This is me rambling on about anything that takes my fancy with no (or very few) facts to back my arguments. You will have to bear with me at times. If you don’t agree with my arguments then please send me a mail.

Nuclear Power

Population Growth

Religion

The Universe

A lot of people seem to be scared silly of nuclear power. It’s a pity since it’s obviously a very viable energy source. It's really not as alien as people think. Scientists have discovered the remains of what looks like a natural fission reactor in the African desert?. The world would be very glacial if it wasn’t for the radioactive decay taking place in the planet's core. And of course without the fusion reaction taking place in stars then there would probably no life anywhere in the universe.

Fission technology is fairly mature now, and a modern well maintained reactor is in my opinion a safe bet. So we should be embracing the technology not shunning it, as for instance in Sweden. We should be actively developing nuclear technology suitable for the third world. These countries are going to want a lot of power in the future and we have a chance here to ensure it is safe.

I hazard a guess that the environmental impact of nuclear fission is less then the only other currently available major energy source - fossil fuel. There seem to be 2 main problems with fission:-

1. When it goes wrong it really goes wrong. It won't blow up like an A-bomb, this is highly unlikely. I think Chernobyl represents a worst case disaster. But how often has that happened? I've heard that the only accident that actually released any substantial amount of radioactive material was (what's that name again, not 3 mile island)? Chernobyl doesn’t really count as an accident since the technicians, in turning off all the failsafe systems, did their best to make it blow up! So maybe it's not as dangerous as people think.
2. Radioactive waist. I don’t see anything wrong with burying it in suitable deposition sites. But of course nobody wants it in their back yard, though they don’t mind using the power. Apparently if you put all the highly radioactive waist in the world in one place then it will fill a couple of large swimming pools. Not much really, considering how much power it generated. And if you give technology a chance then maybe even this problem can be solved. The newly developed reactor which transmutes radioactive waist and produces more power in the process looks very promising

Apparently a large amount of the uranium ore is mined in the Australian outback. The Aborigines living there claim that they are badly treated by the mining companies and that their health is suffering. If this is true then the mining companies should be forced to clean up their act and provide compensation.

How long are the fossil fuels going to last. Not long when Asia, Africa and the rest of the developing world start using these resources at a similar rate to the Western world. Burning these fuels is releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide into the biosphere.

Wind, wave, solar, renewable, thermal, hydro combined with more efficient energy consumption just wont be enough to feed the growing population of power users. What will come after fission? Fusion maybe, or perhaps orbiting solar power or perhaps well never know.

The human population of the planet earth is approaching 6 billion people, which is about 5 billion (plus minus 1 billion) too many. Human population growth seems to have a lot in common with a single cell culture on a petri dish: -

1. resources are finite
2. there is no competition
3. there is no ecologically balanced environment

The only scenario for the cell culture is: -

1. initial exponential population growth while resources are abundant
2. stagnation as resources are diminished and waste products starts to interfere
3. starvation followed by death of the whole population

The cells in the petri dish are of course doomed from the very start since the petri dish is truly finite. If they were smart they would autonomously limit their population and therefore last longer. But they aren't. They are blindly following a behavior, which works well in their normal environment, where they are competing with other organisms in an ecologically balanced environment, where one organism's waste is another organism's resource.

The human population has recently moved into its own petri dish. The dish is the Earth's crust, the agar jell is the Earth's biosphere and the lid is space (the final frontier). Like the cells, humans are alone in their petri dish and have no competition. Human waste products are accumulating in the dish and are starting to interfere with the population.

It's all the fault of human sentience. This gave rise to civilisation, which in turn gave rise to technology.

To be continued

Is there a God(s). I doubt it

Where is it? And what's it doing here