Fantasy Energy
Posted by Shannon Love on August 28th, 2008 (All posts by Shannon Love)
Megan McArdle [h/t Instapundit] writes:
There’s a lot of optimism on both the center-left and the right that all we really need to do to tackle the problem of global warming/peak oil is throw a hell of a lot of money at the problem, and presto!…Yes, we found petroleum to replace whale oil. This does not therefore mean, as night follows day, that we will find something to replace petroleum. We will find something to replace petroleum if there is something that can replace petroleum. There might not be.
Well, actually, there is always a new source of energy to replace any old energy source. It just might not be the energy source we fantasize about.
Energy begets energy. Technological history has been one of using one source of energy to bootstrap the production of new and more powerful forms of energy. We started with wood, which we used to capture energy from wind and water. Then we used wood, wind and water to capture energy from coal and whale oil. Then we used wood, wind, water, whale oil and coal to capture energy from petroleum. We used coal and petroleum to start to capture energy from nuclear power. The more energy you use, the more energy you can harvest from the universe.
So why do we find ourselves running out of energy? Because we chose to.
Although the universe is stuffed with energy, with any given technology, we can only harvest energy from certain sources. Thomas Jefferson could not have made a photovoltaic power source and Caesar could not have mined coal from hundreds of meters below the ground. We have to exploit the energy sources that we can reach with the tools we have.
Our political classes, especially on the left, have forgotten, or never learned, this hard fact of life. Instead, they’ve looked over the history of our technological achievement and concluded that we can simply create any energy source we wish to. They created a set of parameters for a desired energy source that depends not on technology and science but rather on emotional social and political factors.
Technologists have been handed a list of requirements that not even Santa Claus could fulfill. In no particular order, the fantasy power source must: have no environmental side-effects, be decentralized, produce power in all locations and all environmental conditions, produce enough power to replace all carbon-emitting, hydroelectric and nuclear power. Oh, and they want it tomorrow, before the ice caps melt and kill us all!
In essence, we’ve gone about energy policy backwards. Instead of taking stock of our technology and seeing what energy we can harvest with it, we’ve decide what kind of energy source we want and then, not unlike king Canute, tried to order the creation of a technology without regard to limitations. It’s as if we took a notion that all cell phones should be made of turnips and then blocked all manufacture of non-turnip cell phones while showering money on people trying to figure out how to give a turnip a ringtone.
We need to grow up and accept reality. We’ve exhausted the limits of chemical energy. Using biomass, solar and wind power represents a reversion to older and weaker sources of power. Instead, we need to follow the natural progression of technology and use nuclear energy. With our current and near-future technology, only nuclear power can give us the amount of energy we need, where and when we need it.
I think it important to emphasize that we would need to move to nuclear energy even if we had an infinite supply of fossil fuels and an infinite carbon dioxide sink. Fossil fuels just don’t have the energy density we will need moving into the future. We can no more power the 21st Century with fossil fuels than we could have powered the 20th Century using nothing but wood. Only nuclear power provides energy in sufficient density to power the future.
We should always remember that we can perish by failing to grasp the technological options available to us. The history of technology is littered with examples of societies that suppressed useful new technology for political or social reasons. We can’t repeat those mistakes and survive.
We need to use the technology we have to harvest the energy we can instead of holding our breath and stomping our feet until the technology fairy brings us what we want.
[Addendum: McArdle links to this excellent post that discusses why we won't pull a super battery out our hat anytime soon, if ever. That post links to this table showing the energy densities of various technologies. Nuclear power has a density of 1,500,000,000 megajoules per liter. The very best non-nuclear power source, liquid hydrogen, has a density of only 143 megajoules per liter. The very best batteries available have a lower power density than wood. Starting at the bottom of the chart you can see the bootstrap of energy technology as each technology creates an even denser technology in turn.]
August 28th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Nuclear energy is only of limited use for transportation, though, except via the medium of batteries or battery-like devices. You can power some substantial portion of the rail network via electricity, and maybe you could bring back buses powered from overhead wires, but cars & trucks are another matter.
August 28th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
David Foster,
Nuclear energy is only of limited use for transportation…
You can use nuclear energy to produce virtually any liquid fuel you wish. Some guys at Los Alamos came up with a scheme to use nuclear energy to make liquid fuel of CO2 and water vapor in the air.
Once you’ve got great gobs of concentrated energy, you can convert it to chemical energy at your leisure.
August 28th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Nuclear is the only option for ever moving to a hydrogen powered transportation sector without significant carbon footprint. Hydrogen is not a fuel (since it doesn’t exist in nature) but it is a good means of energy transfer. So, it’s batteries and/or hydrogen for powering the transporation sector using nuclear.
August 28th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Actually, the nuclear reactor suitable for serving transportation markets breaks ground in 2009. The pebble reactor being built in South Africa will be able to produce hydrogen which in turn can be used to turn coal into liquid hydrocarbons like gasoline or diesel without an increase in CO2 emissions over conventional petroleum. Hydrogen will also be invaluable in refining kerogen from oil shale and heavy oils and tars into liquids usable in conventional internal combustion engines.
Yes, we could use CO2 from the air but it will be cheaper to start with coal.
August 28th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Even energy produced from nuclear power has a cost associated with it. Before getting too excited about liquid fuel or hydrogen from nuclear, I’d want to see some cost estimates.
August 28th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
David Foster,
Nuclear power densities dwarf that of hydrocarbons. If we get serious about nuclear power the unit cost will drop significantly. At that point well have electricity or heat enough to pretty much crank out anything we want.
August 28th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Volume incrases will of course drive unit costs down, and I hope we get the opportunity to see how much. But there are factors that will constrain how low they can go–steam turbines and generators, for example, don’t cost any less if they are used in a nuclear plant instead of a conventional plant.
France is getting something like 80% of its electricity from nuclear and, while it’s not as big as the U.S., it’s still big enough that its experience should be a useful guide to the cost of nuclear energy with significant scale–if subsidies could be disentanled.
August 29th, 2008 at 8:25 am
I agree with the last comment. Not only does France get much of its energy via nuclear, it is able to recycle waste…the problem,for the lads and lassies here? Nuclear has been safe because under govt supervision rather than private industry. Can you live with that?
If most of our energy comes via nuclear, then gas for cars becomes much less a problem, and besides, electric cars soon to be a reality, as well as the hybrids…but oil products needed for plastic etc too.
August 29th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Fred…I thought I explained this before. France’s nuclear companies–both manufacturing and operations–are not pure government organizations. They are publicly traded corporations with majority government ownership but also with private shareholders.
Regarding the general principle–do you honestly think that airline travel would be safer if the FAA/NTSB *actually ran airlines* rather than being limited to a regulatory role?
August 29th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Magic Power
They Could Do The Magic If They Wanted To?
A friend in college told me about his mother and what she knew about electricity. She regarded electricity as a type of magic and was resentful that she had to pay for it. She thought that it ran everywhere through the walls of the house. The reason that there were wall sockets was so the plugs on appliances would not damage the walls when plugged in. Otherwise, you could jam the plug anywhere and get the electricity. The plugs were designed so you could be charged for electricity when you used them. She was a good person, but didn’t understand physics.
(Continued at Easy Opinions: Magic Power)
August 29th, 2008 at 11:30 am
For more information on synthetic fuels from atmospheric CO2, google “Green Freedom.” The authors estimate they could sell gasoline at the pump for $4.60 per gallon. With easily-achieved efficiency improvements the cost could be reduced.
August 29th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Fred Lapides,
Not only does France get much of its energy via nuclear, it is able to recycle waste…the problem,for the lads and lassies here?
And we could do the same if you and leftist buddies would let us.
Nuclear has been safe because under govt supervision rather than private industry. Can you live with that?
Guess I will have to because it is illegal for private companies to build a reactor and it is illegal for private companies run an electrical grid. The U.S. government legal owns are nuclear fuels.
We’ve talked before about your strange delusion that somehow nuclear power in the U.S. is some kind of libertarian paradise. I think that we could create real world private mechanism to assure the safe operation of nuclear power plants but realistically I do not see that happening anytime soon.
Pragmatically, I am more than welling to tolerate the current system as long as we get power. Please talk to your lefty friends and educate them about how great Frances nuclear power system is and how great it would be if we would emulate it.
August 29th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Andrew Garland,
Thanks for the links.
In “Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” , Robert Persig tells the story of going to fix a flickering light in the office of humanities professor. The professor tells him that the fault must be near the switch because it happens right after he turns on the light!
In college, I bemoaned to my spouse the lack of scientific education in humanities. When spouse claimed I exaggerated, I walked to the light switch, flipped it on and off and then said, “Look, maaaagic!”
I still catch hell for that one.
August 29th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Great story from Persig.
Instapundit has a link today on geothermal via very deep drilling, apparently feasible in a lot more places than traditional geothermal.
Strikes me that all likely energy production solutions are VERY capital intensive–nuclear, geothermal, coal-to-liquids, etc. So are conservation solutions, especially railroads. (An exception on the production side: peaking turbines, but they are inefficient compared to larger & more capital-intensive plants.) Demand for capital on this scale seems likely to lead to increases in the real interest rate.
August 29th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
I hear from people like David Walters, and I believe, that there is nothing particularly left-wing about opposing nuclear energy.
What the left likes about this opposition, I think, is that it to the degree it is successful, protects government income. At $0.04 billion per electrical gigawatt-year, uranium replaces natural gas that would cost, IIRC, $0.5 billion per electrical gigawatt-year. That includes royalties that probably exceed the whole uranium bill.
From a career civil servant’s, or a career government cheque-casher of any stripe’s, point of view, this is a major failure to tax. The subsidies they assert nuclear energy receives, even if they existed, would be small in comparison.
— G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan ’til ~1996
August 29th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I think most of the major players–including both candidates–recognize that nuclear has to be part of the solution. But beyond storage problems, we need to recognize that we will need to throw a lot of capital at nuclear: big startup costs, an almost dead domestic industry, and government research into breeder and other technologies is far behind that of the French and the Japanese. We’re about to shut down our only breeder reactor for lack of a relatively small amount of operating funds. Moreover, it will take a lot of work to get adequate fuel in a way that isn’t carbon intensive or doesn’t release lots of carbon through mining, so….
August 30th, 2008 at 4:04 am
Though people who claim to be on the political left have been vocal opponents of nuclear power, I strongly suspect that the power of the anti-nuclear movement did not come from sign carrying, tie died, hippies. Despite all claims to the contrary, I also suspect that it did not come from Ralph Nader and his minions.
I suspect that much of the opposition to nuclear power development has come from fossil fuel related capitalists who desire to protect their wealth and power.
Our addiction to oil, coal and gas is a source of great joy to the people that find, extract, sell, finance and transport those products. The perception of energy scarcity is an exceedingly important part of the profitability of the entire enterprise - if there was no scarcity, the prices would naturally approach the production cost for the lowest cost source needed to meet all market demand.
No one should fail to notice that the fossil fuel market is rather large and profitable - ExxonMobil, a company with less than a 5% fossil fuel market share had revenues last year exceeding $330 billion. That level of revenue is larger than most entire industries.
If there was a cheap source of almost unlimited quantities of power that needed no emissions control systems, was easy to move from one side of the world to the other, and was able to be operated by mere mortals, there would be a tremendous change in the world’s political and economic power structure. Conservatives that are part of that power structure are the ones that are most likely to recognize the threat and most likely to use all possible means of keeping the energy market in a balance that favors their own interests.
BTW - do you really think that the oil enriched oligarchs in Russia are really leftists in the sense of desiring a more equal distribution of wealth and a concern for the common man?
August 30th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Rod Adams,
I suspect that much of the opposition to nuclear power development has come from fossil fuel related capitalists who desire to protect their wealth and power.
I suppose that somewhere behind the sciences some evil coal baron of natural gas excutive was slipping the anti-nuke crowd some money. I’m sure that people who sell natural gas and natural gas turbines etc would not be adverse to gaming the politics to sell their goods.
I don’t think they had much effect for two reasons: (1) The people who took the public actions of writing, speaking, protesting, filing lawsuits etc where almost all Leftist. Someone might have slipped them some money but they chose to fight the fight for their own ideological reasons. (2) All theories of conspiracy theories about evil energy companies wreck upon the reef of corporate opposition. Yes, the energy might make a lot of money from high energy prices (up to a point and then they lose money due to reduced consumption) but the corporations that use energy are hurt by it and would fight back. Since the number and power of corporations that use energy dwarfs that of the energy companies themselves, I find it unlikely that energy companies can manipulate markets or the government to any great extent without serious corporate opposition.
That’s one of the benefits of the free-market, built in checks-and-balances. Back in the “energy crisis” of the 70’s, oil companies stood to make big profits (if they lifted price controls and the windfall profits tax) but the automotive industry, which at that time employed IIRC 10% of the US work force and was much larger than the oil companies, was devastated by high energy prices. The same dynamic continues to this day.
If there was a cheap source of almost unlimited quantities of power that needed no emissions control systems, was easy to move from one side of the world to the other, and was able to be operated by mere mortals, there would be a tremendous change in the world’s political and economic power structure.
Not really, we transitioned from coal to petroleum without any great shake ups. You evince a very static model of business. You assume that people who invest in oil companies can do nothing else but invest in oil companies. In truth, we a technology grow obsolete, which happens all the time, The investors, management and workers just shift to something else. The people who own and run oil companies would be just as happy making money running nuclear power plants.
Conservatives that are part of that power structure are the ones that are most likely to recognize the threat and most likely to use all possible means of keeping the energy market in a balance that favors their own interests.
If that is true, why do large corporation ever fail? Why do technologies and the corporations that build them ever lose market share and eventually just evaporate? Again, in any resource shortage or technological change there are corporate winners and losers. They balance each other out in the long run.
Nuclear power was shut down in the U.S. right at the pinnacle of the “energy crisis” circa 1980. At that time every corporation who manufactured or transported anything worried intensely about having enough electricity and fuel both short-term and long-term. A lot of the rust-belt arose in part because high energy cost made factories uneconomical. Frankly, the idea that a tiny minority of corporations, the fossil fuel companies, somehow overwhelmed every other corporate interest in the country is just silly.
BTW - do you really think that the oil enriched oligarchs in Russia are really leftists in the sense of desiring a more equal distribution of wealth and a concern for the common man?
Well, Putin has describe the break up of the Soviet Union as the worst tragedy in human history. In any case, they had nothing to do with the shutdown of nuclear power in the U.S. back in the 70’s.
August 30th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
This is an interesting discussion. I would of thought that absolutely anything associated with the Chicago School of Economics would be the last place I’d post something to, but times change. I appeared as an endorser of Chuck DeVore’s pro-nuclear initiative in California last year. Anything is possible…
Nuclear energy tends to be sort of like the “socially isolated” issues like abortion, gun rights, and even anti-Iraq war issues. Usually you are for it or “again’ et’. Yet there is a serious cross over on the three above issues and noted persons and groups that one would not expect to take positions because they are associated with “right wing” or “left wing”.
As I’ve noted on other blogs, if you really take the worlds entire “left”, meaning everyone from the old social-democracies of Europe to the Stalinist-Maoist currents of Asia to the very mild “left governments” in places like Argentina, Brazil or Venezuela, you would find the majority of those on the left not opposed to nuclear energy but in fact for it, in some cases, very practically so.
So what Shannon notes is “true”, but like all things that are true, it’s relative from where one is standing looking at the issue as well as where one is standing: say, the US. In this case Shannon is factually correct as what passes for “left wing” in the United States (usually anyone to the left of the old moderate wing of the GOP) is considered “left”.
Unlike Shannon, I understand that every electrical generation/grid system in the world was built in large part by direct government intervention. It’s because private capital, in those days, could hardly come up with the money to satisfy the population. In those days, the the pre-and post-WWII era, for *private* utilities, this meant big cities with lots of easy to wire residences and industries. So it took a massive “anti-free enterprise” understanding on part of OTHER sectors of society, including a large wing of the capitalist class itself, to understand that the “market” wasn’t going to do squat to develop electrical energy.
The massive electrification that took place in the US at the height of the depression was a wholly owned enterprise of the New Deal, not Wall Street. The heart of social-conservatism, in a twist of fascinating historical irony, rests on the development of their heartland, the “bible belt”, of the grandest “socialist” experiments of US history, the TVA.
Every modern grid in Europe, be it German, France, Scandinavia or even the UK was essentially modernized, expanded and technologically brought “up to snuff”as the result of the massive socialization of the grid after WWII by workers fed up with the exact monopoly practices that people like T. Roosevelt and William J Bryant would rail about in the US 40 years previously.
One cannot explain, based on a simple “free market” analysis, why the increasingly centralized and somewhat neo-Stalinist gov’t of Putin and the rather oxymoronic Chinese Communist Party are the two countries in the world that are simply THE leaders in nuclear energy deployment and have increased their peoples use of electrical generation as well as their standard of living.
I only say this to point out that the complex social and political mix that gave rise to the nuclear power industry on a world basis would simply not exist without the full-on implementation of some very left wing governments.
In the US today the “left” as Shannon notes is opposed to nuclear energy. It is, however, hardly a typical “left” position. For example, the really loco “we want a decentralized, democratic, alternative, granola-burning” off-the-grid types that dominate a large section of the anti-nuclear movement are hardly “left” wing, more like liberal-libertarians. Traditional leftists would say, “no, MORE gov’t centralization, nationalize the energy monopolies, make energy public, not private”. Historically, even in the US, into the 1960s, every leftist worth the label (from Albert Einstein–a socialist–to the Communists, to the various cold-war liberals) was pro-nuclear. Even the anti-Vietnam war movement did not take a position on this, or, for that matter, even talk about it.
So the idea that the left opposes nuclear energy is basically a contemporary phenomenon that exists basically Western Europe and North America. Ergo, it’s not to much of a leap for a socialist and trade unionist like myself to be an advocate as a leftist, to support nuclear and unite with those who I believe want to see nuclear power deployed as the solution, or main solution, to our energy crisis, to our climate crisis, to our health crisis and to many other crises that effect humanity today. I’m hoping MORE and more of those on the left join this effort so we can see one day those waving the Scarlet Banner high criticizing the Right for not implementing nuclear power fast enough!
David Walters
left-atomics.
August 31st, 2008 at 12:47 am
David Walters,
Unlike Shannon, I understand that every electrical generation/grid system in the world was built in large part by direct government intervention.
I understand that. I was merely responding to Fred Lapidies constant and strange insistence that sometime in the past nuclear power was free market phenomenon. There does seem to be a general belief on the left that nuclear power is epitome of free-market capitalism run amok. I think they believe this due to an ideological reflex to associate anything they dislike with the free-market.
I understand that the modern electrical grid, like the telecommunication grid once was, is a socialist creation.
It’s because private capital, in those days, could hardly come up with the money to satisfy the population.
Many factors drove the socialization of the power grid. At the time people viewed vertical integration as the way to accomplish efficiencies of scale. They wanted the efficiencies of monopolies but wanted control over them. Big power companies wanted to absorb their smaller competitors. This happened. The biggest utilities became public utilities and bought out the smaller companies for pennies on the dollar. Big companies got their debt backed by the state. People who didn’t live in compact cities did not want to pay the full cost of delivering electricity to them and so they supported a system that force people in the city to subsidize them.
There’s really nothing to suggest that the free-market could not have delivered solutions. The solutions might have been much different than the present solutions. For example, farms might have purchased generators, windmills or used compressed air technology. We don’t really know because everyone chose to use coercive methods to get cheap electricity instead of relying a voluntary evolutionary system.
The heart of social-conservatism, in a twist of fascinating historical irony, rests on the development of their heartland, the “bible belt”, of the grandest “socialist” experiments of US history, the TVA.
The TVA was began as military project during WWI. The electricity from the damns was intended to power munitions plants. Prior to the 60’s, there was little separation between social conservatives and redistributions policies. The first socialist in America were the Grangeist who had a powerful presence in the south. Souther Populist have socialistic economic policies and the KKK has profoundly anti-capitalistic economic policies. The south was riven with such politics until the late-60s. Only then did the south reform and become a more free-market oriented region than the north (while the north went the other way, hence the rust-belt).
So the idea that the left opposes nuclear energy is basically a contemporary phenomenon that exists basically Western Europe and North America.
A sea change occurred during the 1960’s in the (developed world) left’s relationship to technology. Prior to that time, they had been all around technophiles who based their claim to power on the argument that they could deliver the nearly miraculous benefits. After that failed, they repositioned themselves as the protectors of the people guarding them from the evils of capitals technology. Environmentalism, the “all natural”, organic food, alternative medicine etc are part of this sea change. Nuclear power just got caught up in it.
Ergo, it’s not to much of a leap for a socialist and trade unionist like myself to be an advocate as a leftist, to support nuclear…
You’re an atavism.
I too hope that more leftist come around. Global warming will drive some but I am hopeful that others realize that lower income people can’t get good jobs in manufacturing if there is no cheap power or that when we reduce our material standard of living, the poor suffer most. Frankly, though, I simply do not think the average American leftist gives a damn about those things anymore.
The leftist of old who cared about people, thought big and saw a brighter and future ahead for humanity are small in number and a dying breed.
August 31st, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Shannon:
I think you might be underestimating the scale of the fossil fuel business and the timelines associated with historical changes. My comment about the importance of fossil fuel interests in the anti-nuclear movement does not deny that eventually better technology generally wins market battles. Those market battles, however, often take a very long time to resolve and carry some rather large stakes. When you are talking about a technological shift in an enterprise that has total annual revenue measured in the trillions of dollars (that is a million million) it might take decades for everything to play out.
Even delaying the inevitable by a few years is worth a few dollars and a few sneaky tactics that include spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt amongst that large portion of the population without the ability to really understand and without the inclination to really dig into what is going on.
As you noted, there are a lot more energy consumers in the world than energy producers, but I guarantee you that the producers know a lot more about the details of their business than the consumers do - even those consumers where energy is a fairly significant portion of their business. If that statement was not true, there is no way that we would be seeing huge corporations like GM, Ford, United Airlines, Delta, and many others at the brink of bankruptcy.
Specifically, you stated:
Not really, we transitioned from coal to petroleum without any great shake ups. You evince a very static model of business. You assume that people who invest in oil companies can do nothing else but invest in oil companies. In truth, we a technology grow obsolete, which happens all the time, The investors, management and workers just shift to something else. The people who own and run oil companies would be just as happy making money running nuclear power plants.
The transition from coal to petroleum only included part of the market - we burn far more coal today than we did in the 1900s-1940s when coal was a the major source of transportation energy in ocean shipping and railroads. Additionally, I think you would find that the people in West Virginia and Wales remember things a bit differently from your facile dismissal of their struggles. I assure you that there were some significant and bloody battles and some captains of industry that worked very hard to protect their capital investments.
My assertions were not about casual investors that can sell stock and move on.
They were about owners of resources and capital equipment that have real concerns about the value of those resources and equipment. If oil becomes less valuable because people realize there is plenty of energy in the world and even better alternatives available in the future, what do you think will happen to the market price of oil wells, pipelines, tankers, rail cars, drilling rigs, platforms, tank farms, etc.? All of those items are capital intensive and most carry large loan balances. Do you think that the owners would appreciate being “upside down” on those loans? How do you think that the financial people would feel?
What about those countries and regions whose prosperity is dependent upon natural resources? Certainly Saudi princes can invest their profits elsewhere, but what other business would have brought them the profits in the first place? I have had a bit of experience working with Saudis - as a general rule, their work ethic would not make them suitable for retraining in the nuclear power plant operation business.
Are you so certain that the Soviet Union had nothing to do with financing “leftists” in Europe and the US in the 1970s? What would have stopped Soviet spymasters from encouraging anti-nuclear activities knowing that oil and gas were their country’s primary sources of hard currency?
August 31st, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Shannon:
One more thing:
Nuclear power was shut down in the U.S. right at the pinnacle of the “energy crisis” circa 1980. At that time every corporation who manufactured or transported anything worried intensely about having enough electricity and fuel both short-term and long-term. A lot of the rust-belt arose in part because high energy cost made factories uneconomical. Frankly, the idea that a tiny minority of corporations, the fossil fuel companies, somehow overwhelmed every other corporate interest in the country is just silly.
A major part of the anti-nuclear movement’s success lay in driving up the cost of nuclear power through delays, additional requirements, and regulatory takings.
Most of the energy customers that you mentioned equated new nuclear power plants with increased electricity prices. It was not hard to convince them that the industry growth needed to be restrained, especially since they had been told that there was EXCESS capacity in the electricity grid that was costing them money. Remember, at that time nearly all of the utilities were local monopolies that sold electricity on the basis of cost plus fixed rate of return on capital investment.
The capitalists running the utilities and the vendors helped perpetuate the impression that nuclear power = expensive power through choices in the way that they ran their business.
August 31st, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Oil and gas provide more of the world’s energy than coal (~66% for oil and gas combined). And the transition was actually quite difficult. England transitioned to coal during the Industrial Revolution from the decline of wood. Petroleum was aided by the decline in whale oil from over-hunting of whales.
I wonder if part of nuclear’s problem is that it is not amenable to consumer devices (e.g., it is too expensive to put small reactors in cars or lawnmowers). We accept carcinogenic and explosive gasolene because we have personal experience with it and any substitutes would be immediately felt by the general public. My meager opinion ;-) is that nuclear will win out as the pressures from the growth in the global economy combine with rising extraction costs and the carbon issue (whatever one’s opinion, carbon will likley be regulated).
September 1st, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Rod Adams,
Firstly, we have to begin with the fact that not a single shred of evidence exist that the petroleum industry ever did anything whatsoever to disrupt nuclear power in the U.S. or anywhere else. The belief that they did so arises from nothing more than paranoia born of economic ignorance. My arguments where intended to show that the paranoia was unfounded.
Essentially, we’re having a discussion about the possible basis of a fictional phenomenon as if we were writing an alternative history novel.
I think you might be underestimating the scale of the fossil fuel business and the timelines associated with historical changes.
I doubt it. My family has worked in the oil business for four generations now holding positions from roughneck to executive. My father died in the oil field. I know something of which I speak.
…but I guarantee you that the producers know a lot more about the details of their business than the consumers do - even those consumers where energy is a fairly significant portion of their business. If that statement was not true, there is no way that we would be seeing huge corporations like GM, Ford, United Airlines, Delta, and many others at the brink of bankruptcy.
It just means that no one, producers or consumers, can make long term predictions about petroleum prices. Major energy consumers get bit because they have to plan years in advance. Oil producers likewise get burnt when the price of oil unexpectedly collapses. For reasons to complex to go into right now, oil markets exist in a constant state of boom and bust. Nobody can predict oil markets and no one can control them.
The transition from coal to petroleum only included part of the market…
There were no major conficts between coal and pertoleum because they were used for different technologies. Oils third major use (after health food and lubricant) was kerosene for lamps. Coal didn’t compete. Neither did compete with gasoline and diesel. The same dynamic applies with nuclear power. The U.S. has never used petroleum to generate electricity. Oil and nukes are not in direct economic competition so there is no need to evoke an unseen conspiracy.
What would have stopped Soviet spymasters from encouraging anti-nuclear activities knowing that oil and gas were their country’s primary sources of hard currency?
Again, oil and nukes not in competition. Coal and nukes are in competition but the same people who shutdown nukes also waged a war against coal. If the Soviets were behind it, their goal was to cripple our electricity output across the board.
To recap: (1) There is no direct evidence of any conspiracy or even uncoordinated aciton on the part of independent members of the oil and gas industry to shutdown nuclear power in the U.S. (2) The economic arguments about why such a conspiracy would act are not plausible enough to suppose a conspiracy without direct evidence.
The anti-nuclear movement in the U.S. was a leftist political phenomenon based on the belief they could eliminate nuclear weapons by eliminating all nuclear technology. It also dovetailed nicely with their anti-capitalist sentiments. Leftist politician learned they could gain power by claiming to protect people from the evils of this capitalist technology.
There is no reason to evoke any other actors.
September 1st, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Shannon,
“The same dynamic applies with nuclear power. The U.S. has never used petroleum to generate electricity. Oil and nukes are not in direct economic competition so there is no need to evoke an unseen conspiracy.”
That’s simply untrue. See table 8.4 of http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/aer.pdf .
In the 1978 4 quadrillion BTU of petroluem were used to produce electric power in the US. To put that in context; in that year 10 quads came from coal, 3 quads from nuclear, 3 quads from natural gas and 3 quads from hydro; 4 quads corresponds to 1.9 million barrels of crude oil per day.
September 1st, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Shannon:
Let’s have a civilized discussion that does not devolve into accusations of paranoia and ignorance. We know very little about each other. I do not think that any of my comments form the basis for such accusations. Your statement “not a single shred of evidence” is quite bold considering the complexity of the energy industry, the time span of the historical interaction and the number of players involved.
There is significant evidence that directly contradicts the following paragraph from your comment:
There were no major conficts between coal and pertoleum because they were used for different technologies. Oils third major use (after health food and lubricant) was kerosene for lamps. Coal didn’t compete. Neither did compete with gasoline and diesel. The same dynamic applies with nuclear power. The U.S. has never used petroleum to generate electricity. Oil and nukes are not in direct economic competition so there is no need to evoke an unseen conspiracy.
A significant area of market competition between coal and petroleum existed in ocean transportation, railroads, and even in power generation. Daniel Yergin’s well respected book about the oil industry, The Prize, for example, documents the importance of Winston Churchill’s decision to shift the British Navy from coal to oil. That decision was made for technical reasons, but it also caused great economic disruption in the Welch coal industry and in the coal industry in many other British colonies and former colonies. That is especially true since most of the other navies in the world followed and the commercial shipping companies were not far behind.
As you know, especially if your family has been in the “oil” business, companies that extract oil often also extract natural gas and natural gas liquids from the very same wells. Have you ever read about the marketing battles between “town gas” and “natural gas” for the street lighting market? Do you know that town gas was produced from mined coal?
In today’s electrical market, fully 20% of the power comes from burning natural gas. Big oil companies are big sellers of natural gas - ExxonMobil, for example, sells almost as much energy in the form of natural gas as it does oil - about 2 million BOE per day each.
You also asserted that the US has never used petroleum for power generation. That is simply not true. From 1972-1980, for example, the US was burning about 2-2.5 million barrels of oil per day in electrical power generation. If you want to see a simple graph of the contribution from petroleum over time, you might want to visit Energy Input Into US Electricity Production from Nuclear, Petroleum, and Gas 1954-2007. I wrote that article, but the graph is directly from data tables provided by the US Energy Information Agency.
Here is a recent (July 2008) quote from Amory Lovins, a well known environmentalist who has been fighting nuclear power since about 1970.
“You know, I’ve worked for major oil companies for about thirty-five years, and they understand how expensive it is to drill for oil.”
Bottom line - I am not theorizing about a conspiracy. I am simply pointing out that normal competition for some very lucrative markets makes it very likely that people interested in continued prosperity of the fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas) industry have played a role in activities designed to discourage the use of nuclear power.
If you are interested in learning more about my evidence and not just reacting in a reflexively negative manner, you can visit the Atomic Insights Blog and search for “smoking gun”. Over the past 2-3 years, I have posted a number of articles with that phrase in the title to document cases that support my assertion.
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:12 am
Let’s have a civilized discussion that does not devolve into accusations of paranoia and ignorance.
Sorry to offend you but these conspiracy theories hurt people. These kind of conspiracy have caused pogroms against economically proficient minorities everywhere form the jews of europe to the expatriate chinese of Southeast Asia. I watched people in old fields of West Texas struggle during the late 1970’s, when a punitive wind fall profits tax destroyed oil field jobs at a time when the entire country was starved for oil.
These conspiracy theories cause economic devastation and can lead eventually to mass killings. As a result, the fact that people embrace them so readily in absence of any smoking gun. disgust me. Look at yourself. We have a smoking gun with leftist who fought for over a decade to shutdown nuclear power with hysterical fear fed by outright ly