Re: Are nukes the answer to global warming?

From: Scott A Crosby (scrosby_at_cs.rice.edu)
Date: 02/10/05 

Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 17:27:52 -0600

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 08:46:01 +0100, Rolf Martens <rolf.martens@mailbox.swipnet.se> writes:

> Technically, people all over the planet *can* "have their
> cake and eat it too". The natural resources are limitless.

For the most part, I agree. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed in
any chemical reaction. Only transformed. If we don't get our cake and
eat it too as a world civilization, it will because we inflicted it
upon ourself.

> On this, see for instance:
>
> John McCarthy: The Sustainabilty of Human Progress:
> http://www.formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/

> Nukes for instance are a good thing (ensuring an energy
> supply which is practically limitless), and there is
> no "manmade global warming" either.

He's wrong. I read it and used to agree with it. But, if you crack the
numbers giving 10 billion people an energy-intensive first-world
lifestyle, the supply of uranium may start to get tight within the
next few 10,000 years, even including reprocessing. Thats not
'practically limitless', but the problems are not immediate. Google my
past posts for the arithmatic.

Also, we have cheap energy right now. With nuclear fission, energy
will probably be about 4x-5x more expensive over the long run. The
energy in a barrel of oil is less than 20% of the cost of the same
energy produced from a best-case (aka, not yet built) next generation
nuclear reactor. Civilization can survive, but it will have to
dedicate a much larger fraction of its resources into energy
acquisition.

Scott

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