Summary of Robert Zubrin: The Case For Nukes | Tom Nelson Pod #100

00:00:00 - 00:55:00

Robert Zubrin, a nuclear engineer, argues in his book "The Case for Nukes" that the world needs to adopt more nuclear energy to combat poverty and promote a positive future. He believes that carbon emissions are not at a crisis level, and efforts to reduce carbon emissions by making fuel less affordable are unethical and impractical. Instead, Zubrin advocates the widespread adoption of nuclear energy, which he believes is clean, available, and emits fewer carbons than other sources of energy like solar power. He also differentiates practical environmentalism from ideological environmentalism, which he argues opposes nuclear energy due to the potential for it to create unlimited economic growth and solve a problem that ideological environmentalists need to have. Zubrin believes that building a coalition of pro-growth Americans, regardless of political affiliation, is crucial, and compares France's pro-nuclear approach to Germany's anti-nuclear stance. Additionally, Zubrin discusses the regulatory burden and potential for nuclear power to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuels for aviation. Finally, he argues that promoting brotherhood and sisterhood among all individuals requires creating a world with enough resources for everyone, which involves the adoption of more nuclear energy to combat poverty.

• 00:00:00 In this section, Robert Zubrin, an engineer with a background in nuclear engineering, discusses his latest book, "The Case for Nukes," which argues that widespread adoption of nuclear energy is essential for a positive human future and to combat poverty, which is currently the biggest problem in the world and kills hundreds of millions of people every year. Zubrin argues that although global warming and anthropogenic atmospheric chemistry change are real, they are not currently at a crisis level and reducing carbon emissions by making fuel less affordable is both unethical and impractical. Instead, Zubrin advocates for continued exponential growth of human energy power generation, requiring the widespread adoption of nuclear energy.
• 00:05:00 In this section, Robert Zubrin discusses the need for increased energy use worldwide but suggests that to do so with fossil fuels would create real air pollution problems and accelerate climate change. The solution he proposes is nuclear power, which he argues is clean, massively available, and emits fewer carbons than other sources of energy like solar power. He differentiates between practical environmentalism, which seeks to clean the environment, and ideological environmentalism, which uses incidents of human insult to the environment as evidence against human liberty. Zubrin believes that ideological environmentalists oppose nuclear energy because it gets rid of the smoke and it solves a problem they need to have, quoting a great example of how the Sierra Club opposed it in the 1960s because it might cause unnecessary economic growth.
• 00:10:00 In this section, Robert Zubrin explains how the Malthusians of the early 1970s initiated the idea that economic growth needed to be stopped, or we would run out of everything by the year 2000. The Club of Rome published the book "The Limits of Growth" in 1972, proclaiming claims of oil, copper, and zinc running out within the next three decades, which seemed logical to many. The Sierra Club was initially in support of nuclear power because of its positive environmental attributes but quickly moved to anti-nuclear power due to unlimited energy causing unlimited economic growth, which consequently leads to more pollution. They used the waste issue as a tactic to shut down nuclear energy and waged a continual war against establishing land-based and seabed nuclear repositories, preventing the establishment of a safe waste repository and eventually led to the lack of waste reprocessing in the US.
• 00:15:00 In this section, nuclear advocate Robert Zubrin addresses some common critiques of nuclear power. He argues that nuclear submarines are irreplaceable for the Navy, which has a nuclear waste storage facility in New Mexico. He also points out that the time and cost to build nuclear power plants have increased due to hyperregulation and lawsuits. While it took three years to build the first nuclear plant, it now takes around 16 years due to regulatory changes made by the Carter Administration. Zubrin attributes these changes to the influence of malthusians from the U.S committee for the club of Rome on energy policy.
• 00:20:00 In this section, Robert Zubrin argues that the current system of environmental enforcement in the US for nuclear power plants and other industries is flawed. He suggests that those who create damage to the environment should be prosecuted, and those who do not should be left alone. Zubrin believes that the way environmental enforcement is currently done is like having to prove to the police in advance that you are not going to speed before going on a road trip, which is unreasonable. Zubrin also mentions that there are numerous large organizations and commercial interests funding the blocking of nuclear power plants, but he asserts that the Malthusian global warming campaign has backfired, and people who are worried about global warming are starting to see nuclear power as a solution.
• 00:25:00 In this section, the speaker argues that the program of trying to combat global warming by making fuels more expensive is ultra-regressive, even more so than sales tax, because it taxes on the basis of mass rather than price. Carbon tax is a racist tax because black people, on average, are poorer than white people. He believes that the old left, including blue-collar people, who are the core of the Democratic party, cannot afford to be written off on bread and butter issues, and needs to oppose this program. The program of rigging up Fuel and electricity prices counteracts the interests of low-income districts, and hence, it should not be supported.
• 00:30:00 In this section, Robert Zubrin discusses the importance of building a coalition of Americans for growth, regardless of political affiliation, and how pro-growth policies benefit both labor and capital. He then highlights the nuclear energy policies of different countries, comparing France's successful pro-nuclear approach to Germany's anti-nuclear stance, which he claims is influenced by Kremlin allies. Russia and China are currently the biggest players in exporting nuclear reactors, with China planning to build 450 more domestically by 2050 and export them to the third world, while the United States lags behind.
• 00:35:00 In this section, Robert Zubrin discusses the advancements being made by other countries in the nuclear power industry, specifically China and South Korea. He believes that due to their efficiency and business mentality, the Chinese will be able to build nuclear power plants in two years or less. Zubrin also talks about his involvement in promoting a movie by Oliver Stone about this issue. When it comes to the future of nukes in the US, Zubrin sees potential for both large power plants with economies of scale and smaller plants that can be manufactured in factories and trucked to their intended location. Even though there is a push for smaller plants, he believes that the pressurized water reactor design, which has been used for over 90% of commercial nuclear power plants, is a reliable and safe design that has been proven over the past 60 years.
• 00:40:00 In this section, Zubrin discusses the regulatory burden associated with newer nuclear reactor designs, and how it hinders their development and deployment. He explains that the pressurized water reactors commonly used today only utilize one percent of the available energy in uranium fuel, as opposed to breeder reactors which can use over 90 percent. However, the fuel cost of pressurized reactors is only five percent of the cost of electricity, with the other 95 percent being the capital cost of construction which is influenced by regulatory burdens. Zubrin notes that regulatory ease would allow for cutting fuel costs in half while tripling the cost of construction. He touches briefly on the potential of thorium reactors, and the regulatory obstacles hindering their development. Zubrin notes the potential for nuclear power to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuels for aviation, with methane being the easiest fuel to produce.
• 00:45:00 In this section, Robert Zubrin discusses the possibility of using nuclear power to create hydrocarbons and examines the vast amount of nuclear power resources available. Uranium ore is the preferred fuel for nuclear power, but granite, found in mountains and buildings at a concentration of two parts per million uranium and eight parts per million thorium, is about ten million times more energy-dense than gasoline. A block of granite contains as much energy as one hundred times its mass and cancer, and its energy supply dwarfs that of Earth's fossil fuels. Moreover, a gallon of earth water is as energy-dense as 350 gallons of gasoline, while Martian water's increased concentration of deuterium makes a gallon of it as valuable as 1600 gallons of gasoline, according to Zubrin.
• 00:50:00 In this section, the speaker discusses the misconceptions surrounding nuclear power and reactors, stating that the waste can be disposed of and that nuclear reactors cannot blow up like bombs, nor do they support proliferation as commercial reactors cannot be used to make bomb-grade material. He also explains how any technology can be used for destruction, but the unique destructive potential of nuclear weapons is no longer unique and that as humanity's knowledge advances, the destructive potential becomes much more affordable. He references the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate how a virus made in a lab could potentially cause mass destruction.
• 00:55:00 In this section, Robert Zubrin discusses the potential danger posed by biological warfare facilities that could create viruses capable of killing hundreds of millions of people. He emphasizes the need to create a world where no nation feels that destroying the world is in their interest. Zubrin argues that nuclear power is necessary to create a world with enough resources for everyone, which is the key to promoting brotherhood and sisterhood among all individuals.