Managing Physically Imposed Global “de-growth”

 

REVISITING THERMODYNAMIC & MATERIAL LIMITS to 'Learning / Experience Curve' Models'

Predictions of Future Growth for 'Modern Renewables' & the role of Nuclear Energy

 

(6150 words)

 

Summary: This is an open letter to the Green Party of England & Wales detailing how and why its anti-scientific for the Party be anti-nuclear energy whilst claiming to “remain committed to genuinely sustainable and renewable sources of energy”. The scientific literature is full of 100% 'Modern Renewables' anti-nuclear energy schemes being exposed as nonsense “almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy” 1 despite failed law suits trying to discredit peer reviewed, published and cited papers repeatedly de-bunking such schemes on grounds they break the laws of physics. 2 3

 

The Party fails to account for fundamental limits 1. Energy Density and 2. Material Inputs impose on 'Modern Renewables' capacity to grow significantly beyond their current share of solar 1%, wind 2% (nuclear 4%) in the race to replace fossil fuels' 85% share of primary global energy supply. 4 Further additional secondary limits emerge: 3. Extractivisim; and 4. Reuse and Recycling. Next we explore impacts of these limits on 5. 'Learning / Experience curve' Models; and 6. Mainstream Economics. Then 7. Modern Monetary Theory; is integrated with  8. Nuclear: Lowest Hanging 'Thermodynamic Fruit'; and with 9. Politics; followed by 10. Discussion; to derive 11. Conclusions.

 

The Laws of Physics and Thermodynamics tell us: that flows of energy from the sun (and secondary flows induced & amplified by wind and water) are ten orders of magnitude times less energy dense (high entropy / disorder) than oil, or coal & wood and fifteen orders of magnitude less than uranium, rendering harvesting such dilute flows unsustainable due to the correspondingly orders of magnitude more materials, land and energy inputs needed for equivalent energy outputs from hydrocarbons or uranium.

 

Geologist, miners, and financial markets all tell us: existing mineral & material supplies are orders of magnitude too small and need decades to expand to support significant growth of 'Modern Renewables'. There's barely enough to go around for existing demands in non-energy industrial production sectors already. Further, remaining reserves and futures are rapidly hitting geopolitical supply limits too.

 

1. Comparative Energy Density / Entropy Limits: Let's start by comparing visually how many zeros (orders of magnitude) 5 separates different energy sources 6 7 8 (not precise number accuracy) in Joules / Cubic Meter 9 10 and Mega Joules / Kilogramme 11 :-

 

 
No matter what units or precision the same broad pattern emerges: Energy flows from the sun are so weak that harvesting their tiny and intermittent outputs and storing them in batteries requires orders of magnitude more and larger infrastructure requiring hundreds or thousands of times more input materials all fuelled by hydrocarbons emitting CO2 to get the same net energy output as uranium infrastructure yields. 12

 

Over and over again throughout human history this same pattern emerges: civilisations' grow and evolve not because primary energy sources become exhausted, we still have plenty of trees and coal in the ground. But by progressing step by step up the energy density ladder, not down it. Why is this? Because humans are driven to achieve increasing prosperity, a function of energy availability for material output over time. So we've developed more efficient technologies, to harness the fact that energy sources spontaneous flow from higher to lower energy density, by using more energy dense fuels, thereby increasing global complexity, enabling global average prosperity to increase.

 

 

That's why we progressed from animal power and wood fires, to fossil fuels and uranium, they all work by releasing their stored energy in the natural spontaneous direction of flow: a hot water bottle never spontaneously warms up, it always (frustratingly) only ever cools down. However, sun and wind energy harvesting machines have to work against energy / entropy's spontaneous direction of flow: they have to concentrate very dilute low energy density flows, (a cold water bottle) into high energy density electricity (to make a hot water bottle) which is do-able but extremely and prohibitively inefficient.

 

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) 2021 13 14 found the sun's orders of magnitude low energy density flows hitting the earth's surface, is the fundamental reason behind it reporting exactly the same as any 'disaggregated' EROEI (Energy Returned Over Energy Invested) 15 16 message would: the laws of physics dictate that sunlight, waves & wind require correspondingly orders of magnitude more massive harvesting machines than nuclear:-

 

• Wind & Solar need between 400 and 750 times More Land than Nuclear or Gas.

• Nuclear needs far Less Materials, Minerals, & Metals inputs.

• Nuclear energy has the Lowest Full Life-Cycle CO2 emissions of any electricity generating technology. Hinkley Point C 17 and Sizewell C, in the UK were again found to have a lifecycle impact of 5.5g CO2 per kWh.

• Over the period 2020-2050, Nuclear Emissions will Decline by a larger percentage than any other electricity generating technology.

• Nuclear has second Lowest Life-Cycle Atrophying Emissions after Hydro.

• Ionizing Radiation from Coal higher public & occupational exposure than Nuclear.

 

Today humans look down the slope from our fossil fuel hydrocarbon dominated position on of the energy density ladder, to tens of thousands of times less energy dense 'Modern Renewables' i.e. fantasy landscapes filled with industrial windmills, wave & tidal barriers, solar panel & biomass monoculture deserts, their intermittent energy stored in battery banks the size of cities connected with millions of tons of copper steel, aluminium and concrete all serviced and built using asphalt paved roads, diesel and natural gas furnaces.

 

Next up the ladder's slope in the other direction from hydrocarbons is uranium because its tens of thousands (Light Water Reactor) to millions (Fast Neutron Breeder Reactor) of times more energy dense than hydrocarbons and quadrillions of times more dense than sun energy flows. To get the same amount of energy from uranium requires thousands of times less input materials than hydrocarbons, and up to hundreds of thousands times less input materials than 'Modern Renewables'. (Note: For the same amount of energy supplied 'Modern Renewables' infrastructure build-out emits orders of magnitude more CO2 than the infrastructure build out legacy fossil fuels emitted. The majority of CO2 emitted by fossil fuel infrastructure is from burning the fuel itself, not what's embedded in its infrastructure materials and build-out processes).

 

High energy density explains why and how growth of global per capita wealth is positively correlated with fossil fuels' increasing share of global energy supply growing from c70% in 1950, increasing to 80% by 1980, and today standing at c85%. And low energy density is why it's taken 20 years for wind to grow to c2% of global energy, and solar to c1%, less than the growth of fossil fuels share of energy supply over that same period.

 

2. Material Inputs: The Green Party of England & Wales' call for “more ambition on renewables” but this is near impossible due to hitting material supply limits 18 as well as low energy density (as we leaned above) causing significantly increased CO2 emissions. The laws of physics dictate that opening and running new mines requires 1000's of horsepower diesel trucks & excavators. Electric vehicle's orders of magnitude lower energy density cannot replace depleting fossil fuels 19 in this role. Nor then transport process & refine metal and other material inputs. In other words 'Modern renewables' cannot power building themselves out, nor maintain themselves, nor electric grid balance, nor recycle, nor replace themselves after c25 year life cycles expires, without fossil fuels.

 

International Energy Agency chief Birol: “Supply and investment plans for many critical minerals fall well short of what is needed to support rapid deployment of solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles […] Around 67 tons of copper can be found in a medium-sized offshore wind turbine. To extract this amount of copper, miners have to move almost 50,000 tons of earth and rock […] The ore is shredded, ground, watered and leached. Demand for critical raw materials will quadruple by 2040 for lithium its 42 times higher […] The bottom line: A Lot of Nature Destroyed for a Little bit of Green power.” 20

 

 
There's plenty of minerals still left in the ground, but the deposits that are easiest to extract have already been mined. For example “Over the past 15 years, the copper ore content in Chile’s mines has fallen by almost a third to 0.7 percent. Three generations ago, that figure was 2 to 3 percent. Today, the industry has to dig much deeper to extract the same quantities of precious metals than it did in the past – and it consumes correspondingly more electricity and fuel.” The same is true for all material inputs such as lithium, cobalt, aluminium, indium, tellurium, platinum, rare earth metals, and building sand. 21 22

 

The reserves of metals and ever increasing energy inputs to recover and use them, are however not the most pressing impeding factor; annual production is. But new mines take two decades or more to enter end use manufacturing supply chains. Global rare metal manufacture is not enough by orders of magnitude to meet the approaching demand.

 

 
Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management in 2018 found that production of the metals required for renewable energy sources (such as solar and wind power) need to increase twelvefold by 2050. And that wasn’t even taking into account the increase in demand we would see as population increases or the further elevated demand for these precious metals due to a boost in production in other electronics industries. 23

 

Natural History Museum calculated that the UK alone would need to consume just under two times the current total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, at least half of the world’s copper production, and three quarters the world’s lithium to fulfil its 'Net Zero Plans' (not including the LGV and HGV fleets) in an open letter to the Committee on Climate Change in 2019. 24

 

EU and US Department of Energy report that all the photovoltaic systems currently on the market are reliant on one or more raw materials classed as “critical” or “near critical” e.g. high purity silicon, indium, tellurium, gallium, because of their natural scarcity or their recovery as minor-by-products of other commodities. With a capacity factor of only ~10%, the UK would require ~72GW of photovoltaic input to fuel the EV fleet; over five times the current installed global capacity. If CdTe-type photovoltaic power is used, the UK would have to consume on its own over “thirty years of current global annual tellurium supply.” Other published & peer reviewed researchers corroborate these findings. 25 26

 

Geological Survey of Finland published Mining of Minerals and Limits to Growth in 2021 with yet more research concluding the same mineral shortages story once again: “Global reserves are not large enough to supply enough metals to build the renewable non-fossil fuels industrial system or satisfy long term demand in the current system. Mineral deposit discovery has been declining for many metals. The grade of processed ore for many of the industrial metals has been decreasing over time, resulting in declining mineral processing yield. The implication is increase in mining energy consumption per unit of metal.

 

Mining of minerals is intimately dependent on fossil fuel based energy supply. Like all other industrial activities, without energy, mining does not happen. It becomes highly relevant then to examine how mining ecosystem interacts with the energy ecosystem. This suggests that the mining industrial operations to meet metal demand for the future are unlikely to go as planned. This implies that the current Linear Economy system is seriously unbalanced and is not remotely sustainable. It is clear that society consumes more mineral resources each year. It is also clear that society does not really understand its dependency on minerals to function.”  27

 

“As the energy transition supercycle gets closer, a major question is whether miners, financiers and governments can mobilize enough capital fast enough to bring on new supplies in line with demand.” 28 29

 

No doubt with all these limiting factors in mind, Russia’s Far-Eastern Autonomous region of Chukotka, rich in gold, copper and lithium, is fuelling its Arctic ambitions with nuclear power, planing to build 5 more floating nuclear power plants, all to fuel mining projects. 30

 

Meanwhile of course, other sectors, not just 'modern renewables' are affected by collapsing global supply of necessary technological metals and other mineral and material inputs, which further prevents efforts for sun energy flow harvesting machines to scale-up from c3% of global energy supply to replace fossil fuels' 85% share.

 

Solar and wind infrastructure is not so much harvesting ‘primary renewables’ as ‘secondary applications of primary fossil input’. 31 By far the lowest material demand way to replace fossil fuels is with even higher energy density nuclear that does work with entropy's spontaneous direction of flow providing an excellent source of industrial heat to efficiently and cleanly power chemical synthesis of hydrocarbons and hydrogen. 32

 

In other words, when calculated using whole system 'disaggregated' EROEI analysis 'Modern Renewables' are not “genuinely sustainable” for two reasons 33 34 :-

 

  1. • The mineral sector uses 11% of global energy, 35 which will rise with increased material inputs required to harvest low energy density fuel thereby emitting significantly more CO2 to build out than nuclear for the same electricity output; and

 

  1. • As recently as the 1960s, in what we might call a “golden age” of prosperity growth, ECoE (Energy Cost of Energy) was well below 2%. British prosperity has been in decline ever since ECoE reached 3.6%, and an ECoE of 5.5% has been enough to push Western prosperity growth into reverse. Global prosperity stopped growing before ECoE hit 6%. ECoE at, say, 8% or so, that would not be anywhere near low enough. Even if 'Modern Renewables' could stabilise ECoE at, say, 8% – and that’s an assumption which owes much more to hope than calculation – it wouldn’t be low enough to enable prosperity to stabilise, let alone start to grow.

 

If a solution is to be sought on the supply side it will have to be in the form of breeder reactors. The demand side solution is a “de-growth” transition cutting per capita energy, resource and money costs to one-tenth their present typical values. 36

 

3. Extractivismo. And even if low energy density and mineral shortages on their own were were not show stoppers, how would we then avoid inevitable environmental and social destruction with yet more resource wars and corporate land thefts in the global south (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, DRC, Bolivia, Chile, etc.) to get ever harder to extract minerals?

 

War on Want warn of “widespread environmental destruction and human rights abuses unleashed by the extraction of transition minerals – the raw materials needed for the production of renewable energy technologies” in their 2021 Material Transition report. 37 Political resistance to 'Extractivism' is rising, fighting against the implied orders of magnitude increase in mineral exploitation needed by more developed nations to lead proposed low energy density renewable plans to replace fossil fuels, which axiomatically equates to vast increases in local pollution with profits all mostly exported. 38 39

 

 

In light of the fact that China now supplies up to 80% of 'modern renewable' end use energy harvesting machines, their parts and critical metals, the key limits are: a) which countries will be able to get the critical metals they need, for uses other than building 'Modern Renewable' harvesting machines, since supply is rapidly exceeding demand? And b) will we continue to allow 'Extractivism' mining activities to increasingly wreck the environment and local people's health exploiting child labour leaving behind desolate heavily polluted moonscapes?

 

4. Reuse and Recycling. Possibilities for 'Modern Renewable' infrastructure will be very limited and extremely polluting plus there won't be enough decommissioned infrastructure to recycle for decades. The fatal blow for solar panels is that the most valuable materials are in such low concentrations they can barely be separated and therefore cannot be reused. Thermodynamics thus dictates processes will always remain very energy intensive. Primary and secondary solar energy flow harvesting machines will always remain entirely reliant on new metal and other materials inputs for their production. 40 41 42

 

5. 'Learning / Experience Curve' Models or 'Wright's law'. Over the last few decades exponential growth in the rate of solar panel and wind farm installations have been noted by researchers and analysts to now supply c1% and 2% respectively of global energy. These models try to predict the future based on past observations that the more someone performs a task and produces and sells more things, the better they get at it. Making and selling more things gets cheaper and cheaper and much more profitable. In turn we make more and sell more at a rate called the 'learning coefficient'. But these kinds of 'Learning / Experience curve' models suffer from significant limits that are too often overlooked to accurately predict the future.

 

For example in 1974 the 'Limits of the Learning Curve' authors conclude: “this recent impetus toward lower costs and higher volume is very fragile indeed.” If such exponential growth is to continue it will require all “six categories” of the 'Learning / Experience Curve' - “product, capital equipment and process technology, task characteristics and process structure, scale, material inputs, and labor” - to all simultaneously and continuously be working together. In other words “if any one of the necessary conditions is removed, a discontinuous return to higher costs may result.”  43 44

 

A 2018 literature review concludes “analysing past cost developments and projecting future cost developments, researchers should be aware that factors other than experience may have significant influence. It may be worthwhile trying to incorporate some of these additional factors into energy system models.” 45 Discontinuities to 'Experience / Learning Curve' models are so well known even Wikipedia notes: “key suppliers ... becomes the main cost driver for the product.” 46 Any future scale-up of 'Modern Renewables' won't be exponential, it'll be what mathematicians call an asymptote; improvements are subject to the law of diminishing returns where every incremental gain yields less progress than in the past. 47 48 This is already happening. 49

 

 
A 2009 study found “learning or experience curves a dangerous modelling strategy” that is “not widely appreciated”. They have “a fundamental statistical identification problem ... two empirical tests illustrate the potential bias in practice and show that learning parameters are not robust to alternative specifications ... an overestimate of the learning coefficient will provide incorrect estimates of the total marginal cost of output and will therefore bias optimization models to tilt toward technologies that are incorrectly specified as having high learning coefficients.” 50

 

Despite these warnings, many didn't get the memo. Instead to support their irrational beliefs they conspicuously ignore the significant influence of Energy Density and the critical decline of Input Materials for example: “We need mass movements everywhere to force governments to move beyond a reliance on the market, and cover the world with wind and solar power.” 51 Or “a global agenda to move toward PVs at a multi-TW scale” only accounting for “technical, infrastructure, economic, and policy barriers”. 52 These are just two examples of a widespread mistaken belief – unexamined assumption – that 'Modern Renewables' are undergoing the kind of dramatic 'Moore’s Law' lowering of costs and increasing efficiency seen in computing and communications. 53 54 55 56

 

Different Laws of Physics. Their case rests on a core analogy that glosses over profound differences, grounded in different laws of physics between systems that produce energy and those that produce information. Over the past 60 years, Moore’s Law has seen the efficiency of how logic engines use energy improve by over a billionfold. But the challenge in storing and processing information using the smallest possible amount of energy is distinct from the challenge of producing energy, or of moving or reshaping physical objects. The energy needed to move a ton of people, heat a ton of steel or silicon, or grow a ton of food is determined by properties of nature whose boundaries are set by laws of gravity, inertia, friction, mass, and thermodynamics.

 

If photovoltaics and batteries scaled by Moore’s Law, a single postage-stamp-size solar array and a battery the size of a book, costing less than a cup of coffee, could power a jet liner half way round the world. In our universe, power scales the other way. In the world of people, cars, planes, and large-scale industrial systems, increasing speed or carrying capacity causes hardware to expand, not shrink. A similar transformation in how energy is produced or stored isn’t just unlikely; it can’t happen with the physics we know today. 57 58

 

6. Mainstream Economics. The Neo-Classical / Neoliberal economic orthodox storyline fails to account for the significant influence of very fragile physical limits to key supplies such as the impacts of intrinsic Energy Density and critical decline of Input Materials that we discovered (above). It wrongly assumes these limits are determined only by market feedback via the 'price' mechanism. Any unexpected 'price' disruptions are called 'externalities' i.e. an indirect effect of consumption activity or production activity on third parties which can be either consumers or producers, where “indirect” means the effect does “not work through the price system.” (New Palgrave Economics Dictionary 1987). 59  In other words: if 'prices' are not reflecting the very fragile physical limits to key supplies any disruptions are simply 'externalities' that can be safely ignored !

 

The mainstream storyline also 'externalises' all the following self evidently true principals. First that all forms of economic output – literally all of the goods and services which comprise the ‘real’ economy – are products of energy. Second that whenever we access energy for our use, some of that energy is always consumed in the access process. Third in this “blindingly obvious” trilogy is that money acts only as a ‘claim’ on the output of the real (energy) economy. 60 61

 

The Geological Survey of Finland 2021 report (cited above) concludes the same dismal picture: “The very idea that there might be system based limits to the global extraction of resources is considered foolish by the current economic market. The volume of manufacture was influenced by the consumption demand of products. Growth and expansion with no considered limits of any kind was the underlying paradigm.”

 

7. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) identifies the fundamentals of how the real world economy works. 62 63 64 65 First, there is NO identity between tax (inputs) into (Inland Revenue) accounts and spending (outputs) from central banks' (Bank of England) treasury accounts. 66 “MMT provides a coherent aggregate explanation about the role of taxation in fiscal policy, which excludes any causal association between the government receiving tax revenue and spending.” 67 Government budgeting for 'austerity' is a political choice to deliberately pervert central bank accounting realities: taxes are equalisers of prosperity, wealth and income. Not mechanisms to collect fake imagined revenue. 68

 

Sovereign currency issuing governments can spend to the limit of whatever is for sale in the 'energy-economy' (labour & materials) within its own currency jurisdiction - NOT to any arbitrary set 'spread sheet' number limit in central bank accounts or political budgets. Government's cannot go 'bust' because they can create new 'claims' routinely multiple times a day by expanding central bank balance sheets to create new fiat currency units, the same as commercial banks do when they create new 'deposits' i.e. money supply increases. 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 Households and firms can go 'bust' when they run out of cash & bank balance / loan holdings. The only intrinsic limit to any of these future 'claims' we call money is the capacity for the real 'energy-economy' to deliver.

 

8. Nuclear: Lowest Hanging 'Thermodynamic Fruit': Uranium can be 'mined' from seawater, enough for human civilisations to thrive until the sun goes supernova. 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 Not easy, 87 but orders of magnitude more doable than burning precious fossil fuels trying to mine the planet into wastelands covered with wind and solar farms leaving little leftover to grow food or keep wild. To avoid this trap, we must rapidly expand nuclear especially next generation 'Fast Breeder' & 'Small Modular Reactors' 88 already supplying electricity to Russian and Chinese grids. India joins them in 2022 pursuing its long term plan to be energy self sufficient mid-century using thorium fuelled nuclear reactors. 89

 

Conventional uranium fission reactors burn up less than 5% of the energy in their uranium fuel. The so called 'waste' is dangerous for c300,000 years. But it can be recycled to yield the remaining 95% energy in 'actinide' burning 'fast breeder' advanced reactors such as PRISM 90 91 which could simultaneously reduce the UK's nuclear waste' stockpile storage to a few hundred years, and recycle nuclear weapons, whilst suppling all the UK electricity demand for hundreds of years.

 

PRISM was offered to the UK government in the early 2000s by GE Hitachi with no upfront research & development or reactor power station(s) infrastructure build out costs, all profits only from wholesale electricity supply to the grid. Had regulatory and fiscal go ahead by been given 20 years ago, the UK would already have PRISM technology up and running and be leading a worldwide commercial roll-out within a decade or two.

 

Governments should establish funding programs around advanced reactor designs prototype testing and commercial deployment such as PRISM in the UK according to Interdisciplinary MIT study of the Future of Nuclear plus: Increased focus on using proven project & construction management practices; Shift away from primarily field construction of cumbersome, highly site-dependent plants to more serial manufacturing of standardized plants; Shift toward reactor designs that incorporate inherent and passive safety features; and Decarbonization policies should create a level playing field so all low-carbon generation technologies can compete on their merits. 92

 

 
Chernobyl: Europe’s Largest Wildlife Refuge Visitors to the 30 kilometre radius exclusion zone will get more radiation from the flight they take to get to a guided tour. According to biologists, far from a nuclear wasteland, the exclusion zone has become a sanctuary for flora and fauna - precisely because people were forced to flee. 93 94 National Geographic “30 Years After Chernobyl, Nature Is Thriving.” 95 BBC “The Chernobyl exclusion zone is arguable a nature reserve.” 96

 

Direct deaths related to radiation exposure from nuclear energy around 4,000 from Chernobyl which was a military reactor and 1 from Fukushima. Indirect deaths related to Fukushima evacuation range from 573 to 2,202, so the highest estimate of nuclear energy’s total death toll sits at around 6,200. This is a remarkably positive record given that nuclear energy has been in use for over 70 years. 97 Compared to this study finding 98 [global 2012] average deaths / million GWhr: Coal 170,000; Oil 36,000; Biofuel/Biomass 24,000; Natural Gas 4,000; Hydro 1,400; Solar rooftop 440; Wind 150; Chernobyl (total direct deaths) 47; Nuclear (commercial power plants only) rest of the world 0; Nuclear worst case future estimates 90.

 

“We’re reaching a stage where anti-nuclear attitudes are in “full retreat” and that nuclear shutdowns will be both reassessed and reversed” Mark Lynas, visiting fellow Cornell Alliance for Science, 'Nuclear 2.0: Why a Green Future Needs Nuclear Power'. 99

 

9. Politics: The Green Party of England & Wales Brighton MP was asked by this essay's author to support the Green Party of Finland's “technology-neutral attitude when it comes to fighting climate change”. 100 Unfortunately the Brighton MP thinks the laws of physics only apply according to personal preferences claiming “the vast majority in the global greens network remain opposed to the categorisation of nuclear power as clean or green”, but such irrational opposition is crumbling.

 

Major Center-Left forces have recently been shifting their position from opposition to supporting nuclear energy. 101 102 In addition to Finland's current five-party cabinet, which the Finish Green Party sits on, recently declaring “nuclear power a sustainable energy source”, now nearly all EU countries 103 support nuclear energy, except Germany. For example, a year ago French president Macron called for cutting nuclear's contribution to France’s electric power (eliminating the world’s only decarbonized major electric grid). Now he's calling for “relaunching construction of nuclear reactors in our country to guarantee France’s energy independence, to guarantee our country’s electricity supply and achieve our objectives, in particular carbon neutrality in 2050.” 104

 

The Green Party of England & Wales complains that nuclear power is “eye-wateringly expensive and painfully slow in the face of the climate emergency”. But such “eye-watering[s]” have largely been caused by a long history of anti-scientific, misleading fear mongering to promote anti-nuclear energy rhetoric, 105 pushing protestors 106 107 and policy makers to enact ever more convoluted unnecessary regulatory and other hurdles. 108 109 110

 

But regulatory hurdles block Germany's 'Energiewende' too, where further renewable energy rollouts are now judged by investors to not be worth the “eye-watering” risks and hassle. 111 Germany's planning and approval process blockages are compounded by thermodynamics overruling the anti-nuclear political lobby's pet project of unnecessary early closures of nuclear plants, leaving the country with little choice to avoid power cuts and economic collapse, other than by opening yet more coal-powered plants. Germany's now releasing an additional 36 million tonnes of CO2 annually 112 and causing the premature deaths of 1,100 people per year due to increased ambient air pollution. 113 114

 

The Party continues by complaining that new nuclear “regulated asset base funding model [for] that the Government is pursuing essentially means that consumers pay twice:” But UK households already pay approximately 40% of the £10.8 billion per year renewables income support subsidies; 115 116 117 118 and of the £458bn spent on energy subsidies globally in 2017 renewables received 26% and nuclear 3% according to International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). 119 The Party thus perverts nuclear funding contract design, build-out delays and cost over-runs, which are not intrinsic to the engineering and physics of uranium energy extraction and delivery processes, as (dishonest) reason to be anti-nuclear.

 

The Party continues that “one of the ways in which nuclear is taking priority at the expense of renewables” is the UK Departmental of Energy assigning 25% of work days on nuclear energy and 23% on renewables. 120 But there is no “taking priority at the expense of [whatever].” The only real limits are real world availability of material and labour inputs as assets to create liabilities as payments on banks' balance sheets, not the other way round. Government spending budgets are nothing more than spread sheet numbers held on Central and other bank's computer networks. The DoE can pay for as many work days as needed to achieve thermodynamically competent energy supply solutions.

 

And that “it serves as a distraction from more ambition on renewables”. But “ambition” isn't limited by tax payments into treasury coffers to pay people working at its desks. Why use neo-liberal falsehoods pretending that government is a household or a firm with finite money supply to obscure real limits to “ambition” dictated by the laws of physics and thermodynamics on relative energy density and minerals supply limits...?

 

10. Discussion: Electricity supply is only 9% to 15% of global primary energy consumption. So the correct question to focus on, bearing in mind all the limits identified in this essay, is without nuclear in the mix, how do we convert 85% fossil fuel global energy supply, much of it hard to electrify industrial process heat & transport, to 100% electricity?  To answer this question Most Prominent Scientists who have taken a position on global warming in public statements Support Nuclear Power according to a 2018 review. 121

 

“A Plan that Adds-Up is the one ethical position I wish to push” writes the late David MacKay, author of the influential book 'Without Hot Air' polymath & head-hunted UK government climate change advisor: “Please don’t get me wrong:  I’m not trying to be pro-nuclear. I’m just pro-arithmetic.” 122 123 124 James Hansen is correct: ignoring the limits imposed by the laws of physics, then embedding empirically wrong economics in anti-nuclear analysis models of wind & solar energy technology to inform policy offerings from across the political and institutional landscape,  is “almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy”.

 

Nonetheless some remain resolutely seduced by romantic but thermodynamically incompetent rhetoric predicting magical exponential expansion of 'Modern Renewables' e.g. in 'How to Blow up a Pipeline' the author demands the  125 “ruling classes feel themselves under such heat … politicians voted into office from green parties in Europe … Moratoriums on fresh fossil fuel infrastructure are instituted. Germany immediate phase-out of coal production, the Netherlands likewise for gas, Norway for oil, the US for all of the above; legislation and planning are put in place for cutting emissions by at least 10 per cent per year; renewable energy and public transport are scaled up, plant-based diets promoted, blanket bans on fossil fuels.” 126

 

Such tragic-comical posturings neglect that 'Modern Renewables' collect extremely dilute flows of energy from the sun and secondary flows induced in wind and water, such as land & fossil fuels for mining, refining, transport, build, maintain and recycle, which requires orders of magnitude more input resources than nuclear does. This means they can't yield enough excess energy to build themselves out on their own. Why? Because it's orders of magnitude less efficient to deliver a given quantity of energy from an orders of magnitude more dilute source.

 

In other words: anti-nuclear romantics fail to accept that if their aim is to achieve 'whole system' long term sustainability and maintain or develop the current complexity and prosperity of civilisation on our Pale Blue Dot 127 then expanding 'Modern Renewables' significantly more than low single digit % of global electricity supply is impossible, because they're thermodynamically incompetent: they can't scale up without fossil fuels. 128 129 130 Neither can nuclear. But for the same amount of electricity delivered to grids, the 'disaggregated' EROEI environmental foot print and CO2 emissions of nuclear is several orders of magnitude lower than solar or wind energy flow harvesting infrastructure. 131

 

11. Conclusion: WE HAVE NO CHOICE: We've only got one planet to share between all of us. Our one-time fossil fuel and mineral inheritance is getting exponentially more energy intensive to extract. It's running out now i.e. “de-growth” is already being imposed on us by the bio-physical laws of nature on a finite planet. 132 We're already sliding down the “de-growth” slope, 133 ensuring lower CO2 emissions in lock-step anyway. If 'Modern Renewables' are scaled up – egged on by 'blowing up pipelines' – then axiomatically such build-out will push us yet tighter into an 'energy trap' 134 of faster “de-growth” by consuming a greater share of limited materials & fossil hydrocarbon energy, leaving less for other uses.

 

Q: So, how can we best manage physically imposed global “de-growth” i.e. decreasing energy & material output over time 135 i.e. less aggregate wealth, complexity, prosperity and population, without cloaking reality with misty eyed nostalgia for a bygone era?

 

A: For human civilisation to sustainably thrive, nature dictates we are certain to next be treading up the energy density ladder, not down it: we must fast track proven nuclear technologies that are easier, quicker, and use less land & materials to build because they harness energy going with entropy's spontaneous direction of flow, not against it.

 

Future civilizations will be powered mainly by nuclear fission in 'Harmony' 136 and co-operation with 'Modern Renewables' in a circular economy extracting uranium dissolved in seawater because nuclear energy has orders of magnitude less input demands leaving trees, animals, wind, the wilderness, and all the oceans and sunshine in relative peace.

 

We must end decades-long propaganda onslaughts, conflating weapons of mass destruction and radiation scaremongering, with nuclear's gift of being orders of magnitude easier to build and scale up. 137 And celebrate the facts that civil nuclear energy supply has 70 years of lower fatalities or health problems than any other energy source.

Meanwhile, exaggerating imaginary dangers of nuclear energy, equals fewer 'Modern Renewables', equals accelerating the already physically imposed “de-growth” trajectory, equals forcing the global poorest to bear the brunt of such a foolish unmanaged chaotic rush to whatever pre-industrial standards of living, perhaps with less than a tenth of current global population. We must therefore stop believing the romantic misinformation being sold and swallowed uncritically across 'climate' politics. 138

 

The message to the The Green Party of England & Wales is this: Science works by being wrong, and correcting itself, so it's safe, pragmatic, expedient, and necessary – if only to head off electoral oblivion – for the Party to change its mind and support nuclear energy trying to manage physically imposed “de-growth”. Voters will agree: It is the physical laws of nature that will define 'climate action' not political 'will power' promoting the naked hypocrisy of deifying climate science whilst demonising nuclear energy science.

Natasha Thoday 139 Brighton, December 2021

https://tinyurl.com/atomichumanism

https://tinyurl.com/DJPrisss

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1 Dr. James Hansen - NASA scientist & Climate Change expert  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Dr+James+Hansen+%22Easter+Bunny+and+Tooth+Fairy%22&t=ffab&ia=web

2 https://www.vibrantcleanenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Backgrounder_Clacketal_June2017.pdf

3 https://eidclimate.org/climate-activists-push-study-showing-3-8-million-lost-jobs-from-renewable-energy-transition/

4 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitution?stackMode=relative&country=~OWID_WRL

5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(numbers)

6 https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/fossil-fuels-energy-content-d_1298.html

7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#List_of_material_energy_densities

8 https://whatisnuclear.com/energy-density.html

9 https://neutrium.net/properties/specific-energy-and-energy-density-of-fuels/

10https://www.drexel.edu/~/media/Files/greatworks/pdf_sum10/WK8_Layton_EnergyDensities.ash

11 https://www.traditionaloven.com/tutorials/energy/convert-mega-joule-mj-to-horsepower-hour-hp-h.html

12 https://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/PowerDensity_Final120815.pdf

13 https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/LCA-2.pdf

https://www.nei.org/news/2015/land-needs-for-wind-solar-dwarf-nuclear-plants

14 https://earth.org/nuclear-energy-carbon-emissions-lowest-among-electricity-sources-un-reports/

15 https://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/141597.pdf

16 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856

17 https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Hinkley-Point-C-cleaner-than-renewables,-study-sho

18 https://www.manhattan-institute.org/mines-minerals-and-green-energy-reality-check

19 https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-11-02/how-much-of-the-worsening-energy-crisis-is-due-to-depletion/

20 https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/mining-the-planet-to-death-the-dirty-truth-about-clean-technologies-a-696d7adf-35db-4844-80be-dbd1ab698fa3?mc_cid=fe943a3217&mc_eid=8a4b7d1570

21 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=global+sand+shortages&t=ffab&ia=web  

22 https://www.dw.com/en/not-enough-sand-for-construction-industry-despite-abundance/a-49342942

23 https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=932

24 https://www.nhm.ac.uk/press-office/press-releases/leading-scientists-set-out-resource-challenge-of-meeting-net-zer.html

25 https://energyskeptic.com/2021/solar-pv-cells-using-rare-elements-unlikely-to-scale-up-enough-to-replace-fossil-fuels/

26 https://energyskeptic.com/2021/renewables-not-enough-minerals-energy-time-or-clean-and-green/

27 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351712079_The_Mining_of_Minerals_and_the_Limits_to_Growth

28 https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-materials-silver-to-lithium-worth-big-money-in-clean-energy/  

29 https://www.thegwpf.org/new-paper-decarbonisation-plans-fail-engineering-reality-check/

30 https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Russias-Push-To-Mine-Arctic-Metals-Is-Fueled-By-Nuclear-Power.html

31 https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/professional-area/

32 https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/industry/nuclear-process-heat-for-industry.aspx

33 https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/professional-area/

34 https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2020/06/19/175-the-surplus-energy-economy/

35 https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1528681/

36 https://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/141597.pdf

37 https://waronwant.org/resources/a-material-transition

38 https://popularresistance.org/extractivism-and-resistance-in-north-africa/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extractivism

39 https://www.thegwpf.org/new-paper-decarbonisation-plans-fail-engineering-reality-check/

40 https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=932

41 https://www.metabolic.nl/publication/metal-demand-for-renewable-electricity-generation-in-the-netherlands/

42 https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3mavb/we-dont-mine-enough-rare-earth-metals-to-replace-fossil-fuels-with-renewable-energy

43 https://hbr.org/1974/09/limits-of-the-learning-curve

44 https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14638/w14638.pdf

45 https://epub.wupperinst.org/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/6806/file/6806_Samadi.pdf

46 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects#Experience_curve_discontinuities

47 https://economics21.org/inconvenient-realities-new-energy-economy

48 https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf

49 https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/solar/bidens-new-problem-rising-solar-panel-prices/

50 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Perils-of-the-Learning-Model-for-Modeling-Nordhaus/d3963b86069ac686663c54999dc82cf9583055ea

51 https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/01/green-capitalism-is-losing-the-war-against-fossil-fuels/

52 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aal1288

53 https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

54 https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/hurdles-on-the-path-to-a-solar-powered-world/

55 https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/hurdles-on-the-path-to-a-solar-powered-world/

56 https://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-1120

57 https://economics21.org/inconvenient-realities-new-energy-economy

58 https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf

59 https://www.econlib.org/externalities-handle-with-great-care/

60 https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/resources/

61 https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/professional-area/

62 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335883216_Book_Review_Mitchell_William_L_Randall_Wray_and_Martin_Watts_Macroeconomics

63 https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/macroeconomics-9781137610669/

64 https://new-wayland.com/blog/the-view-through-the-mmt-lens/

65 https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Flabourheartlands.com%2F+MMT&ia=web

66 https://new-wayland.com/blog/how-uk-government-payments-are-made/

67 https://new-wayland.com/blog/mmt-economists-on-taxation/

68 http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?cat=11

69 https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/knowledgebank/how-is-money-created

70 https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf

71 https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2015/banks-are-not-intermediaries-of-loanable-funds-and-why-this-matters

72 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/28/2008-crash-government-economic-growth-budgetary-surplus

73 https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/08/what-is-debt-%e2%80%93-an-interview-with-economic-anthropologist-david-graeber.html

74 https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n09/benjamin-kunkel/forgive-us-our-debts

75 https://ellenbrown.com/2015/09/22/time-for-the-nuclear-option-raining-money-on-main-street/

76 https://professorwerner.org/publications/

77 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001477

78 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/

79 https://www.ornl.gov/news/bio-inspired-material-targets-oceans-uranium-stores-sustainable-nuclear-energy

80 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451929420301807#abs0010

81 https://advanceseng.com/improved-technique-extraction-uranium-seawater/

82 https://www.mahachanical.com/project/seawater-uranium/

83 https://cen.acs.org/articles/90/i36/Extracting-Uranium-Seawater.html

84 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451929420301807#sec3

85 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00792-6.epdf

86https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1385894721046143

87 https://res.mdpi.com/sustainability/sustainability-02-00980/article_deploy/sustainability-02-00980.pdf?attachment=1&filename=

88 https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/fast-neutron-reactors.aspx

89 http://www.thoriumenergyworld.com/india.html

90 https://www.theengineer.co.uk/prism-project-a-proposal-for-the-uks-problem-plutonium/

91 https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/PRISM-selected-for-US-test-reactor-programme

92 https://energy.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/The-Future-of-Nuclear-Energy-in-a-Carbon-Constrained-World-Executive-Summary.pdf

93 https://mymodernmet.com/chernobyl-wildlife-tours/

94 https://theconversation.com/why-plants-dont-die-from-cancer-119184

95 https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/00000154-1bd4-dbf2-a1f5-1ffc0b080000

96 http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160421-the-chernobyl-exclusion-zone-is-arguably-a-nature-reserve

97 https://earth.org/nuclear-which-is-the-safest-energy-source/

98 https://alexcoram.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/mathsnuclearumass2o13oooo1o.pdf

99 https://www.newswise.com/articles/a-nuclear-energy-tipping-point-experts-weigh-in

100 https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/finland-lobbies-nuclear-energy-as-a-sustainable-source/

101 https://novaramedia.com/2020/12/03/is-it-time-for-the-left-to-back-nuclear-energy/

102 https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/11/led-by-france-10-eu-countries-call-on-brussels-to-label-nuclear-energy-as-green-source

103 https://www.ispionline.it/en/pubblicazione/role-nuclear-energy-ecological-transition-and-long-term-sustainability-32819

104 https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/the-new-nuclear-moment/

105 https://www.europeanceo.com/home/featured/europes-nuclear-energy-debate/

106 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/05/anti-nuclear-lobby-misled-world

107 https://www.test2.acsh.org/news/2015/08/10/nuclear-energy-safe-clean-nothing-to-fear-despite-fear-mongering

108 https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/nuclear/regulations-hurt-economics-nuclear-power/ and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516300106#s0090

109 https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118

110 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516300106?via%3Dihub#s0040  

111 https://energytransition.org/2021/12/bad-laws-and-poor-regulation-stunt-germanys-clean-energy-drive/

112 https://reason.com/2022/01/04/germany-shuts-down-three-perfectly-good-nuclear-power-plants/

113 https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Germans-asked-to-keep-reactors-in-operation

114 https://earth.org/nuclear-which-is-the-safest-energy-source/

115 https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-march-2021/

116 https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-march-2021/

117 https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications-and-updates/feed-tariff-fit-annual-report-2019-20

118 https://www.netzerowatch.com/how-to-and-how-not-to-cut-uk-electricity-bills/#_ftn1

119 https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/10/does-renewable-energy-have-a-subsidy-free-future/

120 https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2020-10-08.100928.h&s=nuclear+speaker%3A24910#g100928.q0

121 https://sparkoffreedomfoundation.org/2018/01/17/climate-scientists-support-oppose-nuclear-power-reduce-emissions/

122 http://www.withouthotair.com/c0/preface.shtml

123 https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables

124 https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/07/08/idea-of-renewables-powering-uk-is-an-appalling-delusion-david-mackay/

125 https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n22/james-butler/a-coal-mine-for-every-wildfire

126 https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n22/adam-tooze/ecological-leninism

127 https://www.freexenon.com/2019/06/09/carl-sagan-and-his-famous-pale-blue-dot-speech/

128 https://sparkoffreedomfoundation.org/2018/01/17/climate-scientists-support-oppose-nuclear-power-reduce-emissions/

129 https://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/03/world/nuclear-energy-climate-change-scientists/index.html

130 https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/nuclear-power-is-the-greenest-option-say-top-scientists-9955997.html

131 https://atomicinsights.com/topical-index/

132 https://www.faninitiative.net/about/

133 https://www.faninitiative.net/articles/the-age-of-energy-disruptions/

134 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m#section.18.3

135 https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/professional-area/

136 https://world-nuclear.org/harmony

137 https://www.foe.org.au/hansen

138 https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/01/green-capitalism-is-losing-the-war-against-fossil-fuels/

139 Industrial designer: 3D design, cabinet maker & machine tools graduate; spiral staircase design; audio electro mechanical engineer; 2 patents, rebuilt a 5 storey terraced house; secondary, further & higher education teacher, special educational needs (EBD & ASD); Diving Officer at University of Brighton Sub Aqua club for a decade; Triathlete; Yoga teacher; Whale shark spotter Ningaloo reef & SE Asia's wrecks & reefs; MA Change Management; Home Office funded Anti Victimisation Initiative (AVI); University of Brighton 'Count Me In' research; Wrote and won several high profile employment tribunal cases supported by (former) statutory body (EOC); Transition Town; Occupy Brighton; Teacher & Advocate Autistic spectrum (ASD); Written & won disability (PIPs & ESA) appeals; University of Cumbria MA (MOOC) Money & Society; Running electronic music collective.