I just read this article which suggested that we are on course for civilizational collapse following the projections of the 1972 “Limits to Growth” model.
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/2025-a-civilizational-tipping-point-da84d11a0e35
I agree that we may collapse but it will not be as severe as LTG suggests because LTG does not recognize the fundamental fact that economies run on energy. LTG lumps fuels and materials together in a single category, “Resources”. With the eventual decline of fossil fuels, Resources declines, causing a collapse. But we are starting to transition from fossil to nuclear fuels and gain an immense new energy source that will allow us to mitigate collapse.
Also, I think population will decline naturally, earlier than LTG assumes, easing the predicted collapse. With development, people everywhere are moving from the farm into town. On the farm they had four or five kids but in town, they can barely afford one or two kids. Birth rates are falling below the sustainable level of 2.1 kids per woman. In many countries the rate is less than 1.5 and in South Korea, the rate is less than 1.0.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
Now with increasing concerns about the climate, we realize that we must phase out of fossil fuels as fast as possible. This will be the biggest challenge we have ever faced and will truly be a civilization tipping point. The recent COP28 conference in Dubai was our first official recognition of this necessity. Earlier COP conferences talked about climate warming without stating the primary cause.
So how can we phase out fossil fuels and still power our economies? We often hear that wind and solar power are the answer. But in spite of all the media hype, we will not transition to renewables. Renewables are unreliable, intermittent, require large amounts of land and materials and have large environmentally impacts. Globally, we have spent several trillion dollars on renewables which in total produce only small fraction of our energy requirements. Moreover, we can not affordably mine and process all the copper and other metals that would be required for a transition to renewables.
We also hear that renewables are cheap and getting cheaper. It is true that their instantaneous cost of electricity generation is falling but due to their intermittency and unreliability, impossibly huge batteries would be required to make their electricity reliably available 24/7. Present batteries stabilize grid frequency and can hold the load for several hours but not for the days or weeks of calm, foggy weather that occur in winter in Northern Europe. Expensive backup coal, gas or lignite fired power stations and long transmission lines from distant sunny or windy areas are required. So electric rates to consumers rise as renewables are added to the grid. Witness high electric rates (and carbon emissions) in renewables Denmark and Germany, twice those in nuclear France.
Nuclear fuels can provide virtually unlimited amounts of reliable, zero-carbon energy. Nuclear fuels will electrify our economies, reduce energy poverty and pollution and importantly, allow us to recycle many materials and mine low concentration ores. We will maintain LTG Resources at moderately high levels and avoid severe collapse.
Better to split atomic nuclei when and where energy is needed than trying to capture, concentrate, store and transmit the whims of weather in distant sunny or windy regions.
A common measure of energy systems is Energy Return on Energy Invested, ERoEI. Fossil fuels have ERoEI values in the tens, renewables in single digits and nuclear reactors have ERoEI values near one hundred. New nuclear designs, such as dual fluid reactors, can have ERoEI values in the thousands. These reactors will be a game changer and negate past predictions, such as LTG.
https://www.daretothink.org/dfr-the-dual-fluid-reactor/
Dual fluid reactors are actually an old design and ran successfully for four years at Oak Ridge in the 1960s. Nixon cancelled the program to concentrate funds on the pressurized water reactors being developed for nuclear submarines.
https://www.ornl.gov/molten-salt-reactor/history
Most of our present reactors are massively scaled up versions of the submarine reactors. They were scaled up to get economies of scale but they have gotten too big, too complicated, too expensive and take too long to build. As with any construction project, interest costs rise expontially with delays. Environmentalists knew this and so caused many delays.
https://atomicinsights.com/anti-nuclear-movement-strategy-circa-april-1991/
Several dual fluid reactors are being developed. These reactors are safe, simple and are expected to generate electricity cheaper than coal. These reactors operate at high temperatures for thermal efficiency and near atmospheric pressure and not require an expensive pressure vessel and containment structure. Some will burn thorium which is safer and more abundant than uranium. Others can burn spent conventional reactor fuel elements and obsolete nuclear weapons materials.
So I think as we get seriously worried about the climate, we will start building thousands of these small reactors. And fewer renewables. Fusion is the ultimate energy source and fusion reactors are being developed but with climate change happening rapidly, we should concentrate funds on presently available technology. Dual fluid thorium reactors can power us for hundreds of years.
So how much will small reactors cost? Copenhagen Atomics recently bid for 25 40 Mw molten salt reactors at four billion dollars, or about 160 million dollars each. These reactors are the first of a kind and very expensive. Costs will decline as designs are standardized and modularized and more reactors built.
https://www.nucnet.org/news/danish-companies-sign-agreement-for-usd4-billion-thorium-smr-in-borneo-5-1-2023
Smaller reactors, only 20 Mw, might be built for 100 million dollars each using standard components designed for the oil and gas industry. This would allow building 10,000 reactors for a trillion dollars, less than we spend each year on unreliable renewables. Such a fleet of small reactors would provide abundant, low cost electricity, energy independence and industrial heat and space heating everywhere.
https://about.bnef.com/blog/global-clean-energy-investment-jumps-17-hits-1-8-trillion-in-2023-according-to-bloombergnef-report/
Several factors can further reduce costs. The reactors will be built in assembly lines in factories and trucked to installation sites. Or built on barges and towed to coastal sites where they have abundant cooling water and safety from earthquakes and tsunami. Most will be near cities to reduce the need to massively expand the grid. Many will replace coal burners at coal fired power stations to use existing infrastructure, reduce air pollution and carbon emissions and retain many present employees. Other reactors will fuel industrial processes, space heating for buildings, deicing roads and desalting waste waters.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/coal-plants-retire-advanced-nuclear-reactors-smr/645974/
We will never completely replace fossil fuels with nuclear fuels. Petroleum products will continue to be needed as lubricants, aircraft fuels and asphalt. Importantly, our economy runs on diesal trucks. How to replace diesal? Batteries in electric trucks may replace some diesal but we will probably electrify our roads and railroads and massively adopt containerization and modularization of transport. Or hydrogen powered vehicles may become popular.
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/3-nuclear-power-plants-gearing-clean-hydrogen-production
Small reactors can help capture carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere as these require processing immense amounts of air, mostly nitrogen. The carbon would be sequestered as limestone or other carbon-oxygen material which must be stored somewhere. Small high temperature reactors could support pyrolysis of garbage, plastics and other organic wastes to provide a simpler way to sequester large amounts of carbon. We have to handle these wastes somehow and pyrolysis can reduce them to industrial chemicals or char, pure carbon.
https://cen.acs.org/environment/recycling/Amid-controversy-industry-goes-plastics-pyrolysis/100/i36
Char could be added to soils to improve their fertility and moisture retention.
https://cropwatch.unl.edu/2018/using-high-c-char-soil-amendment-improve-soil-properties
Some reactors operate a very high temperatures and support steel or hydrogen production.
So what of the future? Many things are happening fast these days.
Climate is warming and sea levels are rising rapidly,
Energy costs are rising, particularly in Europe,
Russia is collapsing and we need to rebuild Ukraine,
Global debt is huge, as in Chinese real estate,
Interest rates are rising, making it harder to pay off debts,
Politicians have gone crazy,
Falling birth rates create too many old consumers and not enough young producers,
Economic inequality is at an all time high and rising.
Oil production will peak in this decade,
Houses and land are unaffordable and prices are rising.
More specifically, Gail Tverberg talks about huge debts coming due in 2024,
https://ourfiniteworld.com/
Fred Harrison about business cycles collapsing in 2026,
and Jem Bendell about converging crises.
ttps://jembendell.com/2023/04/08/breaking-together-a-freedom-loving-response-to-collapse/
The best solution I can see is a global Resource Fee and Dividend program. RFD would be similar to James Hansen’s Carbon Fee and Dividend but for use of all natural resources, not just using the atmosphere as a carbon dump. RFD would encourage conservation of land and materials, thus promoting nuclear power as nuclear power uses minimal amounts of land and materials. Importantly, it would reduce land speculation, housing prices and homelessness. The fee could support government, build infrastructure and reduce urban sprawl to make cities more compact and walkable. It could reduce or replace less efficient taxes, such as on incomes and sales, and be more predictable than these other taxes as land values change rather slowly. The dividend would reduce poverty and economic inequality and would tend to level out economic boom/bust economic cycles.
RFD would be similar to:
Alaska Permanent Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
Annual Ground Rent https://slrg.scot/
Carbon Fee and Citizen’s Dividend https://www.facebook.com/citizensdividend
RFD would promote nuclear fuels because of their extremely high energy density and consequent low environmental impacts.
https://douglasrmclain.substack.com/p/save-the-world-with-nuclear-power-aef
To conclude, I have to agree with James Lovelock who said that since we humans are such clever bastards, somehow we will somehow muddle through.