How does that support the argument that a complement of technologies including nuclear power that allows a country to be energy sufficient in support of its standard of living is as reproducible internationally as a complement of technologies other than nuclear power that allows a country to be energy sufficient in support of its standard of living?
It seems as if you are taking physical limitations on the energy that can be obtained from a particular technology in the complement as equivalent to social limitations, when of course natural systems are prior to human societies, and the constraints imposed by Natural System will always be respected by technology - by consequence, when not by design.
Of course, "nuclear" is too broad a category here: for instance, the way that some potential Thorium fuel cycles are described by advocated would permit designs that are not prone to proliferation risks in transport of either new or spent fuel. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
How does that support the argument that a complement of technologies including nuclear power that allows a country to be energy sufficient in support of its standard of living is as reproducible internationally as a complement of technologies other than nuclear power
It doesn't, because it isn't. The more components you add into an energy supply mix, the less reproducible the whole package will be. The point is that the whole package doesn't have to be reproducible, so long as large enough parts of it are.
Or, to put it another way: If a citizen of the Democratic Republic of Congo can have light on demand from electricity produced by a dam or a windmill, why should he care that a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany can have light on demand from electricity produced by a nuclear reactor? Light on demand is light on demand - the electrons don't care where the potential gradient comes from, and neither does most of the end users.
It seems as if you are taking physical limitations on the energy that can be obtained from a particular technology in the complement as equivalent to social limitations
In the short term, they are.
In the medium term, social limitations are more amenable to betterment than physical limitations.
In the long term, we're all dead.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
That is, a particular concentrated thermal solar power technology is at a cost point that makes it an appealing choice for installing large plants in the US Southwest for peak power demands in Southern California. That same technology is only a niche player in another setting, and is not adopted at all in a third.
But if its feasible in the third, and not implemented because there are technically superior choices in those conditions, that means its reproducible technology for that country, and indeed with further technical development may come into the frame for adoption. Its availability at its Energy Return on Investment in that context provides part of the baseline for all settings where its Net EROI is positive, and where it is not implemented is where a superior Net EROI is available.
The specific point about proliferation-prone nuclear fuel cycles is not about whether its a feasible technique for acquiring power from the Natural System within which the economy exists, but whether we can confidently promote its use everywhere that it is technically feasible. Its an additional constraint, over and above the fact that yields of different techniques in a technological complement will vary in different settings, so the reliance on one technique will be higher in one setting and the reliance on a different technique will be higher in another setting.
And its a different type of constraint, because when a renewable energy harvest technique is pushed aside by another renewable energy harvest technique with better Net EROI, that implies that some other technique with better EROI exists. When some particular nuclear power fuel cycle is ruled out because the society does not have the institutional capacity to transport virgin fuel to or spent fuel from the plant without ongoing substantial proliferation risks, that does not imply that there is some other technique with some better Net EROI.
The present-day core economies, resting on the dependency of the other economies of the world on us for productive equipment, cannot therefore rest satisfied that they have developed an adequate technological complement for energy sufficiency for ourselves until it also includes an adequate technological complement that is internationally reproducible.
Since we cannot, after all, move the core economies en masse to another planet with a more benign climate, and since the channels of technological development will tend to follow the track of those lines that we choose to pursue. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
