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Page added on February 18, 2015
Nuclear Energy: The Sixty-Year Pitch
 |
| Tony Fischer/flickr |
| Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant |
From a dancing housewife to Homer Simpson and beyond, here are some memorable moments in the long grind to sell nuclear power to a wary public.
Third of three parts. Part 1:Last Tango for nuclear?; Part 2:Atomic Balm.
The nuclear power industry has often been its own worst enemy through its marketing.
At the height of the Cold War in 1953, President Eisenhower rolled out the “Atoms for Peace” campaign, envisioning everything from electrical generation to harnessing atomic bombs to dredging harbors and damming rivers. The following year, Atomic Energy Commission Chair Lewis Strauss upped the ante, envisioning a day when “our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.”
Strauss was placing his bets on nuclear fusion, which, sixty years later, is still on the drawing board. And the meters are still ticking away.
Eager to invest in nukes, utilities took their cue from the AEC Chairman. The Atomic Industrial Forum, the first nuclear power trade association, led the way in messages equating nuclear power with easy living and patriotism. Utilities ran ad campaigns that promised cheap nuclear energy.
From hot times to deep freeze
Nuclear power plant construction hit its Golden Era in the 1960’s. A late Sixties video touting proposed New England nukes, “The Atom and Eve,” is a memorable example from the era: Eve is a dancing housewife, reveling in the virtues of an all-electric kitchen powered by clean, safe nuclear energy. The video’s cigarette-smoking safety engineer looks like he was plucked out of the fission edition of Mad Men, but it’s Eve’s show. She pirouettes around household appliances, caressing the refrigerator, fondling an electric range, and (viewer advisory!) at about the 8:45 mark, she pretty much makes it to third base with an electric washer-dryer combo.
 |
The cynical atmosphere of the Seventies brought a different approach. The OPEC oil embargo of 1973 prompted a U.S. oil crisis, and it all reprised six years later. One of the few friends of the U.S. remaining in the Middle East became a posterboy – or poster Shah – for building U.S. nukes to curb dependency on Arab oil.
It wasn’t Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s only nuclear victory. In 1976, President Gerald Ford bowed to persuasion from two top aides to provide nuclear reprocessing technology to Iran. Three years later, the Shah was toppled, and Iran became America’s top enemy, both its oil and its nuke plants now a threat. The two aides, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, went on to further carve their names into Middle East history.
By the end of the decade, rising protests at nuclear plant construction sites and the near-calamity of Three Mile Island changed the game. Public mistrust grew, particularly after Nuclear Regulatory Commission staffers accused Pennsylvania officials and Three Mile Island’s operators of downplaying risks.
The almost-concurrent release of The China Syndrome, a fictional tale of a California nuclear accident and cover-up, didn’t help. The box-office hit, starring Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas and Jane Fonda, features a plant engineer delivering a serendipitous line taken from an actual 1957 Atomic Energy Commission report stating a major nuclear accident would “render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable.”
Showbiz takes a swing
After Three Mile Island and The China Syndrome, nukes became a pop-culture target. Less than six months after Three Mile Island’s partial meltdown the era’s rock and roll royalty convened for the “No Nukes” concerts in New York: Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash and The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, headlined. Four years later, Meryl Streep starred in a biopic about Karen Silkwood, a plutonium worker and union organizer who was contaminated in an on-the-job incident. When Silkwood died in a 1974 car wreck, supporters said she was run off the road. Police ruled it an accident, but her employers at Kerr-McGee paid her survivors nearly $1.4 million for the contamination.
 |
| FOX |
Nuclear reached peak pop culture pillorying in 1990 with the debut of The Simpsons. With the loutish Homer Simpson becoming the nation’s best-known nuclear employee and the comically evil Montgomery Burns representing ownership and management (not to mention Blinky, the mutant three-eyed fish who appeared in the show’s first year), tens of millions sat down weekly to jokes at the industry’s expense.
 |
| Todd Ehlers/flickr |
After the show became a hit in its first season, the industry took several Simpson’s writers and producers on a VIP tour of the San Onofre plant north of San Diego. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, executive producer Sam Simon promised to take the edge off the nuke jokes. Blinky the mutant fish disappeared from the show, but nuclear snark has remained a Simpsons hallmark for a quarter century.
Anxious Eighties
Three Mile Island did not spawn the cancer epidemic that some activists predicted but it scared the pants off of Wall Street. Backing for new plant construction plunged into a deep freeze as existing nuclear plants aged and on-site storage of nuclear waste piled up. The industry’s re-formed communications arm, the Council on Energy Awareness, cranked out ads dissing the near-term prospects for wind and solar (including a version of “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” from the musical “Annie.”) They also vowed that safe nuclear waste storage was right around the corner. It wasn’t, and still isn’t.
In 1986, the Soviet nuclear complex at Chernobyl, in today’s Ukraine, re-defined the notion of nuclear disaster. Thirty-one deaths were reported immediately after the rupture of a core, steam explosions and radiation releases at Chernobyl’s Reactor Four. The radiation plume reached as far as Scandinavia, with much of it falling on neighboring Belarus. About 350,000 people were relocated from the contamination zones and Pripyat, the city built to serve the reactors, is still a ghost town today, and will be for an estimated 20,000 years.
 |
| National Archives |
| President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter in the Three Mile Island control room, 1979. |
The World Health Organization estimated that Chernobyl-related cancer deaths will eventually reach 4,000, but that is hotly disputed, with some projections reaching six figures. Just to prove that the pro-nuclear side doesn’t have a monopoly on overreach, high-profile opponent Dr. Helen Caldicott has repeatedly cited an obscure, non-peer-reviewed estimate of up to one million eventual deaths from Chernobyl. No other study comes close to those numbers.
By 1988, with the Shah a distant memory, the Middle East became an ominous selling point instead of a success story for nukes. A Council on Energy Awareness ad showing a man paddling a barrel of oil through a Persian Gulf minefield argued for domestic nukes as a countermeasure to Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollahs he was at war with.
Nervous Nineties and beyond
In 1998, industry advertising was whacked by the Better Business Bureau, which ruled in favor of environmental groups and a windmill power producer that nuclear ads could not boast of producing “environmentally clean” power. When those claims continued, the groups won a similar ruling from the Federal Trade Commission a year later.
As the 21st Century rolled in, the industry increasingly marketed itself as a remedy to climate change concerns, with a parade of prominent citizens, some of them paid spokespeople, plugging nuclear.
Then, in 2011, came Fukushima, and the industry’s umpteenth redemption pitch was in doubt. And Japan, by reputation one of the best-prepared and most safety-conscious nation on Earth, went into damage control mode, including at least one world-class PR overreach: Tokyo Electric Power’s legal team argued in court that radiation released by the Fukushima meltdowns was no longer the company’s responsibility.
It was now “owned” by the people it fell on.
The court was not amused.
 |
Today, the domestic nuclear industry is relying heavily on selling nuke plants as a climate change solution. They’ve also leaned heavily on a reliability pitch, citing nuke plants’ consistent operation during the 2014 Polar Vortex. During the fierce New England storms of 2015, Exelon, owner of the biggest fleet of U.S. nukes, sent out this prideful tweet:
“Extreme weather’s got nothing on #nuclear. Our plants ran continuously during the recent winter storm in New England.”
Only problems with this: Exelon doesn’t own any nuclear plants in New England. And on Jan. 27, Entergy’s Pilgrim nuke near Plymouth, Mass., went offline during a winter storm for the second time in three years.
This series is funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Family Foundation
45 Comments on "Nuclear Energy: The Sixty-Year Pitch"
Makati1 on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 7:14 pm
The nuclear industry was built on a mountain of lies from the very beginning. Now they are being exposed by the internet and a shrinking planet.
Dave Thompson on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 8:05 pm
We the people are left holding the radio active bag.
TemplarMyst on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 8:23 pm
As usual, I’ll provide counterpoint. Not so much to apologize for the absurdities of mass advertising or the governance problems in our current form of crony capitalism, as to point out nuclear should remain an option going forward in the face of PO and CC.
Please efer to my previous replies for details.
In sum: the waste is largely unused fuel, the effects of low level radiation on health are quite debatable, and the potential to generate very high levels of low carbon energy on an incredibly small footprint explain why Hansen, Lovelock, et al consider it an energy source which should be in the mix.
Plantagenet on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 8:45 pm
When we get to peak oil, the world is gong to need other forms of energy.
Nuclear power plants provide energy.
Therefore, after peak oil we’ll rely more on nuclear energy.
Apneaman on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 8:54 pm
From this day forward, please don’t feed the Plant.
Makati1 on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 9:02 pm
Well, for the nuke lovers, it ain’t agonna happen. LOL
“Nuclear plants delayed in China, watched closely by US firms”
“Nuclear non-starter: Oversupplied, losing money and without a constituency”
“Government explores options on how to store nuclear waste in the long term (Japan)”
“‘Nuclear Plants Are Like Time Bombs’: Former Japanese Prime Minister”
“IAEA advises Japan to consider water discharge from Fukushima plant”
http://ricefarmer.blogspot.fr/
and on and on…
TemplarMyst on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 9:16 pm
The economics are against nuclear at this point, it is true, but that seems to me to be largely the result of two factors.
First, the use of extremely high levels of leverage in the production of natural gas from fracking. That approach is already beginning to show signs of extreme stress.
Second, the use of very high direct and indirect subsidies to renewable energy forms. This in itself is not the issue per se, since nuclear and fossil get pretty substantial subsidies themselves.
What is the issue is the subsidies to renewables are continuing to mask the impact of their very low efficiencies. Once those shake out providers will be scrambling for how to adjust.
I’m not saying that won’t happen, just that it hasn’t been well thought out. Grid scale storage, or a truly decentralized grid might work, but those are both distant pipe dreams at the moment.
Once natural gas reaches true market-clearing prices and a carbon-tax of some sort is introduced nuclear will be viable and indeed provide a very solid value.
At this point, no. But I suspect it won’t be long.
dashster on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 9:28 pm
Nuclear will play an increasing role in electricity generation in the coming decades. The reason being, there will be no alternative. Annual natural gas and coal production capabilities are being over-estimated just as oil is.
Plantagenet on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 10:43 pm
The secret to making nuclear power affordable is to develop standardized small modular nuclear power systems that can built on an assembly-line system and then put on-line in increments as needed.
AND the DOE has a program to develop nuclear power of this kind
http://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-reactor-technologies/small-modular-nuclear-reactors
GregT on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 11:14 pm
Nuclear power plants generate electricity.
Everything that we power with electricity requires fossil fuels in resource extraction, refinement, transportation, manufacturing, distribution, and maintenance, as do nuclear power plants themselves.
Nuclear is a bridge, nothing more.
meld on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 1:48 am
“When we get to peak oil, the world is gong to need other forms of energy.
Nuclear power plants provide energy.
Therefore, after peak oil we’ll rely more on nuclear energy.”
wow, the level of intellect you display sometimes is truly mind blowing
Makati1 on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 2:17 am
GregT, you are preaching to the deaf, as are all who try to point out the lies to those who don’t want to hear. If ALL of the costs for nuclear electric were tallied truthfully, it would prove that it is in negative territory and no amount of BS will make it a future energy source when oil is no longer a profitable concern. Ask TEPCO how much they are spending to try to contain just one reactor site that has gone into chaos. Multiply that by 400+ and you can see the answer.
dashster on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 6:30 am
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4901 Votes
Nuclear Energy: The Sixty-Year Pitch
Tony Fischer/flickr
Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant
From a dancing housewife to Homer Simpson and beyond, here are some memorable moments in the long grind to sell nuclear power to a wary public.
Third of three parts. Part 1:Last Tango for nuclear?; Part 2:Atomic Balm.
The nuclear power industry has often been its own worst enemy through its marketing.
At the height of the Cold War in 1953, President Eisenhower rolled out the “Atoms for Peace” campaign, envisioning everything from electrical generation to harnessing atomic bombs to dredging harbors and damming rivers. The following year, Atomic Energy Commission Chair Lewis Strauss upped the ante, envisioning a day when “our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.”
Strauss was placing his bets on nuclear fusion, which, sixty years later, is still on the drawing board. And the meters are still ticking away.
Eager to invest in nukes, utilities took their cue from the AEC Chairman. The Atomic Industrial Forum, the first nuclear power trade association, led the way in messages equating nuclear power with easy living and patriotism. Utilities ran ad campaigns that promised cheap nuclear energy.
From hot times to deep freeze
Nuclear power plant construction hit its Golden Era in the 1960’s. A late Sixties video touting proposed New England nukes, “The Atom and Eve,” is a memorable example from the era: Eve is a dancing housewife, reveling in the virtues of an all-electric kitchen powered by clean, safe nuclear energy. The video’s cigarette-smoking safety engineer looks like he was plucked out of the fission edition of Mad Men, but it’s Eve’s show. She pirouettes around household appliances, caressing the refrigerator, fondling an electric range, and (viewer advisory!) at about the 8:45 mark, she pretty much makes it to third base with an electric washer-dryer combo.
The cynical atmosphere of the Seventies brought a different approach. The OPEC oil embargo of 1973 prompted a U.S. oil crisis, and it all reprised six years later. One of the few friends of the U.S. remaining in the Middle East became a posterboy – or poster Shah – for building U.S. nukes to curb dependency on Arab oil.
It wasn’t Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s only nuclear victory. In 1976, President Gerald Ford bowed to persuasion from two top aides to provide nuclear reprocessing technology to Iran. Three years later, the Shah was toppled, and Iran became America’s top enemy, both its oil and its nuke plants now a threat. The two aides, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, went on to further carve their names into Middle East history.
By the end of the decade, rising protests at nuclear plant construction sites and the near-calamity of Three Mile Island changed the game. Public mistrust grew, particularly after Nuclear Regulatory Commission staffers accused Pennsylvania officials and Three Mile Island’s operators of downplaying risks.
The almost-concurrent release of The China Syndrome, a fictional tale of a California nuclear accident and cover-up, didn’t help. The box-office hit, starring Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas and Jane Fonda, features a plant engineer delivering a serendipitous line taken from an actual 1957 Atomic Energy Commission report stating a major nuclear accident would “render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable.”
Showbiz takes a swing
After Three Mile Island and The China Syndrome, nukes became a pop-culture target. Less than six months after Three Mile Island’s partial meltdown the era’s rock and roll royalty convened for the “No Nukes” concerts in New York: Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash and The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, headlined. Four years later, Meryl Streep starred in a biopic about Karen Silkwood, a plutonium worker and union organizer who was contaminated in an on-the-job incident. When Silkwood died in a 1974 car wreck, supporters said she was run off the road. Police ruled it an accident, but her employers at Kerr-McGee paid her survivors nearly $1.4 million for the contamination.
FOX
Nuclear reached peak pop culture pillorying in 1990 with the debut of The Simpsons. With the loutish Homer Simpson becoming the nation’s best-known nuclear employee and the comically evil Montgomery Burns representing ownership and management (not to mention Blinky, the mutant three-eyed fish who appeared in the show’s first year), tens of millions sat down weekly to jokes at the industry’s expense.
Todd Ehlers/flickr
After the show became a hit in its first season, the industry took several Simpson’s writers and producers on a VIP tour of the San Onofre plant north of San Diego. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, executive producer Sam Simon promised to take the edge off the nuke jokes. Blinky the mutant fish disappeared from the show, but nuclear snark has remained a Simpsons hallmark for a quarter century.
Anxious Eighties
Three Mile Island did not spawn the cancer epidemic that some activists predicted but it scared the pants off of Wall Street. Backing for new plant construction plunged into a deep freeze as existing nuclear plants aged and on-site storage of nuclear waste piled up. The industry’s re-formed communications arm, the Council on Energy Awareness, cranked out ads dissing the near-term prospects for wind and solar (including a version of “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” from the musical “Annie.”) They also vowed that safe nuclear waste storage was right around the corner. It wasn’t, and still isn’t.
In 1986, the Soviet nuclear complex at Chernobyl, in today’s Ukraine, re-defined the notion of nuclear disaster. Thirty-one deaths were reported immediately after the rupture of a core, steam explosions and radiation releases at Chernobyl’s Reactor Four. The radiation plume reached as far as Scandinavia, with much of it falling on neighboring Belarus. About 350,000 people were relocated from the contamination zones and Pripyat, the city built to serve the reactors, is still a ghost town today, and will be for an estimated 20,000 years.
National Archives
President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter in the Three Mile Island control room, 1979.
The World Health Organization estimated that Chernobyl-related cancer deaths will eventually reach 4,000, but that is hotly disputed, with some projections reaching six figures. Just to prove that the pro-nuclear side doesn’t have a monopoly on overreach, high-profile opponent Dr. Helen Caldicott has repeatedly cited an obscure, non-peer-reviewed estimate of up to one million eventual deaths from Chernobyl. No other study comes close to those numbers.
By 1988, with the Shah a distant memory, the Middle East became an ominous selling point instead of a success story for nukes. A Council on Energy Awareness ad showing a man paddling a barrel of oil through a Persian Gulf minefield argued for domestic nukes as a countermeasure to Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollahs he was at war with.
Nervous Nineties and beyond
In 1998, industry advertising was whacked by the Better Business Bureau, which ruled in favor of environmental groups and a windmill power producer that nuclear ads could not boast of producing “environmentally clean” power. When those claims continued, the groups won a similar ruling from the Federal Trade Commission a year later.
As the 21st Century rolled in, the industry increasingly marketed itself as a remedy to climate change concerns, with a parade of prominent citizens, some of them paid spokespeople, plugging nuclear.
Then, in 2011, came Fukushima, and the industry’s umpteenth redemption pitch was in doubt. And Japan, by reputation one of the best-prepared and most safety-conscious nation on Earth, went into damage control mode, including at least one world-class PR overreach: Tokyo Electric Power’s legal team argued in court that radiation released by the Fukushima meltdowns was no longer the company’s responsibility.
It was now “owned” by the people it fell on.
The court was not amused.
Today, the domestic nuclear industry is relying heavily on selling nuke plants as a climate change solution. They’ve also leaned heavily on a reliability pitch, citing nuke plants’ consistent operation during the 2014 Polar Vortex. During the fierce New England storms of 2015, Exelon, owner of the biggest fleet of U.S. nukes, sent out this prideful tweet:
“Extreme weather’s got nothing on #nuclear. Our plants ran continuously during the recent winter storm in New England.”
Only problems with this: Exelon doesn’t own any nuclear plants in New England. And on Jan. 27, Entergy’s Pilgrim nuke near Plymouth, Mass., went offline during a winter storm for the second time in three years.
This series is funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Family Foundation
energy Collective
12 Comments on “Nuclear Energy: The Sixty-Year Pitch”
Makati1 on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 7:14 pm
The nuclear industry was built on a mountain of lies from the very beginning. Now they are being exposed by the internet and a shrinking planet.
Dave Thompson on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 8:05 pm
We the people are left holding the radio active bag.
TemplarMyst on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 8:23 pm
As usual, I’ll provide counterpoint. Not so much to apologize for the absurdities of mass advertising or the governance problems in our current form of crony capitalism, as to point out nuclear should remain an option going forward in the face of PO and CC.
Please efer to my previous replies for details.
In sum: the waste is largely unused fuel, the effects of low level radiation on health are quite debatable, and the potential to generate very high levels of low carbon energy on an incredibly small footprint explain why Hansen, Lovelock, et al consider it an energy source which should be in the mix.
Plantagenet on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 8:45 pm
When we get to peak oil, the world is gong to need other forms of energy.
Nuclear power plants provide energy.
Therefore, after peak oil we’ll rely more on nuclear energy.
Apneaman on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 8:54 pm
From this day forward, please don’t feed the Plant.
Makati1 on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 9:02 pm
Well, for the nuke lovers, it ain’t agonna happen. LOL
“Nuclear plants delayed in China, watched closely by US firms”
“Nuclear non-starter: Oversupplied, losing money and without a constituency”
“Government explores options on how to store nuclear waste in the long term (Japan)”
“‘Nuclear Plants Are Like Time Bombs’: Former Japanese Prime Minister”
“IAEA advises Japan to consider water discharge from Fukushima plant”
http://ricefarmer.blogspot.fr/
and on and on…
TemplarMyst on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 9:16 pm
The economics are against nuclear at this point, it is true, but that seems to me to be largely the result of two factors.
First, the use of extremely high levels of leverage in the production of natural gas from fracking. That approach is already beginning to show signs of extreme stress.
Second, the use of very high direct and indirect subsidies to renewable energy forms. This in itself is not the issue per se, since nuclear and fossil get pretty substantial subsidies themselves.
What is the issue is the subsidies to renewables are continuing to mask the impact of their very low efficiencies. Once those shake out providers will be scrambling for how to adjust.
I’m not saying that won’t happen, just that it hasn’t been well thought out. Grid scale storage, or a truly decentralized grid might work, but those are both distant pipe dreams at the moment.
Once natural gas reaches true market-clearing prices and a carbon-tax of some sort is introduced nuclear will be viable and indeed provide a very solid value.
At this point, no. But I suspect it won’t be long.
dashster on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 9:28 pm
Nuclear will play an increasing role in electricity generation in the coming decades. The reason being, there will be no alternative. Annual natural gas and coal production capabilities are being over-estimated just as oil is.
Plantagenet on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 10:43 pm
The secret to making nuclear power affordable is to develop standardized small modular nuclear power systems that can built on an assembly-line system and then put on-line in increments as needed.
AND the DOE has a program to develop nuclear power of this kind
http://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-reactor-technologies/small-modular-nuclear-reactors
GregT on Wed, 18th Feb 2015 11:14 pm
Nuclear power plants generate electricity.
Everything that we power with electricity requires fossil fuels in resource extraction, refinement, transportation, manufacturing, distribution, and maintenance, as do nuclear power plants themselves.”
That statement only has merit if you single out things that cannot be done without fossil fuels. For example, it is possible to have electric transportation. It is possible to have electric manufacturing. We need to know what cannot be electrified and cannot run off of biodiesel or ethanol.
Davy on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 6:42 am
If we see our foundational elements to BAU in descent we must conclude that all other elements to BAU will be under pressure. This is especially true of the other energy sources that rely on oil and the financial system to supply, maintain, and market their product.
I would like to know how NUK power is going to take up the slack and or survive the coming descent as we know it now? If oil is in POD ETP descent with 5 years of BAU able economic contribution and the financial system is in a global disequilibrium how is NUK power going to magically continue to run as it does now efficiently and effectively? How is NUK power going to supply its complex power to a destabilized grid normally and effectively? How is NUK power going to grow as an industry let alone maintain itself with the current energy and financial system in disequilibrium? I find those questions profound and pointing to predicaments and catch 22 of descent that no market or energy source will overcome.
NUK power is highly important at this point now to maintain BAU. We need BAU to transition out of BAU. If we are going to successfully build and drop ship our lifeboats per those locals with a chance we cannot allow NUK power to go offline in economic and functional chaos. NUK power has no future beyond an environment of oil and the financial system in BAU. Maybe a pure command economy of martial law may be the next step for maintaining NUK power. Even in a command economy with all its inefficiencies and lower economic output the ability to maintain something as complex and dispersed as the NUK industry is highly debatable.
I would concur with Greg NUK is a bridge energy source and a very dangerous one with BAU in descent. It is highly critical in respect to BAU dropped lifeboats we maintain and get a handle on the NUK industry and its waste products. Many lifeboat locals will not survive a catastrophic localized NUK failure. So in conclusion NUK likely has no future beyond the descent of oil and the financial system at least as we know it today. NUK power is one of the most important aspects of BAU we have to maintain and get a functional handle on in an environment of BAU descent.
GregT on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 6:54 am
“That statement only has merit if you single out things that cannot be done without fossil fuels. For example, it is possible to have electric transportation. It is possible to have electric manufacturing. We need to know what cannot be electrified and cannot run off of biodiesel or ethanol.”
Please explain how we will go about manufacturing electric cars without fossil fuels. Explain where we would drive those electric vehicles, ie, what would we use to build and maintain roads without fossil fuels?
Biodiesel and ethanol both contribute to CO2 accumulations in the environment. We already have enough fossil fuel reserves available to more than likely render the Earth lifeless. Biodiesel and ethanol are part of the problem, not the solution.
Makati1 on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 8:10 am
GregT, few think about roads, yet, they are made either directly from oil (asphalt) or from oil energy (steel and concrete) It takes about a barrel of asphalt material (oil) to resurface one foot of two lane highway plus more oil energy for actual placement, etc. Or to pave the same two lanes with concrete and steel, two barrels at least, just to manufacture the materials and much more if you include the actual placement, machines, fuels, etc.
“Asphalt pavement is one of America’s building blocks. The United States has more than 2.6 million miles of paved roads and highways, and 93 percent of those are surfaced with asphalt. Many of those are full-depth asphalt pavements; others are asphalt overlays used to restore the performance of deteriorating concrete pavements.”
http://www.asphaltpavement.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=33
Now, Florida might get away with doing road work every few years, but New England is going to have huge pot-hole costs this spring, as usual, after a typical freeze/thaw winter. Soon roads will be abandoned to go back to gravel and then mud. It is only a matter of time.
Kenz300 on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 10:49 am
There are safer, cleaner and cheaper ways to produce electricity than dangerous and costly nuclear energy.
Nuclear energy is a scam sold by nuclear snake oil hucksters……
“Too cheap to meter” —— too costly and too dangerous to exist……..
The same money invested in wind and solar energy would have been money better spent.
——————
TEPCO has a 40 year plan to clean up the mess and admits that the technology to fully clean it up does not yet exist.
How much will it cost to store nuclear waste FOREVER? Who will pay for it?
Had the money that was spent on building a nuclear power plant been spent on wind and solar instead of nuclear the site would already be cleaned up and the people would be back home.
————————
Utility-scale Solar Has Another Record Year in 2014
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/12/utility-scale-solar-has-another-record-year-in-2014
————————
Solar and Wind Provide 70 Percent of New US Generating Capacity in November 2014
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/12/solar-and-wind-provide-70-percent-of-new-us-generating-capacity-in-november-2014
Apneaman on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 1:18 pm
Wildfires in Ukraine could revive Chernobyl’s radiation
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2015/02/09/Wildfires-in-Ukraine-could-revive-Chernobyls-radiation/9311423493119/#ixzz3SDI6Ryzi
baptised on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 1:22 pm
We no longer drive model T cars. Fission was never given a chance to evolve. Passive plants can be build today and Thorium is highly probable. Fission was started with a duo purpose of energy&war. It can be safe and enormously beneficial. But like many comments have said, it properly want happen. That is because the banksters are all in, on oil till the last drop.
Apneaman on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 2:00 pm
Sure “Fission was never given a chance to evolve.” Another free trillion dollars would have made all the difference? Oh pity the poor neglected mistreated nuclear industry.
Privatize the profits-socialize the costs.
“Counting all direct and indirect subsidies, US commercial-fission subsidies have been 200 times greater ($20 billion annually or $1 trillion over 50 years) than those for wind and solar combined, according to the late MIT Nobelist Henry Kendall.”
http://thebulletin.org/nuclear-energy-different-other-energy-sources/cheaper-safer-alternatives-nuclear-fission
TemplarMyst on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 10:12 pm
From my perspective, and just to reiterate what I’ve said in past comments and posts on this site, I’m not sure I’m altogether thrilled with the idea of advocating the use of nuclear power. That’s not quite my approach.
It’s that in looking at the available options, this late in the game, I think nuclear is something we ought to look at. That comes from researching Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island and as of late Fukushima. I’ve come away with the distinct impression low levels of radioactivity pose a very small risk. I certainly understand folks who think otherwise.
I also looked at renewables quite extensively, and I periodically look at them again, thinking maybe I’m missing something. I’ve referred folks to David MacKay’s TED video. The downsides of renewables have been discussed in depth here.
At the end of the day I imagine we won’t do anything other than run out of fossil fuels and then we’ll collapse.
But I can envision an alternative, and that includes using nuclear to assist with climate change and with a transition to a heavily electrified society. Rail, not cars. Cities, not suburbs. Food systems within the cities. Complete recycling of everything.
That vision is not one that could use low levels of energy. Quite the opposite. Uranium, Thorium and Plutonium are insanely energy dense. If you sink the carbon to build a nuke plant and hook it to an industrial park, you have everything you need to make another nuke plant.
With that much energy you can convert CO2 and H20 to hydrocarbons. You can make oil. You can make plastics. You can fire kilns. You can forge steel. You can create dental tools and rail cars, and the tracks they run on.
And you can be physically drawing down the CO2 which is a reasonably near term threat while you’re doing all this. And use the juice to break down and recycle and re-purpose countless nasty chemicals we’ve unleashed on the world. And if you reprocess the fuel in a breeder reactor, you can make more fuel and vastly reduce what little waste is generated in the first place.
If I could see how we could do all this using wind, water, and sun, I’d be be all for it. I just don’t see how that happens, at the scale required. They are so incredibly energy diffuse. You’d have to cover all Britain to just meet current needs, let alone going after what I’m mentioning above.
Yeah, we’ll likely collapse. But given how voracious our species is when it has a full belly, I shudder to think what it’ll be like when it’s hungry. We’ll make a swarm of locust look like a single cow grazing lazily on a warm summer day.
So yeah, I advocate for nuclear. I’d be happy to advocate for something else if I thought it could do the job though!
Makati1 on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 10:37 pm
Nuclear is slow suicide for the species. Some are selfish enough to want it anyway as they will likely be dead before the final costs are paid by our grand kids and theirs.
ALL nuclear plants should be shut down, decommissioned and the debris casketed. It would only cost a years world GDP, but it would employ millions for a decade or more.
TemplarMyst on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 10:46 pm
And therein lies the rub. I don’t see where or how one can conclude this.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been studied extensively over decades. A minimal number of solid tumors arose over that period, and there is not a single case of genetic abnormalities in the offspring of those exposed.
Hundreds of scientists, doctors, and other medical personnel, working over multiple decades. You can read their ongoing research. It’s not classified. It’s not hidden.
There are two views of Chernobyl. One says a minimal number of health impacts, the other says over a million deaths and deformities. I went looking into the latter claims. You must have too. I found the evidence wanting. I guess you did not.
You can visit Chernobyl today. You can talk to folks who moved back in, and have lived there since. More return all the time, even amongst the young.
I do not see them as suicidal, or like to die from their decisions. Those who moved back have had little to no health issues. They will tell you so. You can ask them.
I don’t see where these claims come from, but I have to respect that people have them.
GregT on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 11:03 pm
“I don’t see where these claims come from, but I have to respect that people have them.”
Do you have respect for the G7 spending 1.5 billion dollars, in an attempt to safeguard Chernobyl for another hundred years?
TemplarMyst on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 11:14 pm
Certainly. I’ve been careful to delineate the difference between high and low levels of radioactivity. The area of the explosion has several areas of high radioactivity that it is a good idea to seal. I don’t know why it’s so expensive, but it is what it is.
The other reactors at Chernobyl continued to function for years after the explosion. Workers went to their jobs there every day. Right next to the concrete encased reactor.
There are catfish living in the retention pond right beside the reactor. You can view countless videos and stills of the area, and of Pripyat, the town that was evacuated. Eagles now nest in the condominiums. Wolves, bison, and beaver roam the countryside. Other people have moved back in.
GregT on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 11:34 pm
Templar,
You might find this to be of interest, if you haven’t seen it already I highly recommend reading the entire log:
http://www.kiddofspeed.com
If you have spent time studying the effects of radiation I am sure that you already understand this?
https://www.nde-ed.org/GeneralResources/Formula/RTFormula/InverseSquare/InverseSquareLaw.htm
TemplarMyst on Thu, 19th Feb 2015 11:47 pm
GregT,
I have not looked at those sites in particular, but I will take a look. I understand the inverse square pretty well.
My main source of information on radioactivity is the National Academy of Sciences BEIR VI report. A new BEIR assessment is underway. I also found the WHO assessment of Chernobyl to be more persuasive than that of A, Yablokov and V. and A. Nesterenko, who are the main sources for Dr. Caldicott.
The stills from the kiddofspeed blog seem to only capture one aspect. I’d highly recommend Radioactive Wolves, available on PBS, to see the contrast between what stills and video can provide.
It was Radioactive Wolves which first made me question my own initial belief that surely the effects of Chernobyl must be what Caldicott had claimed.
I used to find her credible when I was younger. Kaku too. Now not so much.
GregT on Fri, 20th Feb 2015 12:27 am
I don’t find Kaku to be credible at all, Caldicott I still haven’t completely made my mind up. She’s very determined to get the word out, I can’t imagine why a person of her credentials would make stuff up.
I’ll check out Radioactive Wolves. Not sure if I’ve seen it already or not. There was a period of time a decade or so back when I read and watched everything that I could get my hands on about nuclear weapons, power, and radiation.
I still maintain that if we can’t figure out ways to safeguard nuclear now, it would be irresponsible to leave this crap for future generations to deal with.
dashster on Fri, 20th Feb 2015 6:52 am
GregT: “Please explain how we will go about manufacturing electric cars without fossil fuels. Explain where we would drive those electric vehicles, ie, what would we use to build and maintain roads without fossil fuels?”
Factories run on electricity. Electricity can come from nuclear and renewable. And it is not a question or with or without for many decades. We still have fossil fuels and will have them for a while, even if production goes into terminal decline.
Road equipment can run on bio-diesel, electricity or ethanol. But again, we won’t have zero oil immediately. So eliminating commuting to work by car frees up a lot of oil to build roads with.
GregT: “Biodiesel and ethanol both contribute to CO2 accumulations in the environment. We already have enough fossil fuel reserves available to more than likely render the Earth lifeless. Biodiesel and ethanol are part of the problem, not the solution.”
Biodiesel and ethanol use does not contribute equivalent amounts of CO2 as burning oil, and – we would be using them because oil use is declining. The savings in CO2 from burning less oil will far exceed any gain from biofuels and biofuels shouldn’t create CO2 unless you cut down forests to grow them.
Davy on Fri, 20th Feb 2015 7:04 am
Dash, leave denial man. Sure your description is possible in the abstract but in the current situation will not scale. We should strive for any and all efforts to extend FF activity so we can use BAU to transition out of BAU. AltE is so much more important then absurd BAU development that is rampant today. In that respect we should fully as a society and individuals embrace AltE. Yet, AltE has no future in a world with less energy intensity and complexity. AltE has no future with an end to BAU globalism and the systematic failures ahead in BAU. It is your shiny new AltE world view that is delusional and deceiving the masses into believing in a plan B BAUtopia. What we need to do is prepare for 200MIL excess deaths a year in a generation from the end of BAU globalism with all her energy intensity and complexity. I concur with Greg on this one.
dashster on Sat, 21st Feb 2015 2:31 am
“Sure your description is possible in the abstract but in the current situation will not scale.”
What part won’t scale? Not commuting to work by car won’t scale? Running road equipment on biodiesel?
“We should strive for any and all efforts to extend FF activity so we can use BAU to transition out of BAU”
Have you on this site ever spoken out against immigration to the United States?
“It is your shiny new AltE world view that is delusional and deceiving the masses into believing in a plan B BAUtopia.”
I don’t have a AltE world view. I am actually pessimistic about the future and don’t expect it to be equal or better. I only asked for one of you doomers to be specific. You doomers tend to generalize as much as the cornucopians. But what I find remarkable, and you could say “in denial” is that you doomers are sure the world is going to collapse, and yet you will be left happily drinking beer on the porch and shaking your head about now you were the only one who got it.
GregT on Sat, 21st Feb 2015 4:52 am
dashter,
Don’t be pessimistic. Be realistic.
You are going to die. Your death is ensured. You are not important, and your life is irrelevant. Pretty doomer-ish stuff, isn’t it.
This is neither pessimistic, nor optimistic, it is realistic. There is nothing that you can do to change reality, and there is nothing that you can do to make yourself immortal.
In the big scheme of things, collapse should really be the least of your concerns. What should matter more than anything else, to each and every single one of us, is what kind of a world are we going to leave behind for our children? After we have lived our very brief lives on this world, and we all die.
Once you get beyond the first big step to acceptance, let’s discuss your fear of living in the natural environment, as opposed to living in the man made environment that is destroying the natural environment that our species needs to survive.
Davy on Sat, 21st Feb 2015 7:40 am
Dash, the system is highly likely not able to adjust to your AltE, alternative attitudes lifestyles, and system relationships. There is not enough time nor resources. The change in lifestyles themselves will destroy economic activity that will destroy BAU that will destroy the transition to your AltE and alternative lifestyles. The system is too brittle in almost every way to change and scale. The infrastructure investment and the amount of population overhang ensure no scalability.
Like Greg said be realistic. At the bottom where the individual lives in the local sure these activities scale. There is no chance for a shiny new AltE world to replace BAU because you are talking an alternative BAU based structure of technology, complexity, and energy intensity just not carbon based. All AltE is carbon based for it production maintenance and grid delivery. There is no AltE liquid fuel potential that will scale for 7BIL people.
Dash I am against immigration at this point with my country in overshoot to carrying capacity. Does one continue to load a boat beyond its safe capacity? NO. I once was pro-immigration before I realized overshoot and limits. Now we have to make tough decisions for survival. We are going to have huge internal migrations to worry about soon. We just can’t allow more immigration without further creating horrible carrying capacity situations i.e. hunger and destitution.
Dash, how can you be specific about something that is abstract and dynamic except with support details. I don’t have a plan B other than there is no plan B. This means the plan B by default is adjust and mitigate a fall we have little control over. I believe in generalization because specialist have demonstrated a delusion and distortion of reality mainly because technology, complexity, energy intensity and substitution have hit limits and diminishing returns. Specialist in so many fields are unable to think in descent terms.
Population is in a vast overshoot situation because our foundational elements of BAU survival are in decline. Dash, I don’t drink and I am very sober every day I see my kids. Every day I am with my kids I feel an unease about the innocence of kids and what faces them. Dash, there is nothing I would like more than an AltE and a new human arrangement of alternative attitudes and lifestyles. I am into AltE and alternative living but I am a realist. Having great experience with AltE and alternative lifestyles I can tell you I see little chance of it scaling up.
Our scaling will be into postindustrial living in a hybrid way. The speed and degree of change will depend on too many factors to adequately forecast. Yet, many here from experience can accurately show that a BAU similar AltE type world with 7BIL people is not possible. It might work for a short time as a niche in the fall. AltE systems will be important elements of the hybrid salvage of the new and old. Alternative lifestyles will be the seeds of the future. This is why any and all AltE efforts are important now. This is why BAU is important to many of us for the transition out of BAU. Time appears to be very short so please folks prep.
TemplarMyst on Sat, 21st Feb 2015 9:49 pm
Well, this thread certainly has some legs, eh?
Davy and GregT, I gotta lean towards dashster’s approach here, albeit with a caveat or two.
Yeah, I know. We certainly seem headed for a nasty future. What I wonder about is whether there’s much point in prepping, unless we think about, and advocate for, some set of preps which provide at least some chance to a very significant number of people.
I’m thinking if we don’t, all that individual prepping is going to get you is mebbe six months. If that.
If the climate is unstable, and food production dicey, and the financial system has collapsed, and the grid is faltering, I don’t think it’ll much matter where you’re at or who you’re with.
Cuz the folks who survive the cities will be the end result of an unbelievable Darwinian evolution. They will have been the ones who rose to the top, above millions of their fellow human beings. They will have been selected for ruthlessness, cunning, intelligence, strength, stealth, and agility.
And they will find you. And when they do, you won’t even know they’re there. You’ll just wake up dead one morning, assuming it ain’t something worse.
I guess that’s why I (and I think dash) continue to bandy ideas about societal transformation, and why it’s something to keep thinking about.
Dun’t seem to make much sense to think otherwise, from where I’m standing. And although I don’t have any kids, I’d certainly hope we can come up with something decent for yours…
GregT on Sat, 21st Feb 2015 11:41 pm
Templar,
Food production, the end of the global financial system, and a faltering grid, are the very reasons for prepping. A catastrophic runaway greenhouse event is obviously a game changer. Lets all hope it doesn’t come down to that.
Here, on the west coast of British Columbia, the First Nations peoples have lived for some 20,000 years, off of the land. With no financial system, no electricity, and no food production. A tad bit longer than ‘mebbe six months’. I’m not sure where you currently reside, but my guess would be in a big city.
I myself currently reside in a big city, but my plans are well in effect, and my wife, myself, and our son will be moving to our other home in June of this year. The community that we are moving to, has a population of around 12,000 people. It is a rural community, with a very large grassroots movement. Most people live on, and maintain their own small farms.
If/when TSHTF, I seriously doubt that travelling 8 hours by car and boat, into the middle of nowhere, is going to be on the minds of the millions of ruthless, cunning, intelligent, strong, stealthy, and agile office workers stranded in the cities, with no means of food production, a collapsed financial system, and a faltering grid. They will probably have more immediate problems to deal with.
Social transformation is at the root of the location that we have chosen. A tight knit, small(ish) local community of mostly likeminded individuals. People that have already opted out of the ‘system’ for a more sustainable, simpler, and less materialistic lifestyle.
If you do live in a largely populated area, good luck with any attempts at societal transformation, especially when dealing with all of those that have risen to the top, that are so keen on destroying the natural biosphere, just so that they can buy the latest consumer crap, that they so desperately do not need.
The idea that ‘we’ are going to come up with something decent, is not the plan that I am going to continue to pretend will ever happen, because it is very clear to me that it won’t. I have decided to take responsibility for myself. If you believe that ‘we’ are going to take care of you, all I can say is, “good luck”. You’ll need lots of it.
TemplarMyst on Sun, 22nd Feb 2015 12:16 am
GregT,
I guess I’m leaning pretty heavily towards the greenhouse event. But I’m with you – I hope I’m wrong about it. However, since I’m leaning in that direction I lean in the direction of the larger transformation. Don’t see how to reverse the climate issue without a sustained, large scale effort.
Again, mebbe it won’t come to that, and all those peace-loving, para-military, convicts, and survivalists who have knocked off the office workers won’t come bother you. You know, the ones either running the ops or doing the time for having run the ops. I’m kind of thinking without a grid it’s gonna be hard to keep those folks on the inside, but I might be wrong.
And there would be no way, of course, for them to get a hold of the militarized police equipment liberally distributed about the place either. Not to mention obtaining all the ammo and weaponry from those gun-loving office workers they just knocked off.
I mean, not that long ago in a place called Ferguson a very small bunch of very minor thugs raised the place. So yeah, I’m sure you’ll be just fine.
Anyway, enough with the snark. I do try to avoid it but it does slip out from time to time. Apologies.
And in actuality I currently live in a conservation community, albeit one that is on the edge of a very large urban environment. We’ve got a farm, stables, lots of native prairie, a lake, all sorts of cool stuff. But we are too close to the big time if it really does hit the fan.
I’ve got my eye on a more remote location, but every time I start thinking about it I just say the heck with it. I’m over 50, no kids. Someone else can take my place on the commune if it comes down to that.
GregT on Sun, 22nd Feb 2015 12:58 am
Templar,
The ‘greenhouse event’ appears likely, and if that is our reality, there really is nothing that any of us can do now to change it. I hope that we are both very wrong about that, but I don’t think so. We have already set the wheels in motion, the momentum is probably un-stoppable at this point. I’m still going to at least try my best, to do my part to leave something behind for future generations. I’m not going to give up, until I have no choice.
Without food production, a functioning ‘grid’, and a supply of fossil fuels to power ICE vehicles, I really don’t see people moving large distances. Those that do get out, will be those that got out ahead of time. After a collapse scenario, most people won’t get much further than a tank of gas. Here in Canada, gun-loving office workers are few and far between. I am one of them, and while I do know a couple of others, I keep that to myself. City folks mostly think that guns are only owned by deranged individuals. We also don’t have the ethnic issues here, that you guys have in the states.
It sounds like you have some knowledge and experience to pass on to others. It would be very sad if you didn’t do so.
Apneaman on Sun, 22nd Feb 2015 2:43 am
Inertia is a bitch fellas. We would have needed to shut it down completely a few decades ago. Too many feedback loops have been triggered and we can’t stop them. I wish it were otherwise.
Davy on Sun, 22nd Feb 2015 5:17 am
Temp, I can tell you as one who has been at this doom and prep game heavy since 2005 I am not optimistic even with prep. Longer term survival is a product of societal health. A stable carrying capacity is a simple concept. This means a population at a manageable level which we will likely not see for a generation. If a stable population comes sooner well we know that process will be horrific. I see best case scenario is 200MIL excess deaths in a generation. Yet, AGW, is likely to mean 1BIL carrying capacity is too high. If we look at this picture then it is bleak.
I have no illusions about this prep activities. I can tell you from experience that it is tough, expensive, and takes time. Longer term prep is about planting seeds and a gamble on water & sun. There is no certainty but there is something as opposed to nothing. The shorter term prep is just common sense. You prep for a few months to get you through what may be a crisis and preparation for a longish emergency. Do you want to be naked running around for food? I you have some time to organize that is so important then in crisis mode from the start.
We have no idea how this is going to unfold and the when. I see an energy brick wall in maybe 10 years but any day is increasingly likely. The degree and duration are uncertain. The prepping of the mind is critical to prepare for less, loss, and death. Your attitudes and lifestyles can be rearranged by rearranging the priority list. The alternative is stay BAUtopian in orientation and somehow keep that hopium drip going. I will say this if life is not bad for you now FRIGGEN enjoy life as if you had a terminal illness. I know life is a bitch but there are so many stupid distractions and self-induced irritations that can be cast off when you realize we are on a runaway train.
I prep and doom because it is my passion and my nature. When I grew up I used to go out and survive in the woods. I became a tracker. I was going into the Special Forces until an accident made me medically unfit. I am not a military type it is just back then the hardcore challenge appealed to me. I have always been an intellectual type and doom fascinates me because it encompasses all aspect of life. Doom is about life itself. Doom is about survival. Doom can be spiritual and about being heroic in the calling to take care of family, tribe, and community.
I am under zero illusions that my prep will ensure survival. I do it by nature like a guard dog barks. I am also under no illusion that people that are not in my position of being able to use BAU to transition out BAU can do more than the short term prep. I feel short term prepping is for everyone. I believe the mental side of prepping is for everyone. Prepare yourself, family, and community best you can. We preppers know the feeling of being looked at as a loon by family and community but when SHTF they will be looking for answers and prepers have plan B’s. Prepping is a plan B.
(Continued)
Davy on Sun, 22nd Feb 2015 5:17 am
I will also add one of the most critical aspects of prepping and that is location relocation. If you are in a large urban area or an environmentally low carrying capacity area you should move and now. If you can’t then just prep short term. Long term prep is a waste in prep-less situations. Some areas are lost causes. You may want to have the gear that someone would need to migrate as an alternative. I would not want to be in a mass migration.
I have guns and ammo but I am under no illusions of being overwhelmed by bandits. I beg to differ with many here on the mad max future. That will probably not be the case everywhere. Locally in my area people will band together and lynch bandits if no law and order is present. People tend toward stability as we can see in refugee camps. Political correct, privacy, and comfort disappear and strong men rise to the occasion to protect and rule. Not all are bad. I disagree that mad max is the only outcome.
My short term prep will help me with the first days of crisis. My long term prep is seeds for a future man after we go from industrial man through the bottleneck man stage back to some kind postmodern man. We may go extinct who knows but do we give up all hope? No. I have nothing to offer you all here except my experiences and learning on this subject. In that respect I am honestly and humbly giving you my shirt off my back digitally. I care about all of you. Being a “man for others” is what real prep is all about.
TemplarMyst on Sun, 22nd Feb 2015 11:25 am
Davy,
I guess I lean towards the Mad Max scenario rather than the Medieval outcome because of the fairly unique set of circumstance we’re in at this point.
When Rome fell it wasn’t for lack of food or because there were just too many Romans (the plague had seen to that, at least twice during the Empire), IMO. It was because the social fabric of Roman society – economic, political, and cultural – had slowly , gradually, and persistently fallen apart.
I do agree with you that strong types can and do arise, but they’re effectiveness can be pretty dicey, and their methods none too pleasant. Ghengis Khan, anyone?
In our time I think collapse, if it is sudden, will place a huge burden on food and we on the site, well, the majority of us anyway, realize there are way too many people out there at this point.
So I’m thinking Mad Max. But that’s just an inclination. All sorts of possible local outcomes come to mind. I’d just rather not be around if it comes to that. I’d rather try to salvage what we’ve got, though I admit that’s a damn tall order.
TemplarMyst on Sun, 22nd Feb 2015 11:29 am
Let me modify my statement a bit. Food did play a role in Rome’s collapse, but I think the lack of food was the end result of all the other factors, not the end result of the fact the land could not have produced what was needed.
You can’t develop sustainable food systems if your economy and culture are rotting, and all you can think of to do about it is fight with each other.
Davy on Sun, 22nd Feb 2015 12:30 pm
Temp, I think we have a huge global world to generalize about. We can be sure of mad max periods and places. I see no reason why we may not see periods of stability. The time frame matters also because a mad max period may happen very quickly with a large amount of destructiveness that will play itself out like a fire that runs out of fuel. We may go into a crisis that is a stable emergency but still law and order. An area without population pressures will surely have a better chance of stability. Areas with ethnic tensions now in large populated regions will be difficult. These regions will be like gas ready for a match. Martial Law will be in effect almost surely in some places eventually. The military will chose where they want law and order. The military is very effective in the right situation. A WWIII will surely wipe out many people if it goes NUK. I am not leaning either way I am leaning both ways. Now is the time to relocate because there are places we know will go mad max and other areas will fare better.
steve on Sun, 22nd Feb 2015 1:37 pm
you guys just don’t get it….. a fast collapse will mean fukishima five times over as all nuclear plants melt down….trust me you won’t want to be on earth when this happens….I guess if it helps you can keep pretending…sorry to interrupt your game
TemplarMyst on Sun, 22nd Feb 2015 3:50 pm
steve,
While that certainly seems to be the prevailing perception, I’ve tried to point out the internal inconsistencies with it.
Chernobyl was an actual explosion. Radionuclides spewing for days and days and days. Thirty years later the countryside is a lush nature preserve.
Natural adaptation to low levels of radioactivity makes sense. Without it life would have terminated eons ago. We’re surrounded by the stuff – in the air, water, ground. Everywhere.
Even if all 402 reactors were to melt down (and that is the term, melt), they would dissipate heat an an exponential rate, and the overwhelming majority of their radionuclides would be localized. Those elements are extremely heavy and tend towards the ground as soon as gravity takes hold.
The end result would be a period of slight increase in overall radiation for the planet. For anyone unfortunate enough to be close to the meltdowns they would get hit with the heavy and high level stuff, and they would be toast. But I don’t think the world will come to an end because of it.
If my understanding of the dynamics of climate change are right, that will be what wipes out the planet. And it will recover – in a few million years. By then any radionuclides our atomic plants disgorged will have long since decayed into their non-radiactive isotopes.
And if you happen to be near a plant (I’m near two), you really just need to keep water on the thing for about eighteen months after shutdown. Not that anyone will think of that, but that’s largely what it would take to keep it from melting down.
Now don’t get me wrong. I understand if you feel it would be the end of the world. I’m just trying to point out it might be the least of our worries in a collapse situation. And it fact it’s the one technology I think might actually permit us to avoid the collapse in the first place.
I could be wrong, of course.