I think it's a waste of time. We have plenty of energy sources. Hydro-power, frozen methane deposits in the sea or nuclear fission could easily supplant oil. The problem is people who want to get control of it by taxing it. If fusion energy were to become a reality, the radical environmentalist would find some reason that it offends the earth gods.
//////////////////
well what people are thinking is ...can you do fusion on the cheap. Can you set a reactor outside beside the port-a-pot? these seem to be reasonable questions.
The whole deal these days with energy is getting stuff to work and scale up at or below the cost structure of oil. Hydro is tapped out. extracting frozen methane is still too expensive--as is solar. Windmill generated electricity is coming close in terms of price but at best could do under 10% of the national needs and then a lot of land would need to be covered by the whirly birds. the left generally hates the carbon cycle. the right is saying the limits for oil expansion are coming within the next couple years--just as demand is scaling up. this means we've seen only the first spike in oil. imho its a very urgent biz to get cheap new scalable energy resources. and all avenues need to be tried.
the nuclear waste from this kind of process seems minimal
Even if it works, it's still going to be radioactive. It creates neutrons which create radioisotopes and it will generate radioactive wastes just like fission reactors. That's not a problem. The problem is people who have been indoctrinated to fear radiation. It doesn't do any good to tell them that the problem is minimal.
Hydro hasn't been tapped out. We could double the amount we get from hydro if it weren't for environmental restrictions.
What everyone ignores is that the supply of a resource increases with the price. When the price increases, it becomes more viable to mine marginal sources. If the price of oil increases enough, it becomes economical to produce gasoline from coal or from oil shale. And as the price rises people conserve and demand falls. They spend more on insulation, fluorescent lights, and more efficient transportation. They cut back on luxury consumption, ski trips, vacation travel, etc. The real danger will be price controls that stops that feedback process.
The tricky thing about estimated oil supplies is that oil companies don't develop resource more than about ten years in advance. Why look for oil with today's technology when we will have better exploration techniques in ten years? Why pay taxes on proven reserves for any longer than you have to? So no one really knows how much we have. Some say that depleted wells are replenishing themselves from deep earth sources.
I read an article written about 1860 in Scientific American that said we would be out of coal in 100 years. These predictions always turn out wrong because the free market and technology always will provide. Our problem is people who hate technology and free markets. It is a political problem.
Think about it. The only energy sources that are not under attack from environmentalists are the ones that don't work -- wind and solar. If they were to become viable, they will also be attacked.