Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumWhat would really happen to "Quantum Fusion"
Last edited Wed May 2, 2012, 09:15 AM - Edit history (1)
This sounds about right to me...
I thought I'd do a thought experiment. Suppose tomorrow morning a hypothetical university---let's call it T.I.M.---sends out their weekly press release claiming a "revolutionary breakthrough" that will change the way we think about energy. Unlike every other time in the past decade they've made this claim, though, suppose this time it's actually true: they've discovered a way of producing extremely cheap energy---as near to "free energy" as can be imagined. Specifically, they've invented Mr. Fusion, a system that can turn anything---trash---into energy via a form of cold fusion. While it can't be done on a small scale, it's expected to have an EROEI of more than 100, producing power at a cent per KWh. The plants are expected to last 40 years at the minimum, but nobody quite knows---maybe they'll last 80. And best of all, the research team is only 5, not 15, years away from commercialization.
1 week later: Some folks at The Oil Drum are showing some surprise at the results, which have supposedly been verified by other scientists. Perpetual cynics dismiss it as yet another free energy hoax. At this point it's still hard to tell that this development really is the game-changer that is claimed.
9 months later: Several large environmental groups, along with a few backers of the photovoltaic industry, begin to publicly question the safety of Mr. Fusion. They note that since it harnesses nuclear reactions to produce electricity, it should be placed under the same scrutiny as any other nuclear plant. The Mr. Fusion team does a few interviews to try to quell any concern, noting that no long-lived radioisotopes are produced in the reactions. They conduct another round of demonstrations to show that the radiation level inside of their test facility is lower than inside a coal plant.
3 years later: After significant lobbying by the American Petroleum Institute, the NRC issues a ruling that Mr. Fusion must meet the established suite of nuclear safety standards---those developed for conventional nuclear fission plants---including those rules on containment, redundancy, hardening, and safety protocols. The Mr. Fusion team appeals the ruling while they continue plans for construction.
20 years later: Several dozen Mr. Fusion plant complexes are operating worldwide, producing on the order of 100 GW of electricity, about 2% of global electricity consumption.
See the full "timeline"at the link.
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phantom power
(25,966 posts)
kristopher
(29,798 posts)It presumes an irrationality on the part of all those involved in evaluating new energy sources that only exists in the minds of the nuclear crowd.
cprise
(8,445 posts)For instance, that a clean source of energy that is both concentrated and virtually limitless will not have drastic secondary effects for the environment. I am trying to imagine such a fusion-fueled society, which magnifies the excesses begotten by the fossil fuel boom. The pumped-up consumerism would make today's consumption mania look quaint, and I'm guessing that few if any people in power would be willing to use the extra energy to have society clean up after itself -- Unlimited power added to today's political and economic culture would produce a system that chooses to do without nature (and why, little Johnny, would you want to hold back economic growth with any of that luddite "biosphere" baloney when we could live large as your favorite space colony heroes do... right here on earth?).
My 'realist', millenia-tested self brings me to imagine that direction for the Mr Fusion future, though the old me thinks it sounds like a slightly cheesy 1980s scifi short story. The big-budget version of the story has a believably fleshed-out society and ethical system that would reign in the excess before it got too out of hand.
I conclude that we need to internalize (not just learn) true ecological responsibility and the value of the web of life before we acquire anything like unlimited power.
Then again, maybe we'll all just float above the biosphere like they do in The Jetsons (though I never did see how they left things down there on the ground).
kristopher
(29,798 posts)I believe it is a veiled attack on those who criticize nuclear power; accomplished by describing what nuclear proponents believe nuclear to potentially be and then renaming it fusion. I think the way everything rolls out around the world's response to nuclear makes the subterfuge extremely obvious while simultaneously demonstrating a complete lack of interest in an actual exploration of the stated hypothetical.
As for your view of the original question, I'll throw out two comments. If we were to eliminate scarcity as a factor in our access to energy wouldn't we also eliminate poverty and hunger? In the cycle of life wealth is largely a proxy for energy; the more wealth you control the more energy you command. Unlimited energy that is accessible to everyone equally would have profound consequences to the entire concept of "economic scarcity".
No one could say for certain how our cultural matrix would shift, but I think that you have to start with idea that with the elimination of economic scarcity, the foundation of capitalism would also be removed. That is my first comment.
My second is that Star Trek Next Generation is an exploration of this idea.
cprise
(8,445 posts)I didn't take the article as truth-seeking. Its seeking the renovation of the consumer candy store.
If we had 'unlimited' energy, we could theoretically have unlimited life, unlimited pollution, or some combination depending on how our peculiar psyches react to the situation. What aspects of the cycles of life and consumption will be blown out of proportion? Won't the topic of population get pushed back into the shadows?
And would a renewed surge in population keep consumer abundance at bay? Any way I look at it, the biosphere is more likely than not to get trashed... unless we first learn to treasure life in a multi-dimensional way (interdependence, biodiversity, etc.).
Eventually Mr. Fusion means pushing out to space in relatively short order or else the laws of thermodynamics would put a crimp on everything. Otherwise and ironically, we overheat both with unlimited energy and without it.
But its harder than it sounds... how do you raise children in 1/3g on Mars without horribly deforming them? Make every dwelling into a centrifuge, that increases heat buildup and decreases population density? Our very first space colonies may make human genetic modification absolutely necessary (and it would take a long time with a lot of trial and error to make even a miserable existence possible).
Star Trek brings the economic aspect up here and there, but as many have said its optimistic (that unlimited energy makes people blase about consumption and exploitation) but the FTL travel on which that society is predicated is highly unlikely anyway.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)Population rises as a response to insecurity in living standards. The conditions we know of that promote instinctive long term population stabilization and/or reduction are all related to economic security.
As for "overheating", again that is an issue that has roots in economic scarcity. If you have unlimited free energy I'm pretty sure some method of reversing climate change is a reasonable proposition since carbon sequestration is really limited in the present world by the energy costs it requires.
What happens to "consumer" demand when you eliminate the profit motive? Since the entire concept of "consumer" is an outgrowth of capitalism I think that it's reasonable to speculate the values by which we judge what one "needs" would undergo significant change.
cprise
(8,445 posts)But my comment about overheating was meant to show that without Mr. Fusion we could continue with worsening global warming, and with Mr. Fusion the resulting increased consumption patterns would create a fundamental thermodynamic waste-heat problem that the extra on-hand energy could not undo.
Perhaps in the later scenario, the increasing use of energy to cool the planet would simply make Mr. Fusion's abilities look more limited and consumption would be checked. Or perhaps a limited reproduction factor as you pointed out, would leave people with just a consumption bell-curve where desire for stuff/services also becomes limited. But the top of the population or consumption bell curves could put the planet well past what the biosphere could withstand.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Adding more human activity to an already-untenable situation isn't going to make it better.
We're unlikely to ever have Mr. Fusion come to visit. But that's OK, we're managing to trash the place just fine without him.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)Just saw this and thought I'd share it.
Kyodo
The number of kids under 15 in Japan dropped for the 31st straight year, standing at a record-low 16.6 million as of April 1, down 120,000 from a year earlier, the government said Friday.
The ratio of children in the age group to the overall population fell for the 38th straight year, falling to a record-low 13 percent, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said.
By dividing the children into three-year age brackets, those aged between 12 and 14 were the largest group, at 3.5 million, while the youngest group — newborns to 2-year-olds — was the smallest, at 3.1 million, the ministry said.
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare's estimate showed earlier that the number of newborns in 2011 came to a record-low 1,057,000, indicating the downtrend in the birthrate is accelerating...
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120504x3.html
I don't understand your point about a waste-heat problem. Yes, there would be a heat stream going into the the environment. But as I'm interpreting the hypothetical we have a free clean unlimited source of energy that is producing it. That means the energy budget for sequestering carbon is irrelevant if the reversal of the greenhouse effect exceeds the thermal output of the energy source required to achieve it. I'm reasonably certain that if the efficiency numbers of Mr. Fusion are at least as good as conventional thermal generation we would easily meet that condition.
cprise
(8,445 posts)but everything else that it powers could become increasingly inefficient and/or people will find more and more ways to increase their activities as more power comes online in a geometric progression. It's between that, and whether population and consumption patterns level off. The thing is, with unlimited energy, any one factor by itself that does not 'behave' would spell catastrophe.
Here are a couple explorations of scale that I found interesting:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/
FogerRox
(13,211 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I like to use such ideas, whether they are objectively "real" or not, to examine the nature of the culture we live in. I do that by imagining (as the author above has) how our institutions and social behaviour might respond to such a development. It's also possible to get a fix on the situation we're in by wondering why we are so desperate to believe such obviously mythological possibilities.
It makes scant difference to Reality™ whether or not a few people on the Intertubes (on a site dedicated to politics, no less) accept or reject such claims. But it is very illuminating about some crucial larger social issues - like why do so many people feel we need this, when our Corporate Masters™ have told us everything is A-OK?
FogerRox
(13,211 posts)Sure.
Tri ALpha and Polywell fusion are being funded by the Navy, they want the all electric boat with 1000Mw beam weapons that would be possible with practical proton Boron 11 fusion.
At a certain point our Corporate Masters™ want to make money. Energy and resources in plentiful supply can lead to economic booms. Practical fusion will give us the solar system, and its resouces.
Overall I'm not sure our Corporate Masters™ would fuck up a good thing, at the end of the day. Possibly market economics will force the day, first one to use/abuse practical fusion will make a ton of money, and can use it to get to those space based resources. They are greedy, arent they?
The Dutch Empire collapsed they used wind power as a work multiplie, the British Empire fell, the used coal as a work multiplier, the US Empire is collapsing, we have used oil as a work multiplier.
The next Empire will be India, they will use fusion as a work multiplier. Possibly Polywell Fusion. MAd Max technological fallback vs Greed? I pick greed to win.
cprise
(8,445 posts)or surging forward; There is also the option of leveling off, stabilizing. Any space colonies that want to become permanent will have to be sustainable from the start because there will be no environmental support systems to draw from (we are not adapted to those environments, so humans will always be 'contained' by resource limits except for brief growth periods when advancing technology can create a bit more abundance).
My point is that it doesn't make much sense to send people to colonize the solar system if we can't do things sustainably for the Earth.
FogerRox
(13,211 posts)removes said industry from Terra.....
Mile and half deep open pit metals mining, stopped. Moved to space.
cprise
(8,445 posts)And where do they eventually end up after they're brought to Earth and manufactured?
