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I just realized that I put my citation thingies for each of my resources on my computer at home, rather then on this blog... Well, here they are in any case


JET. "Nuclear Fusion Basics." 21 Nov. 2005 .

Nuclear Fusion is the energy-producing process which takes place continuously in the sun and stars. In the core of the sun at temperatures of 10-15 million degrees Celsius, Hydrogen is converted to Helium providing enough energy to sustain life on earth.

For energy production on earth, different fusion reactions are involved. The most suitable reaction occurs between the nuclei of the two heavy forms (isotopes) of Hydrogen - Deuterium (D) and Tritium (T); eventually reactions involving just Deuterium or Deuterium and Helium (3He) may be used.

At the temperatures required for the D-T fusion reaction - over 100 Million deg. C - the fuel has changed its state from gas to PLASMA. In a plasma, the electrons have been separated from the atomic nuclei (usually called the "ions"). Understanding plasma required major developments in physics. Plasmas are now used widely in industry, especially for semi-conductor manufacture.

This reasource gave lots of good qouteable facts.

Freudenrich, Craig. "How Nuclear Fusion Reactors Work." Howstuffworks.com. 21 Nov. 2005 .

Fusion reactors have been getting a lot of press recently because they offer some major advantages over other power sources. They will use abundant sources of fuel, they will not leak radiation above normal background levels and they will produce less radioactive waste than current fission reactors.

Nobody has put the technology into practice yet, but working reactors aren't actually that far off. Fusion reactors are now in experimental stages at several laboratories in the United States and around the world.

This reasource makes things easy to understand, and provides links to other resources.

PPPL. "Fusion Basics." Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. 21 Nov. 2005 .

Abundant Fuel Supply
The major fuel, deuterium, may be readily extracted from ordinary water, which is available to all nations. The surface waters of the earth contain more than 10 million million tons of deuterium, an essentially inexhaustible supply. The tritium required would be produced from lithium, which is available from land deposits or from sea water which contains thousands of years' supply. The world-wide availability of these materials would thus eliminate international tensions caused by imbalance in fuel supply. Comparison of Coal and Fusion Power Plants
Comparison of Coal and Fusion Power Plants
No Risk of a Nuclear Accident
The amounts of deuterium and tritium in the fusion reaction zone will be so small that a large uncontrolled release of energy would be impossible. In the event of a malfunction, the plasma would strike the walls of its containment vessel and cool.

No Air Pollution
Since no fossil fuels are used, there will be no release of chemical combustion products because they will not be produced.

No High-level Nuclear Waste
Similarly, there will be no fission products formed to present a handling and disposal problem. Radioactivity will be produced by neutrons interacting with the reactor structure, but careful materials selection is expected to minimize the handling and ultimate disposal of activated materials.

No Generation of Weapons Material
Another significant advantage is that the materials and by-products of fusion are not suitable for use in the production of nuclear weapons.

Summary
The abundance of raw materials, their wide distribution, and the environmental acceptability of fusion are augmented by the expectation that fusion energy will be an economical source of electricity generation.

This reasource gives lots of good info. about the conditions required for fusion.

ITER. "ITER." International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. 21 Nov. 2005 .

ITER is the experimental step between today’s studies of plasma physics and tomorrow's electricity-producing fusion power plants.

It is based around a hydrogen plasma torus operating at over 100 million °C, and will produce 500 MW of fusion power.

It is an international project involving The People's Republic of China, the European Union and Switzerland (represented by Euratom), Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States of America, under the auspices of the IAEA.

It is technically ready to start construction and the first plasma operation is expected in 2016.

ITER is to be constructed in Europe, at Cadarache, near Aix-en-Provence, France.

This site basically gave a whole bunch of information about ITER, the international collaberation to create a sustained reaction.

Savinar, Matt. "Life after the Oil Crash." ??-??-2004. 21 Nov. 2005 .

Oil will not just "run out" because all oil production follows a bell curve. This is true whether we're talking about an individual field, a country, or on the planet as a whole.

Oil is increasingly plentiful on the upslope of the bell curve, increasingly scarce and expensive on the down slope. The peak of the curve coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted. Once the peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to go up.

In practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that if 2000 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2020 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2020 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil-dependant economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode.

I consider this site to be propoganda. All that I took from it were the bare facts, not the persuasive stuff.

Peterson, F. "Inertial Fusion Energy: A Tutorial on the Technology and Economics." 21 Nov. 2005 .

In inertial confinement fusion, small B-B-size hollow spherical capsules, most likely made of plastic, are filled at high pressure with an equal mixture of deuterium and tritium, and then chilled to cryogenic temperatures, so that the D-T gas freezes as a thin, solid coating on the inside of the capsule wall. Suspended by a thin plastic film at the center of a metal cavity called a hohlraum, these spherical capsules can be injected into the center of a target chamber. There, in a few billionths of a second, lasers, or beams of high-energy heavy ions as pictured in Fig. 1 above, can be used to heat the interior of the hohlraum cavity to temperatures several hundred times the temperature of the sun, vaporizing the surface of the plastic shell into an extremely high pressure plasma. Alternatively, direct-drive targets have no hohlraum, and lasers heat the capsule surface directly.

The capsule, transformed into vaporized plasma, reaches pressures of hundreds of millions of atmospheres. As the plasma expands outward like rocket exhaust, it accelerates the thin layer of D-T radially inward, to velocities of 300 to 400 kilometers per second. The residual D-T gas from the center of the capsule, heated by the denser D-T that surrounds and compresses it, reaches peak temperatures over 100 million degrees Celsius, sufficient to ignite a propagating fusion reaction. Just as a match can light firewood, this hot spot ignites a fusion burn wave that propagates out into the denser D-T. By releasing seventy or more times the energy originally needed to compress and heat the fuel, this dynamic process provides the basis for generating inertial fusion energy. The second chapter of these notes, "How ICF targets work," discusses in greater detail the physical processes that occur in ICF targets, and the issues related to manufacturing inexpensive targets and injecting them with high precision into target chambers.

Gave lots of good information about inertial confidement. Probibally my biggest source on the subject.

Citations... Almost

http://www.pppl.gov/fusion_basics/pages/fusion_basics.html
http://www.nrel.gov/learning/eds_hydrogen.html
http://www.alternativescience.com/cold_fusion.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/electric-car.htm


Now that Ive read some of the stuff in these, I can make my citations. Im getting kicked off, so that can wait.

introduction

In the future of ever expanding energy needs, oil will not carry us. We will need viable alternatives everywhere, from power plants to our cars. While Wind, and Geothermal energy work, they can only be used in some parts of the world. Even solar power is affected by cloud cover. Nuclear fusion, Cold fusion, and Hydrogen power are not so restricted. If even one of these becomes efficient, we will have a very good, long lasting, clean supply of energy for the future, in every corner of the world. However, while power plant energy is good, it will not help our gas reliance in our motor vehicles. So, I also researched how electric engines work. In the end, I found that while some of the energy sources might work in the future, and some might not, _______ was the most viable energy source for the future, and electrical engines.


I know that the intro doesnt tell which i found to be the best hope, I havent finished my reaserch because my topic has changed.

...

Plan to make citations form this page

http://www.nrel.gov/learning/eds_hydrogen.html

Outline

I know that I dont have the citations and reaserch done for my new project, but Im going to make a outline of what I want it to be.

1.Title
2.Introduction
A.First paragraph
1.Tells what alternate sources of energy I am reaserching, and tells wether electiric engines are feasible. Also tells which of the three has the best hopes.

11.Body
A.First Section
1.Describes relience on oil
2.Why we need alternate energy soon
B.Second section
1.Describe the physical process of cold fusion
2.Adress wether its real or a hoax
3.Is it possible in the near future?
4.What holds it back?
C.Third Section
1.Describe Hot Fusion
2.Is it possible in the near future?
3.What holds it back?
4.Differant methods of doing it.
D.Forth section
1.Discribe hydrogen power
2.How does it work?
3.Is it possible for cars?
4.What holds it back?
5.Is it feasible for the near future.
E.Fifth Section
1.If we have all this power, how are cars going to run?
2.Discribe electrical engines
3.Cite Jims dad a bunch
4.Can it work?
111.Conclusion
A.Which energy source might work the best.
B.Hope or No Hope
C.Long road ahead.

How things have gone so far

So far, I have liked my topic, but my reaserch has been getting a little off. Lately, I have been researching cold fusion and hydrogen power more then how much oil is left, because there is more objective research on those subjects then on oil. When I reaserch oil, either it says we have 100 years and it wont be a problem, or it says that in half a year our society is going to ****. The more objective big newsagency articles dont tell all that much, so I could write a paper on oil running out, but it would mostly speculation. I would much rather write a reaserch paper begining with how much we rely on oil, and then go into some alternitives, mainly hot fusion, cold fusion, and maybe hydrogen power. My primary source might be Jims dad, who is a electrical engineer, involving electrical engines, to see if we could swich to electrical engines feasibly.

Citation 5

Alternative energy sources have failed to supplant oil for another very simple reason. About two-thirds of the oil consumed in the U.S. is used as a transportation fuel. So far, only biofuels — like ethanol made from corn — are available to displace petroleum as a vehicle fuel. But ethanol and biodiesel are only economical thanks to heavy subsidies. Some researchers say that these biomass fuels require more for fossil energy to make than they produce. In any case, even if ethanol production doubles to 7.5 billion gallons in 2012 — as called for the in the recent energy bill — that would represent only about 5 percent of the fuel consumed by U.S. motorists today.

Other renewable energy sources (like wind and solar) and non-oil fossil fuels (like natural gas or coal) and nuclear will also displace little oil because they are used almost exclusively to generate electricity. Less than 2 percent of the 20 million barrels a day of petroleum products consumed in the U.S. is used to supply power.
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“There is very little petroleum that is used to power electricity generators in the in the U.S. today, very little indeed," said Wiser. "So the wind projects you see up there, the solar projects, the geothermal projects — they are offsetting natural gas generation, coal generation and maybe every now and then a little bit of oil. But they’re not directly displacing oil in any significant magnitude today.”

So until electric-drive transportation becomes commonplace, alternative energy sources that generate electricity can do little to help meet the growing demand for gasoline and jet fuel. Most alternative energy advocates point to the latest improvements in gas-electric hybrids as kind a of “bridge” technology that will introduce the electric drive trains to production passenger vehicles. These early generation hybrids may soon be replaced with “plug hybrids” — designed to hold a charge that will take you 30 miles or so between charges, enough to get most Americans to and from work or the local mall every day without burning a drop of gasoline.


Schoen, John. Alternative energy slow to take hold. 28 July 2005. MSNBC. 01 Nov. 2005 .

This source talked about alternative energy and what can and cannot be done. I found it to be one of the most bipartisan on oil running out, it's main purpose seemed to be tring to get alternatives promoted.

Read the First Comment for html.

...

"Are We 'Running Out'? I Thought
There Was 40 Years of the Stuff Left"


Oil will not just "run out" because all oil production follows a bell curve. This is true whether we're talking about an individual field, a country, or on the planet as a whole.

Oil is increasingly plentiful on the upslope of the bell curve, increasingly scarce and expensive on the down slope. The peak of the curve coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted. Once the peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to go up.

In practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that if 2000 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2020 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2020 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil-dependant economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode.

The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.

In a similar sense, an oil-based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10-15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.

The effects of even a small drop in production can be devastating. For instance, during the 1970s oil shocks, shortfalls in production as small as 5% caused the price of oil to nearly quadruple. The same thing happened in California a few years ago with natural gas: a production drop of less than 5% caused prices to skyrocket by 400%.

Fortunately, previous price shocks were only temporary.

The coming oil shocks won't be so short-lived. They represent the onset of a new, permanent condition. Once the decline gets under way, production will drop (conservatively) by 3% per year, every year.

That estimate comes from numerous sources, not the least of which is Vice President Dick Cheney himself. In a 1999 speech he gave while still CEO of Halliburton, Cheney stated:

By some estimates, there will be an average of two-percent
annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead,
along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline
in production from existing reserves.That means by 2010 we
will need on the order of anadditional 50 million barrels a
day.

Cheney's assesement is supported by the estimates of numerous non-political, retired, and now disinterested scientists, many of whom believe global oil production will peak and go into terminal decline within the next five years.


Savinar, Matt. Peak Oil: Life After the Oil Crash. Jan. 2004. 01 Nov. 2005 .

This site gave a lot of good information, if you could sypher through all of the persuasive stuff.

Read first comment for html.

Primary Source

My primary soiurce is going to be a survay of 9th graders, in order to see what the average kid thinks and knows.