By Doug Lorimer
In his article on nuclear fusion (GLW, No 41), Phil Shannon criticises the Democratic Socialist Party's Socialism and Human Survival document for its "breathless account of how nuclear fusion could be a 'long term solution to the world's energy needs'".
The document — after discussing solar energy as a possible solution to the world's need for sustainable energy supplies — stated that: "controlled nuclear fusion using deuterium (heavy hydrogen) could provide another possible long-term solution to the world's energy needs ... there is enough deuterium in the world's oceans to maintain the current annual level of global energy consumption for 35 billion years! Secondly, deuterium fusion does not generate radioactive wastes. Finally, using deuterium fusion would enable humanity to annually obtain 300-700 times as much energy as we do now from fossil fuels before thermal pollution reached a critical level."
Shannon, however, argues that Marxists cannot afford to "trust" claims that nuclear fusion could provide a clean and sustainable energy source because there are severe technical, social and political problems with nuclear fusion.
Shannon points out that the only sustained nuclear fusion reaction achieved so far was accomplished using deuterium and tritium (DT) fusion. He notes that there are major problems with DT fusion.
First, tritium occurs naturally on Earth only in minute quantities. To obtain significant quantities, tritium has to be manufactured by bombarding the metal lithium-6 with neutrons. Lithium-6 (which Shannon incorrectly claims is radioactive) constitutes only 7.4% of naturally occurring lithium on Earth. If DT fusion was used as the basis for the world's energy supplies, the reserves of lithium-6 in explored deposits would be exhausted in a relatively short time. So DT fusion is not a sustainable energy source.
Second, tritium is unstable, i.e., radioactive, and it is very difficult to avoid its loss and build-up in the atmosphere.
For these reasons, DT fusion can only be considered a prelude to the solution of the problem of deuterium-deuterium (DD) fusion, since the DT reaction is an intermediate stage in the DD reaction.
Deuterium
Shannon notes that "although deuterium is not radioactive, DD fusion produces not only the harmless elements hydrogen and helium, and energy, but also some tritium". However, the tritium reacts almost instantaneously with deuterium and disappears in full in the
He claims that a DD fusion reactor will become radioactive because "DD fusion also releases neutrons which are a form of ionising radiation". This would be true if the material used to absorb the discharged neutrons produced radioactive wastes. However, even in fission reactors the material used to absorb the discharged neutrons (for example, boron) does not produce radioactive by-products. It is not the discharge of neutrons in a nuclear reaction that makes fission reactors radioactive but the radioactive by-products of a fission reaction (e.g., strontium-90).
The biggest technical problem with DD fusion relates to the extremely high temperature required to initiate the reaction — 1 billion degrees.
One possible solution to this problem, which Shannon mentions, is "laser fusion", in which a spherical laser beam is applied to a frozen pellet of deuterium. The laser ionises the upper layer of the pellet, and this flies off in all directions, imparting a recoil to the rest of the pellet and compressing it. Calculations of the heat that would be generated through this compression show that it would be sufficient to obtain a rapid DD fusion reaction. However, as Shannon observes, "this method is less advanced than hot fusion [using superheated gaseous deuterium] because it is even more difficult".
Undemocratic technology?
While he points out that with "more human and financial resources" the technical problems involved in fusion technology might be overcome, Shannon argues that Marxists should oppose its development on sociopolitical grounds.
Fusion, he writes, is "an undemocratic technology, the domain of a scientific elite". By contrast, "People can easily have control over renewable energy technology — you only need know how to tell one end of a hammer from another to be able to maintain a windmill, but mastering the theory and practice of fusion requires a lifetime of nuclear physics and engineering".
But isn't the theory and practice of renewable energy technologies — e.g., the generation of electricity using photovoltaic cells — also the "domain of a scientific elite"? Even the technology of generating electricity from modern windmills requires specialised scientific training in electrical engineering and aerodynamics.
The apparent assumption behind Shannon's argument is an idealist one — that knowledge equals power equals oppression. But the fact that fusion technology requires specialised knowledge does not mean that those who have this knowledge exercise power over those who don't.
If someone knows how to do something that you don't, does that give them power over you? Not unless there is a material advantage, a volved, one that is institutionalised and perpetuated by forms of private property. For example, Kerry Packer has power over other people because he is the private owner of television stations, not because he has specialised knowledge of the theory and practice of television technology (quantum physics and radio engineering), which he doesn't.
Shannon believes that those on the left who are attracted to nuclear fusion are caught up in the "orthodox, 19th century Marxist goal of the conquest of nature", a goal he argues present-day Marxist should reject:
"Rather than conquering nature, turning it into a super-factory powered by nuclear fusion, would it not be better to have a more human-scale world where we use but don't abuse nature?"
Mastery of nature
Shannon seems to assume that when Marxists speak about humanity's "conquest", "domination" or "mastery" of nature, they believe in "abusing" (destroying) rather than simply "using" it. But if I say a violinist has mastered her/his instrument, this does not imply s/he has abused or destroyed it, but learned to control it to obtain what s/he wants. Similarly, mastering, nature simply means that we have learned to control nature in order to meet humanity's material purpose. As Frederick Engels noted in his 1876 essay "The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man":
"... we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature — but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly."
In order to master nature, we have to obey its laws. Capitalism, however, does this only in a partial and limited way because it subordinates technology to the immediate enrichment of a tiny minority and disregards the longer term effects of its productive activities on nature. This is why Engels pointed out that mere knowledge was insufficient to regulate our productive activities so as to avoid environmental destruction: "It requires a complete revolution in our hitherto existing mode of production, and simultaneously a revolution in our whole contemporary social order".
This revolution involves the replacement of anarchistic production for private profit with the subordination of production, through collective ownership and democratic control, to social needs, i.e., the "domination of technology by planning".
Abundance
Shannon poses the question: "Do we want, or need, an abundance of energy powering an abundance of gadgets for an abundance of people, driven by nuclear fusion and a destructively exploitative attitude to
The question has been loaded by implying that anyone who supports the exploration of nuclear fusion as a possible technological solution to the world's need for clean, sustainable energy sources is guilty of a "destructively exploitative attitude to nature".
If we drop this unnecessary addition to the question, we can examine the real issue: does a classless society require abundance of energy powering an abundance of "gadgets" for an abundance of people?
If the word "abundance" is taken in its literal meaning of "fully sufficient" and not as meaning an unlimited amount, as it is sometimes abused, then the answer from a Marxist (and an ecological) viewpoint has to be, yes. A fully sufficient amount of energy to power a fully sufficient amount of "gadgets" would be an amount adequate to meet humanity's rational needs, including its need to preserve a livable global environment.
The DSP's Socialism and Human Survival points out that there is an environmental limit to the production of energy on Earth, determined by the amount of heat that can be safely dissipated into the atmosphere. Development of the practical large-scale conversion of solar energy into electricity would eliminate this problem. While the development of practical deuterium fusion would not eliminate the problem of thermal pollution, it would enable an increase in energy production of between 300 and 700 times what we have now without adversely affecting the planet's heat balance.
Maybe the development of renewable energy sources will make fusion technology unnecessary. But we shouldn't oppose research into it because it may be difficult to achieve. And Marxists certainly shouldn't oppose it because it requires scientific knowledge.