That’s from a nuclear advocacy website. No harm, no foul but I’m going to need some substantiation for those numbers. They present tables. But they don’t provide citations. Also, they don’t have any role for natural gas, which makes their analysis unrealistic and suspect in my view. (Though at least they discussed natural gas, albeit in a dubious manner.)
I say phase in a $100/ton tax on CO2 or about the equivalent of $1.00 per gallon of gas. That’s in $2015 - the tax would go up with inflation. Phase it in over 10 years - 10 cents per year. Maintain R&D support for solar, wind and nuclear power. End or sharply limit subsidies for nuclear power in the form of limited liability protection. Phase out special tax treatment for solar and wind. End fossil subsidies.
In other words, level the playing field then let the market decide the best way to cut CO2 emissions. I’m guessing that nuclear power will play a small role. In fact, I think it would play no role at all in the absence of old style regulated utilities. Because nukes are expensive. Since I advocate a small nuclear power program to maintain our capacity to expand that option, I would keep them. In the Deep South of the US. Which, again, is the status quo.
The reality, though, is that China has been pretty resistant to any such treaty (and would be REALLY pissed off about a tax on their exports), and even today they have only broadly agreed to some very loosely defined stuff. The way things are right now in China economically I seriously doubt they are going to do much, if anything, that will endanger their exports, since they have done basically everything they can to ramp them up, including tweaking their psudo-peg of their currency to the dollar downward to enhance their exports and prop things up.
I was just in China teaching a class on this. China held an estimated 126 billion short tons of proved recoverable coal reserves in 2011, the third-largest in the world behind the United States and Russia, and equivalent to about 13% of the world’s total coal reserves. It’s difficult to arrive at more accurate numbers, as China has been putting its domestic coal industry in a bit of turmoil due to political maneuvering.
China began importing coal in earnest about 2009, and coal imports have increased steadily since then. While many imports are for coking coal, thermal coal imports are rising steadily. Coal production rose 9% in 2013 from 2012, to nearly 4.4 billion short tons. Chinese government data indicates Chinese production and consumption declined by nearly 3% in 2014, the first decline in the coal industry in 14 years.
China approved more than 100 million tonnes of new coal production in 2013 alone. This is about 1/10 the total US production in that same year. At the same time, China has shut down 300 million tonnes of older, low-efficiency mines. China produces nearly 3 times the coal as the US, and about half of all the coal in the world.
China for its part is “going green” by a plan to reduce coal generation by 0.45% per year over 4 years (yee haw). But by early 2013, China had 363 proposed coal power projects with a total capacity of 558 GW.
Having smaller nuclear plants, widely spread out would actually make the grid much more reliable , and make the load management easier. And a smaller PB or MS reactor would be easier to control, using advanced control systems. Nuclear is the way to go.
I ran your article by a guy who actually designed Yucca. His first statement was ‘Oh, Ewing, he talks a lot and understands little’. For example, the studies done did look at the water tables, multiple barriers and also at the effect of water on the canisters, regardless of what Ewing believes. I will see if he is interested in responding to Ewing’s issues in more depth, however I doubt it as he is going on vacation for a bit*.
I suggest digging a little deeper than a newsletter.
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Those allegedly perfect nuclear reactors (pebble bed) are often designed without strong containment vessels, making them susceptible to terror attacks. And the design was adopted then abandoned by South Africa: it’s not as great as its initial billing.
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That is about the stupidest thing I have read in a while. Adding a containment dome to a reactor isn’t all that hard and the containment domes have been tested against terrorist attacks. Linky**.
Slee
The guy is a family friend who used to work for my father. My Dad ran the nuclear reactor safety division at a national lab for ~25 years.
Yeah and an old acquaintance of mine analyzed Yucca in depth for these sorts of issues and found them. But that’s not citeable here and at any rate she’s really a friend of a friend (though I know her first name).
Yucca has been studied for many years. When you are building something with a 10,000 year lifespan, it makes sense to acquire 3rd opinions. I thought the claims made in the newsletter were reasonably judicious.
So why were they designed without the containment dome?
Most probable answer: costs. I hate to break it to you slee, but serious people don’t like shell games. You don’t get to quote one set of cost estimates to show that nukes are economical then turn around and say well *of course * we could hypothetically add a containment dome. This is a recurring pattern with pro-nuke fanatics. They claim that we have super technology to store old waste, or prevent meltdowns, then when holes are picked in their case they pivot to another technology. It’s clownish.
As for China, they have more energetic curbs on CO2 than the US. And it’s been known for over a decade that they don’t want to be worst in the world on this. If the US led, China would follow. And regardless, China’s bad behavior in no way justifies putting a zero price on CO2 unless you are a congenital deadbeat. The dose makes the poison and the harms of CO2 scale with the total level of emissions.
You don’t get to shoplift just because others do it. Responsible people pay their way in the world. CO2 damages the environment and long run growth prospects: attaching a price of zero to it is about as responsible as skipping out on your debt.
Incidentally, I think the nuclear waste problem can be addressed. I’d use the Japanese approach: offer bribes to compliant communities. Combine that with the best possible science, complete with second opinions and peer review. That would be a lot better than picking one site for political reasons and then studying it with a fixed outcome in mind.
Also, don’t pretend that these bribes (in the form of swimming centers and local infrastructure) aren’t real costs. They are. When folks are asked to have a toxic waste disposal center in their backyard they reasonably ask, “What’s in it for me?” A free and reasonable society will offer compensation. Just as they will include such compensation in the costs of nuclear power, along with historically documented and forecastable cost overruns.
I’m guessing that 3rd generation nuclear power plants are a relatively expensive method for generating power, regardless of the price set on CO2 emissions. But I could be wrong. There are also load balancing issues, too rarely discussed. And hey, maybe 6th generation designs will be soo-ooper in 40 years. So I advocate a small nuclear construction program to retain our industrial and technological capacity. It’s even a better deal when they are sited in regions that evidently prefer high electric bills and cozy regulatory capture. It’s a win-win.
I’m not sure why you say this, given that China has done more to curb greenhouse emissions than the US has.
But the way forward isn’t hard, conceptually. After the $100/ton plan is passed, extend it to imports from non-compliant countries. Europe is already on board. Essentially we tell the Chinese: either you charge for the CO2 aspect of your output, or we will. I’m guessing they would play along, if we negotiated this over 20 years or so. As you said, they really don’t want their exports taxed. They also don’t want to be dictated to, like most countries, but that can be finessed as well.
Twist: tradeable emission permitting is probably a better way to go than my plan, for political reasons. But it’s conceptually a little trickier, so I prefer to discuss these things in terms of prices rather than emissions targets.
Of course it’s best to have a backup plan. That’s the 30 year negotiation scenario. The US will presumably continue to research backstop geoengineering plans. One of them involves pumping reflective particulates into the upper atmosphere. The downsides are 1) you have to continue to do that forever and 2) it will probably screw up rainfall distribution.
But in some ways #2 is a feature. To wit, “Nice monsoon you have there China. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”
Actually, what I was getting at was for treaty countries to tax carbon exports to non-treaty countries, so if we sold coal to them, it would be taxed. Although taxing carbon imports from non-treaty countries based on how much carbon was released in the creation of the finished goods would work as well. And may be more effective since there are some fossil fuels in China and even if Russia is not selling gas to China currently, they’d find a way if they become the cheapest option.
Huh? I was just working in China on this very issue with government officials and industry folks there. What “energetic curbs on CO2” are you referring to?
First of all, I mangled my point. Obama has apparently handed down a few executive orders on Greenhouse gases, so I can no longer say the US is doing “Nothing”. At the same time, I want to say that for as long as CO2 a) has no tax or b) no tradeable emission permitting or c) no regulations of the sort that are routinely applied to SOx, particulates and the like.
As for China, consider this from Dec 2015:
Now to be fair, California has greenhouse emission trading now. But until that market is nationwide, I think it’s valid to say that China is doing more than the US.
Nuclear power is expensive. It is uneconomical compared with fossil fuels if you ignore all kinds of pollution.
But if you care about pollution, nuclear power isn’t a slam dunk. There are many ways of lowering particulates, sulfur dioxides and yes greenhouse gases. If you care about such things, put a price on them - and the market will work out the lowest cost solution. That will probably lead to a number of technologies, among them shifting from coal to natural gas, fuel efficient automobiles, public transportation (up to a point), solar, wind, and maybe nukes. Probably nukes to some extent. And fluorescent and LED lighting.
China has nothing to do with this point. Putting a price on CO2 is the way you adopt the least-cost method of reducing CO2 emissions. Nuclear power fans should want a high price. But then they will face stiffer competition from solar and wind. My understanding is that the least cost solution is highly likely to involve a mix of power sources, with a substantial role played by natural gas. I am highly suspect of claims that 15 dozen nuclear power plants can solve all our problems, given that industry’s dismal track record in terms of construction cost containment and circumlocution with regards to nuclear waste.
Either way, China very much wants to be part of the international system. And the thing about emission charges is the government can keep the revenue (though it doesn’t have to). Phase it in slowly and the economy can adapt: it handles far more volatile fluctuations in the price of oil after all.
If OPEC raises the price of oil, it’s a transfer of resources abroad. If you phase in a tax on CO2, coal producers take it in the chin but otherwise the adjustments are pretty manageable economically.
