The Twice Blest Poster

This is the frontispiece of the Twice Blest book.

In Hindu theology, about which I know very little, Lakshmi is the Goddess of wealth and prosperity. Ganesh is the God of wisdom and the remover of obstacles. The basic idea of pairing them, as I understand it, is receiving a fortune doesn’t mean much unless we have the knowledge to use it wisely. I think all of us can agree there is a lot of wisdom in that precept.

It is certainly true when it comes to nuclear power. Nature provided us with a source of electricity that would have been unimaginable 100 years ago. That source has an energy density 100,000 times larger than fossil fuel. That means it requires very little of the planet’s precious resources. In a syllable, it can be cheap, dirt cheap. And in fact nuclear power was cheap, 3 cents/kWh cheap in today’s money when it was still moving down a steep learning curve in the late 1960’s. On top of that, fission power uses up little land, and produces almost no pollution and very little CO2. It is hard to imagine a more bountiful gift.

And that’s only half the blessing. Fission like electricity and high pressure steam and fire itself comes with a unique new hazard: RADIATION. But Lakshmi, Nature, evolution --- I don’t care what we call it --- doubled down. She not only gave us fission; she also provided us with a DNA repair system that can easily handle dose rates hundreds of times above background, dose rates that are unlikely to be exceeded by any member of the public in even a very large release.

But what she did not give us was the knowledge to use this double gift wisely. In fact, due to the ominous way fission power came to us, we chose to massively exaggerate the harm associated with radiation, in order to decrease the probability of the Bomb being used again. This led to the Intolerable Harm Lie, a big release of radiative material would be so catastrophic that it cannot be permitted to happen.

Therefore, we gave control of nuclear power to an all powerful, purblind regulator, whose overriding priority is preventing a release. As a result nuclear power in the West now costs five or more times what it can and did cost. What should be the cheapest source of electricity is impoverishingly expensive. By denying our indisputable ability to repair DNA damage, we have effectively rejected the blessings of nuclear power. We must renounce that lie.

That’s where Lord Ganesh needs to come in. We need him to give us the wisdom to recognize and accept the second half of the blessing. But we need more than wisdom. We need action. Ganesh is depicted holding a lotus and an axe. The lotus represents enlightenment. In this case, recognition that we have been lied to and the rejection of that lie. The axe represents Ganesh’s role as the remover of obstacles. Sixty years of universal acceptance of the Intolerable Harm Lie has created a coven of very powerful special interests whose existence depends on that Lie. We will need a very big axe to remove those obstacles.

A PDF of the Twice Blest poster can be downloaded from the Gordian Knot Group website.