The nuclear option is inevitable

Our civilization faces tremendous challenges today, and its very survival is at stake. The population is expected to stabilize at over 11 billion people at around mid-century. Given that the average person's standard of living—with associated resource consumption and pollution—is also increasing, this may more than double the already unsustainable strain we put on the planet. The resulting human-induced climate change is a big threat, but isn't the only one. In a couple of decades large cities are forecast to run out of drinking water, the so-called 'water crisis.' The velocity and ferocity with which we extract resources from the planet far outstrips our ability to recycle these resources. Our current waste management strategies soon won't be able to cope with the load. Food production will have to more than double, although the planet's surface isn't getting bigger. The challenges are many.

You see, the planet itself will do just fine even if we throw our very worst at it: give it a million years or so—the blink of an eye for a rock that's been around for 4.5 billion years—and it shall have luxuriant forests, rich oceans and abundant fauna again, after we are gone. As a matter of fact, even our species will survive: there are a few of us in Africa, Australia, the Amazon and the arctic circle who have the skills to ensure human survival even if technological life ceases to exist.

I am not concerned about the planet or even our species. My concern is our civilization, our culture. Letting these die would be a waste of, literally, planetary proportions. We've striven and suffered for thousands of years to learn a thing or two, have an insight or two, and now we are about to reset the clock on all that. Despite the deplorable state of our metaphysics today, we have made progress. True insight is only achieved when we've turned every stone and flirted with every vaguely attractive but ultimately stupid idea conceivable, at great cost to ourselves. And now that we've finally done much of the suffering and are about to emerge into daylight, to reset the whole process and go back to square one would be just unspeakably, unthinkingly catastrophic. All the wars, all the famine, all the despair... for nothing? Just to start over before we bank anything?

No, we must survive. But to escape catastrophe we require what in military jargon is called a 'forward escape.' Technology—used for resource extraction, industry, transportation, manufacturing, etc.—carries much of the responsibility for the crises we now face. Yet, to overcome these crises while preserving the positive things about our culture and civilization, we have no other option but to deploy more technology. If we were just a billion or two, perhaps we could do without technology, but not with over 11 billion people on such a small rock.

To effectively address the many challenges we face, we need energy; no, abundant levels of energy; no, even more: we need practically inexhaustible and cheap sources of energy everywhere. The reason is simple: recycling consumes huge amounts of energy, and we need to recycle a whole lot more than we do now, for the planet is not getting any bigger or richer; desalination of ocean water consumes enormous amounts of energy, and we will soon need to do a lot more desalination, for only about 1% of the planet's water is suitable for drinking (that is, after it is treated and pumped to the people who need it, which also requires significant energy); waste management, from sewage treatment to incineration to air pollution control, requires a lot of energy; vertical farming—of which we will need to do much more to keep a growing population fed—requires a lot of energy because of its reliance on artificial lighting and automated systems; and so on. You get the picture. Abundant cheap energy everywhere is the key to addressing our problems through the use of advanced technology, in a forward-escape to avoid catastrophe.

But wind farms, solar panels and the other sustainable, non-polluting energy sources embraced by eco-conscious people today cannot provide it. Sun and wind aren't reliable or abundant sources of energy, even if we project significant advances in the associated technologies. And they have their own cost for the planet, given the huge areas they require. These otherwise sustainable energy sources face enormous challenges to merely meet our current energy needs, let alone what is required for a forward-escape. I know this isn't a popular opinion, but I have had the chance to look at the numbers. For a forward-escape, we will need a lot more energy than we currently consume; wind and solar just won't do, I'm afraid.

Yet we do have the knowledge to solve any conceivable energy challenge within my life time, or even earlier (I am 45 years old as I write these words): nuclear energy.

Okay, before you dismiss me, please continue reading just a little further. I am keenly aware of the problems associated with nuclear energy, not the least of which are safety and radioactive waste. I know why you probably despise this idea. But perhaps what you don't know is that there are extremely robust and effective solutions to the problems of nuclear energy.

The nuclear reactors we despise—think of Chernobyl and Fukushima—are from an old generation, technology from the 1950s and 60s. These reactors require active-safety: unless one actively intervenes to keep the reaction under control, the reactor melts in a nuclear runaway. These systems are inherently unsafe, no matter how many levels of redundancy one builds to prevent a runaway reaction; there can always be an unfortunate alignment of circumstances that leads to catastrophe. And catastrophe in these cases is unacceptable even if it happens only once. So I believe we should eventually phase out all reactors that depend on active-safety, which is just about all reactors in operation in the world today.

But there are also passive-safety reactors: these require active intervention to stay running. They are inherently incapable of a runaway reaction. If you shutdown all power to the reactor and/or if every system in the plant fails, the reactor just stops; it just can't keep itself running unless it is in some way poked or stimulated to do so from the outside. Such reactors are inherently safe; they just can't go out of control. And as if this weren't enough, there are passive-safety reactors being developed that use, as fuel, what current nuclear reactors produce as waste! Many passive-safety reactors do not require uranium enrichment, so the technology also cannot be used for weapons. It's hard to think of any significant risk or disadvantage associated with these technologies.

The holy-grail of passive-safety reactors is, of course, fusion reactors, which produce no harmful waste products (mostly helium, an inert gas used to fill party balloons). Many groups are now actively doing research to develop nuclear fusion power plants. The problem is that we are still decades away from large-scale commercial deployment, time we may not have. Right now, China, for instance, isn't waiting: the Chinese are building new active-safety nuclear fission reactors at a very fast pace.

There are options to bridge the gap between now and the time when fusion reactors can be deployed. Liquid fluoride thorium reactors come to mind, although a more prominent recent example is the TerraPower reactor, pushed by Bill Gates. This latter one is a fission reactor with passive-safety. The problem is that 'nuclear energy' has got such a bad name in our culture that many people, including politicians and regulators, aren't even aware that these new developments effectively solve the problems of older technology. To simply assume that all nuclear energy is bad is, frankly, a dangerously uninformed position. Here we have the most promising—perhaps even the only viable—way to effectively address the many incredibly difficult challenges we now face, and we dismiss it unthinkingly. We don't have the luxury to act based on slogans and prejudices here; the issue requires thoughtfulness and a rather pragmatic attitude.

I believe governments and regulators must aggressively facilitate research and development of passive-safety nuclear technologies; we must allow prototypes to be built, which right now isn't possible in the West. Moreover, Europe, the USA and Japan must use their technological lead and entrepreneurial culture to not only allow, but also foster and accelerate these developments. Significant government funds must be allocated for it, for we are dealing with a matter of survival here. Passive-safety nuclear reactors can potentially solve our world's growing energy needs in an inherently safe way, without significant pollution or waste.

We have a way out, but we must want to explore it.