Environmentalism and the environment
The Economist has an interesting article on the gas boom in America:
Gas has wrought some remarkable changes. Over the past five years America has recorded a decline in greenhouse-gas emissions of 450m tonnes, the biggest anywhere in the world. Ironically, given its far greater effort to tackle climate change, the European Union has seen its emissions rise, partly because its higher gas prices (linked to oil) have led to an increase in coal-fired power generation.
So let’s review the facts:
1. America is reducing greenhouse gas emissions faster than anywhere else because Bush/Cheney ignored environmentalists and went with the “drill baby drill” strategy.
2. Europe is switching to coal because gas is too expensive. But wait; doesn’t Europe also have lots of shale gas? They do. But they listened to the environmentalists, and have all but banned fracking.
3. But wait; doesn’t Europe have lots of carbon-free nuclear power plants? Yes, but countries like Germany have decide to close them all down, on the recommendation of environmentalists. Other countries are also leaning that way. I can sort of understand Japan, but when was the last time you heard about an earthquake in Germany or Sweden?
Now it’s true that the US still has a worse record than Europe, especially in high energy consuming states like Texas. But the same issue of The Economist has another article with this interesting tidbit:
At a casual glance, Houston looks much as it ever did: a tangle of freeways running through a hodgepodge of skyscrapers, strip malls and mixed districts. A closer inspection, though, shows signs of change. The transport authority, which branched into light rail in 2004, is now planning three new lines, adding more than 20 miles of track. Most of the traffic lights now boast LED bulbs, rather than the incandescent sort. More than half the cars in the official city fleet are hybrid or electric, and in May a bike-sharing programme began. Every Wednesday a farmers’ market takes place by the steps of city hall.
Other changes are harder to see. The energy codes for buildings have been overhauled and the city is, astonishingly, America’s biggest municipal buyer of renewable energy; about a third of its power comes from Texan wind farms.
But are windmills actually that good for the environment? Still another article in the same issue has this to say:
By 2009 Inner Mongolia had become China’s largest producer of coal. It is the biggest source of the world’s supply of rare earths. The coal bed around Xilinhot, the capital of Xilin Gol, boasts 38% of global reserves of germanium, a rare earth used in the making of circuitry for solar cells and wind turbines. Ripping up the grasslands and sucking up scarce water for thirsty mines has been part of the price of these “green energy” products.
Here are some comparisons between Inner Mongolia and Texas:
Texas is a state with 25.7 million people. It started out as a ranching state and is now dominated by energy production. It’s mostly hot and flat, and is growing much faster than the rest of the US.
Inner Mongolia is a province with 24.7 million people. It started out as a herding state and is now dominated by energy production. It’s mostly hot and flat, and is growing much faster than the rest of China.
Much faster? How’s that possible given that China has grown at 10% per year for decades? Because Inner Mongolia has grown at 17% per year since 2001. Even Texans can’t say that.
PS. People trying to convince you that China’s a bubble often show a video of Ordos, the almost uninhabited new city. Ordos is in Inner Mongolia, and is hosting the Miss World pageant next month. Let’s see what Ordos looks like in 10 years before we jump to conclusions.
PPS. Do you recall that America’s had two Presidents named Bush, the second of which was governor of Texas? China’s current President is named Hu, and another Hu is being touted as a possible future president. He’s now the governor of Inner Mongolia.
PPPS. Think about Mercedes, BMW and Audi. Then think about the quality of the stuff you buy that’s made in China. Do you sleep better at night knowing that Germany is shutting down its entire nuclear industry, and China is building nuclear plants at a rapid pace.
PPPPS. Please don’t ask me what the point of this post is. It’s Sunday. There is no point.
Tags:
22. July 2012 at 13:44
The irony of environmentalist opposition to nuclear power plants resulting in greater CO2 emissions is nothing new. One major side-effect of German opposition to nuclear power plants was that Germany really stepped up and continued their use of coal plants, similar to what happened in the US after Three Mile Island. Even now, they still depend heavily on coal and imported natural gas from Russia, and their heavily subsidized solar and wind industries are a small fraction of their power generation at ~10% (one which might shrink, too, since the German government is looking skeptically at continuing all the subsidies).
But what can you do? German opposition to nuclear power is pretty deep, with over 60% opposed to continued operation of its plants. Chernobyl really did a number of nuclear power’s reputation in Germany, along with the concurrent rise of environmentalism and some serious safety foul-ups on the part of German nuclear power companies.
22. July 2012 at 13:52
Especially because it is Sunday, perhaps the point is that the road is hell is paved with good intentions.
22. July 2012 at 14:52
Brett, Thanks for that info.
Vivian, Good point!
22. July 2012 at 14:54
Vivian,
I got a good laugh when Scott said ‘there is no point’ because I knew he was also giving you a break! (from having to find any possible holes in his logic)
22. July 2012 at 15:06
Chernobyl really did a number of nuclear power’s reputation in Germany, So, command economics does screw up everything 🙂
A lot of public policy is based on/justified by the intentional fallacy:
Intent x Resources = Effect. [Or, if you prefer, Effect = f(Intent, Resources).]
A simple notion, and a comforting one.
22. July 2012 at 15:13
Scott Sumners…Free association economic poet.
22. July 2012 at 15:42
” America is reducing greenhouse gas emissions faster than anywhere else because Bush/Cheney ignored environmentalists and went with the “drill baby drill” strategy. ”
It would be more accurate to say that America is transferring greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere through shale gas. There has been demand destruction for oil through high prices and depressed industrial output. Low natural gas prices from shale have induced power plants to switch from coal to gas reducing U.S. emissions. However, that has freed up global coal supplies and as a consequence U.S. coal exports are at a twenty year high. Therefore, a transfer of GGE.
http://gregor.us/coal/coal-the-ignored-juggernaut/
22. July 2012 at 15:50
If you subtract the government subsidies for nuclear power…it has never been profitable.
I don’t mind that conservatives want market outcomes. So do I…when ever possible.
What bugs me is that most conservatives are really motivated by a winner take all morality and elite worship…and rationalize it with a fake commitment to market outcomes.
So many American conservatives go into never ending conniptions over liberal attempts to have the government intervene to bring about outcomes that liberals consider fair…
But they are blind to the elite’s successful attempts to have the government intervene to bring about outcomes that benefit the elite. And even when their worshiped’s transgressions are pointed out… they always have a “pity the powerful” ratioanlization at the ready.
They believe demonstrably false notions with the fervor of a evangelist.
My advice to Free market true believers…Go after the elite’s making the government their instrument first. Use it to teach the wisdom and morality of your cause…then you will be able to preach from an unimpeachable pulpit.
‘Cept…You will fail.
There is no way that you can prevent the elite from making the government do their will. The best we can do is blunt their manipulation. It has always been such.
And so long as the elite will uses the government to bend the market to their benefit…It is Immoral to ask the common man to not try and make the government his instrument too.
22. July 2012 at 16:52
This is just another chapter in the largely disastrous record of progressive environmentalism. Same mistake every time, they never seem to learn. People always and everywhere confuse intentions with results, but the far left seems far more susceptible to the vice than average.
22. July 2012 at 16:55
>And so long as the elite will uses the government to bend the market to their benefit…It is Immoral to ask the common man to not try and make the government his instrument too.
As long as the elite control the government, it is FOOLISH for the common man to be able to bend it to his will. It is the underpants gnome logic of “Corporations are bad, and they control the government. Therefore, if we make the government more powerful, PROFIT”
22. July 2012 at 17:17
This post was pointless because sometimes movements and politics are pointless. It is about winning the argument, not about the facts.
Has QE led to inflation in either Japan or the USA? The empirical record is no, even after a five-year program in Japan. So the reason to be against QE is….it might cause inflation.
22. July 2012 at 17:29
Ben Cole,
If you had said high inflation or some variety of that, I’d say you were right, but it would be difficult that QE did not result in prices that were higher than they would of been otherwise and therefore cause inflation. That’s if you want to define inflation by prices. If you define inflation as increasing the money supply, which is the classical definition and the one most consistent with the word inflation in other contexts (like cosmic inflation, inflating a balloon, etc.), then QE programs are inflation.
22. July 2012 at 18:04
Bill Ellis, you are WRONG. And you get it backwards.
NO ELITE has any real reason to support liberals in ANYTHING unless, they are on the Govt. dole.
A Power – top 33%
B Power – top 1%
C Power – everyone else
ALL GAME THEORY says the C Power should play the A and B Power against each other.
See China during Cold War
Bill Ellis, your team is just the C Power.
You are the one who must modify their strategy for optimal outcome.
My team is the A Power.
The PROBLEM is that your team, the C Power ONLY sides with B Power, the Top 1% – you NEVER deviate and side with the Tea Party in its quest to topple 1%.
This would mean:
1. Less regulations for SMB owners, screw the Fortune 1000.
2. less taxes for SMB owners, screw the Fortune 1000.
3. more power devolved to states and cities, screw DC.
YOUR SIDE can’t come to grips with 1-3, and as such YOUR SIDE is actually taken for granted BY THE ELITES.
You are shitty at game play, you don’t want millions of little Boss Hogs running their tens of thousands little fiefdoms.
And as such, you are doomed to be the C Power forever.
Not forever, eventually you’ll WAKE UP, but apparently not anytime soon.
22. July 2012 at 18:12
Note there’s been a recent rash of small govt. Friedmanesque Sumner posts.
A good hedge in case Romney wins.
22. July 2012 at 18:36
So is it the will of the elite that their own manipulation be blunted? Or is Ellis trying the self-contradiction-in-successive-sentences thing to see if we’re paying attention?
22. July 2012 at 18:55
Complaining about the collateral non-greenhouse environmental effects of windmills while ignoring the widespread collateral non-greenhouse environmental effects of fracking is really poor, Sunday or not. The post would have been much shorter – and potentially not even less convincing for a certain segment of the target audience – if it just said “I think environmentals are a convex combination of evil and stupid.” without summoning faux evidence.
22. July 2012 at 19:36
I’ll trust nuclear power when private insurance companies do so. I certainly won’t judge nuclear power on the basis of scientific experts, who are not intellectually competant to judge the risks involved.
John,
I think that the problem with changing the definition of inflation AGAIN is that, since people have a natural dislike of rising prices (except for the things they sell, of course) the word ‘inflation’ is a pretty effective boo-word and changing the meaning of a boo-word or a hooray-word to a more or less neutral meaning muddies the waters, which is why it’s a popular trick amongst demagogues-
“The X party are traitors. What do I mean by ‘traitors’? They oppose our policy Y!”
“Person X is a morally upstanding person. What do I mean by ‘a morally upstanding person’? He hasn’t broken the law once.”
“Che Guevara was a great person. What do I mean by ‘a great person’? He really believed in his principles”.
– and so on.
The issue is with the facts. No-one disputes that QE involves a ceteris paribus expansion of the money supply, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the aggregate. However, the degree to which it affects prices is up for dispute; a sensible answer would start with the provisio “It all depends on the policy regime that the central bank is running and private agents’ expectations about it…”
22. July 2012 at 19:47
I see only two reasonable explanations for the disconnect between environmentalists’ stated goals and the actual results of following their policies.
1) They are stupid, and don’t even learn from their mistakes.
2) They are not being stupid at all, but are Machiavellian, and acting from motives they don’t want us to know about — such as those quoted at http://www.green-agenda.com .
I think at least for the movement’s leadership (especially those quoted on that site) we can rule out possibility 1. For the rest — well, you can find fools in every movement if you look for them.
22. July 2012 at 19:51
“Less regulations for SMB owners, screw the Fortune 1000.”
“less taxes for SMB owners, screw the Fortune 1000.”
Morgan it’s tough to get through to you, you have a stump speech, It’s not bad, I’ll give you that.
Here’s the thing thoug. Less regulations doesn’t screw the Fortune 1000 it’s what they want.
When you say less taxes for SMB what it really amounts to is less taxes for the Fortune 1000.
“ALL GAME THEORY says the C Power should play the A and B Power against each other.”
“The PROBLEM is that your team, the C Power ONLY sides with B Power, the Top 1% – you NEVER deviate and side with the Tea Party in its quest to topple 1%”
You’re like an economist you got lots of models, little “stylized facts.” The models arent bad but where’s the beef? Give me even one example of how “my team” sides with B against A-I’m playing along with your premise for arguments sake.
22. July 2012 at 19:55
John, I wouldn’t doubt your explanation 1, even for leaders. There is definitely a significant watermelon contingent among the greens, but first and foremost it is hard to get a man to understand a thing when he profits by not understanding it.
22. July 2012 at 20:08
Cassander,
“it is hard to get a man to understand a thing when he profits by not understanding it”
Well put. Also, it is hard to distinguish intentions from results in one’s reasoning, so ideological core policy beliefs are very resistant to the experience of practice. In politics, as elsewhere, it’s very tempting to judge a proposal by its goal.
22. July 2012 at 20:17
John David Galt,
I don’t take lists of quotes that are taken out of context very seriously.
22. July 2012 at 21:12
Europe has to move away from gas for energy security. It is not good to be under the thumb of Russian oligarchs. I don’t know about frac’ing in Europe. They should do it if they can.
I don’t remember “drill, baby! drill!” being about frac’ing. It was mostly about oil in Alaska NWR. T. Boone Pickens was the only person predicting the current gas boom.
And that trolley in Houston that stops at red lights is a joke. Houston is building its 3rd loop–170 miles around. The Katy freeway is 8 lanes wide in places. I don’t see any change in Houston, except the energy money has made for swankier cars.
22. July 2012 at 21:48
Your move, Evan Soltas.
(Also, stil stuck on the movie – I think films like Dark Knight Rises do us a wonderful favor by scaring the bejeesus out of the public re nuclear power, don’t you? [I’m saying the opposite of what’s true])
23. July 2012 at 01:43
I agree that the objection to nuclear power makes no sense. But it’s not so universal among environmentalist any more. Some eco groups in the UK are pro-nuclear.
On the gas front, I think you are looking a bit too short term. Current emissions are obviously important, but total cumulative emissions are even more so. Finding new forms of fossil energy is going to expand total cumulative emissions, no alternative to that. Europe might be burning coal, but that would have happened anyway. A ban on shale gas exploration acts like a carbon tax in some way, as you are hindering a cheaper fossil fuel source.
23. July 2012 at 02:17
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, what matters are good incentives.
Still, since the US has much higher emissions per capita, the marginal reduction is much cheaper.
23. July 2012 at 02:21
I’m with you on this one Scott. Environmentalism is full of taboos and absurdities. And so is development policy and generally any scheme to improve on the condition of the world while ignoring markets.
23. July 2012 at 02:41
I completely agree. If only our enlightened elites would be willing to ram these facts down the throats of misinformed public …
23. July 2012 at 03:06
sax, what part of this do yo not understand:
Regulations that the Fortune 1000 must follow, but SMBs DON’T have to follow.
WHAT????
That would give advantages to SMBs and there would be MORE OF THEM, and less desire to MERGE and grow big!!!!
That would mean lots of small companies harder to regulate without simple easy rules.
Exactly Saxie, now you get it.
The goal is INSTITUTIONALIZED DISTRIBUTISM. Rules that very specifically and simply favor there being lots of Big Fish in Small Ponds and make capitalists not see much upside in driving out competition, or colluding with govt. to remove competition…
And we want this EVEN IF it make govt. “less effective.”
It doesn’t.
But even if it did, distributism is that important.
23. July 2012 at 03:21
The C Power (the bottom 2/3) approaches Tea PArty and says:
1. we want nothing.
2. we want to pass any rules / tax laws you come up with that make life easier for SMB owners, and are paid for on the backs of Fortune 1000.
That’s it.
Your side doesn’t presume to know, because if your side thinks too mucj they will try and get lots of immediate upside for the C Power.
That won’t happen.
BUT, you side can lose nothing upfront, while the 1% get hammered and the top 1/3 get the juice:
All tax changes are revenue neutral, no more trying to get MORE taxes from the Top 1/3 – not even for Obamacare.
1000% TAX on all private schools over $25K a year!
ALL SMB profit is TAX FREE CAPITAL GAINS if moved freely between one SMB and another, and doesn’t become income unless a SMB owner actually consumes with it.
ALL Fortune 1000 expenses from Business Travel, to Hotel stays, to club memberships, to conventions, are PERSONAL CONSUMPTION and taxed accordingly.
ALL REGULATIONS will be borne by Fortune 1000, SMBs will be forgiven or paid for by Fortune 1000.
Saxie, it isn’t hard, you just do things that the Tea Party will cheer, and that the Fortune 1000 (mostly Blue State elites who cares about them?) cry cry cry about.
Suddenly there are MILLIONS more folks in the top 1/3 who have a bigger slice of national income and they are needing more services from the bottom 2/3.
23. July 2012 at 04:01
[…] Environmentalists being dumb because it’s not enough to fix the environment; we have to fix it…. […]
23. July 2012 at 04:12
wind farms are awful for the environment, some people dont want to admit it because it would make 30 years of subsidies and little technological progress look silly: to ensure reliability of a wind farm, you have to keep a nearly equivalent amount of natural gas generation “hot” (which means 90%-95% of operating temp), so you are burning a lot of gas to avoid the kind of blackouts TX has seen. Wind farm generators don’t want to turn off their farms during high supply because they get a tax credit and power prices plummet into *negative* territory in many places like the midwest and TX (electricity is not just free, you can get paid to use it!). It’s negative because of the tax credit.
At least with solar, supply mostly matches demand, and the technology is certainly improving.
on another topic: Williams not only gets it, feels like he is inches away from not just opened-ended QE but a nominal income target to manage expectations.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/aa8216cc-d3ed-11e1-942c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz21RcKckEe
(CalculatedRisk spotted this last night).
23. July 2012 at 04:15
oh: i also meant to mention that in Europe don’t forget they have carbon trading. Carbon prices plummeted due to the recession, so they have largely been ineffective at spurring “carbon-friendly” generation.
23. July 2012 at 04:39
I have a problem with this part:
“the European Union has seen its emissions rise, partly because its higher gas prices (linked to oil) have led to an increase in coal-fired power generation.”
How does a decrease in oil lead to an increase in coal? Seems that oil is used for cars, trucks, and plastics while coal is used for the grid. I would need to see some source material before I accept this statement.
23. July 2012 at 05:32
In the United States, private landowners also own the mineral rights to their lands. This gives private landowners an incentive to develop their lands, by leasing them out for profit.
In Europe, mineral rights are owned by the government, which gives private landowners an incentive to oppose resource development, due to the surface disruptions on their lands.
In the United States, energy production from public lands has declined during the Obama administration. More than 100% of the growth has come from private lands.
It’s all about incentives.
Of course, in the long run, technology is more important than either drilling or environmentalism.
Germany doesn’t have a history of earthquakes, but it does have a history of world wars.
23. July 2012 at 05:35
@Benny Lava:
“the European Union has seen its emissions rise, partly because its higher gas prices (linked to oil) ”
the reason is that a lot of natural gas contracts *outside* the US (Asia, Europe) – especially LNG – have prices that are linked (indexed) to oil. In the US we do not see this: natural gas has its own futures market (henry hub), etc. Google search “natural gas contracts linked to oil” and you will see lots of Platts and Bloomberg articles that discuss it.
So when oil is high, in Europe and Asia, natural gas is also expensive. This discourages its use (by making it expensive for power generation).
There has been much research and discussion of undoing oil-indexation but i suspect until shale gas takes off, its unlikely: Russia is a big gas supplier to Europe and Asia and keeps the market this way.
23. July 2012 at 06:20
This post is actually highly relevant to your usual output, Scott. If you say to the environmentalists, “You tell me I can’t use more coal or gas because of carbon dioxide, nuclear is too dangerous and windmills need toxic mining, what can I do?”, they would reply, “live with less growth”. So here is another reason to shade down the NGDP target you suggest.
23. July 2012 at 06:23
“Of course, in the long run, technology is more important than either drilling or environmentalism.”
Steve, good point. Right now we need some incentives to update our antiquated building codes with technology and mass manufacturing simplicity. Communities everywhere are starting to struggle with the implications of their aging infrastructures, and many may not be able to rebuild them in the same ways they existed in the 20th century.
23. July 2012 at 06:34
Richard, That’s also true of windmills, but the net effect should still be positive.
Bill Ellis, You said;
“So many American conservatives go into never ending conniptions over liberal attempts to have the government intervene to bring about outcomes that liberals consider fair…
But they are blind to the elite’s successful attempts to have the government intervene to bring about outcomes that benefit the elite. And even when their worshiped’s transgressions are pointed out… they always have a “pity the powerful” ratioanlization at the ready.”
Good point.
Clark, Can I help it if not everyone shares my sense of humor?
D. Gibson. I love the Katy freeway.
Saturos, I’m not a fan of nuclear power, but biotech is my big fear (and my big hope.)
Acarraro, I don’t follow your gas argument.
dwb, Good point, and thanks for the link.
Benny, You misread the quote, they are talking about gas prices, not oil. Gas is used for electricity.
Steve, If Germany has another world war then nukes will be the least of their worries–they would have nuclear bombs falling on their cities. (An unlikely prospect in my view.)
23. July 2012 at 06:35
Rebeleconomist. Wrong. You impose a carbon tax (or electricity tax) and go for green growth.
23. July 2012 at 06:57
On carbon taxes/trading: don’t forget that SO2 and NOX trading in the US was a huge success at lowering emissions and did not make the banks rich. The scheme incented scrubbing technology, closed plants where that was not viable, and so on (of course, the EPA recently really screwed it up because regulatory bodies rarely declare victory and close up, but that’s a different issue).
carbon trading in Europe might have lowered emissions if the electricity market was not so fragmented nationally, the limits had been a bit tighter, and if they had not allowed so many EU carbon offsets for projects in China and Brazil and so on (which were a big fraud IMHO).
One thing that always disturbed me about German electricity generation is that its not just coal, its *lignite* or brown coal. Among all the grades of coal, it is the worst offender. that always suggested to me they are not all that serious about the environment.
23. July 2012 at 07:53
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me as if you are saying; -Do the opposite of what we think is best for the environment and we’ll accomplish what’s best for the environment.-
23. July 2012 at 07:53
I might be naive, but I think a better way of doing things would be; -Do what we think is best for the environment, and even if we’ll get it wrong sometimes we shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good.- But hey, what do I know, I’m not the unbiased right-wing professor.
23. July 2012 at 08:03
Scott, then I suppose you don’t agree with Ryan Avent and Noah Smith: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/07/global-warming?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/the_heat_is_on
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/carbon-taxes-wont-work-heres-what-will.html
23. July 2012 at 08:10
Sounds good to me, Scott, but just make sure that the carbon tax is introduced at the same time as the NGDP target, otherwise the carbon tax won’t get done. Never underestimate the cycnicism of politicians – as you know, my main criticism of NGDP targeting is that the politicians will use it as an excuse to get easier monetary policy right away, and then subvert it later when it mandates tightening during a boom.
23. July 2012 at 08:27
ssumner:
Rebeleconomist. Wrong. You impose a carbon tax (or electricity tax) and go for green growth.
Wrong. “Green growth” depends on “carbon growth.” It’s why “green” technology can be economically viable in wealthy carbon energy based economies, but not in sparsely capitalized economies such as in Africa.
If the state reduces “carbon growth”, it reduces opportunity for economically viable “green growth”.
Solar and wind power cannot build factories, or power steel industry.
23. July 2012 at 08:45
It just goes to show that all things will work out in the end no matter what!!!
23. July 2012 at 09:09
“Think about Mercedes, BMW and Audi. Then think about the quality of the stuff you buy that’s made in China.”
You mean like my iPad? I’m pretty happy with it.
China doesn’t produce just cheap crap any more. They make everything. Even “German” car companies build their cars in China. Not just the low end either – but upscale Audis and even Lamborghinis are built in China. The Sky City One is being built in China, not the West, and at 1/20th the cost and 1/20th the time of the Freedom Tower in New York.
And Steve Jobs told Obama why this is – Because China has both the physical and human capital to do it, and America does not (neither does Germany).
———–
I will say this: I am concerned about the safety of Chinese nuclear plants, but not because of the quality of Chinese engineers. Their best engineers are all MIT and Stanford grads anyway. But when an earthquake came to Sichuan, all the schools for the children of Party members stood up and all the schools for the children of the non-Party Chinese collapses, killing many children. It wasn’t an engineering problem, since they clearly knew how to build a earthquake resistant building. Their engineering is good; I question their ethics.
23. July 2012 at 10:30
Or, as the great Boon said about Bluto: “Forget it, he’s rolling.”
Got it.
23. July 2012 at 11:58
>Saturos, I’m not a fan of nuclear power, but biotech is my big fear (and my big hope.)
That’s a damn shame Scott. Nuclear power is one of my unhealthy obsessions (like market monetarism). Nuclear power in the West, just like education and healthcare, suffers because it’s entirely government dominated.
We’re still using light water reactors that were fundamentally designed in the 1940s. No nuclear engineers in the 1950s thought we would be using this technology 50 years later, because its incredibly inefficient. In the US a LWR will burn just 0.3% of the fissile uranium before we pull it out of the reactor and put it in a spent fuel pond. Fissile U-235 is as rare as platinum in the Earth’s crust. The nuclear engineering R&D labs (e.g. Oak Ridge National Labs, Argonne National Labs, Lawrence Livermore National Labs) had tons of competing designs that were vastly safer, more efficient with fuel consumption, and could even use entirely different fuel cycles. Between politicians and environmentalism from 1973-1983, all of this progress stopped. This is like the Chinese pulling back after Admiral Zheng He circumnavigated the world.
We actually built and ran reactors that had inherent safety features and ran on fuel as abundant as lead. Alvin Weinberg (the inventor of the LWR and then head of ORNL) favored reactors where the fuel was dissolved in molten salts, which allows radically simpler designs and safety features. The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment ran from 1965-1969, but funding was cut by Nixon to push for an alternative design that would be built in California (pork for the pork gods!). Carter got elected and cut all funding for nuclear energy research, and started us on the subsidized renewable track. Designs based on the MSRE can run on spent fuel from LWRs, standard U-235 (but at burnup in the high 90s), or on abundant Thorium 232. Thorium 232 is fertile: it will absorb a neutron and become fissile Uranium 233. Using the Thorium fuel cycle you will produce virtually no transuranics (which are the really long lived wastes).
So fast forward 40 years. We’re still running 50 year old nuclear reactors, and now China is reviving the work done at ORNL to build it’s own molten salt nuclear reactors. I’m glad they’re doing it, but we could have been doing it 40 years ago.
23. July 2012 at 15:11
I am skeptical of nuclear power, and industry wholly subsidized by the government and only densely deployed in countries with a strong federal government like France. Because nuclear power is not easy to ramp up and down on low usage days France must sell excess electricity from their grid to neighboring countries as a load dump at great discount.
23. July 2012 at 16:04
Benny – you’re describing base load as a downside. They have reliable power on any day of the year, even cloudy windless days. If you want to vary the electricity supplied to match demand intraday you can do that, just not easily in a Light Water Reactor (LWR).
And you are right to be skeptical of it’s heavy subsidies. The large national nuclear companies (Areva, GE, Toshiba, Westinghouse) have a strong interest in keeping the status quo. They make their money on fuel contracts, and they have captive customers because in a LWR fuel has to be fabricated specifically for a given reactor type. A reactor that can run on fluid fuel dramatically upsets this business model.
Fluid fueled reactors are RADICALLY different.
Fuel can be added during normal operation.
Medical isotopes (like molybdenum-99) can be removed during normal operation.
They operate at atmospheric pressure and very high temperatures (upwards of 500C), which is good for thermal efficiency. A LWR holds water under extreme pressure and is limited to low temperatures.
They are inherently/passively safe.
No meltdown is possible, the fuel is already melted.
In the event of an accident (say a 747 hits the reactor), the fuel drains out of the reactor into a ‘drain tank’ where it will cool into a solid.
Take 5 minutes to watch this video.
23. July 2012 at 18:20
dwb, Good points.
Mikael, OK, I’ll correct you–that’s not what I’m saying.
Saturos, I disagree for all sorts of reasons. If you want innovation, a carbon tax is 100 times better than government subsidies.
Brock, Good points, but your final paragraph sort of undercuts your argument. I’d say that at their best they are very good, but it’s a huge country and not all of it is top notch quality.
It that mega-building actually going to be built in Changsha?
Cthorm, I don’t disagree with your post, I said I’m not a fan of nukes as currently constituted. If safe nukes can be built at reasonable cost, without government subsidies then I’m all for it.
23. July 2012 at 18:34
Cthorm,
I am sure that newer reactor designs are better. However, no private company in America will build one without the strong hand of the federal government.
I suspect that environmental issues would be best handled by allowing market interactions with a regulatory regime that, in a transparent fashion, tries to levy fines for externalities. Coal power is terrible. They release so much mercury into the environment that consumption of freshwater fish in large quantities is to be avoided. But this is not what we are doing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/science/earth/17epa.html
I am not an expert but I am guessing it is easier to measure externalities from mercury than from carbon. But so it goes.
23. July 2012 at 22:49
Yeah, I tend to agree with you. But you have to make sure to tax carbon consumption not production, which is very difficult. And ideally you would use it to finance tax cuts not handouts as in Australia (most fittingly, capital tax cuts). Of course the Australian scheme is a joke, textbook regulatory capture…
24. July 2012 at 08:45
[…] Speaking of incentives, there are some perverse ones. Like how the US is lowering its emissions faster than Europe, because we’re less environmentalist. […]
25. July 2012 at 18:13
Saturos, I agree that in the real world they’d screw it up.
1. March 2017 at 02:36
[…] I said this pleasant ‘Unintended Consequence’ was attributable to the Bush/Cheney administration; I guess that warrants explanation, I think Scott Sumner summed it up best: […]