Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Wickidsurfer on <06-16-11/1849:50>
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A friend and I where discussing shadowrun today and the topic of petroleum based energy came up, with projections showing fuel shortages in the future, what has become of the fossil fuel industry in the 6th world? I imagine that there are still petroleum products, I know most cars operate on the grid system, but what of t-birds, jets, semi-orbitals, long haul trucks etc....
Which brings up another question wouldn't the Athabascan Council wield significant power(with all the oil reserves in the north) and have been a juicy target for the former Tsimshian area under the plundering yoke of MCT?
(sorry if this is an obvious question, thought I'd get some forum-iffec answers versus digging around in dusty ol' tomes)
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Petro-Chem Fuels are the common form of "Gasoline" (Petrol substitute, actually) that's been mentioned in the fluff back in the day. A bit of Petrol with a lot of chemical fillers. Bio-Diesel is a big one, and is likely to have a Aviation Fuel equivalent.
Most ground vehicles are hybrid vehicles, electrical energy at low speeds, Petrochem engine for higher speeds or acceleration. This is what GridGuide connects to and provides power to (This limits accel rates, BTW.). Military vehicles, and ones designed for off-road or highway driving are likely to be Multifuel Engines (See Arsenal, Page 140), which can use pretty much whatever will provide enough oomph in the cylinders (I've heard that some forms of weed killer will work! Not well, but...). These work best on Diesel (Bio-Diesel again), apparently, as they're heavily based on Diesel Engines (Which will run on quite a few different things without extensive modifications!).
Petroleum is still a major commodity, however, and the Megas fight heavily over control of oil bearing areas. S-K is the major power in the Middle East, IIRC. If my geography is correct, the Athabascan Council lands hold the (Former) Alberta Tar Sands that has a drekload of petroleum available. The Trans-Polar Aleut is likely sitting on large deposits as well.
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Nuclear reactions are apparently less reliable than they used to be, but solar power has stepped in (somewhat) to fulfill that lack.
I expect Coal to still be a major contributor, especially in North America.
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S-K is the major power in the Middle East, IIRC.
Or Evo, depending on which page of Corporate Guide you're looking at (page 87 or 152 and 154).
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Nuclear reactions are apparently less reliable than they used to be, but solar power has stepped in (somewhat) to fulfill that lack.
I expect Coal to still be a major contributor, especially in North America.
Fusion Power !
most of the Industry is fed by Fusion Power Plants
Citycars are Dual Engine with 1/2 Multifuel and 1/2 Electric
so there is less (but still significant ) Need for Petrol and Oil
HokaHey
Medicineman
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Seattle's main power source is the Gaeatronics reactor across the border in Salish-Sidhe, although I don't remember what kind of reactor it is, I don't think it's fission. And the ACHE (former Renraku arcology) has three fusion reactors still in active use cycles in its lower levels (keeping these from being used against the metroplex was the leverage the UCAS used to send in the joint task force and later seize the arcology).
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There's also been some attempts at Geothermal taps at the volcanoes the the GGD woke up.
Most of those didn't work so well. The remnants of the attempts can be found in Seattle's Hell's Kitchen (Not to be mistaken for the Hell's Kitchen in New York.).
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Don't forget the Japanese solar collectors. Probably not the only people who have that tech at this point.
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Don't forget the Japanese solar collectors. Probably not the only people who have that tech at this point.
Yeah, that came along in 2006 concurrent with or a cause of the return of the Empire.
I'm shocked no one ever had a Sim City 2000-style "accident" with those things.
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What about magic based energy? Have any Megas designed vehicles for awakened metas that run off thier mana? Wouldnt it be cool if a mage could power his car for the day by zapping it with a lightning bolt?
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There's a Spell in War that recharges Batteries/Energy Cells
with a "Duracell Dance"
Medicienman
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What about magic based energy? Have any Megas designed vehicles for awakened metas that run off thier mana? Wouldnt it be cool if a mage could power his car for the day by zapping it with a lightning bolt?
Just what we need, a slotted off Fire Elemental that's angry that it's heating a house for a year and a day!
Magicians are too expensive to provide something as plebeian as electrical power for the Megas. For other groups... That might work. A Fire Elemental-Heated Steam Engine Power Generator using captured rainwater, perfect for a Barrens operation that needs to stay off the grid!
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Fusion reactors in SR pump in seawater to create energy and pure H2O. What more do you want?
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Fusion reactors in SR pump in seawater to create energy and pure H2O. What more do you want?
The ability to deal with the radioactive elements from inside the reactors after they're taken offline due to the internals being too brittle to operate any longer?
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MAGIC!
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MAGIC!
Oh, that's your answer to everything, isn't it? :P
Consider how many magicians work with radiation, and what happens to them when they do.
Admittedly, it's a good thing for a GM. ;D
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quote]Just what we need, a slotted off Fire Elemental that's angry that it's heating a house for a year and a day!
Magicians are too expensive to provide something as plebeian as electrical power for the Megas. For other groups... That might work. A Fire Elemental-Heated Steam Engine Power Generator using captured rainwater, perfect for a Barrens operation that needs to stay off the grid!
[/quote]
What I'm talking about is for the private customers. How about runner made stuff? Summoning Spirits to power machines is a great idea! Spirits Love being enslaved for menial labor. That couldn't possibly go wrong! (Sarcasm at only 50%). Magitech Armour, anyone? You just know that the Megas have people at least trying this. There has to be ways to rudimentary machines with a Spirit. Throw in a Animate Object spell, and you got a start.
Of course, if the media gets wind of a Mega using Spirits in this manner, they'ed have all sorts of animal/spirit rights chumps on thier ass. Not to mention pissed off Free Spirits, Magicians, and even a dragon or two. I smell a story arc...
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Fusion reactors in SR pump in seawater to create energy and pure H2O. What more do you want?
The ability to deal with the radioactive elements from inside the reactors after they're taken offline due to the internals being too brittle to operate any longer?
Fusion reactors turn Hydrogen into Helium. At slightly higher pressures they'll create Lithium and other slightly heavier elements. But they don't create radioactive waste like a Fission reactor system.
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I would think that most non-electric vehicles run on biofuel. In fact, I think one of the main reasons that food is such as issue and that the masses eat processed soy and krill is that much of the farmland goes to biofuel rather than food production. Tomatoes and carrots are for the rich because very little land is devoted to growing them. Farms are either producing bulk staples like soy, wheat, lentils, etc or growing corn for biofuel. Even today, the great majority of corn is grown for feed, starch, sweeteners, oil, industrial uses, and increasingly fuel, and very little is actually consumed as a vegtable or as cornmeal. Biofuel demand is one (certainly not the only one) of the reasons behind food price increases in the last year. In a world like shadowrun where almost all of the fossil fuels are used up and the remains are shale oils that are difficult and expensive to extract, growing our fuel sources would likely put huge strains on the cost of the food supplies.
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Fusion reactors in SR pump in seawater to create energy and pure H2O. What more do you want?
The ability to deal with the radioactive elements from inside the reactors after they're taken offline due to the internals being too brittle to operate any longer?
Fusion reactors turn Hydrogen into Helium. At slightly higher pressures they'll create Lithium and other slightly heavier elements. But they don't create radioactive waste like a Fission reactor system.
I could have sworn I remembered some Shadowtalk about issues with the reactor core and having to deal with the effects when it has to go offline.
Might be a case of "Did not do the research", or something far, far more sinister. Or a Shadowtalker talking out of their hoop.
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Fusion reactors in SR pump in seawater to create energy and pure H2O. What more do you want?
The ability to deal with the radioactive elements from inside the reactors after they're taken offline due to the internals being too brittle to operate any longer?
Fusion reactors turn Hydrogen into Helium. At slightly higher pressures they'll create Lithium and other slightly heavier elements. But they don't create radioactive waste like a Fission reactor system.
I could have sworn I remembered some Shadowtalk about issues with the reactor core and having to deal with the effects when it has to go offline.
Might be a case of "Did not do the research", or something far, far more sinister. Or a Shadowtalker talking out of their hoop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Waste_management
I don't know any more about physics than I learned in highschool and few hundred hours of watching the discovery channel, but the link above is to a short wikipedia article that seems to indicate that shile there are radioactive issues to deal with, they seem to be less significant that Fission reactors and much less long lasting.
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I could have sworn I remembered some Shadowtalk about issues with the reactor core and having to deal with the effects when it has to go offline.
Might be a case of "Did not do the research", or something far, far more sinister. Or a Shadowtalker talking out of their hoop.
Native American Nations, Volume One, page 83
>>>>>[The issue still remains of what we will do with the fusion plant in 15 or so years when continuous neutron bombardment has made the metal components of the core so brittle that the unit must be decommissioned. Do we just seal it in concrete and forget about it? For 17,000 years? I assure you, I'm no neo-Luddite; I merely have concerns and questions.]<<<<<
-Warden (23:57:49/11-28-52)
As far as I can tell, this is a real issue with fusion reactor. Fusion creates H2O but also high-energy neutrons. Those can cause neutron activation, creating radioactive isotopes. I'm not sure however the activation products would last for as long as 17,000 years (activated iron for instance, decays to a non-radioactive isotope of Manganese in a few years).
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I could have sworn I remembered some Shadowtalk about issues with the reactor core and having to deal with the effects when it has to go offline.
Might be a case of "Did not do the research", or something far, far more sinister. Or a Shadowtalker talking out of their hoop.
Native American Nations, Volume One, page 83
>>>>>[The issue still remains of what we will do with the fusion plant in 15 or so years when continuous neutron bombardment has made the metal components of the core so brittle that the unit must be decommissioned. Do we just seal it in concrete and forget about it? For 17,000 years? I assure you, I'm no neo-Luddite; I merely have concerns and questions.]<<<<<
-Warden (23:57:49/11-28-52)
As far as I can tell, this is a real issue with fusion reactor. Fusion creates H2O but also high-energy neutrons. Those can cause neutron activation, creating radioactive isotopes. I'm not sure however the activation products would last for as long as 17,000 years (activated iron for instance, decays to a non-radioactive isotope of Manganese in a few years).
Thanks Nath! I was sure I read about it somewhere.
I failed physics, BTW. Which is odd because I later calculated just how many newtons of energy a throwing hatchet generated after falling off the top of the CN Tower when embedded into a guy's chest.
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I would think that most non-electric vehicles run on biofuel. In fact, I think one of the main reasons that food is such as issue and that the masses eat processed soy and krill is that much of the farmland goes to biofuel rather than food production. Tomatoes and carrots are for the rich because very little land is devoted to growing them. Farms are either producing bulk staples like soy, wheat, lentils, etc or growing corn for biofuel. Even today, the great majority of corn is grown for feed, starch, sweeteners, oil, industrial uses, and increasingly fuel, and very little is actually consumed as a vegtable or as cornmeal. Biofuel demand is one (certainly not the only one) of the reasons behind food price increases in the last year. In a world like shadowrun where almost all of the fossil fuels are used up and the remains are shale oils that are difficult and expensive to extract, growing our fuel sources would likely put huge strains on the cost of the food supplies.
Probably not corn. In my opinion they probably use some sort of algae to create bio-fuel. Corn is to expensive. Easier to have big tanks of algae out in the desert or other non arable land.
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Probably not corn. In my opinion they probably use some sort of algae to create bio-fuel. Corn is to expensive. Easier to have big tanks of algae out in the desert or other non arable land.
Or the ocean.
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Until the algae starts to die, and they have to shift to Soylent Green.
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Petro-Chem Fuels are the common form of "Gasoline" (Petrol substitute, actually) that's been mentioned in the fluff back in the day. A bit of Petrol with a lot of chemical fillers. Bio-Diesel is a big one, and is likely to have a Aviation Fuel equivalent.
There are two types of aviation fuel; a type of gasoline "Avgas", IRL most modern planes use a high octane variety with very tight specifications (used in piston engine planes); and jet fuel which is a modified kerosine, I'm told you could use kerosine in a pinch if you have hundreds of gallons laying around (used in turbine engines). There is one diesel engine that is designed for aviation use and it's used in a helicopter and can not use bio-diesel (and it's got it's own problem with power).
So if you know of bio versions of gasoline or kerosine (which is already a cleaner burning fossil fuel) then feel free to input them, but a loss of power from bio-fuels in an airframe means that airplanes can't fly as fast or carry as much in a more extreme way than is exhibited in land vehicles. You could say that the Avgas most planes use today is bio friendly because there was higher-octane leaded gas being used just a couple of decades ago that was taken off the market. There are conversions for aviation piston engines to car-grade gasoline, but they are only used in 3rd world countries and it's dangerous to use, unless engine failure is the normal name of the game. I've been told that some countries have all of their aircraft converted to jet fuel because of the price of Avgas.
If you are going to reference any "X-planes"... The results weren't necessarily adopted widespread. The same could be said with any aircraft designed to fly above 60,000' and extremely high speed vehicles, like the SR-71, which are their own beasts unto themselves.
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Anyhow, there's lots of use for Petroleum in the world. Asphalt is still made from it. So are plastics which are extensively used in manufacturing of... Everything (Including Plassteel.).
I had a big speech about all the uses for it from a friend of mine that took Civil Engineering and cleaned Oil Refineries for a living before he became a cyborg and started having major issues getting into the "United States of Paranoia" (Or so it seems at Air Ports.).
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Anyhow, there's lots of use for Petroleum in the world. Asphalt is still made from it. So are plastics which are extensively used in manufacturing of... Everything (Including Plassteel.).
I had a big speech about all the uses for it from a friend of mine that took Civil Engineering and cleaned Oil Refineries for a living before he became a cyborg and started having major issues getting into the "United States of Paranoia" (Or so it seems at Air Ports.).
And since Petroleum is just the same "crap" as can be found when creating biofuels (long chains of hydrogen and carbon) all it takes is the right catalyzer to create the right length of chain with the right secondary linkages (sulfur is used in car tires to cross link the hydrocarbon chains).
"Tubes in the Desert" is just one research project about building giant tanks of algae in normally unusable land to create fuel farms. The ocean is ok, but you can't build an algae farm that is very deep or they would starve from a lack of sunlight.
Just an FYI, but there is no technology that is truly sustainable. Everything requires an external input of energy (namely the Sun) to "complete" the cycle.
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Well, the sun isn't about to run out of fuel any time soon.
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Hopefully.
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I would think that most non-electric vehicles run on biofuel. In fact, I think one of the main reasons that food is such as issue and that the masses eat processed soy and krill is that much of the farmland goes to biofuel rather than food production. Tomatoes and carrots are for the rich because very little land is devoted to growing them. Farms are either producing bulk staples like soy, wheat, lentils, etc or growing corn for biofuel. Even today, the great majority of corn is grown for feed, starch, sweeteners, oil, industrial uses, and increasingly fuel, and very little is actually consumed as a vegtable or as cornmeal. Biofuel demand is one (certainly not the only one) of the reasons behind food price increases in the last year. In a world like shadowrun where almost all of the fossil fuels are used up and the remains are shale oils that are difficult and expensive to extract, growing our fuel sources would likely put huge strains on the cost of the food supplies.
Whatever it is, it is likely bioengineered for maximum yield and patented up the ying yang...
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Whatever it is, it is likely bioengineered for maximum yield and patented up the ying yang...
Algae-Fuel, from the same vat that brought you Algae Chips and Soylent Red!
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The benefits of having things created using solar energy is that we aren't increasing the rate at which it depletes, are are just taking advantage of it. The problem is limits to the efficiency of solar power. I don't know what kinds of power they use in the SR universe though.
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Electricity and Mana for the most part. :P
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In RL, the late Dr. Bussard's polywell fusor which is on incarnation number 8 at present and funded by the Navy. It will use Boron 11 as its primary fuel source and is thought to have a reactor footprint equal to three buses.
TDP (Thermal Depolymerization) is another technology that was able to transform sewage, plastics, and other biomass into hydrocarbons. There was a smell factor from the plant but I doubt that would hinder the financially motivated though. Here is the catch though, there simply isn't enough of the raw material to offset our current fuel requirements.
Electric is going to be far more prevalent and with the advancements with carbon nanotubes being utilized in battery development we will have plenty of power to move along. I believe it is scientists at MIT are working on a battery incorporating carbon nanotubes that would provide the power that the 900 lbs. litium battery used to power the Tesla Roadster reduced down to 9 lbs. If they are right, that, sort of shift of power to weight ratio would make high speed (and high torque) electric motors the best mode of transportation around.
The other bit about carbon nanotubes is the rumbling that multiple scientists have done tests showing it has room temperature superconductor capabilities. Increase battery power and increase electric motor performance...seems to me that carbon nanotubes (aka graphene) is going to be the ticket.
Solar film has been another area where research has exceeded expectations in efficiency and production costs. Solar films are reaching levels of traditional silcon wafer cells.
All in all, I do believe in RL our energy problems are going to be sorted out. Deep sea carbon sequestration should serve to reverse atmospheric CO2 levels. Not very dystopian mind you...but I have high hopes. ;)
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Faith in Humanity...
Hope you're right and I'm wrong, John.
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I like the solar updraft tower idea, especially ones built on montainsides that would draw polluted air out of cities via the updraft created. Now it is only feasable in highly insolated areas (the first ones have been built in Spain), but latitude has little effect and it is predicted that solar towers in the arctic would be about 85% as efficient as ones in lower latitudes. Plus it is a fairly simple and green making it fairly attractive to the PCC and Trans Polar Aleut.
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Mostly the problem with renewable sources is not the generating, but the instability of the source fenomena. So the issue is one of energy storage, not generation.
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Mostly the problem with renewable sources is not the generating, but the instability of the source fenomena. So the issue is one of energy storage, not generation.
Which would make me think that most grids have multiple sources of power to help smooth things out, plus I would guess there are "super grids" (smart grids as well) being used, at least within national boundaries.*
*There are currently super smart grids being planned in Europe (SuperSmart Grid, North Sea Offshore Grid and ISLES), and one is being considered, with much less enthusiasm in the US (Unified Smart Grid).
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Energy storage is becoming less of a problem, there is a ceramic battery the size of a plate that can store enough energy for the average house to operate off of for a 24 hour period. If memory serves it operates just under 200 degree F, last time I checked it was selling for $2000, so not cheap. One of the things that I was pondering was a photovoltaic setup charging up the batteries, thus causing them to heat up and then running a loop from a geothermal heat pump to get that last bit of kick from 50 F to 70 F during the colder months. At night, when not charging, heat would be generated by the battery discharge or you could have two such batteries and transfer the charge from one to the other when electrical usage is the lowest. The real question is how many BTUs do the batteries put out and I have not found that information laying about to date.
@CanRay, I have faith that the profit motive will drive the market to come up with solutions and far less in the nobility of the average person. People can be counted on to act in their own best self interest...well...some people...others are just weird. ;)
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Energy storage is becoming less of a problem, there is a ceramic battery the size of a plate that can store enough energy for the average house to operate off of for a 24 hour period. If memory serves it operates just under 200 degree F, last time I checked it was selling for $2000, so not cheap.
Those "battaries" look really cool. One is in the form of a condenser (EEStor) and the other is a more traditional battery made of ceramics (Ceramatec, no name for the battery yet). I'm guessing V2G would be pretty wide spread as well.
So I wonder, if there are that many electric vehicles and fusion reactors, shouldn't air quality be somewhat better? Unless industry pollutes more to make up for it, which would not surprise me as environmental regs seem to be a thing of the long past in most SR nations.
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Industry pollutants, with Megacorporations being extraterritorial, would skyrocket.
And old friend of mine (In both senses of the word "Old") had a job monitoring the smelter in my hometown, and described how things had changed over his career. Let's just say "A lot" and "He got out in time before the company really started to seriously begin considering to shut the place down as they can't upgrade it as cheaply as build a new one where there's cheaper land and workforce."