Kill oil -> Atompunk?

To add to my previous post, here's some effects which I think would surface:

- In coal-mining countries less unemployment in coal-mining areas. Coal would be still sought for Fischer-Tropsch and also for fuel usage more extensively.

- In environment there will be dramatically less tetra-ethyl lead with all it's unfortunate consequences

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetra-ethyl_lead

- Much less deaths and environmental poisoning due to particulate matter, as there will be less fuel burning, it will be more concentrated and thus easier to clean up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulate

- More nuclear accidents for sure, but I'm fairly sure in TTL they would be compared to normal industrial accidents (for example, death tolls in coal mining were and still are in some countries excessive. In China alone, according to official statistics (which probably don't tell the truth) 3000 coal miners died in accidents in 2008 with over 250 000 deaths since 1949. Compared to that record even Chernobyl's worst effect calculations are simply minuscule.
 
Of course the real question there is how. Something involving the Arab nations being in the Soviet sphere of influence somehow is probably needed, but you still need to consider things like West Africa, the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and so on. Any ideas for how we could get around that without ASBs?

One way to bring this might be the eruption of the whole Middle East sometime during early 1950's. This results in Euratom to be formed much quicker and a massive investment into European atomic power. This is justificated in several ways. First, as fuel supplies of Western Europe are extremely scarce it would seem strategically stupid to rely on Middle Eastern oil. Second, as the Atom is the way of the future in war and peace it's sensible to invest in it. It's a high tech product in which European industry can excel as airplane and car industries seems to be slipping away to US (and in related development, Soviet) mastery.

For Britain this is convenient as uranium is extracted from Canada and Australia, for France because of the uranium mines in Niger. Why rely on energy supplies in the unreliable colony of Algeria when much more peaceful Niger can be trusted?

USA supports this development as this would reduce strategic importance of Middle East in favour of Western Europe...

Sure, this involves ASB's but could this be used for start?
 
Why not introduce some form of mutated bacteria to get rid of oil and its derivates, some form that is very hard to contain? It would destroy some oil ressources completely and would turn the handling of oil into something much more complicated and expensive. Such a 'catastrophe' would make nuclear power much more interesting to companies and governments.
 
That said, it's a valid concern, though I think that small nuclear reactors could be designed to be strong enough to survive this sort of thing (just put the whole thing in a big metal case).
Could, but then, you
would have to foot the bill of carrying
a big metal case around, in addition
to the weight of the payload.
I'd say that it would be much more efficient to use electricity from an immobile
nuclear generator.
 
This is one of the projects I had in mind when writing the above: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus

Its a British design researched between 1973-78, now if that was being researched back then when Nuclear power wasn't a viable option then imagine the designs when Nuclear power was one of the only options. Now this design was for intersteller flight and was believed to be able to reach around 10% the speed of light, imagine that for just between the planets in our solar system.

The British Interplanetry Society recently did a "Son of Daedalus" proposal, at a symposium called Project Icarus, debating how a Daedalus type - Interstellar Probe would look like given the technological advances of the past 30 years, esp computing...
(1 advance proposed to Alan Bond in the 1980's, by a Soviet physicist, was to fire a second pellet, made of Lithium, shortly after the He-3 pellet, & using the generated plasma derived from the 2nd pellet, to run a Magento Hydro Dynamic (MHD for Short) Generator, to power the electron beams...).

The Icarus probe would be launched not at Barnard's Star, but rather the Alpha Centauri system, as it's now felt that the Alpha Centauri system is far more likely to have Earth like planets, than Barnard's Star...
 
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