The Other Green Old Deal

The fun future we were promised in the 50s.

Solar, biomass, and wind energy are all well and good where the human population density is low. Yes, there is more work involved, but there is also a restoration of the pioneer spirit that made America great.

Alas, such energy alternatives are questionable or worse when it comes to powering cities. Covering vast swaths of farmland or wilderness with solar panels is not good for the planet. Giant windmills kill birds and whales -- and they are hard to recycle.

But there is another somewhat old energy source which generates next to no carbon dioxide, and has a very small environmental footprint: nuclear power. I highly recommend Petr Beckmann's The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear. And for those who like biting satire I'd recommend Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer, perhaps the greatest Promethean vs. Luddite propaganda novel ever written.

But I would also have you read Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan. On a typical year nuclear is way safer than solar. Ladders kill. But what of outlier events? Nuclear power plants are safe because they very highly regulated. And running nuclear power plants is a true elitist activity, a job for people with competence. What happens when nations newly out of the early Iron Age or Stone Age start managing nuclear power plants? What happens when woke countries like the United States demand that nut cases be allowed to operate nuclear power plants in the name of Equity?

There, I just handed you a powerful talking point to take to any pro nuclear anti Global Warming activist. Touchy people who freak out over pronouns should be not be operating nuclear power plants. And sacrificing qualifications to meet Diversity targets is a really bad idea. Free range neutrons and fissionable nuclei don't care about your feelings.

There are other problems with nuclear fission. What of war or the collapse of civilizations? Off the top of my head I can think of only two countries with nuclear reactors which have suffered military invasion: Iran and Ukraine. Iran successfully repelled Iraq's invasion under Saddam Hussein. The story of Ukraine is ongoing and worrisome.

I worry about nuclear waste as well. When Jimmy Carter put an end to fuel rod reprocessing, nuclear plants started accumulating pools filled with spent fuel rods. What happens to those radioactive rods should civilization collapse due to war, plague, invasion, or mandatory Gender Studies classes? Indeed, still sane countries struggle with what to do with nuclear waste.

The cool solution is to switch to nuclear reactor designs which "burn" most of the waste. Kirk Sorenson has produced a bunch of delightful and seductive videos touting liquid fluoride thorium reactors. Thorium is way more abundant than Uranium 235. Molten salt reactors are more efficient than pressurized water reactors. Molten salt reactors can be turned on and off easily. They burn most of the nasty waste products, and the useful transmutation products can be easily extracted. In theory we could replace carbon fuels for all electricity production, electrify the remaining primitive parts of the world and not have to worry about finding another source of energy for at least a thousand years. And this is a technology which the government developed and dropped over a half century ago.

But there is an inherent problem with any kind of breeder reactor, be it U238 to plutonium or thorium to U233: at some part in the process you get chemically separable fissionable fuel. To separate fissionable U235 from the non fissionable U238 requires gigantic gas centrifuges or mass spectrometers which can be seen from orbit. Separating the fissionable U233 from neutron bombarded thorium requires simply turning the uranium into uranium hexafluoride, which is a gas. This is way too easy!

Sorenson's videos claim that the U233 from molten salt reactors wouldn't be useful for making bombs because of U232 impurities which are deadly gamma emitters. So, a terrorist group building a suitcase nuke from stolen materials is out. But what of a Bond villain who goes into the nuclear reactor business? Robot technology has advanced greatly over the past half century. A Bond villain could handle gamma ray emitters without wasting henchmen. On the other hand, a quick look at Wikipedia reveals another problem: U232 emits enough neutrons to cause spontaneous detonation of a fission bomb. But the same article gives evidence that U233 has been used to successfully make fission bombs. If I had the time and access to a good university library, I'd dig deeper. I'm a bit nervous about doing the research online or buying books on the subject at Amazon, as I don't want the Deep State to think I'm trying become a Bond villain myself.

Speaking of Bond villains, Bill Gates has been financing research on another type of breeder reactor: a Traveling Wave reactor. This design breeds U238 into plutonium and then uses the plutonium for fuel in place, no reprocessing necessary. The trick is to breed just enough plutonium to maintain stable nuclear fission, but not so much that the reactor becomes a bomb. They have run the simulations and are now building a prototype. I hope the simulations weren't written in Python...

Solar Energy as a National Defense Issue

If we stamp out Wokeness and restore an appreciation of competence (aka Ableism), we could theoretically have our chrome plated future with clean air, quieter streets, and residential electricity sold the same way we buy cell phone service. (Think "unlimited" plans.)

But to be serious about Global Warming requires a power source suitable for the unstable and recently primitive areas of the world. Even a super safe nuclear fission reactor can be a serious danger in the event of war or civilizational collapse. And any kind of breeder reactor design makes it easy for rogue governments to become nuclear powers.

Solar may take up space and have other inconveniences, but it's really hard to make a portable super weapon out of solar panels. And many of the world's most tribal and/or truculent countries have sunny deserts in which to place their solar panels. In sunny lands, villages can be energy independent -- no power lines or substations for insurgents to attack. Solar energy works even where central government is weak. Developing cheaper solar panels and batteries is thus the ultimate foreign aid program.

If we can figure out how to use solar energy for transportation, we can stop wasting trillions of dollars mucking about in the Middle East. We can draw a line of death around Israel and leave the rest of the region to its own devices.

Ending our relationship with repressive kingdoms in the Middle East is currently not an option. As long as the world is dependent on petroleum for transportation, said kingdoms are sitting on incredibly valuable buried treasures with low populations to protect said treasures. They are going to pay some superpower for weapons and protection. If it isn't the United States, it will be France, Russia, or China. They will pay a rival to develop ever better weapons and be able to project power abroad.

We are thus in the awkward position of defending Israel and providing top shelf weapons to nations which don't like Israel so much We are feeding the conflict between Sunni and Shiites to distract from the Moslem-Jew conflict. We are supporting the world's most repressively patriarchal monarchies while watering down our own physical standards for soldiers in the name of sexual equality. We fly the Rainbow Flag over our military bases while supporting governments which still have death penalties for homosexuality on the books. We are a house divided against itself, and we cannot stand much longer.

A crash program to make solar cheaper than petroleum would save trillions of dollars even it takes a thousand Solyndras worth of failed experiments to get there. We could then end our ridiculously contradictory foreign policy.

On the downside, solar energy that is cheaper than petroleum could lead to electric car mandates. I'll address that in the next installment.