Ideas 28-3...Zero Carbon Requires Drastic Change In Lifestyle

In addition to its forest of polluting coal fired power stations, the PRC also has a couple of HTR-PM pebble bed nuclear fission reactor power stations, which were switched on in late 2021. Originally conceived in South Africa and developed in Germany, pebble bed is regarded as the safest type of nuclear fission reactor. There are also thorium nuclear fission reactors in existence. Whilst India has long term plans for building such power stations when its uranium and plutonium fuels are exhausted, the PRC has already built 2 such prototype power stations. India has a natural abundance of thorium, whilst the PRC's stockpile is as a bi-product of the refining of rare earths. Thorium is 3 times more abundant than Uranium. If the US had pursued a policy of building thorium nuclear power stations in the sixties, then it would have achieved energy independence by the year 2000, whilst deposits in the USA would have lasted 1000 years. The reason it did not is because you cannot employ thorium reactors to produce nuclear materials for nuclear weapons. In addition numerous nations are now competing to be the first to mass produce modular nuclear fission power stations.

Inside the power plant’s control room, the operators monitor the operational conditions of fuel in the reactor core. The reactors are fuelled by uranium dioxide UO2. The core is composed of 312 fuel assemblies. Each assembly consists of 126 fuel rods that contain the fuel pellets. Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant. 6 November 2012 Photo Credit: Petr Pavlicek / IAEA

Competing against nuclear fusion is SMR (Small Modular Reactors) as used in nuclear submarines. The UK has Rolls-Royce, the USA has TerraPower, Last Energy and Westinghouse Electric, whilst Japan has GE-Hitachi and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The disadvantage will still be the cost of decommissioning and waste disposal.

The next few images are of the National Ignition Facility, Nuclear Fusion Reactor, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA. There are numerous ways in which nuclear fusion can be achieved, laser ignition being one of them.

In addition to the modular nuclear fission reactors proposed by Rolls Royce, emerging at the same time will be nuclear fusion. The mass production of nuclear fusion power stations here in the UK would definitely improve the countries balance of payments situation, assuming there were enough countries with sufficient funds to buy them, where photo-voltaics and wind power were not applicable.

It is predicted that in the year 2025 Tokamak Energy Ltd., UK, will have achieved sustained fusion, generating electricity by employing a steam turbine. If HMG takes this technology seriously, mass production of compact nuclear fusion power plants, many for export, will commence in 2030. To safeguard this technology, to prevent it being misused, it would have to be operated and guarded by UK personnel, its ownership remaining in UK hands. Only electricity exported to the national grid would be sold. It is highly likely that initial batches of HB11 reactors will be sold to the military, to power anti-satellite, anti-missile beam weapons on space platforms, which would also defend stealthy Earth orbiting com-sats, intel-sats and ground targeting kinetic energy weapon's platforms. This assumes that the necessary start up energy can be derived from a nuclear fission source.

This technology has the potential to stimulate the UK's power station and ship building industries. Should these reactors become small enough, they could also power aircraft, trains and other land vehicles. This, at a time when airliner wing production by Airbus is not guaranteed in the UK. It could therefore rekindle the UK aircraft industry, once a world leader. In August 2021 it was announced that Canadian company General Fusion will build its reactor design (70% full size) at Culham, UK. In September 2021 MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Centre, and Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced that they have successfully tested their high temperature superconducting magnet to 20 Tesla. The race is on.

When will HMG give the go ahead for the mass production of HB11 nuclear fusion reactors? I'm certain that the laser technology already exists, when you consider the huge amounts spent on laser weaponry. An HB11 reactor consists of a steel ball which houses a hydrogen-boron11 pellet, which is replaced say after being zapped by a laser beam every second. Two ultra-high powered (petawatt) "chirped pulse amplification" lasers are employed, one to zap the pellet, whilst the second contains the plasma. The laser pulse is stretched out temporally and spectrally, then amplified, and then compressed again. The stretching and compression uses devices that ensure that the different color components of the pulse travel different distances. These lasers were developed at Rochester University in the mid 1980s, and considering all the expense of developing them since by the military, why are they not now available? The HB11 process produces electricity directly, without the need for steam generation and turbines. It would be the easiest and therefore quickest power source to mass produce for a planet that urgently needs fixing, when it comes to global warming.

10...Bio-Engineering Food

Bioengineering is not just confined to the design and production of pharmaceuticals. The quest for clean fuels and artificial food to replace beef, lamb, pork and fish, in order to save the planet's forests and natural food chains, is a goal nurtured by numerous research establishments.

Synthetic fuels were produced by the Nazis during world war two, and still are at Sasolburg, South Africa, triggered by sanctions due to apartheid. Whilst controlled processes in a laboratory can produce a synthetic fuel, the costs are uncompetitive, compared to the low price of petrol, diesel and kerosene (jet fuel), without subsidies. Attempts to produce biofuel from algae are currently not considered commercial due to slow production and minimal output. Subsidized projects exist in effluent treatment works and cement works. The only project that is currently a mainly private venture is that by Porsche of Germany. The plant at Haru Oni in Chile will produce hydrogen from the electrolysis of water (H2O) to produce hydrogen and oxygen. The electricity for this will come from a wind farm. At the same time biofuels or the atmosphere will provide carbon dioxide (CO2). The CO2 and H2 will be combined to form methanol, which will be converted to gasoline for road vehicles employing internal combustion engines. This process is described in greater detail on a video in Youtube. Another research project on Youtube describes the production of biofuel from an artificial leaf plus sunlight and CO2.

The production of artificial meat comes in two categories, textured vegetable protein, grown from plants and is also called vegan meat. The alternative is meat grown in cell culture. I didn't find many British companies involved in this industry, a serious omission considering the UK imports 50% of its food, whilst HMG is pulling out of the EU, replacing the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) with land reclamation and wildlife preservation, thereby reducing agricultural output even further. How else are we going to save our tropical rain forests, thereby reducing CO2 levels, than by drastically reducing our import of grown products?

Much research is presently being undertaken by Quorn, Finless Foods and others on the production of artificial meats. Whilst initial products are likely to appear on supermarket shelves, this technology can also be transferred to a biome. It is likely that by 2050 biomes will be producing artificial meats (animal and fish) in vats or incubators, employing the ingredients, sugar, fungi, stem cells and colour / flavour agents. This product will be 3D printed onto a plate, and then cooked in a smart microwave oven, like the Miele M-chef, with vegetables or fruits. All computer controlled from downloaded calorie controlled menus, this mealie maestro will initially replace chefs in work's canteens, before being made available to the general public. In 2019 NASA was working on a 3D robotic chef, for astronauts in space, with the company BeeHex

11...Rapid Transit

Rapid transit trains began with British Rail's 125 diesel engines 125mph (200km/h), and the competition has got faster ever since. The French TGV train travels at 186 mph (298km/h), whilst the Japanese bullet train's speed is 200mph (320km/h). British Rail's high speed train which tilts on corners moves at 156mph (250km/h), but like so many government sponsored projects failed to go into production. Faster trains will dispense with the wheels and be magnetically levitated, known as the monorail or maglev. The UK scientist Eric Laithwaite developed a full size maglev in 1973 but the project was eventually cancelled by HMG. The UK didn't need it due to the short distances between stations, whilst the export potential clearly wasn't considered. Continued development of maglev was conducted in Germany and the PRC however. The track from Beijing to Shanghai, to be completed in 2030, is anticipated to provide travel at speeds of 375mph (600km/h). Existing trains on this route achieve speeds of 217mph (350km/h). To increase speeds further it is necessary to place the train in a vacuum tube, thereby reducing aerodynamic drag. It's called the hyperloop. Hyperloop is being promoted by Tesla, Virgin and Transpod, to name just a few. Transpod is proposing a hyperloop from Calgary to Edmonton in Canada. The wait time between pods would be 80 seconds, with speeds 3 times that of high speed trains, namely 1000km/h. In a country beset with snow storms and long distances between cities, making the maintenance of remote track difficult, it makes sense to go for an above ground tube system. However, they all suffer from the failure to transport passengers from door to door, which is what computer driven taxi-vans and air taxis can do. There lack of flexibility therefore, maybe their undoing. For below ground systems there is also the effect of Earth's shifting tectonic plates, earthquakes, floods and volcanism to consider, whilst the difficulty of passenger rescue and inconvenient repairs, could lead to lengthy shutdowns. Elon Musk's Hyperloop company was shut down at the end of 2023.

Whether HMG remains a super power depends upon its vision when developing high tech products, like those just listed, and willingness to police the world. Building relatively slow moving surface vessels, be they aircraft carriers or a fleet of inflatable jihadic power boats, presents no problems to a nav-sat and AI guided kinetic energy projectile from space. The cost of these projects is nothing compared to the huge sums which have been poured into the world's banking system by central banks. Free capitalism is anything but free.

As regards the global economic crisis (credit crunch) there are a number of questions that perhaps you should consider:

1 Why doesn't USG buy back all of this sub-prime mortgage debt from around the world, fraud that its regulatory bodies should have stopped? That would make this problem a national shame, not a global crisis. I do not hear any demands from any government for the US Government to do just that. Why not? The USG will not even buy up all the sub-prime debt in the US despite initially saying that it would. Nationalisation of US banks is no longer contemplated. However, despite the UK having the strongest economy in 2016, some of its banks are still at risk, notably RBS and Barclays. Carrying out stress tests on banks doesn't make them more durable.

2 This global economic crisis would not have happened had all financial institutions been transparent in their operations and finance, and been regulated effectively. Lack of transparency is a tradition in an industry beset by employee fraud and theft, to which we can presumably add executive callous incompetence, motivated by greed, which they all appear to be hell bent upon covering up. It is also clear from the huge personal debt created and the huge number of unemployed, under employed and slaves in Far East sweat shops, that either governments do not understand economics or don't give a damn about how their citizens are treated by such an ideology. Maybe government loyalties lie elsewhere? Global agreement in solving these problems appears to be as illusive as that for global warming, where there has been little achieved but carbon trading, amounting to water and wind over the last twenty years. Financial institutions and energy companies are the major contributors to political parties. This may well explain why HMG has been so supportive of our failed banks, and why it is so reluctant to abandon fossil fuel based energy dependence. HMG is in effect committing deception in representing the interests of big business over that of the electorate. Parliament represents the people, whilst government represents big business. If it turns out that it is also deliberately over valuing bank assets that it guarantees, that would amount to fraud.

3 Why has it taken one and a half years since the start of the global economic crisis for HMG to sanction quantitative easing? After all, the longer you leave it the more companies have gone to the wall and the fewer intact companies there remains to reactivate. Economics is as complicated as the weather. Without super computers, computer programs that include thousands of essential parameters and a transparent financial system that reveals the values for those parameters, it is not possible to make accurate strategic decisions which will lead to a fruitful economy for all. Based upon events, one gets the impression that the Treasury had no such technology at the time of this collapse. This technology should even be able to select projects, plus suitable personnel to employ on them, from a government database in order to stimulate regional economies.

4 The US Securities and Exchange Commission has investigated at least six financial institutions since last October 2009, the most prominent being the $50 billion pyramid selling Bernard Madoff Hedge Fund and the cricket supporting Stamford Financial Group with 30,000 clients in 130 nations. UK's Phoenix warned the US regulators about Madoff years ago, whilst employees of Stamford also spilled the beans to regulators ages ago. For eight long years Chancellor Gordon Brown's adviser's were locked away from civil servant advisers, pursuing their own economic plans. This beggars the question, is USG waging economic warfare, possibly with HMG's co-operation, presumably to create a world order dominated by the USG's vision of a big business dominated world democracy? If there is no conspiracy, then it plainly shows that governments only have the capability to regulate one bank, their central bank...hopefully.

5 Considering the hundreds of billions of pounds that are now being poured into British banks, why didn't HMG turn its back on them and pass a bill through parliament re-activating the post office's giro bank and compelling all people and organisations in this country to have current and deposit accounts with it, whilst also making personal off shore bank accounts illegal? Surely this would have been a cheaper alternative, since the text messages pouring into BBC News 24 at the time HMG bailed out Northern Rock clearly showed the dangers of such a policy when they read, "what's the government going to do when the next bank goes under." Did the PM pursue this policy simply because the entire economic strategy of HMG is to maintain the status quo? HMG may call it essential re-capitalization, but I call it a blood sucking ransom paid to sniggering executives.

6 There is one inescapable question to which I cannot find an answer. Why didn't the banks that bought all these sub prime mortgages, check them, long before BNP Paribas blew the whistle? To check the properties one only had to type in the address on an internet search engine to see what it looked like, and it can't be all that difficult to check the references of the buyers, notably their ability to pay, the information for which, must have been included in the packages in order to check them. It also beggars the question, since a nation's economy is the most important thing governments should monitor, why didn't the security services and financial regulatory bodies detect early on, what these spivs were up to?

Currently no one from the Economics Crimes Department of the City of London police have arrested Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and every other prime minister and chancellor, for misconduct in public office, since the birth of monetarism in the 1980s. Neither have they arrested any executives, banking or otherwise, who have clearly pursued a policy over many years of maximizing their salaries, bonuses and pensions with scant regard for the long term viability of the companies they were meant to protect and defend, along with the job security of their employees and the strategic economic well being of the nation that they were meant to be loyal towards. All of these people deliberately committed economic sabotage for their own ends, and perhaps for others. Only when these arrests are carried out and pursued with vigour can people say to themselves that change for the better has truly arrived.

Revenge by any means does not improve the nation's financial circumstances. The total UK personal debt had risen to 1.616 trillion pounds in 2018. The UK national debt as a percentage of GDP was about 47% in 2007, and in 2015 it had risen to about 84%. With the situation this bad, it does make one wonder why HMG is so keen to spend money on large infrastructure projects and defence instead of R&D, and projects that will generate tax revenue, or reduce government expenditure in the long term. Immediately after WWII and into the sixties the top income tax rate was around 90%, with strict exchange controls, to encourage investment in the UK. The top rate of income tax was reduced from 83% to 60% in 1979. It was reduced again to 40% in 1988. The income tax rate in 2019 was 45% for earnings over 150,001 pounds. There is clearly no austerity.

With so much growing global debt, and an economy so dependant upon banking services, it's like being in bed with a volcano. You simply don't know when it will erupt again. And erupt it most certainly will. The highest top rate of income tax in the UK was during WWII. It was 99.25%. Now that's austerity. The foundations of today's national debt was created by unrealistic low top income tax rate and punitive 15% borrowing base rate in the 1980s, imposed by PM Margaret Thatcher. In addition, tax revenue from North Sea oil and gas was not placed in an investment fund. Norway's oil and gas tax revenue was placed in a sovereign wealth fund which now stands at one trillion US dollars, for its five million citizens, as of 2019. The monetarist policy that still exists today in the UK, is retained by a totally apathetic, incompetent and corrupt political system, retained by an electorate that often doesn't think before it votes. When it comes to competence there is little difference between the two main political parties in the UK. They are both a liability. It's a sorry state of affairs, which may never improve.

To make matters worse, we can now see the seeds of leading technology germinating in Germany. I am of course referring to Elon Musk's mega car factory for the Tesla Y electric vehicle, taking root at a green site at Brandenburg. Ten thousand workers will produce half a million cars per annum, plus their battery cells starting in mid 2021. To achieve such remarkable progress in breakneck speed was made by abolishing the beaucracy that normally infests both Germany and the UK. Yes people are protesting about all the trees being cut down and the effects on the water table, but it's still being built. I can remember HMG trying to get a third London airport built on Maplin Sands decades ago, now reduced to arguing about a third runway at Heathrow. We lost this project to Germany solely because of the decrepit state of our non-existent written constitution. Clearly the stimulus plan listed here will have to be preceded by the creation of a WT. Times have changed. The global economy has become cut throat and clearly we need a political system to match. After the pandemic of 2020 it will be even more cut throat. As of February 2021 the estimated cost of the Covid-19 pandemic to HMG is 400 billion pounds. Deaths from Covid-19 in the UK stand at over 120,000, with a population of 67 million, whilst in Taiwan they are only nine, from a population of 24 million. The UK is doubly bankrupt, as are most nations. It will take at least ten years for national debts to be paid off, if ever. What will HMG do? Raise the taxes of the working class, whilst ignoring all that money the Bank of England can't find. If we don't get a world technocracy out of this global disaster then it will never happen, which means that the human race has no future.

In 2021 it was announced by HMG that it was looking for a replacement for the retired royal yacht, that would also act as an exhibition centre for UK manufacturing. The design submitted by HMG to the general public received fierce criticism. I think they should have looked to the Norwegian ship builders Vard, who are in the process of constructing a 222m long residential super yacht called Somnio at a price of £430 million. Part designed by London based Winch Design. In addition to having 39 luxury apartments, it will also serve as a laboratory for oceanographic and environmental research. The residents will also be kept up to date on global challenges and philanthropic issues. Now that got me thinking about all those millionaires and billionaires living it up in the UK who don't invest in job and wealth creating projects in this country. HMG could of cause leave them adrift in the rough seas of the Southern Ocean until they had changed their business model for the better on the nation. Surely if HMG put this project out to tender, then it would receive equally fantastic designs. This project was abandoned in November 2022 in a budget announcement. King Charles III is considering its replacement, as is Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons.

Judging by the stop-go economic policies of different governments in the UK, it is clearly about time that some other body took direct control of technological developments and investments in jobs, defence, etc. Parliament and government would have no say in the matter, for too many careers have been destroyed and too much hard earned tax payer's money has been lost in projects of no economic worth or technological robustness. Clearly there needs to be created a Strategic Technology Committee composed of scientists, producers and finance organisation, that have direct access to predictions in technological evolution and global economics from an AI based research centre. Amateurishness must be removed from politics, or bypassed. Politicians may like performers in parliament, investors do not. It's also time that Downing Street and the Palace of Westminster were handed over to tourists.

And as for Joe Public making that drastic change in lifestyle. Well, it's happening, but not how I envisaged. In 2022 the energy crisis has hit us thanks to the Russo-Ukraine war. So what can we do?

1...Insulate our homes. That's the loft, cavity walls and double glazed windows. You can insulate the floor if you can afford it. Install fluorescent lighting. LEDs if you can afford it. Reduce draughts. It sounds insignificant but even a small draught can result in expensive heat loss. Fit radiator reflectors where cavity walls are not insulated.

2...Get smart meters with the in-home-device, although over 30% of these in the UK are thought not to be working.

3...Turn off electrical appliances when not needed.

4...Wash your clothes less regularly and wash at a lower temperature if possible. Dry your wash on the clothes line, not in a tumble drier.

5...Set your combi boiler temperature to 19C. Have it on for the minimum period possible and wear plenty of pullovers.

6...At meal times, lick your plate. Which makes it easier to wash under the cold tap.

7...Stay in bed for as long as possible, with plenty of duvets on top of you, plus shared bodily warmth.

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November 2024 saw a severe drop in wind speed and sunshine over the UK, known as a dunkelflaute. Electricity generation from wind fell, whilst that from photo-voltaics also fell drastically. This clearly shows the need for a back-up system based upon nuclear, at a time when HMG is trying to phase out the UK's gas fueled electricity power stations.