How to live with urban terrorism

India is at war. And the enemy is inside.

The notion of warfare in modern times has changed rapidly. Large scale battles between neighboring countries will happen much less, because these might degenerate into the use of nuclear weapons.

More collateral damage can be inflicted by terrorist attacks, and this can be targeted to specific high-profile locations and personalities. We will continue to see an upswing of these form of attacks.

The defence spending of the country should be changed to suit this reality. We should allocate a lot more portion of our funds to anti-terrorist squads, and they should explicitly be made part of the army.

It is easy to say can root out terrorism and flush out all the terrorists, but it is much more difficult to do that. This is a sensitive issue, and has to be done without any specific community feeling victimized. Increased espionage and a very efficient intelligence mechanism will help. But they are not foolproof.

In this post, I would like to mention a few measures that we need to adopt, to prevent the kind of attacks that we have seen in Mumbai (and in Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Delhi and Bangalore).

1. The Mumbai coastline was quite vulnerable. There has to be an increase of naval check-points, particularly around our harbors. Each ship / boat should be made to pass through at least two such checkpoints.
2. All major road and railways coming to the city should be subjected to such checkpoints.
3. Major traffic cross-roads should have automatic alarm systems : these junctions should be sealed off in the case of an emergency. The response latency to alerts should be brought down to the bare minimum possible.
4. There should be an increase of numbers in the reserve civilian police, which can react to such situations.
5. The water supply system should be subject to severe monitoring and double-checks.
6. The public transport infrastructure (particularly commuter trains) should have more intensive checks and inspections.
7. Periodic inspections need to be done by dedicated squad members for the detection and disposal of bombs in public markets and crossroads.

These measures are necessary to prevent large scale collateral damage in urban terrorist attacks.

The Case for God

Does God exist ?

A very loaded question. People have very strong opinions on this subject, and they will not like you for being lectured. However, I will take this risk and write on this topic today. Please treat me kindly.

Till very recently, my position on the question of God's existence could be termed "nihilistic". A nihilist is a person who doesn't care. God doesn't exist ? Okay. What matters is that there is a reason behind everything. And life and nature are so lovely, we don't have to care about God. God exists ? Cool. But then, he has some explanation to do.

I have been quite happy with my position. I was raised in a family which encouraged me to question everything and have a rationalistic and scientific view of life. We were not religious, and we were definitely not into religious custom.

I was never an atheist - a person who strongly believes that God doesn't exist. To prove that something doesn't exist, you should first know what it is. The concept of God seemed so unimportant to me that I didn't want to spend time disproving all its attributes.

I did agree with several atheistic points : such as that God doesn't have anything to do with the origin of man (I go with the theory of evolution), the creation of earth and the elements (I go with the big bang theory) etc. In general, I have suspected (and do suspect now) God as a hypothetical being which is created as a ready-made answer for all the questions by lazy people who don't want to think. For this reason, I have been hostile to the idea of God, even though I wouldn't want to call myself an atheist.

There were times in my life, when I experimented with alternate positions.

In my childhood, I once actively engaged myself with believing in God : God is this guy who is playing a game with you, something like blindman's buff. It was my task to discover who it was, by tricking him to have a conversation with me. For example, I did something nice, and checked what God gives me in return. It was a nice game, but I was soon tired of this.

Then , sometime in my adolescence, I have been fascinated by Mathematics. I thought that if God exists, this should be proven. Not by some strange or weird thing that happens occasionally, such as you magically getting saved from an accidant (I was, once), or a statue starting drinking milk (it did). No, God should be proved as a theorem. Not hypothesized as an exception. I was amazed to learn that there were several branches of philosophy which specialize in this. But they all seemed very esoteric and insipid, so I decided to look into them when I get old.

But there was one strand of philosophy which fascinated me. It was called logicism, that everything comes down to logic. This is the idea of Leibniz, and at that time I was a big fan of Leibniz as I was starting to learn calculus. I called myself a logicist, to the utter incomprehension of my friends. They thought I was just showing off (which was partly true). The thing with logicism is that if everything gets down to logic, then God is logic.

But this quaint world was shattered during my engineering days, when I learned Godel's incompleteness theorem. Damn, logicism was not cool anymore.

If God exists, God cannot be logic. It should be something else. What is it ?

Well, I decided I don't care. I became a nihilist. And started quoting Nietzsche, again annoying my friends.

A couple of weeks ago, I realized there exists something which can be called God.

I will try to explain with a few examples.

1) You are watching a soccer match on television. You are cheering for your team, "Come on guys, you can do it.. I know you can make the goal. Yes, move on like that".. Deep down in your mind, you are thinking that these whispers of yours are being heard by the players and motivating them. But, let's take an objective viewpoint and check if these thoughts of yours make any difference to the performance of the team. There is no known law in physics which can prove this for you.

2) You hear that a family member of a close friend of yours is in hospital over a severe illness. You tell your friend, "Don't worry my friend. Everything will be alright. She will survive." Your friend smiles a little on hearing your words. How can your thoughts make any difference to the chances of survival of a remote patient ? There is nothing in physics that can prove this.

3) The person that you love deeply is going to live faraway. You don't know whether she will lead a happy life, or if she finds herself in the midst of troubles. You wish deep inside you that she is happy, and you believe that it is true. How can your love make someone else happy at another location, if you are not even communicating it ?

What I am trying to argue is that there are several things such as hope, love and wishes which are not quite logical. They cannot be proved by science (atleast, they are not yet proven). But we believe in them anyways. This is what I say is God.

When you look objectively at the meaning of God, it has always been this. It is a sincere wish of a human for the wellbeing of another human. This is called hope. In all our culture, God was a synonym for this hope.

I wish upon Athena to look kindly upon me when I debate with someone. I wish upon Neptune to let my ship pass peacefully through his seas. I wish upon Lakshmi to bless you with wealth in your endeavour. And so on.. When you leave from my place, I say good-bye - a shortening of "god be with you".

If you understand God as hope, I will vouch for you that God exists. It you understand God as love, I will vouch for you that it is true.

Let me elaborate. I suspect that there is a hidden ether which connects all human minds (and even plants and animals) and their wishes. When you wish for something deeply for someone, this wish propagates through this ether and reaches the other person. It will make it nicer for that person by modifying the parameters of the physics around. This concept is not yet discovered in science, but I am sure that it is true. We will discover it one day, as we all discover it every day in our lives.

Sacrifice Delhi , Save India

There is a nice verse in my language which says, "A nation does not mean land. A nation means people". This is what I meant when I said Save India.

Let's abolish theologies, let's abolish nationalism. Let's give respect to the human spirit. Nothing is more sacred before that, not even the constitution.

Before you get your passions inflamed, try asking yourself a simple question : Do you like India or do you like Indians ? If you choose the later, then you are a true patriot.

India does not mean the empire of Ashoka. It does not mean the pillars of learning of Shankaracharya. It does not mean the kingdoms of Ramayana. It does not mean a mega utopia which was supposedly destroyed by some invading Muslims. It does not mean the glories of the Mughal empire. It does not mean the eastern bulwark of Islam. It does not mean anything in the past. India is a living notion. It exists in the "now". And it exists in its people.

These people might have had a past, but they live in the present. We should accept what they are right now.

In our journey as an independent country, we Indians are at a crucial juncture : we have to choose between territorial integrity and human integrity. Should we continue our abnormal military presence in Kashmir ? Should we subject every person to getting frisked seven times a day before he reaches to work ? Should we subject our own citizens there to continuous curfews ? Should we continue to impose the rule of the army in one of the states ? Should we give no regard to the democratic aspirations of our own citizens ? Is this what we want to achieve as a nation ? Is this our idea of India ? How many of our own brothers do we have to kill, torture and make disappear for preserving this idea ?

If we continue to tighten our fists, we risk to alienate our own citizens. This is not nation building.

India is an amazing land of diversity. In its richness or heritage, it is no way inferior to the continent of Europe. In what way is Telugu inferior to Spanish ? Then why is it that nobody outside India is even aware of Telugu ? In what way is Kashmiri culture inferior to Polish culture ? Then why does Poland deserve a flag but not Kashmir ?

These questions can be suppressed for years when the population is poor or uneducated, but they are bound to prop up in the minds of the people. What prevents the rest of the Indian citizens from the fear of a cultural subjugation from the Hindi heartland ?

You can shove these fears under the carpet, but they will keep multiplying and keep surfacing with increased ferocity. We will see ethnic strife against minorities in Mumbai. We will see the kidnap and murder of Bengalis in Tripura. We will see Naga rebels fighting in the hills. And we will see a minor issue of 40 acres rise into a full blown freedom struggle and eventually demand the lives of 30 Kashmiris.

No, we cannot shove our fears under the carpet. We have to look at them straight in the eye, and solve the problem. If we do not do that, our country will suffer the fate of Yugoslavia. When it happens, the break up will be rapid, and it will be bloody. Horrors such as genocide will be commited. Hindus and Muslims will massacre each other. India and Pakistan will face outright war, and heaven knows if nuclear weapons will be used.

Before you jump onto the pseudo nationalistic bandwagon of Hindutva, trying to build a glorious Ram Rajya or avenge for the historical wrongs of Islamic invasions etc, please think about where this will lead you. The same is true for people who jump onto the pseudo bandwagon of Islamic glory.

Under the horrors of genocide and nuclear war, can we preserve even a portion of our civilization ? Will we be able to preserve the temple of Madhura ? Will we be able to preserve the Taj Mahal ?

What can we do to avert these dangers ? This is where comes the other part of the title of this blog - Sacrifice Delhi. We have to sacrifice our union government. We have to sacrifice some of our symbols. We need to provide more autonomy to the states. I don't know what this autonomy means : does it mean different flags ? does it mean different constitutions ? does it mean different passports ? I don't know : we need to innovate and we need to do it quickly. It is inevitable, the faster we do it, the more bloodshed we will save.

I have just visited Strassburg, a lovely city of a thousand years of history. This city had a bloody past with periodic occupations from France and Germany. Now it houses the European parliament. Why can't Srinagar be given a similar status, serving as a bridge between India and Pakistan, instead of as a dispute ?

When we think about it, the issue of autonomy is exactly where differences creeped in between Nehru and Jinnah. Let's go where our freedom fighters dared not tread. Let's try to create a union of equals. Let's redefine democracy in the internet age. Let's redefine the notion of a constitution.

Let's take our subcontinent to the true place it deserves. Can Punjab be united ? Can Bengal be united ? Can Kashmir be united ? Yes, let's break the Berlin walls of the east.

Let's forget the horrors of partition. Let's rediscover our true heritage of 5000 years together. Let's model the union of SAARC countries in the fashion of the European Union. Let's have our parliament in Srinagar. Let's have our court of human rights in Jaffna. As we sacrifice Delhi, we will save our India. We will save the spirit of brotherhood between Indians.

James Hansen on Charlie Rose : Nuclear Now

Humanity should look forward to using 4th generation nuclear reactors. Breeder reactors are essential for a sustainable energy future.

Solving global warming requires us a moratorium on using coal. If we wish to leave an inhabitable planet for our future generations, we should stop using coal right now.

Dr James Hansen, one of the first scientists to alert us on global warming is here on an interview with Charlie Rose. I highly recommend everyone to read the book of Tom Blees, which details all the technologies that will make a huge difference in our future (about to come out). The introduction chapter is free. (I am glad to have met Tom on grist).

Another technology of breeder reactors that have a lot of promise are the Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors. This model is different from the Fast Breeder Reactor that India is developing. India should invest a lot more money for the development of breeder reactors in general, because we have huge reserves of Thorium.

Eco-Dollar : Future Global Currency

What is money ?

It is the index of the capacity at which you can consume different resources - food, clothing, housing, ornaments, entertainment etc. What determines your capacity to access these resources is the amount of energy that you possess. For most of the history of mankind, these resources have been in very short supply. Most of the population remained poor, illiterate and lacking health opportunities. In an era of scarce resources (until 17th century - not so long ago), the only energy that could be tapped was that of human beings and that of beasts of burden. Money represented your societal influence and how you could manipulate other human beings.

Then, something extraordinary has happened (in England) during the 18th century : man started automating the modes of production. Slowly but steadily, several amazing changes have come by. Food became plenty and hunger was banished. Health care become available to all and death rates plummeted. For the first time ever, the entire population became educated. As resources became more accessible to every person, the meaning of money started to change. What determined your capacity to access resources is no longer your societal influence, but (a) the amount of fuels that you possessed and (b) the degree of automation available to you. This became the new meaning of money. Historically, the fuels-(a) have been fossil fuels such as coal and gasolene. The amount of automation-(b) that can be achieved is determined by the initial capital that you possessed. This marked the begining of capitalism.

The process of automation was not painless. Man had to start at step zero, with very little energy / capital available to his disposal. To make the first machines, this available capital was not even sufficient. So more capital was obtained by robbing other people. This robbery took several forms : colonization (asia), slavery (africa), ethnic cleansing (americas), pathetic working conditions and open wars (europe). This is the reason industrialization proceeded very slowly. But every single step of automation brought further amounts of energy to the disposal of man, making this a chain reaction. With the progress of industrialization , the economic product of the society grew exponentially. You can visualize this process as a rapid increase of the size of the tappable energy and resources pool.

In the two factors that determined money (a) energy available and (b) initial capital, (a) became so high that (b) started to become negligible. In other words, the world economic product became so high that capital no longer presented a constraint for further industrialization. This was first demonstrated during the Marshall plan when USA pumped in significant amounts of capital to the industrialization of war-torn economies of Europe and Japan. This marked the first signs of maturity for the process of industrialization, and the beginning of an age of plenty, when capital is no longer a constraint and it no longer need be robbed from other people. (At the end of the second world war, USA was very rich, accounting for one half of the world 's economic product).

The lack of capital, however, delayed the industrialization in countries which adopted closed economies. There was not a lot of initial capital available in the Soviet Union, so its industrialization suffered a lot of hiccups. These constraints on capital became further apparent when the Soviet budget was stretched during the space and weapon programs. Iran to this day has a lot of oil and gas, but it still cannot exploit them completely due to lack of sufficient capital. This makes it apparent for developing countries to adopt the strategy of inviting foreign capital for industrializing their societies. In our globalized world, the surplus capital is being exchanged for profits. As demonstrated by China and India, developing countries are industrializing rapidly at rates unseen before. This is a direct result of the increased magnitude of the current global economic product. When African countries industrialize in the future, their growth rates will be higher.

As the initial capital that one possesses is becoming less important, the world is entering a state where energy becomes the true currency. All global currencies of today are tied to energy prices. In our fossil fuel economy driven by gasolene, countries with huge oil reserves automatically became rich.

But fossil fuels are not sustainable. Further, they are dangerous for the environment (increased CO2 levels cause global warming). This makes it imperative that we shift to a new economy where we depend on alternative sources of energy. There are two possible sources : solar power and nuclear power. Solar power has the advantage of being completely renewable, but has the disadvantage of being very diffuse. Nuclear power, if driven by breeder reactors, can sustain us for a very long time. Our future economy will be driven by a combination of solar and nuclear energies.

Developing these two technologies will require capital input. But as we have seen already, capital is no longer a constraint in the current world. What poses a challenge is an established pecking order in business which has deep ties to the fossil fuel establishment. This needs to be overhauled.

Economic growth of a country can be reformulated as increase in the degree of automation in that country. If you want to ensure economic growth, use the money (energy) you possess to do two things (1) to create an infrastructure of automation to consume resources (2) to create an infrastructure of producing new energy. When (2) is completed, redirect the energy to (1).

This is a failsafe method of economic growth, with no stagflations or busts. Our current markets periodically suffer from busts because they lose track of these basic principles. The money is squandered as direct waste (such as waste of food, waste of fuel, stuff purchased but never used) or as investments in non-productive sectors such as real estate.

With solar and nuclear technologies, we will soon enter a world of abundant energy. In this world, neither capital nor energy will pose a constraint for further industrialization.

Instead, what will become increasingly important are the effects on the environment due to extensive consumption of resources. These effects will be visible as deforestation, depletion of soil due to intensive agriculture, loss of biodiversity, air pollution, large scale mining etc. These ecological constraints will be added as costs in the make up of money.

Let's call this new money the eco-dollar. We can define 1 eco-dollar as 1 kilo-watt-hour of energy, as produced from environmentally friendly sources. This will be the future global currency. The price of different commodities in eco-dollars will be calculated as a mixture of (1) the energy that is needed in their production and (2) their environmental side effects. For a comfortable life of an industrialized economy, Dr David Mackay estimates that each person needs 125 kwh of energy per day. In our future economy, this is equal to 125 eco-dollars per day. This will be ensured as the guarenteed minimum wage of everyone.

Imagine a world where each human being is given a robot and that the robot is powered by solar or nuclear energy. Imagine that the robot does all the work for the human. What does the human do ? Have fun.

In reality, there will be no single robot for each human but a huge automation network will be working for the entire human society. But human beings will work less and less, catering more time to finer things in life such as art, science and philosophy. This should be goal of our economic activity.

(In this post, I tried to compress several of my ideas spawned out of discussions on the grist environmentalist community. As I started to think deeper about sustainable energy, I became more and more convinced about the inevitability of human progress, industrialization and eradication of poverty. This is in some contrast to my earlier opinions as expressed in these posts).

H u m a n i t y . V s . E a r t h

My old roommates were a very intelligent and environmentally conscious people. We used to chat a lot. After a furious debate one day, I remember having this conversation with them.

"Imagine this hypothetical scenario. A large explosion is going to destroy our planet. You have two choices - save all the mankind and destroy the earth, or save the earth but destroy mankind. What would you do ? "

"But what will become of mankind if earth is destroyed ?"

"Imagine that we can ship us all in a spaceship, which has enough resources to keep us floating in space for a few centuries."

"But why will the earth be destroyed ? "

"Yeah. If you choose this option, earth will be destroyed with all the plants and animal life."

"And if you want to save the earth ? "

"Then not a single man will survive. That will be the end of mankind. The earth will remain intact though, along with all the plants and animals."

"But we don't understand. What are you talking about ? Why would it be like this ? "

"I told you it is a hypothetical scenario. Something like science fiction. I presented it just to know your judgement. Well, imagine that an asteroid is going to hit the earth, and that it contains a poisonous chemical. Contamination with this chemical in the atmosphere will kill all mankind, but it harms no other life form. To save mankind, imagine we can build a huge spaceship which is driven by some nuclear fusion energy. And to obtain this energy, a huge particle accelerator has to be built, which is known to create a black hole and destroy the earth. Now you have this choice - save the earth or save mankind. What will you do ?"

Then, my roommates gave me an answer which I did not expect.

"Save the earth, ofcourse. This whole spaceship plan for mankind is very silly. What about you ?"

"I think I will destroy the earth, and save mankind in this spaceship."

Instead of resolving the debate, this hypothetical scenario exposed the crux of our differences.

"Kiran, I didn't know you can be so cruel and insensitive. What is so great about mankind ? This planet is like our mother. How can you be so selfish as to destroy it for your own sake ? Infact, throughout history, we did nothing but damage to this planet. "

"But look at what is at stake. We human beings have discovered science, we have discovered art. All this will die along with mankind."

"What is so great about the things we have discovered ? Nature is a thousand times more beautiful than all the art that man can produce. Is there anything as pretty as nature .. with its waterfalls, forests and oceans ?"

"Yeah, I agree. Nature is amazingly beautiful. But I think you are underestimating the value of mankind. Imagine the great masters of art - Van Gogh, Beethoven, Kalidas. And all the great mathematicians and scientists that have come about."

"But this is nothing compared to the earth. If not for man, earth will produce another life form. We are no better than dolphins, or peacocks, or tigers. It is the earth that has the genius. Can man ever engineer something more amazing than an animal which occurs in nature ?"

"I think human beings are different from the rest of the animals. We do abstract thinking, which no other animal can do. Also, compassion is the sole propriety of human beings. The rest of the animal world is full of violence."

"This is crap. Human beings are the most selfish creatures to have ever evolved. To top it all, would be people like you, who want to destroy the earth to save themselves. You call this compassion ?"

"No, aren't you human beings as well ? You are even considering to kill yourselves to save the planet. This kind of thinking would not exist in other life forms. As for my decision, it has nothing to do with selfishness. I am arguing objectively for the sake of humanity, which I think deserves a lot of respect for its genius."

"Okay, we agree that human beings have some good qualities. But a good human being is an exception, and not the norm. There are only a few human beings that are intelligent, creative or compassionate. Most of the rest are selfish idiots that are better dead than alive."

"I think it is the opposite. I think the vast majority of human beings are creative and compassionate. There are only a few selfish persons who are evil."

"What kind of a world are you living in ? You have no commonsense. You will go about trusting every random person that comes across you ? "

"No, I don't completely trust a random person. But I give him a huge probability that he is good natured. I will confirm this opinion in a few interactions. More importantly, in a huge crowd of randomly sampled individuals, I trust that the majority will always make a good decision, provided they are all well informed."

My roommates laughed at this. "Look at our grand democracy, here in France. You think the majority makes a good decision ?". My roommates were referring to the president Sarkozy, quite unpopular in the student community, and always the butt's end for a lot of jokes. "No, the vast majority of them are selfish and stupid."

"I agree that the majority makes a bad decision, but only because they are uneducated or malinformed. I trust in the general goodness of mankind."

"That makes you a very stupid person. I agree that there are a few people who make all mankind proud. I will trust such a person and will do anything for him. But to destroy the earth for a handful of these people is stupid and also selfish."

"I think each single human being is capable of a genius, either in creativity or in compassion. This is what makes us different from animals, and why we are so precious. Each person is a candle waiting to be lit, an inspiration waiting to happen. It is unfortunate that most of us die without ever coming close to realizing our potential. Earth is our home, and ofcourse I love it. But would you like more the house or the people who live in it ?"

"Earth is not just an appartment, she is our mother. Even if you are so self centered as to think earth is your house, what will happen to you if there is no earth."

"It will be a sad day, but the genius of mankind will find a solution. May be we will colonize another planet. Also, you see, human beings live on multiple abstract planes, not just on the physical plane of this world. Imagine we might create a world of virtual reality as in Matrix, and float in the spaceship".

"There you go, you are degenerating from stupid to insane."

At this point, we agreed to disagree. My roommates were visibly angry with me, for what they thought is a selfish attitude. Myself, I was dumbstruck that such nice people as my roommates would devalue humanity over something so mundane.

This difference of opinion was vital in the way we thought about the world's problems.

I believed that global warming will be solved, by something very creative, such as carbon sequestration through sea algae, or by genetically modified bacteria which eat C02. My roommates will want to reduce the speed of the economy and stop pollution.

I contested that we can revert to nuclear power, and emit no greenhouse gases at all. They believed that nuclear waste would be an artificial damage which we human beings cannot consciously impose on this planet.

I argued that reducing the speed of the economy will push some people towards perennial poverty. They believed that reducing global poverty is important, but only secondary to saving the planet.

According to me, the biggest criminal thing in the world is extreme poverty, how several children die of hunger and diseases, or get pushed to perennial poverty without ever coming close to realizing their potentials and genius. According to them, the biggest criminal thing is the way we human beings mistreat the planet by our obscene consumption.

It is true that they and I often support the same issues. But we differ on a few points.

Not to disparage the environmentalist cause, but one should remember that Nazis were environmentalists too. For all my readers who haven't made their minds yet, I echo the Russell-Einstein manifesto. "Remember your humanity, and forget the rest."

F a t M e n R u n n i n g

Imagine a fat man running with a certain velocity. You watch him from aside, and notice that there is a sharp drop ahead of him. If he keeps running, the fat man will fall off into an abyss. You shout at him , asking him to change direction.

He replies, "I cannot do it now. According to Newton's first law of motion, I have to keep moving ahead with a constant velocity".

You say, "But you should change direction. You will die otherwise".

He replies, "You see. I am a body with a large mass, so I contain a lot of inertia."

You exclaim, "You have enough control in your muscles. Please force yourself to turn a bit. If you keep running forward, you will fall off the cliff in a couple of minutes."

He replies, " My eyes are clogged due to exertion. I cannot see anything beyond the next few metres. Since I don't believe in what I don't see, I will not listen to you."

You tell him. "You are getting tired. May be you should slow down."

He huffs and puffs, looks at you in anger, and retorts "You tell me I cannot keep running. I have enough energy within me to keep running for atleast 10 minutes".

You tell him, "But you are right about to fall off the.. "

There we end the story. The fat man dies.

It is immaterial if he fell off the cliff or if he suffered a heart attack due to over-exertion. What matters is that he has experimentally validated Newton's first law of motion, and that he prove himself to be a large object with a respectable mass and a strong inertia. May his soul rest in peace.

Let me tell you a frightening peace of information. The economic levers of the world are held by such fat men running (FMR). When they kill themselves, these FMRs take you down as well.

Most problems in the world have already their solutions discovered. If the problem persists, it is because of an FMR.

For example, we can solve the world's energy crisis by switching to nuclear power run on molten salt reactors. Some of the several FMRs behind the problem : oil industry, motor car industry, environmental protest for the sake of protest industry, nuclear fuel fabrication industry, strategic nuclear deterrent aka nuclear bomb industry.. All these FMRs have a mixed bag of joint investments ranging from media to retail, and from politics to toilet paper fabrication.

In fact, the FMRs care about nothing but their own momentum (momentum = mass * velocity). To keep their momentum going, these FMRs engage in noble duties such as looting, murder and the tough job of throwing bullshit around.

I present a few morsels of such bullshit for your examination

a) There is no energy crisis. You don't have to change your habits. We will increase oil production. Please stop entertaining silly ideas such as renewable energy.

b) We don't have enough resources in the world. Some population should necessarily starve or die from preventable diseases. We can't keep worrying about all and sundry. After all, what is the value of a human life ?

c) There are all kinds of bad guys out to get you. These include aliens, mutant cockroaches, ninja turtles, komodo dragons, chinese people and religious fundamentalists. So believe in us, and we will keep fighting a noble war against all these miscellaneous bad people.

I implore all you nice and goodlooking people to stop believing things as they come by.

Food, Daily Needs & Nuclear Power

What is the stupidest thing ever conceived and consistently executed by mankind ? Arguably, it is burning fossil fuels for getting energy. Oil, coal or natural gas release paltry amounts of energy as they burn with Oxygen in the atmosphere. These minerals are otherwise useful for making fertilizers, plastics and several valuable things. But as they get burned for energy, these mineral reserves get depleted at an enormous pace, and will vanish completely within 200 years ! The costs of energy rise exponentially, and so do the costs of everything (everything uses energy for production and for transport). As oil and coal reserves go downhill, so does the purchasing power of people. People will starve and governments will tumble.

The only people that get richer are those who control access to the tap. There are 23 countries in the world that derive at least 60 percent of their exports from oil and gas and not a single one is a real democracy !

But above all, fossil fuels are one of the dirtiest ways to derive our energy. Combustion of oil or coal releases thousands of waste products directly into our fragile atmosphere. Most of them are poisonous and a few of them are even radioactive. They are tremendously affecting the thin layer of atmosphere that sorrounds us - these effects range from global warming to acid rain. As a result, millions of people are dying and millions of plant and animal species are going extinct.

Why do we continue with this insanity ?

A green world run on nuclear energy

Let me present you an alternative scenario. We use solar energy to cater to about 30% of our energy needs, that is as much as it makes economical and ecological sense. For the rest of our energy needs, we construct nuclear power reactors which utilize Uranium and Thorium reserves. A new design called the breeder reactor, though slightly more costly to build, makes 100 times more efficient use of the nuclear fuel. Energy equivalent to a gallon of petrol will be produced as cheaply as 0.5 cents (6 paise for a litre of petrol in Indian terms). The electricity production will be entirely clean; the radioactive waste of the entire world for one year will fit into a small room. We convert this waste into glass, seal it in multiple layers and store it deeply in the rocks. We construct an elaborate railway network, and heavily discourage road transport. We replace gas-guzzling cars in the cities with noiseless electric vehicles. We run those indispensable road vehicles of the countryside using biofuels, and later shift to Hydrogen. In terms of safety and cleanliness, this economy will be million times more efficient.

In principle, this nuclear-fission based economy will be sustainable for several million years. But within a few hundred years, science will inevitably discover newer, more efficient ways of producing energy.

In this series of posts (tagged nuclear), my objective is to untangle a few strands from the cobweb of doubt and fear which sorround nuclear energy. Many people have legitimate concerns about nuclear, and I treat them with respect. My intention is to add some more information and perspective into this debate.

" What's at stake ? "

Opposition to nuclear energy is costing us the battle with coal and oil. This opposition is fuelled discretely by oil and coal company bosses, who might infiltrate green environmental groups with their spies ! Solar energy cannot fight coal and oil by itself, and it is not just good people who are aware of this. A shift away from oil based economy will hurt certain people, and they will do their best to prevent this shift from happening.

The US dollar is tied to the oil prices, and a falling dollar is accentuated by an immediate rise in oil prices. These oil prices drive the prices of food and daily needs everywhere around the world, as is happening right now. Whenever there is talk of investing in clean energy options, the oil prices are strategically reduced. The very next moment, they are rised again. A lot of FUD is spread over all kinds of alternative energies, including nuclear. Unconsciously, several environmental groups become party to this strategy. Breaking from the vicious oil economy through nuclear power is vital to ensuring the security of food and daily needs in poor countries.

If the primary concern with oil is inflation, that with coal is pollution. The statistics are alarming. China is building 10 times more coal plants than nuclear plants. A similar story repeats throughout the world. The filth dumped by coal into the atmosphere affects the world in entirety. This is why it is important to encourage clean energy production, particularly in developing countries such as India.

"Breeder reactors can never be built, so nuclear energy is a lost hope"

Answer : Without breeder reactors, the nuclear resources in earth will not last for more than 600 years. And without breeder reactors, there will be enormous amounts of nuclear waste awaiting disposal. But breeder reactors lie at the heart of nuclear hope. This is because these reactors use 60% of the Uranium fuel instead of the 0.3% used in the current light water reactors(LWR). With breeders, nuclear resources will last for several millions of years ! There have been several efforts in the world to construct breeder reactors, but most of these reactors have been abandoned now. Sly anti-nuclear activists look upon this fact as a proof that breeders can never be constructed.

The truth is more intriguing. Firstly, breeder reactors have been successfully demonstrated, and we have 300 reactor-years of experience in operating them worldwide. India has been operating an experimental breeder reactor since 1985 ! Indian nuclear scientists have demonstrated a revolutionary design in 2005 of 'A Thorium Breeder Reactor' that can produce 600 MW of electricity for two years 'with no refuelling and practically no control manoeuvres.' This has been dubbed as the world's safest nuclear reactor. With such highly efficient designs available, why do we not construct breeder reactors ?

As it currently stands, reprocessing spent Uranium in breeder reactors is more expensive than mining fresh Uranium from earth. As long as shallow reserves of Uranium are available (for the next 60 years), breeder reactors will be economically unfavorable.

An MIT interdisciplinary panel has discouraged breeder reactors for not making economical sense currently, but this anti-nuclear activist has quoted this to say that the breeder design itself has been termed infeasible. This type of reporting is extremely dishonest.

Even though breeder reactors are currently uneconomical, we do well to construct them because they are essential for securing our energy's future.

Breeder reactors have also drawn a lot of political ire due to the fact that they produce high grade plutonium, which can potentially be used for bombs. The India-US nuclear deal had been in hot water for a few months due to the perceived US objections against breeder reactors. These objections have later been resolved in the current version of the deal.

The most visible example of a discontinued breeder reactor is the Superphénix reactor in France. The reason it stopped working was because of a missile attack by a radical environment group !

Technically speaking, ther are absolutely no hindrances for constructing breeder reactors. However, there are several political hurdles that need be overcome.

"Reduce consumption and use solar energy. Don't go nuclear."

Answer : No doctor will prescribe the same medicine for obesity and malnutrition. There is a humongous disparity in the consumption levels of the world today. It is true that most of the consumption in Western societies is wasteful and directly harmful to the environment. But nuclear energy is a valuable aide in lifting up the living standards of the developing world. The energy-consumption levels of the third world will have to inevitably rise to obtain decent living standards.

Apart from producing greenhouse gases, we are rapidly depleting mineral and water reserves (Consumerist societies are meat eating. Production of meat consumes 12 times more water than the production of vegetable protein). Some of the clean energy options such as bio-fuels, wind power and hydel power compete with food production for these resources, so they have to be used with care. The depletion of these resources will cause famine and war all over the world. As I have mentioned earlier in my blog, bio-fuels could be a valuable tool in making land profitable in the developed world, thus ending the food subsidies that are enjoyed by big farmers there. Developing countries should look upon bio-fuels more carefully, because they are more pressed for land and water.

Both nuclear and solar energy are valuable towards desalinating water, and averting famine. Along with attempts at reducing consumption, these novel sources of energy will prove priceless in improving the well being of the world.