Calling for “thermonuclear power, not nuclear war,” a new study envisions a North American Water and Power Alliance that would radically alter the continent’s ecosystem and economy.
The civil works project of geologic magnitude would redirect water from river basins in Canada and Alaska to the Canadian prairie and America’s parched Southwest.
“This would provide a secure water supply that will triple the acreage of irrigable farmland,” said Jason Ross, science and technology editor of Executive Intelligence Review.
The key to the massive project is the yet-to-be-mastered fusion power – unleashing the power of the atom to generate billions times more energy than conventional power sources.
The report – building on the pioneering work of engineer Ralph Parsons in the 1960s – envisions peaceful nuclear explosions for earth-moving and plasma torches to break up earth materials into their elemental components.
During the decades it will take to bring NAWAPA online, production of nuclear desalination plants can provide immediate relief and water security to coastal areas, as well as inland areas suffering from saline intrusion, Ross said.
Lyndon LaRouche, an economist and 1980 U.S. presidential candidate, supports the fusion program, and says the stakes are life and death.
“Any civilization which systemically rejects man’s natural development as an increasingly powerful force in nature will simply be unable to exist,” Ross stresses.
The fusion vision extends to high-speed magnetic levitation transportation systems and a host of peaceful applications of technology, he adds.
“Rather than pursing a military and economic encirclement of Russia and China, this concept is an example of what international relations should be.”
Environmentalists, distrustful of nuclear power – peaceful or otherwise – have blocked mankind’s progress, LaRouche and Ross charge.
“They teach our children that their goal in life is to have as little impact on their surroundings as possible. We are past the point of being able to tolerate this pathological anti-human outlook.”
Fusion power, far outstripping the fission technology of today’s nuclear plants, does not produce the piles of radioactive waste that now burden the atomic industry. Fusion reactants -- including deuterium found in seawater -- have energy densities millions of times greater than fossil fuels.
For example, just one half-ton of the hydrogen isotope of deuterium contains that same power as 2 million tons of coal, 1.3 million tons of oil or 30 tons of uranium oxide.
Edward Teller, co-founder of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was working toward fusion power before his passing.
Teller’s theoretical work indicated that fusion would revolutionize canal building, port construction, mining, aquifer creation, tunneling and other requirements of bulk earth moving – thus making NAWAPA possible.
To politicians and statesmen cowed by what he calls a prevailing environmental “cult”, Ross said, “Let us now overthrow the statis demanded by these forces, and be beautifully human, enjoying the thrill of discovery as we do things that are truly new.”
