what happened to nuclear power
Reading science fiction written during the early 1940s, I'm struck by the extreme faith in nuclear power expressed at that time.
Nuclear fission had only just been discovered in 1938. There had been no nuclear weapons built yet. The first experimental nuclear reactor wasn't built until 1942. Yet Isaac Asimov was predicting from 1941 onward (in his Foundation series) that nuclear power would take humans into the galaxy and provide personal-sized power packs strong enough to shield the wearer from weapons fire. I remember as a kid reading sci-fi about nuclear-powered cars, nuclear-powered homes, and of course nuclear-powered space ships. The expectation during the 1950s among many of the science-literate was that nuclear fission and then fusion would provide practically unlimited electricity at ridiculously low prices by the 21st Century.
What happened? Today we're still getting most of our energy from fossil fuels, and nuclear fission only accounts for 4% of primary energy production -- less than hydroelectric, less than renewables. There is no commercially-available nuclear fusion.
(1) It turned out that nuclear power plants are expensive to build. They can be competitive with other power sources over their production lifecycles in some locations, but they were never ridiculously cheap and have not become cheaper over time.
(2) Nuclear power plants require well-trained expertise to operate safely -- and when something goes wrong, it can go wrong so catastrophically that entire countries (Germany, Italy, Japan) then decide, "Nope, that's it, we're closing down all our nuclear power plants." It's the danger of radiation spreading over widespread areas and contaminating soil and groundwater for decades. Cleaning up after Chernobyl, for example, will have taken 80 years when completed, and has already cost the equivalent of $70 billion. For one nuclear accident.
(3) Nuclear power plants create radioactive waste that lasts for hundreds of thousands of years!
(4) If you have the expertise to build a nuclear power plant, you also have the expertise to build nuclear weapons, and the current nuclear powers do not like to see that kind of technology proliferate without strict controls, because -- well -- it could destroy human civilization in a nuclear WW3.
(5) The amount of nuclear fuel is not so unlimited as was dreamed of in the 1950s, we have about 90 years of reserves of nuclear fuel at current consumption rates. A good amount, but in the same general ball park as fossil fuels and other mineral reserves aka less than 100 years worth. What's your plan for the 22nd Century when we've run out of fucking everything?
(6) Nuclear fusion turned out to be even more expensive to build -- it is still not commercially viable and isn't expected to become commercially viable until at least 2050.
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The problem with science fiction is the endless extrapolation of positive trends. In the case of nuclear power, assuming that the "power of the atom" was "unlimited". In the real world of science nonfiction, specific technologies do not extrapolate endlessly. For example, the clock speeds of microchips hit their effective ceiling in 2005 after decades of exponential growth -- there are physical limits to how quickly microchips can function, and how small transistors can be, and we've pretty much hit these limits.
It seems we hit the physical limits of human space travel 50 years ago -- it's too expensive and too dangerous -- and despite the multiple US/UK billionaires jumping into the "space tourism" game right now, it's not getting any cheaper to base humans in space. OK, we just lobbed William Shatner into "space" for all of 3 minutes LOL. Bringing an astronaut up to the International Space Station costs $55 million, keeping her there for one day costs $8 million, and then you have to bring her back for another $55 million. These kinds of costs have not made it more likely that we'll ever have cities in space.
[The average-sized city in the US has 20,000 residents; it would cost $1 trillion to put them all into space and then $160 billion per day to keep them there. So over $50 trillion per year to maintain that city in space, which is more than the entire GDP of the US.]
The medical revolution in antibiotics has pretty much reached a stalemate, with bacteria evolving to defeat our current antibiotics at least as fast as we're developing new antibiotics.
Yes, we keep developing new technologies, but each specific technology eventually hits a physical ceiling, and then maintaining that technology requires ongoing training, employment, and investment. At some point, everybody is either learning about or maintaining an existing technology ... who would be left to operate the new ones?
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It is possible that eventually we'll hit Peak Technology, Peak Stuff, perhaps later this Century, that we won't be able to keep growing our per capita GDP past a certain point. Global per capita GDP growth rates peaked way back in the 1970s (along with global population growth rates), and pushing per capita GDP ever higher since then seems to have required a consistent effort to keep cutting both tax rates and interest rates down to the bone, while paying only lip service to the problems of global warming and mass species extinction. In other words, we've had to keep supercharging Capitalism with reductions in taxes, interest rates, and regulations to keep it growing in the face of rational resource constraints.
I won't live to see the end of this Century, but I'd bet that we'll hit a verifiable peak in per capita GDP, on a global scale, adjusted for inflation, before 2100. And not because I'm a pessimistic person by nature, but because of the statistical phenomenon known as "reversion to the mean", and because of the ecological phenomenon of population dynamics. Nothing can expand exponentially forever. Just because we haven't hit our carrying capacity yet doesn't mean we won't, or can't.
But science fiction has always worshipped the exponential curve. It really is the religion of the exponential curve. Whereas capitalism is the state (political economy) of the exponential curve. And there is no separation between the religion of the exponential curve, and the state of the exponential curve. Science fiction and capitalism get along well together.
Yes, thank you, Apple TV+, for bringing Asimov's Foundation to the screen.
Nuclear fission had only just been discovered in 1938. There had been no nuclear weapons built yet. The first experimental nuclear reactor wasn't built until 1942. Yet Isaac Asimov was predicting from 1941 onward (in his Foundation series) that nuclear power would take humans into the galaxy and provide personal-sized power packs strong enough to shield the wearer from weapons fire. I remember as a kid reading sci-fi about nuclear-powered cars, nuclear-powered homes, and of course nuclear-powered space ships. The expectation during the 1950s among many of the science-literate was that nuclear fission and then fusion would provide practically unlimited electricity at ridiculously low prices by the 21st Century.
What happened? Today we're still getting most of our energy from fossil fuels, and nuclear fission only accounts for 4% of primary energy production -- less than hydroelectric, less than renewables. There is no commercially-available nuclear fusion.
(1) It turned out that nuclear power plants are expensive to build. They can be competitive with other power sources over their production lifecycles in some locations, but they were never ridiculously cheap and have not become cheaper over time.
(2) Nuclear power plants require well-trained expertise to operate safely -- and when something goes wrong, it can go wrong so catastrophically that entire countries (Germany, Italy, Japan) then decide, "Nope, that's it, we're closing down all our nuclear power plants." It's the danger of radiation spreading over widespread areas and contaminating soil and groundwater for decades. Cleaning up after Chernobyl, for example, will have taken 80 years when completed, and has already cost the equivalent of $70 billion. For one nuclear accident.
(3) Nuclear power plants create radioactive waste that lasts for hundreds of thousands of years!
(4) If you have the expertise to build a nuclear power plant, you also have the expertise to build nuclear weapons, and the current nuclear powers do not like to see that kind of technology proliferate without strict controls, because -- well -- it could destroy human civilization in a nuclear WW3.
(5) The amount of nuclear fuel is not so unlimited as was dreamed of in the 1950s, we have about 90 years of reserves of nuclear fuel at current consumption rates. A good amount, but in the same general ball park as fossil fuels and other mineral reserves aka less than 100 years worth. What's your plan for the 22nd Century when we've run out of fucking everything?
(6) Nuclear fusion turned out to be even more expensive to build -- it is still not commercially viable and isn't expected to become commercially viable until at least 2050.
-----
The problem with science fiction is the endless extrapolation of positive trends. In the case of nuclear power, assuming that the "power of the atom" was "unlimited". In the real world of science nonfiction, specific technologies do not extrapolate endlessly. For example, the clock speeds of microchips hit their effective ceiling in 2005 after decades of exponential growth -- there are physical limits to how quickly microchips can function, and how small transistors can be, and we've pretty much hit these limits.
It seems we hit the physical limits of human space travel 50 years ago -- it's too expensive and too dangerous -- and despite the multiple US/UK billionaires jumping into the "space tourism" game right now, it's not getting any cheaper to base humans in space. OK, we just lobbed William Shatner into "space" for all of 3 minutes LOL. Bringing an astronaut up to the International Space Station costs $55 million, keeping her there for one day costs $8 million, and then you have to bring her back for another $55 million. These kinds of costs have not made it more likely that we'll ever have cities in space.
[The average-sized city in the US has 20,000 residents; it would cost $1 trillion to put them all into space and then $160 billion per day to keep them there. So over $50 trillion per year to maintain that city in space, which is more than the entire GDP of the US.]
The medical revolution in antibiotics has pretty much reached a stalemate, with bacteria evolving to defeat our current antibiotics at least as fast as we're developing new antibiotics.
Yes, we keep developing new technologies, but each specific technology eventually hits a physical ceiling, and then maintaining that technology requires ongoing training, employment, and investment. At some point, everybody is either learning about or maintaining an existing technology ... who would be left to operate the new ones?
-----
It is possible that eventually we'll hit Peak Technology, Peak Stuff, perhaps later this Century, that we won't be able to keep growing our per capita GDP past a certain point. Global per capita GDP growth rates peaked way back in the 1970s (along with global population growth rates), and pushing per capita GDP ever higher since then seems to have required a consistent effort to keep cutting both tax rates and interest rates down to the bone, while paying only lip service to the problems of global warming and mass species extinction. In other words, we've had to keep supercharging Capitalism with reductions in taxes, interest rates, and regulations to keep it growing in the face of rational resource constraints.
I won't live to see the end of this Century, but I'd bet that we'll hit a verifiable peak in per capita GDP, on a global scale, adjusted for inflation, before 2100. And not because I'm a pessimistic person by nature, but because of the statistical phenomenon known as "reversion to the mean", and because of the ecological phenomenon of population dynamics. Nothing can expand exponentially forever. Just because we haven't hit our carrying capacity yet doesn't mean we won't, or can't.
But science fiction has always worshipped the exponential curve. It really is the religion of the exponential curve. Whereas capitalism is the state (political economy) of the exponential curve. And there is no separation between the religion of the exponential curve, and the state of the exponential curve. Science fiction and capitalism get along well together.
Yes, thank you, Apple TV+, for bringing Asimov's Foundation to the screen.