“The fortunes of nations,” Vaclav Smil writes in his 2008 book Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years, “are not determined primarily by strategic designs or economic performance but by the magnitude and efficiency of their energy conversions.” We are now in the midst of just such a grand transition from fossil fuels to renewable and alternative energy sources. This evolution, Smil observes, is “the most fundamental future shift in the global economy. It is not, as one might think, further globalization but rather the coming epochal energy transition,” which Smil discusses here in the context of nuclear power.
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