> If the ecosystem and climate collapsed, us rich folk could live in air conditioned houses powered by solar or nuclear power, eat food grown in green houses and drink desalinated water.
Eh, no. We don't have the infrastructure to live in air conditioned houses powered by solar or nuclear power. Both solar and nuclear only can power a fraction of houses. And if you need additional power to grow food that fraction gets ever smaller.
For both nuclear and a solar power you need an extensive, global infrastructure that will require raw materials (nuclear; fuel, solar; finished products) from all over the world. Good luck trying to acquire enough uranium from all over the world when all is going to shits. Who do you think exactly is going to do the extraction?
This country is working on a $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill. New Orleans was just saved by a massive infrastructure program to build levees. We'll build most of the required infrastructure. Probably not enough of it, and we'll spend too much for it, but most Americans will be "fine". (Insert "this is fine" meme picture here)
The budget - and I think you are talking about the budget reconciliation - includes a lot of stuff besides infrastructure. It's the budget after all.[0]
Well... one half of the country is working on such a budget. The other half is doing everything to sabotage that budget, get back control of the senate and the house and spend that $3.5 trillion on a tax bill for the super-wealthy. You know, like the last time they did that [1].
Bit even if the infrastructure got $3.5 trillion; that isn't enough to even fully repair the existing infrastructure[2]. The last time the ASCE released an infrastrucutre report, fixing the infrastructure would cost about $4.8 trillion.
That's just to fix the existing infrastructure. That money isn't going to build new nuclear reactors. By the way; how many nuclear reactors are currently being built in the US?
... Two... Two reactors with each a bit more that 1TWh. The latest one to come operational one was the Tennessee’s Watts Bar Unit 2, which began operation in June 2016. Before that Watts Bar Unit 1 in 1996. So, two new one ones in operation in 25 years. Two new ones being built.
How many more do you think we would need?
Well, we don't just have to cover the existing energy needs. Since it's getting hotter (I'm taking +1.5°C by 2050 as granted, since we're already at +1.25) we're going to need a bit more - but hey! - let's discount that. Let's say for living we don't need more energy, as generous as that is.
Unfortunately you also want to grow food using electricity. And desalinate water. But let's also discount that. Let's discount all that and go with our current energy needs, for the sake of argument.
We currently have 100 reactors with each about 1TWh. That covers about 20% of US energy needs. Let's say we can get the other renewables also up to 20%. That would still leave us with about 600 new reactors to be built. By about 2060.
Do you honestly thing that this country has the political will to build 600 nuclear reactors over the span of forty years? This country cannot muster the political will to phase out coal or gas. This country cannot even muster the political will to stop subsidizing fossil fuels.
Sorry, my friend. I'm afraid that brute-forcing technology will save none of us. It might play a part in saving us, but unless we have a radical rethink about our current economic structure and incentives[3], this is just hot air.
Not a word about solar (or wind) in your rant. Solar is dirt cheap, and being built at a quickly accelerating rate.
You'll say "but storage". However, storage is getting cheaper even faster than solar/wind production is, and storage is not necessary for its use in food production.
Uff! I certainly didn't write it as a rant. But fine, I'll take that. But my intentions are good. I just want to make it clear to all of you that we face calamity and destruction and that there's no magical technofix that will save us. We will have to completely overhaul our socialeconomical value and incentive structures. Fat chance of that happening. (Prove me wrong! Do it!! Save mankind!)
> Not a word about solar (or wind)
Not a word about my pretty conclusive rebuttal of nuclear power as the technojebus to save mankind! I guess today no one gets what they want.
Hey, sure, we can do a feasibility examination of solar too.
> You'll say "but storage".
Haha, no. Storage is fine. There are pretty nice battery concepts in development. Liquid metal batteries are one crazy idea that I think has promise.
No, the problem lies elsewhere. Let's see: nowadays about 1.5% of energy comes from solar power, both PV and CSP. That's about 100GW (about one nuclear plant) and takes up about 1000 square miles.[0]
Let's say we somehow have the political will to cover a third of our energy needs with solar, somewhere in the ballpark of 2TW. That would cover an area of about 22,000 square miles.
So, to get to only about 33% of solar power by 2050, we'd have to cover 785 square miles with PV or CSP. Every year. For the next 28 years. Every year.
As a metric; in 2020 we've added about 190 square miles (or about 19GW) of solar power. Even if the current growth of solar power installations continues for a few years; we're still ridiculously off target. The bottleneck is installation capability.
Eh, no. We don't have the infrastructure to live in air conditioned houses powered by solar or nuclear power. Both solar and nuclear only can power a fraction of houses. And if you need additional power to grow food that fraction gets ever smaller.
For both nuclear and a solar power you need an extensive, global infrastructure that will require raw materials (nuclear; fuel, solar; finished products) from all over the world. Good luck trying to acquire enough uranium from all over the world when all is going to shits. Who do you think exactly is going to do the extraction?
So, I guess we'll all die, rich and poor.