For the misguided reasons you have often set forth, people in the West, especially activists, are frightened of nuclear. These activists persuade politicians to wrap nuclear in so much oppressive regulation that it becomes impossible to build. No nostalgia for the c19 market will change this. Only counter-arguments and, the joker, the ever more obvious failure of renewables will eventually set us back on the path of sanity. Too late for me, I expect!
Politicians depend on votes - and dollars for solar, wind and batteries buy more votes than nuclear. Nuclear is opposed because fewer have found ways to profit from it. It requires expert knowledge and manufacturing experience and gigantic amounts of capital that are in the hands of relatively few.
Jack - I agree with this POV. Free market democracies have substantial advantages that get lost when governments try to make decisions with chosen favorites.
It’s why my appreciation of the IRA clean electricity credits continues to grow. They’re available to all comers that can meet objective standard until a stated emissions goal is achieved.
Voluntary REC's are about the weakest market signal imaginable. Every study that I have seen indicates they have had at most marginal impact on wind.solar investment. And for nuclear they do nothing to solve the elephant in teh room, omnipotent, perversely incentivized regulation. The only hope is to clean house: subsidies, mandates, the NRC, the DOE, and toss the REC's with them.
The Clean Electricity tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act are completely different. They are modeled after the PTC/ITC programs that have played a significant role in helping wind and solar industries to scale and improve through repetition.
And yes, we ALSO need to address the burden imposed by regulatory processes and the absurd ALARA construct.
My bad, So it's just another subsidy, and the worst kind at that. An in your face transfer from the poor to the rich. Not exactly the market based solution I had in mind.
Tend to agree until they have their first release. Be very interesting to see what happens then, but the CCP shut everything down for a year or so after Fukushima.
It is far more fundamental than that. Only freedom, of all kinds, can fix all the problems that ever face us. Free markets are only one element of that. When the human mind isn't free to decide for itself it can't explore the richness of reality to find the best ways to improve our living in it. This is why every dictatorial country has been an abysmal failure, and why all government organizations are far less efficient than similar businesses that are free to follow whatever improves them, e.g. the post office vs. UPS or FedEx to name one of many such examples. Let scientists, engineers and businessmen be free to pursue the best options for energy and there will be an explosion of cheap, abundant energy for all purposes, including even climate change, if it really is a problem.
Free markets are inherently unstable. People get euphoric in a boom, buy more and more until there is a bust, then panic and sell when prices go down. We engineers recognize this as positive feedback. The amplifier breaks into oscillation, rail-to-rail, and the negative rail is death and destruction. The response of governments is to regulate the markets (limit their freedom). We still haven't figured out how to do this intelligently. The only tools we have are deficit spending and interest rates. Deficit spending goes only one way. Interest rates can go up and down, but they have a delay in their impact on the economy, which can actually increase positive feedback in a rapidly changing free market. Raise the rates too quickly, and it might trigger a crash.
What we need is a regulatory agency that has authority to apply a "deficit reduction tax" at the right moment, just as the economy is starting to overheat. How we isolate that agency from stupid, greedy and corrupt politicians, I don't know.
We are getting off track. I know I started this derailment, but comments that are not specific to teh role of nuclear power in solving the Gordian Knot shall be expunged. Take your political philosophizing elsewhere, These two comments will disappear shortly.
Democracies are vulnerable to the irrational trends of the uneducated masses (like this anti-nuclear nonsense), even more now that we have social media replacing professional journalism. We accept this because we value our freedom. Sometimes I wish we could have an intelligence test for voting.
Since we can't do that, and we must have a regulatory agency, how do we isolate that agency from the stupidity and gullibility of the masses? Should regulators have tenure, like college professors? Can the right person at the head of the NRC make significant changes? Are we starting to see any progress?
For the misguided reasons you have often set forth, people in the West, especially activists, are frightened of nuclear. These activists persuade politicians to wrap nuclear in so much oppressive regulation that it becomes impossible to build. No nostalgia for the c19 market will change this. Only counter-arguments and, the joker, the ever more obvious failure of renewables will eventually set us back on the path of sanity. Too late for me, I expect!
Politicians depend on votes - and dollars for solar, wind and batteries buy more votes than nuclear. Nuclear is opposed because fewer have found ways to profit from it. It requires expert knowledge and manufacturing experience and gigantic amounts of capital that are in the hands of relatively few.
Jack - I agree with this POV. Free market democracies have substantial advantages that get lost when governments try to make decisions with chosen favorites.
It’s why my appreciation of the IRA clean electricity credits continues to grow. They’re available to all comers that can meet objective standard until a stated emissions goal is achieved.
Rod,
Voluntary REC's are about the weakest market signal imaginable. Every study that I have seen indicates they have had at most marginal impact on wind.solar investment. And for nuclear they do nothing to solve the elephant in teh room, omnipotent, perversely incentivized regulation. The only hope is to clean house: subsidies, mandates, the NRC, the DOE, and toss the REC's with them.
Jack - I wasn’t referring to RECs.
The Clean Electricity tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act are completely different. They are modeled after the PTC/ITC programs that have played a significant role in helping wind and solar industries to scale and improve through repetition.
And yes, we ALSO need to address the burden imposed by regulatory processes and the absurd ALARA construct.
My bad, So it's just another subsidy, and the worst kind at that. An in your face transfer from the poor to the rich. Not exactly the market based solution I had in mind.
Wait and see. I predict within 2 years China will quadruple their investment and goals for Nuclear
Dan,
Tend to agree until they have their first release. Be very interesting to see what happens then, but the CCP shut everything down for a year or so after Fukushima.
It is far more fundamental than that. Only freedom, of all kinds, can fix all the problems that ever face us. Free markets are only one element of that. When the human mind isn't free to decide for itself it can't explore the richness of reality to find the best ways to improve our living in it. This is why every dictatorial country has been an abysmal failure, and why all government organizations are far less efficient than similar businesses that are free to follow whatever improves them, e.g. the post office vs. UPS or FedEx to name one of many such examples. Let scientists, engineers and businessmen be free to pursue the best options for energy and there will be an explosion of cheap, abundant energy for all purposes, including even climate change, if it really is a problem.
Free markets are inherently unstable. People get euphoric in a boom, buy more and more until there is a bust, then panic and sell when prices go down. We engineers recognize this as positive feedback. The amplifier breaks into oscillation, rail-to-rail, and the negative rail is death and destruction. The response of governments is to regulate the markets (limit their freedom). We still haven't figured out how to do this intelligently. The only tools we have are deficit spending and interest rates. Deficit spending goes only one way. Interest rates can go up and down, but they have a delay in their impact on the economy, which can actually increase positive feedback in a rapidly changing free market. Raise the rates too quickly, and it might trigger a crash.
What we need is a regulatory agency that has authority to apply a "deficit reduction tax" at the right moment, just as the economy is starting to overheat. How we isolate that agency from stupid, greedy and corrupt politicians, I don't know.
Guys,
We are getting off track. I know I started this derailment, but comments that are not specific to teh role of nuclear power in solving the Gordian Knot shall be expunged. Take your political philosophizing elsewhere, These two comments will disappear shortly.
I agree. Let's delete this whole subthread. I'll try to keep my comments better focused on nuclear.
Democracies are vulnerable to the irrational trends of the uneducated masses (like this anti-nuclear nonsense), even more now that we have social media replacing professional journalism. We accept this because we value our freedom. Sometimes I wish we could have an intelligence test for voting.
Since we can't do that, and we must have a regulatory agency, how do we isolate that agency from the stupidity and gullibility of the masses? Should regulators have tenure, like college professors? Can the right person at the head of the NRC make significant changes? Are we starting to see any progress?