3 ms·

The curves largely break about 1971 across a wide set of areas, but the energy connection is interesting. J Storrs Hall argues in "Where is My Flying Car?" tha

The curves largely break about 1971 across a wide set of areas, but the energy connection is interesting. J Storrs Hall argues in "Where is My Flying Car?" that the proximate cause is breaking the increasing availability of energy per person, which could only have been continued with very widespread nuclear, and that the turn from nuclear was a symptom of a culture of increasing regulation and excess caution, such that the only major industry that escaped the trap in the 70s and continued existing growth curves was computing. Now that computing has advanced sufficiently and is being applied to everything else, we're finally getting sudden, major advances again in other areas (electric and autonomous cars, drones, reusable rockets, pharma...), but computing is in the race against smothering that most industries lost in the 20th, and it remains to be seen whether stagnation or abundance will win. A side note is the resurgence of nuclear, and supersonic flight, etc, which suggests that maybe the problem was more about post-war culture than a systemic turn away from growth and prosperity... we'll see!

immibis 1y ago
Am I the only one annoyed by the continual low-level background radiation (heh) of pro-nuclear propaganda? It's just another fossil fuel. Sure, it doesn't emit CO2, but the sustainability problem is still there. I'll support nuclear expansion when I see a credible plan to complete the transition to actual renewables within 30 years, using nuclear as a stopgap. We have less than 100 years of known uranium reserves if we use it to power everything. It'll be coal and oil all over again. And now we don't need one because solar is already here.
- randallsquared 1y ago
  We have less than 100 years of uranium assuming we use enriched uranium once, don't reprocess the "spent" fuel, don't use breeder reactors to make plutonium for further energy production (going from 100 to thousands of years at current usage rates), and don't use breeder reactors to produce U233 from thorium, which is so much more abundant and available than uranium that it would extend current use by another 100-270 times, meaning current usage at hundreds of thousands of years, with already known deposits of nuclear fuel. These aren't breakthrough technologies, but just engineering, because we already know how to do this. Electricity was forecast in the 1950s to be too cheap to meter within a few decades of building reactors, and that future was completely practical. We just chose (at least temporary) stagnation, instead. Solar is definitely cheaper than current nuclear, and continuing to fall rapidly, while battery cost is also improving apace. In the short term, solar can meet most of our needs and let us turn off more coal and oil, and that's certainly useful! In the medium term, though, we can't get back on the Henry Adams curve without denser sources than sunlight, which takes up quite a bit of real estate even if we move most capture to space.
  - immibis 1y ago
    I don't know how you can say with a straight face that solar power is a stopgap and nuclear power is a long-term sustainable solution. I cannot rightly comprehend the confusion of ideas that would provoke such a statement.
    - randallsquared 1y ago
      Well, I said “medium” term. But ultimately if we stayed on the curve (that is, longer term), humanity would be using the entire output of the sun in less than 2000 years, requiring a Dyson sphere or something. Solar power can’t keep up with human flourishing. We’ll have to have something that is denser and more distributed. :)
      - immibis 1y ago
        Where do you propose to get enough uranium and thorium to match the power output of the entire sun for longer than five milliseconds?
        randallsquared 1y ago
        I feel like we're talking past each other. If we are to get back on a steady growth rate in energy/person, solar on earth is a great short-term part of that, fission is required for continuing it in the medium term until we figure out something else (fusion, but then whatever we might unlock down the road). You're globalizing what I said about having enough uranium and thorium in known deposits and at current power usage, but obviously we would outgrow that as we expand into the rest of the solar system. My point is not that we should stop or slow investment in solar (we shouldn't!), just that we'd all have been much, much better off if nuclear had continued to be adopted at speed in the last 50-60 years rather than being demonized, and for high density or unlit areas, it's still a great option and has no risk of running out of available fuel in the next hundred years.
        immibis 1y ago

immibis 1y ago

Am I the only one annoyed by the continual low-level background radiation (heh) of pro-nuclear propaganda? It's just another fossil fuel. Sure, it doesn't emit CO2, but the sustainability problem is still there. I'll support nuclear expansion when I see a credible plan to complete the transition to actual renewables within 30 years, using nuclear as a stopgap. We have less than 100 years of known uranium reserves if we use it to power everything. It'll be coal and oil all over again. And now we don't need one because solar is already here.

randallsquared 1y ago
We have less than 100 years of uranium assuming we use enriched uranium once, don't reprocess the "spent" fuel, don't use breeder reactors to make plutonium for further energy production (going from 100 to thousands of years at current usage rates), and don't use breeder reactors to produce U233 from thorium, which is so much more abundant and available than uranium that it would extend current use by another 100-270 times, meaning current usage at hundreds of thousands of years, with already known deposits of nuclear fuel. These aren't breakthrough technologies, but just engineering, because we already know how to do this. Electricity was forecast in the 1950s to be too cheap to meter within a few decades of building reactors, and that future was completely practical. We just chose (at least temporary) stagnation, instead. Solar is definitely cheaper than current nuclear, and continuing to fall rapidly, while battery cost is also improving apace. In the short term, solar can meet most of our needs and let us turn off more coal and oil, and that's certainly useful! In the medium term, though, we can't get back on the Henry Adams curve without denser sources than sunlight, which takes up quite a bit of real estate even if we move most capture to space.
- immibis 1y ago
  I don't know how you can say with a straight face that solar power is a stopgap and nuclear power is a long-term sustainable solution. I cannot rightly comprehend the confusion of ideas that would provoke such a statement.
  - randallsquared 1y ago
    Well, I said “medium” term. But ultimately if we stayed on the curve (that is, longer term), humanity would be using the entire output of the sun in less than 2000 years, requiring a Dyson sphere or something. Solar power can’t keep up with human flourishing. We’ll have to have something that is denser and more distributed. :)
    - immibis 1y ago
      Where do you propose to get enough uranium and thorium to match the power output of the entire sun for longer than five milliseconds?
      - randallsquared 1y ago
        I feel like we're talking past each other. If we are to get back on a steady growth rate in energy/person, solar on earth is a great short-term part of that, fission is required for continuing it in the medium term until we figure out something else (fusion, but then whatever we might unlock down the road). You're globalizing what I said about having enough uranium and thorium in known deposits and at current power usage, but obviously we would outgrow that as we expand into the rest of the solar system. My point is not that we should stop or slow investment in solar (we shouldn't!), just that we'd all have been much, much better off if nuclear had continued to be adopted at speed in the last 50-60 years rather than being demonized, and for high density or unlit areas, it's still a great option and has no risk of running out of available fuel in the next hundred years.
        immibis 1y ago