As power needs of AI push emissions up and put big tech in a bind, companies put their faith in elusive — some say improbable — technologies.
The mighty Columbia River has helped power the American West with hydroelectricity since the days of FDR’s New Deal. But the artificial intelligence revolution will demand more. Much more.
It’s been 38 years since the Chornobyl nuclear plant exploded in Ukraine. Now we’re coping with an explosion of hype and exaggeration about new nuclear technologies that still aren’t ready to deliver.
To cope with the routine spin and exaggeration we keep seeing from the nuclear energy lobby, it helps to take an over-sized, over-priced, over-hyped technology and bring it down to something more…everyday.
So imagine that you’re setting out to buy a new toaster, and your online sleuthing brings you to an offer that looks too good to be true.
Followers of my writing have I hope noticed me repeatedly arguing that capitalism produces four mutually reinforcing and multiplying apocalyptic horsemen: ecocide, pandemicide, potentially terminal nuclear war, and fascism.
Capitalism at the Dark Taproot
I want to dig into this formulation here, explaining how capitalism generates each of these apocalyptic menaces and how the “four horsemen” reinforce and indeed multiply each other.
Nuclear proliferation experts are warning that 50 years of policy designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons is unravelling as governments invest in certain small modular reactors that could be misused to build bombs.
The concerns are aimed at Moltex, a Saint John, N.B., nuclear startup building small modular reactors (SMRs) that will be powered with spent fuel from CANDU reactors. To make the fuel, Moltex plans to separate plutonium from uranium in CANDU waste and use the extracted plutonium to power new SMRs.
