Writing in the conservative US magazine National Review, Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute criticises the Democratic Party platform for omitting any mention of nuclear power, and accuses the Democrats of failing to “do the math”. Unfortunately, although he throws some numbers about, he doesn’t do any math to support his key conclusion
But even if we doubled the rate of growth for wind and solar — and came up with a perfect method of electricity storage (which of course, doesn’t exist) — those renewables aren’t going to replace nuclear energy any time soon
So, I’ll do the math for him.
Here’s the data Bryce supplies
* In 2015, America’s nuclear plants produced 839 terawatt-hours of electricity (this industry source says 798), compared to 253 for hydro, 193 for wind, and 39 for solar
* The current rate of growth is 7GW per year for wind, with output of 2.6 TWh/GW, and 5 GW per year of solar with output of 1.5 TWh/GW
That’s enough to check Bryce’s claim. The gap between nuclear and renewables is currently 552 TW/year. The current rate of addition of capacity for solar and wind combined amounts to additional generation 25.7 TW/h per year. Doubling that gives 51.4. So, assuming a doubling of the current installation rate, it would take 10.5 years for renewable generation (including hydro) to surpass nuclear. Excluding hydro it would take 15 years. So, if the goal of policy were to replace nuclear with renewables, the answer is that it could be achieved in the fairly near future.
Of course, replacing nuclear power is not the goal of climate policy. The objective is to replace coal and, as far as possible, gas as sources of electricity.
So,Bryce is right to say that ““widespread retirement of America’s nuclear power plants would make it extremely difficult if not impossible”. If we didn’t know that a rapid shutdown of nuclear power would be a big problem for a decarbonization policy, the examples of Germany and Japan make it pretty clear.
But Bryce is shifting the ground. he fact that The Democratic platform says nothing about nuclear power implies that they don’t have a policy for a rapid shutdown. In fact, the Obama Administration has consistently supported an “all of the above” policy including loan guarantees for nuclear power.
The problem is that new nuclear power is hopelessly uneconomic, and even existing plants are finding it hard to cover their costs. Bryce doesn’t propose a solution, presumably because any solution would require government intervention on a scale so massive as to horrify the readers of National Review.
Still, it might be worth looking at the possibilities for an expansion of US nuclear power in the foreseeable future. Apart from a handful of plants under construction there’s no chance of any new ones in the 10-15 year time-frame we just derived. So, let’s look out a bit further to the early 2030s. On past experience would require starting construction by 2020, which means we can confine our attention to proposals that have already started the licensing process.
In the first flush of enthusiasm for the “nuclear renaissance” of the early 2000s, proposals were put forward to build around 30 new units, typically of 1 GW each. Four of those have gone ahead (over time and over budget as usual), and should be completed by 2020. At least ten have been abandoned, while the remainder are in limbo, being kept alive as options but without any actual prospect of occurring. That’s a maximum of around 15 GW, or around 100 TWh per year.
The new additions have already been offset by closures. Even with the most friendly policy environment possible, we’re bound to see more over the next 15 years, given that many plants are already well beyond their initially planned operating life.
So, even with an all-out effort to implement every currently proposed nuclear power plant, and to keep closures to a minimum, we might get a net addition of 50TWh a year. That’s the equivalent of two years of additional solar and wind at the current rate, which has been increasing steadily over time.
* For completeness, I should mention Small Modular Reactors, which are often seen as the nuclear hope of the future. The only project that’s currently active is that of Nuscale which aims to produce a demonstration plant by 2025. Even if SMRs prove economic (there is no reason to believe this), large scale deployment will be well into the 2030s.
John Quiggin 
Some of the commenters here don’t seem to fully comprehend the status of civilian nuclear. Several insist that nuclear is not competitive or that it is linked to ‘capitalism’.
Please have a look at the following recent presentation from the Chinese government, about it’s nuclear plans. It intends to ramp nuclear up to 1500+ GW before the end of the century, by which time it will have implemented a fully sustainable breeder fleet.
It’s all fine and well to speculate among ourselves what our non-nuclear future will look like, but let’s make no mistake. The Chinese (and the Russians) are going to do what they know is best, and that includes a significant role for nuclear power. And we should be thankful, because the IPCC has already embraced a quadrupling of global nuclear power as probably necessary in order to sufficiently address the climate crisis. So even if we destroy our own civilian nuclear capability, we will always be able to order our nuclear plants from the Chinese and Russians (if we don’t piss them off).
The thirteenth slide shows the main scenario for Chinese nuclear:
Click to access 3.1_China_49th_TWG-FR.pdf
@Joris van Dorp
Well actually we might buy our civilian reactors from France, especially after the France-China nuclear partnership signed in June 2015.
I looked with interest at slide 29 of the China Institute of Atomic Energy slide presentation that you linked to and what I found under the heading “Three Phases of the TWR Program” was three key points”
1. A new CP will be signed by China and US governments
2 Joint venture will be founded in 2016
3 The project proposal is under preparation
which doesn’t exactly sound like the Chinese are going it alone. Besides, Phase 3 of the TWR-C – a commercially operative reactor – doesn’t complete until 2032 – and that’s based on the usual highly optimistic estimates of how quickly complex research and development tasks can be completed and practical problems overcome.
In the meantime, as I have previously commented, Portugal has recently completed 107 continuous hours of electricity supply from non-nuclear ‘renewables’ only, and Spain has been operating a 24/7 capable solar thermal (molten salt) CSP generator for several years now.
In short, I would say that ‘renewables’ are winning the race by a clear margin. They’re a lot cheaper to build, operate and decommission than nuclear, too.
@Gruebleen Renewables are far more expensive than nuclear. The Chinese have reached 1.5 $B/GW already, after only building a few dozen NPPs. Most officials I talked to agree they could push the price of new nuclear down to 1 $B/GW. Nothing can compete with that, not even Chinese coal (in the long run).
I love renewables, let’s get that out to avoid confusion. Solar and wind are now so cheap that they can be economically paired with natural gas plants. A huge achievement! But it doesn’t make sense to pair them with nuclear, so in the end they will fade away as nuclear solves our energy/climate problem.
In the meantime we can use renewables to reduce our co2 emissions while our fossil fuel plants are running to the end of their economic life. That’s a useful role for renewables. But countries like Germany, Japan and the USA are still building new fossil plants! That’s a big mistake! Renewables should be used to reduce our fossil fuel consumption, not to provide a green fig leaf for new fossil capacity. We should not be building new fossil plants, only nuke plants. That will allow us to solve energy/climate in a timely manner.
@Joris van Dorp
Is it reasonable to say that “several insist that the earth rotates around the sun”? Hardly.
The arguments are far more rooted in facts and analysis.
Several sources have demonstrated that nuclear is not competitive and recognised that it is linked to capitalism.
Nuclear is certainly linked to capitalism, just like coal or oil, or gas, or solar, or wind or tidal. All production in OECD is linked to capitalism. So what?
@Joris van Dorp
Well that’s certainly a delightful story you spin, Joris. If only we had world enough and time to implement it, all would be copacetic, wouldn’t it. But before claiming that “renewables are more expensive than nuclear” it would be really, really nice if you could provide some, you know, actually audited numbers to prove your case, and not just exaggerated claims by some unnamed “officials”.
Having lived just a few years on this planet amongst this species, I find the words of “most officials” to be eminently unbelievable. Haven’t you ? Now if you could just post the actual words of even one internationally recognized “official” that just might help.
In the meantime, while we’re waiting, you could perhaps look up the words of some Chinese “‘officials” as to why the Tibetan glaciers are melting quite a bit faster than was expected. Tempus fugit, mate.
Australia’s newest coal power plant, the Kogan Creek Power Station, cost roughly $2,000 a kilowatt to build in today’s money. So Australia is not going to build nuclear power plants for $1,000 a kilowatt. If we could, then the cheapest way to build a coal power station would be to build a nuclear power first and then convert it to burn coal.
Actually, since coal is out since it is bad for the environment, if anyone wants to build a large biomass plant I suggest getting one of these incredibly cheap $1,000 a kilowatt nuclear plants and then converting it to burn wood or agricultural waste.
@Joris van Dorp
Where is this from:
@Ivor.
[..] The National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) issued a construction licence for units 3&4 in March 2009, and first concrete for unit 3 was poured soon afterwards. CGN will be responsible for the project construction and the operation of the first five years after commercial operation, with full participation of CPI. The cost of all four 1080 MWe CPR-1000 units in the first construction phase is put at CNY 50 billion (US$ 6.6 billion). China Nuclear Power Engineering Corporation (CNPEC), part of CGN, is managing the project. Shanghai Electric won a $260 million contract for equipment and Alstom providing the four low-speed Arabelle turbine-generator sets for $184 million. Localisation is above 70% for units 1&2 and over 80% for units 3&4. [..]
(emphasis mine)
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-power.aspx#ECSArticleLink6
I think the people here need to do more research about exactly what’s going on with nuclear, especially in China and Russia. It could be me, but I sense a huge blind spot here and an unhealthy readiness to use old cliches and half-truths in place of arguments.
China’s current nuclear plans call for 30 GW of additional nuclear to be installed by 2020 (a total of 58 GW), with another 30 GW to be under construction by then. That’s not trivial, but even if it’s achieved it won’t be any more than solar PV (2020 target of 150 GW, installing about 15 GW per year) even allowing for higher capacity factors and less than wind (250 GW by 2020, up to 400 by 2030). Moreover the trend has been for renewable goals to be scaled up and nuclear scaled back. So, even in China, which is by far the most promising case, nuclear is barely holding its own. That’s not consistent with an account in which nuclear is the cheapest option.
@Joris van Dorp
Thanks for that. As you probably realise, China constructing 4 CPR1000 units for 50 Billion Yuan does not mean that the cost outside China is US$1.5B per GW.
Why not?
The initial wave of nuclear fleet-building in the West saw prices lower than US$0.75B per GW. Corrected for inflation that cost is fairly similar to what the Chinese are achieving today. So the Chinese nuclear costs are nothing special and can certainly be achieved again in the West. Rather, we should be able to improve on those costs because there has been a great advance in general manufacturing and construction technique which didn’t exist 40 years ago.
Australia has been continuously building houses for over 200 years and thanks to the great advance in general manufacturing and construction techniques we’ve been able to get the cost per unit down to around $300,000.
In saying this I acknowledge that I might be regarded by some as rude, but is it a coincidence that part of Joris van Dorp’s name bears more than a passing resemblance to another word that begins in “d” and ends in “rp”? Just sayin…
@Tim Macknay
Ah… I have pretty much given up pointing out issues like peak uranium, the expense and danger of breeder reactors and the fact that Russia currently has much (about 40%) of the world’s Uranium enrichment capacity. This is a hangover of nuclear weapons production.
“The European Commission said in 2001 that at the current level of uranium consumption, known uranium resources would last 42 years. When added to military and secondary sources, the resources could be stretched to 72 years. Yet this rate of usage assumes that nuclear power continues to provide only a fraction of the world’s energy supply. If electric capacity were increased six-fold, then the 72-year supply would last just 12 years.” – Wikipedia.
So, without a massive and successful breeder reactor program, fission power simply won’t help us much at all. And renewables are already cheaper and more scaleable than fission power with or without breeder reactors. Fission reactors are a crude, out of date solution for stationary power. Naval power plants will remain for sure.
But nuclear power holds an alchemic fascination for people who don’t understand its grave limitations for safe, practical stationary power applications. Pro-nukesters essentially think it is magical and that nuclear engineering is easy.
Correct. which is why China and Russia have already embarked on a huge breeder program. China aims for 1500+ GW of breeders by the end of the century. See the link I already posted above.
To solve climate change, we’ll need tens of thousands of breeders, thorium, uranium or both, so we better get cracking. We don’t need subsidies for that. all we need is support from the environmental movement.
Renewables only work as a fossil fuel-saving add-on for a fossil fuel powered grid. They won’t and can’t eliminate fossil burning. Only nuclear can.
@Joris van Dorp
I am surprised you asked this.
You cannot purchase Western labour equivalent to 50 Billion Yuan of Chinese labour at market exchange rates ie for US$1.5 billion (or whatever the current exchange rate is).
Also in the West, to move capital into the nuclear sector – it has to receive the same EBITDA as alternative opportunities.
Also in Australia, nuclear cannot compete against subsidised renewables. This should be our policy.
Chinese nuclear sector labour is similarly priced to Western nuclear labour. The main reason Chinese nuclear power costs are falling like a stone is because of the learning effect (= maturing supply chains). A similar learning effect was observed in the USA and France during the run-up of those country’s nuclear fleet building experience 40 years ago. There really is no mystery here and no need for speculation.
By the way, US$1.5B/GW is almost exactly the same – corrected for inflation – as the design cost of Western built AP1000 and EPR reactors. Of course, a few dozen AP1000’s and/or EPR’s will need to be built before the full learning-effect and supply chain maturation benefits are achieved which make the design cost a reality, but the notion that only China can build nuclear power plants cheaply is baseless and illogical.
@Ikonoclast
Yes, it’s hard to bother summoning the effort to make a serious argument for the umpteenth time, when you know the same assertions will simply be made over and over again, ad infinitum.
It is now economically viable to extract uranium from sea water, just by leaving an absorbent in the water for a few weeks. The world’s seas contain 4.5 billion tonnes of uranium. Enough for thousands of years.
@Ikonoclast:
Peak uranium is not an issue, no wonder you gave up pointing it out.
Why are you writing under an anonymous name? Are you ashamed your comments may negatively impact your reputation? If so, you should stick to facts, stop making things up, and quote a respected academic source rather than Wikipedia. The problem with anonymous authorship is it encourages irresponsible behavior. When people write anonymously they act as if the truth/falsity of their argument has no negative consequences to them. It doesn’t. In contrast, those of us who write without anonymity must back statements with our reputations. If we lie, we will be remembered for every lie written. In the long run, this is better as it forces one to give the most careful, evidentially backed argument, one can.
You should stop using anonymity. You will gain in the long run. It will turn you into a better forum debater, because you will do better research to make sure you’re not shown up as a blaggard or fool.
Interesting to see how he answers this. I predict he will ignore it completely.
@Joris van Dorp
Why do we get strange statements such as:
The best Chinese average wage I could find was in urban Beijing @ 7,000 Yuan PerMnth [2015].
This is around A$1,420.00
See: http://www.clb.org.hk/sites/default/files/ave%20min%20wage.png
Australian average monthly wages are much, much higher than this.
In November 2015, Australian average earnings were A$1,500 perWeek. [ABS 6302.0]
So were is there factual evidence that “Chinese nuclear sector labour is similarly priced to Western nuclear labour.” ??????
This marine testing shows that these new fibers had the capacity to hold 6 grams of uranium per kilogram of adsorbent in only about 50 days in natural seawater. A nice video of U extraction from seawater can be seen on the University of Tennessee Knoxville website.
And later this month, July 19 to 22, global experts in uranium extraction from seawater will convene at the University of Maryland-College Park for the First International Conference on Seawater Uranium Recovery.
Stephen Kung, in DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, says that … these advances by PNNL and ORNL have reduced the cost by a factor of four in just five years. But it’s still over $200/lb of U3O8, twice as much as it needs to be to replace mining uranium ore.
Mark Pawelek :
Why-o-why do we get these strange statements:
Where is there evidence ???????
According to Forbes Magazine 1 July 2016:
This marine testing shows that these new fibers had the capacity to hold 6 grams of uranium per kilogram of adsorbent in only about 50 days in natural seawater. A nice video of U extraction from seawater can be seen on the University of Tennessee Knoxville website.
And later this month, July 19 to 22, global experts in uranium extraction from seawater will convene at the University of Maryland-College Park for the First International Conference on Seawater Uranium Recovery.
Stephen Kung, in DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, says that … these advances by PNNL and ORNL have reduced the cost by a factor of four in just five years. But it’s still over $200/lb of U3O8, twice as much as it needs to be to replace mining uranium ore.
Ah gawd, this really is the first time you’ve ever had a serious discussion about nuclear? It’s funny how the people who appear to be most confident in dissing and defaming nuclear power never seem to know the first thing about it. 🙂
To get you up to speed, China has been luring nuclear sector workers from all over the world to expand it’s human capital. Salaries of people working in the nuclear industry are often higher than anywhere else in the world. Here’s an older article revealing what has been going on (while we in the West are sleeping).
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2012/07/16/commentary/world-commentary/nuclear-engineers-ditching-japan-for-a-bigger-paycheck/#.V5oJYVWLTDc
@chrisl Interesting to find a load of snivelling cowards terrified to put their reputations on the line by using their real names.
The point of my comment on sea water uranium extraction was to refute the myth of peak uranium. Uranium mining is still a far cheaper source than sea water. We will not be running out of uranium as the Malthus doom, doom echo chamber tell us; not for many tens of thousands of years. Before then we will have developed the thorium fuel cycle; probably within the next few decades. This will be in response to fears over global warming. Why thorium was not developed previously? (1) because we did not need it, and (2) because it will blow apart anti-proliferation arguments. Thorium is about 4 to 3½ times more abundant than uranium. 100% of thorium can be used so it does not need to be enriched. Only 0.7% of natural uranium is fissionable. So we have about 500 times more thorium available for use in fission reactors than uranium-235. We will not be running out of thorium for millions of years to come.
Commiserations to all the Malthus fans here.
@Mark Pawelek
This is not good enough. You have used inaccurate spin without citing sources or any evidence. This is one of the key problems with nuke-obsessives. They do not recognise the realities and there is no better example than the inane denialism coming from Barry Brook’s crew at “Brave New Climate” during the Fukushima meltdowns.
Not only that – they seem oblivious to the obvious link between nuke-power and nuke-weapons. This is now becoming clearer. According to the Indian newspaper “The Hindu” here
This demonstrates there is a direct path from nuke-power to nuclear weapons if politicians waver.
Having nuclear power plants spotted all through the worlds continents would be a disaster-in-waiting should regional wars break out. They would be a likely target.
Notice too how our thorium folks never seem to admit that thorium reactors need uranium and produce radioactive waste. At most they just suggest that thorium reactors just produce less HLW than contemporary reactors.
We do not need nukes as we can rely on subsidised renewables with all the benefits and long-term safety they provide.
@Mark Pawelek
This is not good enough. You have used inaccurate spin without citing sources or any evidence. This is one of the key problems with nuke-obsessives. They do not recognise the realities and there is no better example than the inane denialism coming from Barry Brook’s crew at “Brave New Climate” during the Fukushima meltdowns.
Not only that – they seem oblivious to the obvious link between nuke-power and nuke-weapons. This is now becoming clearer. According to the Indian newspaper “The Hindu” here
This demonstrates there is a direct path from nuke-power to nuclear weapons if politicians waver.
Having nuclear power plants spotted all through the worlds continents would be a disaster-in-waiting should regional wars break out. They would be a likely target.
Notice too how our thorium folks never seem to admit that thorium reactors need uranium and produce radioactive waste. At most they just suggest that thorium reactors just produce less HLW than contemporary reactors.
We do not need nukes as we can rely on subsidised renewables with all the benefits and long-term safety they provide.
@Mark Pawelek
To put a public reputation on the line, one has to have a public reputation. In each of our cases, our obscurity ensures there is no practical difference between a nom de plume and a real name. There is also no assurance that an apparently real name is actually a real name.
Have you done any calculations on the weights and areas of absorbents required to be placed in the sea, then recovered and processed for uranium extraction in that 50 day cycle? Have you done any calculations on the size of the trawler-like shipping fleet necessary to run an operation on this scale? Have you done any calculations on the fuel needed to run that fleet? What are the EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) calculations for the entire operation?
@Ivor
Renewables would need no subsidies if the current massive subsidies were withdrawn from fossil fuels and nuclear power. In addition, if the full costs of negative externalities were paid, then renewables would look even more attractive.
Direct subsidies to fossil fuels are about $500 billion a year. The indirect subsidies of not charging for negative externalities bring the total cost to about $1.9 trillion a year or 2.5% of global GDP. Source: IMF.
http://grist.org/climate-energy/imf-says-global-subsidies-to-fossil-fuels-amount-to-1-9-trillion-a-year-and-thats-probably-an-underestimate/
And click on new report link to IMF report.
Nuclear power also cannot survive without massive subsidies.
Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies (2011) – Union of Concerned Scientists.
“The most important subsidies to the (nuclear) industry do not involve cash payments. Rather, they shift construction-cost and operating risks from investors to taxpayers and ratepayers, burdening taxpayers with an array of risks ranging from cost overruns and defaults to accidents
and nuclear waste management. This approach, which has remained remarkably consistent through-out the industry’s history, distorts market choices that would other-wise favor less risky investments.
Although it may not involve direct cash payments, such favored treatment is nevertheless a subsidy, with a profound effect on the bottom line for the industry and taxpayers alike.
Reactor owners, therefore, have never been economically respon-sible for the full costs and risks of their operations. Instead, the public faces the prospect of severe losses in the event of any number of potential adverse scenarios, while private investors reap the rewards if nuclear
plants are economically successful. For all practical purposes, nuclear power’s economic gains are privatized, while its risks are socialized.”
@Joris van Dorp
This is not making much sense. The labour to build a nuclear station does not consist of nuclear engineers. Most people are aware that Chinese executives and professionals can obtain incomes similar to the West, but this DOES NOT change the average wage relativities I posted.
If a nuke power station was built in Australia I would expect that the nuclear engineers engaged to manage the project would be paid a lot more than your “specialists working at liquefied natural gas plants” – whatever these are meant to mean.
Have you ever seen a nuclear engineer fixing rebar or pouring concrete, cleaning the floors, or delivering orders?
Again we are just getting smoke and mirrors from our nuke-addicts.
Here is another example:
What workers? What rates? Crane drivers, electricians, fitters and turners, form workers, transport workers, earth movers and excavators, clerks, or who?
Mark Pawelek, did you lie or did you just make a mistake when you wrote, “It is now economically viable to extract uranium from sea water, just by leaving an absorbent in the water for a few weeks.”
Not that the innumerate and illogical will read this but here it is anyway.
Click to access cooper-smrsaretheproblemnotthesolution.pdf
In particular, it is worth looking at Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis both in the article and as an internet search term.
@Ivor
You don’t understand the physics, so you can’t really comment on what is and isn’t a proliferation risk. This newspaper quote is worthless because neither you, nor the journalists at the Hindu, know what you’re talking about. A state with the resources of India will use only the best weapons grade material to make bombs with. They will make that material in special purpose military reactors. There’s no saving using inferior grade plutonium, because it can blow up in your face (literally) if you try to. That you anti-nukes are ignorant of basic physics of why countries use only best quality plutonium to make bombs means I’d literally have to spend months teaching you science before you understood my points. In addition, you make no effort to understand any science and engineering issues. You seek out cherry-picked articles written by like-minded people such as yourself and declare that wisdom. The blind leading the deaf. Good luck with that philosophy.
@Ronald Brak
I did not lie. Suppose all uranium mining stopped tomorrow. It would then become economically viable to extract it from sea water. The cost of raw fuel is not a deal breaker. There are many factors involved in the cost of nuclear power and fuel is only a minor one. Also many factors involved in the cost of fuel: mining, extraction & purification, enrichment, and fuel fabrication. By “economically viable” I meant viable compared to other energy sources (such as wind, solar, …), not viable with respect to current uranium mining. In practice, it means that a country such as India, with no uranium resources to speak of, could make it’s own uranium from sea water should a uranium blockade be imposed on them. The extra cost of sea water uranium will hardly be felt. They will not do this because it is cheaper for them to buy it from Oz and elsewhere, as good marginalists, which I hope you all are, understand.
@Ikonoclast
More cherry picked data which no one else agrees with but fanatical anti-nukes and renewable boosters such as yourselves. Nor is this Lazard’s, as such. It’s not their official policy. The report was written by some people who just happened to be at Lazard’s at the time. I’m sure all good energy analysts and traders working for Lazard’s will ignore this report, if they want to make a profit.
@Mark Pawelek
According to the ordinary understanding of “economically viable”, your statement was clearly wrong. Why not just admit it? If you’d said that uranium extraction from seawater was “technically feasible”, you would have been on more solid ground, but that’s a different thing altogether.
Your claim that uranium extraction from seawater is viable “compared to other energy sources (such as wind, solar…)” is plainly contradicted by the available facts (i.e. wind and solar energy capacity are expanding rapidly on a global scale but no-one, anywhere, is extracting uranium from seawater except on a purely experimental basis), which is pretty much the point of Prof Q’s post.
By adding the qualifications to your claim, i.e. “if all uranium mining stopped tomorrow”; “should a uranium blockade be imposed upon them”, you are effectively saying that nobody would use this method unless they were desperate. That is pretty much the opposite of “economically viable”. Here’s a question: It’s technically feasible to produce liquid fuel from coal using the Fischer-Tropf process. However, the only instances in which this has been employed on a large scale were by Nazi Germany during the latter stages of World War II, when they were surrounded by Allied forces, and by Apartheid South Africa, when they were subject to international economic sanctions. Do you think producing liquid fuel from coal is “economically viable”?
@Tim Macknay
Economists like you have a different definition. Then again you all consider renewables to be economically viable and energy storage to be just around the next bend so please don’t trumpet your credentials with me.
It’s economically viable compared to renewables. The cost will depend on how much it costs to make and process the absorbent. No industrial process currently exists to make it. One would need about 5550 tonnes of absorbent to make enough fuel to power a 1GWe PWR for a year. One would need to process about 15.2 tonnes of this absorbent each day, assuming a 7-day week. Should India find itself under a uranium blockade it be economically viable for them to make their own uranium this way rather than try to build your fantasy energy systems relying on grid scale storage.
Grid scale energy storage required to make renewables carbon neutral will never be economically viable, nor environmentally responsible.
Ah, I knew we would get the “IMF report”sooner or later. A particularly devious piece of propaganda, that. I’ll demonstrate:
First off, the report is not by “the IMF”. On the title page, the IMF – in bold type – distances itself completely and clearly from the contents of the report. And it even warns readers to make sure that the report is not presented as being from the IMF (which you just did) That’s because the contents are speculative, preliminary, incomplete, misleading and not up to the standard of the IMF.
Second, if you actually read the report, you’ll find out pretty quickly why the IMF doesn’t endorse it. For example, the authors include as a “subsidy for fossil fuels” the strangest cost items such as:
– the cost of road repairs globally
– the cost of traffic accidents globally
– the cost of traffic congestion globally
That’s how the authors obtain their fantastic numbers for “fossil fuel subsidies”! They are counting on the fact that journalists just read the summary! This is precisely the kind of diabolical propaganda which all of us need to combat, rather than promote! This propaganda actually kills people, and destroys the environment.
Final point: that B$500 billion figure is indeed correct, but needs to be put in context:
1. virtually all of that B$500 goes to fossil fuels, not to nuclear
2. B$ 400 of that 500 merely represents the lost income in oil exporting countries who provide oil to their domestic population below the international oil price, but above the cost of production. This is not so much a subsidy, as it is oil exporting countries directly benefiting their own populations with oil at cost of production. It’s an accounting issue, not a subsidy.
3. B$ 100 is the true subsidy, in the form of tax breaks and the cost of civil servants needed to administer the fossil fuel industry. All industries get these subsidies. These are what is called ‘efficient subsidies’.
4. Not mentioned is the crucial fact that globally, the fossil fuel sector delivers B$800 in tax revenues and royalties to state treasuries. So this means that the treasuries provide about B$ 100 to subsidise fossil fuels, but they get back B$ 800 in tax revenues and royalties! So there is no net subsidy. There are huge net earning for the public treasury!
5. I want to get rid of fossil fuels as much as everyone here. But the only way to do that is to be clear and honest about the facts, especially the financial facts. Otherwise we will fail! We have to be aware of the misunderstanding and propaganda. We have to combat it. Please, let’s all do this!
@Mark Pawelek
It’s no use shooting the messenger (and missing) and I have studied physics at undergraduate level.
Again you provide no evidence – just pro-nuke trolling.
@Tim Macknay
If you follow this sub-thread to its source, you’ll find that @Ikonoclast invoked “peak uranium” yesterday. The example of uranium from sea water (up to 4.5 billion tonnes of it) was invoked to refute peak uranium, which it does.
_No_ CO2-free intermittent generation renewable energy system exists. Solar, wind, tidal all need fossil fuel support. As such none are “renewable” using the strictest definition. Given we’re all using strict definitions now, how do you propose to make Australia’s energy system CO2-free? Or do you not? Robert Bryce has CO2-free proposals. John Quiggin does not. So what gives him the right to criticise Bryce when Quiggin offers no alternative? Quiggin makes a fundamental error in his argument above. He used the term renewables and included wind, tide, solar under that banner as an implied CO2-free, grid scale system. They are not CO2-free because they depend upon fossil fuels. Hence they are not “renewable”. Quiggin proposed no CO2-free energy alternative.
@Joris van Dorp
You must be talking about a different report to the one I linked to. There is no such message as the one you claim on the title page. Some working papers (not this one which appears to be a complete report) contain a message as follows;
“IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to
elicit comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are
those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board,
or IMF management.”
Even this message is not as strong as you imply. Now, on your actual points.
1. ” ..virtually all of that B$500 goes to fossil fuels, not to nuclear.” Yes, I know, that’s exactly what I wrote: “Direct subsidies to fossil fuels are about $500 billion a year.”
2. You can redefine subsidies if you wish (and it’s a very socialist thing of you to do) but;
(a) there are standards in capitalist economic accounting, which this is about, and these are clear subsidies under those standards; and in any case
(b) even in a socialist economy, or in a mixed economy with a statist sector, the supply of cheap petroleum involves opportunity costs. The social, environmental and alternative production opportunity costs still exist even under statist, welfarist or socialist allocation methods. This is because there is a real economy, as well as a financial or command ordering of the economy, and opportunity costs at base are real.
3. Tax breaks are only one form of subsidy. “Every one gets them” is not an argument for them. I am not aware of any theory pointing to “efficient subsidies” in capitalist economics but maybe my knowledge is too limited. Point me to this theory if you can. I understand social subsidies but these are adopted for social ends not narrow economic efficiency as such.
4. Any state owned enterprise or state taxed private enterprise can deliver revenues. Again, the subsidies to fossil fuels involve the opportunity cost of not doing something else which could also provide revenues and very likely ameliorate fossil fuel pollution (negative externalities) at the same time.
Mark Pawelek,
Seawater uranium is not economically recoverable compared to all other current energy sources, be they fossil fuels or renewables. Tim Macknay has been trying to explain this to you. In any case it appears that the EROEI (energy return on energy invested) for seawater uranium would be lucky to be 1:1. That is there would be no energy profit in it. I’ll leave to you check the information.
A full electrical economy could make, transport and install solar and wind gen components without fossil fuels. It would take a new form of infrastructure to make this work but it is all technically feasible.
Click to access CountriesWWS.pdf
Of course, I don’t expect you to be convinced. I wonder about the raw materials resources needed for this build-out myself. However, I see a nuclear fission build-out, on the scale you envisage, as at least two orders of magnitude more improbable again.
@Joris van Dorp
No one has said:
It is clearly a IMF Report – copyright is asserted by the IMF and the publisher is IMF.
The IMF report does not:
and does not
There is only a standard scholarly boilerplate disclaimer which is common in academic papers such as working papers emanating from Universities or private research entities. It permits researchers to operate freely while using the facilities of different bodies.
It casts no dispersion of the work of the authors or the accuracy of their analysis.
The disclaimer is at: Report page ii
You changed the words to suit your own nuclear fantasy.
@Mark Pawelek
Mark, at this juncture I’d like to suggest that you take a deep breath, slow down, and try more carefully to read what other commenters are saying. You seem to be making some rather extraordinary assumptions and projections about the people you are engaging with. For example, when did I “trumpet my credentials”? I didn’t say, or even imply, anything about credentials at all. In fact, the only instance on the thread so far that might be construed as bringing credentials into it is when you accused another commenter (I think it was Ivor) of lacking a sufficient understanding of physics to to qualified to have an opinion.
Now, back to the actual subject of our discussion. When I referred to the ordinary understanding of “economically viable” I was referring to just that – the ordinary understanding of it, not a technical economics definition. More or less, when we say something is “economically viable”, we mean it can be done at a profit, or to put it another way, that the economic benefits of doing it outweigh the economic costs.
So, once the eyes have stopped swivelling and the flecks of spittle have been wiped away, a reasonable person, based on the information you have provided, would be likely to form the view that seawater uranium extraction has been technically demonstrated, but it is not yet known whether it can be done on a commercial scale. A reasonable person would arrive at this view because you yourself have pointed out that the technology necessary to do it at a commercial scale does not yet exist.
Certainly it is possible that the technology will be developed in the future. But the fact remains that it is clearly not, at present, economically viable, and whether it will ever become so is unknown. However, in this respect the technology is no different from a wide range of electrical storage technologies that are also at an experimental stage.
Which raises the question: why is it that you are so adamantly optimistic about uranium seawater extraction technology on the one hand, but so determinedly pessimistic about electric storage technology on the other, when the ultimate potential of both categories of technology is unknown? If you’ll pardon me for saying so, it doesn’t exactly seem like a rational analysis.
Sorry guys, you’re right, I was talking about the updated version of the report Ikonoclast linked, namely this:
Click to access wp15105.pdf
I discussed this report so many times that I neglected that there is also an older version, which is the version Ikonoclast linked, and which doesn’t have as strong a disclaimer from the IMF.
(Perhaps that is why that old report is now being referenced again in current discussions about energy subsidies instead of the updated one, since people are starting to catch on that the IMF has become a lot more careful with endorsing this research in the newest version.)
Anyway, like I said, I’ve discussed this report many times, and I’ve noticed we can boil down the whole fossil fuels subsidies controversy to three questions:
Q1 “Are the cost of traffic congestion, traffic accidents, and road maintenance a subsidy for fossil fuels, like the IMF authors assume?”
Q2 “Is the domestic sale of fossil fuel products in oil exporting countries at the cost of production but below international market prices a subsidy for fossil fuels, like the IMF authors assume?”
Q3 “If the government funds 100$ of goods and services benefitting one producer A who then pays back 800$ of taxes to the government, and the government funds 10$ of goods and services to another producer B who pays no taxes, which of these producers is being subsidised by the government? A? B? Or both?
Looking forward to your answers!
I’ll take this, if I may.
At a U3O8 price of about US$25/pound the raw material cost of the uranium to produce electricity in a nuclear reactor is about US$0.001/kWh. If uranium is extracted from seawater, the price would be ten times more, so the raw material cost of nuclear electricity would be US$0.01 per kWh.
In other words, shifting to ocean uranium extraction would raise the cost of nuclear power by less than 1 ct/kWh.
I think that is what Mark Pawalek means when he says that uranium can be economically extracted from seawater. It’s not economical compared to surface mining, but crucially, switching from surface mining to ocean extraction does NOT make nuclear power uncompetitive. This means that uranium shortage will never occur. Uranium is an inexhaustible resource. Q.E.D.
Moreover, breeder reactor technology such as the Russians and Chinese are building commercially today(!) makes 100 times better use of the raw uranium material, so in a breeder reactor, using uranium extracted from ocean water with today’s(!) technology would add only US$ 0.0001 to the price of the produced electricity: that’s one-hundreth of one dollar cent per kWh.
So battery technology and uranium extraction are not both ‘unknown’. On the contrary, the potential of uranium from seawater is fully understood and ready to go, while cheap batteries don’t even exist in the imagination yet. Totally unknown.
@Tim Macknay
I don’t consider it that wonderful. After we develop the thorium fuel cycle we will not even need seawater extraction. I brought it up to refute an earlier claim that peak uranium was only a few decades away.
Given you’re obsessed about it I’ll consider the relationship (or lack of) between the price of uranium and the long-term future of nuclear power.
1) Four years ago: Sea Uranium Extraction Nearly Economically Viable
recent advances lowered the cost even more.
2) Breeder reactors. Were we to replace burner reactors such as PWR/BWR/CANDU with breeders, we’d only need a fraction of the uranium we currently use. We’ve been able to build breeder reactors for decades. For example PRISM. Worldwide we currently have about 430 GWe of nuclear power. Each 1GWe uses about 27 tonnes per year. A total of 11,610 tonnes. This is mostly low enriched uranium which needs about 9 times as much natural uranium to make it. So we currently need about 104,500 tonnes per year of uranium mined.
Suppose instead we had 20 times as much breeder reactor power. That would be 8600 GWe and we’d be able to make all the world’s electricity carbon-free with it. 8600 GWe of breeder would require about 8600 tonnes of uranium (or thorium) per year. As you can see, nuclear power is economically viable for the whole world using a fraction of the uranium we currently use. It is also “economically viable” without uranium. We can use thorium instead. It is viable with uranium too. Whether reactors require a lot of uranium (burners), or very little (breeders). The price of uranium is almost irrelevant. If the price or uranium rises, that will just stimulate us to use breeders instead, which will actually allow us to use far more nuclear power because long-term breeder fuel supplies are no problem at all – even with uranium at $1000/lb breeders would still be economically viable. Breeders such PRISM can run using plutonium made from spent fuel, and depleted uranium. There is over 2 million tonnes of depleted uranium worldwide. A 1GWe breeder will burn 1 tonne per year. So breeder reactors have enough uranium stocks, already mined and extracted, to last hundreds of years. They can use thorium too.
The price of uranium is only very loosely coupled to the long-term cost of nuclear power.
Joris van Dorp,
This document, as an example, illustrates the difficulties in defining a “subsidy”.
Click to access primer.pdf
Basic and obvious subsidies are clear enough to us when we see them but to comprehensively and exhaustively define the entire class of “subsidy” proves to be very difficult.
You want to cloud the debate about subsides as you are clearly aware that nuclear power is the recipient of enormous subsidies and has been so historically as well as today.
Seach for the report “NUCLEAR POWER: Still Not Viable without Subsidies”.
In general, one could argue in the context of a market economy with a state sector (the model of “really existing capitalism” today), that a subsidy to an economic activity occurs when the producer of a good or service and/or the user of a good or service does not directly and fully pay the market determined price or what would be the market determined price without a subsidising program or initiative from state instrumentalities. In addition, this definition ought to include un-costed negative externalities borne by individuals, the community, society and even by the environment when the latter damage is ameliorated or remedied, in whole or in part, by state expenditure. In other words, a subsidy also occurs when a party is able to cause costs or damage to another in the course of economic activity without remedy being required. In this case, the state may be not be paying this subsidy, other economic and social actors may be paying it.
Further, fulfilling requirements to pay standard tax obligations required in general of all companies and individuals engaged in economic activity does not in any way mean said tax payments can be regarded as “offsets” negating the existence and economic effect of subsidies.
Now, if you have assimilated these points, we can deal with your smokescreen questions. In the document you link to (and I linked to a similar one) you have to pay attention to the definition of energy subsidies. Here is the consumer subsidy definition.
“Consumer subsidies arise when the price paid by consumers is below a benchmark price. For
pre-tax consumer subsidies the benchmark price is taken as the supply cost, whereas for post-
tax consumer subsidies the benchmark price is the supply cost plus a Pigouvian tax for nternalizing environmental externalities and a consumption tax to contribute to revenue
objectives.”
The above is an eminently supportable definition within market economics.
Here is the producer subsidy definition:
“Producer subsidies exist when producers receive either direct or indirect support that increases profitability above what it otherwise would be (that is, the support is not passed forward in the form of lower consumer prices). This support can take many forms, including receiving a price for the output above the supply cost, paying a price for inputs below supply costs, receiving preferential tax treatment, or receiving a direct transfer from the budget.”
The definition might also have added receiving cheap state backed loans, state backed insurance and guarantees although these are probably implicit in the notion of direct transfers, real or possible (if risk is realised) from the budget.
The document states;
“Externality cost estimates are available for petroleum products, natural gas, and coal (but not
for electricity to avoid double-counting). These estimates are drawn from Parry and others
(2014), in which they are explained in greater detail. They pertain to the cost of damages
from CO2 emissions or global warming, local air pollution (damages relating to SO2, NOx, PM
2.5, and VOCs), traffic congestion and accidents, and road damage. Estimates are available for 150 countries, and in other cases are estimated based on the average of countries in the same region and income level.”
On page 8 of the document, the reasoning for including a Pigouvian taxation reckoning is included;
“When the consumption of a good by a firm or household generates an external cost to society, then efficient pricing requires that consumers face a price that reflects this cost. In the absence of a well-functioning market for internalizing this cost in the consumer price, efficiency requires the imposition of a Pigouvian tax equal to the external cost generated by additional consumption. This issue is especially pertinent for energy consumption since the consumption of fossil fuels generates a range of external costs including:…”
Then it mentions essentially particulate pollution, CO2 emissions and;
“Broader externalities associated with the use of road fuels in vehicles, such as traffic congestion and accidents (most important) and road damage (less important). Although motorists may take into account (“internalize”) some of these costs in their driving decisions (for example, the average amount of congestion on the road, the risk of injuring themselves in single-vehicle collisions), they do not take into account other costs such as their own contribution to
congestion and slower travel speeds, injury risks to pedestrians and cyclists and occupants of other vehicles, and the burden on third parties of property damage and medical costs (van Bentham 2015).”
Now with third party comprehensive insurance (do all countries have that?) some of these costs may be user paid.
To sum up, there is a comprehensive theory, explicit and implicit in this document, behind the assessment of subsidy costs. There are “whole of economic system” considerations and “whole of environmental system” considerations. This document links them in a consistent theory and provides support for its subsidy definitions. These costs and subsidies are non-obvious but they are indeed real. If you read the document in full you might come to understand the reasoning.
Now what you wanted was (failure to provide) over-simplistic answers to your over-simplistic questions. Instead you have received a pointer to complex answers to what are complex questions. I hope you follow up, research it and think about it.