40 Million Years of Uranium, at 10X Current Use

Image SourceAnd there is more than 3X as much Thorium as Uranium in Earth's crust. According to Brian Wang, there is an estimated 40 trillion tons of Uranium in Earth's crust, and over 120 trillion tons of Thorium. Only 67,000 tons of Uranium are "consumed" yearly. If rational fuel enrichment and re-cycling is incorporated into the fission cycle, Earth would never run out of fissionable uranium.

The Thorium cycle is safer and less prone to weapons proliferation. Fortunately, we have over 100 million years worth of Thorium.

But talking about millions of years of nuclear fission is simply silly, considering the likelihood that scalable nuclear fusion will be practical sometime in the next 20 to 30 years. How much would the world change in the face of abundant nuclear fusion energy?

Fully developing the capabilities of nuclear fusion and nanofactories and accessing these resources in the solar system is the end of scarcity scenario. _BrianWang's NextBigFuture

Brian is quite correct: the combination of abundant fusion energy with perfected molecular nano-assemblers would mean the end of scarcity in the human world -- for a period of time.

But the mean human IQ of planet Earth is now less than 90. In 40 years Earth's mean IQ is likely to be in the middle or lower 80's, if current demographic trends continue. The combination of abundant energy, abundant wealth, hyper-advanced technologies, AND LOW AVERAGE INTELLIGENCE, is a deadly mix. Unscrupulous politicians -- similar to those now ruling North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, or Iran -- would find a way to control access to energy, wealth, and technology. The politically connected would live better than any king or emperor throughout human history. The great masses of common people -- those who are not imprisoned in work camps, psychiatric institutions, or torture facilities for dissent or thinking disloyal thoughts about the great leader du jour -- are likely to suffer, as they always have.

Human nature is not likely to change in the world at large. Humans are not going to grow more intelligent, on average. New technologies of wealth and power will be controlled by insiders, in most countries. They will be used to enrich the inner circle, and to control everyone else.

If the dieoff.orgiast gang of militant greens happen to be in control of the countries where cornucopian technologies are developed, they will find themselves -- at last -- in a position to correct all the evils of man about which they have bitterly complained for so long.

Read Brian's article carefully and you will see that he has included warnings and cautions, along with optimism. Brian's blog is one of the resources of the Lifeboat Foundation, after all. The Lifeboat Foundation is all about keeping human civilisation going in the face of the wide range of existential threats of the future -- manmade and otherwise.

With great opportunity comes great danger.

Peak oil catastrophe is for dummies, to be sure. Like climate catastrophe, it is a political contrivance. But sometimes abundance can be a greater threat than scarcity. We need to be prepared.