The Green New Deal Resolution of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts is a very ambitious and broad-ranging proposal and framework for decarbonizing the American economy, and in the process, cure most of America's long-term historical problems at the same time.
Text of the Green New Deal Resolution
https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Takes Green New Deal Global in Passionate Speech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1w3V4PUv2s
Many object to tying the decarbonization of America with such things as providing all Americans with healthcare, decent housing and good-paying jobs. Granted, as I pointed out in The Deadly Dangerous Dance of Carbon-Based Intelligence and Last Call for Carbon-Based Intelligence on Planet Earth, the world is currently messing with the carbon cycle of the Earth in a way that could bring forth the demise of civilization. Fixing this problem will certainly require the reworking of the entire world economy, and while totally reworking the entire world economy, maybe it does make sense to fix all of the world's historical problems in the process. But how about reworking the entire world economy in such a way that also takes into account the future problems of the world too? In The Impact of GPT-3 AI Text Generation on the Development and Maintenance of Computer Software, we saw that the Software Singularity may be closer than we think. The Software Singularity is a time in the near future when software will finally be able to self-replicate on its own without the need of human beings, and will also be able to improve itself without limit. As I pointed out in Oligarchiology and the Rise of Software to Predominance in the 21st Century and Is it Finally Time to Reboot Civilization with a New Release?, the resulting displacement of most of the world's working population by AI software and AI-controlled automation processes will end the current economic paradigm upon which all civilizations have been run for the past 4,000 years. Such a monumental economic disturbance could also help to spell the demise of civilization as we know it. So I would like to propose a Global Comprehensive Green New Deal to handle all of the earth-shattering problems now facing mankind. But I do not need to do so because somebody else has already done that.
A Global Comprehensive Green New Deal
I did not support Andrew Yang's 2020 Presidential campaign because I knew that he could not win. However, that does not mean that I thought that his policies were incorrect. In fact, implementing Andrew Yang's policies by the entire world will probably be the only way we will be able to hold civilization together for the next 100 years or so. Andrew Yang's chief proposals are for a Universal Basic Income, Human-Centered Capitalism and the decarbonization of America with wind, solar and 4th-generation nuclear reactors. The Universal Basic Income and Human-Centered Capitalism are designed to handle the vast economic disturbances that robotics and AI software will soon be generating as most people stop working for a living. My suspicion is that Andrew Yang also knows that wind and solar just do not have the necessary energy densities to do the job of decarbonizing the world. But large numbers of molten salt nuclear reactors running on spent uranium fuel rods, depleted uranium, natural uranium and thorium have an energy density that is millions of times greater and can certainly do the job.
Andrew Yang's 2020 Policies
https://www.yang2020.com/policies/
Recently, Andrew Yang started up a Humanity Forward Foundation to carry forward the policies of his 2020 Presidential campaign at a global level.
Humanity Forward Foundation
https://movehumanityforward.com/
But to truly have a Global Comprehensive Green New Deal we will need to have the world adopt the tenents of ecomodernism as expressed in the Ecomodernist Manifesto:
AN ECOMODERNIST MANIFESTO
http://www.ecomodernism.org/
Basically, the Ecomodernist Manifesto suggests that mankind needs to stop pretending that it can be one with Nature. Today, many modern environmentalists strive to reduce the impact of mankind on Nature by having mankind scale back to the needs of the hunter-gatherers of old. The problem is that nobody really wants to live with the poverty of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle for long. Perhaps for a weekend retreat, but not much longer than that. The Ecomodernists suggest that the only way to save Nature is to decouple mankind from Nature by totally stopping the exploitation of Nature by mankind. This can only be accomplished if mankind has access to a limitless supply of energy. The Ecomodernists maintain that modern 4th-generation nuclear reactors burning uranium and thorium provide just such a limitless supply of energy. There is enough uranium and thorium on the Earth to run the world for hundreds of thousands of years. After that, there will always be sources of uranium and thorium on the Moon and the nearby asteroids. By moving all of mankind to self-contained cities run by modern nuclear reactors, it would be possible to totally decouple mankind from Nature. Nature could then be left to heal on its own.
These totally self-contained cities would be like huge interstellar spaceships. Each self-contained city would contain a fixed number of atoms that would be constantly recycled using the energy from 4th-generation nuclear reactors. The only additional atoms required to run the self-contained cities would be small amounts of uranium and thorium. All of the food and manufactured goods would be derived from the atoms already in the self-contained cities and from the atoms in discarded goods, sewage, garbage and waste that would be recycled back into food and other useful products by unlimited amounts of energy, robotics and AI software. Such self-contained cities with occupants all living with a modern high-level standard of living would be the actualization of the science-fiction future that I was promised while growing up back in the 1950s. But unlike many of the other things from the science-fiction future of the 1950s that I grew up with, we now have the necessary technology to make it actually all happen if we decide to do so.
Problems with the Current Green New Deal
But what about the current Green New Deal? There are some problems. The current Green New Deal does not take into account the fast-approaching dramatic economic impacts of robotics and AI software, and it does not properly deal with the very low energy density of wind and solar power. Our Universe primarily runs on two very powerful forms of energy - gravitational potential energy and nuclear energy. Surprisingly, gravitational potential energy is the most powerful even though the force of gravity is the weakest force in the Universe. The gravitational potential energy of the Universe is so vast simply because our Universe has huge amounts of mass spread out all over the place and not just in one spot.
Gravitational potential energy is released when things fall down. For example, when the gas and dust in a vast molecular cloud falls together, it releases huge amounts of gravitational potential energy that heats up the gas and dust at the center to form a new star. Similarly, when gas and dust fall into the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, it gives off radiation so powerful that it can literally be seen across the entire observable Universe as a quasar. This huge amount of gravitational potential energy is leftover from the Big Bang that kicked off our little Universe in the Multiverse and is the result of the decay of the Inflaton field that powers the expansion of the Multiverse. See The Software Universe as an Implementation of the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis for more about the Inflaton field of the Multiverse. But unfortunately, we do not have access to cosmic amounts of gravitational potential energy. The only gravitational potential energy that we have access to comes in the form of hydroelectric power, and that gravitational potential energy really comes from seawater that was lifted into the clouds by the very dilute energy density of sunlight spread over large areas of the ocean.
The second most powerful form of energy in our Universe is nuclear energy - primarily in the form of fusion nuclear energy in the cores of stars. Fusion may come along someday for us as a useful source of energy, but we have been working on fusion energy for about 70 years now and it might take another 20 - 100 years to perfect, and we need something right now to replace carbon-based fuels! The physics of fusion is tough. You have to really squeeze protons together with high densities and high temperatures to make them fuse. For example, the core of our Sun has a tremendous density of 150 g/cm3 which makes it about 150 times denser than water and it has a temperature of 15.7 million degrees Kelvin. Yet
the core of our Sun only produces about 275 watts/m3 of heat! Since the human body generates about 100 watts of heat and has a volume of about 0.1 cubic meters, that means the human body generates about 1,000 watts/m3, or about 3.6 times the heat production of the Sun's core! My wife uses a very small space heater on her bathroom sink top to heat the bathroom. It generates 1200 watts of heat. So my wife would need 4.36 cubic meters of the Sun's core to provide the same amount of heat and that would take up most of my half of the bathroom.
But the Universe has been kind. The Universe also contains another form of nuclear energy that remains largely untapped. That is because it requires Intelligence to unleash it. It is called fission nuclear energy. Certain very heavy nuclei like uranium-233, uranium-235, plutonium-239 and plutonium-240 can fission into lighter nuclei when hit with a neutron. When these nuclei fission, they split in half and the two halves fly apart at about 40% of the speed of light! That's a tremendous amount of kinetic energy that turns into heat as the fission products bounce around hitting other atoms. Additional energy is released as the fission products decay into lighter nuclei and give off gamma-rays and high-speed electrons.
Figure 1 - When a neutron hits a uranium-235 nucleus it can split it into two lighter nuclei like Ba-144 and Kr-89 that fly apart at about 40% of the speed of light and two or three additional neutrons. The nuclei that fly apart are called fission products that are very radioactive with half-lives of less than 30 years and need to be stored for about 300 years. The additional neutrons can then strike other uranium-235 nuclei, causing them to split as well. Some neutrons can also hit uranium-238 nuclei and turn them into plutonium-239 and plutonium-240 that can also fission when hit by a neutron.
Figure 2 – A ball of thorium or uranium smaller than a golf ball can fuel an American lifestyle for 100 years. This includes all of the electricity, heating, cooling, driving and flying that an American does in 100 years. We have already mined enough thorium and uranium to run the whole world for thousands of years. There is enough thorium and uranium on the Earth to run the world for hundreds of thousands of years.
Molten salt nuclear reactors burn the entire ball of uranium or thorium into fission products. Some of those fission products are valuable nuclei that can be used for medical or industrial purposes. Regardless of that, the generated fission products only need to be safely stored for 10 half-lives or 300 years until they become as radioactive as coal ash. And we already know how to safely store things for 300 years or more. We already have many buildings, books and paintings that have been carefully preserved for 300 years. But the current nuclear reactors that we are running only burn a few percent of the ball and then leave behind a radioactive ball that needs to be safely stored for 200,000 years until it decays to safe levels. For more on how modern advanced fission reactors work, see:
Last Call for Carbon-Based Intelligence on Planet Earth.
It is now thought that these very precious heavy nuclei are created when orbiting neutron stars collide. Each neutron star is several miles in diameter and is essentially a very huge atomic nucleus composed of huge numbers of neutrons. As the two neutron stars orbit each other, they give off energy in the form of gravitational waves and begin to orbit closer and closer together as their orbital energy radiates away. They also orbit each other faster and faster to conserve angular momentum. Eventually, the two neutron stars collide like two giant balls of neutrons smashing together at a high velocity in a vast cosmic atom smasher. This allows some very heavy nuclei to form like uranium-235 uranium-238 and thorium-232. Plutonium-239 and plutonium-240 also form, but those nuclei have relatively short half-lives so they do not exist long enough to become incorporated into a new stellar planetary system. It is also thought that these very heavy nuclei are created by Type II supernovae when the cores of very massive stars collapse at the end of their lives. Fortunately for us, Nature squirrels away vast amounts of cosmic energy in these nuclei, just waiting for some form of Intelligence to come along and put them to good use. They are a form of unlimited limitless energy for any Intelligence smart enough to put them to good use.
Many Green New Deal Supporters Propose to Solve All of Our Problems with Lots of Solar Panels and Wind Turbines
But couldn't we just build lots of solar panels and wind turbines instead of using 4th-generation nuclear reactors? That would produce millions of high-paying jobs that could bring people out of poverty and into a thriving middle class like we had back in the 1950s and 1960s when I was growing up. The problem is that both solar panels and wind turbines are driven by the very low-density energy of sunlight. Our Sun does give off lots of energy, but by the time sunlight reaches the top of the Earth's atmosphere it has dropped down to a value of 1370 Watts/m2. That's about as much as my wife's space heater for every square meter. But lots of that energy gets reflected back into space by clouds and the atmosphere. Plus, you only get that 1370 Watts/m2 for a surface that is perpendicular to the incoming sunlight. During the night you get nothing and even during the daytime you only get a portion of it because your solar panels are tilted from being perpendicular to the incoming sunlight. So even if solar panels were 100% efficient, you would need lots of them to power the world.
But how about calculating an order of magnitude approximation? Lots of people use the "toe" unit of energy - the energy of one ton of oil equivalent. In gigawatt-hours that comes to:
1 toe = 11,630 KWh = 0.011630 GWh where KWh = KilloWattHour and GWh = GigaWattHour.
One Mtoe = 1 million toes.
In 2018, the world used 14,421 Mtoe = 167,716,230 GWh for the whole year. To find the average steady-state power usage of the world we need to divide by the number of hours in a year:
167,716,230 GWh / 24 / 365.25 = 19,132 GW which is about 20,000 GW
So the whole world needs the continuous output from about 20,000 one-GW power plants on average. That could be furnished by 80,000 modular 250 MW molten salt nuclear reactors, each about the size of a city bus, that could be built on assembly lines and would not need any storage infrastructure. The world currently has about 50,000 commercial aircraft in service so this is doable. Since 1/2 of the world is always in darkness and probably does not have enough wind either, let's say you need to continuously store and release about 10,000 GW of power for those down-times. That's a lot of rechargeable batteries.
For example, to just power America's Green New Deal with wind and solar power alone, Mike Conley and Tim Maloney used the numbers from the 132-page report of the environmental Solutions Project that requires 18 billion square meters of solar panels and 500,000 5 MW wind turbines to supply all of the energy needs of the United States. Mike and Tim point out that once all of this infrastructure has been constructed on 132,000 square miles of land, we will need to replace 1.23 million square meters of solar panels and 80 of the 5 MW wind turbines every day, forever, as the solar panels and wind turbines wear out. One idea in the Green New Deal is to create millions of high-paying jobs building the huge arrays of solar panels and wind turbines and additional high-paying jobs to maintain and replace large amounts of hardware as it wears out. There will also need to be a large number of jobs devoted to collecting and recycling the materials in worn-out solar panels and wind turbines. The benefit of millions and millions of high-paying jobs is that it will help to bring many people out of poverty and into the middle class. The problem is that it will also make solar and wind power very expensive.
Figure 3 – The new GE 5 MW wind turbine is 500 feet tall, about the height of a 50 story building. We will need 500,000 of them and will need to replace 80 of them each day as they wear out in the future.
Roadmap To Nowhere - The Myth of Powering the Nation With Renewable Energy
https://www.roadmaptonowhere.com/
In a sense, the Green New Deal would be moving millions and millions of people back to the soil to become sunshine farmers. That is because the energy density of sunshine is so very low and undependable. And wind power is just one step removed from sunshine farming because the wind is caused by the differential heating of the Earth's atmosphere by sunshine. Sunshine farming is subject to all of the same debilitating vagaries of traditional farming like too many cloudy or hot windless days. And like traditional farmers, sunshine farmers cannot work at night. On the other hand, a true Global Comprehensive Green New Deal would divert such potential sunshine farmers into building molten salt nuclear reactors, upgrading electrical grids, rebuilding infrastructure, converting transportation systems to electrical and hydrogen-based systems, building energy-efficient low-cost housing and insulating existing buildings. Investments in those activities would also create millions of high-paying jobs and would deliver more benefits than simply investing in sunshine farming.
Conclusion
Now don't get me wrong. I have been buying wind and solar-powered electricity for about 10 years now, only because they are better than electricity from coal-fired power plants. But if I could buy electricity from power plants run by molten salt nuclear reactors, I would definitely do that. But I cannot do that because there are no molten salt nuclear reactors generating electricity. This is where a Global Comprehensive Green New Deal comes in. We need the government of the United States of America to adopt a "Manhatten Project"-like Global Comprehensive Green New Deal to rapidly develop molten salt nuclear reactors and all of the necessary supply chain infrastructure to fuel them. Such a project would also help to attain all of the objectives of a solar and wind-based Green New Deal. Given an infinite amount of limitless energy that is far cheaper than coal, we can achieve all of the worthy objectives of the Green New Deal, and by further implementing the ideas of Andrew Yang, we can also overcome the challenges of the Software Singularity and the fast-approaching dramatic economic impacts of robotics and AI software. And I love the good intentions of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts. For me, they bring back the hopes and aspirations of the 1960s for a better world. I just think that a little bit of physics and softwarephysics could be of help in achieving their goals.
Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net
To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/
Regards,
Steve Johnston
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