taking options off the table….
May 1st, 2007Posted by: admin
Interesting exchange between Bill Maher and Sheryl Crow and Laurie David. Or not. I saw it on the NEI Nuclear Notes blog, so you can go there to get the exchange, or see it on youtube. Basically the upshot that NEI reports is yes yes yes we need to cut GHG emissions but no no no way do we need nuclear to do that.
What’s interesting to me is not the content but the tone of the conversation. Listen to Crow adamantly cut off Maher from bringing nuclear into the discussion. We want to talk about low-carb energy but we don’t want you to talk about nuclear. When Crow stalls out on giving good reasons to disavow nuclear David comes in with a little misdirection, laying fuel economy standards down as a step to be taken to avoid bringing nuclear into the picture.
I’ll give Crow/David the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t have the time or the prep to really get into the hidden subsidy issues that make nuclear a more expensive option than it appears. But for being so concerned about GHGs, a staunchly anti-nuclear stance — taking a major GHG reduction option off the table — is curious.
The non-idealist reality is that all options need to be on the table, and all options — including nuclear — need to be honestly accounted for. Hidden subsidies of nuclear, including insurance issues (the U.S. government insures nuclear plants because private companies won’t — Price-Anderson was just renewed through 2025), should be compared to the true cost of solutions like wind, which currently gets a generous PTC to keep it competitive.
Wind and solar are not viable options for baseload power, which is what coal provides. What we should be talking about is replacing the dirty, old baseload coal plants with nuclear plants while also bringing renewables online. And while David is right that [aggressive] efficiency and waste issues would make a big dent in demand, thinking that we’re going to solve our energy supply issues through efficiency gains shows a pretty deep misunderstanding of the way incentives and the market works here. You can wait and wait for efficiency gains to significantly reduce GHG emissions and you’re going to be waiting for a very long time.
Beyond the sound bites, fairly thorough studies on the competing economics (and other issues) of nuclear, coal and renewables are here and here.
May 1st, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Is a large proportion of baseload energy really necessary, or is overnight electricity use largely a byproduct of its low marginal cost due to the physics of cheap coal plants?
May 1st, 2007 at 9:30 pm
The failure on the part of Crow and David to even contemplate the possibility of nuclear power as part of the solution to global warming suggests one of two possibilities:
1. Their professed concern about global warming is merely a pretext for advocating their position on efficiency and renewables, or
2. Their concern about global warming is sincere, but their position on the role of nuclear power demonstrates a failure of logical risk analysis sufficient to discount, if not completely dismiss their global warming concerns.
I’m inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt regarding their sincerity. Their unwillingness to discuss their objections to nuclear power makes it difficult to address these objections directly, but I’ll assume they have to do with the issues of safety and waste disposal.
On the safety issue, since the most serious accident at any American nuclear plant resulted in no injuries to anyone, if you maintain that global warming is not as dangerous as nuclear power, this suggests that the danger of global warming can be largely dismissed.
Regarding the waste issue, the MIT report referenced at the bottom of Kevin’s post has a good discussion about the feasibility of geological disposal of nuclear waste (page 54, footnote 3). Essentially, if the appropriate criterion is a consensus in the relevant scientific community, then the science is settled – nuclear waste can be safely isolated in geologic formations for the necessary durations. On the other hand, if you maintain that there’s no viable solution to the problem of nuclear waste disposal because the safety of geological storage hasn’t been demonstrated with absolute certainty to the satisfaction of all potential skeptics, then a comparable analysis would lead to a conclusion that the link between CO2 and global warming hasn’t been demonstrated to a level sufficient to warrant any significant concern.
By all means, the economics of nuclear power should be evaluated against those of competing technologies, with relevant subsidies included in all cases. But dismissing out of hand the possibility of considering nuclear power as part of the solution to global warming makes it that much easier for those who are inclined to do so to dismiss concerns regarding global warming.
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:59 am
And I would add that the rather strident tone of the policy debate has also removed new coal plants designed to operate much more efficiently and cleaner than current plants. This all or nothing mentality is what will keep us from making significant reductions to our fossil fuel usage for the forseeable future.
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:40 pm
I don’t think that the statement that solar is not a viable option for baseload power is correct. Concentrating solar thermal power plants, particularly if hybridized with natural gas, can provide dispatchable power, probably at about 10 cents/kwh. A good reference is the Western Governors’ Association study on CSP, available at http://www.westgov.org/wga/initiatives/cdeac/Solar-full.pdf