The World Cannot Survive
Without Nuclear Energy
Developments around the globe—from Europe to Asia and even the United States—indicate that leading policymakers are finally beginning to realize that the world will not survive without a revival of nuclear power. One of the most insane characteristics of the last 30 years of post-industrialism is about to be abandoned.
The LaRouche political movement has long insisted that a renaissance of nuclear fission, and then fusion, is an indispensable aspect of a world economic recovery. We welcome this development, and intend to do everything possible to move it along.
The most dramatic shift has been taking place in Western Europe, where formerly anti-nuclear trade unionists and politicians are now saying that they have to rethink their positions. British and German trade unionists are now talking about the need to expand the nuclear industry, in the face of both the dramatic increase in price of fossil fuels, and the instability of the supply.
Similarly, a turn toward nuclear has begun to be discerned in the United States, where licensing procedures are being simplified, and leading politicians are beginning to realize that "energy independence" means, among other things, going back to nuclear power.
But the proof of the pudding, so to speak, lies in Asia, where the preponderance of the world's population lives, energy-starved, in abject poverty. Economist LaRouche has insisted that particularly India and China will never overcome their destitution unless they move with an integrated 50-year development plan, which places great emphasis on nuclear power. They are not generating enough real income for their people, to bring the 70-80 percent of the population out of poverty.
The situation will get even worse, of course, if the Synarchist bankers behind Cheney et al. succeed in starting their new series of wars in the Perian Gulf region, which will even more massively disrupt oil supplies.
India, LaRouche has indicated, has tremendous capability for launching a massive program to build high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, using its vast supply of thorium. By building small plants, int he range of 120-200 megawatts, India is capable of producing the pressure vessels on a mass scale. Such a production program can provide the power to transform the rural areas of India by providing a lot of cheap power.
China is somewhat different, LaRouche noted, but still nuclear energy is vital. Hydro-power, such as that which will be produced by the Three Gorges Dam, cannot be expected to solve the nation's energy needs. Rather power from nuclear energy should be used to help China with its water management problems, since that country has an urgent need for moving water from one part of the country to another.
LaRouche's conception for the international nuclear revival emphasizes the importance of using thorium fuel (which cannot make bombs), and proliferating small reactors, which would minimize the loss of energy through transportation of power. Oil reserves should be used be petro-chemicals, and gas should be primarily used locally. In the future, the use of nuclear power will facilitate the shift to hydrogen-based chemical fuels.
The big picture is this: we are going to have to change the global economic reality over the next two generations. We are going to have to build new cities, deal with rural poverty, and create high-speed transportation and development corridors throughout the Eurasian region, the Americas, and Africa. We need to focus on the long-term benefits of investments in the physical economy, not the short-term opportunism of today's leading "economic experts." This 50-year approach is the truly revolutionary way to transform the world economy.
To carry out this perspective, the first step is to free the United States from Synarchist banker control, because the United States is the only nation capable of reorganizing the world monetary system. The second step is to initiate cooperation between the U.S., Europe, Russia, and China, especially on the full range of infrastructure development that is required. But all of such development depends upon ample, cheap, economical power—and that means nuclear energy.
Go nuclear—now!
