I'm completely on board with nuclear from a scientific and engineering perspective. At the end of the day, all power is nuclear - solar is the obvious one, but wind and hydroelectric are just less...
I'm completely on board with nuclear from a scientific and engineering perspective. At the end of the day, all power is nuclear - solar is the obvious one, but wind and hydroelectric are just less direct ways of tapping into solar power. And all fossil fuels are just plants that harnessed and stored solar power millions of years ago (coal, for example, is mostly trees that lived & died before bacteria learned how to eat wood). Moving closer to the source by harnessing nuclear reactions directly makes perfect sense.
However...I can't support expansion of nuclear power in the US, given our political climate and lax attitude towards regulation. Doubly so when the new 6-3 Supreme Court is likely to limit or end Chevron deference which would kneecap all environmental regulations.
If a wind farm is mismanaged or run poorly, it might...kill a few too many birds? If a hydroelectric dam is mismanaged, I suppose it could burst and cause major flooding. All that pales in comparison to what can happen if a nuclear power plant is mismanaged and run with a "show profit for this quarter" motive.
One of the points this article makes (that it thinks is pro-nuclear) actually underscores this for me:
The construction and operation of nuclear power plants create more jobs than any other type of energy production.
People are expensive. Requiring lots of people to operate a nuclear power plant is a downside, not an upside. Yes, it seems like it "creates jobs", but it also creates an incentive for the operator of the plant to cut back on staff in order to cut costs.
From Exxon Valdez to Deepwater Horizon and other disasters that barely make the news, I simply don't trust the energy industry in the US with anything that can cause major harm if mishandled.
I really wouldn't understate how bad "major flooding" can be... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure Honestly hydroelectric is far and away the most dangerous way we can make...
If a hydroelectric dam is mismanaged, I suppose it could burst and cause major flooding.
I really wouldn't understate how bad "major flooding" can be...
I mean, the disasters for hydro are certainly the biggest you're ever going to see for single events, but I don't think it's even remotely comparable to the amount of people killed by fossil fuel...
I mean, the disasters for hydro are certainly the biggest you're ever going to see for single events, but I don't think it's even remotely comparable to the amount of people killed by fossil fuel plants that are working as intended.
That's not how your comment read to me, calling it the most dangerous way to make power. But yeah, unquestionably it's more dangerous than nuclear or any other low carbon power source, and that's...
That's not how your comment read to me, calling it the most dangerous way to make power. But yeah, unquestionably it's more dangerous than nuclear or any other low carbon power source, and that's before getting in to environmental damage from reservoir creation.
I have to disagree here. This might be true for hydroelectric dams. But hydroelectric power can be done by just tapping a stream uphill, putting it in a pipe and running it downhill. The problem...
I have to disagree here. This might be true for hydroelectric dams. But hydroelectric power can be done by just tapping a stream uphill, putting it in a pipe and running it downhill. The problem with that is that it does not aid in control of the river (making it navigable while preventing flooding) and it does not provide a reservoir for irrigation. Which happen to be three common concerns. Additionally, "my" kind of hydro power does not allow for load following with the power plant, as there is no storage.
The question is: Given proper engineering standards and safety regulations, is hydro still a dangerous kind of power generation if we offset the gains made by flow control? My guess would be "hell yes" since we have done dams before we did hydro power but I haven't the numbers to do the math.
The only problem is I don't really see how you could actually use "your" kind of hydro power to provide any kind of adequate base load. Sure, there's no danger if you are just using small hydro...
The only problem is I don't really see how you could actually use "your" kind of hydro power to provide any kind of adequate base load. Sure, there's no danger if you are just using small hydro plants to supplement other power generation, but it will not come anywhere close to providing enough power for society's needs on its own.
Ironically, one of the best solutions we currently have for energy storage is to literally pump water into a giant reservoir so it can be used to power hydroelectric turbines to smooth out the load as needed.
The scale is no different. You can literally get the same amount of power per year from such a facility as you could from a conventional dam, given the same geography. Say you have a mountain...
The scale is no different. You can literally get the same amount of power per year from such a facility as you could from a conventional dam, given the same geography. Say you have a mountain valley. You can slap a 100m wall into it, creating a 100m deep lake with 100m of head (pressure) on your turbines. Say you get 10m³/s flow through the river. That makes for 10MW , by the way. Say also that this creates a 10 km long lake.
Now, we'll build a pipeline for the 10m³/s flow. Starting 10km upstream from the would-be dam, leading to a point 100m up the hill from the dam. Water will flow naturally in there if we include a miniscule slope. We're now capturing the same flow without storing an enormous amount of energy. From the top of the pipeline down the hill, we now build the same hydro plant we would in the dam. The main difference is that we can't do pumped hydro (without a reservoir uphill) and can't store water to use later, so we can't adapt to load. Water we don't use now is lost, so we'll get our 10MW all year round instead of sometimes 0, sometimes 20MW. But nuclear isn't that agile either, so whatever.
Also: A much smaller reservoir upstream could give enormous benefits in terms of following daily load cycles.6 soccer fields, 10m deep will soak up 12h worth of water. And that's a much smaller wave if that dam breaks than if the 100m wall breaks. But at that point we're doing exactly what a lot of pumped hydro plants are doing anyway. My concept really isn't all that different from normal hydro. It's a continuum, more or less, of just how much storage you want.
If the scale of the invasion of nature or the scale of the construction worry you, look at conventional hydro first.
To expand more on the financial side of things: Economics really did kill the "dream" many nuclear proponents had of a comeback. As you say, nuclear power plants require a lot of—often highly...
To expand more on the financial side of things:
Economics really did kill the "dream" many nuclear proponents had of a comeback. As you say, nuclear power plants require a lot of—often highly educated and trained—people to run properly. That incurs massive costs that aren't borne by other forms of electricity generation. Take for example the Topaz Solar Farm in southern California, a 550MW photovoltaic plant. It provides "only" 12 full-time jobs. That's not a bug, that's a feature.
Economically, it's very clear nuclear is wholly uncompetitive in the face of continuously dropping costs of solar and wind as they undergo their respective learning curves. Big nuclear projects seem almost doomed to failure, from a fiscal point of view, at this stage. Additionally, another huge disadvantage is the lead times on nuclear power plants are long, like 10-20 years long. In that time, you can build out 10x-100x the capacity in solar, and you can bring it online piece by piece. Nuclear requires all capital investment and construction upfront before it can even generate a single watt hour of electricity.
Probably the only hope for nuclear fans at this point is small, modular, compact reactors like NuScale. But again, I'd question the costs compared to just building some solar panels and connecting up batteries. Perhaps it's time for nuclear proponents to move on to focusing our energy and resources on the bleeding edge front to fusion power, which if commercialised and designed to be small enough, could one day allow carbon-free marine travel and aviation.
I am a (huge) proponent of nuclear, and still believe a nuclear fueled society will invite longer and better scientific innovation (nuclear produces 1000x the amount of power per unit when...
I am a (huge) proponent of nuclear, and still believe a nuclear fueled society will invite longer and better scientific innovation (nuclear produces 1000x the amount of power per unit when compared). And I would love to attempt to refute a lot of this, but I am on mobile.
I will refute about the lead times, the mean time for nuclear power plant development is only 7.5 years , and less when you remove the outliers that started development 20-30 years ago. Lots of reactors are now being fully developed within 3 or 4 years.
You might be right about the lead time aspect, the outliers probably skew the mean towards something closer to what I suggested, but the median may be shorter.
You might be right about the lead time aspect, the outliers probably skew the mean towards something closer to what I suggested, but the median may be shorter.
Lead times are tough, because Western countries generally haven't built new reactors sinces the late 1990s or early 2000s. Even a few years gap between projects (2002-2007 in the case of France)...
Lead times are tough, because Western countries generally haven't built new reactors sinces the late 1990s or early 2000s. Even a few years gap between projects (2002-2007 in the case of France) can cause a lot of knowledge, experience, and efficiencies to be lost. On top of that, we are working with first-of-a-kind reactors that need to incorporate changes made after 9/11 and Fukushima. I am somewhat hesitant to trust the Russians and the Chinese as to their lead times. I'm most interested to see what the British experience is like (for large, conventional nuclear) as well as the Canadian experience (for SMRs).
I believe SMRs have more of a chance in today's environment. Big projects have too much of a chance of failure. I also think we will see an increasing emphasis on cogeneration (a reactor puts out...
I believe SMRs have more of a chance in today's environment. Big projects have too much of a chance of failure. I also think we will see an increasing emphasis on cogeneration (a reactor puts out far more heat than is recoverable for electricity) and marine propulsion (something we are already doing today). I work in the nuclear sector (spent fuel storage), so feel free to ask more questions if you'd like.
Yeah I would say the lead time is the real dealbreaker at this point for nuclear. In what, 30 years is when we really need to be carbon neutral to only severely damage the planet instead of making...
Yeah I would say the lead time is the real dealbreaker at this point for nuclear. In what, 30 years is when we really need to be carbon neutral to only severely damage the planet instead of making it unliveable? In terms of generations that's maybe 2 generations of nuclear power, in terms of plan, build, and evaluate performance. Certainly not enough time to get governments, citizens, and businesses on board to get it done.
I personally hope we develop a strong, renewable baseline for day to day electricity needs and then use nuclear for targeted mega-engineering projects.
I personally hope we develop a strong, renewable baseline for day to day electricity needs and then use nuclear for targeted mega-engineering projects.
This is American politics in a nutshell. "Look at how many jobs this will create" is basically how every policy needs to be framed. And if that job is in the private sector you can bet they'll be...
Yes, it seems like it "creates jobs", but it also creates an incentive for the operator of the plant to cut back on staff in order to cut costs.
This is American politics in a nutshell. "Look at how many jobs this will create" is basically how every policy needs to be framed. And if that job is in the private sector you can bet they'll be looking to reduce that headcount ASAP.
It reminds me of the classic anecdote where the Chinese were showing Milton Friedman some kind of infrastructure project. Milton Friedman was puzzled as to why they workers were only using shovels...
It reminds me of the classic anecdote where the Chinese were showing Milton Friedman some kind of infrastructure project. Milton Friedman was puzzled as to why they workers were only using shovels and not operating any heavy machinery. They explained to him that it was a jobs program, so Milton Friedman asked "why not give them spoons, then?"
That's the main reason I'm so optimistic about MSRs. I don't really like the PWR approach - it just seems like straight crazy to run water at 90-150 atmospheres of pressure depending on your...
That's the main reason I'm so optimistic about MSRs. I don't really like the PWR approach - it just seems like straight crazy to run water at 90-150 atmospheres of pressure depending on your design. The plants cost a fortune, too, due to the added complexity dealing with that potential for a 300x steam explosion.
MSRs seem well poised to sidestep all that trouble - they run with no pressure, or even negative if you'd rather leak in than out. The safety feature of having passive design removes human failure from the reactor management too. If this nuclear proposal had focused on Gen-IV designs I'd be a lot more supportive of it. The obvious candidate for investment at present is Thorcon. Get them that test platform for about $600 million and we're going to know everything we need to know about MSRs and get them certified in multiple countries in under ten years. Then they start rolling off the assembly line.
Leave the PWRs in the dust, let's move on. And then later, someday, fusion. That's the nuclear approach that should be part of any forward-thinking package, not this pitch pining for the old school.
I think molten salt reactors have a decent chance, but they have some of their own challenges. I would say the more likely candidates are Terrestrial Energy and Moltex, especially the former.
I think molten salt reactors have a decent chance, but they have some of their own challenges. I would say the more likely candidates are Terrestrial Energy and Moltex, especially the former.
It's refreshing to see a zero bullshit honest list of MSR unanswered questions. Usually it's conflating the old reactors with MSRs and those arguments just don't carry over. I've watched a couple...
It's refreshing to see a zero bullshit honest list of MSR unanswered questions. Usually it's conflating the old reactors with MSRs and those arguments just don't carry over. I've watched a couple Thorcon videos now - their hope is to get funding from Indonesia for the startup investment. They need power (rolling blackouts are common) and it's Thorcon or some thirty-plus coal plants. Those are their options. If they get the funding for the testbed, it's todo list is basically what you just linked.
They aren't trying for the fancy MSRs with clever designs that so many of the other startups are chasing. They intend to build - with minor improvements - the exact same MSR that ran for 20,000 hours at ORNL in the 60s. They are straight up ignoring all the tasty distractions and just going for the dumbest, simplest can that works on their power ships. They or some other company can invent a better can, and waste burners, later - we don't need it to get started. I rather like that approach. It's one of the most practical I've seen, almost to the point of being a viable business plan.
I like Thorcon just because the power is mobile and that's a killer feature in a world dealing with climate change. I wish them all the best of luck.
Disclaimer: the Reddit link was not mine. I think the shipbuilding approach is interesting and has a lot of potential, but I think Indonesia is the wrong place to start. They lack much of the...
Disclaimer: the Reddit link was not mine.
I think the shipbuilding approach is interesting and has a lot of potential, but I think Indonesia is the wrong place to start. They lack much of the institutional and industrial base for nuclear operations. With the new builds in the UAE, Turkey, and Bangladesh, they are partnering with countries which already have a nuclear base (Russia and Korea). I believe it makes more sense to partner with a country that has an existing nuclear industrial base (institutional knowledge, fuel cycle facilities, existing plants, an experienced regulator, strong research programs). Canada is a popular choice, as they have all of the above, and are looking to expand their nuclear portfolio, especially in the Arctic. Additionally, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is willing to work with vendors in approving new designs.
I think the point is that running costs are cheap. Because uranium used is so tiny and easily mined, the major running cost is highly paid staff; and even with that cost Nuclear is still...
I think the point is that running costs are cheap. Because uranium used is so tiny and easily mined, the major running cost is highly paid staff; and even with that cost Nuclear is still competitive over 20 years when compared to gas.
Wow, that's really quite solidly pro-nuclear propaganda. Like, really really. It's not just saying "hey, look at how nuclear power holds up against other power sources", but talking about union...
Wow, that's really quite solidly pro-nuclear propaganda. Like, really really. It's not just saying "hey, look at how nuclear power holds up against other power sources", but talking about union membership and needed square footage and cross-party collaboration in Congress?
I'm sure it's an inspiring article to someone, but it feels very much like a sales pitch for nuclear as opposed to a solid argument regarding the respective merits of various power infrastructure options.
I have to restrain myself in this, apparently, because I'm kinda anti-nuclear and I find the whole thing baffling. So I'm just calmly pointing out that this article, made in a style that got it...
I have to restrain myself in this, apparently, because I'm kinda anti-nuclear and I find the whole thing baffling. So I'm just calmly pointing out that this article, made in a style that got it into ~enviro, does not mention nuclear waste once. That's all I need to distinguish a genuine summary of nuclear energy from a propaganda piece.
I really didn't get how that graph was connected to anything in the text. It talked a bit about low wage jobs... but there wasn't any point being made other than "look a this graph of union...
talking about union membership
I really didn't get how that graph was connected to anything in the text. It talked a bit about low wage jobs... but there wasn't any point being made other than "look a this graph of union membership over the years" and I suppose it insinuates some correlation with other metrics???
Anyway, I'd be happy to be proven wrong that safe and clean nuclear power is possible to achieve at a lower cost than e.g the corresponding amount of solar.
You would be happy to be proven wrong? What advantages do you believe nuclear power has over solar? I would rather be happy to discover that solar is cheaper than expected. I'd be happy to...
You would be happy to be proven wrong? What advantages do you believe nuclear power has over solar? I would rather be happy to discover that solar is cheaper than expected. I'd be happy to discover that there are any of a variety of promising advancements in solar power, such as a more environmentally friendly bill of materials, improved efficiency, improved lifespan, reduced size, or greator adoption.
The way I see it, tit-for-tat, nuclear generation has this little issue of possible irradiation. The only likely alternative I am aware of is nuclear fusion. But if we had a choice between ideal nuclear fusion and ideal solar, I'd still take solar, simply because it is more inherently decentralized. Not that they couldn't co-exist.
The only real drawback to solar is that the infrastructure itself is not green, and it doesn't last forever. Same goes for any green capture, we're looking at a lot of collapsed windmills in...
The only real drawback to solar is that the infrastructure itself is not green, and it doesn't last forever. Same goes for any green capture, we're looking at a lot of collapsed windmills in twenty years. Gotta keep rebuilding it all the time.
All that used up older solar/wind/whatever material starts to pile up pretty fast, and it's not all recyclable either. Some of it relies for components on resources we're going to run out of and that will eventually make their prices rise considerably. That's still a better problem to have than coal any day, but we can do better than that with modern nuclear. Not the kind this article is pitching, though. Potentially, we can do better with proposals like this one.
Considering what I just read in this article vs the one in the video, I know which proposal I'd vote for in a hot second and which one I'd vote against.
While it's true that every form of electricity generation has downsides, non-recyclable components are not unique to solar and wind. The sheer concrete and other materials used in the construction...
While it's true that every form of electricity generation has downsides, non-recyclable components are not unique to solar and wind. The sheer concrete and other materials used in the construction of all forms of power generation are basically impossible to recycle and reuse effectively. I don't think this is a good reason to ding solar or wind—especially solar, which should be mostly recyclable.
Frankly, I think this a good example of the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra, i.e. reduce comes first, and the most recyclable and efficient electricity generation is the electricity you don't have to generate. I do seriously worry that we're simply too populated and have such insatiable consumptions that running anything at the scale required to satisfy humanity's needs is going to be environmentally deleterious, which raises a lot of questions about overpopulation.
All fair points. Solar is my favorite out of the renewables for that light footprint, and we're nowhere near an optimal design for a solar panel yet. Advances in superconductors and panel designs...
All fair points. Solar is my favorite out of the renewables for that light footprint, and we're nowhere near an optimal design for a solar panel yet. Advances in superconductors and panel designs have the potential to transform solar into a much stronger contender than it is now. The mere convenience of a foldable, pocket sized solar capture device can't be matched by any other power system, either. That's an avenue of research and commercial development I'm happy to fund. Tidal doesn't get enough credit, either.
Looking at my comment, I'm surprised no-one mentioned the bit about solar and off-hours haha. The youtube video is interesting; I haven't finished watching, but I feel like tsunamis and huricanes...
Looking at my comment, I'm surprised no-one mentioned the bit about solar and off-hours haha. The youtube video is interesting; I haven't finished watching, but I feel like tsunamis and huricanes would be a problem.
My one caveat after I finished watching that proposal - I'd want to see one of those reactors tested upside-down, since that's their worst case scenario. If something rolls the ship, it nullifies...
My one caveat after I finished watching that proposal - I'd want to see one of those reactors tested upside-down, since that's their worst case scenario. If something rolls the ship, it nullifies their safety system. They need to fail gracefully in that scenario to be completely safe, just in case a legendary tsunami or earthquake comes along where they are parked.
Massive output is one advantage (though I'm not sure if an equal investment in solar power would be able to match the output). That it is centralized could also be considered an advantage (solar...
You would be happy to be proven wrong? What advantages do you believe nuclear power has over solar?
Massive output is one advantage (though I'm not sure if an equal investment in solar power would be able to match the output). That it is centralized could also be considered an advantage (solar can with current technology be done in a decentralized way which of course might be considered an advantage too). Consistent output is often touted as a benefit of both nuclear and fossil based power generation (perhaps that could be offset by investing in better trans continental power transmission?). Someone who actually thinks nuclear is a good idea can probably come up with more :)
Maybe... I mean mining & refining plus transporting uranium to power a traditional nuclear fission plant still has a bunch of carbon emissions compared to what's needed for keeping solar/wind...
Maybe... I mean mining & refining plus transporting uranium to power a traditional nuclear fission plant still has a bunch of carbon emissions compared to what's needed for keeping solar/wind going. I guess it depends on what you include in the calculation.
The lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for current solar tech is indeed higher per kWh produced than nuclear is. Wind is very comparable to nuclear, but both solar and wind don't account for...
The power grid in the continental US is more than a little bit of a shitshow. It was developed piecemeal by regional utility companies, and the interconnections are not great. It's been touted as...
The power grid in the continental US is more than a little bit of a shitshow. It was developed piecemeal by regional utility companies, and the interconnections are not great. It's been touted as a strength a time or two: if a section of the grid is hacked or otherwise sabotaged, the whole country won't go down... because it's not really very well integrated.
Reminded me of this news from 2018 related to the European power grid. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/european-clocks-six-minutes-late-serbia-kosovo-electricity-grid-spd/
Madison began her career fighting for nuclear power as a research and analyst for Environmental Progress, a pro-nuclear research and policy organization in Berkeley, California.
Michael Shellenberger (born 1971) is an American author, environmental policy writer, cofounder of Breakthrough Institute and founder of Environmental Progress.
Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All
In June 2020, HarperCollins published Shellenberger's book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, in which the author "explores how and why so many of us came to see important but manageable environmental problems as the end of the world, and why the people who are the most apocalyptic about environmental problems tend to oppose the best and most obvious solutions to solving them."[10][73]
In a book review, Peter Gleick argues that "bad science and bad arguments abound" in 'Apocalypse Never', writing that "What is new in here isn't right, and what is right isn't new."[74] Similarly, a 2020 Forbes article by Shellenberger, in which he promotes his book, has been analyzed by seven academic reviewers and one editor from the Climate Feedback fact-checking project; the reviewers conclude that Shellenberger "mixes accurate and inaccurate claims in support of a misleading and overly simplistic argumentation about climate change."[75] Shellenberger responded in a piece published at Environmental Progress, a publication he founded.[76]
Breakthrough has been criticized by both the right and the left. On the right, they have been criticized for arguing about the importance of the federal government in producing technological innovations.[51] On the left, they have been criticized for arguing that carbon pricing is not the solution to climate change,[16] for being pro-nuclear,[52] for promoting industrial agriculture that is highly dependent on fossil fuels, and for touting natural gas as a way to decrease coal usage.[53]
Journalist Paul D. Thacker alleged that the Breakthrough Institute is an example of a quasi-lobbying organization which does not adequately disclose its funding.[54]
The Institute has also been criticized for promoting industrial agriculture and processed foodstuffs while also accepting donations from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, whose board members have financial ties to processed food companies that rely heavily on industrial agriculture. After an IRS complaint about potential improper use of 501(c)(3) status, the Institute no longer lists the Nathan Cummings Foundation as a donor. However, as journalist Thacker has noted, the Institute's funding remains largely opaque.
Climate scientist Michael E. Mann questions the motives of the Breakthrough Institute. According to Mann the self-declared mission of the BTI is to look for a breakthrough to solve the climate problem. However Mann states that basically the BTI "appears to be opposed to anything - be it a price on carbon or incentives for renewable energy - that would have a meaningful impact." He notes that the BTI "remains curiously preoccupied with opposing advocates for meaningful climate action and is coincidentally linked to natural gas interests" and criticises the BTI for advocating "continued exploitation of fossil fuels". Mann also questions that the BTI on the one hand seems to be "very pessimistic" about renewable energy, while on the other hand "they are extreme techno-optimists" regarding geoengineering.[55]
Ontario, Canada generates half of its power via nuclear but one of the main plants is being decommissioned in the next five years. It’s a bit of a shame that the capacity isn’t being replaced at...
Ontario, Canada generates half of its power via nuclear but one of the main plants is being decommissioned in the next five years. It’s a bit of a shame that the capacity isn’t being replaced at the same time.
If we're serious about tackling climate change, we need to not just make things more efficient, but also consume less of practically everything, which includes energy. Perhaps the best thing we...
If we're serious about tackling climate change, we need to not just make things more efficient, but also consume less of practically everything, which includes energy. Perhaps the best thing we can do for the planet is strip less resources from it in the first place.
The problem with simply making things more efficient is you suddenly suffer from what's known as Jevon's Paradox, which states that as a process becomes more efficient, the overall output and effect is to actually intensify the overall consumption of that process, and the efficiency gains aren't used to reduce consumption, but instead to ratchet up consumption further.
Indeed. We've seen the kind of efficiency and total usage the market will generate if we let it run free. If we artificially increase supply, power will be cheaper and demand will rise. People...
Indeed. We've seen the kind of efficiency and total usage the market will generate if we let it run free. If we artificially increase supply, power will be cheaper and demand will rise. People will just buy more wasteful apppliances again because it's cheaper.
Considering our problem with the entire market is a negative externality, we need to do "internalize" that. Power and fossil fuel companies need to pay to dispose of their waste (CO2, radioactive waste) in a safe way. Power prices climb, but we're actually rid of the climate problem then, mostly. The market will react accordingly. Public transit will be cheaper in comparison, efficient appliances will be cheaper in comparison. Since this essentially an unjust tax, give poor people some support to offset the additional burden. Done.
No more patchwork as we have it in germany right now of directly supporting discrete parts of the market, like boosting electric and hybrid vehicle sales by a simple subsidy. Price the fuel properly, and let consumers decide.
Realistically, the only way to resolve that paradox is rationing. Want to reduce meat consumption? Nationalize food production, everybody is given X annual meat rations, representing their...
Realistically, the only way to resolve that paradox is rationing.
Want to reduce meat consumption? Nationalize food production, everybody is given X annual meat rations, representing their fractional ownership of Y total meat industry output, and you slowly force that Y down.
Want to reduce fossil fuel usage? Same thing for oil extraction... individuals get X rations of oil, force Y down.
The other advantage to this method is that it acts as a wealth redistribution mechanism as well. It gives the first pick of the scarce resource to individuals, and corporations must buy those credits from individuals in order to do their business.
Restricting demand is generally better done with taxes, because it means that the most marginal uses will get curtailed first and everyone in the supply chain has incentive to reduce usage. (And...
Restricting demand is generally better done with taxes, because it means that the most marginal uses will get curtailed first and everyone in the supply chain has incentive to reduce usage. (And the wealth redistribution could be done with UBI.)
Something I frequently think about is how everyone all across the world was happy to accept measures such as rationing during the 1940s when it was all in an effort to kill each other. Now, all of...
Something I frequently think about is how everyone all across the world was happy to accept measures such as rationing during the 1940s when it was all in an effort to kill each other. Now, all of humanity faces a common existential threat and suddenly these same sorts of measures are derided as "extreme".
It's not that it's extreme, it's that it wouldn't work very well. Carbon emissions are pretty abstract. There are millions of products that contribute to global warming in some way. Rationing...
It's not that it's extreme, it's that it wouldn't work very well. Carbon emissions are pretty abstract. There are millions of products that contribute to global warming in some way. Rationing wouldn't reward most of the ways people could find to cut back on carbon emissions, and probably would reward some things that don't really matter much.
If you want extreme, you could raise the tax a lot.
Have you ever looked around a hardware store or looked at the specialized catalogs used by various industries? I would guess that most products are small components of larger devices, along with...
Have you ever looked around a hardware store or looked at the specialized catalogs used by various industries?
I would guess that most products are small components of larger devices, along with things that are rarely sold to consumers at all. As an example, this would include most medical supplies, and that by itself is just one industry.
I don't really understand how the fact that sometimes screws are used to build medical equipment means we can't do things like make it illegal for the average consumer to buy as much useless junk...
I don't really understand how the fact that sometimes screws are used to build medical equipment means we can't do things like make it illegal for the average consumer to buy as much useless junk on Amazon as they want whenever their heart desires with next day delivery. Or make it illegal for people to book flights to wherever they want whenever they feel like it. Or require logistics companies to optimize distribution chains for reduced carbon emissions instead of consumer convenience.
I think it gets difficult because there are a lot of grey areas and you often don’t know why people are doing it, and if you wanted to find out, you would have to learn a lot more about them, and...
I think it gets difficult because there are a lot of grey areas and you often don’t know why people are doing it, and if you wanted to find out, you would have to learn a lot more about them, and this could be a big invasion of privacy.
An example might be a flight to Hawaii. For many people, this would just be a vacation, but some people have close friends and relatives there. Maybe you’re going for a wedding. Is that a good enough excuse? (In a non-pandemic year.)
So you could say, only people with relatives can go, but some people might use visiting relatives as an excuse for a nice vacation. So how do you crack down on that? By learning more about them. And then you’d be making judgement calls like how close a relative are they, really?
You can look at immigration regulations to see how intrusive this could get, where they try to figure out whether people are really married or trying to pull some kind of immigration scam. It gets really intrusive fast.
Or consider buying a truck. There are some people who really need trucks and a lot more that don’t. How do you decide who really needs a truck?
It’s better just to say some things are expensive and let people use their own judgement about whether it’s “worth it” compared to other things they can do with the money. Along with making sure people have enough money that this isn’t a horrific choice to be making.
One alternative is that we have some other class of people who decides who “deserves” stuff. This is what we do with prescription drugs, so it can be done, but how many different areas of life do you want to be applying for permission?
Taxes don't really curb usage though. They just raise some extra money in the coffers. Tobbacco taxes are a great example. And giving up cigarettes is easier than giving up Oil for sure. The...
Taxes don't really curb usage though. They just raise some extra money in the coffers. Tobbacco taxes are a great example. And giving up cigarettes is easier than giving up Oil for sure.
The problem is that taxes don't change an elastic supply to an inelastic one to resolve the paradox. Rations put a lock the supply and make it possible to force that supply down in the future. Supply chains will be further incentivized because costs will skyrocket as rations become scarcer. Distributing to people first insures a fair distribution across the population.
I'm not sure tobacco taxes are a great comparison. The problem with tobacco is that it's addictive, so you can't tax people into detox. However, combined measures have helped reduce prevalence of...
I'm not sure tobacco taxes are a great comparison. The problem with tobacco is that it's addictive, so you can't tax people into detox. However, combined measures have helped reduce prevalence of smoking.
And it's not about giving up oil. It's about reducing and making the right goods competetive. If fuel and coal power was 2x as expensive tomorrow, maybe I'll install a battery back in my basement, solar on my roof and buy an electric car, because suddenly that's the economic decision. Maybe the train is competetive. Maybe that highly efficient appliance is not that expensive after all. Maybe I'll skip the drier and hang my laundry up to dry. And if I want to be a moron and not change my behaviour, the government has a fat check to spend on renewables, sustainability or other compensation measures. And we haven't talked about how an adequate tax on emissions would make it easier on the willing consumer to find ecological competitors. I don't know if my tofu has caused less emissions than the meat in the supermarket. If we price emissions properly, the price will give me a big hint.
Taxes will absolutely make supply and demand meet up at a lower quantity. Think about how a carbon tax will affect supply and demand: In a given market, for any quantity on offer, the price goes up, say, twofold, depending on efficiency. This does not mean consumers will just pay double, because they would've just consumed more previously. Instead, they reduce consumption. Suppliers respond by lowering prices short-term (if you don't give advance notice of the tax) to make any sale at all. If this drops them into a loss, they'll next respond by reducing output.
Sure, there are goods where demand is so inelastic that nothing will change except extra govt revenue. People will not buy less toilet paper. But maybe a more eco-friendly process will become effective and beat the competition on price.
The thing about the tax is that it sidesteps - or rather exploits - supply elasticity. Supply elasticity is bad because more demand will result in more goods being produced. But it's also good because less demand will result in less goods being produced. So by artificially lowering demand by adding a hefty tax, we get less production. Production here being whatever planet killer product you want. Gas, coal, meat, etc. Bonus points for any supplier who can find a way to make their supply chain more efficient: They pay less carbon tax, meaning their products are cheaper. They get to rightfully sidestep the tax.
The trivial implementation is just: Add a tax of X$ per unit of greenhouse gas emitted. That's easily done for carbon dioxide, a bit harder to quantify for methane. Choose X s.t. you can compensate the emission's effects. Add a subsidy of X$ per unit of greenhouse gas bound(E.g. through biomass generation). Prego. (I'm sure the details are a bit more complicated) Meat will get expensive because it's super resource intensive: You're using all that land for feed crops that you could use to grow biofuel crops. Biofuel is carbon neutral, therefore tax free. Or you could use that biomass to do CCS, getting that sweet subsidy money. Meanwhile, meat production turns that precious biomass into methane, so you have to pay even more.
Yea, but that's always the excuse that's used for adding/increasing cigarette taxes: that people will make the smart financial choice to stop smoking. One major issue with carbon taxes (and...
The problem with tobacco is that it's addictive, so you can't tax people into detox.
Yea, but that's always the excuse that's used for adding/increasing cigarette taxes: that people will make the smart financial choice to stop smoking.
If fuel and coal power was 2x as expensive tomorrow, maybe I'll install a battery back in my basement, solar on my roof and buy an electric car, because suddenly that's the economic decision.
One major issue with carbon taxes (and similiar) is that they're also incredibly regressive the same way a sales tax is. The wealthy will benefit more than the poor, since the wealthy can afford those mitigation measures or are so wealthy the tax is insignificant. And for the people who can't afford those things? Poor people pay $2 for a roll of toilet paper at a corner store because they can't afford to get out to a wholesale store and buy a 30 pack for $15. They'll have to do without in a way that the rich won't.
That is one of the main reasons rations have been used in the past...to insure that in the face of decreasing supply that the resources are distributed equitably and not based on who is the wealthiest.
They incentivize minimizing your personal usage (as you can sell off unused rations). Their issuance can be reduced in a controlled and predictable manner, so that sudden supply shocks and severe rationing isn't needed (ala 1970's gas crisis).
They're time tested and easier to implement than ever. Take a look at a quick glance into WW2 rationing. This is the kind of resource reduction that is going to be necessary to mitigate climate change. Adding taxes and saying "let the markets figure it out" is not going to be nearly effective enough. We need rationing across damn near every sector of the economy, because it's not any one thing, it's that we consume too much of everything.
Ration all fuels and electricity from the grid. Force corporations to purchase rations for their operations from citizens. Trickle-up resources, rather than trickle-down.
@skybrian since my reply to them would be similar.
The regressiveness is why I always say the money needs to be given back with UBI. The idea is to make some prices higher while also giving people the financial means to afford them, but also a big...
The regressiveness is why I always say the money needs to be given back with UBI. The idea is to make some prices higher while also giving people the financial means to afford them, but also a big financial incentive to cut back.
I'm also not sure why you keep saying cigarette taxes don't work? What study is that based on? I'm not an expert in this area, but based on a quick search, here's something I found from the World Heath Organization:
Significant increases in the taxes and prices of tobacco products is the most cost effective measure to reduce tobacco use. This, combined with other tobacco control measures, such as advertising bans and public smoking prohibitions help ensures the effectiveness of tobacco control demand reduction measures.
Evidence from countries of all income levels shows that price increases on cigarettes are highly effective in reducing demand. Higher prices encourage cessation and prevent initiation of tobacco use. They also reduce relapse among those who have quit and reduce consumption among continuing users. On average, a 10% price increase on a pack of cigarettes would be expected to reduce demand for cigarettes by about 4% in high-income countries and by about 5% in low- and middle-income countries, where lower incomes tend to make people more sensitive to price changes. Children and adolescents are also more sensitive to price increases than adults, allowing price interventions to have a significant impact on this age group.
I don't intend to use the authority of the WHO as a conversation-stopper, but I just wanted to show that it's at least a respectable argument that cigarette taxes work, and if you don't think they do then you need to actually make the argument.
In part, personal experience being with and around other smokers. Cost was a non-factor... we'd skip lunch to get our fix. Being outdoors in the cold and health problems are the main motivators...
In part, personal experience being with and around other smokers. Cost was a non-factor... we'd skip lunch to get our fix. Being outdoors in the cold and health problems are the main motivators for quitting.
It seems like you’ve thinking too much in binary terms? Taxes on both cigarettes and oil are both going to reduce demand somewhat, the question is how much. With oil especially there are...
It seems like you’ve thinking too much in binary terms? Taxes on both cigarettes and oil are both going to reduce demand somewhat, the question is how much. With oil especially there are incentives to do things more efficiently as prices go up (buying more fuel-efficient cars), but cigarette taxes will also make alternatives like vaping more attractive.
Putting a cap on usage (cap and trade) has a similar effect as a tax. A cap will cause the price to rise until some people decide it’s too expensive and drop out. You see this in the housing market when supply is limited. A tax that raises prices to the same level has the same effect, except the government gets the money instead of the suppliers. You can then use UBI distribute the money back and the average person breaks even, but there is an incentive to cut back even more and come out ahead.
If you need to limit supply then it would be better to do it that way than have the profits go to the suppliers.
If this is a discussion you're actually interested in having, please rewrite this in a better way. This is just extremely dismissive and antagonistic, and has almost zero chance of leading to any...
If this is a discussion you're actually interested in having, please rewrite this in a better way. This is just extremely dismissive and antagonistic, and has almost zero chance of leading to any kind of productive conversation.
Edit: instead, you proceeded to post an even worse comment, so take a day off.
I'm completely on board with nuclear from a scientific and engineering perspective. At the end of the day, all power is nuclear - solar is the obvious one, but wind and hydroelectric are just less direct ways of tapping into solar power. And all fossil fuels are just plants that harnessed and stored solar power millions of years ago (coal, for example, is mostly trees that lived & died before bacteria learned how to eat wood). Moving closer to the source by harnessing nuclear reactions directly makes perfect sense.
However...I can't support expansion of nuclear power in the US, given our political climate and lax attitude towards regulation. Doubly so when the new 6-3 Supreme Court is likely to limit or end Chevron deference which would kneecap all environmental regulations.
If a wind farm is mismanaged or run poorly, it might...kill a few too many birds? If a hydroelectric dam is mismanaged, I suppose it could burst and cause major flooding. All that pales in comparison to what can happen if a nuclear power plant is mismanaged and run with a "show profit for this quarter" motive.
One of the points this article makes (that it thinks is pro-nuclear) actually underscores this for me:
People are expensive. Requiring lots of people to operate a nuclear power plant is a downside, not an upside. Yes, it seems like it "creates jobs", but it also creates an incentive for the operator of the plant to cut back on staff in order to cut costs.
From Exxon Valdez to Deepwater Horizon and other disasters that barely make the news, I simply don't trust the energy industry in the US with anything that can cause major harm if mishandled.
I really wouldn't understate how bad "major flooding" can be...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
Honestly hydroelectric is far and away the most dangerous way we can make power. And I'm not even opposed to hydro.
I mean, the disasters for hydro are certainly the biggest you're ever going to see for single events, but I don't think it's even remotely comparable to the amount of people killed by fossil fuel plants that are working as intended.
Sure, but we are comparing hydroelectric to nuclear power, here.
That's not how your comment read to me, calling it the most dangerous way to make power. But yeah, unquestionably it's more dangerous than nuclear or any other low carbon power source, and that's before getting in to environmental damage from reservoir creation.
I have to disagree here. This might be true for hydroelectric dams. But hydroelectric power can be done by just tapping a stream uphill, putting it in a pipe and running it downhill. The problem with that is that it does not aid in control of the river (making it navigable while preventing flooding) and it does not provide a reservoir for irrigation. Which happen to be three common concerns. Additionally, "my" kind of hydro power does not allow for load following with the power plant, as there is no storage.
The question is: Given proper engineering standards and safety regulations, is hydro still a dangerous kind of power generation if we offset the gains made by flow control? My guess would be "hell yes" since we have done dams before we did hydro power but I haven't the numbers to do the math.
The only problem is I don't really see how you could actually use "your" kind of hydro power to provide any kind of adequate base load. Sure, there's no danger if you are just using small hydro plants to supplement other power generation, but it will not come anywhere close to providing enough power for society's needs on its own.
Ironically, one of the best solutions we currently have for energy storage is to literally pump water into a giant reservoir so it can be used to power hydroelectric turbines to smooth out the load as needed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
The scale is no different. You can literally get the same amount of power per year from such a facility as you could from a conventional dam, given the same geography. Say you have a mountain valley. You can slap a 100m wall into it, creating a 100m deep lake with 100m of head (pressure) on your turbines. Say you get 10m³/s flow through the river. That makes for 10MW , by the way. Say also that this creates a 10 km long lake.
Now, we'll build a pipeline for the 10m³/s flow. Starting 10km upstream from the would-be dam, leading to a point 100m up the hill from the dam. Water will flow naturally in there if we include a miniscule slope. We're now capturing the same flow without storing an enormous amount of energy. From the top of the pipeline down the hill, we now build the same hydro plant we would in the dam. The main difference is that we can't do pumped hydro (without a reservoir uphill) and can't store water to use later, so we can't adapt to load. Water we don't use now is lost, so we'll get our 10MW all year round instead of sometimes 0, sometimes 20MW. But nuclear isn't that agile either, so whatever.
Also: A much smaller reservoir upstream could give enormous benefits in terms of following daily load cycles.6 soccer fields, 10m deep will soak up 12h worth of water. And that's a much smaller wave if that dam breaks than if the 100m wall breaks. But at that point we're doing exactly what a lot of pumped hydro plants are doing anyway. My concept really isn't all that different from normal hydro. It's a continuum, more or less, of just how much storage you want.
If the scale of the invasion of nature or the scale of the construction worry you, look at conventional hydro first.
To expand more on the financial side of things:
Economics really did kill the "dream" many nuclear proponents had of a comeback. As you say, nuclear power plants require a lot of—often highly educated and trained—people to run properly. That incurs massive costs that aren't borne by other forms of electricity generation. Take for example the Topaz Solar Farm in southern California, a 550MW photovoltaic plant. It provides "only" 12 full-time jobs. That's not a bug, that's a feature.
Economically, it's very clear nuclear is wholly uncompetitive in the face of continuously dropping costs of solar and wind as they undergo their respective learning curves. Big nuclear projects seem almost doomed to failure, from a fiscal point of view, at this stage. Additionally, another huge disadvantage is the lead times on nuclear power plants are long, like 10-20 years long. In that time, you can build out 10x-100x the capacity in solar, and you can bring it online piece by piece. Nuclear requires all capital investment and construction upfront before it can even generate a single watt hour of electricity.
Probably the only hope for nuclear fans at this point is small, modular, compact reactors like NuScale. But again, I'd question the costs compared to just building some solar panels and connecting up batteries. Perhaps it's time for nuclear proponents to move on to focusing our energy and resources on the bleeding edge front to fusion power, which if commercialised and designed to be small enough, could one day allow carbon-free marine travel and aviation.
I am a (huge) proponent of nuclear, and still believe a nuclear fueled society will invite longer and better scientific innovation (nuclear produces 1000x the amount of power per unit when compared). And I would love to attempt to refute a lot of this, but I am on mobile.
I will refute about the lead times, the mean time for nuclear power plant development is only 7.5 years , and less when you remove the outliers that started development 20-30 years ago. Lots of reactors are now being fully developed within 3 or 4 years.
You might be right about the lead time aspect, the outliers probably skew the mean towards something closer to what I suggested, but the median may be shorter.
Lead times are tough, because Western countries generally haven't built new reactors sinces the late 1990s or early 2000s. Even a few years gap between projects (2002-2007 in the case of France) can cause a lot of knowledge, experience, and efficiencies to be lost. On top of that, we are working with first-of-a-kind reactors that need to incorporate changes made after 9/11 and Fukushima. I am somewhat hesitant to trust the Russians and the Chinese as to their lead times. I'm most interested to see what the British experience is like (for large, conventional nuclear) as well as the Canadian experience (for SMRs).
I believe SMRs have more of a chance in today's environment. Big projects have too much of a chance of failure. I also think we will see an increasing emphasis on cogeneration (a reactor puts out far more heat than is recoverable for electricity) and marine propulsion (something we are already doing today). I work in the nuclear sector (spent fuel storage), so feel free to ask more questions if you'd like.
Yeah I would say the lead time is the real dealbreaker at this point for nuclear. In what, 30 years is when we really need to be carbon neutral to only severely damage the planet instead of making it unliveable? In terms of generations that's maybe 2 generations of nuclear power, in terms of plan, build, and evaluate performance. Certainly not enough time to get governments, citizens, and businesses on board to get it done.
I personally hope we develop a strong, renewable baseline for day to day electricity needs and then use nuclear for targeted mega-engineering projects.
This is American politics in a nutshell. "Look at how many jobs this will create" is basically how every policy needs to be framed. And if that job is in the private sector you can bet they'll be looking to reduce that headcount ASAP.
It reminds me of the classic anecdote where the Chinese were showing Milton Friedman some kind of infrastructure project. Milton Friedman was puzzled as to why they workers were only using shovels and not operating any heavy machinery. They explained to him that it was a jobs program, so Milton Friedman asked "why not give them spoons, then?"
That's the main reason I'm so optimistic about MSRs. I don't really like the PWR approach - it just seems like straight crazy to run water at 90-150 atmospheres of pressure depending on your design. The plants cost a fortune, too, due to the added complexity dealing with that potential for a 300x steam explosion.
MSRs seem well poised to sidestep all that trouble - they run with no pressure, or even negative if you'd rather leak in than out. The safety feature of having passive design removes human failure from the reactor management too. If this nuclear proposal had focused on Gen-IV designs I'd be a lot more supportive of it. The obvious candidate for investment at present is Thorcon. Get them that test platform for about $600 million and we're going to know everything we need to know about MSRs and get them certified in multiple countries in under ten years. Then they start rolling off the assembly line.
Leave the PWRs in the dust, let's move on. And then later, someday, fusion. That's the nuclear approach that should be part of any forward-thinking package, not this pitch pining for the old school.
I think molten salt reactors have a decent chance, but they have some of their own challenges. I would say the more likely candidates are Terrestrial Energy and Moltex, especially the former.
It's refreshing to see a zero bullshit honest list of MSR unanswered questions. Usually it's conflating the old reactors with MSRs and those arguments just don't carry over. I've watched a couple Thorcon videos now - their hope is to get funding from Indonesia for the startup investment. They need power (rolling blackouts are common) and it's Thorcon or some thirty-plus coal plants. Those are their options. If they get the funding for the testbed, it's todo list is basically what you just linked.
They aren't trying for the fancy MSRs with clever designs that so many of the other startups are chasing. They intend to build - with minor improvements - the exact same MSR that ran for 20,000 hours at ORNL in the 60s. They are straight up ignoring all the tasty distractions and just going for the dumbest, simplest can that works on their power ships. They or some other company can invent a better can, and waste burners, later - we don't need it to get started. I rather like that approach. It's one of the most practical I've seen, almost to the point of being a viable business plan.
I like Thorcon just because the power is mobile and that's a killer feature in a world dealing with climate change. I wish them all the best of luck.
Disclaimer: the Reddit link was not mine.
I think the shipbuilding approach is interesting and has a lot of potential, but I think Indonesia is the wrong place to start. They lack much of the institutional and industrial base for nuclear operations. With the new builds in the UAE, Turkey, and Bangladesh, they are partnering with countries which already have a nuclear base (Russia and Korea). I believe it makes more sense to partner with a country that has an existing nuclear industrial base (institutional knowledge, fuel cycle facilities, existing plants, an experienced regulator, strong research programs). Canada is a popular choice, as they have all of the above, and are looking to expand their nuclear portfolio, especially in the Arctic. Additionally, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is willing to work with vendors in approving new designs.
I think the point is that running costs are cheap. Because uranium used is so tiny and easily mined, the major running cost is highly paid staff; and even with that cost Nuclear is still competitive over 20 years when compared to gas.
Wow, that's really quite solidly pro-nuclear propaganda. Like, really really. It's not just saying "hey, look at how nuclear power holds up against other power sources", but talking about union membership and needed square footage and cross-party collaboration in Congress?
I'm sure it's an inspiring article to someone, but it feels very much like a sales pitch for nuclear as opposed to a solid argument regarding the respective merits of various power infrastructure options.
I have to restrain myself in this, apparently, because I'm kinda anti-nuclear and I find the whole thing baffling. So I'm just calmly pointing out that this article, made in a style that got it into ~enviro, does not mention nuclear waste once. That's all I need to distinguish a genuine summary of nuclear energy from a propaganda piece.
Here might be the video you're looking for?
You forgot the https:// so the markdown parser screwed the link up.
[Here](https://youtube.com/watch?v=KnxksKmJa6U)= Here:O Thanks!
I really didn't get how that graph was connected to anything in the text. It talked a bit about low wage jobs... but there wasn't any point being made other than "look a this graph of union membership over the years" and I suppose it insinuates some correlation with other metrics???
Anyway, I'd be happy to be proven wrong that safe and clean nuclear power is possible to achieve at a lower cost than e.g the corresponding amount of solar.
Yeah, this article is basically a gish gallop. I could pick it apart argument by argument and graph by graph, but aint nobody got time for that.
You would be happy to be proven wrong? What advantages do you believe nuclear power has over solar? I would rather be happy to discover that solar is cheaper than expected. I'd be happy to discover that there are any of a variety of promising advancements in solar power, such as a more environmentally friendly bill of materials, improved efficiency, improved lifespan, reduced size, or greator adoption.
The way I see it, tit-for-tat, nuclear generation has this little issue of possible irradiation. The only likely alternative I am aware of is nuclear fusion. But if we had a choice between ideal nuclear fusion and ideal solar, I'd still take solar, simply because it is more inherently decentralized. Not that they couldn't co-exist.
The only real drawback to solar is that the infrastructure itself is not green, and it doesn't last forever. Same goes for any green capture, we're looking at a lot of collapsed windmills in twenty years. Gotta keep rebuilding it all the time.
All that used up older solar/wind/whatever material starts to pile up pretty fast, and it's not all recyclable either. Some of it relies for components on resources we're going to run out of and that will eventually make their prices rise considerably. That's still a better problem to have than coal any day, but we can do better than that with modern nuclear. Not the kind this article is pitching, though. Potentially, we can do better with proposals like this one.
Considering what I just read in this article vs the one in the video, I know which proposal I'd vote for in a hot second and which one I'd vote against.
While it's true that every form of electricity generation has downsides, non-recyclable components are not unique to solar and wind. The sheer concrete and other materials used in the construction of all forms of power generation are basically impossible to recycle and reuse effectively. I don't think this is a good reason to ding solar or wind—especially solar, which should be mostly recyclable.
Here's a BBC article with the latest evidence I've seen on the recyclability problem of wind turbine blades, as far as I can tell, the problems are not unique to turbine blades, but rather all fibreglass/composite products, so they're destined to their own unique boneyards just like aircraft are. That doesn't make it okay, but at least it's not leaving behind a toxic open-cast coal mine.
Frankly, I think this a good example of the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra, i.e. reduce comes first, and the most recyclable and efficient electricity generation is the electricity you don't have to generate. I do seriously worry that we're simply too populated and have such insatiable consumptions that running anything at the scale required to satisfy humanity's needs is going to be environmentally deleterious, which raises a lot of questions about overpopulation.
All fair points. Solar is my favorite out of the renewables for that light footprint, and we're nowhere near an optimal design for a solar panel yet. Advances in superconductors and panel designs have the potential to transform solar into a much stronger contender than it is now. The mere convenience of a foldable, pocket sized solar capture device can't be matched by any other power system, either. That's an avenue of research and commercial development I'm happy to fund. Tidal doesn't get enough credit, either.
Looking at my comment, I'm surprised no-one mentioned the bit about solar and off-hours haha. The youtube video is interesting; I haven't finished watching, but I feel like tsunamis and huricanes would be a problem.
My one caveat after I finished watching that proposal - I'd want to see one of those reactors tested upside-down, since that's their worst case scenario. If something rolls the ship, it nullifies their safety system. They need to fail gracefully in that scenario to be completely safe, just in case a legendary tsunami or earthquake comes along where they are parked.
Massive output is one advantage (though I'm not sure if an equal investment in solar power would be able to match the output). That it is centralized could also be considered an advantage (solar can with current technology be done in a decentralized way which of course might be considered an advantage too). Consistent output is often touted as a benefit of both nuclear and fossil based power generation (perhaps that could be offset by investing in better trans continental power transmission?). Someone who actually thinks nuclear is a good idea can probably come up with more :)
Cheap, reliable baseload power with no carbon emissions?
Maybe... I mean mining & refining plus transporting uranium to power a traditional nuclear fission plant still has a bunch of carbon emissions compared to what's needed for keeping solar/wind going. I guess it depends on what you include in the calculation.
The lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for current solar tech is indeed higher per kWh produced than nuclear is. Wind is very comparable to nuclear, but both solar and wind don't account for storage options.
The power grid in the continental US is more than a little bit of a shitshow. It was developed piecemeal by regional utility companies, and the interconnections are not great. It's been touted as a strength a time or two: if a section of the grid is hacked or otherwise sabotaged, the whole country won't go down... because it's not really very well integrated.
Reminded me of this news from 2018 related to the European power grid. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/european-clocks-six-minutes-late-serbia-kosovo-electricity-grid-spd/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger
https://www.c-span.org/video/?473859-1/after-words-michael-shellenberger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Institute
Ontario, Canada generates half of its power via nuclear but one of the main plants is being decommissioned in the next five years. It’s a bit of a shame that the capacity isn’t being replaced at the same time.
If we're serious about tackling climate change, we need to not just make things more efficient, but also consume less of practically everything, which includes energy. Perhaps the best thing we can do for the planet is strip less resources from it in the first place.
The problem with simply making things more efficient is you suddenly suffer from what's known as Jevon's Paradox, which states that as a process becomes more efficient, the overall output and effect is to actually intensify the overall consumption of that process, and the efficiency gains aren't used to reduce consumption, but instead to ratchet up consumption further.
That seems wholly unsustainable to me.
Indeed. We've seen the kind of efficiency and total usage the market will generate if we let it run free. If we artificially increase supply, power will be cheaper and demand will rise. People will just buy more wasteful apppliances again because it's cheaper.
Considering our problem with the entire market is a negative externality, we need to do "internalize" that. Power and fossil fuel companies need to pay to dispose of their waste (CO2, radioactive waste) in a safe way. Power prices climb, but we're actually rid of the climate problem then, mostly. The market will react accordingly. Public transit will be cheaper in comparison, efficient appliances will be cheaper in comparison. Since this essentially an unjust tax, give poor people some support to offset the additional burden. Done.
No more patchwork as we have it in germany right now of directly supporting discrete parts of the market, like boosting electric and hybrid vehicle sales by a simple subsidy. Price the fuel properly, and let consumers decide.
Realistically, the only way to resolve that paradox is rationing.
Want to reduce meat consumption? Nationalize food production, everybody is given X annual meat rations, representing their fractional ownership of Y total meat industry output, and you slowly force that Y down.
Want to reduce fossil fuel usage? Same thing for oil extraction... individuals get X rations of oil, force Y down.
The other advantage to this method is that it acts as a wealth redistribution mechanism as well. It gives the first pick of the scarce resource to individuals, and corporations must buy those credits from individuals in order to do their business.
Restricting demand is generally better done with taxes, because it means that the most marginal uses will get curtailed first and everyone in the supply chain has incentive to reduce usage. (And the wealth redistribution could be done with UBI.)
Something I frequently think about is how everyone all across the world was happy to accept measures such as rationing during the 1940s when it was all in an effort to kill each other. Now, all of humanity faces a common existential threat and suddenly these same sorts of measures are derided as "extreme".
It's not that it's extreme, it's that it wouldn't work very well. Carbon emissions are pretty abstract. There are millions of products that contribute to global warming in some way. Rationing wouldn't reward most of the ways people could find to cut back on carbon emissions, and probably would reward some things that don't really matter much.
If you want extreme, you could raise the tax a lot.
The vast majority of these "millions of products" are nothing more than trinkets designed only to satisfy the latest fleeting consumer whimsy.
Have you ever looked around a hardware store or looked at the specialized catalogs used by various industries?
I would guess that most products are small components of larger devices, along with things that are rarely sold to consumers at all. As an example, this would include most medical supplies, and that by itself is just one industry.
You could take a look at Amazon's industrial and scientific section, or the McMaster-Carr website, or DigiKey.
I don't really understand how the fact that sometimes screws are used to build medical equipment means we can't do things like make it illegal for the average consumer to buy as much useless junk on Amazon as they want whenever their heart desires with next day delivery. Or make it illegal for people to book flights to wherever they want whenever they feel like it. Or require logistics companies to optimize distribution chains for reduced carbon emissions instead of consumer convenience.
I think it gets difficult because there are a lot of grey areas and you often don’t know why people are doing it, and if you wanted to find out, you would have to learn a lot more about them, and this could be a big invasion of privacy.
An example might be a flight to Hawaii. For many people, this would just be a vacation, but some people have close friends and relatives there. Maybe you’re going for a wedding. Is that a good enough excuse? (In a non-pandemic year.)
So you could say, only people with relatives can go, but some people might use visiting relatives as an excuse for a nice vacation. So how do you crack down on that? By learning more about them. And then you’d be making judgement calls like how close a relative are they, really?
You can look at immigration regulations to see how intrusive this could get, where they try to figure out whether people are really married or trying to pull some kind of immigration scam. It gets really intrusive fast.
Or consider buying a truck. There are some people who really need trucks and a lot more that don’t. How do you decide who really needs a truck?
It’s better just to say some things are expensive and let people use their own judgement about whether it’s “worth it” compared to other things they can do with the money. Along with making sure people have enough money that this isn’t a horrific choice to be making.
One alternative is that we have some other class of people who decides who “deserves” stuff. This is what we do with prescription drugs, so it can be done, but how many different areas of life do you want to be applying for permission?
Taxes don't really curb usage though. They just raise some extra money in the coffers. Tobbacco taxes are a great example. And giving up cigarettes is easier than giving up Oil for sure.
The problem is that taxes don't change an elastic supply to an inelastic one to resolve the paradox. Rations put a lock the supply and make it possible to force that supply down in the future. Supply chains will be further incentivized because costs will skyrocket as rations become scarcer. Distributing to people first insures a fair distribution across the population.
I'm not sure tobacco taxes are a great comparison. The problem with tobacco is that it's addictive, so you can't tax people into detox. However, combined measures have helped reduce prevalence of smoking.
And it's not about giving up oil. It's about reducing and making the right goods competetive. If fuel and coal power was 2x as expensive tomorrow, maybe I'll install a battery back in my basement, solar on my roof and buy an electric car, because suddenly that's the economic decision. Maybe the train is competetive. Maybe that highly efficient appliance is not that expensive after all. Maybe I'll skip the drier and hang my laundry up to dry. And if I want to be a moron and not change my behaviour, the government has a fat check to spend on renewables, sustainability or other compensation measures. And we haven't talked about how an adequate tax on emissions would make it easier on the willing consumer to find ecological competitors. I don't know if my tofu has caused less emissions than the meat in the supermarket. If we price emissions properly, the price will give me a big hint.
Taxes will absolutely make supply and demand meet up at a lower quantity. Think about how a carbon tax will affect supply and demand: In a given market, for any quantity on offer, the price goes up, say, twofold, depending on efficiency. This does not mean consumers will just pay double, because they would've just consumed more previously. Instead, they reduce consumption. Suppliers respond by lowering prices short-term (if you don't give advance notice of the tax) to make any sale at all. If this drops them into a loss, they'll next respond by reducing output.
Sure, there are goods where demand is so inelastic that nothing will change except extra govt revenue. People will not buy less toilet paper. But maybe a more eco-friendly process will become effective and beat the competition on price.
The thing about the tax is that it sidesteps - or rather exploits - supply elasticity. Supply elasticity is bad because more demand will result in more goods being produced. But it's also good because less demand will result in less goods being produced. So by artificially lowering demand by adding a hefty tax, we get less production. Production here being whatever planet killer product you want. Gas, coal, meat, etc. Bonus points for any supplier who can find a way to make their supply chain more efficient: They pay less carbon tax, meaning their products are cheaper. They get to rightfully sidestep the tax.
The trivial implementation is just: Add a tax of X$ per unit of greenhouse gas emitted. That's easily done for carbon dioxide, a bit harder to quantify for methane. Choose X s.t. you can compensate the emission's effects. Add a subsidy of X$ per unit of greenhouse gas bound(E.g. through biomass generation). Prego. (I'm sure the details are a bit more complicated) Meat will get expensive because it's super resource intensive: You're using all that land for feed crops that you could use to grow biofuel crops. Biofuel is carbon neutral, therefore tax free. Or you could use that biomass to do CCS, getting that sweet subsidy money. Meanwhile, meat production turns that precious biomass into methane, so you have to pay even more.
Yea, but that's always the excuse that's used for adding/increasing cigarette taxes: that people will make the smart financial choice to stop smoking.
One major issue with carbon taxes (and similiar) is that they're also incredibly regressive the same way a sales tax is. The wealthy will benefit more than the poor, since the wealthy can afford those mitigation measures or are so wealthy the tax is insignificant. And for the people who can't afford those things? Poor people pay $2 for a roll of toilet paper at a corner store because they can't afford to get out to a wholesale store and buy a 30 pack for $15. They'll have to do without in a way that the rich won't.
That is one of the main reasons rations have been used in the past...to insure that in the face of decreasing supply that the resources are distributed equitably and not based on who is the wealthiest.
They incentivize minimizing your personal usage (as you can sell off unused rations). Their issuance can be reduced in a controlled and predictable manner, so that sudden supply shocks and severe rationing isn't needed (ala 1970's gas crisis).
They're time tested and easier to implement than ever. Take a look at a quick glance into WW2 rationing. This is the kind of resource reduction that is going to be necessary to mitigate climate change. Adding taxes and saying "let the markets figure it out" is not going to be nearly effective enough. We need rationing across damn near every sector of the economy, because it's not any one thing, it's that we consume too much of everything.
Ration all fuels and electricity from the grid. Force corporations to purchase rations for their operations from citizens. Trickle-up resources, rather than trickle-down.
@skybrian since my reply to them would be similar.
The regressiveness is why I always say the money needs to be given back with UBI. The idea is to make some prices higher while also giving people the financial means to afford them, but also a big financial incentive to cut back.
I'm also not sure why you keep saying cigarette taxes don't work? What study is that based on? I'm not an expert in this area, but based on a quick search, here's something I found from the World Heath Organization:
I don't intend to use the authority of the WHO as a conversation-stopper, but I just wanted to show that it's at least a respectable argument that cigarette taxes work, and if you don't think they do then you need to actually make the argument.
In part, personal experience being with and around other smokers. Cost was a non-factor... we'd skip lunch to get our fix. Being outdoors in the cold and health problems are the main motivators for quitting.
But for non-ancedotal evidence, I remember this paper: https://www.nber.org/papers/w18326
Interesting. I wonder how that changed after vaping became a popular alternative? (The paper is from 2012.)
It seems like you’ve thinking too much in binary terms? Taxes on both cigarettes and oil are both going to reduce demand somewhat, the question is how much. With oil especially there are incentives to do things more efficiently as prices go up (buying more fuel-efficient cars), but cigarette taxes will also make alternatives like vaping more attractive.
Putting a cap on usage (cap and trade) has a similar effect as a tax. A cap will cause the price to rise until some people decide it’s too expensive and drop out. You see this in the housing market when supply is limited. A tax that raises prices to the same level has the same effect, except the government gets the money instead of the suppliers. You can then use UBI distribute the money back and the average person breaks even, but there is an incentive to cut back even more and come out ahead.
If you need to limit supply then it would be better to do it that way than have the profits go to the suppliers.
If this is a discussion you're actually interested in having, please rewrite this in a better way. This is just extremely dismissive and antagonistic, and has almost zero chance of leading to any kind of productive conversation.
Edit: instead, you proceeded to post an even worse comment, so take a day off.