I think there's a fairly compelling abstract logic that given the pressing nature of the climate change issue, it'd be a good thing to have more electricity generated by nuclear power plants despite the waste issue. The concrete reality of the matter, though, is that the nuclear power industry is basically looking for handouts and I see no reason why they should get them. A sensible energy policy would, through caps or taxes, effectively penalize energy sources that emit large amounts of carbon thereby de facto advantaging nuclear power along with wind, solar, hydro, etc. and I don't have a problem with that. But if we're going to be handing out additional subsidies (and I'm really not sure we should be) they should be directed at the very cleanest things available, which nuclear certainly isn't.
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Cash for Nukes
31 Jul 2007 08:34 am
Comments (23)
Another thing to consider is that biofuels, solar, and wind power use up a lot of space, which may entail some habitat destruction. I agree that the optimal thing is a carbon tax. But, absent that, I would give nuclear the same advantage as those other technologies with respect to subsidies.
After all, if we had a carbon tax, the benefit to nuclear and the other clean technologies would be the same.
The USGovernment does not have a coherent plan for nuclear research, ordnance, power, or waste management. We had incoherent plans for each at one time in the past.
But, now, all we have is a competition between individual members of both parties: That would be the Hold Harmless Demopublicans and Free Market Republicrats over pork and concessions.
The total nuclear budget could be reduced and yet provide for significant research or ordnance and power as well as a portfolio of waste management and environmental remediation programs.
But, you cannot really do that without a core of patriotic and competent managers making economic and technical decisions without regard for the corrupt influences of either Congress of the Executive.
Despite a wide range of political sentiment, the EU -- notably France and Germany -- have such trusted and competent bureaucracies. This gives them the ability to have an environment/energy policy with positive military, political, and economic implications.
The USGovernment does not have a coherent plan for nuclear research, ordnance, power, or waste management. We had incoherent plans for each at one time in the past.
But, now, all we have is a competition between individual members of both parties: That would be the Hold Harmless Demopublicans and Free Market Republicrats over pork and concessions.
The total nuclear budget could be reduced and yet provide for significant research or ordnance and power as well as a portfolio of waste management and environmental remediation programs.
But, you cannot really do that without a core of patriotic and competent managers making economic and technical decisions without regard for the corrupt influences of either Congress of the Executive.
Despite a wide range of political sentiment, the EU -- notably France and Germany -- have such trusted and competent bureaucracies. This gives them the ability to have an environment/energy policy with positive military, political, and economic implications.
Look, we KNOW what enormous strides in technology the USA made in the 1940s up through the early 1960s. Those advances were NOT made by the "FREE MARKET" -- which exists only in the minds of morons. There were made by government-industry partnerships focused on the common national interest.
I don't know of any major industry today which does not have lobbyists in Washington pressing Congress for BIG favors -- tax breaks, guaranteed federal purchases, laws which favor them against possible competitors here and abroad, laws which grant them questionable property rights and monopolies ("intellectual property"), regulations which let them dump pollution on us with impunity, huge transfers of money from the taxpayers for subsidies, laws which provide protection from citizens lawsuits for wrongful deaths,etc.
The Republican cant about "Free Markets" just show what lying shitheads Republican Congressman really are. The RNC received $707 MILLION in the 2006 electoral cycle. Very little of that come in as $25 checks from the common citizen and
DAMM little came in from corporations wanting a "Free Market".
I agree, and because I agree with Robert Rapier that the future is solar, that's the only form of energy I'd privlege now. (Note that Rapier is more concerned with beating back biofuels, which are indeed bullshit; sometimes I think that if the Iowa caucuses had gotten themselves held in Arizona we'd be further ahead on solar by now.)
I heard Christine Todd Whitman on the "liberal" Bill Press Show in the wee hours this morning. I couldn't understand WHY she was shilling for the nuclear industry, and WHY this was timely. The NEW YORK TIMES article clarified why. Some background is at my link.
Rust never sleeps, and neither does the nuclear industry, evidently.
This is unsupported and anecdotal, but my impression is that nuclear energy is the only realistic option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on foreign oil.
Solar, hydroelectric and wind power should be developed as much as possible, but in the end none of them, singly or in combination, is a practical method of supplying the vast amount of energy the US requires.
Given the continuing fierce opposition to nuclear power, this provision looks to me to just be a way for the government to say, "We'll back you up in the face of the costs and uncertainty caused by your opponents."
It doesn't seem very out-of-line to me. Nuclear is the only available power source that can make a practical dent in CO2 emissions in the near future, so some guarantees are warranted.
HI Matt: Enjoy Chicago and try to catch a game of the Cub-Mets series this weekend while at Yearly Kos (perhaps a playoff preview?). Reference the loan subsidies for nukes, as a Greenie, I should be aghast, but I long ago decided that electricity generated by reactors was the lesser evil. Why subsidies over taxes? Because for our politicians, including our Democrats, it is so much easier to hand money out then make a billionaire pay 10% more on his taxes. If I were King (am I channeling Cheney here?), I would replace part of the income and social security tax with a carbon tax and an oil import tax with a price floor of $70(so OPEC could not put alternatives out of business with a price cut). But that all makes to much sense.
RE "But if we're going to be handing out additional subsidies (and I'm really not sure we should be) they should be directed at the very cleanest things available, which nuclear certainly isn't."
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1) We are ALREADY handing out huge subsidies to Big Oil -- see my comment above. You should know that.
2) If people are freezing --or can't drive to work -- they don't really give a hairy rodent's posterior what you think is a "clean" energy source.
3) I do think solar cells on roof tops have a lot of potential --long distance transport of high voltage electricity from nuclear plants has losses. Solar Cells appear "economically uncompetitive" only in this country, where Big Oil can charge us $3/gallon at the pump --and then take ANOTHER $38 per gallon from our income tax to pay for military protection of its investments in the Middle East.
But I think nukes are needed to provide the high volume of electricity needed for industrial manufacturing, smeltering, charging of batteries for electric cars, etc.
This very discussion is a good justification for a carbon tax- reasonable people will disagree on the best alternative energy source. Sometimes the market does do the best job of deciding these issues and I think instituting a carbon tax is the way to start.
Actually there is a very good argument for some subsidies to jump start the nuclear industry (if you support it) simply because this country hasn't built a new nuclear plant in many years. The way the industry and system is structured there is a lot more risk for the first plant, but not necessarily any major competitive advantage to doing so.
Once developers can be assured that the new licensing system for a nuke will actually work though (by seeing a couple get through) then those subsidies should evaporate. These specific subsidies, however, sound pretty fishy.
Private capital is streaming into clean, distributed power all over the globe. Not a single new nuclear project in the last 20 years, anywhere in the world, was financed with private capital. That tell you something?
Clean, renewable, distributed energy (plus energy efficiency) will win in the end, not for any fuzzy moral reasons but just because it's the best, smartest investment. Nuclear will survive as long as governments are willing to ply it with public money. When they stop, it will perish. It can't survive without massive subsidies. Believe me, nuclear execs knows this all too well.
Delicious Pundit - because I agree with Robert Rapier that the future is solar, that's the only form of energy I'd privlege now.
We have been hearing that the future is solar power since the late 60s, usually from people with no science or engineering backgrounds. It amounts to 0.02% of electric power/transportation/industrial energy use now, and even the most wildly optimistic Green Parties in Europe say getting 5% of energy coming from solar by 2030 would be amazingly good progress. There are people, again, outside engineering and science for the most part, who say some miracle new solar innovation is right around the corner, have for 40 years, like the cure for cancer. But if you smoke or live in a modern society that needs rational energy solutions, it would be foolish to count on either.
Solar involves high up-front costs, not storable, is not available much of the year due to weather, not available at night, is not able to be increased in power output as daily or cyclical demand increases (called load following, 24/7 reliability& availability, and storage capacity - the 3 most critical requirements, along with cost, of any power source). Solar also would cause large habitat destruction.
Yes, every little bit helps, and I'm not "anti-solar" but a strategy to push solar and other minor supplies and completely reject coal and nuclear? That is like a land with famine problems being told to eat less and plant raspberry plants in lieu of any more corn and potatos because "no one objects to raspberries". It is a nonsensical strategy.
(And, remember that many of the "eat less" proponents also advocate at the same time America add 40 million new "energy eaters" by 2020 through illegal alien amnesty and chain migration of most of their relatives. Another strategy that makes no sense because it destroys all the conservation gains they advocate.)
I like the idea that Matt puts forward for using a carbon tax to put the external costs back where they belong on fossil fuel plants. However, I can't see why you wouldn't take the same approach with nuclear waste.
Shouldn't the nuclear industry be able to prove to us they can store waste safely for 20,000 years? Shouldn't they be footing the bill to do so? Not just the cost of the hole in the ground, but the 24/7 security around the garbage dump. And of course they should be held responsible for anything bad that does happen, either in operation or with the waste. And they should have the funds available in escrow to pay out the largest claim that might reasonably be brought against them. You can't really hold them responsible if they simply go out of business after killing half the people in Nevada.
Meet those criteria, then when can start talking about nukes.
The big argument in favor of nuclear is that it's the only "practical" way to generate the electricity the nation needs without generating CO2. Even most environmentalists have accepted this argument; some therefore argue in favor of more nuclear power, while others say "yes, but the waste is such a big problem I'm still opposed."
But nuclear is NOT CO2-emission free. According to the most thorough study of the nuclear lifecycle not funded by the industry itself, mining, processing, and transporting the ore, right now, results in CO2 emissions of around a fifth to a third of that which would be produced by a natural gas fired plant. However, the supply of good quality ore is finite, so if we were to greatly increase our reliance on nuclear power, we would have to increasingly use lower-grade ore, which takes much more energy to refine, and the overall CO2 emissions would eventually INCREASE from using more nuclear power.
Also, the waste, the threat of terrorism... Yeah. If there's a carbon tax and those guys can make it work without subsidies, great.
Douglas Beach & Mike J -
You guys point out a problem we would have with nuclear power if we stuck to Jimmy Carter's foolish open cycle scheme, rather than recycled spent fuel rods. The longer-lived stuff is the transuranics like Plutonium, which is what all the "spent fuel storage for 20,000 years" alarmism is about - if we bury it instead of use it. Plutonium which could be completely recycled along with all the U-235 and U-238 left (95% of the fuel rod mass less the cladding). The shorter-lived, intensely radioctive portion - the fission products - almost completely decay away in 300 years. Those products, from a year run of a 1000 MW plant not only replace 5 million tons of CO2, they only weight 200 lbs and can be contained in a vitrified matrix measuring 13 cubic feet.
Carter resisted "open cycle" because he worried other nations that would never figure out separation technology as we did 65 years ago, would suddenly "learn the secret" and divert plutonium to bombs. France, Russia, Sweden, Japan all said Carter was silly, that any nation could do simple chemistry, and were proved right by the NORKs and PAKs easily learning how to extract plutonium from spent fuel. Those nations, along with Belgium, reprocess and use MOX (mixed uranium and plutonium oxide) fuel. Currently, MOX is less economic than enriched U-235, but only because we are buying up and burning all the Russians huge HEU nuke weapon stockpile and diluting. Once you take 95% enriched HEU and blend it down with regular uranium to 3% enrichment, the HEU is gone. No one can get it back up to weapons grade without building a national enrichment program and spend a few billion on a mass centrifuge facility using technology only 8 nations have mastered..
The IAEA says that reprocessing facilities in nations they trust - like the USA, Russia, France - pose no substantial risk of plutonium diversion by terrorists since they know by the spent fuel fuel mass and reprocessing efficiencies down to a gnats ass how much PU available for energy use they get back...And monitoring is effective. The US has continuously reprocessed since the 1st year of WWII without loss of security, ebven before we helped create the IAEA.
The other reason why the other nuclear power countries called Carter silly was that fuel burned for it's design length in civilian electric gen reactors have too much PU-241 to be usable in any bomb design terrorists could deploy, even if they somehow mounted a "death raid" on a reprocessing facility to get the MOX fuel sticks, set up their own reprocessing and metal fab facility in a cave that we would sniff out with satellites within weeks..
And all of us that hope commercial fusion happens know it will take reactors that fission to make fusion fuel tritium, and that the most effecient process appears to be fusion with fast neutrons hitting a U-238 blanket for added power from fast fission of that ordinarily non-fissile uranium isotope, plus plutonium creation from neutron absorbtion of slower fission neutrons - and the blankets would have to be reprocessed in the facilities Carter had such unfounded fear of 30 years ago...
Beach's assertion that nuclear generates lots of CO2, is wrong by a factor of 15 or more. His study assumes that we will never use breeder reactors, never recycle any uranium mined or recover the plutonium generated in a reactor fuel cycle, and the most energy-intensive part of the process, uranium enrichment, would be done by CO2-spewing coal plants instead of CO2-free nuclear generated electricity.
The other thing that is intriguing Euros and Asians are that new 4th gen nuclear reactors offer even better risk factors against fuel melt accidents for fuel breeders, use far more abundant thorium, and some designs are what is called "passive-safe", impervious to meltdown.
One sort of 4th Gen design, the high temperature gas "pebble bed" reactor,invented in Germany, engineering in the USA/France/Germany, and now being tested in China. It uses Carbon balls impregnated with uranium or mixed oxide fuel, and requires no cooling to prevent fuel meltdown.
Most interestingly, it operates in the temperature range of fossil fuel steam cycles vs. lower pressure, temp existing nuclear PWRs.
In fact, so suitable that a movement has started to consider the 5 million tons of CO2 generated by a coal plant as an economic cost, and if so, 1-3 pebble bed reactors could replace the coal boilers on an existing coal plant and use the existing power gen equipment of the coal plant while on top of CO2, also eliminate the 700,000 tons of coal slag, 700 tons of heavy metals, and 12,000 tons of acid sulfur oxides.(plants with old or no scrubbers like 3rd world ones)
That offers the promise of nukes directly replacing coal as fuel while not having to build a brand new plant to replace the largest CO2 emitting coal plants (hundreds of billions in sunk-in costs in global coal plants) .
The main problem of the nuclear power industry was always that it pretended to be a product of the free enterprise system.
Uncle Sam subsidized, totally I believe, the General Electric and Westinghouse nuclear power plant designs. The fuel was offered to the buyers at a teaser rate, which by the way was unilaterally changed later.
When the time came to put pen to paper and buy the first plants there was a problem. It was a big problem at the very core of the free market. The utilities couldn't get liability insurance for offsite. The market spoke so damn the market, Uncle Sam stepped in. (and stepped in again and again every five years or so for the last 50 years to provide off site liability insurance.)
The plants themselves are not insured either as is often the case in huge capital projects as the insurance is just too expensive. So with no insurance companies looking over their shoulder to enforce safety that was left up to the NRC. Of course the mantra ever since was that there was too much regulation but that is a lie. Insurers can be brutal in insisting on safety issues in order to protect themselves againt loss. Just as brutal as the nasty goverment.
What killed nuke power. Cost over runs caused by general inflation of the 70's as well as an overtaxed nuclear power construction industry without enough resources and people to bring 70 some plants online at one time. Then came Three Mile Island. Remember the plant itself was not insured for loss. Poof, the entire billion or so in the plant lost in a few hours. They were also on the hook for the cleanup. Poof, another billion. (Part of that was covered by a pool of funds set aside by other utilities. Self insurance so to speak. Money set aside then sent to Pennsylvania. Did you know that?) The place is still a mess in the containment building and who knows how they are going to finesse final decommissioning.
With 50 years of experience I think at a minimum Uncle Sams liability coverage should be canceled. Let private insurance cover them. I assume the will because of all that experience. Which was the actuaries problem when they first looked into it.
As far as other subsides, mostly tax, well they are ugly but can't be avoided. By the way, there isn't enough uranium in the world to replace a large portion of existing coal plants. Nuke power isn't a total solution, but don't think anyone is saying it is but as the push gets stronger to start building I am sure many a flak will say so.
Pointing out nukes' shortcomings is fine --but its not reasonable to ignore Chris Ford's point that some research and development could create new advanced designs that would not have the safety problem --and hence liability problem --that you cited.
And the whole point of breeder reactors is to reduce the need to mine/refine ore.
Nor is it reasonable to ignore the HUGE subsidy that Big Oil gets today -- has been getting since Three Mile Island-- and the MALIGN effects of that policy. No one is going to crash airliners into our skyscrapers because we are building nuclear plants in the US.
Nor is it reasonable to ignore the huge pollution kicked out by coal plants. NOT just carbon dioxide but things like mercury and acid rain as well.
The biggest problem , however, is that our corrupt political system creates massive perverse disincentives to addressing an increasingly urgent problem. Market incentives don't work if someone can use campaign donations to have a SUMO wrestler sit on one end of the scale.
'That offers the promise of nukes directly replacing coal as fuel while not having to build a brand new plant to replace the largest CO2 emitting coal plants (hundreds of billions in sunk-in costs in global coal plants) .'Posted by Chris Ford |
That's promising. I'm convinced the Chinese are not going to kiss off their huge investment in coal burning power plants that they've made in the last couple decades (and are continuing to make). A direct replacement of nuclear reactors would be easier to sell to them. Otherwise, I think there would be a willingness to put "their fair share" of CO2 in the atmosphere and damn the consequences.
Chris Ford:
My assumptions (or rather those of the study I cited) about how much CO2 is generated by supplying nuclear plants are simply based on how those plants are supplied NOW. You can argue that if we did x,y, and z to supply those plants that the CO2 generated would be far less; however, that isn't where the fuel is coming from now, so it's a bit speculative, I think. It's kind of like arguing that electric cars don't generate any CO2 -- you know, if you accept the counterfactual that all of the electricity will be generated by clean sources.
That said, I don't take a hard line against nuclear power as some do -- but I'm also against subsidizing it, including the stealthier subsidies, like insuring the plants. And just to be clear, I realize all too well that oil and other fossil fuels are being subsidized massively right now -- and I'm against that too.
So, to summarize, sure, go ahead and build nuclear plants if you can make it work on the economics (which hopefully would include a carbon tax), but don't expect the federal government to help pay for it. Under those conditions, if Ford's assertions about the favorable economics (including carbon impacts) of reprocessing the fuel and so on are correct, they'll be proved out and we'll have a bunch of nuke plants funded by private sources. It'll be amazing.
So far, however, the nuclear industry's complaints of "excessive regulation" are translated as "not paying us to build the plants and also shielding us from all the liability."
Oh, my god, we're still talking about nuclear power as a serious option? This is ridiculous, and it's not all about 25,000-year half-lives.
If anyone were talking seriously about repealing the Price-Anderson act, which makes the American taxpayer liable for any mishap at a nuke, that would remove one complete disqualifier. If your accountants decide that you can't afford the insurance that the actuarial market would provide, then you can't afford the project, unless you're planning to do it in a damn-the-consequences-we-have-absolute-power Soviet style.
Secondly, each dollar can only be spent once. There are ways of spending dollars that return to the energy balance several times more power than nuclear, the best among these being improvements to end-use efficiency. So any dollar spent building a nuke is a net loss for the goal of avoiding carbon emissions.
What is said above about the much less greenhouse-friendly nature of nuclear's overall carbon cycle once fuel preparation is considered is worth bearing in mind too, as is the fundamental nature of Faustian bargain of waste disposal -- has anyone who uses this term actually read Faust??
As far as pie-in-the-sky, hypothetical, future nuclear power technologies being potentially less harmful, more greenhouse-friendly, less potentially catastrophic, or whatever, if decades of government-subsidized status for nuclear power haven't produced them by now, it's time for the Federal tit to dry up. Go talk to a VC firm, and when you come up with something a commercial insurer will stand behind, with no artificial exemptions from liability provided by a bought-and-paid-for Congress, then we can talk. I suspect I'll be waiting a good long while for that.
-F.
Comments closed August 14, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
RE Matthew's comment "the nuclear power industry is basically looking for handouts and I see no reason why they should get them "
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Why not? After all, Big Oil is getting a handout of about $300 Billion PER YEAR --and the lives of about 3600 soldiers and 3000 civilians -- to protect its foreign investments.
The Nuclear industry is just kinda slow. They don't realize that there is a ..er.. "Protocol" to these things. Step 1 of the protocol is to give a few $Million to Dick Cheney.
Posted by Don Williams | July 31, 2007 9:13 AM