I have been a fan of science and technology since I was a child. Many years ago I worked on projecting technological development and anticipated a lot of what has come to pass with computers and the Internet. I have always believed that science and technology could solve the problems confronting humanity if used with proper foresight and caution. Unfortunately, there are often unforeseen consequences following the adoption of a new technology. While this may be true of nuclear energy, sadly, many of the problems were clear from the beginning and were ignored.
I recently published a series of books on sociology that I have been editing for over ten years. They are available on Amazon under the name of Stuart C. Dodd. He was a professor of sociology at the University of Washington for many years. His pursuit of an understanding of human society took him far beyond the bounds of his discipline. He tried to develop a model of the universe that included all the physical and social sciences. When we first met, we discovered a mutual interest in understanding things from a global perspective. This is the perspective that I bring to nuclear energy.
Thinking about the human race and the use of various fuels down through history in a global perspective takes you beyond the usual concerns of what it costs to obtain, how you use it and what pollution/waste does it generate. There have been other periods of history in which the use of a particular fuel that allowed a particular society to flourish wound up destroying their environment to the point where the civilization collapsed. Most people would agree that the environment is important but don’t perhaps fully realize that nuclear accidents that release massive amounts of radiation could conceivably spell the end of our civilization.
There are interesting connections between the type of facility needed to utilize a form of energy and social factors such as politics. Some types of fuel, such as uranium, are expensive and scarce and require special massive equipment to generate power. This leads to centralization of power generation with attendant problems of distribution and disruption of huge populations if one plant fails. Massive investments are required for such energy sources which in turn depend on large pools of capital which restrict their use to certain types of economic and political systems. In contrast, other types of fuel and sources of energy are highly distributed and can be utilized at a local level without centralization of equipment, investment and control. These distributed systems might allow for a more decentralized type of economy and political system than we currently have in the U.S.
In situations where environmental degradation, waste disposal and centralization are ignored, massive power stations such as nuclear power generators provide seemingly cheap energy. The availability of large amounts of inexpensive electrical power encourages energy use and discourages conservation and efficiency. Centralized power use generates so much heat that huge columns of warm air rising above big cities alter weather patterns over large areas.
We will be exploring the direct problems of nuclear power generation such as cost, waste disposal, environmental degradation, impact of accidents, etc. in future posts, but we will also spend time addressing larger and more indirect issues raised by nuclear power.
