🚀 go-pugleaf

In article 25258@gn.ecn.purdue.edu, zika@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (Michael Zika) writes:
>In article <1992Jun7.222928.1843@nmt.edu> houle@nmt.edu (Paul Houle) writes:
>>In article <l322udINNd30@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM> jdr@starflight.Corp.Sun.COM writes:
>>>Like many students of physics, I once leaned toward nuclear power. But as I
>>>continued to read the literature over the years the realization emerged that
>>>nuclear fission is intrinsically unsafe, over the long term, in ways that
>>>can't be fixed.
>
>  Alright, socio-political problems, definitely; economic problems, yes;
>technical problems, occasionally (what engineering system doesn't?); but
>"intrinsically unsafe, over the long term, in ways that can't be fixed" --
>how do you justify this?
>
>  Let's get back into the realm of science, shall we...
>

The limitations of any technology are difficult to "prove" in a few,
simple propositions. It is more a matter of the deep insight that
comes only after years of study. There is no easy answer, but there
are some hard lessons.

There is a similar problem with "proving" that there is no viable
alternative between sealed, compact cities, and the collapse of
human civilization all the way back to the stone age, taking the
natural ecosystem with it. People are accustomed to the idea of
scattered living. They take it for granted, never questioning its
place in the larger scheme of things. The "proof" comes from the
systematic analysis of one economic system and one technology after
another, looking at the characteristic annual material retention
rates of each, and finally realizing that no system other than
sealed, compact cities will work over a long time span. Nothing
less is "sustainable" for more than a few decades, a century at
most, all things considered. That conclusion doesn't come out of a
simple thermodynamic theorem, although it is based on one, because
it also involves the labor of systematic interpretation across the
entire class of possibilities.

---

jdr@starflight.corp.sun.com, starflt@uunet.uu.net
Jon Roland
Starflight Corporation, 1755 E Bayshore Rd #9A,
Redwood City, CA 94063-4142, 415/361-8141