6 ms·

We need to rapidly: Adopt modular nuclear reactors, and produce hundreds/thousands of them yearly. Electrify transport. Figure out how to get to a global pop

We need to rapidly: Adopt modular nuclear reactors, and produce hundreds/thousands of them yearly. Electrify transport. Figure out how to get to a global population of 4 billion: ie massive family planning drive in Africa/West Asia encouraging 1/0 children. (Keep in mind this is just the population level from 1974).

rtkwe 5y ago
Add “reprocess nuclear fuel rods”. Even once expended and removed from reactors there’s a lot of life left in fuel rods and reprocessing reduces the amount of waste that has to be stored long term.
aunty_helen 5y ago
>Adopt modular nuclear reactors, and produce hundreds/thousands of them yearly. We have this, they just go in ships and submarines.
- acchow 5y ago
  Hundreds of nuclear ships/submarines annually?
  - hcurtiss 5y ago
    Well, at least their reactors.
- beamatronic 5y ago
  Bring the ships to port and hook them up to the grid. Talk about swords to plowshares.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    They already can do this.
- masklinn 5y ago
  > We have this, they just go in ships and submarines. US shipboard reactors use highly enriched (93%, literally weapons-grade because it was originally produced for warheads) uranium, that's not really desirable to distribute throughout the territory. Even "low-enriched uranium" in a naval context just below 20% (which is the official boundary between LEU and HEU). By comparison regular "civil" nukes use 3-5% uranium.
iammisc 5y ago
> Figure out how to get to a global population of 4 billion: ie massive family planning drive in Africa/West Asia encouraging 1/0 children. Quick way to start a war, and not one that could be won without committing grave crimes against humanity which would obviate the need for such a policy to begin with.
- consumer451 5y ago
  The proven way to reduce population growth is via economic growth. It has worked everywhere it has been applied. We should be carpet bombing Africa with books, higher-ed, and investment. No genocide necessary. The only problem with this plan is that it is far too boring/liberal/naive for a significant portion of decision makers.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    > The proven way to reduce population growth is via economic growth. It has worked everywhere it has been applied. After observing the impact the biosphere has experienced with developed countries and developing countries industrializing, do you believe it will support the same for another 4 billion people? My evidence that it will not is enumerated below. I would agree that policies that help African women become as empowered and wealthy as fast as possible (which reduces the total number of children had [1]) would be the key to success, if done in a manner that does not increase per capita GHG emissions, meat consumption, and all the other negative impacts of per capita wealth growth. If Africa gets wealthy and pumps out CO2 and methane from autos, factory farming, fossil electrical generation, and clear cutting for ag production, that is not a net positive. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-change-in-the-number-of-children-women-have https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-... (Our World In Data: What explains the change in the number of children women have?) https://www.nationalgeographic.org/topics/resource-library-human-impacts-environment/ https://www.nationalgeographic.org/topics/resource-library-h... https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/fish-and-overfishing https://ourworldindata.org/fish-and-overfishing https://ourworldindata.org/excess-fertilizer https://ourworldindata.org/excess-fertilizer https://ourworldindata.org/diet-affordability https://ourworldindata.org/diet-affordability https://ourworldindata.org/living-planet-index-decline https://ourworldindata.org/living-planet-index-decline https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/farmers-are-facing-a-phosphorus-crisis-the-solution-starts-with-soil https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/farmers-a...
Glavnokoman 5y ago
Where do you get the number of 4 billion? I mean I think that is still too many but I really wonder how you calculate that.
- Diederich 5y ago
  Roughly half of current population I'd guess.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Factorium said that it was the population of 1974 - but didn't explain why 1974 is some kind of magical level for the population.
mfer 5y ago
It's logistically more complicated than this... - You can create electricity but how do you deliver it? The existing power lines, transformers, and other parts aren't enough. The grids need to be upgraded. This takes time, planning, and money. - Many people don't have the income to buy new vehicles. Especially at the costs for electric cars today. They often buy low cost used cars. Low cost electric used cars often don't have range due to old batteries. The car costs aren't working for a large chunk of the population. - Buses, construction equipment, worksite/home generators, and a lot of other things run on gas and we don't have functional replacements for them right now. Cars are the easy part. There are a lot of other gas powered things that are harder and still need viable solutions. If we really wanted to do the environmental thing we'd focus on public transit. Moving lots of people at low costs and environmental impact. This would work for cities and suburbs. It would have a better environmental impact than moving people to electric cars. The lack of looking at things holistically makes me wonder what the real goals are and for whom.
- Factorium 5y ago
  Modular nukes can mean lower need for electrical infrastructure, because they can power mines/military bases/towns directly without huge reliance on a national grid. We can start by mandating EVs-only for vehicles priced $100,000 and higher, and lowering that threshold by $10,000 yearly. We entirely overhauled our manufacturing in WW2 with much less technical capability than today - we just need the political and social willpower (which I guess war provided). Electric busses are already here. Those other uses require minimal levels of fossil fuels in the scheme of things. Public transit is not attractive because its not point-to-point, and you have no control over the other passengers on your ride. Autonomous minibusses with demand-driven routes, private subscriptions, and passenger reviews are the solution. Or, just plain old electric scooters if we can get rid of enough street parking/car lanes and install bike paths.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "Public transit is not attractive because its not point-to-point, and you have no control over the other passengers on your ride. Autonomous minibusses with demand-driven routes, private subscriptions, and passenger reviews are the solution. " They are not the solution, we cannot support this many cars even if they are all EV's. We also cannot support thia mich meat in our diet. The sooner people can accept that, the less pain it will be in the long run. https://youtu.be/yiw6_JakZFc https://youtu.be/yiw6_JakZFc Also, how much do you have to hate public thanspor that you'd rather rise a totally unsafe and uncomfortable electric scooter than take a tram?
snarf21 5y ago
I agree with you and it is usually down-voted. We humans are way too selfish of a species to live sustainably with 9 billion. We really just need fewer people for sustainability. This is why I don't understand the plan to go to Mars. We have near unlimited resources here that we continually mismanage. How would we survive on a planet with almost none?
- kyleee 5y ago
  well harsh conditions breed ingenuity so it's probably a good offshoot and backup plan for human civilization. Outside of anthropogenic climate change we know earth and humans can suffer catastrophes and extinction events from many other sources, so it's very wise to have redundancy. I think your comment also brings up the "weak men create hard times" quote; part of the reason why many in the developed world seem to be floundering is probably due to our unprecendented safety and comfort
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "I think your comment also brings up the "weak men create hard times" quote;" This is a very silly quote that has been produced by a writer, there is no evidence for it and it was debunked hundreds of times. No self-respecting social scientist, economist or learned man of any kind would repeat it while sober. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/02/hard-times-dont-make-strong-soldiers-warrior-myth/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/02/hard-times-dont-make-st...
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Why 4 billion? Why is that the right number? Why not 2? Or 1? Or 8? And, why Africa and West Asia? Why not, you know, everybody? And what are you going to do if they decline to be planned according to your idea of how they should be planned? (Which I suspect they hare very likely to do...)
wbsss4412 5y ago
> Figure out how to get to a global population of 4 billion: ie massive family planning drive in Africa/West Asia encouraging 1/0 children Why in those countries, when countries in the west that have already completed demographic transition aren’t even at that level and have policies that actively resist fertility rates that low. Why not encourage development in Africa and west Asia, immigration in to western countries, and family planning in places where headwinds are much weaker (and where a shrinking labor force can be bolstered by immigration).
- kyleee 5y ago
  Are there any moral or ethical qualms about letting a population / culture die out via lower than replacement rate birth rates, and just importing immigrants to fill the void? For instance is it problematic to just import Africans to Japan until there are no more ethnic Japanese left? It seems like what you are proposing would just lead to the most developed nation's peoples just dieing off and being replaced with groups that are slowest to educate and provide a high standard of living for their women, which would be awful for human cultural diversity in the long term
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    In the full time span of human history, a 50-100 year of in development isn’t very notable. Whatever you may believe to be a result primarily of culture, wether it be education, treatment of women or what have you, it is much more correlated to development status. Preindustrial Europe/Japan looked a lot more like Africa in those aspects does today than their modern status would seem to indicate. Edit: also, where did I indicate we should get rid of ALL Japanese people? What a ridiculous straw man.
    - kyleee 5y ago
      I didn't claim you said that but was fleshing out a possibility based on the argument you made initially
lapinot 5y ago
Respectfully, but your talking points are very common and very wrong. > Adopt modular nuclear reactors, and produce hundreds/thousands of them yearly. Nuclear reactors need fossile fuels to work (in the supply chain): To sustain nuclear you need to have a thriving militaro-industrial complex, which in all sorts of manner requires vast ressources which you must somehow buy (or steal depending or your political views) from global south countries. The problem here is very simply framed: we've thrived on tons of cheap energy and now this source is tarishing. It's pretty clear there is no miracle alternative: nothing around us is going to have the same combination of cheapness, massive volume, energy density and ease of use (neither nuclear nor renewable). We can improve some alternative stuff but there's really nothing on the same level. That is a fact. Now if you're running short on something, you spare it. And in fact it's pretty practical. One should be blind not to see how a small part of the world is hilariously over-consuming (energy, raw material, food, investment). Knowledge has exploded and it's now easier than ever to build things that last. That are passive in energy during use, that are cheap to produce in terms of energy input and non-renewable material contained. This will of course be at expense of economic growth since it will drive consumption down. But that is actually what we need. Of course it needs cultural changes, but like seriously, who is satisfied with the current doxa? Trust in institutions in dominant countries is at record low, there is gonna be a (obviously more or less gradual) reboot, with changes in lifestyle and social order. So we better choose it instead of having it imposed. > Figure out how to get to a global population of 4 billion: ie massive family planning drive in Africa/West Asia encouraging 1/0 children. (Keep in mind this is just the population level from 1974). Ugggh. You and me are the problem, not some poor smuck in Nigeria or Bengladesh, who's energy consumption in a year is probably comparable to ours in a month. We're the one that are making them badly extract their ressources, who are paying for them to work, to whom they ship broken things, who are doing tourism in their countries. Think about it for one moment and then please stop using this colonialist talk point which is fallatious ("poor people reproduce uncontrollably"). There are numerous reasons for that to happen and our domination on them (past and present) is a big one. Precision: of course we have to "help them" up their materialistic well being, and that encompasses having better healthcare support for women, contraception etc. But it's improductive and actually violent and authoritarian for us to do it directly and without giving away power, money and knowledge. And perhaps we could start by not hindering them to do so, like EU countries are currently doing with Covid vaccines (i'm saying Covid but this is routine mafia racket work which is pervasive in all industrial domains). edit: i even forgot to answer to one of your points: > Electrify transport. This is a moonshot. For one, autonomous transport needs high density energy storage and has locality between source and use. Too bad electricity is like impossible to store directly and has as main benefit to be transportable quite easily over long distances. Our vehicules are designed for fuel, they just cannot be reused as is with such a different energy source. The one way electricity is useful for transport is if you manage to profit from its benefits: trolleybus and rail. Again if you go back enough in your assumptions and think about the real problem there's one solution which is always overlooked: scale it down and do less transportation ffs. Globalization has enabled some radically new stuff which need planetary scale to actually be possible. But these things are a minority: it's high-tech stuff. Let's just make every local group of countries produce it's own simple things locally again (as in: what is needed to have 80% of our lifestandard) and we'll cut global transport by X%. Stop designing cities like everyone has their personal car. Stop depleting countrysides from local services (yes, it's local human-labour intensive to maintain). --- All the things i presented are actual solutions which would need some thinking to go through and lots of reorganizing, but crucially they aren't depending on some magical technology popping up. We know they can work. The real question is now: do we want to keep the worlds power structure and thus depend on a moonshot to make things work or do we accept to stop doing what has been central to maintain the domination of global north on global south and just do the easy obvious thing? It fine to defend the second choice, but you gotta know what your defending.

rtkwe 5y ago

Add “reprocess nuclear fuel rods”. Even once expended and removed from reactors there’s a lot of life left in fuel rods and reprocessing reduces the amount of waste that has to be stored long term.

aunty_helen 5y ago

>Adopt modular nuclear reactors, and produce hundreds/thousands of them yearly. We have this, they just go in ships and submarines.

acchow 5y ago
Hundreds of nuclear ships/submarines annually?
- hcurtiss 5y ago
  Well, at least their reactors.
beamatronic 5y ago
Bring the ships to port and hook them up to the grid. Talk about swords to plowshares.
- kfprt 5y ago
  They already can do this.
masklinn 5y ago
> We have this, they just go in ships and submarines. US shipboard reactors use highly enriched (93%, literally weapons-grade because it was originally produced for warheads) uranium, that's not really desirable to distribute throughout the territory. Even "low-enriched uranium" in a naval context just below 20% (which is the official boundary between LEU and HEU). By comparison regular "civil" nukes use 3-5% uranium.

iammisc 5y ago

> Figure out how to get to a global population of 4 billion: ie massive family planning drive in Africa/West Asia encouraging 1/0 children. Quick way to start a war, and not one that could be won without committing grave crimes against humanity which would obviate the need for such a policy to begin with.

consumer451 5y ago
The proven way to reduce population growth is via economic growth. It has worked everywhere it has been applied. We should be carpet bombing Africa with books, higher-ed, and investment. No genocide necessary. The only problem with this plan is that it is far too boring/liberal/naive for a significant portion of decision makers.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  > The proven way to reduce population growth is via economic growth. It has worked everywhere it has been applied. After observing the impact the biosphere has experienced with developed countries and developing countries industrializing, do you believe it will support the same for another 4 billion people? My evidence that it will not is enumerated below. I would agree that policies that help African women become as empowered and wealthy as fast as possible (which reduces the total number of children had [1]) would be the key to success, if done in a manner that does not increase per capita GHG emissions, meat consumption, and all the other negative impacts of per capita wealth growth. If Africa gets wealthy and pumps out CO2 and methane from autos, factory farming, fossil electrical generation, and clear cutting for ag production, that is not a net positive. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-change-in-the-number-of-children-women-have https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-... (Our World In Data: What explains the change in the number of children women have?) https://www.nationalgeographic.org/topics/resource-library-human-impacts-environment/ https://www.nationalgeographic.org/topics/resource-library-h... https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/fish-and-overfishing https://ourworldindata.org/fish-and-overfishing https://ourworldindata.org/excess-fertilizer https://ourworldindata.org/excess-fertilizer https://ourworldindata.org/diet-affordability https://ourworldindata.org/diet-affordability https://ourworldindata.org/living-planet-index-decline https://ourworldindata.org/living-planet-index-decline https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/farmers-are-facing-a-phosphorus-crisis-the-solution-starts-with-soil https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/farmers-a...

Glavnokoman 5y ago

Where do you get the number of 4 billion? I mean I think that is still too many but I really wonder how you calculate that.

Diederich 5y ago
Roughly half of current population I'd guess.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Factorium said that it was the population of 1974 - but didn't explain why 1974 is some kind of magical level for the population.

mfer 5y ago

It's logistically more complicated than this... - You can create electricity but how do you deliver it? The existing power lines, transformers, and other parts aren't enough. The grids need to be upgraded. This takes time, planning, and money. - Many people don't have the income to buy new vehicles. Especially at the costs for electric cars today. They often buy low cost used cars. Low cost electric used cars often don't have range due to old batteries. The car costs aren't working for a large chunk of the population. - Buses, construction equipment, worksite/home generators, and a lot of other things run on gas and we don't have functional replacements for them right now. Cars are the easy part. There are a lot of other gas powered things that are harder and still need viable solutions. If we really wanted to do the environmental thing we'd focus on public transit. Moving lots of people at low costs and environmental impact. This would work for cities and suburbs. It would have a better environmental impact than moving people to electric cars. The lack of looking at things holistically makes me wonder what the real goals are and for whom.

Factorium 5y ago
Modular nukes can mean lower need for electrical infrastructure, because they can power mines/military bases/towns directly without huge reliance on a national grid. We can start by mandating EVs-only for vehicles priced $100,000 and higher, and lowering that threshold by $10,000 yearly. We entirely overhauled our manufacturing in WW2 with much less technical capability than today - we just need the political and social willpower (which I guess war provided). Electric busses are already here. Those other uses require minimal levels of fossil fuels in the scheme of things. Public transit is not attractive because its not point-to-point, and you have no control over the other passengers on your ride. Autonomous minibusses with demand-driven routes, private subscriptions, and passenger reviews are the solution. Or, just plain old electric scooters if we can get rid of enough street parking/car lanes and install bike paths.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "Public transit is not attractive because its not point-to-point, and you have no control over the other passengers on your ride. Autonomous minibusses with demand-driven routes, private subscriptions, and passenger reviews are the solution. " They are not the solution, we cannot support this many cars even if they are all EV's. We also cannot support thia mich meat in our diet. The sooner people can accept that, the less pain it will be in the long run. https://youtu.be/yiw6_JakZFc https://youtu.be/yiw6_JakZFc Also, how much do you have to hate public thanspor that you'd rather rise a totally unsafe and uncomfortable electric scooter than take a tram?

snarf21 5y ago

I agree with you and it is usually down-voted. We humans are way too selfish of a species to live sustainably with 9 billion. We really just need fewer people for sustainability. This is why I don't understand the plan to go to Mars. We have near unlimited resources here that we continually mismanage. How would we survive on a planet with almost none?

kyleee 5y ago
well harsh conditions breed ingenuity so it's probably a good offshoot and backup plan for human civilization. Outside of anthropogenic climate change we know earth and humans can suffer catastrophes and extinction events from many other sources, so it's very wise to have redundancy. I think your comment also brings up the "weak men create hard times" quote; part of the reason why many in the developed world seem to be floundering is probably due to our unprecendented safety and comfort
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "I think your comment also brings up the "weak men create hard times" quote;" This is a very silly quote that has been produced by a writer, there is no evidence for it and it was debunked hundreds of times. No self-respecting social scientist, economist or learned man of any kind would repeat it while sober. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/02/hard-times-dont-make-strong-soldiers-warrior-myth/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/02/hard-times-dont-make-st...

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

Why 4 billion? Why is that the right number? Why not 2? Or 1? Or 8? And, why Africa and West Asia? Why not, you know, everybody? And what are you going to do if they decline to be planned according to your idea of how they should be planned? (Which I suspect they hare very likely to do...)

wbsss4412 5y ago

> Figure out how to get to a global population of 4 billion: ie massive family planning drive in Africa/West Asia encouraging 1/0 children Why in those countries, when countries in the west that have already completed demographic transition aren’t even at that level and have policies that actively resist fertility rates that low. Why not encourage development in Africa and west Asia, immigration in to western countries, and family planning in places where headwinds are much weaker (and where a shrinking labor force can be bolstered by immigration).

kyleee 5y ago
Are there any moral or ethical qualms about letting a population / culture die out via lower than replacement rate birth rates, and just importing immigrants to fill the void? For instance is it problematic to just import Africans to Japan until there are no more ethnic Japanese left? It seems like what you are proposing would just lead to the most developed nation's peoples just dieing off and being replaced with groups that are slowest to educate and provide a high standard of living for their women, which would be awful for human cultural diversity in the long term
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  In the full time span of human history, a 50-100 year of in development isn’t very notable. Whatever you may believe to be a result primarily of culture, wether it be education, treatment of women or what have you, it is much more correlated to development status. Preindustrial Europe/Japan looked a lot more like Africa in those aspects does today than their modern status would seem to indicate. Edit: also, where did I indicate we should get rid of ALL Japanese people? What a ridiculous straw man.
  - kyleee 5y ago
    I didn't claim you said that but was fleshing out a possibility based on the argument you made initially

lapinot 5y ago

Respectfully, but your talking points are very common and very wrong. > Adopt modular nuclear reactors, and produce hundreds/thousands of them yearly. Nuclear reactors need fossile fuels to work (in the supply chain): To sustain nuclear you need to have a thriving militaro-industrial complex, which in all sorts of manner requires vast ressources which you must somehow buy (or steal depending or your political views) from global south countries. The problem here is very simply framed: we've thrived on tons of cheap energy and now this source is tarishing. It's pretty clear there is no miracle alternative: nothing around us is going to have the same combination of cheapness, massive volume, energy density and ease of use (neither nuclear nor renewable). We can improve some alternative stuff but there's really nothing on the same level. That is a fact. Now if you're running short on something, you spare it. And in fact it's pretty practical. One should be blind not to see how a small part of the world is hilariously over-consuming (energy, raw material, food, investment). Knowledge has exploded and it's now easier than ever to build things that last. That are passive in energy during use, that are cheap to produce in terms of energy input and non-renewable material contained. This will of course be at expense of economic growth since it will drive consumption down. But that is actually what we need. Of course it needs cultural changes, but like seriously, who is satisfied with the current doxa? Trust in institutions in dominant countries is at record low, there is gonna be a (obviously more or less gradual) reboot, with changes in lifestyle and social order. So we better choose it instead of having it imposed. > Figure out how to get to a global population of 4 billion: ie massive family planning drive in Africa/West Asia encouraging 1/0 children. (Keep in mind this is just the population level from 1974). Ugggh. You and me are the problem, not some poor smuck in Nigeria or Bengladesh, who's energy consumption in a year is probably comparable to ours in a month. We're the one that are making them badly extract their ressources, who are paying for them to work, to whom they ship broken things, who are doing tourism in their countries. Think about it for one moment and then please stop using this colonialist talk point which is fallatious ("poor people reproduce uncontrollably"). There are numerous reasons for that to happen and our domination on them (past and present) is a big one. Precision: of course we have to "help them" up their materialistic well being, and that encompasses having better healthcare support for women, contraception etc. But it's improductive and actually violent and authoritarian for us to do it directly and without giving away power, money and knowledge. And perhaps we could start by not hindering them to do so, like EU countries are currently doing with Covid vaccines (i'm saying Covid but this is routine mafia racket work which is pervasive in all industrial domains). edit: i even forgot to answer to one of your points: > Electrify transport. This is a moonshot. For one, autonomous transport needs high density energy storage and has locality between source and use. Too bad electricity is like impossible to store directly and has as main benefit to be transportable quite easily over long distances. Our vehicules are designed for fuel, they just cannot be reused as is with such a different energy source. The one way electricity is useful for transport is if you manage to profit from its benefits: trolleybus and rail. Again if you go back enough in your assumptions and think about the real problem there's one solution which is always overlooked: scale it down and do less transportation ffs. Globalization has enabled some radically new stuff which need planetary scale to actually be possible. But these things are a minority: it's high-tech stuff. Let's just make every local group of countries produce it's own simple things locally again (as in: what is needed to have 80% of our lifestandard) and we'll cut global transport by X%. Stop designing cities like everyone has their personal car. Stop depleting countrysides from local services (yes, it's local human-labour intensive to maintain). --- All the things i presented are actual solutions which would need some thinking to go through and lots of reorganizing, but crucially they aren't depending on some magical technology popping up. We know they can work. The real question is now: do we want to keep the worlds power structure and thus depend on a moonshot to make things work or do we accept to stop doing what has been central to maintain the domination of global north on global south and just do the easy obvious thing? It fine to defend the second choice, but you gotta know what your defending.