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CHAPTER
8 – Problems that Need Special Attention
a) Africa, the Beleaguered Continent
To know Africa is to appreciate its complexity. As the
famous physiology professor, Jared Diamond, has written,
Africa is
the sole continent to span both the north and south temperate zones;
it is also unique in its human diversity, for one quarter
of the world’s languages are spoken only in Africa. These two factors
explain a great deal about Africa today. Domesticated plants
and animals from the Fertile Crescent in western Asia spread south
(into Africa) across climate zones much more slowly than east
and west. Thus, pockets of human hunter-gatherers persisted,
even as Bantu-speaking African farmers slowly expanded their territory
south, between 1,000 B.C.E. and 1,000 A.C.E. This long human
presence in Africa has allowed the big animals to adapt and survive today,
and it has also encouraged infectious human diseases to thrive,
such as malaria, yellow fever, trypanosomiasis and AIDS.
One
might well ask, is Africa, or at least its tropical core, doomed
eternally to wars, poverty and devastating diseases?
One could also
ask, why is it that most Westerners who visit Africa return with
feelings of optimism and compassion? I think the solution lies
in Africa’s children. Our investment in their education
would be far less costly than trying to stop ugly wars in the
long run,
far more compassionate, and crucial for reducing the galloping
birth rate in Africa.
b)
The Enigma of Nuclear Energy
Recently the
world has been rethinking its position on nuclear power. One reason
is that the costs of oil and natural gas have shot up dramatically.
Another reason is that nuclear fission does not release carbon dioxide,
so it has been described as an “environmentally friendly”
source of electricity. Skeptics, however, say that it is a poor
investment and a worse security risk. Let us examine some crucial
facts:
In
the past half-century nuclear energy has emerged from behind
a wall of military secrecy to become a widely used
source of commercial
electricity. Despite the high construction costs and special
risks, there are now 441 reactors working in 30 nations. Almost
half of
these reactors are in Europe. While the nuclear share of total
electrical output is less than 20% in USA, there are 6 European
countries (France,
Lithuania, Slovakia, Belgium, Sweden and the Ukraine), in which
it exceeds 50%, and many more where it exceeds 30%. Nuclear energy
advocates urge the world to increase nuclear power output 10-fold
by the end of the century, but few are heeding this advice. Still,
because most reactors now in use are over 20 years old at a time
of growing concern over the climate change issue, there is a
consensus that we should maintain the nuclear share of electrical
output at
the current level as a “bridge” to future clean energy
technologies. Even this proposal upsets many environmentalists,
who claim that nuclear power is a false solution, pushed as part
of a clever public relations campaign by nuclear industrial interests.
Reasons given for this viewpoint are many, but they boil down to
two central issues: concerns over the safety and security of storing
or reprocessing “spent” isotopes, and fear that we will
allow ourselves to be distracted from the need to invest in moderate-scale,
renewable energy systems. Let us look into both issues more deeply.
Back
in the 1950's decision-makers in USA decided to follow Admiral Rickover's
decision to use uranium oxide pellets stacked in zirconium alloy
rods in water as the reactor medium. The dangerous by-product, plutonium,
was considered an asset back then, for it would contribute to the
manufacture of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, a significant opportunity
to use molten salts was missed, especially salts of THORIUM, a "fertile"
metal of slightly lower atomic weight that could easily be made
fissile (able to maintain a chain reaction). Now that a movement
of dedicated engineers and physicists have formed an organization
to point out the huge advantages of liquid thorium over solid uranium
(6), it is difficult to persuade the politicians and utility owners
to change the established infrastructure to the much simpler, cheaper
and safer unpressurized system that supports the use of liquid thorium
(7).
Finally, we return to the problem of our fear of distraction: This
has already driven a rift between highly respected environmentalists
in the U.K. Purists are determined to direct all of our energies
into developing wind and solar energy, fearing that any expansion
of nuclear power would sap the former initiatives. Pragmatists doubt
that we will have sufficient energy from wind and solar power to
satisfy our growing appetite without using nuclear energy for several
more decades to fill the potential energy gap. The pragmatists seem
to be holding sway in Europe, while the purists dominate the scene
in North America. When realistic concerns about nuclear waste disposal
are added to hypothetical concerns about nuclear terrorism, there
remains little enthusiasm for building new nuclear plants in U.S.A.,
let alone maintaining the old ones.
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