I have a terrible habit of automatically discounting the use of U-238 as a fuel. I realise, however, that my reasons for doing so rest on a subjective belief that the production of large quantities of plutonium across much of the world is not an acceptable solution to our situation. I accept that others do not share that view, and once again apologies for my unjustified assumption.

However, even leaving aside that particular objection and accepting that there are significant reserves of U-238, I still have several objections to your proposal. The amount of electricity you are talking about producing is mind-boggling. Truly enormous. You’re still talking about the largest industrial engineering project in human history, and you’re talking about beginning it exactly when the resources we need to carry out such a project are running out.

And even then, electricity is simply not a substitute for liquid fuels. There is no non-liquid fuel solution to mass air-travel, for example. And the other products of crude oil (from plastics to pesticides and about a million things in between) cannot be created simply by moving electrons.

In my view the only sane solution… the only one with even a half a chance of succeeding is to cease using so much energy. I find it amazing that people find it easier to contemplate an enormous increase in plutonium-producing nuclear power plants than to imagine restructuring our society to eliminate the private car.

It is this fact; that people see it as a foregone conclusion that we need to find a way to continue living the way we do; that convinces me there’s no chance of a smooth transition to sustainability.

“The thermal fuel cycletypified by the LWR (the MHTGCR is also a thermal reactor)is an extremely inefficient use of uranium resources, generating energy primarily from the fissile uranium isotope U-235 which comprises only 1/140th of natural uranium[8]. At current rates of consumption, existing and estimated uranium reserves recoverable at up to $US80/kg (compared with current spot prices around $US20/kg) are sufficient for only about 50-60 yearsgrowth in the nuclear industry will reduce this period. Of course, further uranium discoveries can be expected, and very substantial higher cost uranium resources exist (e.g. seawater offers a virtually unlimited supply, albeit at about 10 times current prices). Higher costs, however, will make inefficient resource use even less sustainable.”

U-235 reserves won’t last. I wasn’t talking about U-235. I am at a loss as to what you were trying to prove with that report. And really, even if U-238 is much more expensive than U-235, it’s still a damn sight better than nothing, which is what we’ll have when oil runs out unless we find a viable alternative. Most of the cost of nuclear power isn’t in getting the fuel anyway. Look here, here, and here if you want to see what I mean. The fuel costs, as of now, are low, the other costs are _very_ high. Fuel will just have to join the costs at the high end. End result, more expensive electricity. Survivable. It’ll hurt the economy, sure, but that’s not the end of the world.

Vehicles? Well, we’ll have to shift over to electric cars or something like that. It’s not like we have much of a choice, is it? It’s either move to something else or we all starve. Not a tough choice to make that.

According to the Australian government (the world’s largest exporter of uranium and holder of the largest reserves) in a report published 6 years ago:

“At current (their emphasis) rates of consumption, existing and estimated uranium reserves recoverable at up to $US80/kg (compared with current spot prices around $US20/kg) are sufficient for only about 50-60 years. Growth in the nuclear industry will reduce this period. Of course, further uranium discoveries can be expected, and very substantial higher cost uranium resources exist (e.g. seawater offers a virtually unlimited supply, albeit at about 10 times current prices). Higher costs, however, will make inefficient resource use even less sustainable.”

You can read that report HERE.

Also, what the report doesn’t mention is that the energy cost to extract uranium from seawater is substantial, making the process only slightly energy positive and requiring a truly enormous expansion in nuclear power station numbers (both to cover the current power we’re getting from fossil fuels, and the extra power to cover the extraction of uranium from seawater).

Proposing perhaps the most ambitious expansion of industrial construction in human history right when we start to face fossil fuel depletion is frankly bizarre in my view.

Also, I’m unclear on how you plan to use nuclear power to replace the liquid fossil fuels currently driving 98% of global transport network. Crude oil depletion is not just about dimishing energy, it’s about a serious liquid fuels shortage and that’s not exactly the same thing.

Human life will survive the collapse of our civilisation in much the same way it survived the collapse of every other one.

Of course, climate change, now that’s a whole other kettle of fish-meal. I suspect that won’t kill us off either, even if things get really bad. But there’s a big difference between a few scraggly post-industrial primates scraping a living off an increasingly hostile piece of rock, and the kind of world I think most of us would like to see.

But assuming we don’t completely bugger up our ecosystem, and we don’t decide to all nuke one another (I’m looking at you, North Korea) or spray each other with bio-weapons, then humanity will survive peak oil. I just don’t believe our current civilisation – or anything remotely resembling it – will.

In the long term this is a good thing. In the medium term (i.e. the lives of your children and grandchildren) the transition will be somewhere between an apocalyptic worst-case scenario and a gradual, systematic best-case. I write about this in the hope of generating some support for the best-case. My views on human psychology lead me to conclude, however, that it is extremely probable that the transition will end up being closer to the worst-case.

Not on the scale we want to consume it, it can’t. To say so is to fundamentally misundersatand fossil fuels. They are millions of years of captured solar energy. Solar panels are a few hours, biofuels a few years. Yes, that panel my be a more efficient a converter than the oilseed rape, but nowhere near enough to replace a serious chunk of the fossils.

Alex: ‘starch-based plastics are a big field of research at the moment.’

This, like the biofuels solution for cars and heating, raises the question of where we’re going to grow all these techno-plants.

There are 6 billion of us now. By the middle of the century it’ll probably be 10 billion. Every one of them will need to eat every day.

This will coincide with climate change raising seas levels, desertifying fertile lands and drying rivers currently depended on for irrigation.

It will also coincide with the supply of oil and gas dwindling forever, and the corresponding skyrocketing of the price as demand outstrips supply. Oil and gas being the things that give us our agrichemicals that have delivered the bumper crops that allow 6 billion to be well fed.

This leads to the strongest argument for veganism I know of; we presently feed half the world’s grain to animals who give very little of it back in their flesh and milk, and just shit most of it out.

Were we to feed it to people instead we could all eat well and who knows, maybe even grow us some starch plants for plastics too.

But it doesn’t work like that because we do not grow food to feed people. We grow it to sell it to them.

So, if i can afford the great squandering of foodstuffs for my steak, then we’ll buy food for my cows off people who then starve. All through the big Ethiopian famine of the 80s, as we were sending boats of grain from Band Aid, we were importing their foodstuffs for animal feed.

So it is that today we chop down Indonesian rainforest to make way for palm oil plantations for the rich nations’ eco-friendly biofuels, and fish stocks collapse while we use fishmeal to fertilise lawns.

As long as people pay, those who get paid will fuck over the poor. We only deliver such high standards of living to the rich because someone else does all the work. We’re very squeamish about having slaves in our fields now, so we keep them overseas where it’s not so unsavoury.

Try giving decent working hours and standard of living to the people who make all the consumer stuff you buy from China, Malaysia and wherever. See how much that stuff gets priced out of your reach.

And this is before we get into the most serious and pressing issue of our time, climate change.

As we now understand it, we have to keep under a 2 degree increase on pre-industrial temperatures. Once we go over that, we stop being the big emitter and the bioshphere takes over; peat bogs decompose, the organic sludge at the bottome of arctic oceans gives off methane, and the whole warming process spirals. Without a thing we can do.

Keeping it under a two degree increase means a global CO2 cut of about 60% in 25 years. for us rich folks, that’s 90%. There’s simply no way you can do that and keep our energy-intensive way of living up.

No renewable source of power can replace the fossils. Now imagine how much more true that is if we were to extend our standard of living to the 80-90% of the world who consume less than us.

Old & Cynical’s right, that there are perfectly satisfying ways to live outside of modern consumerism. Indeed, it seems there’s a clear correlation between a society’s affluence and its rates of depression.

The longer we see unlimited affluence as intrinsically good and probably the very purposae of life, the more suffering we pile up for those who live in the mess we leave.