitty small town Indiana

quote:

Well, I haven't heard of any incidents in France for as long as I can remember so someone there must have it right. Or maybe they hide all that radioactivity in their cheese!

quote:

ORIGINAL: mcp

I read somewhere else that projections for 2008 shows US demand down 200K b/d and China up 400K b/d. In a combined market of over 28M b/d, that is less than 1% uptick in demand for two major/main users that import heavily. Supplies appear to be up not just in strategic reserves, but in additional crudes and gasoline reserves as well. All this with the reduction and profit losses in refining in the US. Some of the profit strains on the refiners is the regulation to ultralow sulfer diesel; they would rather refine a traditional distillate diesel to export. Also, I know personally that different grades of oil sit stockpiled in floating assets (ships/ barges). I read an article earlier today that stated that Iran has had problems with land storage of their crude and are holding ships full of sour crude.

quote:

First off, there are roughly 80 million barrels per day of consumption.

Second off, 200 kbpd is a huge number. This is roughly equivalent to all of Alaska's offshore oil consumption. This is roughly 10 times the amount that Texas increased production over the past year.