Screw the oil industry/clean energy wank

"Kill the car industry"? "Only nuclear"? Really? So run-of-the-river hydro is impractical anywhere? Ocean thermal is impossible (especially at high latitudes)? Solar power satellites are impossible?
Hydro needs very specific geographic conditions that are pretty hard and very expensive to artificially recreate. Ocean thermal is likely impractical to power entire countries. And as for solar power satellites, the political acceptability for countries to start wielding hundreds of GW worth of orbital energy weapons isn't going to be something easy to achieve, let alone talking about the cost to do it.
 
The easiest way is a much earlier oil crisis, which results in greater use of nuclear power. Next mix it with thorium being used. Here we could have the allies banning Japan and Germany from standard nuclear power and instead we see them invest into thorium reactors, as thorium are safer and cheaper, most countries who doesn’t plan to use plutonium for anything (nuclear weapons) decides to go with thorium reactors. As electricity have become dirt cheap and oil prices are high, we also begin to see a increase in artificial manufactured fuel.
 
The easiest way is a much earlier oil crisis, which results in greater use of nuclear power. Next mix it with thorium being used. Here we could have the allies banning Japan and Germany from standard nuclear power and instead we see them invest into thorium reactors, as thorium are safer and cheaper, most countries who doesn’t plan to use plutonium for anything (nuclear weapons) decides to go with thorium reactors. As electricity have become dirt cheap and oil prices are high, we also begin to see a increase in artificial manufactured fuel.
Thorium isn't necessarly safer and cheaper. I found out, when getting some documentation about it, that there are tons of different concepts for thorium reactors, all of them with various advantages and issues. Some of them make proliferation even easier than uranium/plutonium reactors, actually, while some of them aren't particularly safe. I don't like to be that guy, but it does annoy me (a little, not that much, though) to see that people have ended up (due to a lack of institutional communication, IMO) mixing all models and concept to imagine a perfect thorium reactor that combines all advantages with no drawback. I'd suggest you to check on "Molten Salt Reactors and Thorium Energy", by Thomas J. Dolan (Elsevier editions) if you want to know a bit more about it. My degrees ain't in nuclear engineering and I found it pretty accessible overall, if long.

Checking it right now, and among the chapters, I see:

Liquid fuel, thermal neutron spectrum reactors
Fast-spectrum, liquid-fueled reactors
Solid fuel, salit-cooled reactors
Static liquid fuel reactors
Accelerator-driven systems
Fusion-fission hybrids
Throium molten salt reactor nuclear energy system
Integral molten salt reactor
ThorCon reactor
Molten salt fast reactor
Stable salt fast reactor

And a few others. Then there are the reviews of work being done often very independently in almost two dozen countries, on various models with a handful of proofs of concept for part of the extremely complex equipment needed to make such reactors work. TL, DR? They aren't a magical solution to the issues of nuclear power generation.
 
For all the nuke talk there is oodles and oodles of energy available from the dawn of the industrial era simply going to waste. Lots of industry creates vast amounts of heat and wastes it once the primary purpose is done, that waste heat could be recycled to generate power or run things like district heating. I read a while ago that the US could generate the equivalent of 20% of its power production from industry waste heat alone.
 
Mike McCormack is able to win re-election in 1980 and solidify the Pro-Fusion lobbying force in Congress he was in the process of building IOTL that had already been able to pass the Magnetic Fusion Energy Engineering Act of 1980. With a strong force to push for Fusion, it's likely you'd see the Center for Fusion Engineering be created while projects like Princeton’s Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s Mirror Fusion Test Reactor get a chance to actually operate, instead of shut down on the day they were supposed in the example of the latter. Others, like Oak Ridge's Elmo Bumpy Torus preliminary design for a 1200 MW magnetic fusion power plant would actually get built, same for Princeton's Compact Ignition Tokamak (CIT). It's important to note that the Reagan Administration wasn't opposed at all to Nuclear Fusion, indeed setting high funding for it during the first term, but said funding began to languish without a unified bloc in Congress to support the costs and especially so with declining oil prices in the second half of the decade. if McCormack had been able to stay and continue his work, combined with the openness of Reagan to said work, I think there would've been more than sufficient political will to see support for the costs continue and thus keep the United States on track for a working reactor by 2000. Such was stipulated by the previously mentioned legislation, which used 1976 projections by the ERDA to establish its time frame. By ATL 2019, Nuclear Fusion would likely be entering commercialization if not already a few years into such, if the timeline presented by ITER is anything to go by.

For good measure to the above, and to qualify for the "Screw Oil" portion of the OP, have Saddam be successfully assassinate at Dujail in 1982 by Kurdish fighters. In the event of his death, given the purges he had previously conducted, it's likely Ad-Douri or Khairallah Talfah would take power. Both have their issues, but both would definitely being more willing to let the Iraqi Army engage in offensives and counter-offensives against the Iranians. Saddam IOTL was pretty reluctant for many years to allow such, resulting in the relatively static war that dominated much of that conflict. With a more aggressive Iraqi leadership from 1982, it's possible the conflict could end much sooner; let's say 1985 and with the Iraqis getting a minor victory of securing the Shatt Al-Arab fully for themselves. With the war at a close, the Gulf states would scale back the amount of their production as opposed to going full blast to help keep the Iraqis funded as in OTL. Thus, the 1980s glut would be avoided or at least seriously mitigated, further bringing about more support for Nuclear Fusion in the United States.
 
For all the nuke talk there is oodles and oodles of energy available from the dawn of the industrial era simply going to waste. Lots of industry creates vast amounts of heat and wastes it once the primary purpose is done, that waste heat could be recycled to generate power or run things like district heating. I read a while ago that the US could generate the equivalent of 20% of its power production from industry waste heat alone.

Just because USA do not do so, does not mean the rest of the world doesn't. However, the "waste heat" is exactly waste heat for a reason: it does not have sufficient energy density to power a Carnot cycle engien. But it does not preclude it from other usages.
Using waste heat (low pressure steam) from coal and gas power plants to heat cities is a common feature in both Western/central Europe and in the former Soviet Union. I would not be surprised if NYC, Philadelphia, Boston and other East Coast cities in US wouldn't use it as well. The Soviets had also some of the nuclear power plants connected to city heat network, in the West (to my knowledge) only the Swiss have done that. Using waste heat instead of burning natural gas or fuel oil in order to heat houses is saving a lot of hydrocarbons and reduces emissions a lot.
Within the industry, "waste not, want not" has meanwhile become an art form - it includes waste streams from one plant being used as raw materials for another, but it also includes waste heat:
https://www.basf.com/global/en/investors/calendar-and-publications/factbook/basf-group/verbund.html
Hydropower can be in principle expanded - but IOTL it has been fought by environmentalists nearly as fiercely as nuclear power. Nevertheless, while you can in prnciple build a nuclear power station wherever you have a large-ish body of water, you cannot build a mountain chain.
 
Hydro needs very specific geographic conditions that are pretty hard and very expensive to artificially recreate.
"artificially recreate"? You really don't know what run-of-the-river hydro is, do you?
Ocean thermal is likely impractical to power entire countries.
Oh? So the electricity & hydrogen the rigs produce can't be transported?

And did I say, "by itself"?
orbital energy weapons isn't going to be something easy to achieve, let alone talking about the cost to do it.
"orbital energy weapons"? Nobody adovcating SPS is suggesting energy density at the receiver much over that of sunlight, AFAIK.

IMO, the cost argument is overblown; using Mylar mirrors rather than PV cells makes it much more practical. Besides which, when you're talking about such insanely high amounts of power, the cost is worth it.
 
Plus uranium is "fossil" : it is a mineral, and thus isn't renewable.
The least renewable of non-renewables. Petroleum is a chemical can be synthesized or replicated from renewable feedstocks if need be, including CO2 and water. Uranium is an element and is, for all intents and purposes, impossible to replicate. Don't waste it.
 
The least renewable of non-renewables. Petroleum is a chemical can be synthesized or replicated from renewable feedstocks if need be, including CO2 and water. Uranium is an element and is, for all intents and purposes, impossible to replicate. Don't waste it.

Except it can be extricated from seawater, one report here:

https://newatlas.com/nuclear-uranium-seawater-fibers/55033/

Higher cost of uranium due to larger demand would create filtration techniques faster than OTL.
 

kernals12

Banned
We built our society around oil because we were forced to by the constraints of technology. Short of an ASB scenario, there's no way you can move forward 1 century in progress in batteries and solar power.
 
We built our society around oil because we were forced to by the constraints of technology. Short of an ASB scenario, there's no way you can move forward 1 century in progress in batteries and solar power.

Nuclear power and hydro electric in combination of hydrogen economy, hydrogen produced primarily by nuclear heat. That would be technologically doable without massive progress of battery technology. Of course some applications would need fossils, but in a massively reduced way.
 
I am a firm believer in crawling before you walk. To get the tech level needed to get clean tech you have to burn a lot of dead dinosaurs.

We moved to coal because wood wasn't as effective. That gave us the power to have an industrial revolution. Oil is a more convenient coal.

Green tech is interesting. The environmental consequences of fossil fuels may be wanking green tech already? But we certainly couldn't have green tech without fossil fuels.
 
Nuclear power and hydro electric in combination of hydrogen economy, hydrogen produced primarily by nuclear heat. That would be technologically doable without massive progress of battery technology. Of course some applications would need fossils, but in a massively reduced way.
Hydrogen is a bitch to transport safely. The advantage of oil is that it's convenient in a way few, if any, other fuels are. To get a hydrogen tank in a car that isn't a public menace, you sacrifice a lot of things between cost, endurance, flexibility, etc.
 

kernals12

Banned
Nuclear power and hydro electric in combination of hydrogen economy, hydrogen produced primarily by nuclear heat. That would be technologically doable without massive progress of battery technology. Of course some applications would need fossils, but in a massively reduced way.
Fuel cells cost too much and hydrogen is difficult to store.
 
Fuel cells cost too much and hydrogen is difficult to store.
Fuel cells only cost so much because there's been so little research into them.

And hydrogen isn't so enormously harder to store than, frex, CNG or propane.
Hydrogen is a bitch to transport safely.
Compared to a natural gas pipeline?
To get a hydrogen tank in a car that isn't a public menace, you sacrifice a lot of things between cost, endurance, flexibility, etc.
And, again, compare CNG or propane.

Not to mention the ideas of producing "bricks" of solidified hydrogen. (Don't ask me how that's supposed to work, but IIRC, it was in Scientific American several years ago.)
 
Fuel cells only cost so much because there's been so little research into them.

And hydrogen isn't so enormously harder to store than, frex, CNG or propane.

Compared to a natural gas pipeline?

And, again, compare CNG or propane.

Not to mention the ideas of producing "bricks" of solidified hydrogen. (Don't ask me how that's supposed to work, but IIRC, it was in Scientific American several years ago.)
Are you kidding? Fuel cells have had huge amounts of research
Practically every auto executive out there thinks they're the future, and automakers keep pouring millions upon millions into them. This attitude even as the BEV pulls ahead and closes the gap on the biggest advantage fuel cells have, which is charge time.

That said, I am very much rooting for more affordable fuel cells and I hope they really are coming. They are very well suited to certain things that batteries are less adept at.
 
And, again, compare CNG or propane.
Yep, it remains the same result: hydrogen is much, much harder to store than CNG or propane if you don't want tons of leaks everywhere: when your molecule is so bloody tiny, it becomes a pain in the ass to not have it leak out. Pro-tip: ever had a helium baloon as a kid? Haven't you noticed that they leak no matter what?

Hydrogen is worse.
Not to mention the ideas of producing "bricks" of solidified hydrogen. (Don't ask me how that's supposed to work, but IIRC, it was in Scientific American several years ago.)
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No. Just no. Also oh hell no. Let me point to something for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_hydrogen
Solid hydrogen is the solid state of the element hydrogen, achieved by decreasing the temperature below hydrogen's melting point of 14.01 K (−259.14 °C; −434.45 °F). It was collected for the first time by James Dewar in 1899 and published with the title "Sur la solidification de l'hydrogène" (English: On the solidification of hydrogen) in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, 7th series, vol. 18, Oct. 1899.[1][2] Solid hydrogen has a density of 0.086 g/cm3 making it one of the lowest-density solids.
Not only would you need some huge cryogenic installation in your vehicle to store the stuff but your fuel density would be astonishingly low, making it useless.

Physics and chemistry are a thing.
 
Not only would you need some huge cryogenic installation in your vehicle to store the stuff but your fuel density would be astonishingly low, making it useless.
Uh, no. AIUI, this presupposed mixing hydrogen with something else, & turned into bricks.
 
No WW1. Not only does that see Frank Shuman's experiments in concentrated solar continuing, but also reduces the number of trucks and other petrol vehicles.
 
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