As nuclear energy is getting an extensive discussion in the comments thread, I thought I’d repost this piece I wrote this more than a year ago. The only change since then is that the evidence for human-caused climate change has become even more overwhelming, though there are still plenty of people who combine global warming denialism (or a long track record of denialism, with no admission of error) with the claim that “nuclear power is the only solution to climate change.”
Repost
My column in yesterday’s Fin was about the option of nuclear energy as a solution to the problem of climate change, an issue that’s been discussed a few times here already. One point I didn’t make is that the availability of nuclear-generated electricity as a ‘backstop’ technology puts an upper bound on the costs of a strategy that would reduce CO2 emissions enough to stabilise atmospheric concentrations (this is much more than Kyoto which aims only to stabilise emissions from developed countries, as a first step to a solution).
Nuclear option premature
With the Kyoto protocol in force, and evidence of rapid climate change mounting up day by day, it’s not surprising that there has been renewed interest in nuclear energy as a source of electricity, free of emissions of greenhouse gases. What’s surprising is that so many of the participants in the debate seem to be restating positions that have been frozen in time for twenty years or more.
The debate over uranium mining provides an example. Labor’s ‘three mines’ policy was a grubby internal compromise reached in the early 1980s. It owed a lot to the interaction between geographical and factional alignments and almost nothing to a rational evaluation of the issues. It made no sense even at the time, yet it is still defended by some as an appropriate policy for the future.
The central reasoning underlying the anti-uranium campaign was rendered obsolete by the late 1970s. It was assumed that nuclear power was set for rapid growth, and that restricting the supply of uranium was the best way of constraining that growth. Meanwhile, nuclear proponents were looking at ‘fast-breeder’ reactors that would generate their own plutonium and thereby avoid the uranium shortage.
But the stagnation of nuclear power after the Three Mile Island accident meant that the shortage of uranium never developed. Releases from military stockpiles after the end of the Cold War have ensured a continuing supply. The availability of uranium is not a constraint on nuclear power and is unlikely to become one. Restrictive Australian policy might raise the world price, but that would merely benefit other suppliers at our expense. Similarly, the fast breeder reactor is commercially dead. France pulled the plug on its Superphenix reactor in the late 1990s, and Japan’s Monju has been mothballed for a decade.
If the opponents of nuclear power seem stuck in the 1980s, many of the supporters seem to back in the 1950s, still selling a dream of limitless clean power, ‘too cheap to meter’, and obstructed only by baseless fears. If the experience of the past thirty years has taught us anything, it’s that this dream is illusory.
Nuclear power can be clean (at least compared to the main alternatives), it can be safe and it can be cheap, but it apparently can’t be all three at once. In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island meltdown, it was pointed out by some that no-one had died, and it was suggested that nuclear power was being held to excessively tight safety standards, compared to those prevailing in the Soviet Union, which was forging ahead while nuclear energy stalled in the West. The Chernobyl disaster put paid to that claim.
In the ensuing decades, there have been repeated claims that the problems have been solved and that the stage is set for a renaissance of nuclear power. There has been much less in the way of concrete achievement.
It is hard to assess the costs of nuclear power because of its long stagnation. Large-scale construction has mostly been undertaken in countries where nuclear power attracts government subsidies, usually linked to military objectives, as in France. The main issue relates to capital costs. With the low interest rates prevailing currently, nuclear power looks marginally competitive with fossil fuels, but a complete analysis, including a proper allowance for waste disposal, would almost certainly yield substantially higher costs.
It would be foolish to foreclose any options, but a return to nuclear power looks premature at this stage. There are lots of conservation options, and alternative strategies such as tree planting, that could yield savings in emissions at significantly lower cost. Only when these options are exhausted would an expansion of nuclear power make sense.
In the meantime, it would be helpful if advocates of nuclear power could clarify their own position regarding climate change. While many are happy to score points against environmentalists by pointing to nuclear power as a solution to climate change, a surprisingly large number simultaneously push the claims of the handful of scientists (mostly not experts in the field, and many with glaring conflicts of interest) who deny the reality of human-caused climate change.
Not only does this undermine the case for re-examining the nuclear option, it undermines the credibility of its advocates. If an individual or lobby group disregards the massive body of evidence on climate change, often on the basis of a predetermined political or interest-group agenda, what reliance can be based on their claims about the safety and cost-efficiency of nuclear power?
John Quiggin 
There are important economic considerations that have been omitted from this discussion. For one, nuclear is not subject to input price shocks in the same way as fossil fuel plants are. This is a major impetus for the interest in nuclear power in countries like France, as it furnishes substantial economic value in the form of energy security (quite possibly offsetting its subsidization).
Also, energy price per MWH or KWH is not an appropriate measure for the economics of a power source. Solar, for example, looks extremely unfavorable in that context, but when you consider that solar produces power during the day when it is demanded and not through the night where it’s value is negligible by contrast, and further consider the massive cost of transporting electricity which is eliminated in rooftop solar produced power, it’s looks far more economically justifiable.
Tom Worstall’s emotions hypothesis:
“The sequence of certain events — equipment malfunctions, design related problems and worker errors — led to a partial meltdown of the TMI-2 reactor core but only very small off-site releases of radioactivity”
Source: Fact Sheet on the Accident at Three Mile Island, US NRC
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html.
The quoted Fact Sheet has a link to Chernobyl, too.
Wikipedia’s very comprehensive description of the accident explains what happened; much of the core did melt down after the loss of coolant.
There was no explosion, however, and all the radioactive solids remained within the intact containment building. The radiation that was released was by venting gas into the atmosphere, though the amounts released were such that the doses to those surrounding the plant small to negligible compared to the natural background radiation.
Am I missing something or is there a tacit agreement not to talk about demand reduction as a strategy for future power generation and reducing emissions? We could look at A Clean Energy Future for Australia , which estimates something like a 20% reduction in energy usage below the baseline scenario by 2040. Is this omission a result of the persistent error that demand reduction represents a fall in living standards?
And what about perverse subsidies to fossil fuel generation? The same report quotes an estimate that they represent about $5b. annually.
Back in late February or early March this year Prof. Quiggin sought help in finding material for work he was doing on greenhouse mitigation. I wonder how that project is progressing and whether it’s relevant here.
Gordon, there does seem to be a tacit agreement of this kind among a large number of participants in the discussion, though obviously I don’t share it. I get frustrated when the talk immediately turns to alternative supply sources as it did right from comment #1 in this thread.
On my project, it’s still in the exploratory stage and will be for quite a while, but this kind of discussion is part of that stage. The Murray-Darling project is still my main focus.
According to the above-mentioned Wikipedia article the fact that there was no explosion at TMI was just dumb luck.
And for Dogz’s benefit the Wikipedia site also quotes the clean-up at TMI as costing $975m, one third of which was passed on to rate-payers.
So Dogz’s much-repeated sum of $150m in insurance payouts is dwarfed by the $330m fine imposed on innocent electricity consumers for a single incident that luckily didn’t involve an explosion.
Katz, TMI didn’t explode because TMI has a containment vessel which operated as it was designed to. There’s no reference in that wiki article to “dumb luck” and none to the fact that ratepayers paid 1/3 of the cost of cleanup.
gordon,
I think that there is also an appreciation that demand reduction will only really be effective through the price mechanism. If we paid a price for our power that correctly showed the externalities then the correct amount of demand reduction would naturally flow.
gordon, you are spot on. and if we take an approach based on accurate price signals (as suggested by andrew reynolds – with whom I was not disagreeing earlier) then demand reduction ought to follow. there are market imperfections, though, as a result of poor information: if you have the time to do the research, you find that investment in household measures such as better window and roof insulation can pay for itself in less than year (average – depends on the climate where you are), likewise pelmets in cold areas, often wall insulation similarly, water efficient shower heads (massive effect – because there is a big energy use in heating hot water that in practice often goes mainly to heat the sewer pipes!) – the list can go on. the information is there is you hunt, but not readily available to the average punter. There are similar figures for industry; some suggestions (eg via greenhouse challenge program) that large industry at least has been in the lead of the household sector on this front. Before a government leaps to the nuclear solution, it could deal with all of our energy needs in the short to medium term simply by demand reduction measures without in any way reducing quality of life.
I think that Dogz is correct, the containment building at TMI, the shell around the core, worked as planned to contain the damage. Reports at the time indicated that to be the case and I don’t think anything reported since then has altered that view. It would have been terribly irresponsible and short-sighted not to have had a containment shell. Thank goodness it worked. Wasn’t about half the core melted?
Half, yes. It was a pretty bad accident. But it led to a lot of improvements in the way reactors are designed and operated. And no-one was killed.
Well Gordon & JQ it seems the government certainly doesn’t want to talk about it.
Lovins has been showing the money to be saved for ages and I remember watching The Race To Save The Planet from the lates 80’s giving simple ways this could be achieved.
I know countries like Japan are super efficient, maybe being energy efficient is just too ‘green’ for some business types, & if the greenies advocate it must be wrong!
Avaroo thinks Dogz is correct. Who cares?
The experts, who wrote a report on the Three Mile Island Accident, described the events in such a way that the term ‘meltdown’ and the term ‘dumb luck’ seem to be appropriate. Here is another excerpt from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Fact Sheet:
“Because adequate cooling was not available, the nuclear fuel overheated to the point at which the zirconium cladding (the long metal tubes which hold the nuclear fuel pellets) ruptured and the fuel pellets began to melt. It was later found that about one-half of the core melted during the early stages of the accident. Although the TMI-2 plant suffered a severe core meltdown, the most dangerous kind of nuclear power accident, it did not produce the worst-case consequences that reactor experts had long feared. In a worst-case accident, the melting of nuclear fuel would lead to a breach of the walls of the containment building and release massive quantities of radiation to the environment. But this did not occur as a result of the Three Mile Island accident.”
The accident happened in 1980. The clean-up took 13 years.
Source: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html.
I’m almost embarrassed to interrupt the Dogz/avaroo love feast with some facts.
But here goes:
http://www.threemileisland.org/downloads//215.pdf.
This document confirms the breakdown of charges for the more than 1 billion dollar cleanup cost for TMI so far. This frightfully cheerful “factsheet’ provides all the answers that Dogz and Avaroo would like to hear.
“Q. Who should pay the cleanup costs?
“A. The burden of the cleanup costs should be spread beyond GPU stockholders and
ratepayers. Stated quite simply, if the benefits of the lessons learned extend beyond these groups, so, too, should the burdens.
“The conclusions of both the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island
(the Kemeny Report) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Special Inquiry Group (the Rogovin Report) are that the accident involved the entire industrial, technological and regulatory structure of nuclear power in the United States.
“Thus, potential contributors to the cleanup include not just GPU, its customers and
shareholders, but the federal and state governments, and the electric utility industry as
well.
“The accident at Three Mile Island is a national problem that deserves a national response…”
In other words, when it comes to costs, everyone should be liable.
What a pity the profits of the nuclear industry aren’t distributed on the same generous basis.
By the way, this document indicates that the more than $1 billion spent so far does not include actually disturbing the melted down core of the reactor, which his still glowing away as vividly in 2006 as it did on that very interesting day way back in 1979 when life inside the reactor became impossible.
Can I recommend an excellent article, “Why Nuclear Power Cannot be a Major Energy Source” which is largely, but not exclusively, based on the work of Leeuwin and Smith at http://tinyurl.com/7dcoc and http://tinyurl.com/b5cw8 (which I referred to in an earlier post)?
Also worth reading is a great shorter article on Online Opinion, “The Economics of Oofle Dust” by Chris Shaw. Comments can be found here.
This passage establishes the credibility of the author of the article referred to by JS:
What does he think is going to happen? Sea level rises of a few millimetres a year will suddenly overwhelm a nuclear reactor near the coast and cause a meltdown? This is the sort of idiotic analysis you find at the core of most anti-nuclear screes. Eventually the author gives away the fact that they have no rational reason for disliking nuclear.
I am starting a new anti-nuclear clown club, and in the spirit of JQ’s characterization of AGW skeptics, I claim that all people who are still opponents of nuclear energy in the face of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary must be either dogmatically adhering to long-since discredited beliefs, ideologues, or have some financial incentive for their views.
While that particular example may be ludicrous, dogz, the consequences of a nuclear accident could certainly be extreme; that much at least is correct. It seems that we should at least look seriously at nuclear sources of energy, any responsible policy would dictate that we continually revisit the issue. Think how much nuclear industry has changed just in the last 5 years.
The quote, referred to by “Dogz”, in a more complete form, and more in context is :
“There is also the prospect, rising to certainty with the increase in numbers and the passage of time, of sabotage by staff, of the flooding of reactors by rising sealevels, and poor training and systems, particularly if a nuclear programme were to be developed in haste by governments eager to produce energy as fast as possible to make up for the depletion of oil and gas. Every technology has its accidents. The risk never goes away; society bears the pain and carries on but, in the case of nuclear power, there is a difference: the consequences of a serious accident – another accident on the scale of Chernobyl, or greater, or much greater. It is accepted that the damage could be so great that it was far beyond the capacity of the world’s insurance industry to cover.”
And your point JS? Let’s look at it another way: would you trust a nuclear engineer who in the midst of all his calculations started talking about his design for a perpetual motion machine?
I know watering down of education standards has been a long-term project of the left, but at some point reality bites: you want the people making the decisions to actually know what they are talking about.
Speaking of, I have previously denigrated James Lovelock for his eco-alarmism, but it seems the guy may have his head screwed on after all:
With friends like that, who needs enemies, eh?
Dogz, if “credibility” can only be established on the criterion that they agree with your pro-nuclear point of view, then there’s not much point discussing the nuclear issue, is there?
Anyway… It probably is a good thing that there is such division on the topic of nuclear energy. It’ll be necessary when we get railroaded into using nuclear power and meltdown insurance will become available. If nuclear power is so safe, then pro-nuclear advocates will gladly bear the risk of those that don’t want to glow in the dark.
EG,
What a pity your previous contribution about the dumb luck of avoiding an explosion at TMI lay in moderation limbo. This quote from the extract of the NRC Factsheet is particularly apposite:
“In a worst-case accident, the melting of nuclear fuel would lead to a breach of the walls of the containment building and release massive quantities of radiation to the environment.”
When nuclear apologists congratulate the foresight of constructing a “containment vessel”, a term which has all the portentousness of “the cone of silence” or “the ark of the covenant”, what they are in fact talking about is a building. Such a building is unlikely to survive the kind of explosion that tore Chernobyl apart and allowed the escape of vast amounts of radioactive matter.
There was no escape at TMI because there was no explosion. The so-called “containment building” didn’t prevent the explosion. And it is unlikely that the so-called “containment building” would have survived a major explosion.
Hence the fact that no explosion occurred is dumb luck.
However, the TMI containment building did its job in preventing uncontrolled venting into the environment. The venting that did take place was controlled and deliberae.
Sorry to derail your argument with the facts Katz, but in modern reactors (including that at TMI) there’s a “containment vessel” that lives inside the “containment building”. The containment vessel at TMI was an 8-inch thick steel cylinder. I don’t have a picture but here’s a somehwat different one from a Mitsubishi reactor.
The coolant pump on those suckers operates at 50 or 60Hz, so no mods required for an Aussie install (although in fine Australian tradition we’d probably want to lower it a bit and add a loud exhaust).
Katz,
It was not ‘dumb luck’, but good design of the core and associated equipment. Because of multiple failures of staff and equipment it melted, but it would not have exploded anyway. The very old design of the Chernobyl core, also combined with multiple failures, caused the explosion which got out due to the lack of any decent containment structure.
No derailment at this end Dogz.
I’m enjoying your newfound taste for facts.
A hydrogen bubble formed in the containment vessel at TMI causing a small explosion.
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=124385
The explosion wasn’t strong enough to breach the containment vessel. But the fact remains that TMI suffered an explosion within the containment vessel. So much for the myth of the explosion-proof reactor.
Thereafter, pure hydrogen began to accumulate in the containment vessel again, This terrified reactor operatives;
“Though the immediate problem of cooling the reactor core had been solved by the afternoon of the incident, concerns over the existence of a hydrogen bubble within the containment vessel lingered for several days until technicians found a way to reduce its potential for further trouble. ”
http://www.docheritage.state.pa.us/documents/tmi.asp
As is well known, they did this by venting the radioactive gas to the environment.
An explosion occurred inside the containment vessel. The situation was so volatile that in the frst instance insufficient hydrogen accumulated to do damage.
That insufficient hydrogen accumulated before the first (and only) explosion can legitimately be ascribed to dumb luck.
Dogz,
I thought the point I was making was self-evident. You were attempting to discredit the whole article by quoting a few sentences, incompletely and out of context. If you included the words “with the increase in numbers and the passage of time”, you would not have been able to lead readers believe that David Fleming was claiming that “sea level rises … will suddenly overwhelm a nuclear reactor near the coast and cause a meltdown”.
Avaroo, the example is not ludicrous. Corporations have shown time and time again that they have no social conscience, and if building a reactor, in a location likely to be overwhelmed with rising sea water, would help increase their bottom line today I am quite sure that many would do it, particularly if they were going to build the reactor in a poor, corruptly governed Third World country.
Katz, I don’t think my post having been in moderation limbo was of any consequence. As you can see from the subsequent comments by Andrew and Dogz, even the carefully worded official documents by the U.S.A. NRC are treated as inferior to their opinions. After quite some time of observations and experience, I’ve decided not to read their comments any more.
Thanks for the reference. It describes the complexity of just one nuclear accident in clear and un-emotional terms. The article is from May 1982. The present value of the cost figures in the article would be much higher for any strictly positive interest rate.
Dogz and Andrew – The debate about nuclear power in Australia is a total red herring. From a purely economic standpoint building an expensive nuclear power plant in a country with abundant cheap coal does not make any sense at all especially if you think anthropogenic global warming is exaggerated or at worst a hoax. The only rationale for nuclear is that it is supposed to reduce greenhouse gases. Building one nuclear power plant or even 2 will do absolutely nothing to quell Australias shameful emission record. Replacing the 20 or so large coal power plants in Australia will cost many billions of dollars and be very unlikely to be profitable. IF we do go ahead and build a plant it will be 10 or 15 years before it is commissioned and then everyone can go “Hooray we have a nuclear power plant” and then wonder what real difference is AND be billions of dollars worse off.
To hear Mr Howard say that we have 40% of the world’s uranium so therefore it makes sense for us to have nuclear power is also complete bunk. We may have 40% of the worlds uranium however it its not just a case of shovelling yellow cake in one end and getting power out the other. We do not have 40% of the world’s NUCLEAR FUEL!!!! We would STILL have to buy processed and manfactured fuel rods from someone else at an enormous cost. We would be in exactly the same position as Iraq at the moment that has to import expensive petrol from Turkey while sitting on the world’s 4th largest oil reserves. They lack the refinery capablity. Having uranium does not mean you have fuel. We could use CANDU reactors, that use natural uranium, however these reactors need heavy water and while they use natural uranium the stocks of highly concentrated ore are limited.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor
CANDU reactors are also conventional reactors whereas some of the newer safer designs that are being touted as completely safe are pebble bed reactors that need pebbles of enriched uranium to be manufactured.
We could enrich uranium here. For that facility we would need to budget another couple of unprofitable billion dollars. That however brings us to the proliferation issue. Who cannot be tempted, once we have enrichment and in the name of national security a hot topic at the moment, to have a secret lab enriching a quantity to the 5% or 10% required for nuclear weapons. No: shock: horror: that could not happen in AUSTRALIA. We are the good guys we would never do that!!!!!!! Now substitute IRAN for AUSTRALIA and you see the problem. IRAN thinks it is the good guys as well. Can only christian democracies responsibly enrich uranium? Can you really trust ANY government, particularly our own which has turned lying into an art form, to not produce a couple of nukes just in case?
Finally the waste. Not 1 kilo of high level waste is in permenant geological storage despite the nuclear industry trying for 50 years to do it. Most of the current ‘thinking’ now involves dry aboveground storage:
http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/atreactorstorage/atreactorhome.htm
and
http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/fctsht.htm/#radwaste
There is about 29 000 tons of high level waste in the US alone that we do not have a solution for. France has not solved the problem and it’s waste sits above ground and due to reprocessing is highly enriched. When this article talks about a small glass cylider of waste that is misleading. Plutonium is immediately weapons grade and only small quantities are needed for a bomb or even a dirty bomb as PU is incredibly toxic. Here is the bottom line on waste:
“People felt much happier with the idea of a “stocking center” than a “nuclear graveyard”. Was this just a semantic difference? No, says Bataille. Stocking waste and watching it involves a commitment to the future. It implies that the waste will not be forgotten. It implies that the authorities will continue to be responsible. And, says Bataille, it offers some possibility of future advances. “Today we stock containers of waste because currently scientists don’t know how to reduce or eliminate the toxicity, but maybe in 100 years perhaps scientists will.””
So how do you let a contract for 10 000 years of guarding. Imagine still guarding Sumerian nuclear waste dumps or Roman ones. If we were still guaring Roman waste dumps we would still have another 4000 or 5000 years to go. A waste dump in central Australia seem OK however how do you get guards to live and work there FOREVER!!! Seems like we need the idea of an atomic priesthood.
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/NGP/AtomPriesthd.html
All in all nuclear power is a non starter for Australia. Massive expansion of energy conservation, wind and solar thermal coupled with IGCC coal plants is both cheaper, faster and easier than nuclear power. If reducing greenhouse emissions is your object then then these are far better options. If spltting the Labor party and dividing the nation for political ends is your object then nuclear power is the obvious choice.
Ender, you could have said all that in a lot fewer words. This is the party line of the Greens: nuclear power is bad because we’ll be tempted to enrich and then be tempted to make nukes and we’ll have to dispose of the waste.
Needless to say, I don’t think this is such a problem. Firstly, if any country is going to have nukes it should be a stable democracy like Australia. Secondly, the world’s nuclear waste needs storing somewhere: Australia is absolutely ideal. For the good of the planet we should be storing other country’s nuclear waste, in which case we might as well be storing our own.
As for 10-15 years to get a reactor running: that’s only if you let the bureaucrats run the project. There are plenty of companies that would be able to build one very quickly if we just place the order.
Katz wrote: “So Dogz, please have the courtesy of addressing my arguments rather than your prejudices.”
Katz, Ender et al, I trust you will know better than to hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
Excellent post, Ender! Thanks
Dogz, I wouldn’t care if Australia had nukes either but I can’t imagine why you’d be interested in Australia storing everyone else’s nuclear waste. Are you joking about this? If you think Australia would be ideal then wouldn’t any relatively sparsely inhabited locale also be ideal? Perhaps you’re thinking that putting the bulk of the planet’s nuclear waste in one place would make security simpler?
Oh dear JS, Ender’s post was nothing but a bunch of prejudices. We’ve heard it over and over again from the anti-nuclear crowd. You’re right, there really is no point debating you lot.
Even your own erstwhile heroes recognize the benefits of nuclear:
“Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources.”
Unfortunately, one can’t legislate against stupidity.
James Lovelock hasn’t been complete in his list of opponents of the “unjustified” fear of nuclear energy.
As we have proven and reproven on recent threads:
1. The US nuclear industry is unwilling to self-insure.
2. The US insurance industry is unwilling to cover the nuclear industry. Has anyone heard of an insurance company declining to take on a good risk?
3. Using political sleight of hand the US Federal government indemnifies the US nuclear industry at a huge cost to the public.
Perhaps as an old man Lovelock can be forgiven for forgetting these facts or for declining to include them in his data-set of knowledge about the world.
Before it is objected that there is an insufficient data-set to establish risk, let me point reasers to this very useful article on nuclear accidents on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_accidents
I append, with discussion, part of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s list of “significant precursor” events in US reactors.
‘A “significant precursor” is an event that leads to a conditional core damage probability (CCDP) or increase in core damage probability (CDP) that is greater than or equal to 1×10^-3. In other words given that the precursor event has occurred, the probability that a subsequent failure will cause core damage is >=0.001.
‘As of 24-Oct-2005 the “significant” precursor events (i.e. the worst category) were (listed from highest probability of occurrence 1 to lowest probability of occurrence 0.001):
1) Three Mile Island Unit 2, CDP = 1.000, (28-Mar-1979)
2) Browns Ferry Unit 1, CDP = 0.200, (22-Mar-1975) (ref NRC IE BULLETIN NO. – 75-04A)
3) Rancho Seco, CDP = 0.100, (20-Mar-1978)
4) Davis-Besse, CDP = 0.070, (24-Sep-1977)
5) Turkey Point Unit 3, CDP = 0.020, (8-May-1974)
6) Davis-Besse, CDP = 0.010, (9-Jun-1985)
7) Salem Unit 1, CDP = 0.010, (27-Nov-1978)
8) Millstone Unit 2, CDP = 0.010, (20-Jul-1976)
9) Brunswick Unit 2, CDP = 0.009, (29-Apr-1975)
10) Brunswick Unit 1, CDP = 0.007, (19-Apr-1981)’
The list names 33 “precursor events”.
Quite a data set. Surely enough for an enterprising actuary to frame a market on catastrophe.
But maybe this is a case of too much information.
I must say that until JQ brought this topic up I hadn’t thought much about nuclear issues. It has been a steep learning curve for me, and I didn’t expect to be as disturbed as I am by what I am still discovering.
I suppose I should have expected somebody (in this case, Andrew Reynolds) to say demand reductions equal price rises. After all, this is an economics blog and trying to get a non-market solution from an economist is like trying to get a watermelon at the butcher’s. But as Stephen says, price rises for fossil-fuel-produced power are not the whole answer.
Did a moratorium on whaling result from a price rise for whales? Did the Montreal Protocol (limiting the use of CFCs) result from a price rise for refrigerators? When a municipality is short of water, do they just raise the price or do they institute water restrictions?
“Natural Capitalism” (Hawken, Lovins & Lovins, 1999), an excellent book on conservation with which I relentlessly bore my family and few remaining friends, says “price is less important than ability to respond to it” (p.254). The authors compare power usage in Seattle and Chicago, saying that power conservation in Seattle (where power is cheaper) is far in advance of conservation in Chicago (where power is more expensive). They devote a whole chapter (Ch.13) to discussion of why, if conservation can save money, conservation is not practiced – the answer, time and again, is that markets don’t work properly.
Andrew Reynolds’ simple solution of “raise prices” implies, I think, the dismantling of a whole raft of subsidies and incentives which exist in our present power generation and distribution systems, which is unlikely to happen. What about the $5b. in perverse subsidies (see my previous comment)? What about State incentives to locate industrial installations? What about cross-subsidies to remote areas? Etc. And I fear there are many ways to rort a permit system (which Andrew Reynolds advocated in an earlier comment) for raising prices.
But if we are to consider price, I think that it should, after all, be just as effective to subsidise renewables as to raise the price of nonrenewables if the objective is to reduce the demand for greenhouse-gas-emitting power generation. A price rise would fall mainly on households, both directly (the electricity bill) and indirectly as generators and intermediate users passed on the price of their permits, whereas a subsidy to renewables would spread the cost over the whole society. Since greenhouse is a problem that affects us all (and all our children), that seems fairer to me.
Dogz – “This is the party line of the Greens: nuclear power is bad because we’ll be tempted to enrich and then be tempted to make nukes and we’ll have to dispose of the waste.”
As is the party line of the pro-nuclear camp that nuclear waste is easy to dispose of and nuclear power is easy and cheap. The problem you have is that my party line is closer to reality than yours. No nuclear waste has been stored safely and we are waiting for a miracle. An unstable group of countries Pakistan, India, Israel
“Needless to say, I don’t think this is such a problem. Firstly, if any country is going to have nukes it should be a stable democracy like Australia.”
So Australia is a stable democracy? What about in 100 years or 300. Do you imagine that it will still be a stable democracy in 300 years? 300 years is longer that Australia has been a country. How can you possible think that this will continue for ever.
Quite apart from the lofty elitist viewpoint that stable democracies are OK and theocracies are bad who says we are OK?
“As for 10-15 years to get a reactor running: that’s only if you let the bureaucrats run the project. There are plenty of companies that would be able to build one very quickly if we just place the order.”
Like the ‘private’ company run ones in the US? 10 to 15 years is standard for the construction of NP plants anywhere. There is only so may people with expertise in reactor construction – if you plan really gets underway and there are nukes everywhere then you could wait 5 years just for the engineers. NP is neither quick or cheap.
and finally:
““Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources.â€?”
It may be true that nuclear plants are safer now however that is not the main problem and is not addressed by this quote. My main fears are proliferation and waste disposal neither of which you have addressed. Even without all these greenie things you cannot demonstrate that nuclear power is better or cheaper than even coal. As an obvious free marketeer the markets have where allowed to have categorically chosen all other power sources rather than nuclear. THe initial plants in the US were built with massive subsidies, far greater than renewables, and none have been built since. The rest of nuclear power in the world exists as prestige government programs, total state run non profit enterprises or nuclear weapons manufacturing.
Ender, people really like living in stable democracies. It would be tough to get any people to give it up, including Australians.
Stable democracies are certainly a safer bet when it comes to having nukes. If you had two neighbors, one was a stabe democracy and one run by a despot or theocrats, which would you rather see have nuclear weapons?
Ender, why don’t you do some research? We’re you depart from pure opinion you are almost 100% wrong.
“No nuclear waste has been stored safely and we are waiting for a miracle.”
That’s primarily due to irrational politics. You don’t get to use the consequences of your irrational arguments to buttress those same arguments – that’s circular. The US has had legislation in-place for some time now mandating the Nevada desert as a final repository for long term waste. It still hasn’t been moved there from its short-term storage at the reactor sites for political reasons. And Sweden is well advanced in long-term-storage.
So Australia is a stable democracy? What about in 100 years or 300. Do you imagine that it will still be a stable democracy in 300 years? 300 years is longer that Australia has been a country. How can you possible think that this will continue for ever.
Are you kidding? I’ll bet you $1M in today’s dollars that Australia is a stable democracy in 300 years. Beside, even if we take you seriously, on your argument Australia should have no weapons whatsoever, for fear that one day we’ll become a totalitarian state. All I said was that Australia having nukes is not going to reduce world security, given the countries that already have them.
“Quite apart from the lofty elitist viewpoint that stable democracies are OK and theocracies are bad who says we are OK?”
Yeah, lofty elitism like not threatening to wipe entire countries off the face of the earth.
“10 to 15 years is standard for the construction of NP plants anywhere.”
Nope. Most modern designs take 3-5 years (eg, ABWR reactors take 4 years, AP-600 and AP-1000 take 3 years).
Sorry Ender, you’ll have to go dig up some more complete falshoods with which to buttress your crumbling world-view.
Dogz where did you get the 3-5 years from? Whenever I’ve heard it mentioned it is at best 10 years.
Americans Wary of Nuclear Power
http://futurewire.blogspot.com/2006/06/americans-wary-of-nuclear-power.html
I would think the not in my back yard will be the same here; it’s one thing to force the NT to take the waste but unless they are built out Woop Woop it aint going to happen.
SimonJM, I got that info from the same place I get most of my nuclear industry info: Uranium Information Center. It is an industry-backed group, but it seems pretty objective.
Dogz – “That’s primarily due to irrational politics. You don’t get to use the consequences of your irrational arguments to buttress those same arguments – that’s circular.”
However the fact remains that due to not just technical problems no waste has been stored properly no matter who you try to blame. Only Sweden seem prepared to cough up the ponies required to do it properly – about 12 billion for the whole program.
“Are you kidding? I’ll bet you $1M in today’s dollars that Australia is a stable democracy in 300 years. ”
Sure assuming you and I are still around in 300 years to collect. If you do not have enough imagination to think that things might change in this time frame then there is nothing further I can say.
“Yeah, lofty elitism like not threatening to wipe entire countries off the face of the earth.”
Unlike the countries with nuclear weapons mounted in undetectable platforms that can do the same at a seconds notice.
“Nope. Most modern designs take 3-5 years (eg, ABWR reactors take 4 years, AP-600 and AP-1000 take 3 years).”
Maybe for the reactor itself however that is only part of the process. From instigation to power is typically 10 years
This is from:
http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=4&catid=345
“The schedule of major regulatory requirements for new plant construction in the United States. There are three major requirements established by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a nuclear plant.
â—? The early site permit gives a company approval for a plant site before a decision is actually made to build the plant. The energy company makes the application and the approval process takes approximately two and a half years.
� The design certification of a reactor design signifies the NRC’s approval that the design meets regulatory safety standards. The reactor manufacturer makes the application. Once the decision to seek certification has been made, the regulatory interactions leading to approval take between five and eight years.
â—? The combined construction and operating license (COL) permits the construction and subsequent operation of a specific nuclear reactor design at a specific site. Energy companies and reactor manufacturers may apply for a COL. The approval process for the first COL could take up to three years, while subsequent approval of COLs for identical plants will take about one and a half years.”
In the US the COL can take 3 years – do you imagine that it would be quicker in Australia?
“Sorry Ender, you’ll have to go dig up some more complete falshoods with which to buttress your crumbling world-view. ”
I am sorry Dogz you free market globalisation world view is the one that will crumble due to lack of energy. Nuclear power is not the answer. You really are the one that needs some more falsehoods as the ones your camp peddles are just not supported by evidence.
“In the US the COL can take 3 years – do you imagine that it would be quicker in Australia?”
Probably would actually – the Australian public service is a lot better than the US in my experience. And given the urgency, we could streamline things a lot.
“I am sorry Dogz you free market globalisation world view is the one that will crumble due to lack of energy.”
And doom 2 billion Chinese and Indian peasants, and all their descendents, to perpetual poverty? With all due respect, something tells me they’re not going to heed your advice Ender.
But I’m glad you’ve finally admitted what is at the core of the anti-nuclear position amongst Greens: it’s your best chance of implementing your communist agenda. That’s why you’re so confident that Australia will be a totalitarian state within 300 years: the proletarian world revolution will have taken place well before then.
Why didn’t you say so earlier? We could have avoided a lot of argument.
Dogz Says:
I note that you continue to argue as if you were an authority on the subject.
How many AP-600 reactors have been built? How many AP-1000s?
In the case of the ABWR, again, how many have been built? What was the average construction time? What were the maximum and minimum times? How was construction time defined?
Dogz – “But I’m glad you’ve finally admitted what is at the core of the anti-nuclear position amongst Greens: it’s your best chance of implementing your communist agenda. That’s why you’re so confident that Australia will be a totalitarian state within 300 years: the proletarian world revolution will have taken place well before then.”
So really you have nothing and resort to making things up and ad-hom attacks which are usually the last resort of right wingers (and rats) backed into a corner. We are already commiting them perpetual poverty in order for us to have what we have – where is the difference?
Gee SJ, I looked up the figures on an authoritative website. That doesn’t mean I claim to be an authority, but it is better than just requoting the same figures without checking them as you lot continue to do with the glib “minimum 10-15” years.
“So really you have nothing and resort to making things up and ad-hom attacks which are usually the last resort of right wingers (and rats) backed into a corner.”
Last resort of right-wingers and rats ad hom attacks may be, but I only resort to such stuff in response to your ad hom efforts. It’s more fun that way. Tit-for-tat and all that.
But you know, if I am backed into a corner by your rapacious logic then so is every other nuclear advocate, including all your erstwhile Green friends. Perhaps you’d be better off trying to persuade them – I am unlikely to have much influence on public opinion but they surely will.
What was the “authoritative website” that you failed twice to cite?
And can you go back to the “authoratative website” and check how many AP-600 and AP-1000 reactors have been built?
There’s a point to this, trust me.
Warning: Long comment.
Dogz says:
“I dispute that we’d be in a better position on anything by listening to the Greens.”
“Reading the policies of the Greens is like reading the communist manifesto, and we all know how well that worked out in practice.”
Cheap and ignorant shots, Dogz, especially the first one. If you think green ideas have had no substantial impact on mainstream practices you are out there in lala land. Farmers, just to name one group, are rapidly taking up many ideas that the greener farmers, scientists and economists have been advocating for decades. Furthermore, many of these ideas are just ancient traditional practices refined by modern science and adapted to a larger scale.
The Greens are neither communists nor barking mad. You really do have it in for them, don’t you. You sound like Andrew Bolt or Piers Ackerman with language like that.
“Cheap and abundant energy has allowed human progress to continue at a rapid pace.”
A lot of truth in that, and no one is denying the fundamental importance of energy to human welfare. Problem is there needs to be another two attributes of energy besides cheap and abundant (or at least sufficient): it also has to be clean and sustainable, which it currently ain’t. You didn’t factor in the real full cost of that cheap abundant (hydrocarbon based and non-renewable) energy: including pollution (especially global warming), increasingly limited supplies, related international tensions, and overall energy security, amongst other problems.
“I don’t see that our first course of action must be energy conversation at all.”
Well, an awful lot of far better informed people than you disagree profoundly. An article by Stephen Leahy (’Energy-Hungry Nations Also Most Wasteful’, May 30, 2006, Inter Press Service), makes the following points about the importance of energy efficiency:
Robert Taylor, an energy specialist at the World Bank, and the lead author of a report led by the World Bank and the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) says that: “Cutting energy waste is the cheapest, easiest, fastest way to solve many energy problems, improve the environment and enhance both energy security and economic development.�
In other words, it is a win/win for all, except maybe Big Oil, and they ain’t exactly living in poverty or likely to have to do so anytime soon, so no big problem there.
The report goes on to state that: “Experts estimate that cost-effective retrofits could reduce energy use today by at least 25 percent and advanced technologies could reduce their energy use growth projected through 2030 by at least 10 percent (and reduce projected carbon dioxide emissions growth by 16 percent).�
Jeremy Levin of the World’s Bank’s South Asia Environmental and Social Unit says that: “Massive investments are being made in new energy sources like wind power and nuclear plants, but similar investments in energy efficiency are lagging far behind.�
According to an analysis by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, “China’s investment in energy supply will require an average 48 gigawatts of new capacity every year, equal to two-thirds of Britain’s total installed capacity. But that investment is more than 18 times greater than investment in efficiency.�
In other words, efficiency is the most cost-effective way to reduce energy demand and resultant pollution. Hence:
“Energy efficiency projects quickly pay for themselves, with typical returns on investment of 20-40 percent,…�
Can you name another reliable (and irrefutably worthwhile) investment with similar or better returns?
I would like to add that the standby mode in many modern electronic consumer goods accounts for about 10% of domestic electricity consumption in Australia. If that isn’t wasted energy I don’t know what is. I mean, how friggin hard is it to turn the TV (or whatever) on/off at the power point, instead of permanently leaving it in standby mode and using the remote control?
We could also save shitloads of energy just by installing solar hot water systems on every habitable building in Oz, not a difficult or expensive task, especially compared to the returns. Even in Tasmania solar hot water saves around 60% of hot water bills, and in the tropics it is over 90%. And hot water is one of the big items on domestic energy bills.
So, why isn’t energy efficiency a top priority?
More from Dogz:
“If we can continue to meet demand while reducing C02 then surely we can carry on as we are.”
Or I could argue that if you can live a similar quality lifestyle to the one you do now, but with (say) two thirds of the energy consumption, then surely that is worth doing. By any sane economic or engineering calculation it is better to use less energy (and/or materials) to do the same job. Why don’t you get this? It is one of the fundamental lessons of both the market and nature. And it also happens to be a worthy real-world ethical principle.
“…we doom ourselves to very scarce, very expensive energy from renewables, which in turn means leaving my children far worse off than me.”
You are seriously out of touch with the renewables and particularly the efficiency game, though in fairness so are a lot of people. You are also starting to sound like the conservative mirror image version of the ludicrous doomsaying green Luddite communo-nazi straw men you dragged out of your dusty cliche cupboard a little earlier. I think you don’t want renewables or efficiency to succeed, let alone play a major role. It’s a conveniently self-fulfilling prophecy: “I know they will never work, and they’re pathetic anyway, especially if the ‘Greens’ are promoting them. I am not even going to try. So there.”
Hmmm. I think you are a little blinded by your pseudo-libertarian ideology, and irrational reflexive dismissal of anything vaguely connected to green ideas.
David Michie says:
“These things help at the margins,…”
They will be doing a lot more than that, and a lot sooner than many think. See the Australian developed Sliver Solar Cell Technology, for example, which might just have fundamentally changed the economics of solar panel electricity, and there are many other interesting developments occurring across a wide range of renewable and efficiency technologies.
And I wouldn’t describe the substantial energy savings that can be made right now with solar hot water, or high grade building insulation and otherwise efficient design, as economically or technically marginal. Quite the contrary.
For what it is worth, I think the real technical and economic issue for renewables is not the generating capacity, but the backup storage capacity (and cost) for the times when the generating components can’t provide enough power. In other words, batteries (or their functional equivalent). Whoever solves this one will be a very rich person indeed.
“…while small car sales are growing,…”
Scooter sales in Oz grew 30% last year, and motorbikes 20%, and the rate of growth for both is rapidly increasing and shows no sign of slowing down.
“…and I believe Australia used less petrol last year than the year before.”
Now that is interesting. Is that because we didn’t travel as far, or because we use more fuel efficient vehicles to travel similar distances?
And good posts Ender and Gordon.
Prof Q, why was my previous comment put on ‘awaiting moderation’? I am not upset, I just want to know what I need to do to avoid triggering this feature in future.
Katz,
The US insurance industry wouldn’t do terrorism insurance either but for the stupendous subsidies and not subtle ‘encouragement’ they have received from the federal government. This does not imply anything about the extent of terrorism risk, only that it is unquantifiable and therefore, they have no basis to assume that the risk of such policies is consistent with prudent business practices, (nor can they really price such policies, which by their nature have huge downside loss potential). Another example of the limitations of insurance is earthquake insurance which is much too expensive based on any plausible forecast of claims (presuming insurance companies haven’t discovered how to forecast earthquakes). This is because of the high risk premium insurers charge for their taking on these kinds of wild risks.
Point being, you can’t draw conclusions about risks from the extent of coverage the insurance industry is willing to market (or its price). This requires additional information.
PS I read in the FT that insurance companies were very nervous about insuring nuclear at least in part because of terrorism risk.
It’s telling that thousands and thousands of MWHs are generated each year by nuclear power plants, but yet there are only two incidents that nuclear skeptics can point to as evidencing the extreme nature of reactor meltdown risk: one Soviet Era example- or I should say non-example in its lack of representativeness of the way in which nuclear power is generated outside of authoritarian states- and TMI from 25 years ago. Doesn’t it stand to reason- if this indeed was such a dire risk- that there should have been more than 1 single solitary representative incident to date?
As for the waste issue, the amount of waste that is produced by a nuclear reactor is tiny. It’s certainly nasty stuff in its tinyness, but its size does go toward the size of the problem. For instance, the permanent storage facility the US has been building in Nevada- inside a mountain in the middle of nowhere btw- is capable of storing many megatons of this tiny nasty stuff. Apparently it’s been tested out thousands of years and is capable of safe storage over that timeframe. More generally speaking, I can understand skepticism about industry, politician or academic hacks claims on waste stoage, however, I have yet to see a credible argument that nuclear waste is prohibitively expensive or environmentally disastrous to store. What I’ve read here sounds more like the anti-science rants I’ve come to expect from the political right- not to use a pejorative.
As regards nuclear’s economics, any analysis of them that does not include it’s advantages from an energy security and input shock risk perspective, is simply not credible. These reasons are after all the impetus for most of the world’s nuclear power generation.
Finally and most importantly, anyone that thinks we can cut carbon emissions globally over an extended horizon only with conservation is kidding themselves. This is similar to a company thinking it grow earnings by cutting costs- works for a short time but is ultimately unsustainable, (at some point, cost cuts require revenue cuts. This point, it turns out, is very short term). So, if your position is that we should shrink global GDP, and with it, the well being of billions, then by all means. But if you are not interested in such an outcome AND are seriously concerned by the potentially cataclysmic consequences of AGW- a group of which I count myself a member- you should advocate instead a solution that uses heavier taxes on fossil fuels, (or in any case, policy measures that financially burden their use, e.g. cap & trade, etc.), as a catalyst for both conservation and energy production substitution into alternative energy sources and nuclear (with subsidies only for the former).
PS For the record I grant JQ’s point however that AGW ‘skeptics’ who try to promote nuclear as a solution to ‘AGW’ are full of excrement.
Majorajam says: “…anyone that thinks we can cut carbon emissions globally over an extended horizon only with conservation is kidding themselves.�
Majorajam, I’m sure you know (or at least I hope you know) that nobody expects energy conservation by itself to be the answer to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The point about conservation is that it can have a quick and significant effect, and need not reduce living standards. And as far as the need for “heavier taxes on fossil fuels� (which I take to be the same as Andrew Reynolds’ proposal above), I have already put my views on that in my comment of June 2nd. I know this thread is now tiresomely long, but those who wade in at the end really should read what has gone before.
Seeker, this is easy: show me. If renewables and energy efficiency are are so cost-effective, why isn’t everyone doing it already? If you can supply the world’s energy needs with renewables, please do so. I would rather that than any of the alternatives. But the simple fact is you cannot even come close, and no amount of wishful thinking on your part will make it so.
“The Greens are neither communists nor barking mad.”
No? Look at the “no Nuclear” logo slap bang in the middle of their home page. Look at that poor little baby with the geiger counter. How could anyone promote nuclear energy when all the little babies are going to have geiger counters pointed at them?
If that’s not barking mad I don’t know what is.
SJ: I cited the website up-thread.