Nuclear power and other sources of energy in anarchism

[Gozutennou]

I notice that most anarchist don't have an hard one for nuclear power, why is that and what is in your opinion the best form of energy in an anarchism ?

 

[Aegidius]

Well, implementation of nuclear power in the world today tends to be really entangled with the state, so that's not a help.  I'm for letting the market decide whether it's viable (big surprise), but based on my limited knowledge I am a fan.

This is the really beautiful thing about markets: in a planned society, you need to figure out what's "the best form of energy", but free markets give us a device to make decisions like that which is  "smarter" than any one person, or at any rate which takes into account more knowledge than any one person could possibly have.  Many entrepreneurs can make educated guesses about what form of energy is going to be the most profitable (efficient) and then compete to see who's right.  In precisely the same way that natural selection has created far better optimized beings in terms of survival and reproduction than a designer could (take that, intelligent design), the market can choose the activities which most effeciently achieve the satisfaction of people's wants and needs with far greater accuracy than any armchair intellectual.  The market steers us towards greater efficiency, and therefore greater wealth and a higher standard of living for all, by what pretty much boils down to exhastive, neverending trial and error.  This is why bailouts are so horrifying: failure is as integral to the healthy function of a market as is success.

Which is, I suppose, pretty far off topic.  Mea culpa.

[Syock]

Personally I dislike it.  If something goes wrong, there is no way in hell to compensate a city full of dead people.  There is also the fact that transport for the fuel both before and after use is very risky.  It is risky to the point where they just bury the stuff on site now.  The site will not be useable for anything else for a good 20,000 years or so.  They are often built in locations vulnerable to nature to deal with cooling requirements.  

I would be curious to see how the free market insurance deals with these issues.

[MAM]

I'm a fan of nuclear power, and in the event it is ever successfully implemented I would be a bigger fan of Fusion Power, which if the estimated figures are right would give us more energy and be safer...

PS: Nuclear power is already fairly safe.

[Gozutennou]

In precisely the same way that natural selection has created far better optimized beings in terms of survival and reproduction than a designer could (take that, intelligent design), the market can choose the activities which most effeciently achieve the satisfaction of people's wants and needs with far greater accuracy than any armchair intellectual.  The market steers us towards greater efficiency, and therefore greater wealth and a higher standard of living for all, by what pretty much boils down to exhastive, neverending trial and

That is a really good point !, i'll keep that one in mind 

[Syock]

PS: Nuclear power is already fairly safe.

That is a very relative term.  Flying is fairly safe vs driving.  But when shit happens and that airplane hits a sky scraper, things go very bad.  

Fusion has very little radioactivity vs fission.  I expect fusion has a bright future.  Fission I think would lose big time on a free market.  The cost to insure it I expect would cause the price to be excessive vs alternatives.  

[MAM]

PS: Nuclear power is already fairly safe.

That is a very relative term.  Flying is fairly safe vs driving.  But when shit happens and that airplane hits a sky scraper, things go very bad.  

Fusion has very little radioactivity vs fission.  I expect fusion has a bright future.  Fission I think would lose big time on a free market.  The cost to insure it I expect would cause the price to be excessive vs alternatives.  

What I'm saying is that the big scares that have paralyzed the proletariat with fear can all be traced back  to human stupidity. Chernobyl for example was caused by the night manager deciding to do an experiment (which would cause the core to have a melt down) and he did it during a shift change, it was aided by the fact that the Soviets didn't take good care of their shit nor was it that good to begin with.

You may be right with the insurance thing though, only time will tell.

[BobRobertson]

Much of the fear of radiation has its source in government propaganda.

Specifically, the fallout from the nuclear testing was officially understated. This made it seem like small amounts of radiation were to blame for the problems, rather than the massive doses that actually happened.

If radiation was the only concern, coal fired plants would get closed too.

Next, as is stated earlier, atomics are so highly regulated (leveraged by that fear in the peasants above) that it's impossible to disentangle the two.

For example, reprocessing is illegal. All "spent" fuel, which has an overwhelming majority of energy still in it if only it could be reprocessed, must be stored on site forever, by law.

"Is nuclear waste really waste?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv-mFSoZOkE

All nuclear reactor designs must be govt approved, all reactors require licenses first, etc etc, which retards innovation. Small reactors, such as Navy sized systems, are relatively inexpensive but are not built for consumer use. The lack of liability because of all this govt regulation also makes people afraid of allowing reactors to be built, since if something does go wrong the reactor owner can just point to the fact that they obeyed all the regulations and they're off the hook.

Thorium, pebble-bed, etc., there are lots of alternative designs for reactors that may never be built because of the total absence of competition.

[MAM]

Thorium

I'm not a physicist but I'm given to understand that Thorium is harder to turn into nukes than say plutonium, or uranium.

radiation

is the black magic of our day.

[kunkmiester]

Look up molten salt reactors.  They're generally thorium burning, though you use uranium at the start before you get the breeding cycle going.

The big problem with nuclear is the capital costs--you need large power plants, long distance transmission lines, etc.  You also need security.  It has a big payoff, but even without superfluous gov regulations in the way you'll probably find it hard to find investors willing to fund a fission power plant in an anarchist society.

Fusion is a different story.  Do some searching, on polywell, focus fusion, and field reversed configuration.  Some plants could be small enough to fit in your house, which eliminates infrastructure issues.

Infrastructure is a weak point I see.  While there are proposed methods and arrangements to deal with laying pipes and lines across property, it'll be complicated, at least for a while.  If you can avoid it however, you don't have to deal with the legal issues, and that can give an advantage.  This is also one reason I see a statist period in history being useful, since you get a regime where rights-of-way and common areas are established as a norm, and when transitioning to anarchism, the idea that there are places roads and such should be is sacrosanct, provided proper compensation is arranged.

[ff42]

Premise: In a free society those that cause harm will be held accountable for their actions, so will those that finance those that cause harm.

Premise:  In a free society profit will be driven down to near zero, the logical conclusion being that nobody will be rich enough to single-handedly finance a single 'big' reactor (enough to serve and/or destroy a city).

Conclusion:  Nobody will pool their resources to build a 'big' reactor because of the chance of personal liability, nor could anyone afford the insurance rates of doing so.

Prediction:  A free society will probably develop the technology for a single house reactor, buried beneath the property such that harm/insurance is within financial reach.

[rudolph]

What about bigass nuclear reactors in space

[BobRobertson]

What about bigass nuclear reactors in space

Much easier to collect solar as a source of heat, rather than fission or fusion.

It still remains that the power must be transmitted to where it will be used. If you can do that, there is this serious big nuclear reactor just 93 million miles away that wastes some 99 and 44/100% of all its radiant energy and will be free for the taking for the next 10 billion years or so.

[macsnafu]

I notice that most anarchist don't have an hard one for nuclear power, why is that and what is in your opinion the best form of energy in an anarchism ?

Obviously, we should let the market decide. 

 

But seriously, Nuclear energy isn't all that dangerous.  The real problem with nuclear is that it takes very large nuclear energy plants to create electricity, and thus there's a certain tendency towards centralization.  Now if they can improve the technology and reduce it to a size that fits in your back yard or garage, then nuclear power becomes much more decentralized, and will fit an anarchist society better.

[rudolph]

What about bigass nuclear reactors in space

Much easier to collect solar as a source of heat, rather than fission or fusion.

It still remains that the power must be transmitted to where it will be used. If you can do that, there is this serious big nuclear reactor just 93 million miles away that wastes some 99 and 44/100% of all its radiant energy and will be free for the taking for the next 10 billion years or so.

Haha very true. Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Tesla have plans for a some sort of solar satellite that connects to Earth with a giant copper wire or something. If my memory serves me correctly, it could power everything on Earth or something ridiculous like that.