Re: Life after the oil crash

In article <e%kye.11575$aA5.3141@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Nocturnal <nocturnal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>I am scared and
>feel a little hopeless. I have a five year old son and I would love to see
>him grow up. I'm sure some of you have children as well. What can I do to
>prepare for the coming oil shortage? How bad will it really be? Will it be
>all out hysteria with Armageddon like things happening?
>
The oil shortage is a lot further off than you think. However, that does
not mean that we should be complacent. Start lobbying your legislators for
a sweeping expansion of the use of nuclear power. The prime complaints
against nuclear power are the waste products and nuclear proliferation.
Given that nuclear fission products are neatly contained in the spent fuel
pellets, and that even a once-through fuel cycle is practical for a long time
(a ten percent rise in nuclear electricity will pay for extracting uranium
from sea water), spent fuel is a non-issue. We have long since built steel
casks that will survive intense fires, massive collissions, and falling
onto hardened steel spikes from several stories. For the truly paranoid, it
would be beyond the possibility of material science to allow them to survive
a fall from orbit, but they do not have to be that tough.

Nuclear proliferation is not significantly more difficult in the absence
of nuclear powered electrical generators, as there were no nuclear powered
electrical generators around for the first atomic bomb. Nuclear proliferation
is an inherent property of the universe.

The enviro-nuts will (hopefully) end up in gibbering madness as coal smoke
darkens the sky between the dwindling of oil and the rise of nuclear power
exploitation. As the enviro-nuts will have to find honest work when nuclear
power drives our economy, they will fight it tooth and nail. The probable
result of their blocking action will be to force people who are too attached
to high standards of living to insist on renewed coal exploitation. Because
you can make gasoline and diesel oil from coal, it will not be too much
work to get the needed block of voters to support short term coal pollution
to fill the gap between oil and nuclear.

There are lots of unemployed coal miners who would sell their mothers to mine
coal again, and no shortage of other unemployed who would grab at the chance
to get a high paying mining job.

I would prefer to jump directly to a nuclear economy, but the anti-
technological obstructionists have too much political clout (although it
will fade as people realise that they cannot follow them and support their
standard of living). The thing about nuclear power that really scares the
anti-technology obstructionists is that it promises to provide enough
cheap power to generate enough wealth to clean the planet and support a
high standard of living. The obstructionists would have us believe that
there is something noble about being poor, dirty peasants.

.

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