i’ll wager, from an armchair mind you, that this is because decrepeit Scrooges see it as a plus that the people from the regions most affected as “lesser people”, while also holding on to money and ensuring states militarize to defend that money from increasingly pissed of people.
so TLDR ig racist old dudes appreciating what fascism does for 'em.
this is just an armchair assessment fron me though. why is fossil fuel still being used?
We can’t replace it fully.
We can replace it with cars. We can replace it with trains as well, but electrified track is more expensive than just plopping a diesel engine there and filling her up. Track for that is just steel+concrete and rocks and stuff.
We can not replace it with air planes, helicopters, rockets. At all. We could reduce air travel and stuff like fighter jets.
We can also not replace it for cargo ships. And that’s pretty bad news. Luckily ships are crazy efficient, so the actual CO2 and other pollution per ton and kilometer is very very low. If you get a delivery, that delivery comes in a fossil fuel truck to your doorstep, that truck will emit more CO2 than the ship will, going either from china to Rotterdam or the US westcoast. And also global transportation is probably more than necessary.
Anyway, the big problem we can solve are cars and planes.
There are also a bunch of chemical and industrial processes that need coal. Fertilizer and steel are two big ones.
Cargo ships could be replaced with nuclear. It would also be a significant gain as they are a significant source of pollution beyond CO2.
Theoretically yes, but in practice nuclear is very complicated technology that requires a lot training, expertise, care, maintenance and oversight.
Putting it into military ships and ice breaking ships makes sense because of their unique circumstances.
With cargo ships there are a lot of additional complicating factors: cargo ships regularly break and sink. Not a lot, but frequently enough that it is a legitimate concern. We already have trouble regulating regular cargo ships sea-worthiness and issues like environmental pollution through ship breaking, notably in india. That’s another issue btw…
The biggest problem is the sheer number of cargo ships. Any risk of an accident gets multiplied by that.
You can browse the wiki page on nuclear propulsion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion (btw, if it was economic to do it they would have done it already) It’s “obvious” that the number of ships with nuclear propulsion are in the low hundreds. Meanwhile we have more than 100.000 merchant ships in operation at the moment. https://www.ener8.com/merchant-fleet-infographic-2023/
Operating “a few” ships safely is one thing, doing it with literally hundreds of thousands is something completely different.
Reactors aren’t bombs, they don’t just go boom. One of them sinking is far less dangerous than thousands of gallons of fuel in existing tankers. The economics are terribly different than electric cars, it makes no sense to replace a ship with 20 year of life left, but it’s worth considering for a new ship.
There is still the anything nuclear is the boogie man problem.
And what about when terrorists like the Houthis capture one? Just trust they can’t extract the materials to build dirty bombs?
A reactor isn’t a catalytic converter. They might get some coolant that’s mildly radioactive. The core would probably kill them if they ever managed to open it. There’s not a button to just open it, it’s only designed to be opened with heavy equipment in drydock.
Dirty bombs are more of a boogie man than a real thing. High grade materials are dangerous to be around without shielding and can fairly easily be tracked. It’s just as likely to kill the makers before they can get a bomb together than be used. Lower grade materials require more to be dangerous, which means less spread with the same explosive, and the bomb has to be pretty big. It’s easier to get a backpack full of explosives into somewhere than a van full of radioactive material, and the backpack will have a bigger radius.
I don’t think that’s feasible. Imagine for-profit corporations being responsible for nuclear reactors floating around in international waters. I don’t trust them with diesel certainly not nuclear.
It’s easy to underestimate the maintenance requirements. Australia, UK, and US just signed a treaty to develop and produce nuclear subs. It’s a big deal. It’s going to take many decades and 100s of billions of dollars before UK and Aus have the capability to build and maintain nuclear subs.
For profit companies already run reactors. Putting them on a boat is well understood. Nuclear subs are more about the sub part and military tech than the nuclear part.
For profit companies already run reactors on dry land, which don’t move, and are heavily regulated and constantly observed.
Obviously, the risk profile is vastly different when you put the reactor on a boat.
Putting them on a boat is not well understood. Australia just doesn’t have personnel experienced with any kind of reactor. We don’t have a nuclear industry. It’s not as simple as plonking a box named “reactor” on the boat and calling it a day.
You are correct.
Agriculture, shipping, and power generation together dwarf the petroleum used by road vehicles.