How To Create Unlimited Energy
Infrastructure is the trellis around which society grows
I recently interviewed nuclear engineer Mark Nelson on a nuclear energy transition, covering the fears, realities and future of nuclear technology which, Mark insisted, could engineer a sustainable future “until the sun explodes”. In this context, a sustainable future is one in which we have access to such cheap and abundant energy that, no matter how large our population gets, everyone can enjoy a medium to high energy intensive lifestyle.
Whether or not the technology will ever get there (although we are close to recycling radioactive waste into fuel, Mark assured me) and whether or not we have the materials to do so (Simon Michaux argues we don’t) are not questions I can even have a stab at. It is deeply complicated navigating the strands of the big picture when even the experts don’t agree, leaving those of us classed as curious laymen to figure out what fits with what we know. However, if we only accepted that which “makes sense”, we would surely live in a technologically barren world. Creativity withers in boxes; researchers must push the limits of knowledge to break through to new paradigms.
That said, there are a few frames with which to understand the world that don’t impede technological development, mainly the ideological frames. Economics and politics are fairly easy to wrap your head around once you accept that a) nobody is really in control and b) current economic feedback loops drive perverse incentives and c) some people really are arseholes. Seen through the lens of resource scarcity, nuclear energy becomes so exciting a prospect of abundance one immediately imagines that, if it were as good as they say it is, someone, somewhere, would shut it down. Of course, they did try to shut nuclear down. We are told environmental protests warning against the dangers of nuclear energy turned the world off it. This gets harder and harder to believe given governments simultaneously ignored scientists’ warnings about greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuels, and given we live in a world with more nuclear warheads than when the activists were protesting. We ended up with missiles, and not energy for all.
This market runs on the equation of scarcity, deliberately engineered. Who can show off their military might if there are no resource wars to be found? Who can come out on top if everyone has as much as the next person? (Surely, surely, this is why rather than funding Africa’s renewable transition to bypass fossil fuels entirely, Western democracies would rather see them choke on coal: they need sellers now that Southeast Asia is wising up, and a solar-powered Africa would be quite the force to be reckoned with).
Yes, there are powerful political and economic forces at play which pervert, destroy and advance certain technologies depending on their interests. Yet, like everything else, those forces are in relationship with everything else, including technology, making some societal changes almost…inevitable.
Think of the printing press and the runaway societal benefits that affect us still today. This technology allowed for the Protestant reformation, which impacted royal families, old allies, and even wars. Mass education is only possible thanks to the printing press, a literate society is only possible thanks to the printing press, literature available to everyone is only possible thanks to the printing press. Sometimes technology shapes us as much as we shape its uses. Infrastructure is the trellis around which society grows.
What does a nuclear society look like? High energy lifestyles for all seems, through my current lens, pretty dangerous: we can’t eat nuclear fuel so despite the abundance of energy the materials required to fabricate a society to meet the demands of its high-energy consumers seems unfeasible given Earth is limited and we’d like to protect it. Also, high-energy lifestyles often mean more technology which isn’t doing much for our mental health. A benefit I would very much wish to enjoy, and wish for future generations, is clean travel around the world so we may still experience, witness, and learn from one another’s cultures, building social ties which break down differences.
There is so much else we could redefine as energy. Time spent with loved ones, time spent alone with a good book, time spent watching ants scurry across the topsoil. Our current paradigm is obsessed with the production and consumption of energy that we forget to spend our own doing what we love. Is time not the most important currency? Time, the conductor for what we give to the world: how we spend what is ours. Time spent laughing, making love, cooking, napping, writing, working, and doing sweet fuck all. The energy it takes is that within our own bodies; the time it takes is ours to give; the energy it makes for ourselves and the world around us is truly unlimited. We call it love.
How do we build an infrastructure to support a society blooming with love for no reason other than it is the best we have to give?
There is a paradox between the building of cultures in place - through 'restanza', an Italian concept of 'staying in place', and growing deep roots into the land, that bear the kind of wisdom we value in indigenous cultures - and 'clean travel'. Clean travel is a sail boat, or a horse, or a bicycle, or your feet. The frictionless but wholly destructive global travel of today erodes cultures of place - who wants to be the authentic peasant culture when you can dip in and out and rinse that dirt out of your hair with a power shower, in the aircon on your private jet, or electric powered train cabin? Travel is the antithesis of culture, which should not be confused with nomadism, which is firmly 'in place' and rooted in seasonal land wisdom. There is alot we will have to leave behind.
TravelLING to meet communities in place that are connected with your own community in place, to take gifts and bring back experience is a different matter that will be helped by the adventure of the relative difficulty of getting around.
That nuclear energy favors an abundance where “everyone has as much as the next person“ with “high energy lifestyles for all” is questionable. So far, the nuclear lobby was always an expression of a big monopolistic concentration power in the hands of few financial groups (and did the opposite of building a “society blooming with love,” just let’s not forget how Yakuza mafia embedded in Japan’s nuclear industry resorted to forms of modern slavery to clean up Fukushima’s mess.) The myth of the magic (and powerful) wand that will deliver limitless energy for all and forever is a fantasy that has no rational basis. An ‘equitable abundance’ can come only come if we finally accept the mathematical fact that an exponential growth and consumption forever, let alone a fair one, is a delusion. A fair distribution of wealth can come only within a civilization that bases its energy budget on limited, renewable and clean resources, and by accepting, once and for all, that the dream of an unending growth with unlimited energy is a vain chimera. And even not a desirable one. While a ‘love-based society’ can’t be built neither with nuclear energy nor with renewables, but because of an inner energy that can emerge only if we nurture discipline, restrain and a love for nature.