Energy Production in the U.S. is not a problem

Great Debates
21

LonghornDave: Sorry, but your analysis is just too superficial to be useful.

The various mixes of energy production and consumption around the world are controlled by the economics of importation vs local production. The fact that the U.S. produces the energy that it does tells you very little without looking at why the markets have evolved the way they have. The U.S. could import twice as much energy and still not have a ‘production problem’ if the reason for importing was simply that it could get it cheaper that way. It gets complex enough that countries which are net energy exporters still find it economically advantageous to import energy as well.

Also, the comparisons of energy per capita are somewhat meaningless, because different countries have different mixes of industries. You need to consider that a country with high energy efficiency might wind up actually being the largest consumer of energy per capita, simply because that country has a comparative advantage in energy efficiency and therefore attracts more high-energy manufacturing than do other countries.

Really, the only numbers that are useful in your analysis are those for energy efficiency. Even those have to be used with caution, because some processes are simply more energy efficient than others, so the overall energy efficiency of a country will depend on what it makes, and for whom.

So for example, you could have two roughly equivalent countries - one of which is mainly a provider of services and intellectual capital to the other, which is a heavy-industry manufacturing country (such a situation could evolve simply because the manufacturing country has better access to raw materials, energy sources, water for cooling, etc). The manufacturing country could be extremely energy efficient, and the population could be made up of staunch conservationists, and it could still wind up using more energy per capita than the other country, which is made up of rich people who drive SUVs to their mansions.

So let’s look at energy efficiency for a minute. You made big hay out of the fact that the U.S. is 46th, but the countries above it are largely made up of smaller, poorer countries. The proper way to use that data is to compare the U.S. against other large, 1st world countries with large manufacturing bases. If we do that…



10)	France		$235,132 
13)	United Kingdom	$232,340 
15)	Germany		$228,361 
17)	Japan		$224,668 
43)	Australia	$150,237 
46)	United States	$140,517 
51)	New Zealand	$123,639 
57)	Mexico		$114,169 
62)	Indonesia	$105,359 
67)	Canada		$95,909 
73)	Malaysia	$85,967 
75)	Korea, South	$82,958 
78)	Singapore	$71,143 
86)	India		$65,100 
87)	China		$61,151 
93)	Russia		$41,344

But even here, some huge discrepancies pop out. How come South Korea is only 1/3 as energy efficient as France? The answer lies in the mix of industry. South Korea is a heavy industry manufacturer - it’s the largest shipbuilder in the world. It makes a lot of steel and other high-energy goods. So even here, the comparisons aren’t all that useful. To do it right, you’d want to try to normalize this in some way by looking at exactly what each country manufactures and in what quantity.

And to make it even more complex, let’s consider a potential unintended consequence of energy conservation policy in the U.S.

First, note that almost all countries that are potential offshore sources of American manufactured goods are less energy efficient than is the U.S. So let’s start with two potential factories - one in China, and one in the U.S. I’m trying to decide where to locate my factory, and my breakdown looks like this:


Cost per product
----------------------

		U.S.   		China
Energy		2bbl($180)	5 bbl($450)
Transportation	$150		$280
Labor		$600		$100
Management	$300		$500

Total:		$1230		$1330

Based on these numbers, I’m going to build my plant in America because the labor savings I could get in China don’t overcome the additional cost of energy and transportation and management.

But now, in an attempt to cut greenhouse gas emissions, we add a carbon tax of $60/bbl to American oil consumption. My product would now cost $1350 per unit to make in the U.S., and $1330 in China. As a result of this difference, I’m going to build my plant in China - and for every product that comes off the assembly line, 5 barrels of oil will be consumed instead of 2. I’ve more than doubled the carbon footprint of this product in my attempt to be ‘green’.

So forget the simplistic analysis. Any analysis of the value of conservation vs consumption has a million factors that have to be considered, and any estimate of carbon savings through forced consumption by way of carbon taxes or cap and trade has to consider the potential environmental costs of the inevitable increase in offshoring that will occur.

22

I think building more power plants is going to remedy the fact that the United States’s oil, gas, coal, nuclear, and renewable energy production is not keeping up with consumption by increasing our oil, gas, coal, nuclear, and/or renewable energy production via the increased production of the new plants. (I should think that would be obvious.)

And you’re not seriously asserting now that the reason that we don’t have more nuclear plants is a shortage of raw materials, are you?

So what makes you think that there is a plan what will make effective changes in general energy consumption, if current efforts have been ineffective? Do you have a plan here? Or are you just asserting that it’s possible, with the same lack of argumentive basis as everything else you’re asserting?

You make this easy.

Putting aside the fact that you are loudly declaring yourself to be a walking, talking strawman, this can be summarized as “If nuclear power production is going to increase in america, the government is going to have to take steps.” All the roadblocks you mention could be swept aside with ease by the government, if it was so inclined.

Which raises the question, who do you expect to organize and implement the great changes required to bring production and consumption together? Private businesses, deying their own profit motivations? You apparently don’t expect the government to help you. Are you calling for word-of-mouth campaign instigated by yourself to do nothing more than buy compact flourescents and turn off the lights when you leave the room? What?

23

Look, the issue is pretty obvious to anyone not seriously intellectually impaired. Building a power plant doesn’t magically increase the production of fossil fuels. Please state how building a power plant will increase oil production in the U.S. if you think it is so obvious.

Did I say anything about a shortage of nuclear raw materials? Nuclear makes 9% of the total energy production in the U.S. Nuclear makes up about 0.5% of the number of power plants in the country. When you make a global statement about building power plants increasing the energy production in the U.S., a reasonable person would think you are talking about the total energy production and not a minor sliver of it. In case you need to be spoonfed, 99.5% of power plants in the U.S. are not nuclear. If you want someone to think you are talking about a nuclear power plant, I would use the term nuclear power plant and not the generic term power plant.

I’m not asserting anything other than what I have stated. Given the choice between blaiming the energy deficit on lack of production versus increased consumption, I believe the problem is caused by increased consumption. I’ve purposefully left the topic narrow because I’m not trying to argue over whether or not an energy deficit is a bad thing or not or promoting a grand plan to increase production or decrease consumption. The purpose is to say that the public debate, which focuses on production, is focusing on the wrong topic. The two major political parties seem to believe that the energy deficit is a problem and are talking about ways to fix it. They are promoting primarily increases in production. I think they are focusing on the wrong thing.

Are you serious? You think that a statement about not being able to grow the total energy production significantly even remotely is close to meaning that building nuclear power plants in the U.S. is impossible? Nuclear power is currently declining as a percentage of total energy production. Isn’t it just possible that I might think that nuclear power production might be able to: 1) increase but still not keep pace with total production growth; 2) increase to keep pace with the total production growth; 3) increase beyond keeping pace with total production growth but not enough to offset declines in other sources of energy; or 4) increase beyond keeping pace and more than offsetting declines by other sources of energy but still not enough to grow energy production in the U.S. significantly?

I don’t think you know what a strawman is. I’ve made a statement that increasing consumption is a bigger problem than lack of production growth. You are trying to change my argument to something about being anti nuclear power. That is a strawman. Further, you stating that government roadblocks could be easily swept aside if it was so inclined is just absurd. The fact that they are so far away from being inclined to promoting it is the major roadblock. You’ve basically stated that if the biggest roadblock magically didn’t exist then the whatever other roadblocks that do exist wouldn’t be a big problem. No shit. What’s your next grand statement going to be, “water is wet”?

I haven’t made any attempt to say that there is an easy fix or even that an energy deficit is a problem. I am saying that the public debate is incorrect. If the belief is that an energy deficit is a problem, then the debate should center on the consumption side more than the production side. It’s really as simple as that.

24

You seem to be saying that my post doesn’t make the case that an energy deficit is a problem and therefore it is not useful. My response is that I’m not trying to make the case that an energy deficit is a problem. I’m trying to make the case that the public debate over how best to increase production is incorrect because if a person believes that an energy deficit is a problem then the bigger issue that needs to be focused on is increased consumption and not failure for production to grow. I think that the information I have provided does speak to that point without attempting to speak to the overall is an energy deficit a problem question.

Many of the statistics I have shown are to counter what is being stated by the Republicans and Democrats. Certain politicians seem to be trying to say that the only reason we have to rely so heavily of foreign oil is because the government is not allowing enough drilling in the U.S. or that we’re falling behind the rest of the world in alternative energy. I think they also try to insinuate that we get all our oil from the middle east. I think it is worth pointing out that in fact the U.S. is a world class oil producer. Not only that, we’re a world class producer in all forms of energy. We’re having to rely more and more on foreign sources of energy mainly because our consumption is rising faster than our production. However, our production is still basically the best in the world when you factor in all forms of energy.

I didn’t make “a big hay out of the fact that the U.S. is 46th”; I responded to a request from someone else asking for the information.

Sure, unintended side effects are probably the biggest problem with a progressive government. Many times their solutions create bigger problems than the one they are trying to address. I haven’t proposed any solutions or even stated that it can be solved. I’m really saying that the public debate should focus on the consumption side if it is believed that an energy deficit is a problem. That debate may end up with us saying that the problem can’t be solved in any reasonable way. Maybe the debate should instead be more focused on whether an energy deficit is a problem at all. I think that the current debate over how to increase production enough to eliminate the deficit is getting us no where.

Sure. I haven’t made any statement about reducing consumption being an environmental benefit. Everything you say here is valid. I’m not really trying to address any of this with this current post.

25

Hey ad-hominem boy, here’s your solution: build more nuke plants. Have I put it simply enough for you yet? Let’s see you pretend that is some stupid strawman about spawning oil from air.

And by the way, I’m saying that you’re incorrect when you assert that the public debate is focusing on the wrong things. The public debate is quite correctly focusing on both production and consumption, with the focus correctly more on the problem that seems more directly correctable. Production occurs at a relatively small number of sources of a small number of kinds, and changes to them or additions to them will have relatively large effect. Consumption occurs at millions of points in tens of thousands of variations, where changes would have to have widespread implementation to even start to have an effect. It is a no brainer that if you can ramp things up at the supply side you’ll get more bang for each improvement. See?

26

Reducing consumption is a matter of ROE. The people best in place to make wise investments in energy efficiency, from an egineering and systems point of view, are electirc utilities. But we, largely, have very little incentive to do so. There are very few companies that are willing to actively decrease their own sales. In order to prmote energy efficiency, you need to make sharehodlers whole for lost sales, and this doesn’t mean just covering the costs and lost profits - that’s till a net loss, because you’re missing your return component. *If you want electric utilties to spend money on reducing consumption, then you must make it more profitable for them to reduce demand than to increase capacity. *Read that last sentence again, it is really important. There is no other way to do it, period. If you want something, you have to pay for it. The state energy commissions have been overwhelmingly reluctant to pay electric utilities more to not produce than to prodcue, so electric utilities have - surprise - increased capacity rather than reduced demand. Money talks, bullshit walks.

27

You’re still not getting it. Try this thought experiment:

Let’s say the U.S. worked like mad to improve energy efficiency. It revamps all its factories to conserve every joule of power it possibly can. It spends billions on the effort. It keeps on improving efficiency until every little gain left costs 10X what the energy is worth. Nothing more can be done.

In time, it becomes by far the most energy efficient place to manufacture goods on the planet. As a result, manufacturing flows into the country. All the smelting operations come to the U.S. because it’s the cheapest. Every high-energy industry on the planet locates to the U.S.

Now you have a situation where the U.S. is producing as much energy as anyone, but consuming far more than anyone else. So, it imports energy from these other countries along with their raw materials, and returns finished goods to them.

Since it can’t find any more ways to do the same amount of manufacturing with less energy, the only way it can now reduce consumption is to close down factories and send them to countries where it takes more energy to produce the same goods. Would you still say the U.S. has a consumption problem? That the answer is to conserve more?

If not, tell me how the stats you’ve presented rule suggest otherwise.

In other words, the fact that the U.S. consumes as much energy as it does could simply be the result of it being a great place to do high-energy manufacturing, because it does so efficiently. Why on earth would you want to stop that?

Now I’m not saying that this is the case. I’m saying the statistics you presented are irrelevant, because they don’t tell us why the U.S. consumes so much energy. And that’s really the critical piece of information.

28

The current 104 nuclear power plants generate an average of 7,751,749 MWH per year. We would have to build 1,134 new nuclear power plants just to eliminate the current deficit. Let’s just say we could build them all immediately for a cost of $10 billion a piece. That would cost $11.3 trillion dollars or basically the amount of the entire national debt. That’s assuming we could somehow increase the amount of nuclear power plants by 1,100%. You really think that’s a feasable plan?

Further, it is not a strawman to ask you how building a power plant would increase the amount of oil production. You stated the following.

Are you not directly saying here that oil production would increase simply by building a power plant? It seems to me that you are stating that building a new power plant could increase: 1) oil production; 2) gas production; 3) coal production; 4) nuclear production; and 5) renewable energy production. I’d simply like you to answer how that is possible. You might also explain how that is a strawman since I am asking you to explain something you directly stated.

In your mind spending $11 trillion dollars to build 1,100 nuclear power plants is an easy solution, so I’m probably going to discount what you think about ease of reducing consumption.

29

I rearranged things to group like topics.

Quick lesson in reading comprehension - instead of “and” I wrote “and/or”. Emphasis, in this case, on “or”. This tiny modification allowed me to keep most of the form of your statement (since quoting you back at you works well to emphasize how much you argue against yourself), while still really only saying that one of the categories need be increasable with just plants. Specifically, nuclear.

Bases: covered. Moving on:

Dude, you don’t even have a plan. You’re apparently proud that you don’t have a plan. Thing is, though, it makes your criticism of any plan of mine completely hollow - do you have a better idea? No? Then shut the hell up until you do. Because you literally have nothing.

That said, here’s an alternative to building nuke plants: don’t change anything at all. Try and beat that for cost-effectiveness! The thing to keep in mind is that you haven’t even shown that running an energy deficit is a problem. Whoops! Your bad. Of course, I happen to think that getting a little closer to energy independence couldn’t hurt, so if we’re really worried about it we can build some nuke plants. And sell more flourescent bulbs and energy star compliant devices, I don’t mind that. Works for me. And it’s certainly better than your complete-lack-of-plan-or-argument-or-anything-else.

30

According to the EIA, 31% percent of the U.S.'s energy is used for industrial purposes and approximately 3/5ths of that is for manufacturing. Therefore, approximately 18.6% of the U.S.'s energy use is for manufacturing. You don’t think that we could improve the efficiency of the other 81.4%?

31

So, explain to me then why in many states you can get rebates from the power company for buying energy efficient appliances?

Or why they subsidize home energy audits?

Or why DTE just sent me a package full of energy saving tools, including CFL bulbs, flow restrictors for faucets, a low-flow showerhead, and an LED nightlight?

Actually, I think I’ll answer my own question…it’s to prevent expensive outages. If the grids in a localized area get overloaded, maintenance crews have to be deployed immediately to fix it, and this cuts into profits pretty harshly. So we want to reduce power consumption to a maintainable level.

32

It would seem very odd that you make the statement oil, gas, coal, nuclear, and/or renewables all the while knowing that you really only meant nuclear. However, if that is what you say, then I guess I’ll take your word for it. Usually people don’t say “and/or” when they know that 80% of it is wrong. Let me try it out though: It is perfectly ethical to murder, rape, donate to charity, molest children, and/or assassinate the president. I guess no one could call me out of that since I really only mean that donating to charity is ethical. You really think you are giving a lesson in reading comprehension? No competent writer would construct the statement in the way you did.

Let’s see, you propose the most ludicrously stupid plan possible, but I am not allowed to criticize it until I come up with a plan as well? Okay, my plan is we annex Saudi Arabia. Now that I have a stupid plan as well am I allowed to tell you how stupid your plan to build 1,100 nuclear reactors is?

I have stated on this thread many times that I am not arguing there is any problem with running an energy deficit. Once again, I am stating that the politicians who believe there is a problem with running an energy deficit are attacking that problem incorrectly. I don’t lack an argument. It is as simple as that. I happen to think it is logical to first identify a problem before trying to solve it. For the purposes of my argument, I am assuming that an energy deficit is a bad thing, and saying between lack of production and over-consumption, over-consumption is the problem. That is the argument that I am making. Most politicians assume that lack of production is the problem and come up with a myriad of solutions to that problem. It seems like a reasonable thing to ask if a lack of production really is the problem.

33

Perhaps. But my point was not that there are no ways to conserve, but that the reams of statistics you chose to present to make your case did not make it, and actually had very little to do with it.

See, you can’t make sweeping statements like “It’s obviously a consumption problem, not a production problem.” You have not made that case at all. I don’t think you understand energy economics. The consumption/production ratio, and the rate of consumption and efficiency of energy use is based on a whole lot of factors you haven’t even considered.

What you need to do is to drill into every usage of energy, and make a case where it’s smarter to conserve energy in that case rather than buy more from abroad. You haven’t done that. And the burden of proof is on you, because the mix of energy use in the United States right now is largely determined by supply and demand and rational decisions formed by considering the cost of energy against the alternative of consumption.

I can give you some concrete ways to make this more efficient, though - reduce regulations that distort the market for energy. Eliminate subsidies for high-energy manufacturing and farming. Get rid of all trade tariffs so that goods can flow freely between optimal producers and consumers. Eliminate regulatory roadblocks preventing nuclear power expansion, and reform the tort system so that serial lawsuits cannot tie up billions of dollars in capital indefinitely.

Speaking of nuclear… Your numbers are way off. You said:

Your list of 104 power plants appears to include ones that are decommissioned, research reactors, naval reactors, etc.

Here’s A list of nuclear plants operating in the United States as of 2008, sourced directly from the Energy Information Administration. There are 66 of them - not 104.

Furthermore, if you drill into the details on them, you’ll see that they vary substantially in energy output. So taking an average is a lousy way to estimate. Using historical data as an estimate for new plants is a lousy way to go in any event.

And finally, your estimate of 10 billion dollars per plant is way off, and is based on the historical cost in America, which is driven in large part by the wacky regulatory environment which raises risk and increases the cost of capital. For example, the South Carolina Electric and Gas Co. estimated that two new AP1000 reactors would cost 9.8 billion dollars. But elsewhere in the world, these identical reactors are built for much less money. In 2009, the published cost for 4 AP1000 reactors under construction in China was a total of $8 billion.

Let’s take that reactor as an example. The Westinghouse AP1000 puts out 11,543 MW, or about 10,000,000 MWh of electricity per year. You would need about 950 of them to replace all U.S. imports of energy. At 2 billion each, that’s about 1.9 trillion. That’s only about twice the size of the ‘stimulus’, and about equal to last year’s deficit.

But you also remember that the 1.9 trillion does not represent an unrecoverable cost. A big chunk of the cost of nuclear is the cost of the capital. That means that as you sell nuclear power, you’re paying off the capital. So think of it more like a 1.9 trillion dollar loan which generates a revenue stream every year and pays itself back, with interest.

Your cost of 11 billion, by the way, was for power plants, not reactors. Some plants have 2, 3, or 4 reactors. So the price per reactor is much less than your 11 billion, even in the States. I quoted South Carolina’s estimate of about 5 billion per reactor, and China’s proven ability to build them for less than half that amount. The difference is construction time - American reactors take much longer to build because they are ensnared in a web of regulations and lawsuits. Tying up billions in capital costs a lot of money. The fast you can build them, the better.

So if you apply the correct numbers, suddenly your outrageous estimates for nuclear don’t look so outrageous any more. 11.3 trillion may not be feasible, but 1.9 trillion sure is.

34

I traffic in formal logic. “It is perfectly ethical to murder, rape, donate to charity, molest children, and/or assassinate the president.” is true. Deal with it.

Also, the desire to reflect your own absurdity back at you as purely as possible trumped the need to be comprehensive in argument. After all, you’ve got nothing, so it doesn’t require a carefully-composed argument to blow it apart.

You are aware that I never proposed that we need to build 1100 nuclear reactors, right? Just checking whether you’re aware you’re shooting at strawman.

Also, I’m so impressed by your argument-from-stupidity. (What else can you call the jusitification you just presented?) You just keep running with that; I’m sure it’ll pay off big in the long run.

The problem with your argument is that you don’t have an argument. What you have there is an assertion. You’re baldly stating, based on zippo facts whatsoever, that between lack of production and over-consumption, over-consumption is the problem.

Guess what, I can assert too: you’re wrong. That’s my assertion. Technically it’s as strong as yours even if I have no support for it, because your assertion is completely unsupported - however I can go the extra mile and point out the obvious fact that any improvements made to energy production will reduce the deficit (which we’re assuming for the sake of argument is sort of a problem), and so obviously any approach that pointlessly ignores the possibility of improving production is obviously inherently flawed. QED, so to speak.

35

Actually I was quoting nuclear reactors. There are 104 nuclear reactors in the U.S. per the this EIA page. It seems more appropriate to talk in terms of number of reactors than power plants, which may have more than one reactor.

I briefly read about the AP1000, which I believe produces 1,154 MW not 11,543. However, doesn’t saying they would produce 10,000,000 MWH assume essentially 100% run time? The current U.S. reactors produce on average 964 MW and result in 7,751,749 MWH versus 8,445,482 MWH if they ran at 100%. Therefore, isn’t it reasonable to assume that the AP1000 would run at something lower than 100% capacity as well? I’m sure when new they run at better capacity, but I would think averaging something close to what the current reactors would do makes some sense.

Further, I’m not blind to the fact that much of the cost overruns in the U.S. result from the U.S. regulatory environment. Nevertheless, it seems unreasonable to assume that the current environment would disappear. It is a true statement that it costs much more to build reactors in the U.S. than elsewhere. Even if there is not good reason for the higher cost, it seems unreasonable to assume we could do it at the same price as China. Regardless, I’ll concede that they should cost less than $10 billion even if they don’t currently.

This is meaningless. The fact is that the capital cost is an up front cost that needs to be paid. Obviously they would generate cash flow after being built. If an oil well costs $5 million to drill and then generates a future stream of cash flow resulting in a positive of number of $10 million you don’t say that the well cost negative $10 million. You state the cost of the well as $5 million. I really have no idea what your point is with this. Maybe you’re trying to convince me that after we pay the trillions of dollars to build the reactors that we’ll get a benefit back that may over time exceed the original up front cost? That’s a pretty obvious fact, and I don’t dispute it.

The cost I saw was approximately $10 billion not $11. The average power plant has 1.6 reactors by the way. I’m not saying $10 billion is a reliable number. In fact, I just used it as a number I found quickly. I’m sure it could be done cheaper. It may also be done at a higher cost since we both know that we’re not going to be able to build 1,000 new reactors all at todays’ prices. It would take decades to build them, so who really knows what the cost would be to build that many. I think you know that under the current climate in the U.S., they are not going to be built as cheaply as they are in China, so $2 billion is an unreasonable number. Further, the nuclear industry has a problem with coming in at costs much higher than estimates, so South Carolina’s estimate of $5 billion per reactor may be too low. I don’t fault the nuclear industry for why it costs so much. It’s not their fault that regulatory costs spiral out of control as well as prolonged legal battles and permitting issues. I wish the U.S. would eliminate many of those issues and allow as many reactors to be built as possible. Realistically it isn’t going to happen though.

In summary, do you really think it is even remotely feasible to build 950 new reactors? Further, do you really think we could build them for as little as $2 billion in the United States? Finally, even if the cost was only $1.9 trillion, which I imagine you will concede is probably unrealistically too low, any chance in hell that happens?

36

But I am not trying to make the case of how best to conserve. And saying that the many of the statistics I presented don’t make the case to conserve is obvious since the intention of the posting of almost half was to show that the U.S. is a world class producer.

Do you disagree that the U.S. is a mature oil, natural gas or coal producer? Obviously there are new discoveries to be made, but the ability of the U.S. to dramatically increase production on any of those fuels is nearly impossible. Even with all of the significant recent natural gas discoveries, they really don’t do a whole lot more than offset the natural declines in conventional and Gulf of Mexico production.

On nuclear, is there room for significant expansion? Sure. Do you truly believe that is possible in the current U.S. political climate? I think nuclear will be lucky to even maintain its current share of the U.S. energy production. Do I wish that wasn’t true? Sure, but I think any honest person would agree that it will probably not happen even if all evidence indicates that it should.

On renewables, is there room for expansion? Sure. Do you really believe that they are going to replace natural gas, coal, or nuclear any time soon? Isn’t it more likely that as production of fossil fuels naturally declines, a portion may be offset by increases in renewables?

So just looking at the global production side, do you think there is any realistic way that the U.S. can dramatically increase production in order to bridge the energy deficit?

If you don’t believe we can, then it makes sense to look a lot harder at the consumption side. You want me to show data that demonstrates specific areas that we could operate more efficiently. I agree that would be valuable information. I don’t think it is necessary to make this point though. If a person believes that the energy deficit is a problem, then there are really only two ways of solving that: increasing production or reducing consumption. The focus, as I see it, by the major political parties has been on what can we do to increase production. Both parties agree that the energy deficit is a problem. If production can not be dramatically increased then the only way to fix the problem is on the consumption side.

What don’t you think I understand about the economics of energy? I’m guessing I know more about the economics of the domestic oil and natural gas than anyone on this board. I’m not an expert on coal, nuclear, or renewables. However, it doesn’t take an expert to know that coal is a mature industry that won’t be done any favors by this or future administrations. It doesn’t take an expert to know that even though nuclear is a near magical fuel that could solve a lot of problems, that’s just simply not going to happen for unfortunate reasons. It also doesn’t take an expert to know that renewables are largely in their infancy and also largely uneconomic without government subsidies; they will improve, but production will probably not increase at a rate higher than the amount needed to simply offset declines in the fossil fuels and further increases in consumption.

If the problem is simply how do we eliminate the energy deficit then the only things that matter are that production has reached a plateau and consumption continues to increase at a high rate. I primarily attribute the increase in consumption to the increase in the population. Obviously, I’m sure there are thousands of other factors, but simple fact is that those don’t matter if you assume that the deficit is a problem. Those would probably be more appropriate in an argument about whether the deficit is a problem or not.

If we come from the assumption that an energy deficit is a problem, why would I need to do that?

37

Sorry, a typo on my part. The rest of the numbers are correct.

I actually rounded down from the actual number to account for that. Maybe not enough, but we’re talking trivial differences. Nuclear reactors in the U.S. currently run at about 92% of full annual output, I believe.

They do currently. Or rather, they are projected to. A nuclear plant hasn’t been completed in the U.S. in a long time. But most of the estimates I’ve seen run about 5-6 billion per reactor. If China has done it for 2 billion, let’s split the difference and say that with a little regulatory reform these reactors could be built for 3.5 billion each. The NDRC estimates more like 2.5-3 billion. But let’s use the larger number.

As you yourself pointed out, you couldn’t build all these reactors at once. Let’s say you built them over 20 years, starting a new group of reactors every 4 years. That’s 200 reactors every four years. At 3.5 billion each, that’s a capital investment of about 175 billion dollars a year. But after four years, the first group of reactors would be online, and paying back their capital. So the next group would be partially funded out of that revenue. And in 8 years, you’d have 400 reactors online.

Total capital cost recovery for nuclear plants would be on the order of 25 years. So by the time you were halfway through construction of them all, you’d already have recovered half the capital of the first group.

These numbers are very big, but they’re not outlandish. The health care bill that just passed will wind up costing more. And again, the difference is that health care expenditures are a sunk cost, whereas expenditures to build nuclear power plants are an investment that return all the money. So you can tolerate much higher levels of spending.

Is it likely? No. Is it feasible? Yes. Considering ongoing capital cost recovery during a 20 year construction period, the cashflow required would probably be on the order of 2-3 trillion dollars over 20 years, with the money being returned, with interest, in the decade after. If we accepted that to make this happen the government had to outright subsidize 50% of it through loan guarantees or cheap interest rates, you’re talking about a total cost to government of 1-1.5 trillion dollars over 20 years, or maybe 50-70 billion dollars a year. About the cost of the Department of Education. Let’s just scrap that and divert the money to stimulating nuclear production.

But my guess is that if you really wanted to do this, you could do it without costing the government a nickel. Put in regulatory reforms that guarantee immunity from lawsuits after a design is certified and allow investors to have guaranteed time periods for capital investment, and I think you’d see a lot of activity in this area. Re-open Yucca Mountain and guarantee a federal repository for waste. Hell, you could even offer a liability-free government transportation system for the waste from the nuclear plant. Do whatever you have to do to eliminate the risks of investment in nuclear power.

That said, I don’t think such a crash program is likely. Not in the U.S., anyway. The well has been too poisoned by decades of environmentalist yammerheads scaring the public. I don’t think you could even get licenses for 950 nuclear plants in less than a decade.

But the rest of the world is going there. There are 50 new nuclear plants under construction in the world right now. And those numbers will start to increase as more large countries start approving new nuclear plants.

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It’s poor writing. Deal with it.

Following that particular point in this thread back to my original statement results in me saying that the U.S. is one of the best producers of energy in the world. Where is the absurdity in that statement? Not putting words in your mouth, but you seemed to try to say that we have lots of room for improvement since we could build a bunch of new (nuclear) power plants. Am I incorrect in the overall points made if we ignore the grammer issues?

However, you did say that solution to the energy deficit problem was to build more nuclear power plants. Whether it takes 950, 1100 or some other specific number, it is a large number. Where is the strawman? If anything, I am guilty of slight exaggeration.

I’m not basing my argument on zero facts. The facts are: 1) the size of the energy deficit; 2) the trends of production and consumption; and 3) the United States’s world leading position on the production side. These have been augmented by near truisms that production in the U.S. has reached a plateau for the traditional fuels and that the non-traditional are exceedingly difficult to increase substantially. What do you have on your side to say that production is the problem (or combination of production and consumption or whatever you believe)?

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  1. ignoring the possility of nuclear growth. 5) Ignoring that the trend is for consumption per capita to be highly static. 6) Presuming a double standard of changability in nuclear power presumption (presumed none) and consumption (presumed high) completely sans facts -nay, completely contrary to facts in the latter case.

And the capper - you’re mixing up “problem” and “solution”. The problem is that there’s an energy deficit -er, presuming we accept the premise that the problem is that there’s an energy deficit. That’s the problem. Period. Is consumption the problem? No more than production is, mathematically speaking; from the perspective of the deficit problem fixing either would be equally effective. If we look at if from the perspective of solutions, though, then the answer becomes “whatever solution best addresses the problem”. If the best solution addresses consumption, then you can call consumption the sub-problem to be addressed to correct the (assumed) deficit problem. If your solution fixes production, then production is the sub-problem to be addressed.

However, what you’re doing is coming into this without any solution whatsoever. You’ve provided no reason to think that consumption is more correctable the production - the closest you’ve come to that is saying that coal and oil can’t be improved, and then asserting that nuclear can never work. But without an actual way to do it, fixing consumption will never work either. And asserting that consumption is the real problem achieves nothing but closing yourself off to solutions in other quarters, which is methodologically self-sabotaging.

You want to fix consumption? Then fix consumption. Don’t tell us to ignore everything else.

Here’s what I believe:

  1. the energy deficit isn’t necessarily a problem; declaring it to be a premise of this discussion turns this discussion into a game.
  2. Any solution that includes reduction of consumption is by defintion also a solution that addresses a combination of production and consumption, so you mock yourself. However, any idiot knows that problems are best addressed from as many angles as possible.
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I think that’s really the answer. Is it theoretically possible to substantially increase nuclear power generation, yes. Is there any chance that it is going to happen, no. This brings me back to my earliest statement about nuclear power, which was “Nuclear has been a declining percentage of production, and has significant roadblocks toward increasing.” Is that really a controversial statement?