Answers From LaRouche


Q:
Why do we need nuclear power?
How do gang-countergang operations
work in modern leftist movements?

                              
  - from February 1, 2023 National Cadre School

Question My question is, why should we have nuclear power, versus solar power, and how exactly the gang-countergang operations work, with a lot of these modern leftist movements? So, that's my question.

LaRouche: Okay. Because solar power is idiocy. Actually, solar power is nuclear power. Where do you think you get solar power? From nuclear fission and fusion, in the sun.

You want to eliminate nuclear power? No solar power.

Also, this whole idea of energy is crazy. You know, I believe in Don Quixote when it comes to windmills. We need Don Quixote now, for a useful mission! He's an important character of fiction, but now he can be an important character of reality. He can get out there with his lance, and knock some of these things down, and get this ugliness off the landscape, uh? These ugly things, these monsters up there, sitting up there snarling, killing birds. They kill birds! Bird-haters! [laughter]

Now, the point is... Now, this goes back to a piece of scientific idiocy, which was understood already -- the problem was understood by Plato, already. The concept of power, as opposed to that idiot Aristotle's concept of energy. So, when people talk to you about nuclear energy, or solar energy, they're Aristotelean idiots, who shouldn't be talking. They should be monkeys, and not talk. They can chatter, but not talk.

Because, the issue here is power.

Now, power is reflected in various ways in terms of energy, relative to what people call energy. Power had two features, generally, descriptively, in the form of energy. This is not where power comes from, but this is what power reflects, in terms of energy language. One, is energy flux density. What is the intensity of energy, apparent energy, per square kilometer, cross section area of motion? It's called energy flux density.

Now, compare the energy flux densities of various modes of power generation. Solar power is the least efficient. As a matter of fact, the use of solar power is insane. Because solar power has a very important use on this planet. Light. Light. What we want is more vegetables. We want more foliage. We want the deserts to bloom. What we want to do, is we want to get areas which are too hot, to cool down. We want more moderate weather. We want to turn the deserts into areas where people can live, under normal conditions.

How do we do that? We increase the biomass. Increase the amount of growth.

Now, for example, trees will absorb about 10 percent of the solar radiation hitting the earth's surface. It's very good. Take 10 percent of the solar energy, in a certain area; convert it into trees. You moderate the climate, both for winter and summer. You take an area which is a quasi-desert area, or desiccated area, and you convert it into a place where people can live. You convert areas which are useless, into areas where you grow food. So therefore, we want to manage what we're getting in terms of solar, heat radiation. We want to manage it, for the benefit of living processes on the earth. Including man.

For example. If we plant enough trees in the high plateau, or relatively high plateau, of southern India, we would probably lower the average temperature in the summer time, by 5 to 10 degrees. They need trees. Mrs. Gandhi had a program for putting in these semi-hybrid mango trees, and they're planting them all over the place. Developed at the Delhi Agricultural Institute of India. You know, the Indian people -- I don't know if you know what mangoes are, really know what they are. But when the mango crop harvests in India, everybody shuts down, and they'll take all the mangoes in sight, and if they've got a bathtub, they fill a bathtub with water, get naked, get in the bathtub with the mangoes, and eat. Because a ripe mango is a very popular thing. This is particularly true in Bengal.

But, a mango would be treated by the Indian farm family, as a family heritage. The tree comes, these special trees, come to fruit in three years. And then they fruit every year. And the fruit is delicious. So obviously, if you give a farmer help in planning these tress, and maintaining them, the farmer's family is going to protect those trees, and they will be assigned to the children to maintain them. Because these trees are now a family heritage. of something they like. They're not going to chop those trees down for firewood, as they did before -- what happened in turning the Deccan area into a semi-desert.

So, we've got our western land. You've got the great American desert. Look at southern California. Look at what's happened to the aquifers. This is insane! Look at Northern Mexico; what we're letting happen there is insane. The conflict between Texas and Northern Mexico over water, is insane! And therefore the thing with the solar radiation, is to organize its use, in such a way, as to enhance the biosphere. Be kind to Mother Nature. Enhance the biosphere. Don't waste solar energy, to trying to power television sets.

All right. Now, therefore, the other aspect is, that if we use... We waste a lot of money, by taking gasoline as a fuel all over the landscape. This is insane! Why should we do that? We don't need to have gasoline as a fuel, or diesel oil as a fuel. We don't need that. If we have a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor... Let's take a very specific type of a nuclear reactor. The so-called UNIK model, developed by a friend of ours, who is now deceased, Professor Schulten. Which works. This model is a self-regulating reactor, which operates in a range of between 120 and 200 megawatt. That is, as the reactor becomes hotter, it tends to shut down the rate of reaction. So, it keeps the rate of reaction within a certain range.

With a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, you can generate in an area, or say, a complex of them... Instead of putting up a 1.2 Gigawatt reaction, you put up a bunch of 200 megawatt reactors, and you put them up quicker. Because the big thing about the large reactors is, you have to pour concrete, and you have to cure the concrete. So, therefore it will take you many years, up to 5-6 years, to complete the reactor, and you have to spend and invest all the capital in it. Why not build smaller reactors, which you can complete more rapidly, and make many of them, in an area? You can put these things, they're easy to put in, you put them, they're self-regulating.

Now, but with these kind of reactors, we can turn water into a fuel! Very simply. You use high-temperature reaction to disassociate water, producing a hydrogen, or hydrogen-base fuel. You can use fuel cells, you can use other vehicles, you can convert from the use of gasoline, or diesel fuel -- which is a highly inefficient fuel, relatively speaking -- to a much more efficient fuel, which is a hydrogen, or hydrogen-based fuel.

So now, instead of carting oil all over the county, with pipelines and natural gas lines and so forth, you use natural gas where you have it in excess, as a chemical feedstock. For fertilizers, things like that. You take petroleum, and you ship the use of petroleum to chemical feedstocks, which is what it's most useful for. Burning petroleum is very inefficient. Use it as a chemical feedstock, the benefit to humanity is much greater per ton consumed.

You would turn the Middle East into production, a chemical factory, to produce feedstock, which would be used by the world, rather than burning the stuff up, and polluting the atmosphere. Much better. Then you would produce the hydrogen-based fuels, in your local region, so you wouldn't be carting this stuff all over the place. The problem with other methods, is, they generate a lot of waste. Boiling oil generates waste. You can't really be too efficient with that. Coal is terribly wasteful. Hauling fuels all over the country is very costly, and very wasteful. Don't do it.

So, why not have a new system, which can generate the fuels where we need them, and have them available on a standard, in every part of the world, or in every part of the United States, in particular.

So, therefore, there is no problem with it. If you're afraid of nuclear energy, die. [laughter] Why? Because you have nuclear actions going on in your body. Radioactive potassium reactions, which are an essential part of life. You don't like radioactivity? Don't lean against a brick wall. You'll get more radiation than from a nuclear reactor. A brick wall will do it all by itself.

So, this whole idea... What happened is this, very simply. To sum it up. 1954, there was an attempt to turn the United States from being the great producer nation of the world, per capita, per square kilometer, into a parasitical consumer society, which would live by sucking the blood of other parts of the world, and destroying our own people, and turning them into a bunch of dummies, which has been done with our education system now. So, as a part of that, they attacked technology.

Now, the first attack was not on nuclear energy. The attack on nuclear enegy happened after 1972. But the rock-drug-sex-counterculture, a key part, a leading edge of the campus radical movement of the mid-to late '60s, was essentially based on "end of technology." "Destroy technology. Go to a consumer society. Which means a parasitical society, like the Roman Empire. And the attack on nuclear energy, was determined to stop progress.

Take the other case, the case of DDT. There was never any reason to ban DDT. The campaign against DDT was a complete fraud. People are dying today, because DDT was banned. It was one of the most efficient, most harmless types of insecticide available. You have people dying of West Nile virus, because of a lack of DDT. This was done to stop technology. It was done as part of the war against technology, to transform us from a producer nation, into an imperial consumer society, a predator preying upon the rest of the world.

And therefore this campaign against nuclear energy, was a massive campaign of brainwashing. And someone who's afraid of nuclear energy, and prefers solar or something, they have to be a brainwashed zombie. And they should be told that. Because only by knowing they're brainwashed zombies, can they free themselves of the slavery. [applause]

-30-

Paid for by LaRouche in 2004

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