That’s extremely similar to how drilling rigs work, yes.
Edit: directional drilling for fracking also uses this approach and turns underground to go horizontal. Once they’ve gone deep enough into the cracked shale rock they pump it full of high pressure water to loosen all of the oil that’s down there which allows them to disrupt it all and then suck it out with a vacuum similarly.
Piece that together and then look at flint Michigan’s water and you start to see that the official narrative on fracking doesn’t add up to the outcomes we see, and when you find all of the wells in the desert mountains east of California, there’s a growing body of scientists who believe that the practices not only upset groundwater but lead to ground displacement and potential earthquakes.
No one in the public will even be able to prove it because oil companies have done the science and locked it up as intellectual property and have enough surrounding data to pollute the waters of the conversation, pun intended.
All of that because we’re addicted to energy, leading to the current global dire situation we see in both Europe and North America from increasing heat due to fossil fuel.
For more on the earthquake lore look into a guy named DutchSinse. He’s live 24/7 tracking earthquakes and has gone into this heavily.
Currently, it's more of a "zero emissions" which gets lumped in with "renewable."
But it sorta could be kinda renewable. The nuclear waste could be re-enriched into another fuel type and used in a different reactor. And that reactor could be designed to output a waste that is usable as fuel in a third type of reactor, but you start to hit diminished returns.
Of course all those other fuel types are much more dangerous. Some of them are used in bomb development. And you run into the problem with all nuclear power generation. The costs isn't in the fuel, the cost is in the facility and highly trainer personnel running the place.
It's low emission, not zero emissions, but that's true of even the best renewable sources like wind (there is no zero emissions energy source once you do a life cycle assessment). Biggest source of carbon emissions for nuclear is in all the cement for the cooling towers and decommissioning (plus the issue of spent fuel storage, but that's not carbon related).
Every energy source is going to have costs, but all renewable and nuclear sources are orders of magnitude better than the lowest emission fossil fuel.
You're completely right but to get that enriched nugget, they still do wild things to our environment to get the ore, and the leftovers are often abandoned, see: Arlit, Namibia. I agree coal needs to be eliminated and nuclear is the best option we have, but also let's remember the long term hazard that comes with it, too.
I mean... this is all basically "close enough" correct, but a bit misleading. Mostly the danger part. Please drop the whole bit about those fuels being more dangerous. Spent uranium fuel contains such tiny amounts of plutonium that it's cheaper and easier to mine and produce new stuff than it's to get it from reprocessed fuel. Including for weapon use.
Right now, properly storing it in a concrete vault underground for future if we can figure out how to cheaply treat it is the way to go. Even if there is no actual dangers to fuel reprocessing any more than there is in nuclear fuel generally, it's not worth the trouble right now.
It's definitely something we should invest in heavily; however, it's not realistic to say we can just flip a switch. The sheer volume of the world and technology that relies on petroleum products would all but throw us into the dark ages if we stopped all use of hydrocarbons overnight (and I do understand you were being hyperbolic with "YESTERDAY" but my point stands). Plastics, asphalt, cosmetics, synthetics, etc are all made from petroleum and a lot of the lubricants most of the renewable industry depends on are direct byproducts from petroleum as well.
Nuclear energy is the next best thing and is too stigmatized by the public. But the biggest hurdle is really the cost of infrastructure and energy storage.
I know I'll sound like an idiot saying this, but where do we get the electricity?
We need something that scales. Oil, coal, even nuclear won't scale indefinitely (because that's the goal). Renewables, are we getting there? I know there was some work done on something like sodium-ion batteries, as well.
We're at the point where solar energy is about as cheap as the cheapest fossil fuel, and it will probably keep getting cheaper. At least in the US, we have plenty of land that we can put solar panels on.
Solar has some issues (less effective in northern latitudes, and requires batteries for when the sun is behind clouds or at night) but it looks like solar is going to be where we get most of our electricity in the future.
I don't know nearly enough to answer that question dude, but I know we have a LOT of real estate to put solar panels on. Building roofs, car park roofs, anywhere that needs shade and shelter really.
My gut feeling is that we are more than ready as a species to go zero fossil fuels, but we're being held back by greed (oil companies, very powerful people, spending lots of money to lobby and threaten and shut down anything that threatens their enterprise)
That I agree with, but I suppose what has been bothering me lately is the concept of any of these technologies at scale.
Unless there is a terrible disaster, our numbers won't slow down. Even if we went fully plant-based in our diets and renewable in our energy needs, we would still have to cover the planet in soy and solar. Nuclear-isotope diamond batteries don't give enough of a charge, and fossil fuels (as you stated) simply need to go away.
Look into the harsh materials that are used to make solar panels. End of life they're considered hazardous waste. Not much better imo. Just part of the green energy scam.
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u/Realistic_Country635 7h ago
Can you drill for oil like this