arXiv subjects

Michael Dittmar

Publications and source records attributed to Michael Dittmar.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2017

A Regional Oil Extraction and Consumption Model. Part II: Predicting the declines in regional oil consumption

In part I of this analysis, the striking similarities of the declining oil production in the North Sea, Indonesia and Mexico were used to model the future maximum possible oil production per annum in all larger countries and regions of the planet from 2015 to 2050. In part II, the oil export and oil consumption patterns, that were established in recent decades, are combined with the consequences of the forecast declines in regional oil production that were developed in part I of this analysis. The results are quantitative predictions of the maximum possible region-by-region oil consumption during the next 20 years. The predictions indicate that several of the larger oil consuming and importing countries and regions will be confronted with the economic consequences of the onset of the world's final oil supply crisis as early as 2020. In particular, during the next few years a reduction of the average per capita oil consumption of about 5%/year is predicted for most OECD countries in Western Europe, and slightly smaller reductions, about 2-3%/year, is predicted for all other oil importing countries and regions. The consequences of the predicted oil supply crisis are thoroughly at odds with business-as-usual, never-ending-global-growth predictions of oil production and consumption.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2016

Regional Oil Extraction and Consumption: A simple production model for the next 35 years Part I

The growing conflicts in and about oil exporting regions and speculations about volatile oil prices during the last decade have renewed the public interest in predictions for the near future oil production and consumption. Unfortunately, studies from only 10 years ago, which tried to forecast the oil production during the next 20-30 years, failed to make accurate predictions for today's global oil production and consumption. Forecasts using economic growth scenarios, overestimated the actual oil production, while models which tried to estimate the maximum future oil production/year, using the official country oil reserve data, predicted a too low production. In this paper, a new approach to model the maximal future regional and thus global oil production (part I) and consumption (part II) during the next decades is proposed. Our analysis of the regional oil production data during past decades shows that, in contrast to periods when production was growing and growth rates varied greatly from one country to another, remarkable similarities are found during the plateau and decline periods of different countries. Following this model, the particular production phase of each major oil producing country and region is determined essentially only from the recent past oil production data. Using these data, the model is then used to predict the production from all major oil producing countries, regions and continents up to the year 2050. The limited regional and global potential to compensate this decline with unconventional oil and oil-equivalents is also presented.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2013

Development Towards Sustainability: How to judge past and proposed policies?

The scientific data about the state of our planet, presented at the 2012 (Rio+20) summit, documented that today's human family lives even less sustainably than it did in 1992. The data indicate furthermore that the environmental impacts from our current economic activities are so large, that we are approaching situations where potentially controllable regional problems can easily lead to uncontrollable global disasters. Assuming that (1) the majority of the human family, once adequately informed, wants to achieve a "sustainable way of life" and (2) that the "development towards sustainability" roadmap will be based on scientific principles, one must begin with unambiguous and quantifiable definitions of these goals. As will be demonstrated, the well known scientific method to define abstract and complex issues by their negation, satisfies these requirements. Following this new approach, it also becomes possible to decide if proposed and actual policies changes will make our way of life less unsustainable, and thus move us potentially into the direction of sustainability. Furthermore, if potentially dangerous tipping points are to be avoided, the transition roadmap must include some minimal speed requirements. Combining the negation method and the time evolution of that remaining natural capital in different domains, the transition speed for a "development towards sustainability" can be quantified at local, regional and global scales. The presented ideas allow us to measure the rate of natural capital depletion and the rate of restoration that will be required if humanity is to avoid reaching a sustainable future by a collapse transition.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2011

The End of Cheap Uranium

Historic data from many countries demonstrate that on average no more than 50-70% of the uranium in a deposit could be mined. An analysis of more recent data from Canada and Australia leads to a mining model with an average deposit extraction lifetime of 10+- 2 years. This simple model provides an accurate description of the extractable amount of uranium for the recent mining operations. Using this model for all larger existing and planned uranium mines up to 2030, a global uranium mining peak of at most 58 +- 4 ktons around the year 2015 is obtained. Thereafter we predict that uranium mine production will decline to at most 54 +- 5 ktons by 2025 and, with the decline steepening, to at most 41 +- 5 ktons around 2030. This amount will not be sufficient to fuel the existing and planned nuclear power plants during the next 10-20 years. In fact, we find that it will be difficult to avoid supply shortages even under a slow 1%/year worldwide nuclear energy phase-out scenario up to 2025. We thus suggest that a worldwide nuclear energy phase-out is in order. If such a slow global phase-out is not voluntarily effected, the end of the present cheap uranium supply situation will be unavoidable. The result will be that some countries will simply be unable to afford sufficient uranium fuel at that point, which implies involuntary and perhaps chaotic nuclear phase-outs in those countries involving brownouts, blackouts, and worse.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2011

The Future of Nuclear Energy: Facts and Fiction: An update using 2009/2010 Data

An update of our 2009 study, "The Future of Nuclear Energy, Facts and Fiction" using the 2009 and the available 2010 data, including a critical look at the just published 2009 edition of the Red Book, is presented. Since January 2009, eight reactors with a capacity of 4.9 GWe have been connected to the electric grid and four older reactors, with a combined capacity of 2.64 GWe have been terminated. Furthermore, 27 reactor constructions, dominated by China (18) and Russia (4), have been initiated. The nuclear fission produced electric energy in 2009 followed the slow decline, observed since 2007, with a total production of 2560 TWhe, 41 TWhe (1.6%) less than in 2008 and roughly 100 TWhe less than in the record year 2006. The preliminary data from the first 10 months of 2010 in the OECD countries indicate that nuclear power production in North-America remained at the 2009 levels, while one observes a recovery in Europe with an increase of 2.5% and a strong rise of 5% in the OECD Asia-Pacific area compared to the same period in 2009. Worldwide uranium mining has increased during 2009 by about 7000 tons to almost 51000 tons. Still roughly 18000 tons of the 2010 world uranium requirements need to be provided from the civilian and military reserves. Perhaps the most remarkable new data from the just published 2009 edition of the Red Book, are that (1) the best understood RAR (reasonable assured) and IR (inferred) resources, with a price tag of less than 40 US dollars/Kg, have been inconsistently absorbed in the two to three times higher price categories and (2) uranium mining in Kazakhstan is presented with a short lifetime. The presented mining capacity numbers indicate an uranium extraction peak of 28000 tons during the years 2015-2020, from which it will decline quickly to 14000 tons by 2025 and to only 5000-6000 tons by 2035.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2009

The Future of Nuclear Energy: Facts and Fiction Chapter IV: Energy from Breeder Reactors and from Fusion?

The accumulated knowledge and the prospects for commercial energy production from fission breeder and fusion reactors are analyzed in this report. The publicly available data from past experimental breeder reactors indicate that a large number of unsolved technological problems exist and that the amount of "created" fissile material, either from the U238 --> Pu239 or from the Th232 --> U233 cycle, is still far below the breeder requirements and optimistic theoretical expectations. Thus huge efforts, including many basic research questions with an uncertain outcome, are needed before a large commercial breeder prototype can be designed. Even if such efforts are undertaken by the technologically most advanced countries, it will take several decades before such a prototype can be constructed. We conclude therefore, that ideas about near-future commercial fission breeder reactors are nothing but wishful thinking. We further conclude that, no matter how far into the future we may look, nuclear fusion as an energy source is even less probable than large-scale breeder reactors, for the accumulated knowledge on this subject is already sufficient to say that commercial fusion power will never become a reality.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2009

The Future of Nuclear Energy: Facts and Fiction Chapter III: How (un)reliable are the Red Book Uranium Resource Data?

For more than 40 years, the Nuclear Energy Agency of the OECD countries and the International Atomic Energy Administration of the United Nations have published a biannual document with the title "Uranium Resources, Production and Demand". This book, known as the "Red Book", summarizes data about the actual and near future nuclear energy situation and presents the accumulated worldwide knowledge about the existing and expected uranium resources. These data are widely believed to provide an accurate and solid basis for future decisions about nuclear energy. Unfortunately, as it is demonstrated in this paper, they do not. The conventional worldwide uranium resources are estimated by the authors of the Red Book as 5.5 million tons. Out of these, 3.3 million tons are assigned to the reasonable assured category and 2.2 million tons are associated with the not yet discovered but assumed to exist inferred resources. Our analysis shows that neither the 3.3 million tons of "assured" resources nor the 2.2 million tons of inferred resources are justified by the Red Book data and that the actual known exploitable resources are probably much smaller. Despite many shortcomings of the uranium resource data, some interesting and valuable information can be extracted from the Red Book. Perhaps most importantly, the Red Book resource data can be used to test the "economic-geological hypothesis", which claims for example that a doubling of uranium price will increase the amount exploitable uranium resources by an even larger factor. The relations between the uranium resources claimed for the different resource categories and their associated cost estimates are found to be in clear contradiction with this hypothesis.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2009

The Future of Nuclear Energy: Facts and Fiction Chapter II: What is known about Secondary Uranium Resources?

During 2009 nuclear power plants, with a capacity of 370 GWe, will produce roughly 14% of the worldwide electric energy. About 65000 tons of natural uranium equivalent are required to operate these reactors. For 15 years on average only 2/3 of this fuel is provided by the uranium mines and 1/3 comes from secondary resources. In this paper the situation concerning the secondary resources at the beginning of the year 2009 is presented. The data used are from the IAEA/NEA 2007 Red Book, "Uranium Resources, Production and Demand", and from the World Nuclear Association (WNA). Our analysis shows that these civilian stocks will be essentially exhausted within the next 5 years. This coincides roughly with the year 2013, when the delivery of the 10000 tons of natural uranium equivalent from russian military stocks to the USA will end. As the majority of the remaining civilian stocks, about 30000 tons, are believed to be under the control of the US government and american companies, it seems rather unlikely that the USA will share their own strategic uranium reserves with other large nuclear energy users. All data indicate that a uranium supply shortage in many OECD countries can only be avoided if the remaining military uranium stocks from Russia and the USA, estimated to be roughly 500000 tons are made available to the other countries.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2009

The Future of Nuclear Energy: Facts and Fiction Chapter I: Nuclear Fission Energy Today

Nuclear fission energy is considered to be somewhere between the holy grail, required to solve all energy worries of the human industrialized civilization, and a fast path directly to hell. Discussions about future energy sources and the possible contribution from nuclear energy are often dominated by variations of fundamentalists and often irrational approaches. As a result, very little is known by the general public and even by decision makers about the contribution of nuclear energy today, about uranium supplies, uranium resources and current and future technological challenges and limitations. This analysis about nuclear energy and its contribution for tomorrow tries to shed light on the nuclear reality and its limitations in the near and long term future. The report, presented in four chapters, is based essentially on the data provided in the documents from the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Administration) and the NEA (the Nuclear Energy Agency from the OECD countries, the WNA (World Nuclear Association) and the IEA (International Energy Agency).

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2008

The European Electricity Grid System and Winter Peak Load Stress: For how long can the european grid system survive the ever increasing demand during cold winter days?

The rich countries of Western Europe and its citizens benefited during at least the last 30 years from an extraordinary stable electricity grid. This stability was achieved by the european grid system and a large flexible and reliable spare power plant capacity. This system allowed a continuous demand growth during the past 10-20 years of up to a few % per year. However, partially due to this overcapacity, no new large power plants have been completed during the past 10-15 years. The obvious consequence is that the reliable spare capacity has been reduced and that a further yearly demand growth of 1-2% for electric energy can only be achieved if new power plants will be constructed soon. Data from various European countries, provided by the UCTE, indicate that the system stress during peak load times and especially during particular cold winter days is much larger than generally assumed. In fact, the latest UCTE data on reliable power capacity indicate that already during the Winter 2007/8 only a few very cold winter days in Western Europe could have resulted in very unpleasant supply problems during the early evening peak load times in France and the neighboring countries. An analysis of the potential to build and operate new power plants demonstrates that no short term solution, which allows a further continuous 1-2% consumption growth seems to exist. Thus, without any action from the various governments in Europe to reduce the electricity demand in a serious way, the risk of blackouts will increase dramatically in the near future. Instead of simply waiting for the blackout disaster to happen, a few simple short term political actions are suggested.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2006

Combining Monte Carlo generators with next-to-next-to-leading order calculations: event reweighting for Higgs boson production at the LHC

We study a phenomenological ansatz for merging next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) calculations with Monte Carlo event generators. We reweight them to match bin-integrated NNLO differential distributions. To test this procedure, we study the Higgs boson production cross-section at the LHC, for which a fully differential partonic NNLO calculation is available. We normalize PYTHIA and MC@NLO Monte Carlo events for Higgs production in the gluon fusion channel to reproduce the bin integrated NNLO double differential distribution in the transverse momentum and rapidity of the Higgs boson. These events are used to compute differential distributions for the photons in the pp \to H \to γγdecay channel, and are compared to predictions from fixed-order perturbation theory at NNLO. We find agreement between the reweighted generators and the NNLO result in kinematic regions where we expect a good description using fixed-order perturbation theory. Kinematic boundaries where resummation is required are also modeled correctly using this procedure. We then use these events to compute distributions in the pp \to H \to W^+W^- \to l^+l^- ν\barν channel, for which an accurate description is needed for measurements at the LHC. We find that the final state lepton distributions obtained from PYTHIA are not significantly changed by the reweighting procedure.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2004

Man-made climate change:Facts and fiction

Important issues about climate change are summarized and discussed: A large body of evidence shows that the world climate is getting warmer. Climate models give a consistent explanation of this observation once human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are taken into account. Furthermore, the main source of greenhouse gases comes from the burning of oil, gas and coal, mainly in the industrialized countries. Without any change of behaviour, the possible predicted consequences of this climate change for the coming decades are very disturbing. Today's (in)action's will have long-term consequences for the entire biosphere and the living conditions of many future generations. The combination of the various points related to the climate change leads to a final question: "For how long will Humanity continue to bury its head in the sand?"

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2003

Z' studies at the LHC: an update

We reanalyse the potential of the LHC to discover new $Z'$ gauge bosons and to discriminate between various theoretical models. Using a fast LHC detector simulation, we have investigated how well the characteristics of $Z'$ bosons from different models can be measured. For this analysis we have combined the information coming from the cross section measurement, which provides also the $Z'$ mass and total width, the forward-backward charge asymmetries on- and off-peak, and the $Z'$ rapidity distribution, which is sensitive to its $u \bar{u}$ and $d \bar{d}$ couplings. We confirm that new $Z'$ bosons can be observed in the process $pp \to Z' \to l^+ l^-$, up to masses of about 5 TeV for an integrated luminosity of 100 fb$^{-1}$. The off- and on-resonance peak forward-backward charge asymmetries $A_{\rm FB}^{l}$ show that interesting statistical accuracies can be obtained up to $Z'$ masses of the order of 2 TeV. We then show how the different experimental observables allow for a diagnosis of the $Z'$ boson and the distinction between the various considered models.

hep-ph↗

arXiv1999

Experimental Challenges at the LHC

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will provide proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 14 TeV with a design luminosity of 10**34/cm**2/s. The exploitation of the rich physics potential offered by the LHC will be illustrated using the expected performance of the two general--purpose detectors ATLAS and CMS. The detector design requirements necessary to extract the physics under the challenging experimental conditions at the LHC are discussed. This is followed by an analysis of search methods for the Higgs sector and the detection of supersymmetric particles.

hep-ex↗

arXiv1999

Searching for the Higgs and other Exotic Objects; A ``How to'' Guide from LEP to the LHC

Methods and ideas to search for new phenomena at existing and future collider facilities like LEPII and the LHC are analysed. Emphasis is put on the experimental aspects of discovery strategies for the Higgs Boson of the Standard Model. This is followed by a critical analysis of search methods for the extended Higgs sector and the direct detection of Supersymmetric Particles within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. We also discuss methods and the potential mass reach of the LHC experiments to discover new Bosons and Fermions.

hep-ex↗

arXiv1999

SUSY discovery strategies at the LHC

Current ideas for SUPERSYMMETRY searches at the LHC are reviewed. We analyse the discovery prospects for various supersymmetric particles and describe recent ideas on the possibilities of detailed SUSY studies at the LHC. We also combine today's experimental knowledge with some speculations about what might be known by the year 2005 to provide a realistic picture for the LHC start.

hep-ex↗

arXiv1997

$h^0\to W^+W^-\ra \ell^+\ell^{'-}ν_\ell{\bar ν}_{\ell'}$ as the Dominant SM Higgs Search Mode at the LHC for $M_{h^0}$= 155-180 GeV

We show that the Standard Model Higgs decay $h^0 \to W^+W ^- \to l^+ l^- ν{\barν}$ is the most sensitive mode for SM Higgs searches in the range 155-180 GeV. The previously considered mode $h^0 \to Z^0 Z^{0*} \to l^+ l^- l^+l^-$ has a significantly lower search sensitivity. We place particular emphasis on two new cuts based on (i) the boost and (ii) the spin-correlation of the $W^+W^-$-system. The distribution we obtain from our combined cuts shows a mass sensitive peak which probably allows a mass determination to $\pm$ 5 GeV for 5 fb^{-1}. This contribution complements our earlier published paper.

hep-ph↗

arXiv1996

Neutral Current Interference in the TeV Region; the Experimental Sensitivity at the LHC

The possibilities to measure lepton forward--backward asymmetries at the LHC in the reaction pp(qqbar) --> l+l- are studied for dilepton events with masses above 400 GeV. It is shown that such measurements allow accurate tests of the neutral current interference structure up to about 2 TeV center of mass energies. The sensitivity of asymmetries at the LHC to new physics is demonstrated within the context of quark compositeness and exotic Z' scenarios.

hep-ex↗