I’ll never forget the sound of the siren–or the screams–coming through the long distance phone line from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on … Read more
Nuclear Power
Brandi Carlile, at a Gorge Amphitheater concert a couple years ago, remarked that her father, a hunter, told her the most dangerous animal was one that was wounded and cornered. This is a good characterization of the present fossil fuel industry.
They are cornered and dangerous because the simple truth is that the fossil fuel industry is no longer economically competitive.
Of all the nonsense about nuclear power that one hears, the idea that somehow it is planning problems rather than financial issues that stop its development surely takes the biscuit. The Government bats away any formal planning objection made to its nuclear plant when companies want to build them. Yet the UK government is flogging nuclear planning problems as a scapegoat for the technology’s failure for all it is worth. And it is talking about the non-existent concept of small modular reactors (see HERE). Is this a smokescreen to hide its problems with financing Sizewell C?
Meanwhile, incumbents (utilities), long used to dominating the debate and government policies have been caught on the receiving end of the anti-renewables propaganda they spewed in the past, and which have been weaponized wittingly or unwittingly by the political opponents of the greens, usually the rightwing populists, who are ascendant right now. So the current debate on energy is highly polarized, mostly tribal, and renewables are on the losing side in the public debate. It does not matter much because the march of solar and batteries is relentless and irreversible, but it makes policy making harder, and investment decisions scarier.
The newest and most powerful nuclear reactor in Europe that was delivered more than a decade late and nearly four times over budget is also proving to be a headache for grid operators now that it is finally up and running.
On Sunday, the 1,600 megawatt Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor tripped again, the latest in a series of faults and outages that have plagued the new facility and caused the market to reach out for back-up power to fill the gap.
The plan to restart the shuttered reactor on Three Mile Island has already generated controversy as energy experts debate the merits of providing separate federal subsidies for the project in the form of tax credits. Constellation’s pursuit of the $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee, which has not been previously disclosed, is likely to intensify that debate. The loan guarantee request has cleared an initial review. It has now reached the stage where the specific terms of a deal would ordinarily start to be negotiated, according to the Washington Post. A loan guarantee would allow Constellation to shift much of the risk of reopening Three Mile Island to taxpayers. The federal government, in this case, would pledge to cover up to $1.6 billion if there is a default. The guarantees are typically used by developers to lower the cost of project financing, as lenders are willing to offer more favorable terms when there is federal backing.
Ramana is keen to point out that the nuclear energy industry only survives because of government support. Through electricity bills and taxes, the public often pay a significant amount toward building and running nuclear plants, as well as storing the waste. Governments also provide subsidies, skew electricity markets in favour of nuclear and form such tight relationships with industry that they end up repeating their propaganda, he says.
A key reason governments sink so much money into nuclear is because of how tightly bound up it is with nuclear weapons, which ostensibly guarantee a country’s security and strength, Ramana says. “Technically speaking, having a nuclear reactor means you’re going to have more capacity to make nuclear weapons,” he says, including through interchangeable personnel.
The hollowing out of these once great American industrial giants is a sad story, and unfortunately that story has repercussions that will be felt for years to come as the country tries to come to grips with its intractable emissions problem. Although not the only root cause, a remarkable amount of the culpability rests on Jack Welch and his destructive take on capitalism.
If nuclear made sense, Microsoft or Amazon or Rio Tinto would finance the construction of a few plants to feed their ever growing appetite for reliable carbon-free energy… In reality, despite all the high-powered attention, ridiculously few new nuclear plants are being built compared to new renewables, even in China. Nuclear is at best irrelevant and at worst a distraction…
If BEV weren’t moving money and turning policy makers’ heads, I likely wouldn’t care. But billionaire adulation isn’t going to solve the climate crisis. Gates and the other founders are creating as many problems and causing secondary organizations and even governments to waste time and money we can ill afford. That’s not because they don’t care, but because they aren’t starting from reality. Investment theses require a very strong basis in reality and climate investments require strong technical due diligence. BEV’s theses in several parts of their portfolio are off base, and their technical due diligence approaches non-existent.
