> It's gonna cost money. It's gonna require work. It's going to not only be opportunity cost, but require us to do stuff. This is what it means to have climate change as a priority. It's a priority above money, above GDP growth, above even the standard of living.
It is clear that climate change is an emergency. However, the amount of resources, including money, to address that emergency is finite, so it would be illogical (or even unethical) not to use resources in the most economical way possible.
New nuclear power plants have a cost of, for example,
over 90 £ / MWh. New solar and wind energy can deliver at less than half that price:
There is also another motication to build nuclear power plants - they subsidize military use of nuclear weapons. To cite from the article above: "On 12 October 2017, The Guardian reported that researchers informed MPs that the UK government was using the expensive Hinkley Point C project to cross-subsidise the UK military's nuclear-related activity by maintaining nuclear skills. The researchers from the University of Sussex, Prof. Andy Stirling and Dr. Phil Johnstone, stated that the costs of the Trident nuclear submarine programme would be prohibitive without "an effective subsidy from electricity consumers to military nuclear infrastructure".[97]"
On top of that, such plants, even with very conventional nuclear technology, take more than a decade to build. To address climate change, we need big and radical changes in energy production in the next twenty years. Building new nuclear energy is very clearly too slow to achieve that.
So, at that point, using nuclear to address climate change is merely a distraction. There are much better ways to address this problem.
The only problem with nuclear power is Government oversight, as you rightly point out: "they subsidize military use of nuclear weapons".
If Governments allow commercial development of nuclear power stations that cannot be used to produce enriched uranium (thorium being one of those), then free market forces will push the cost of design, and building them down, making the price of nuclear electricity much lower.
There's no economy of scale to the current nuclear industry. Each power station design is different in some way.
Imagine a commercial small sized, modular nuclear power plant, produced at scale. Nuclear subs, and aircraft carriers already have a version.
"Building new nuclear energy is very clearly too slow to achieve that."
I'd disagree, it is, as usual politics getting in the way of science, not the engineers or physicists. If the financial incentives are there, it would be solved very quickly. Fission isn't fusion, and the physics and engineering is well understood. Not directly comparable, but look at what SpaceX has achieved in 20 years in terms of design and engineering.
>If Governments allow commercial development of nuclear power stations that cannot be used to produce enriched uranium (thorium being one of those), then free market forces will push the cost of design
Nuclear plants have always been uninsurable without an explicit liability cap (currently set at $200 million).
The "free market" would never have let it happen in the first place without that subsidy (& several others).
Nuclear only ever exists and will only ever continue to existing because of subsidies.
The desire for subsidies is probably why this article exists, in fact.
The other market distortion that enabled nuclear to be built was the regulated monopolies of electric utilities. These utilities earn based on their capital investment, so the larger the capital investment they can get the regulators to swallow, the better. And this is best done by systems with large up front costs, costs that can be underestimated then escalated after the initial fixed investment.
What really killed the first wave of nuclear in the US was not TMI or over-regulation, but the passage of PURPA that began to open the markets to competition from non-utility suppliers.
Prior to 2000, the space industry was thought to be extremely complex and expensive and viable only by state sponsored efforts, i.e. NASA, ESA, and so on.
And then SpaceX, Blue Origin, and others have come along and shown that an industry that expensive can be profitable, cheap, and safe.
It's not a perfect analogy by a long shot, but it's similar in terms of (historical) investment.
There's no reason to believe that nuclear should be any different. The engineering and physics is well understood.
I'd say that you've omitted the word "current", i.e. "current Nuclear plants have always been uninsurable", and "current Nuclear only ever exists and will only ever continue to existing because of subsidies."
I'll re-iterate my previous comment, if Governments would step back from over regulation, and the desire for reactors to produce weapons grade uranium and plutonium as a by-product, then new designs could be achieved quickly, cheaply, and safely. Molten-salt is being actively researched: https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/09/04/166330/meltdown-...
SpaceX and Blue Origin exist because of two billionaires brought up on dreams of space travel. Without their willingness to sustain potentially very heavy losses those companies would not exist.
It's not like there are a variety of startups nipping at their heels. They want to make a profit but they're not doing it because they're convinced they will.
As for the word "current"... well, if the nuclear industry thinks it's so safe and thinks it can prove it to the insurance industry why don't they prove it and forgo their public insurance subsidy? They fought for this subsidy in the first place, they can give it up just as easily.
Why not let the free market decide if they're safe rather than providing taxpayers as a backstop?
> Why not let the free market decide if they're safe rather than providing taxpayers as a backstop?
The free market is pretty evidence based, so it would decide they are safe. I doubt the public insurance subsidy works the way you are representing it. They'd not insure against the risk of a catastrophic meltdown in a free market, the risk is too low. The "insurance" is probably more of a government tax on the assumption that there is latent risk. I'm not going to say that is unreasonable, but it doesn't have anything to do with how safe the industry thinks it is.
Consider Fukushima, the result of one of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history (Wikipedia says 4th largest [0]). Free markets don't bother to insure against that sort low-risk event. It would be like insuring San Francisco against the fact that it is on an active fault line - the market doesn't bother to insure against a risk that rare.
The free market is entirely based on investor hype. We have economic downturns ever 7-ish years, like clockwork, because some bubble burst again. It's a fallacy to treat investors like rational actors.
Chernobyl is presumably what you're talking about. It was a high pressure steam explosion due a sudden introduction of energy into the system, which of course would cause an explosion and contaminate a wide area [0].
> The engineering and physics is well understood.
as are the safety issues which is why there what research there is for a modern nuclear reactor design would not repeat those mistakes (e.g. molten-salt).
Whether the region around Chernobyl is uninhabitable is debatable, given that animals have returned to it in abundance.
One major thing about nuclear is that we do not even truly understand the effects of wide-ranging low doses of nuclear radiation.
I am repeating here from an earlier post:
There are many things we do not understand about radiation. The traditional models on radiation dosis and health effects are probably too simple. There is a strain of research on epigenetic effects of ionizing radiation:
Simply put, we often see the DNA as a kind of program which is executing on our body. But it is actually a program which, activates, inactivates, modifies and rewrites itself, so that the program code can reflect environmental conditions - especially during the growth of a fetus.
Radiation effects are very difficult to capture by statistics. A part of the reason is that cancer is not a rare illness, and any kind of cancer which might be induced by additional low doses of radiation will be covered by a lot of noise. But if these low doses of radiation affect a large number of individuals, radiation could still cause a lot of damage. What makes it even more difficult is that radiation, as it affects genetic control loops in the cell, has no distinct picture of its effects. It could be cancer, but it could also be effects on the central nervous system. Or circulatory diseases, which have been reported from Chernobyl as well. And what makes it more difficult of course is that it is not an area where one can make controlled experiments, so it is mostly science by observation. This is tricky because there are so many confounding factors. Even with something entirely plausible like, say, "smoking causes cancer", or "neonicotinoids probably affect bees and insects", it is hard to come to a conclusion.
There are also more concrete causes for concern. In Germany, following some irregularities at the Kruemmel nuclear plant, in the Wesermarsch area near Hamburg, it was found there was a cluster of leukemia cases in children - many times more than what was to be expected from the normal statistical case numbers. In the follow-up, the incidence of leukemia near all nuclear power stations was determined, and compared to other factors. A significantly higher incidence of leukemia was found, with no good explanation so far.
I need to point out that this is not established science - but it poses very important questions.
The traditional theory on effects of ionizing radiation can so far still not explain this. A possible hypothesis is that radiation disturbs the expression of the delicate self-modifying genetic program, which has disproportionately large effects during early development.
> Look all I'm saying is that if we let the free market do whatever it wanted with gene therapy, cancer would be cured already. The market innovates. Look at SpaceX.
You can't dismiss huge technical challenges and engineering problems with "uh the free market can probably innovate a solution." Likely what would happen is a dozen nuclear startups would spring up like mushrooms after rain, vacuum up hundreds of millions in VC funding, spin their wheels for five years, and then dry up, leaving us with nothing.
The market isn't there to innovate. It's there to generate revenue, and it only innovates insofar as it is easy and profitable to do so. It's not a magic wand you can wave at situations you dislike. Frankly, if you want someone to innovate for you, ask the government [1].
It is clear that climate change is an emergency. However, the amount of resources, including money, to address that emergency is finite, so it would be illogical (or even unethical) not to use resources in the most economical way possible.
New nuclear power plants have a cost of, for example, over 90 £ / MWh. New solar and wind energy can deliver at less than half that price:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...
There is also another motication to build nuclear power plants - they subsidize military use of nuclear weapons. To cite from the article above: "On 12 October 2017, The Guardian reported that researchers informed MPs that the UK government was using the expensive Hinkley Point C project to cross-subsidise the UK military's nuclear-related activity by maintaining nuclear skills. The researchers from the University of Sussex, Prof. Andy Stirling and Dr. Phil Johnstone, stated that the costs of the Trident nuclear submarine programme would be prohibitive without "an effective subsidy from electricity consumers to military nuclear infrastructure".[97]"
(The linked reference [97] is https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/12/electricity-...)
On top of that, such plants, even with very conventional nuclear technology, take more than a decade to build. To address climate change, we need big and radical changes in energy production in the next twenty years. Building new nuclear energy is very clearly too slow to achieve that.
So, at that point, using nuclear to address climate change is merely a distraction. There are much better ways to address this problem.