15/12/2022, 20:29 A Time for Choosing - Doomberg

A Time for Choosing

Doomberg 55 8
37 min ago
“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” – William Shakespeare

When we have occasion to remind friends and family that the anti-nuclear movement
was created by a group of radical environmentalists who were fundamentally anti-
human – as in, they were actively and specifically working to have fewer humans
living on the planet – we are usually met with blank stares of disbelief, followed by a
prompt change of subject. Especially during the holidays.

As we laid out in Malthusian Malarkey, the prospect of cheap, abundant energy for the
masses was considered no solution at all to the elites who founded many of the well-
known environmental groups still in operation today, individuals that understood all
too well that nuclear power from fission was capable of providing an energy bounty
with minimal damage to the environment. Thus began a decades-long propaganda
campaign directed at the technology that continues to this day.

While these same organizations have worked hard to distance themselves (at least
superficially) from their ugly history, physics mandates that full implementation of
their policies would result in the death of countless humans in the name of
preserving nature, to which we routinely say to the closet Malthusians who support
such thinking: “You first.”

Serendipity provided a timely reminder of this last week when Emmet Penney, author
and pro-nuclear advocate whom we quoted in Malthusian Malarkey (you can find his
excellent work on the Grid Brief blog here), chanced upon some revealing
correspondence while researching the origins of the modern environmental
movement. Tucked into a pre-publication copy Penney acquired of Allan Talbot’s
book Power Along the Hudson: The Storm King Case and the Birth of Environmentalism
was a signed letter from David Brower, the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club
and founder of Friends of the Earth. On Saturday, Penney tweeted his exciting
discovery, and, having confirmed the authenticity of Penney’s story directly with him,
we reproduce a key passage of that letter here (emphasis added throughout):

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“Only a short twenty years ago the phrase ‘population explosion’ hadn’t yet been coined,
and only a few demographers foresaw the deluge of people now engulfing the earth. Few
of them anticipated the devastating effects of too many people. Now we’re beginning to
reap the whirlwind of that Hugh Moore warned about in the early Fifties.”

Malthusian malarkey - signed, sealed, delivered | Emmet Penney

On this issue, Brower did not lead by example and went on to live a long, resource-
consuming life before passing away from natural causes at age 88. To be clear, we
would be the last to begrudge him or anyone else of such a lengthy lifespan, we
rather point out that all humans deserve a shot at a similarly long run on this
wonderful blue planet, not just the select few self-pardoned from the label of “too
many.”

It is with this sober background that we reluctantly address yet another imminent
hype cycle on nuclear fusion, a supposedly new-and-improved embodiment of nuclear
power. Earlier this week, scientists at the storied Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (LLNL) made global headlines by claiming to have achieved the long-
sought-after goal of deriving more energy from a fusion experiment than went into it.
The scoop was broken by the Financial Times:

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“US government scientists have made a breakthrough in the pursuit of limitless, zero-
carbon power by achieving a net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time,
according to three people with knowledge of preliminary results from a recent
experiment….

The federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which uses a process
called inertial confinement fusion that involves bombarding a tiny pellet of hydrogen
plasma with the world’s biggest laser, had achieved net energy gain in a fusion
experiment in the past two weeks, the people said.”

Scientists doing science-y things | LLNL

As exciting as this scientific breakthrough appears – and rest assured, we are as

fascinated by advances in basic science as anybody – the reaction to this development
by the general public will undoubtedly be more enthusiastic than that of the grizzled
veterans of the nuclear power industry. What does this advance realistically mean for
humanity and why are so many nuclear power advocates underwhelmed by these
headlines? Let’s dig in.

The main issue that proponents of nuclear power have with fusion is that it
fundamentally isn’t needed. The problems it purports to solve are the manufactured

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product of Malthusian environmentalists. Effectively limitless, zero-carbon power is

available today using the latest nuclear fission reactor designs – we simply need to
choose to do it. It really is that simple. The countless mainstream news articles
promoting fusion that will be printed in the coming weeks and months will all
carefully note that fusion holds the potential for no radioactive nuclear waste and
zero risk of reactor meltdown, as though those dangers are a meaningful barrier to a
nuclear fission renaissance. Just watch as wildly exaggerated risks associated with
fission are further embellished to amplify the significance, by comparison, of the
fusion breakthrough, playing seamlessly into the hands of nuclear power’s
contemporary opponents. Why build new, “dangerous” fission reactors now when
this shiny new unicorn technology is just around the corner?

Except it won’t be.

Energy poverty is a deliberate choice, and when fusion technology eventually

approaches commercial viability (a timeframe to be measured in decades), we expect
to hear a chorus of equally compelling risks concocted to scare people out of
supporting its widescale deployment. As they have successfully done with fission,
professional fatalists will do everything in their power to make fusion more
expensive – through relentless legal assaults, corruption of our regulatory bodies, and
death by a thousand environmental impact studies – only to then turn around and
argue that we shouldn’t pursue fusion because it costs too much. The playbook is as
tired as it is effective, and until we address that problem no amount of brilliant
science is going to save us.

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Malthusians doing Malthusian-y things | Mail & Guardian

For proof of what governments are capable of doing in a true energy emergency, we
take an ironic turn to Germany, a country that has done more to impale itself at the
altar of green energy than virtually any other nation in the world (with the possible
exception of Belgium). In a fascinating article published in the Wall Street Journal last
week titled The Five-Year Engineering Feat Germany Pulled Off in Months, we learn how
quickly major energy projects can be constructed when the full weight of the
government pivots from being a headwind to a tailwind and environmental barriers
are wiped away with the help of a motivated bureaucracy:

“In March, the German government asked energy companies to weigh a seemingly
impossible engineering task. Could a new liquefied natural gas import terminal, which
normally takes at least five years to build, be erected in this port town by year’s end?

At the headquarters of the company asked to build the pipeline portion, technical director
Thomas Hüwener posed that question to his team. ‘If no, then it’s a no,’ he told them. ‘If
yes, then we have to commit, with all the possible consequences for our company.’

After three days deliberations, the company concluded that if everything went perfectly
the project could be done by Christmas. Since then, it has had to contend with

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potentially toxic soil and environmental regulations protecting frogs and bats. When
workers encountered high groundwater, they had to drain trenches, then backfill them.”

GSD in Germany | WSJ

Don’t forget, Germany wouldn’t be scrambling to build natural gas import facilities
at record speed if it hadn’t foolishly and voluntarily deconstructed its world-class
suite of nuclear fission reactors. That Germany is moving mountains to facilitate this
particular project is the ultimate example of an exception that proves the rule: if the
Germans wanted to reverse course and become a global nuclear energy superpower
again they could easily do so. The country chooses to burn coal and pay Qatar for
natural gas instead.

It also chooses to spend tens of billions of Euros on intermittent solar and wind
installations, technologies that are woefully underdelivering thus far in the winter of
2022-2023. The vast majority of the critical components needed to construct these
projects are imported from China, a country that has purposefully and illegally
cornered the market on renewable supply chains. In a classic example of “Do as I say,
not as I do,” China is busy building out nuclear fission reactors by the dozen:

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“The real growth story for nuclear power, as in so many other realms, lay in Asia. In 2022
so far, the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) reports that 35 civilian nuclear
power plants were under construction in Asia, over twice as many as in Europe,
including Russia. The numbers for other continents pale in comparison; just two in North
America, both in Georgia; two in South America; three in the Middle East.

Many of the new Asian construction projects involve China, either because the
construction is in China or is being conducted with loans and expertise from China. If
Chinese President Xi Jinping is to be believed, the 19 currently under way are a down
payment on 150 new reactors that are in the planning stages. As Bloomberg noted when
China’s nuclear lending program was announced at the COP26 climate summit in
Glasgow last November, it will cost about $440bn through 2060 and aims to replace all of
China’s massively dirty coal generation capacity by that year.”

Chinese nuclear fission reactors | Getty

While scientific breakthroughs like the fusion work described by LLNL are
important, the global energy shortage is not a science problem, it is a political problem.
All too often, modern politics quickly descends into dirty propaganda battles where
those with the greatest appetite for distortion emerge victorious. By this defining

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measure, nuclear proponents have been focusing their lasers on the wrong target and
have been routed accordingly.

Fusion might power the stars, but, as the Bard of Avon so aptly reminds, the reins of
our energy destiny are already well within our grasp.

Thank you for reading and engaging! Your “likes,” tweets, and word-of-mouth are the
lifeblood of this publication’s growth, and we are grateful for your support.

8 Comments
Write a comment…

Joesmoe3 5 min ago · edited 4 min ago

I absolutely LOVE "you first" !!!!!

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Not to slow you down one iota . . . there was an impressive study/exposé by Dr. Simon
Michaux, sort of presented in digestible form by Decouple:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwULaEaTAaU
My point here, is that he pokes a small hole in the balloon of nuclear advocates
dismissal of the challenges associated with fission waste when addressed at the limit
of a massive expansion of fission plants.
And, I would add, nuclear plants, even built to the limit, cannot replace energy as
consumed in today's form, beyond (according to him) ~60%. So we will continue to
need hydrocarbons, primarily for transportation.
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Laramie Writes Coming Crypto Battle Lines 9 min ago
Thanks for this extremely timely and insightful piece. It's why I subscribe.
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