guys:
I wrote “nuclear is very dangerous without a strong regulator”. Telling me how safe nuclear has proven to be in a tightly regulated country does not change my mind.
There are three risks, by the way: operations, waste and proliferation. Recall that not too long ago, Iraq, Syria, Libya were well-organized.
Stephen Segrest,
(2) Renewables following sound engineering economics;
Renewablkes cannot supply much of the worlds energy so they cannot make much contribution to reducing GHG emissions. And they are ridiculously expensive when all costs are properly included. Nuclear is a far cheaper to decarbonise electricity.
I’m open to constructive comment.
You’ve never demonstrated that is true. You’ve continually demonstrated you are a renewables energy advocate and have a a closed mind. You’ve admitted previously you are a greenie.
Horst Graben,
“…here in the capitol of venture capital..”
Capitol of capital? Would that be Capitola? What do you propose we do Horst, or Graben? Which is it, Horst or Graben? Quit sitting on the fence!
I say go nuclear! What say you?
Richard Tol,
I greatly appreciate your contributions to economics and the climate damage function. But on nuclear power you are poorly informed. Nuclear power is the safest way to generate electricity. We have 60 years demonstrating that and it’s getting safer all the time, just as aviation, cars, ships and other technology is getting safer all the time. The rate of development and the rate that safety improves would accelerate if we removed the ridiculous impediments that have been applied to nuclear power as a result of 50 years of irrational anti-nuclear propaganda.
Brian and PA +2
Orwell got this right a long time ago – he saw it coming. The Constitution of the US was a turning point in history and continues to be frustrating for the elite and the powerful. Democracy decorelates bias nicely.
Yep, two little nukes sitting on ~900 acres produce 7% of California’s electricity 24X7X365. No disaster yet. How can anyone fault that? I couldn’t resist…
Richard Tol,
There are three risks, by the way: operations, waste and proliferation. Recall that not too long ago, Iraq, Syria, Libya were well-organized.
1. How is operations a major risk? Even when the plants do a Fukushima (an exceedingly rare occurrence and the frequency per unit of electricity produced is decreasing), the fatalities and health consequences are negligible and, properly normalised for the amount of electricity they supply, are less than any other electricity generation technology operating routinely.
2. Waste is not a technical issue. It’s just an irrational ideological issue. It’s cost is fully included in the cost of electricity and is trivial at about $1/MWh.
3. Proliferation – what about it? Who has made weapons material from used fuel from modern civilian reactors? How would you even do it? What would be involved?
It’s really sad that economist make such comments about subjects that are outside their area of expertise.
Here’s a quote from Freeman Dyson:
“The fundamental problem of the nuclear industry is not reactor safety, not waste disposal, not the dangers of nuclear proliferation, real though all these problems are. The fundamental problem of the industry is that nobody any longer has any fun building reactors….Sometime between 1960 and 1970 the fun went out of the business. The adventurers, the experimenters, the inventors, were driven out, and the accountants and managers took control. The accountants and managers decided that it was not cost effective to let bright people play with weird reactors. So the weird reactors disappeared and with them the chance of any radical improvement beyond our existing systems. We are left with a very small number of reactor types, each of them frozen into a huge bureaucratic organization, each of them in various ways technically unsatisfactory, each of them less safe than many possible alternative designs which have been discarded. Nobody builds reactors for fun anymore. The spirit of the little red schoolhouse is dead. That, in my opinion, is what went wrong with nuclear power.”
Don,
I always search for your posts first – they are as good as the comedy channel with Willy, Yimmy, and Kenny sitting in the front row like ducks. It’s like fishing in a barrel…
Keep up the good work.
Oh, I almost forgot, that Harvard business. Why DOES Harvard charge tuition?
Peter M Davies,
Have you seen this: http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/01/16/zero-emission-synfuel-from-seawater/ unlimited hydrocarbon synfuels from seawater (using nuclear energy) at $3-$6/gallon using current technollogy according to US Navy Research (Audi also estimated the same cost). Cost would be about half that using high temperature nuclear reactors to produce the hydrogen instead of electrolysis)
Peter M Davies,
This thread seems more about policy than the science of climate change.
If the climate science does not provide the information that is required for rational policy analysis then the climate science is irrelevant. We’ve had 30+ years of mostly irrelevant, or at least poorly directed climate science. I suggest many more posts should be clearly policy relevant.
Interesting idea Mosher. The central Bugtussle price this month is $43.5/short ton. It’s gotta cost at least $10 to mine and load. Transport is probably another $10. Then you have restoration costs.
As of 2013, the world has ~1,000Billion short tons a mine price would be no more than $5 per short ton, so we are looking at a cost of ~$5 Trillion to sequester the remaining known coal reserves. What will that do to the price of oil and gas?
Annually, the world burns 160Quad BTU’s of coal at $2.5 per million BTU. We are currently burning about the same BTU’s of natural gas at the same price. If coal was sequestered, CH4 production would need to double. Petroleum goes for $10/MMBTU, so one would guess that the price of CH4 would approach petroleum as a ceiling. Lets say $7.5/MMBTU for all CH4 would increase the cost of coal + CH4 by $1.6Trillion annually. If the US consumes 25% of the world energy, that’s just $400B/year which works out to $5,000 per family of four per year, or about 10% of total income. This for the first few years until oil and gas gets more expensive. Then all hippie energy will be magically “economical”.
Pretty soon, there will be a black market for coal. Prohibition always seems to produce positive externalities, so I am sure this will too. I can’t wait for the War on Coal to add to our war for oil and the war on drugs. I can’t wait for my grandkids to be old enough to enlist. Onward Gaian Solders…
[…] Maximus has a guest post on Climate Etc. in which he focuses on RCP8.5. RCP8.5 is a Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) that leads to a change in forcing of […]
Kellermfk
Wrong! Dead wrong! It’s extremely difficult and costly to make weapons grade material from the used fuel from modern civilian nuclear power plants. That’s why no one tries. They make weapons grade material from dedicated plants that are specifically designed to produce materials for weapons.
“If you accept the premise that human caused climate change is dangerous and that we need to rapidly stop burning fossil fuels, then I don’t see a near term alternative to nuclear.”
Sensible people have been saying this for 30 years. Lovelock said it. What has changed? The “Green blob” has never been interested in practical solutions to reduce carbon emissions. They oppose not only nuclear but also fracking.
For them, “renewables” are part of a religion and AGW is simply a way to get their ideas accepted by the public. The scare must be kept going as long as possible, and anyone who threatens to “solve” the problem is as dangerous as someone who denies it exists.
Getting into bed with the “green blob” was the biggest mistake the scientific community ever made. It is the greens who are anti-science, anti-development, and anti-human.
Thank you. That helps.
Most people commenting here (not all) seem to have a what looks to me to be a limited view of what “nuclear” is. There are many ways of doing nuclear that are not dangerous and do not require uranium necessarily or transuranic material.
Of the commentators here the one to have looked at this question most closely is Peter Lang. I would urge you to read what he has to say if he responds to your post.
It’s been said that saying that “nuclear is dangerous” is like saying “cars are dangerous”. Well, what car? There are lots of ways to make cars….
There already is a Napoleon – duly awarded the Nobel Prize for Political Correctness in 2007. Or was, should I say. Seems to be resting on Elba for now.
Richard Tol,
I would be vastly surprised for anything at all to only have three risks. However, you have nominated three for nuclear power generation, without providing any detail at all. Not good enough, if you claim expertise in the field. Unsubstantiated assertion appears to be common to Warmists and economists. The track record of both is equally dismal, I am sorry to say.
You might care to quantify the risks, if you wish to be considered credible.
Many people seem to have an irrational fear of nuclear power generation plants, just as people a century ago were fearful of domestic electricity supplies using alternating current. Edison (a DC supplier), associated AC in the popular mind with the fatal use of AC for the “electric chair”.
Luckily, cost effectiveness overcame propaganda, although the US was saddled with 120V or so, which reduces efficiency compared with 240V.
Even though electricity can be measured and quantified, and Edison was an expert, he was still wrong. Economics can not be measured or quantified – how might one quantify the expertise of an economist? How could one decide which expert was correct, or if any were?
I’m inclined to agree with Peter Lang. He appears to be able to provide facts to support his views.
Cheers.
