Customer Reviews

Prescription for the Planet: The Painless Remedy for Our Energy & Environmental Crises

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book is a must read for people who want to be informed about our worsening energy and ecology crisis. Before I read this book, I was opposed to nuclear power for the usual reasons: weapons proliferation and the waste problem. But also because I had read that in fact nuclear power was not as clean as advertised nor as cost competitive as advertised and was, moreover, not a renewable form of energy, as it depends upon depleting stocks of uranium, which would become an especially acute problem in the event of "a nuclear renaissance." Before I read this book, I was also of the opinion that growth economies (meaning for now global capitalism) were in the process of becoming unsustainable, that, as a consequence, our global economy would itself unravel due to increasing energy costs and the inability of renewable technologies genuinely and humanely to solve the global transport problem of finding real replacements for the billions of gallons of gasoline consumed by the global economy, and the billions more gallons required to fuel the growth imperative. I was thus attracted to the most egalitarian versions of Richard Heinberg's power down/relocalization thesis.


Blees' book has turned many of my assumptions upside down and so anyone who shares these assumptions needs to read this book and come to terms with the implications of Blees' excellent arguments. To wit: the nuclear power provided by Integral Fast Reactors (IFR) can provide clean, safe and for all practical purposes renewable power for a growing economy provided this power is properly regulated (I'll return to this issue below). The transportation problems can be solved by burning boron as fuel (a 100% recyclable resource) and the waste problem inevitably caused by exponential growth can be at least partially solved by fully recycling all waste in plasma converters, which themselves can provide both significant power (the heat from these converters can turn a turbine to generate electricity) and important products: non toxic vitrified slag (which Blees notes can be used to refurbish ocean reefs), rock wool (to be used to insulate our houses--it is superior to fiber glass or cellulose) and clean syngas, which can assume the role played by petroleum in the production of products beyond fuel itself. Blees's discussion of how these three elements of a new energy economy can be introduced and integrated is detailed and convincing. Other forms of renewable energy can play a significant role also, though it is his argument that only IFRs can deal with the awesome scale problems of powering a global economy which would still need to grow. Tom's critique of biofuels is devastating and in line with the excellent critiques proferred by both the powerdown people and the red greens (John Bellamy Foster, Fred Magdoff); his critique of the "hydrogen economy" is also devastating (similar to critiques by Joseph Romm or David Strahan); his critique of a solar grand plan must be paid heed by solar enthusiasts of various political stripes.


The heart of this book, though, really resides with the plausibility of the IFR. His central argument is that these reactors can solve the principal problems plaguing other forms of nuclear power. It handles the nuclear waste problem by eating it to produce power: The nuclear waste would fire up the IFRs and our stocks of depleted uranium alone would keep the reactors going for a couple hundred years (factoring in substantial economic growth) due to the stunning efficiency of these reactors, an efficiency enabled by the fact that "a fast reactor can burn up virtually all of the uranium in the ore," not just one percent of the ore as in thermal reactors. This means no uranium mining and milling for hundreds of years.

The plutonium bred by the reactor will be fed back into it to produce more energy and cannot be weaponized due to the different pyroprocessing that occurs in the IFR reactor. In this process, plutonium is not isolated, a prerequisite to its weaponization. The IFR breeders can produce enough nonweaponizable plutonium to start up another IFR in seven years. Moreover, these reactors can be produced quickly (100 per year starting in 2015, with the goal of building 3500 by 2050)), according to Blees, with improvements in modular design, which would facilitate standardization, thus bringing down cost and construction lead time.

Importantly, nuclear accidents would be made virtually impossible due to the integration of "passive" safety features in the reactors, which rely on "the inherent physical properties of the reactor's components to shut it down." (129)

Blees is no shill for the nuclear industry and is in fact quite hostile to corporate power. He thinks that these IFRs must be both run and regulated by a globally accountable, international and public body of experts. Blees has in mind a global energy democracy in which profit would play minimal if any role. Blees realizes that democratizing energy in this way, including technology sharing, will be fought by vested interests. But he thinks that the severity of the climate crisis will persuade people of the necessity of global public ownership over energy resources. My greatest disagreements with this book focus on the scale of conflict that would emerge around such proposals. Blees' energy democracy is a great idea, but I doubt the ruling elites would go for it no matter how much sense it makes. Blees is banking on the unique character of the climate crisis to convert a significant sector of our elites to humanity's cause and not their class interests. Let's hope he's right, but I'm less optimistic that this revolution will be as "painless" as Blees suggests.

That said, Blees's solutions make possible the kind of relatively clean growth I did not think was possible under current global regimes. Still, if such a new energy regime as Blees proposes can solve the climate crisis, this is not to say, in my opinion, that a growth regime is fully compatible with a healthy planet and thus a healthy humanity. There are other resources crucial to us--the world's soils, forests and oceans come to mind--that a constantly expanding global economy can destroy even if we recycle all the world's garbage and stop global warming.

Before I read this book, I did not think contemporary global capitalism could sustain itself for long, due to its pathological inequity and its seeming inability to solve the energy and ecological challenge. Blees' book seems to offer immediate solutions to our energy and ecology problems while breathing new life into some kind of growth economy--whether that economy can rightly be called capitalist given its commitment to energy democracy and democratic planning is a question, perhaps, for Blees's next book.


I think it's hard to exaggerate the IMPORTANCE of this book. Those who are opposed to nuclear power have a responsibility to read and respond to Blees' arguments.

I hope that the book's uncanny timeliness--released in the midst of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, a fact that ought to open people's minds to his critique of the free market--allows it to have the mass impact that it deserves.

I found Prescription for the Planet to be refreshing and entertaining read on one man's well-researched evaluation (developed hand in hand with the scientists who developed its core concepts) of our present energy crisis and his suggested solutions for a workable path forward. His prescription may even be good for the planet's health! I recommend it for anyone interested in current energy issues and a fresh, different perspective.

The author (who isn't even a nuclear engineer ) asserts that solving our planet's most pressing dilemmas requires more than simply setting goals (Which we never even come close to meeting anyway - who was the first/last president (Nixon/Obama) that proclaimed that we needed to use less foreign oil and become energy independent?). Worldwide environmental and social problems require a bold vision for the future that includes feasible planet-wide solutions with all the details. Prescription for the Planet explains how a trio of little-known yet profoundly revolutionary technologies, coupled with their judicious use in an atmosphere of global cooperation, can be the springboard that carries humanity to an era beyond scarcity. A side benefit would be that if his prescription eliminates scarcity, then the incentive for warfare will be eliminated!

The author gores a few oxen along the way (which makes it more entertaining) yet does it in a way that keeps the reader focused on the main message. His writing style is a true pleasure to read.

Mark L Miller

Finally a plain spoken description of three existing technologies that are capable of solving America's problems of dependence on foreign oil, and the impacts of climate change.

Backed by the scientists and engineers who have developed these technologies, the author clearly lays out how the technologies interlock to close the waste cycle, thus precluding the need for further resource extraction. The application of these technologies worldwide have the potential to significantly attenuate the impacts of global warming. The implementation of these technologies has the potential to end the resource wars that currently dominate the geopolitical landscape of the 21st century.

If you are interested in solutions to our energy problems, and a real solution to world peace please consider reading, and passing on this book as it may be the most important text of the 21st century.

Tom Blees first caught my attention when I heard him in a radio-broadcast interview. Sounded so good that I had ordered the book from Amazon before the interview was over. Like most everyone who thinks about global warming, oil depletion, overpopulation and the like, I had been seeking any means to reverse the sorry legacy of fossil fuel use. I had heard the endless advocacy of the Greens, Richard Heinberg, the Sierra Club, etc, that renewables, conservation and powering down are the answer. Clearly they were not. Our use of fossil fuels has become so massive, so widespread, that such "solutions" are like trying to bail out the ocean! What is needed is a radical game-changer and Tom seems to have hit on one. Even if you're a hard-core anti-nuclear believer, you owe it to yourself to read this book, just for the sake of gaining some nuclear education and "knowing your enemy". The non-nuclear info on plasma furnaces as a way to deal with landfills is reason enough for those opposed to nuclear power to read it. You will notice that the few reviewers who condemn Blees's book don't propose any alternative to fossil fuel use. To them I say: Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Rich Clark -=- rrich.clark@gmail.com -=- Berkeley, California

This is it! A real solution. We need to get these ideas out there. We can solve our global warming, nuclear proliferation and waste, energy dependence, and pollution problems using existing technologies. Mr. Blees has clearly cracked the code - we just need to read this book and then push for these solutions.

This book is definitely an eye opener. It goes to some lengths that I don't think are likely to come to fruition (namely GREAT and the Boron cars), but the details about the IFR reactors alone make this worth a read. It saddens me that this game changing nuclear technology was derailed by our politicians, just for the sole sake of politics. This project would have been completed by now and ready for production, or already in production. Now, assuming anyone can get the ball rolling again, we would be lucky to get a 10 year delay to get it back on track.

That part of the book made me very angry at Washington and the stupid games played there. Big thanks to Bill Clinton and John Kerry for setting us back 25 years. Thanks, guys. And I love the fact it cost more to disassemble the IFR program than it would have to complete it. That is just.... sickening.

Who could be against a nuclear program that is a) extremely safe and not capable of a Three Mile Island style meltdown, b) would use our NUCLEAR WASTE FOR FUEL, and c) is capable of creating it's own fuel creating an unlimited fuel source?

But I digress.

I had previously read about the plasma technology to consume trash and waste a few years ago and am glad to hear it slowly, finally starting to get implemented. No more landfills! No dangerous medical waste floating in the ocean! A generator of power and fuel from trash. I do not understand why these are not implemented in every major city on the planet.

I won't touch all the topics but this is a good book and everyone should read it. Brew some coffee though. While Blees tries to keep it going and has a dry sense of humor, it sometimes delves into technical points that can inspire a nap. Maybe that's just me though...

5 stars! If you care about the planet, you must read. If you are of an "Anti-Nuclear" stance, you must read.

Time is short. Read this. Share this. Talk it up with friends.

Respected NASA climatologist James Hansen appeared on the Charlie Rose show recently and recommended this book by Tom Blees. Hansen is a top shelf climate scientist who sounded the alarm on climate change back in the 1980s and has most recently testified for Congress on the subject in 2008. He's the guy the Bush administration tried to censor when global warming became a political liability for the fossil fuels industries (there's another book on this subject out there).

If you've never heard of IFR (4th generation nuclear reactors that can solve proliferation, use existing nuclear waste for fuel, and produce no CO2 emissions), or Boron cars (similar to hydrogen without the complex infrastructure favored by oil interests), or plasma waste recycling, then you simply must read this book if you wish to speak knowledgeably about alternative energy. It is extraordinarily well researched, and backed by a panoply of nuclear physicists and other specialists whose knowledge far outstrips the superficialities so frequently chirped by politicians and talking heads. Few political leaders are sufficiently grounded in the sciences to put forward an integrated plan - hear the technical before you apply the political.

For anyone interested in such important issues as global warming, environmental pollution, energy independence, nuclear proliferation, nuclear waste etc., "Prescription for the Planet" by Tom Blees is a "must read". The author has taken volumes of research-based scientific data from leading scientists and research institutions and written it in a way that is very readable and understandable to scientists, politicians and average interested citizens alike. Not only are these important issues addressed with clear potential solutions, but the answers are also presented in a socially responsible framework in which the resources of the world can be shared by all people around the globe. Science, policy and politics meet social justice !

This is a book about three world-wide problems and three technologies to solve them. It's a book about technologies written by an Alaskan fisherman for understanding by the general public.

Nuclear power can solve global warming primarily by eliminating CO2 emissions from coal power plants, and secondarily by enabling new vehicle fuels. Nuclear power reactors in the US have not changed design in decades, and the public's perception seems to be acceptance of the mysterious domed plants, but with concern for the spent nuclear fuel waste.

There are newer, better nuclear technologies than these solid fueled, water-cooled reactors, which are generally unknown to the public. Tom Blees describes one: The Integral Fast Reactor consumes spent fuel reactor waste, generates power from the 95% of potential energy left in the waste, and does not involve any transport of weapons-proliferation-sensitive plutonium outside the plant. The IFR project, developed and tested for a decade at Argonne National Laboratories, was two years from fruition when it was killed in 1984 by President Bill Clinton, Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, and Senator John Kerry.

The IFR would have solved the coal-burning energy crisis, consumed existing nuclear power plant waste, and not isolated inventories of plutonium (as does the French power program.) I nearly cried when I first heard of the death of the IFR, and Blees tells the story well. Since Blees wrote this book he has learned about the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, which has these same advantages at lower cost.

Boron fuels were completely new to me. Cars, trucks, and airplanes require portable energy supplies, such as gasoline, diesel oil, or natural gas (the Pickens Plan). Electric batteries can provide this stored energy for cars. Liquid or compressed hydrogen is another (impractical) energy carrier. Blees points out that boron metal can be a portable fuel. Boron metal is combined with oxygen in a special engine to generate power. The resulting boron-oxide is later brought to a refueling station to be exchanged for a new supply of boron metal fuel. The refueling station uses electricity to convert the boron oxide back to boron metal fuel.

Boron fuel eliminates carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles, and it eliminates dependence on foreign oil. (I think there is much more boron fuel R&D work to be done.)

Plasma arc gasification of waste is another technology new to me. Four states of matter are solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Plasma is so hot (4,000 - 17,000 C) that electrons are torn free, molecular bonds are broken, and elemental nucleii are freed. Toxic chemicals are destroyed. The cooled plasma becomes a glass-like slag. It takes a lot of electric power to operate a plasma arc torch, but in the case of municipal solid waste, the process can generate 28x more natural gas energy than electric energy consumed.

There are solutions for our environmental and energy problems! Blees' Prescription for the Planet is nuclear power + boron fuel + plasma waste gasification.
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Wow! What a book! I was skeptical when I first heard its premise, but after blazing through it (got my first hard copy a few days ago) I have to say, honestly, that this is the first real solution I've heard. Tom Blees's book addresses everything I wanted to know, not just the specific scope of his revolutionary plan, but all the other options being touted around as "solutions" as well. For ANYONE interested in climate change, energy problems, water shortages, global energy wars, or pretty much Earth itself, this book is a MUST READ.