by Kylon » Wed 07 Nov 2007, 03:45:28
I agree! With the right market incentives, the rich would invest in the construction of power plants.
Furthermore, as a recession/depression sets in, labor will become dirt cheap. So the construction cost will go way down.
On top of that, if we mass produced nuclear power plants, pre-assembled them in a factory, that would drastically reduce the cost of nuclear power even more.
With the elimination of 5 year permit times, instead becoming 1 year permit times, and with all the construction factors I mentioned above, nuclear power plants could easily be built on a large scale as needed.
The energy crunch, Peak Coal, you say that some estimates are as bleak as 10-20 years, well let's see, if the U.S decided to hog all of it's coal for itself(instead of export any of it), decided to let the price of gasoline/fuel rise to 10-20 dollars a gallon(forcing everyone to live closer to work), then there would be plenty of fuel to power the construction of nuclear power plants.
What your also forgetting is demand destruction, as prices rise, the wasteful practices of convience will be thrown out the window.
People won't go on Summer vacations two thousand miles away. People won't gorge their faces with crispy creme donuts, people won't go sky diving, essentially most luxuries, except for the very rich, will disappear.
The 2000 mile casear salad will breath it's last.
People will focus on what's necessary to survive. Some won't survive, but that's a cost of any depression. The morbidly unhealthy(such as HIV victims) will probably die off. The extremely elderly and sick will be cut off from expensive medical care. These will be human sacrifices. Many of the baby boomer generation will either work, or die. Social security may collapse, medicare will almost certainly collapse. A major re-adjustment of our living conditions and expections will have to occur.
But in the long run of things, civilization is here to stay.
Even if Americans like myself watch our civilization get destroyed due to incompetance(hoping that won't happen, but it's a possibility) then civilizations like France(80% nuclear!) and Sweden(very good policies concerning energy and environment) will survive, and thrive in the new age, as resources like steel and aluminum become cheap from the decaying carcasses of other civilizations. And eventually if we do get wiped out, then those nuclear powered Europeans will be able to re-colonize the world once the world is reclaimed(it's possible, just throw in enough hydrophobic iron), and expand their civilizations. THis is just about the worse case scenario, just saying, that if worst comes to worst, there is a place to go, and the human race will survive.
If we were on the other hand to spend just 10-20 years, of heavy labor in building up our primary infrastructure, Nuke Breeder reactors, and worked with the rest of the world to reverse global warming through hydrophobic iron seeding, the things that matter most, then we could have within 20-30 years a lifestyle maybe the same, if not better then the one we have now.
If we cool down the planet, and stop the global dimming process that would mean more rain, and milder temperatures. With a cooling of the planet, less water would evaporate and less would be needed to cool down industrial plants, with less global dimming, the pan evaporation rate would increase, leading to more rain.
Furthermore, hurricane strength would go down.
As for global warming...
If global warming gets too bad, we'll use ground water cooling to cool/heat our homes, we'll reduce our water usage due to droughts, focusing primarily on drinking water, necessary industrial use, and agricultural use, and as energy becomes more expensive we'll tone down our lives.
We'll live a simpler life.
Ultimately, if we play our cards right, and we get working together on this, and reach out to politicians who need our input and ideas, we might possibly create a nuclear powered environmentally friendly civilization.
If we fail, then civilizations rise and fall, then maybe it's our time to fall.
