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Power too Cheap to Meter
Reading Churchill’s 1931 essay about the technology of the coming half-century, I was struck once again by the failed promise of the Atomic Age. Churchill speaks of bringing Newton to a contemporary undergraduate physical society, and the reaction he would have had to Churchill’s world. If one had whisked Churchill ahead to 1981 he would have been astonished — not at our taming the atom, but at how little we’d done with it.
Churchill predicted we would harness nuclear energy like this:
The discovery and control of such sources of power would cause changes in human affairs incomparably greater than those produced by the steam-engine four generations ago. Schemes of cosmic magnitude would become feasible.
And this:
Communications and transport by land, water and air would take unimaginable forms, if, as is in principle possible, we could make an engine of 600 horsepower, weighing 20 lb and carrying fuel for a thousand hours in a tank the size of a fountain-pen.
Have we changed human affairs so very much? Nuclear weapons aside, the world is pretty much the same. I single this out not because Churchill got this wrong, but because the story of nuclear age’s failure to come to fruition is fascinating.
“Wait!” I hear you cry, shaking your monitor in frustration, “We already know why it never happened. It was those lousy greens and peaceniks. They conjured specters of irradiation, and worries about how we could possibly store radioactive waste. As if Utah wasn’t full of perfectly worthless uninhabited mountains to bury it under.” That’s certainly true, but it’s hardly the only reason. Let’s run down them, shall we?
Radiation
Well, it’s scary. Much like your garden variety ninja, it’s totally invisible and can kill you without you ever noticing. In the public’s mind (to the envy of ninjas everywhere) it can cause mutations worse than death and permanently poison the countryside beyond all memory of man. Ignoring radiation’s ubiquity as a bad plot device, it’s still clear that nuclear energy needs some selling to the public.
Radiation puts a practical limit on how small you can make these nuclear piles. Consider the engine example, from the second quote. Such a thing would be impossible to build not because the physics disallows it, but because a device that small can’t possibly shield the user from radiation.
Regulation
Nuclear reactors are dangerous in more ways than one. It’s even possible — and my libertarian nature recoils at the suggestion — that the nuclear industry should be regulated as heavily as it currently is. Regardless, it’s heavily regulated now. Consider what effects that has.
Regulation stifles innovation faster than anything else. Suppose I had a genius idea to smash atoms on the cheap and provide discount electricity to widows and orphans. It ain’t gonna happen unless I’ve got major corporate money to back me up with the NRC. Suppose I have that, too. Why would they take the risk on a regulatory fight when they can make money on the tried and true? It’s not like someone can come in and take their business.
Never you mind the inexplicable array of regulations surrounding electrical utilities regardless of how they produce power. And the whole state of California can jump in a lake.
Power
What exactly does nuclear power do that coal doesn’t? It’s marvelously useful if you’ve got an aircraft carrier to move around. It’s vital if you’re France, concerned about the strategic weakness of fuel importation. As a practical matter, a civilian nuclear reactor in America is similar to any other power plant. Greater startup costs are balanced by fewer fuel costs down the road.
Churchill was right that the ability to produce massive amounts of energy cheaply enables us to do new and interesting things. For example, it’s possible to synthesize gasoline out of air and water. Hydrocarbons burn with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide and water. You can drive that reaction backwards with enough energy. You could build an oil well. All you need for it to be economical is for gas prices at $5 a gallon. (Is that iWe I hear laughing?)
Economics
You could build the power plant first. People are clever. They’ll find ways to use ever-cheaper electricity to do ever cooler things, even if we can’t tell what those things are ahead of time. If there’s money to be made, people will find a way to finance new and mindbogglingly expensive power plants. An army of bureaucrats or a squad of lobbyists can be hired to deal with regulations. Slick ads and good jobs can placate public fears.
All of that depends on money to be made. But what was the central promise of the Atomic Age? Power too cheap to meter. Why was the steam engine still a more important technological development to the world than the fission pile?
Because power too cheap to meter is too expensive to sell.
Published in General, Science & Technology
Good article, Hank. It would be interesting to know the demographics of support and opposition to nuclear power. Is it the young or the old who are more likely to oppose it? How about rich versus poor? Are college graduates more or less likely to oppose it than those who didn’t go to college? Is there a rural/urban split?
We will never have meterless power.
In 2014 nuclear power alone generated 798 billion kWh in the United States. That is 19% of the total electrical power generated.
In 1945 total electrical power generated was 142 billion kWh.
If we were consuming electricity at 1945 rates of consumption, we would have so much electricity generated by nuclear that it would be meterless. Every time electrical power gets cheaper people find more to do with electricity, raising the demand (and hence the price). In a sense, nuclear has delivered levels of power unimaginable in 1945, but it does not matter.
(On the other hand, we do not have the unlimited power/too-limited food production problem predicted by 194os SF because power can be converted to food. Cheap power = cheap and plentiful food.)
Seawriter
Cheaper power is the whole underpinning of increased standard of living. The more power you have, the more the standard of living.
Tony Stark’s reactors are wasted on battle suits. They would be able to transform the world in ways we cannot imagine. Quote #2 would be basically possible.
In the real world, I expect fusion will eventually be a game changer. With the right elements, the radiation issue is greatly reduced.
Nice article!
Indeed!
Like the Midnight Train, $5 gasoline is never coming, never coming, never coming back!
Virtually 100% of France’s electrical power is nuclear. We here in America deal with the prog-left’s desire to drive the West to it’s knees, so we can experience the joy of life in Kenya.
Not in terms of real dollars. I would wager at some point it might be $5 which is worth $1.25 in today’s dollars. (Just to be pedantic)
Indeed. As Willis Eschenbach has written in multiple gorgeous articles, low energy prices matter much more to the world’s truly poor than it does to us. Cheap enough energy means nobody has to starve.
I (of course) meant “inflation adjusted”. Because I am sure hyper inflation is the only way out of the nation’s debt problems.
Or, Arc Reactors.
It is a fun thought experiment. If energy were suddenly an order of magnitude cheaper, we could grow our way out of the debt.
Nah. They would just ad more debt faster than the growth.
Growth is not energy limited. It is constrained by human costs – like compliance with regulations, and governmental barriers to entry.
Growth is not *just* limited by energy. But, energy is the fundamental limit on growth. In order to grow the pie, we have to have access to more energy.
I disagree. At current prices, growth can skyrocket without access to more energy. We have much more access to energy than we need.
Human capital is the most precious asset of all. And when it is buried in hipposcat doing unproductive work, growth is constrained.
I think we are talking at different altitudes. I agree with the regulation issue. In fact, as President, I would suspend all Federal Regulations in my Inaugural address.
My greater point is that with enough energy, costs go down. With enough energy, there is no water problems, you use seawater and clean it. There is no garbage problem, you just use a plasma torch. Resources can be moved with less effort, etc.
Energy unlocks human capital. We had lots of the latter for 10,000 years since the ice rolled back. Energy, was 150 years ago.
About 75 percent. But it’s the world’s largest net exporter of electricity — it’s a €3 billion/pa industry. It has the lowest cost of electricity in Europe. But it’s an interesting case of a shrewd dirigiste decision: After the 1973 oil price shock — as you pointed out — the decision to push the nuclear industry was made on national security grounds. (France also has an extremely low level of CO2 emissions per capita, since the rest of its electricity generation mostly comes from hydro. Sometimes I wonder if they pushed the whole ridiculous Climate Change Carnival we just had here because they could see what a great business opportunity it would be for them.)
“Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
My husband worked in the nuclear power industry for years, and he’s the first to admit that the lack of good information early on from the industry was catastrophic. They are slowly beginning to build modular plants here which are smaller and less expensive (relatively) to build. And don’t forget that Jimmy Carter killed the possibility of fusion plants.
So far, it’s physics and engineering that has killed the possibility of fusion plants.
Jimmy Carter may get the blame for a lot, but he doesn’t deserve it here.
You’re right, Tuck. My mistake. My understanding is that he stopped our re-processing fuel, because it would make plutonium. According to Mr. Buju, everyone is reprocessing their fuel except us.
For more info on reprocessing nuclear fuel go here.
That’s for fission, not fusion. Fusion just doesn’t work, although efforts continue.
3 words – muon catalyzed fusion.
Three words — still a fantasy:
Solar power is about to be dirt cheap too:
It’s not that I’m responding on a computer that’s running 24/7, it’s that I have to decide WHICH computer I’m gonna use to respond. You make an excellent point.
But, if I may crawl into the minds of the prophets of last century, it’s not that they expected us to generate five times the power via nuclear, but five hundred times. It’d be entirely feasible to generate all our current load off of coal.
Solar is always interesting, but fails for reasons unrelated to the raw cost of building solar arrays. The sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day, and even when shining one can only approach the maximum power for ones panels for about six hours a day, and the maximum irradiation at any one spot is just too low, to get a lot of power, one needs a LOT of space.
So assume we get the panels for free, then the cost to replace base load would still need massive investment in new distribution networks, insane levels of batteries, or some unknown storage technology, all of which are environmentally far worse than just burning coal, and orders of magnitude more expensive. Solve those issues an one can use solar to replace base load economically. I am not holding my breath. It works for small amounts of power needed only intermittantly, and where other cheaper power is not available. If I had a ranch in Nevada, 100 miles from a power line, then solar can be compared to other methods, e.g. a local diesel generator.
I’ll bet against solar as a grid solution any and every chance I can get. The maintenance cost of cleaning panels, all by itself, is crippling.
We have a wonderful solar converter technology already : plants.
You nailed it.
Green power, although “free” to generate is expensive in large part because regulations make building the plants and the transmission lines expensive. The bigger problem is that for every plant on line that you can’t control (solar, wind, and yes to some extent nuclear), you need a controllable unit (i.e. hydro, coal, or natural gas) ready to back it up. This backup unit is the true hidden cost. A big problem with nuclear as it stands today is it doesn’t move quickly, so overnight you tend to have way too much and no where to put it.
So I agree, solar and wind is forcing the industry to come up with novel storage solutions (trapping compressed air in a cave?!). If this is solved (big if) then we may be able to absorb the insane amount of green energy that’s being built and maybe some day more nuke’s.
Quite right. Would it be impolite to point that a lot of the greens that think we aren’t paying nearly enough for energy are also the same folks that tend to think that humans are a pestilence on the earth (with some of the more radical ones also fans of eugenics)?
Lifting the oil export ban is a bigger deal than people realize. Instead of the Saudis having the oil weapon, if we play it right, we could have a lot sharper energy weapon. Help the world’s poor develop their economies with cheap energy, cut off Russia’s blackmail weapon in Europe, provide Asia with cheaper natural gas and drastically reduce the $$ Islamist (or Islamist-sympathizing) regimes can spend causing havoc. Oh, and revive our manufacturing sector (at least in the South).
One can dream.
You don’t have to dream. Congress just killed the ban. It was one of the many, many items quietly tucked away in that $1.1 trillion spending bill.