Design
From rewilding to district heating, these kickass concepts offer a glimpse of how nuclear power might shape our lives.
The below concepts were originally developed for my Instagram channel, atomic trends, as part of a series featuring digital artists working in sci-fi, movie and video game design.
Concept 1: The Deep Future
What will the Deep Future look like?
Food. Water. Energy. Minerals. Medicine. Manufactured goods. Many things humans need place a strain on the natural world. And as populations grow, impacts grow. Only technology breaks the cycle and decouples prosperity from environmental destruction while ensuring human prosperity. This is the beating heart of ecomodernism.
The Deep Future will not look like today. We will see the Earth rewilded. From monoculture cropland will rise virgin forest. From cattle pasture, new sweeping…
Nuclear Power
I started atomic_trends to explore what nuclear power will do for humanity in the coming decades. Here’s how it’s gone so far.
A few months back, I wrote that the old dreams about nuclear power are dead, and it is time to make some new ones. I expanded on this idea in a YouTube video called Imagineering an Atomic Future.
Not happy with that, I started working on a Pinterest board, searching for positive, forward-looking imagery to represent nuclear power in the 21st century. I collected images around a range of themes such as Electric Dreams, Temples of Modernity, The City Never Sleeps, Power of the Gods, and Tomorrow, Today.
“But I don’t see how your board is about nuclear,” people said.
…
The story of why a digital artist is creating scifi art about nuclear power ⚛
I first came across Alexey Rubakin’s work on Artstation, the social media and job board of the art world. He’s one of growing community of digital and environmental artists hosting their art there, both professional and personal projects.
Watched a scifi movie or played a video game in the last five years? Chances are the original concept art came from one of the big artists and studios that now rely on Artstation to show off their portfolio.
Alexey, like almost all the other artists I’ve approached to feature on my Instagram channel, wasn’t making works explicitly about nuclear power. …
You’ve heard of living “off-grid”, but how about living “off-world”?
Many of us dream about a future in space; few of us actually plan for it. So when I came across Space Is More, I was amazed by what I found. Most of all, I was inspired to discover nuclear energy is the key to unlocking humanity’s colonisation of space. Read on to find out how.
Based in Poland, Space Is More exist to dream up how humans might flourish on other worlds. In fact, dreams are just the first step.
What makes Space Is More unique is that their…
On the day Indian Point 3 is prematurely closed for political reasons, Generation Atomic has a message for the plant’s climate hero workers.
History will judge those who’ve acted to prematurely close Indian Point 2 and 3 right in the middle of a climate emergency. On behalf of Generation Atomic volunteers around the world, we salute you, workers of Indian Point.
We salute you, workers of Indian Point.
Your hard work these last almost 50 years has provided clean and reliable electricity to the state of New York. Through avoided air pollution, you have no doubt saved thousands of lives. By reducing carbon emissions, you’ve given future generations a better chance at beating climate change.
Whatever you go on to do with your…
“It had to be atomic” says designer of vessel so beautiful, it will make you weep.
I recently stumbled across something so beautiful, so ambitious, so CRAZY, that I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. I’m talking about the Earth 300 superyacht.
It’s hard to know how to describe the Earth 300, designed by Iddes Yachts, a naval architect company based in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Is it a luxury yacht? A science vessel? A vanity project? It’s all of those, and more.
“The ship will introduce features found on cruise, expedition, research and luxury yachts...but she will be none of them.” — Aaron Olivera | Founder & CEO of Earth 300 Ventures
“The Earth…
Philosophy
And why taking fire from the gods has unintended consequences for human morality.
The Ancient Greeks used myths to help them make sense of everyday life. Could the story of Prometheus and the gift of fire help us think about how we view nuclear technology?
In Greek mythology, Prometheus was one of the Titans, a group of supernatural beings who emerged before the time of Zeus and the rest of “Olympian” gods. Prometheus was inquisitive, an intellectual, with his name meaning “Forethinker”. He was known as a culture hero and a trickster.
As Prometheus and his brother Epimethus supported Zeus in overthrowing Kronos, Zeus’s father, they alone among the Titans escaped being cast…
Nuclear Startups
Kärnfull plans to do for nuclear power what Spotify did for music.
John Ahlberg launched a 100% nuclear electricity startup in August 2019 with co-founder Christian Sjolander. Growing almost entirely by word-of-mouth, they are now Sweden’s fastest organically growing utility, with plans to expand to other countries. Ahlberg tells me how they did it, and I search for lessons for the broader nuclear industry.
Marty Neumeier is a legend in Silicon Valley. He cut his teeth helping companies like Apple, Netscape, HP, Adobe, and Google build their brands, and now runs his own design firm. The best thing about him is he shares his secrets and encourages you to steal his ideas.
A New Zealand pop group need your help to crowdfund pro-nuclear remake of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”.
Just when you thought you had seen everything, here’s four semi-naked New Zealanders on a beach singing the benefits of nuclear power to the tune of reality TV’s tearjerker staple, Hallelujah.
The song’s authors Rangi & the Totos describe themselves as “New Zealand’s most iconic topical pop group”, and have put out other YouTube videos in recent months, including one mocking ticket sales company Viagogo. You might say they’re the 2020 inheritors to the comic geniuses that were Bret and Jemaine in The Flight of the Conchords.
HalleNuclear is four minutes of surrealist farce, with the band members often…
The public is always asking of nuclear, ‘what if it all goes wrong?’ Data from Chernobyl and Fukushima have now provided the answer.
This past 11th of March 2020 was the 9th anniversary of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. Fears of radiation from the triple meltdown led to the long-term relocation of over 100,000 people. In a landmark study completed in late 2017, a group of UK scientists set out to find the truth about the risk of nuclear. They showed that not only was the scale of this relocation far too large, but that the evacuation itself led to thousands of unnecessary deaths from mental and physical exhaustion.
Despite initial interest from UK and US authorities, little has changed in the…
David Watson
Chartered Physicist, nature-lover, believer in pedal power. Ecomodernist. Editor for The Kernel mag. Founder of Atomic Trends.
