Solar and wind get big subsidies at taxpayer expense. Why doesn't that make them more unpopular? I doubt most people answering a poll have any idea of the relative cost of nuclear.
Possibly because they can relate more to the kind of people who are the direct beneficiaries of the subsidies, such as individual householders with solar panels on their roof?
There is a proven way to get the public involved in nuclear power. And a way that moves the poll numbers and therefore the politicians. From a no to nuclear vote of 72% in 2019 down to only 32% in 2023.
And the yes vote was moved from 19% for in 2019 to 49% today. The right SoMe approach moves the polls and then the politicians
Unless Joe Sixpack is a lineman, he probably thinks next to nothing about how his electricity is generated. BP and Greenpeace can put up windmill posters to make him feel good, but he doesn’t give a crap at the end of the day because he has stuff to do to feed the family.
Make it cheap and nobody will give a flying f$&! about where it comes from. Make it expensive and everyone will complain, even if it comes from “harmonious” wind and solar.
In my opinion, much of the problem is semantic, that is, for many people the very word 'nuclear' is heavily and automatically associated with terrible bombs and with terrible fallout, as in Chernobyl. The term 'molten salt reactor' is a much better monicker for units such as those planned by ThorCon.
As regular readers of Gordian Knot News know, I believe nuclear power is inherently cheap. Thanks to its remarkable energy density, in a competitive environment it could easily produce dispatchable electricity at less than 3 cents/kWh. The Joe Sixpack post is a plea for nuclear supporters to stop focusing on safety and start focusing on why nuclear's did-cost is five or more times higher than its should-cost. However, the piece in isolation could be read to imply that nuclear is inherently costly, which is the opposite of the truth. Mea culpa.
Joe Sixpack is smarter than we realize. One of the most popular human trends of the last two centuries amidst the rise of technology and complexity is the broad tendency to privatize gain and socialize loss. This is what coal burning is. This is what irrigation of deserts is. This is what overtilling is. You are a very engaging and knowledgeable writer!
One of the benefits of fission power is low carbon footprint. Pricing carbon (any resource) rightsizes the benefit both positive and negative. Eliminating subsidies and pricing in tragedy of the commons behaviors like carbon pricing and use of water are methods to drive desired behavior. This is perhaps the root distortion in our system of finance and picking winners and losers.
I believe the nuclear power business is a perfect example but there are many others. Having ANY INVESTMENT bond via insurance for its behavior and provide bankruptcy survivability of the financial instruments. Joe Six Pack understands that we privatize gain (Utility and Constructor) and socialize loss (everyone else) if we insulate the beneficiaries from the lifecycle cost of their insurance. Why not expect the beneficiary to buy bonds in the public market that reflect the risk. This would mean:
(1) Investor owned utilities would carry insurance from the public markets for their facilities. A public backstop means picking winners and losers. If the cost and insurance must be public then the EXACT SAME SUBSIDY should exist for each form of electricity generation on a MWH basis if that is the public good. Capping liability incentivizes bad behavior. Public markets have demonstrated a good capacity of quantifying risk, much better than regulators and bloggers (like myself).
(2) Post 9/11 the first action of the federal government was to backstop airlines. The same folks who say yeah that makes sense consider subsidy to other forms of transportaion socialism -- idiotic. Here we sit 75 years of airline businesses. They all repetitively go bankrupt and re-emerge like dandelions. Why not require airlines to bond their fully loaded costs. Finally, the "cost" of a flight would reflect its true cost. Against such massive subsidies other forms of transportation might emerge. This is the tragedy of the commons and the distortion of public insurance.
(3) The rise of horizontal drilling -- fine if viable -- a significant percentage of ALL FRACKED wells in the US are abandoned and uncapped -- just like carbon pricing, pricing of freshwater as a market would eliminate distortions leading to proper pricing of the oil and gas recovered -- most importantly the LLCs that abandon the well should be required to bond and ensure the lifecycle cost at public insurance prices. Imagine if the fracker paid a fee for sequestering contaminated fresh water and insures against all future groundwater contamination. The Fracker would be paying the fully-loaded cost of their effort. If still a profitable venture, the markets will fund it. Today, we allow LLC dissolution and taxpayers sit at the ready for a future Superfund problem. Privatize gain, socialize loss.
(4) Pricing carbon or pollution is a market-based solution to minimizing bad behavior and provides promotion for desired behavior.
Agree completely that investors should bear the full cost of their activities. However, the American tort system is totally out of control. If we are to have an insurance based scheme
I would imagine the Venn diagram of pro-nuclear power advocates and the pricing of carbon and freshwater is small. Maybe education of the public could help. One of my favorite authors is Michael Lewis. My favorite takeaway is that if you were to focus on the one single thing the human brain is VERY BAD at -- quantifying risk. A primitive lizard wanting to survive till its next meal. Whether radiation or chemical toxicity, so much of our basis for setting toxicity levels are rooted in the atomic bombings at Hiroshima, the seized results of medical experiments by Nazis and Imperial Japan and the use of gas in WW1 by all parties. The nuclear power industry lacked the lobbying might of the chemical industry. This is why Americans can still walk into a superstore and buy a gallon of bleach. We are VERY POOR at quantifying risk.
Here is a funny anecdote. One of the many utilities I serviced has a nuclear plant that was located <15 miles from a large coal station. During the summer time, when prevailing winds were right, the open coal pile (the largest radiation source in the state) would set off the area radiation monitors at the nuclear plant. If we wished to end the use of coal power all we would have to do is mandate and install the SAME types of monitoring systems required at light water reactors and set off an emergency alarm at nearly every coal mine and coal power station in the nation all of the time!!! A couple weeks of the alarms and the public would rise up and say leave the coal in the ground (and cover it up). As you know, the act of pulling coal out of the earth exposes everyone to radiation at a measurable level. I would guess each time the train car cover becomes loose, the same condition applies :)
I am actually a bit dubious about the very low death rates for solar and wind in the chart. Both require massive primary production of raw materials - not just concrete and steel, but mining of rare earths, cobalt, and other specialty materials for the solar cells and for the magnets in the generators, most of which come from China with dismal environmental and safety standards where fatalities are disappeared faster than papers contradicting the global warming narraitve. Plus, solar keeps on being installed on rooftops and wind turbines are tall. Falls kill quite a few people annually, and there is maintenance as well as the initial installation.
Solar and wind get big subsidies at taxpayer expense. Why doesn't that make them more unpopular? I doubt most people answering a poll have any idea of the relative cost of nuclear.
Possibly because they can relate more to the kind of people who are the direct beneficiaries of the subsidies, such as individual householders with solar panels on their roof?
There is a proven way to get the public involved in nuclear power. And a way that moves the poll numbers and therefore the politicians. From a no to nuclear vote of 72% in 2019 down to only 32% in 2023.
And the yes vote was moved from 19% for in 2019 to 49% today. The right SoMe approach moves the polls and then the politicians
Seeing a major gas-exporting dictatorship in your region start the biggest war of naked imperial aggression since World War II may be part of that.
Unless Joe Sixpack is a lineman, he probably thinks next to nothing about how his electricity is generated. BP and Greenpeace can put up windmill posters to make him feel good, but he doesn’t give a crap at the end of the day because he has stuff to do to feed the family.
Make it cheap and nobody will give a flying f$&! about where it comes from. Make it expensive and everyone will complain, even if it comes from “harmonious” wind and solar.
In energy cost is EVERYTHING.
In energy cost is EVERYTHING.
In energy cost is EVERYTHING.
In my opinion, much of the problem is semantic, that is, for many people the very word 'nuclear' is heavily and automatically associated with terrible bombs and with terrible fallout, as in Chernobyl. The term 'molten salt reactor' is a much better monicker for units such as those planned by ThorCon.
As regular readers of Gordian Knot News know, I believe nuclear power is inherently cheap. Thanks to its remarkable energy density, in a competitive environment it could easily produce dispatchable electricity at less than 3 cents/kWh. The Joe Sixpack post is a plea for nuclear supporters to stop focusing on safety and start focusing on why nuclear's did-cost is five or more times higher than its should-cost. However, the piece in isolation could be read to imply that nuclear is inherently costly, which is the opposite of the truth. Mea culpa.
Joe Sixpack is smarter than we realize. One of the most popular human trends of the last two centuries amidst the rise of technology and complexity is the broad tendency to privatize gain and socialize loss. This is what coal burning is. This is what irrigation of deserts is. This is what overtilling is. You are a very engaging and knowledgeable writer!
One of the benefits of fission power is low carbon footprint. Pricing carbon (any resource) rightsizes the benefit both positive and negative. Eliminating subsidies and pricing in tragedy of the commons behaviors like carbon pricing and use of water are methods to drive desired behavior. This is perhaps the root distortion in our system of finance and picking winners and losers.
I believe the nuclear power business is a perfect example but there are many others. Having ANY INVESTMENT bond via insurance for its behavior and provide bankruptcy survivability of the financial instruments. Joe Six Pack understands that we privatize gain (Utility and Constructor) and socialize loss (everyone else) if we insulate the beneficiaries from the lifecycle cost of their insurance. Why not expect the beneficiary to buy bonds in the public market that reflect the risk. This would mean:
(1) Investor owned utilities would carry insurance from the public markets for their facilities. A public backstop means picking winners and losers. If the cost and insurance must be public then the EXACT SAME SUBSIDY should exist for each form of electricity generation on a MWH basis if that is the public good. Capping liability incentivizes bad behavior. Public markets have demonstrated a good capacity of quantifying risk, much better than regulators and bloggers (like myself).
(2) Post 9/11 the first action of the federal government was to backstop airlines. The same folks who say yeah that makes sense consider subsidy to other forms of transportaion socialism -- idiotic. Here we sit 75 years of airline businesses. They all repetitively go bankrupt and re-emerge like dandelions. Why not require airlines to bond their fully loaded costs. Finally, the "cost" of a flight would reflect its true cost. Against such massive subsidies other forms of transportation might emerge. This is the tragedy of the commons and the distortion of public insurance.
(3) The rise of horizontal drilling -- fine if viable -- a significant percentage of ALL FRACKED wells in the US are abandoned and uncapped -- just like carbon pricing, pricing of freshwater as a market would eliminate distortions leading to proper pricing of the oil and gas recovered -- most importantly the LLCs that abandon the well should be required to bond and ensure the lifecycle cost at public insurance prices. Imagine if the fracker paid a fee for sequestering contaminated fresh water and insures against all future groundwater contamination. The Fracker would be paying the fully-loaded cost of their effort. If still a profitable venture, the markets will fund it. Today, we allow LLC dissolution and taxpayers sit at the ready for a future Superfund problem. Privatize gain, socialize loss.
(4) Pricing carbon or pollution is a market-based solution to minimizing bad behavior and provides promotion for desired behavior.
Mark,
Agree completely that investors should bear the full cost of their activities. However, the American tort system is totally out of control. If we are to have an insurance based scheme
such as I outline in https:/jackdevanney.substack.com/p/market-regulation-of-nuclear-power
it must be combined with a firm, automatic compensation scheme for radiation harm based on the individual's dose rate profile and nothing else.
The Feds should set up such a compensation scheme, and then disappear. The underwriters will keep the plants honest.
I would imagine the Venn diagram of pro-nuclear power advocates and the pricing of carbon and freshwater is small. Maybe education of the public could help. One of my favorite authors is Michael Lewis. My favorite takeaway is that if you were to focus on the one single thing the human brain is VERY BAD at -- quantifying risk. A primitive lizard wanting to survive till its next meal. Whether radiation or chemical toxicity, so much of our basis for setting toxicity levels are rooted in the atomic bombings at Hiroshima, the seized results of medical experiments by Nazis and Imperial Japan and the use of gas in WW1 by all parties. The nuclear power industry lacked the lobbying might of the chemical industry. This is why Americans can still walk into a superstore and buy a gallon of bleach. We are VERY POOR at quantifying risk.
Here is a funny anecdote. One of the many utilities I serviced has a nuclear plant that was located <15 miles from a large coal station. During the summer time, when prevailing winds were right, the open coal pile (the largest radiation source in the state) would set off the area radiation monitors at the nuclear plant. If we wished to end the use of coal power all we would have to do is mandate and install the SAME types of monitoring systems required at light water reactors and set off an emergency alarm at nearly every coal mine and coal power station in the nation all of the time!!! A couple weeks of the alarms and the public would rise up and say leave the coal in the ground (and cover it up). As you know, the act of pulling coal out of the earth exposes everyone to radiation at a measurable level. I would guess each time the train car cover becomes loose, the same condition applies :)
I am actually a bit dubious about the very low death rates for solar and wind in the chart. Both require massive primary production of raw materials - not just concrete and steel, but mining of rare earths, cobalt, and other specialty materials for the solar cells and for the magnets in the generators, most of which come from China with dismal environmental and safety standards where fatalities are disappeared faster than papers contradicting the global warming narraitve. Plus, solar keeps on being installed on rooftops and wind turbines are tall. Falls kill quite a few people annually, and there is maintenance as well as the initial installation.