The main problem facing humanity when it comes to satisfying its needs is not so much resources — either mineral resources or food resources — as energy. Resources are virtually infinite, the problem is to find the energy to get at them. For most of human existence on the planet Earth the main source of energy for production was the energy of human beings and domestic animals, supplemented by various mechanical devices and by limited amounts of wind and water power. Then, beginning in the 18th century, came the widespread use of steam power (based on burning wood and later coal to heat the water) and. at the beginning of the 20th century. the internal combustion engine (based on burning another fossil fuel. oil).
What will probably turn out to have been the greatest technological advance made by humans since the introduction of agriculture was the discovery of how to generate and use electricity in the second half of the 19th century. Electricity is a form of energy that can be generated by mechanical means (by turbines) and then later transformed back again into mechanical energy to be applied to production when and where required. It can be generated on a large scale (in power stations) or on a small scale (as by windmills and waterfalls) and so can be adapted to various different ways and combinations of ways of living.
Most of the electricity used in the world today is generated by huge steam-powered turbines in which the steam is still, overwhelmingly. raised by burning fossil fuels but also, increasingly, by the heat given off when atoms of uranium and now plutonium are split (nuclear fission). Electricity generated by using turbines turned by water, wind or tidal power is still relatively marginal. From an ideal point of view, burning fossil fuels is an irrational way of using these natural resources since this wastes a large part of their potential as useless and harmful gases.
Nuclear fission, too. is not the long-term solution to humanity’s energy problem since it has been well described as "the dirtiest and most unpleasant method of releasing energy that man has ever discovered". It merits this description because, besides heat, the process of splitting the atom releases lethal radioactivity which can escape into the atmosphere (as at Chernobyl) and which, in any case, remains in the waste products. Nuclear fission reactors should be quickly phased out.if not stopped completely, in any rationally-organised human society, rather than being extended to meet the problem in the supply of fossil fuels. Certainly there can be no humane justification for embarking on the mad idea of building more and more "breeder" reactors (so called because they produce radioactive plutonium which can be re-used as a nuclear fuel).
So what, in a rational world of common ownership and production solely for use, could be the solution to the energy problem? In the light of present-day scientific knowledge. there are two main candidates for the not-too-distant future: solar power and nuclear fusion. Solar energy, in its natural form of heat and light, is the product of nuclear fusion, the sun being a sort of fusion reactor in which atoms of hydrogen are continually being fused into becoming helium, a process which generates huge amounts of heat and light energy. The sun is in fact the source of the energy that sustains all life on Earth (its rays being converted, in the first instance, by plants into chemical energy which serves as food for animals including humans); solar energy is thus nature’s source of energy. It is also the indirect source of some of the other forms of natural energy that humans have been able to harness such as wind and water power. If humans could find a way of harnessing solar energy, then our energy problem would be solved.
Solar batteries, which directly convert the sun’s light rays into electrical energy, already exist and are used in satellites and space vehicles. But an efficient method of doing this at Earth ground-level — where the sun’s rays are much less powerful — has yet to be devised, as the experimental batteries being developed use up more energy than they create. Further research into this is still necessary but a world socialist society would be able to direct resources, such as those that will be released by abandoning all military research, towards it. Another possibility would be to launch a satellite that would function as a power station, converting the sun’s light rays into energy and beaming this down to Earth. But once again until more research has been done, more energy would be needed to get such a power station into orbit than it would initially produce.
At the moment the only practical way of using solar energy, apart from small scale uses in particularly sunny parts of the world, is to use the heat from the sun to raise steam to drive electricity-generating turbines. Such power stations using mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays could be situated in sunny, desert areas and linked to a grid that would allow the electricity to be transported to whatever part of the world it was needed. Since, however, considerable amounts of electricity are lost in transport, such a change-over from fossil fuel and nuclear fission power stations to solar power stations. to be most effective, would demand a corresponding re-allocation of industry to the sunnier parts of the world.
In view of the geo-political considerations involved under capitalism in such a re-allocation of industry — and so also of economic and political power — a change to solar power on a massive scale is unlikely to occur while capitalism lasts. If capitalism is allowed to continue, it is much more likely that the states where industry is currently concentrated will choose to develop nuclear fission power stations, including breeder reactors, in these areas as a way of maintaining their economic and political power. This is one example of how capitalism prevents a rational solution to humanity’s energy problem and a reason why anti-nuclear protestors. justified as their protests are. are unlikely to succeed as long as capitalism lasts.
Nuclear fusion has nothing in common with nuclear fission beyond the fact that both are examples of nuclear engineering. Nuclear fusion is. as its name suggests, a process whereby atoms of the lightest chemical elements are fused together (as in the sun) as opposed to fission when atoms of the heaviest elements are split. Both processes release energy in the form of heat but fission also leaves a radioactive waste material, some of it extremely dangerous, fusion does not. and so to this extent is a clean source of energy.
It is true that, as the equipment used to contain the fusion process will become radioactive, fusion power will not be entirely clean, though the levels of radioactivity involved would be nowhere near those caused by the process of nuclear fission. It is also true that the technically-easiest process, now in the experimental stage, does involve the production of a radioactive gas. but other possible fusion processes could avoid this. If the technical problems involved in these latter can be solved, humanity will have at its disposal a relatively clean and virtually unlimited source of energy since the raw material — an isotope of hydrogen, deuterium — exists in abundance in the sea. to the extent of 1 gramme in every 30 litres.
Since neither solar batteries nor fusion power yet exist in a form that can be applied to production, it is clear that if socialism is established in the near future it is going to have to rely on existing ways of generating electricity, essentially burning oil and coal even if. ideally, this is not the best way of using these resources. Since socialist society will need all the energy it can muster to clean up the initial problem of world poverty and hunger it will inherit from capitalism, on present day knowledge it may well not be able to afford not to use any nuclear fission reactors in existence at the time, dirty and dangerous though they are — though, freed from the profit and cost considerations of capitalism they could be and would be made less dangerous than they are now. It will be a question of deciding to use them temporarily to help eliminate the more pressing evil of deaths from world hunger, disease and poverty. But the aim will have to be to take such reactors out of service as soon as these immediate problems have been cleared up. Nuclear fission reactors have no long-term or even a medium-term future in socialism.
As to whether the substitute that will sooner or later be necessary for power stations based on burning coal or oil will be solar power or nuclear fusion, only future socialist society can decide but since certain forms of power can be applied straight away this would seem to be the obvious choice at the moment.
Adam Buick
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