When I was very very small, so I remember, my Physics Master explained to us about the new Nuclear Power Station (Fission) currently being built not far away at Bradwell on Sea in my natal Essex. He explained how this marvel would provide (for ever) limitless electricity, pretty well free after the cost of construction had been met ... clean, limitless ...
'Poor gullible nitwit', I thought. 'If he believes that, he'd believe anything'. I gave up Physics as soon as I possibly could. 'Never knowingly be taught by a fool' was one of my infant maxims. (Of course, I am not aplying this language to all or indeed to any scientists; I love to hear anybody who is really set on fire by his own, reputable, academic discipline.)
Seventy or so years later than that ancient episode, just a day or two ago, there burst upon my computer screen a voluble and excited woman. She ... I hope I'm getting this right ... claimed to to have performed the miracle of Nuclear Fusion. This would mean, once the cost of construction had been met, clean, er, limitless, er, cheap electricity for ever.
The improbable twaddle continued to gush as if from the lips of a generously-executed baroque Tritoness. I grabbed an adjacent pencil ...
Long-term.
Clean.
Limitless ...
My attention wandered ... back to long-dead Mr Wozzname at my ancient school ... to the Bradwell Nuclear Power Station, now defunct, contaminated, useless, ugly, expensive, a decaying monument to hubris looming nastily over the remains of the Roman Naval base of Othona and the early Saxon chapel and monastic site in those curlew-haunted Essex marshes ...
Something woke me from this autochthonous reverie. The poor dim woman was still warbling on. I resumed my pencil.
Clean.
Sustainable.
Long-term.
On-demand.
Long-term.
Clean ...
The narrative here is one of grandiose, excessively optimistic extrapolations from a laboratory experiment, including assumptions that the application to the real world -- the technology -- will be straightforward, and that the profit and loss account will work out. Sounds plausible but only to those who haven't heard this type of rhetoric used before.
ReplyDeleteIt is worth noting that 'global warming' follows a similar playbook. It is easy to demonstrate the greenhouse effect in a laboratory experiment. But when I ask physicists who are true believers in 'climate change' to explain how and why this lab experiment can scale up to the whole world (without there being confounding factors negating its applicability, I mean), I receive a torrent of vulgar epithets, such as 'moron' and 'climate-change denier'. If this is how the scientific method works these days (when a hypothesis is challenged), frankly it is a cargo cult.
William, it is interesting that these days we are urged to treat certain scientific theories as dogma, and to accept them without question, whereas scientists themselves have long had a cheerfully iconoclastic attitude towards theories and hypotheses.
DeleteCopernicus, Galileo and Kepler demolish Ptolomy, Lavoisier puts paid to phlogiston, while Michelson and Morley do the same for the luminiferous ether. I could go on. Karl Popper, the Kiwi philosopher, said that science was what could be proved false, and scientists have spent a lot of time doing just that.
Ehrm, well, she does have (part of) a point. Nuclear fission notoriously creates waste because of how uranium and plutonium split. Fusion, in contrast, fuses two hydrogen atoms together to create helium. Less radioactive waste at worst; more energy at best.
ReplyDeleteWe should note too that we all "burn" electricity using these computers.
Somebody, somewhere, had to burn coal or natural gas, or split atoms for this to happen.
Either that or use solar panels or windmills, probably also deep cycle batteries, none of which can be honestly defined as biodegradable.
Such matter as "green" or "clean" energy, ie. energy that cannot harm people--or environment--in any way, ...has not been found or created.
Free Beer Tomorrow
ReplyDeleteO Sapientia…
ReplyDeleteThe lesson for Ember Friday in Advent is taken from Isaiah 11 and mentions both Sapientia and Scientia, translated by Douay and RSV as Wisdom and Knowledge respectively.
So "Science" is knowledge which is not necessarily wise. (For what it's worth, the Greek (LXX) has Sophia and Gnosis, the Hebrew (MT) Hokmah and Da'at.)
Meanwhile, nuclear submarines are doing just fine. Why nuclear power stations are not just as fine, I don't know.
ReplyDeleteBanshee,
ReplyDeleteOut of sight, out of mind?