4 ms·

Why doomed? Because ever person on earth needs access to energy in the end. Simplified this leads to 5 outcomes: - keep burning fossil fuels and have resulting

Why doomed? Because ever person on earth needs access to energy in the end. Simplified this leads to 5 outcomes: - keep burning fossil fuels and have resulting climate change - nuclear power stations in every country including unstable countries, countries with high corruption, dictatorships ... Which means proliferation risk ~1. - nuclear power generation in "stable" countries and a world wide power grid to distribute energy - intermittent power (solar, wind) and a world wide grid (almost no) batteries (sun always shines somewhere) - decentral intermittent power and decentral storage 1&2 will be doom. I hope you agree. 3 is financially inferior to 4 due to the high capacity cost of nuclear compared to intermittent sources. 5 is 2 but with solar instead of nuclear so none of these problems apply. That seems to be the course we are on. Personally I prefer 4 because we will need to cut down trade to reduce emissions too but diverse trade seems to be a quiet effective way to prevent war. So I hope that a 24/7 energy trade around the globe and "we are literally all connected" is enough to keep us from large scale war.

panick21_ 5y ago
- nuclear power stations in every country including unstable countries, countries with high corruption, dictatorships ... Which means proliferation risk ~1. Overblown issue when you think about it. And there are many reactor designs and fuel cycles that make it totally unpractical for a whole host of reasons. Neither for dictators nor terrorist are these all that relevant targets. It would take to long to get into this in detail but its certainty doable in a safe way. The reality is, its a very unlikely vector, if a nation has the finances to do it, they will just do it. ----------------------- Nuclear power with a heat-based battery driving commercial turbines places right at the location of current coal plants is likely the best possible solution. Modern nuclear power plants already have a heat battery almost by definition, if you just circulate a larger amount of salt, you basically have the same thing as a Concentrated Solar Plant. Every country has ample fertile nuclear material, once you give them a started reactor they can refuel it with domestically mined materials. So every country could be safe in assuming that they would continue to have power even if international trade was blocked.
- freemint 5y ago
  > Overblown issue when you think about it. >> Assume good faith. I think about it and I come to a different conclusion. Thank you for stating that I type such a long message without thinking about it. > And there are many reactor designs and fuel cycles that make it totally unpractical for a whole host of reasons. I am not convinced this is true. Please suggest a fuel cycle which could not be use for proliferation when one is allowed to spike it with other materials and one also can add steps to the waste nuclear processing to extract products? Fuel cycles also don't address nuclear waste which can be processed further allowing at least dirty bombs and fuel can be disposed in manners which violate out western sensibilities in totalitarian states. > The reality is, its a very unlikely vector, if a nation has the finances to do it, they will just do it. Well having nuclear capabilities makes it a lot more feasible to have the means and money to build them. > you basically have the same thing as a Concentrated Solar Plant. Except instead of solar mirrors which can be taken care of by every country you have a highly complicated plant which locals might not be able to maintain, build in slightly unsafe ways, not inspect properly, not maintain properly, not shutdown when it needs to be shutdown, shutdown wrongly or use for proliferation. > So every country could be safe in assuming that they would continue to have power even if international trade was blocked. This would be objectively be a bad thing though. Isolationism is what allowed for war in the last century. Borders which goods cross, soldiers (or nukes) do not. It also would weaken human rights in countries which are no longer dependent on the good will of the world. I hope that you were not aware of these implications.

panick21_ 5y ago

- nuclear power stations in every country including unstable countries, countries with high corruption, dictatorships ... Which means proliferation risk ~1. Overblown issue when you think about it. And there are many reactor designs and fuel cycles that make it totally unpractical for a whole host of reasons. Neither for dictators nor terrorist are these all that relevant targets. It would take to long to get into this in detail but its certainty doable in a safe way. The reality is, its a very unlikely vector, if a nation has the finances to do it, they will just do it. ----------------------- Nuclear power with a heat-based battery driving commercial turbines places right at the location of current coal plants is likely the best possible solution. Modern nuclear power plants already have a heat battery almost by definition, if you just circulate a larger amount of salt, you basically have the same thing as a Concentrated Solar Plant. Every country has ample fertile nuclear material, once you give them a started reactor they can refuel it with domestically mined materials. So every country could be safe in assuming that they would continue to have power even if international trade was blocked.

freemint 5y ago
> Overblown issue when you think about it. >> Assume good faith. I think about it and I come to a different conclusion. Thank you for stating that I type such a long message without thinking about it. > And there are many reactor designs and fuel cycles that make it totally unpractical for a whole host of reasons. I am not convinced this is true. Please suggest a fuel cycle which could not be use for proliferation when one is allowed to spike it with other materials and one also can add steps to the waste nuclear processing to extract products? Fuel cycles also don't address nuclear waste which can be processed further allowing at least dirty bombs and fuel can be disposed in manners which violate out western sensibilities in totalitarian states. > The reality is, its a very unlikely vector, if a nation has the finances to do it, they will just do it. Well having nuclear capabilities makes it a lot more feasible to have the means and money to build them. > you basically have the same thing as a Concentrated Solar Plant. Except instead of solar mirrors which can be taken care of by every country you have a highly complicated plant which locals might not be able to maintain, build in slightly unsafe ways, not inspect properly, not maintain properly, not shutdown when it needs to be shutdown, shutdown wrongly or use for proliferation. > So every country could be safe in assuming that they would continue to have power even if international trade was blocked. This would be objectively be a bad thing though. Isolationism is what allowed for war in the last century. Borders which goods cross, soldiers (or nukes) do not. It also would weaken human rights in countries which are no longer dependent on the good will of the world. I hope that you were not aware of these implications.