Nuclear Energy and Politics:

It's Complicated

For years, the mantra has been that the Republicans are in favor of nuclear energy and the Democrats are against it, so if you're a nuke, "Republicans good, Dems bad."  I have always felt the truth was not so simple.  A recent article in the New York Times reinforces my viewpoint.  Even more interestingly, the author, Eduardo Porter looks at the issue from the point of view of climate change concerns.  But his conclusion is the same.  Basically, the political parties focus often focus on other issues, and things like nuclear power and climate change end up being "collateral damage."

The article notes that the liberal viewpoint criticizes conservatives for "climate change denial."  But, he notes that the liberals have their own biases that perhaps raise equal challenges for climate change measures being proposed.  Namely, many liberals are "anti-nuclear" and perhaps "anti-fracking" as well. 

Likewise, it has been my observation over the years that many advocates of nuclear power are also "fiscal conservatives" and therefore, are traditional against appropriating Federal funding for technological development.  Thus, in years when we've had a pro-nuclear Administration and/or Congress, the budgetary treatment of nuclear development has not necessarily been generous.

All of these observations are, of course, generalizations.  I personally know many people from both of the political parties whose views do not match the stereotypes I've noted above.  Hence, my liberal use of quotation marks.  My point is really that these issues are all complicated and have many factors.  People have biases and blind spots that sometimes cause them to end up undermining a cause they profess to support.

Unfortunately, the diagnosis is easier than the cure.  It seems to be difficult to get people to change preconceived biases, or to abandon positions they previously espoused.  And yet, people do change, and many of us probably know people whose views have shifted over the years--possibly in both directions.  I am hopeful that, over time, people will learn to understand better how their views on one issue may sometimes undermine their interests on another issue, and may moderate their positions accordingly.

In the meantime, I think those of us who feel that liberal equals anti-nuclear and conservative equals pro-nuclear should look closely at our own biases about the two ends of the political spectrum.

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Renewable Energy and Reality:

Growing Recognition of the Limits and Drawbacks

Although this is supposed to be a blog about nuclear energy, I keep finding myself drawn to discussing the world in which nuclear energy operates, including the pros and cons of alternative energy sources.  As readers of this blog know, I have long been concerned that most of the public seems to believe that there are easy solutions to our energy problems.  That the intermittency problems of "new" technologies such as renewables can be solved quickly, reliably and economically.  That these technologies are more "natural" and cleaner and greener. 

In other words, the "paper reactors" of Admiral Rickover's day have been replaced in people's minds by "paper solar power plants" and "paper wind farms."

I was therefore very pleased to find a couple of articles that raise some specific points that reinforce the arguments I have been trying to make.  While I may not agree with the authors in every respect, I do agree with some major points they make.  Since most of the press seems to focus on the issues associated with fossil and nuclear power, I hope that highlighting articles such as these will help balance the dialogue.   

The first article I want to discuss is an interview with Ozzie Zehner, the author of a new book called  "Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism."  The article starts by pointing out what I said above--that many people believe that the answer to climate change (as well as to other downsides of current fossil fuel energy sources) is to shift from fossil fuels to "clean, green, renewable, alternative energy." The problem with such a solution, the article goes on to say, is that things are never as simple as they seem, and that "there's actually no such thing as a free lunch" when it comes to energy consumption and production. Further, what we're often told is "green" and "clean" is actually neither.

While I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, Zehner's description is clearly very much along the lines of my own thinking.  He says that this book  "...isn't a book for alternative energy. Neither is it a book against it. In fact, we won’t be talking in simplistic terms of for or against, left and right, good and evil ... Ultimately, this is a book of shades." 

In answer to a question about whether we can move from fossil fuels to solar and wind energy, Zehner says:

There is an impression that we have a choice between fossil fuels and clean energy technologies such as solar cells and wind turbines. That choice is an illusion. Alternative energy technologies rely on fossil fuels through every stage of their life. Alternative energy technologies rely on fossil fuels for mining operations, fabrication plants, installation, ongoing maintenance and decommissioning. Also, due to the irregular output of wind and solar, these technologies require fossil fuel plants to be running alongside them at all times.

Zehner goes on to say that every energy generation method has side effects and limitations.  He mentions several, but I will highlight one:

Finally, we have to consider the mining, health, pollution and waste problems of renewable technologies. For example, we are now learning that the solar cell industry is one of the fastest growing emitters of virulent greenhouse gases such as sulfur hexafluoride, which has a global warming potential 23,000 times higher than CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

This, coupled with the fact that solar power usually relies on fossil fuel backup, makes it unlikely that converting to solar power will really solve climate change. 

I can't subscribe to everything that Zehner says.  In particular, he sees the only solution as being to "bring the population down over time as we also reduce per-capita consumption."  While I can see improvements in energy efficiency, even possibly substantial ones, it is harder to see how we will achieve enough through efficiency alone, and achieving the kinds of reductions in population that he seems to think are necessary is far easier said than done.  I am more optimistic that a spectrum of advanced energy technologies (including improvements in efficiency) can meet the world's energy needs.

Although that is an important point to Zehner, I think we can disagree on that but still agree that every generation method has both pros and cons.  Zehner has provided a service by bringing greater attention to the challenges we will have to face as the use of renewable technologies grows.

The articles on Zehner's book brought my attention to a two-year-old op ed by Paul Krugman on "renewable energy's not-so-bright side."  Krugman takes issue with some reports that came out two years ago that claimed that "we can have a fully renewable-based, nuclear-free economy by 2050."  And, "What’s more, the world wouldn’t have to pay that much more for energy than it does today."

Krugman points to his personal experience, early in his career, where cost projections for energy proved wildly wrong.  "They were much too optimistic about the costs of alternative energy sources, especially alternatives to oil. Basically, the engineers were understating the difficulties involved. Later, economist Marty Weitzman would formulate a law: the cost of alternatives to crude oil is 40 percent above the current price — whatever the current price is."

Krugman implicitly acknowledges that this formula may also be too simplistic, saying that, "To be fair, we probably have much more solid ideas about the costs of wind and solar power than we did about shale oil and coal liquefaction back in 1973: wind is already a widely used technology, and concentrated solar power is pretty well understood, too."

Nevertheless, he concludes, "But there will be surprises, not all of them positive."

This is a caution we all need to keep in mind, whether we are making projections about renewable technologies, advanced nuclear technologies, or new carbon-capture technologies for coal plants. 

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Climate Change or Global Warming

Does the Term Make a Difference?

I recently attended the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), held this year in San Diego last week. There were a number of interesting sessions at that meeting, and I may use some of them as a launching point for later discussions, but I had one personal conversation with Lew Branscomb that I thought might be of particular interest while the Northeast is still being pounded by snowstorm after snowstorm this season.

Lew, as many will recall, had a distinguished career that included several presidential appointments, as well as high-level positions in industry and academia. While he is a physicist, and not a climatologist, the breadth of his career accomplishments certainly made me sit up and listen when he started talking about climate change and global warming.

He bemoaned the fact that the phrase "global warming" has taken root so strongly in our vocabulary. It leads, he feels, to a natural tendency to dismiss the science every time we have a regional cold spell--or greater than average snowfalls. I must confess, I have personally been guilty, on occasion, of saying things like "Where is global warming when you need it?" whenever we get some really wintery weather. I say it jokingly, of course, because I am aware that the variability of weather patterns means that we can have a warming trend, but still have cold and snowy days, but I can guess that some may take a snowfall as a signal that global warming is a hoax.

He feels the right terminology is "climate change," not global warming, and the snow, he believes, is added proof that climate change is, indeed, very real. He points out that climate models predict that one change in the climate will be more moisture in the air. The temperatures in the Washington, DC area (we were focusing on this area in the conversation) have been pretty typical winter temperatures, he noted. I have not had a chance to check this, but indeed, the temperatures haven't been exceptionally low this winter. What has brought us such severe snowstorms, he notes, is the very fact that there is more moisture in the air.

Of course, we all know that weather and climate are very complex phenomena, and I don't think he intended to extrapolate too much from the data point of one snowy winter. However, his point is well taken that we need to look at more than temperatures, and his suggestion that the term "climate change" is better than the term "global warming" is well taken. I'm not sure I'll purge it entirely from my vocabulary, but I'll be a bit more careful from now on. And I may not be able to resist completely the occasional urge to ask what happened to global warming when I need it, but I may be more careful about my audience when I do use the joke.

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Nuclear Politics:

Nuclear Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows

Politics has always spawned unlikely alliances, but the nuclear provisions of the current energy legislation seem more than ever to be making that old saw about politics making strange bedfellow seem very true. A recent New York Times article on the legislation points to some of the marriages being forged in the language of the bill. Advocates of nuclear loan guarantees are aligning with cap-and-trade supporters to each get what they want. On the state level, too, the prospects of jobs and tax revenues have some governors taking a fresh interest in having new nuclear plants built within their boundaries.

These things present an opportunity for the nuclear industry--while they are hot. The concern here is that some of these opportunities are fleeting. Even as some are forging deals that include would increase the loan guarantees in the current legislation, others are lining up to try to fight these provisions. Others warn that the energy legislation may be a possible victim of the acrimonious health care debate, and that the compromises needed to get the bill passed are going to be too hard for some to swallow.

Clearly, even though the eventual outcome isn't clear--and may turn on unrelated things entirely, those in the nuclear community needs to make their voices heard on the issues in the energy bill while it is still an active issue.

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Copenhagen Climate Change Conference:

What is the Real Issue?

Recent revelations about the alleged fabrication of data on global warming have raised high-profile objections to US participation in the Copenhagen climate change conference.

This would be an unfortunate reaction on many levels.

Of course, the recent discoveries of possible fraud are disappointing and we need to understand what the facts really are. However, the discussions do not need to stop while the incident is being probed. While the initial trigger for the Copenhagen conference was the growing concern worldwide about global warming, global warming is only one reason that we should be engaged in an international dialogue on energy and environment.

Therefore, the US position should be driven by the bigger picture rather than by this news. Here are some of the key reasons:

1. Global warming can't be ruled out

I'm not a climatologist. Then again, neither are most of the people who are denying the reality of global warming. So we're on equal ground. While I can't claim I fully understand all the climate models, I understand that the global environment is incredibly complex. It is therefore difficult to extrapolate long-term global trends from a few years of data or data from a small part of the globe. What is compelling to me is not any single study or model or set of data, but the fact that, in recent years, I have seen a lot of different kinds of data that suggest that there are already effects warming trends occurring--Arctic ice melting, changes in insect and animal populations, etc.

Are there other interpretations of the data I have seen? Possibly, but global warming can't be ruled out as one possibility. Do the changes prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the changes are the result of anthropomorphic carbon emissions? Probably not, but anthropomorphic effects are a plausible contributor. If the changes are natural, will reducing man-made carbon emissions make any difference at all? It can't be proven, but since we do know that carbon dioxide has an atmospheric warming effect, it is possible that it might help.

2. Carbon emissions today may be only the tip of the iceberg

The stark reality is that, whether you are measuring carbon emissions or energy use, the largest contribution today comes from a small portion of the world's population. This has been the situation for a number of years because the countries that lacked energy largely lacked money as well, and therefore, couldn't buy or produce more energy.

However, this situation is on the verge of changing rapidly. Two very populous countries, China and India, are becoming economic powerhouses and are now beginning to increase their energy use. China has already surpassed the United States as the world's biggest carbon emitter. Yet, they still use only a fraction of the energy per capita that we do. Therefore, their energy use--and carbon emissions--are likely to increase a lot more. A large fraction of India's population still has no access at all to electricity. Therefore, the potential increase in energy use in India is staggering. There is still further potential for increased demand from other parts of the world, particularly Africa. These may develop more slowly, because most other less-developed countries do not yet have the economic clout that China and India now have, but the potential is surely there.

Therefore, I have to wonder: Even if we believe that current levels of carbon emissions have little or no effect, are we sure that several times the current levels of emissions will still have no effect?

3. Costs are going to increase anyway

One of the main objections to taking measures to reduce global warming is that such measures will increase the cost of energy and that the increased cost will have an effect on our economy. I again risk straying into a field outside my own--this time, economics--but it seems very clear that the increased demand in China, India and perhaps elsewhere is already beginning to create pressures on the supply of energy (and other) resources.

Couple to this the fact that much of the world's oil comes from a politically unstable part of the world, and that countries controlling scarce resources have been known to use threats to the supply as a weapon. The increased demand for these resources, and the expectation of dwindling supplies of oil and gas, could make it easier for such countries to invoke threats of embargoes in the future.

What does this mean for Copenhagen?

In my view, all of this means that the Copenhagen conference is about much more than stemming global warming. It is at least as much about finding ways to address the growing demand for energy around the world. It is about the recognition that our energy use has consequences, and that a coordinated international plan can help meet the needs and manage the consequences.

Does this mean that we may have to make commitments at Copenhagen that will increase the costs of energy for us in the future? Possibly, but the increase in cost may, in the long run, be less than the price we will pay for business as usual.

Therefore, I think it behooves us to engage in this discussion thinking not only of the global warming issue, but also of the issue of how the world is going to be fueled in the decades ahead, and the role of the developed countries in shaping the energy future. Global warming should be one consideration in the decision process, but so should adequacy and diversity of supply, sustainability, and a variety of other considerations. All options should be on the table, including carbon sequestration and new transportation fuels, renewables and nuclear energy, conservation and efficiency. All countries should participate, each according to its history, its economy and its current energy use.

Footnote: This post was originally published earlier in the Copenhagen conference. I edited it slightly a day or two later and mistakenly, did not republish it. Unfortunately, it may be a little dated now, but I hope it is still useful. I apologize for any inconvenience.

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