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On Climate Change and Nuclear Power, Democrats May Not Be the Party of Science
Eduardo Porter in the New York Times:
And yet even as progressive environmentalists wring their hands at the G.O.P.’s climate change denial, there are biases on the left that stray just as far from the scientific consensus. “The left is turning anti-science,” Marc Andreessen, the creator of Netscape who as a venture capitalist has become one of the most prominent thinkers of Silicon Valley, told me not long ago.
He was reflecting broadly about science and technology. His concerns ranged from liberals’ fear of genetically modified organisms to their mistrust of technology’s displacement of workers in some industries. “San Francisco is an interesting case,” he noted. “The left has become reactionary.”
Still, liberal biases may be most dangerous in the context of climate change, the most significant scientific and technological challenge of our time. For starters, they stand against the only technology with an established track record of generating electricity at scale while emitting virtually no greenhouse gases: nuclear power.
Only 35 percent of Democrats, compared with 60 percent of Republicans, favor building more nuclear power plants, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center. It is the G.O.P. that is closer to the scientific consensus. According to a separate Pew poll of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 65 percent of scientists want more nuclear power too.
Interesting that Andreessen is quoted. While nuclear power may not seem like an obvious venture for capital investment, there is interest in Silicon Valley. And here is VCer Peter Thiel on this issue:
While politicians prepare a grand bargain on emissions limits that future politicians are unlikely to obey, a new generation of American nuclear scientists has produced designs for better reactors. Crucially, these new designs may finally overcome the most fundamental obstacle to the success of nuclear power: high cost. Designs using molten salt, alternative fuels and small modular reactors have all attracted interest not just from academics but also from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists like me ready to put money behind nuclear power. However, none of these new designs can benefit the real world without a path to regulatory approval, and today’s regulations are tailored for traditional reactors, making it almost impossible to commercialize new ones.
While Porter does not mention it, I recently heard a novel — at least to me — bit of anti-nuclear/pro-renewables reasoning: We need to use that uranium for powering future spacecraft, and we shouldn’t waste it on power generation here on Earth.
Published in Culture, Science & Technology
The left has always been anti science. They only like science if they can find some or create some that furthers its goals.
The molten salt reactors mentioned by Thiel run on thorium, not uranium. They are vastly different from traditional light water fission reactors. It is a big mistake to refer to “nuclear power” as a single technology.
“Nuclear energy is to the Right what solar energy is to the Left: Religious devotion… When the day comes that the electricity from solar or nuclear power plants is worth more than the costs associated with generating it, I will be as happy as the next Greenpeace member (in the case of the former) or MIT graduate (in the case of the latter) to support either technology.
…how do France, India, China, and Russia build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don’t. Government officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Either these governments build expensive plants and shove them down the market’s throat—or they build shoddy plants and hope for the best.” — Jerry Taylor, senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
http://reason.com/archives/2008/10/22/nuclear-power-and-energy-indep/3
The left should like nuclear power, it requires tighter central controls at every stage, and centralizes power itself. The private sector? Not so much; too much government, too much risk, capital costs too high given these risks. Thing to do is free the economy so it adjusts to whatever climate brings, finds new technologies as prices change, and unearth things central controllers can never imagine. If the climate alarmists were really worried about climate they’d support freedom rather than centralization. They are transparent.
This sounds like a fantastic idea for compromise between left and right on emissions.
Jim, what does the new nuclear power technology bring to the table in terms of safety innovation, assuming innovation is needed in this area?
How do you explain Japan’s use of nuclear? The main issue, I always thought, was safety, not cost. Japan exemplifies the safety problems.
I remember the debates in my home state over the closure of the Maine Yankee nuke plant in Wiscasset.
I also remember the shocking increase in electricity prices in the aftermath. Nuclear may not be cost-effective right now, but it used to be the cheapest base load power you could get, by a lot.
Interesting. What was the source of this comment? I’ve heard of the shortage of plutonium for spacecraft radioisotope thermoelectric generators. But I was unaware that uranium is a critical fuel for RTGs. Or is the comment referring to full-blown nuclear fission reactors on some hypothetical future trans-solar spaceships?
I am far from an expert, but I do live with one. My husband is a nuclear engineer and we met in grad school while he was obtaining his PhD at MIT. What little I do know is that the designs that are touted as so “new” have been discussed for decades. In fact the “modular gas-cooled reactor” was all the talk among his peers. Several of them even spent summers working at an experimental reactor of this type in Germany. (This was the late 80s, early 90s before the greens killed nuclear in Germany.) I did ask my husband recently about the molten salt reactor design (which is also not new), but he was very negative about it due to corrosion issues.
As far as cost, my general understanding is that the huge costs associated with nuclear are mostly regulatory in nature. It really should be an inexpensive form of energy. The hope is that with a standardized design, those regulatory costs could be minimized. This is how France built its nuclear plants (they used to get 80% of their power from nuclear — not sure about today). If you have one design, you don’t have to go through the full regulatory process for every plant you build. Also, the smaller reactors are designed to be “passively safe” such that the physics of the reactor will not allow a meltdown, even with a loss of coolant.
I’m convinced, but I’m also not neutral.
The safety concerns have got to be addressed to everyone’s satisfaction before expanding nuclear power.
I agree this is the biggest problem. I have had enough discussions, that I’m convinced it’s more a political issue than a technical one. In all honesty, I’m not the one to explain the things that can be done. (My husband is out of town at the moment, so I can’t get him to answer.) One thing I will say is that people overestimate the dangers of nuclear relative to other forms of power generation and industrial activity. I do believe I would much rather live next to a nuclear power plant than many chemical plants.
Except that only applies to traditional light water fission reactors. There are lots of different ways to do nuclear energy. The method used by currently-operational nuclear plants became dominant because it was necessary for building nuclear weapons. Other methods that are way better at producing electricity cheaply and safely, but are useless for producing weapons, didn’t get the development funding during the Cold War.
Private companies didn’t develop these alternate technologies because a) nuclear is so heavily regulated that they pretty much had to work through government, and b) the light water reactors they would have been competing against were heavily subsidized.
Nuclear power is very cost efficient to operate; it’s the construction in the past that has been so expensive. With the new designs you’ve pointed to, James, construction can be much less expensive and practical. Let’s hope a future US government figures that out.
“To everyone’s satisfaction” will never happen. The left is too biased to accept scientific fact. Japan’s problems had to do with their building plants that were foolishly designed. Their problems could have been avoided with the tsunami and they knew it.
So…define “everyone”. All Americans, if we build a nuclear plant? Are we going to have 300 million people sign a release?
I would argue that we wouldn’t be expanding nuclear power; we’d be returning it as part of the grid mix to previously-existing levels if we started building more plants today. Is anyone concerned with safety over natural gas being transported by rail? Or oil?
http://ktla.com/2015/02/17/train-derailment-leads-to-explosion-massive-fireball-in-west-virginia-video/
Yet we consume energy derived from these fuels, daily, and don’t spend a lot of time chin-stroking over what safety issues have been addressed or not.
Fear of things we don’t understand drives people to chase cheap, always-on baseload power out of the grid. What’s amazing is that when rolling brown-outs start occurring and the bills go up, these same people will be outraged over the results of the actions they themselves have taken.
Nuclear power is responsible for all life on earth. It’s called the sun.
I agree that there are some whose safety concerns will never be satisfied. I think what I was trying to get at is that The Advocates of expanding nuclear power not only should focus on it’s cleanliness but should also focus on its safety record when they advocated for using more of it in the United States
My husband (who was in the nuclear power industry) admitted that the industry did a poor job of promoting it. Engineers weren’t always good at marketing, and I don’t know if that’s improved. You’re right, Josh.
A complete myth.
Fukushima’s reactor killed nobody. Not one soul.
The Tsunami killed 15,000.
I’m not trying to be mean here. But this is kind of like pointing out to opponents of food-borne illness that all digestion involves bacteria. While strictly true, it is not relevant to the conversation.
But if they had built the plant properly, many of their follow-up problems could have been avoided, too.
In terms of deathtoll you’re right. But my understanding is that it will take 30-40 years to completely shut down and dismantle the site, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
To this day they still haven’t accounted for all the fuel that was in the reactors when they melted down. They have to continuously bathe the facility in water to keep it cool, and this water needs to be stored in a growing number of huge tanks on site. There is currently no plan for what to do with the radioactive water. The still-molten fuel or irradiated heavy water could leak into the groundwater or the surrounding ocean.
I’m not trying to be an alarmist, and in terms of death and injuries to date, there is no comparison. But we’re not out of the woods yet.
Besides nuclear power and GMO foods, the left is also skeptical of any social science that challenges their orthodoxies, such as studies of racial or sex differences, or studies on the effects on children of being born out of wedlock and raised by a single mother. They tend to believe that culture (rather than physiological difference) explains why the NBA and NFL are disproportionately comprised of blacks. They will consider no evidence that recycling is counter-productive. They think that population growth is always bad. The list goes on.
On the contrary. Data has consistently shown that higher background radiation levels are SAFER for people. Examples.
The whole “we don’t know yet because of all the mutations, etc.” is a complete canard.
Even tree-huggers admit that Chernobyl is showing very high fecundity.
I am not an expert on this topic. But I also think you’re breaking new medical ground here if you’re asserting that to contaminate ground water with radioactive cesium, or to intentionally release heavy water into the drinking supply or local fished ocean areas, would improve the health of the residents. Let me know if I have read you wrong.
Absolutely – but with the wonderful help of the ‘interveners’ who made certain the cost of nuclear was prohibitive by filing suit after suit against utilities thereby delaying construction as much as 15 years in some cases. While most of those demonstrating against a particular plant were genuinely concerned about nuclear because they had bought into the general disinformation campaigns, those who developed those campaigns knew exactly what they were doing to those utilities in terms of the cost of money over so many years.
Is there a municipality anywhere that hasn’t experienced a net loss on their recycling program?
Mark, it is all about moderation. The data clearly shows that elevated radiation levels are, on balance, more good than bad. Within limits, of course.
Take pilots. Each polar flight is like many x-rays. And yet, they do not have higher cancer rates. Etc.
I once asked a class of liberal students, “If I could prove to you that recycling paper leads to fewer trees rather than more would you still be in favor of it?” Almost all said they would.
It does, by the way, lead to fewer trees. As the price of paper goes down marginal land that might have been planted with trees is used for something else.
iWe – you are correct, I should have restricted it to the company that did not take the appropriate precautions at the one plant.