99% of mankind should love nuclear energy
Please be patient with me on this post – it might take a while before I clearly demonstrate why it belongs on Atomic Insights. First I want to share a couple of entertaining, but informative videos that you’ll probably never see in the commercial media.
This is another version of the same song, performed with a band in front of an audience in a theater.
The star of those videos is David Ippolito, who is known as That Guitar Man from Central Park. I first heard about him and his minstrel-like song writing skills while listening to Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code, which can legitimately stake a claim as being the first podcast. I started listening to that show and to other podcasts in early 2005.
Podcasts might have actually saved my life – it was so much easier to stay alert during my long commute from Annapolis to Washington, DC while listening to intelligent conversation and independently produced music than while listening to ad interrupted, inane talk or “top 40” radio that is produced by conglomerates like Clear Channel.
Curry’s show demonstrated how someone with broadcasting experience as a creative DJ who had run afoul of corporate control could declare his independence and keep on doing the DJ work he loved to do. Curry spoke frequently of his desire to share the sound track of his life without being “encouraged” to follow a homogenizing playlist. As some of you know, I joined the podcasting movement in March of 2006 and have produced more than 180 episodes of The Atomic Show since that time.
For me, podcasting and blogging have never about finding a way to monetize the effort and quit my day job. They have been my way to find and share knowledge with people who might share some of my passion. When your favorite topic is nuclear energy, it is a real challenge to find a local group of people – even if you live and work in a big metropolitan area – who are willing to listen and exchange ideas without their eyes glazing over.
There is a strong thread that ties podcasters, bloggers, and independent song writers together – we share a desire to express creative thoughts to others, even if those others are strangers who we may never meet face to face. Of course, that desire to express oneself to others is nothing new, but the technology available today makes it possible for nearly everyone to have the privilege of finding a potentially world wide audience.
Aside: Fortunately, I occasionally get a chance to meet someone in person with whom I developed a friendship through my Atomic efforts. Most recently, I had a chance to meet Brian Mays and his dad at a local American Nuclear Society dinner. We had a great conversation about interesting topics like nuclear rocket motors. End Aside.
The reason that I have chosen to share a little of my personal political philosophy of independent thinking and communicating – I’m a libertarian leaning person who does not like being controlled by either corporations or government – is that I believe many of the people who joined the Occupy movement are potential nuclear energy advocates. Unfortunately, many of them have been influenced by the establishment to have an almost programmed negative reaction to the words “nuclear”, “atomic”, and “radiation”.
In some small way, I want to let them know that most of the bad things that they have heard about nuclear energy have been told to them by people who really like the established way of the world. “They” like having control of power and fuel, knowing that the false perception of scarcity gives them access to far more resources than they would otherwise have based simply on their skills and ability.
“They” also like encouraging people to be afraid of low probability hazards like “terrorists” and “radiation” because it encourages some people to demand that the government step in to provide protection. That is exactly what “they” want – a timid population of people who will accept incredibly onerous laws like the “Patriot Act” and intrusive agencies like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Homeland Security.
My guess is that about 1% of the world’s population really likes the fact that people think we are doomed to either be dependent on fossil fuels or to be limited to “natural”, but completely unreliable energy sources.
My message of hope this morning is to shout from the highest soapbox that I control – Atomic Insights – that atomic energy provides mankind with almost unlimited, clean, affordable power.
From an engineering perspective, power is simply defined as “the rate at something can do work”. We all have a lot of work to do to make the world a better place and there is not too much time to waste. In order to work rapidly, we need all of the power that we can get. It is time to demand that politicians remove the ties that bind down our access to atomic energy. It is time to ask them – “Where’dat power go?”
How you can help
Please join me in supporting the Nuclear Literacy Project (NLP). Your contributions to the Nuclear Literacy Project are tax deductible.
Well you will get no argument from me on this matter. However when I look at “movements” like Occupy [whatever] or other protests that can put a significant number of boots on the ground I have to wonder how we can do the same.
One thing we lack is a simple positive message delivered without qualification.
We have been maneuvered into taking a defensive posture trying to answer the manufactured fears of radiation and proliferation and these have been framed in such a way that even our counter arguments serve to give these notions more creditably than they are due. I believe it is time to let these go and instead focus on promoting the positive. After all fossil fuel has managed to keep going despite being under constant attack for its environmental burdens, and dangers and I don’t see them constantly making hand-wringing excuses.
Also, (and I’ve said this before) we desperately need to start to cultivate grassroots support among the young at the secondary and post secondary levels. We need people from this age group willing to organize at these levels. If we continue to wait until they see the light themselves, we will also continue to loose potential supporters to the renewable side. And that’s the other thing: deep understanding of nuclear energy isn’t needed. If you look at most renewable supporters you find that they have bought into a general idea, not its specifics. This is the sort of support we need; we cannot wait for everyone to see the technical argument in detail – a superficial understanding is enough.
The message I would like most send to these young occupiers is that the United States does not have to fight wars and occupy foreign lands in order to secure sources of uranium. Imagine a poster with a picture of a G.I. with a prosthetic limb. The poster could pose the question, “Why are we still fighting for oil?” and include a slogan. Nuclear Fission…plentiful, affordable, and clean.
b>
One problem is that oil is used overwhelmingly for transport, an area which nuclear fission can only power indirectly.
@George – a larger than understood portion of our oil is used to power ships, which have been known to be technically capable of carrying small, safe, flexible nuclear propulsion systems for about 57 years. Large, ocean going transport consumes about 6% of the world’s oil.
I have not found any good sources for numbers yet, but inland shipping with vessels large enough to accomodate nuclear energy is also a significant oil consumer.
Then you have such obvious opportunities as electrifying more rail, using more electric space heating to displace oil furnaces, using smaller reactors to power oil dependent places like Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Alaska, and Guam, and helping oil producing nations that currently use indigenous oil in power plants. I figure that even without any plants to take advantage of nuclear fission heat to upgrade carbonaceous fuels to liquid hydrocarbons, fission could reduce our current oil demand by 20-30%. That would be more significant than finding 2-3 more Saudi Arabias
My analysis shows that the primary reason we did not take this sensible approach to using less oil 3 decades ago is that the oil and gas industry wanted to sell as much product as possible before they were made less important by the inevitable acceptance of atomic fission as a better source of heat energy.
Electric Cars will be available in a time-frame that will fit nicely with a nuclear build-out.
There is a reason why after 10-years of driving submarines and spending 95% of my deployed time in the Middle East that I left the Navy and started working on how nuclear power can provide our transportation fuel without having to fight wars.
We have more than enough coal to produce diesel and gasoline at current consumption for the next 150-years. Every time I go to the airport and see those young men and women, that I get so angry. There is no need to induce such a loss of innocence. We should be fighting to protect it.
One big problem with all Western economies is that their currencies are overvalued relative to Asian currencies, making their industries uncompetitive. Devaluation would have far less negative consequences if we weren’t dependent on imported fossil fuels…,
Rod, one of your own posts of a couple of years ago should be interesting to the people who support Occupy. This one: . If you allow, I’ll use it the arguments in it in a post in the blog I hope to start this month.
@Twominds – feel free to adopt and adapt my arguments. Links back to the original are always appreciated, but not required.
From Twitter:
Helen caldicott @DrHCaldicott
Hooray. Fear grows in O.C. cities near #San Onofre #nuclear plant http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0330-san-onofre-20120330,0,7730812.story
4h helen caldicott helen caldicott
A prominent anti-nuker is GLEEFUL about more and more people living in FEAR of a nuclear plant. I’m not harsh in putting it mildly that this person is _ill_.
James Greenidge
Queens NY
You are old fashioned, living in the past, while conning yourselves you are the future. Nuclear was thought of as the great hope way back in the fifties and sixties when even cars would be nuclear in the future, planes also, energy would cost nothing by the 21st century … blah blah blah. Didn’t happen, ain’t gonna happen. And the world still has the [growing] stockpile of highly radioactive waste it doesn’t know what to do with. Great. You are fantasists, and Caldicott is gleeful precisely because people are waking up to the con and opposing it. Why wouldn’t she be glad? Huh? Have a read this link to see what the latest research is telling us http://planetark.org/wen/65576. You lost the argument years ago. But like all cults you just hang on. Germany has closed most nuclear plants and the remaining ones will be closed within a few years. Recently Germany’s power needs were half provided by solar! That’s 50%, and although it was for just a few hot days, this is a work in progress and shows what is possible.
@Peter Simmons
Don’t forget to submit an invoice to your fossil fuel industry employers after posting that comment.
Nuclear fission is millions of times more energy dense than fossil fuel combustion and it does not produce any greenhouse gases.
The “waste” still contains 95% of its initial potential energy and we KNOW how to extract most of that remaining energy.
Germany’s solar industry celebrated and issued press releases when, for a few hours on a sunny mild Saturday afternoon, 50% of its electricity needs were supplied by solar energy. They neglected to mention that solar output just 8 hours later was ZERO and is regularly ZERO for 12-15 hours per day.
No one has issued any press releases for the 8760 hours per year for the past 20 years that 80% of France’s electricity needs are supplied by emission free nuclear energy. It is not news, it is just routine fact.