Dr. James Hansen’s reply to my question about Nuclear Power
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A a few years ago, Anthony Watts posted a link “The Middle Ground where AGW skeptics and Proponents should meet up“. At AGU2013, Anthony asked Dr. Hansen a question in full session about the very same topic and a video of that exchange follows.
The proposition is, that in the highly polarized global warming debate, there are, or should be, some surprisingly broad areas of agreement. A video also follows showing Anthony asking Dr. Hansen about this at AGU2013
One such area of agreement appears to be support for nuclear power. In addition to the Middle Ground article, WUWT has posted many other articles, on Thorium and next generation nuclear technology, which have been well received by regular readers of this blog.
Dr. James Hansen is also a supporter of nuclear power. A few months ago, James Hansen, Ken Caldeira, Kerry Emanuel and Tom Wigley published an open letter, calling for and end to opposition to nuclear power, for the sake of the environment.
If I have understood correctly, scientists who are truly concerned about CO2, such as James Hansen, support nuclear power, because nuclear power a plausible route to decarbonising the economy, without the difficulty of convincing voters to accept drastic curbs to their lifestyles.
Skeptics like myself tend to support nuclear power, because it is the future – we tend to love high technology and the glorious rise of human civilisation, and yet we are, contrary to the straw man stereotypes projected by many of our opponents, concerned about environmental issues, such as the megatons of toxic ash and sludge produced by coal power stations. We see next generation nuclear power as the clean, inexhaustible energy source of the future.
So I sent an email to Dr. James Hansen mid March this year, asking whether he had ever considered sharing a platform with Anthony Watts, to jointly promote acceptance of a nuclear powered future. I made it very clear I was asking this question on my own initiative, and had not discussed it with Anthony.
This was Dr. Hansen’s reply:-
“The more important matter is the need for a slowly rising revenue neutral carbon fee, 100% of the funds distributed to the public, equal amount to all legal residents. This would cause nuclear power to win out for electricity. Otherwise we are going to get a very expensive dual renewables–fossil fuel system. This fee-and-dividend approach is by its nature a conservative agenda, allowing the market to work. It is also a winning populist political strategy, providing some correction to the increasing disparity of wealth, allowing the hard-working careful low-income person a chance to make some money and contribute to a cleaner, healthier world. This is what conservatives need to understand. If they don’t, the changing demographics will sink them, and we will all suffer under a screwed up energy system.”
I replied to Dr. Hansen, pointing out that Conservative opposition to carbon fees was entrenched, and asked whether the issue of how to make nuclear power economically attractive, on which there was no agreement, could be set aside for now, for the sake of jointly promoting research into next generation nuclear technology.
So far I have not received a reply to my second email to Dr. Hansen.
The conversation and questions I put to Dr. Hansen were meant in good faith. I hope the dialogue I have had to date with Dr. Hansen is not the end, that the conversation goes further, perhaps with other participants. Perhaps I am being naive, but I really am a keen supporter of nuclear power, and would like to find a way for everyone who supports a nuclear future to join forces, to overcome the decades of propaganda against nuclear technology, which has retarded its development in the West.
Here is Anthony asking Dr. Hansen about Thorium power at AGU2013
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Interesting that my comment, after noting the TRUE FACT that I worked in Nuclear Power for 21 years, was…apparently “spiked”. I will repeat the plants that are left, although producing viable power, are aging. YES, they can work. BUT there is NO, ZERO, NONE growth potential. There is NO ONE who will put a PENNY into new nuclear development. In CASE YOU CAN’T FIGURE IT OUT..the LEFT, the Environmentalists and the “low level educated” American public will not, (allow), cannot tolerate and has NO INTEREST in reviving nuclear. The people working in the system are dispirited and “beaten”. I would NEVER recommend to a “young person” that they become “involved” professionally, as there IS NO FUTURE. This is not sour grapes, this is REALITY. Reality can be hard to handle. As the old saying goes, “Live with it..”
PS: Anthony or Mods – You have my Email. Request my resume, and I’ll send it to you. Request some people to talk to who I have worked with, I will give you phone numbers and names.
Stephen Rasey @4.31
“Using Thorium in a power reactor is a proven technology.
No it is not. There is much more on the learning curve before we can say that.”
There was no indication that your remarks were confined to a single type of thorium reactor
My comment was a perfectly valid reply to your negative response to a correct previous posting. Furthermore it drew attention to an existing, valuable thorium power reactor technology that appears to have been forgotten..
“jai mitchell says:
March 31, 2014 at 4:09 pm
Believe me, in 10 years you will all be begging for carbon free energy production.”
Like Al Gore claiming the Arctic would be ice free by 2013, we won’t have long to wait to disprove your claim too.
Wayne Delbeke says: “Every community along the border has a large number of people who trip across the border to fill up. When I visit my mother in Grand Forks, BC, I fuel up at the Alberta border.”
The BC carbon tax is hardly the only thing that determines gas prices. People cross-border fill up when they live in provinces without carbon taxes too. As they should if it saves money, and good for you if you can too. It isn’t a significant issue from a policy perspective, though, because most people don’t live within a convenient drive to a cross-border fuel station.
Wayne Delbeke says:“I don’t know of many people in BC that are happy about the Carbon Tax, but maybe don’t know the right people.”
Apparently you don’t. From an Environics poll in early 2013:
Wayne Delbeke says: “No one I know believes it is revenue neutral either.”
Good thing it isn’t a matter of belief but is instead a matter of law:
The Minister of Finance is required by law to annually prepare a three-year plan for recycling carbon tax revenues through tax reductions. This plan is presented to the Legislative Assembly at the same time as the provincial Budget.
People can get the numbers from the Ministry web site if they want to see in detail. A problem for some people, though, is they think ‘revenue neutral’ should mean on an individual basis, not across the entire tax base. They’ve completely misunderstood the entire concept if that is what they think, though.
jai mitchell says:
March 31, 2014 at 4:09 pm
Believe me, in 10 years you will all be begging for carbon free energy production.
=========
No. We will be begging for low cost energy, regardless of carbon content. And so will you. Else you would have converted to alternative supplies long ago.
I actually lived off the grid for 20 years. How many years have you done this? How about a guess? ZERO? Correct? Yet you believe you have the solution. What you have is nonsense.
2 billion people on this planet live off the grid. They have a miniscule carbon footprint. They are what is called poor.
The Carbon Hypocrites want everyone except themselves to live the same way. Al Gore isn’t about to give up his carbon footprint. Nor is James Hansen nor Jai Mitchell.
Big fat carbon footprints spouting off at how the rest of us need to clean up our footprints.
I don’t know of many people in BC that are happy about the Carbon Tax,
==========
http://bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-s-carbon-tax-plan-a-sham-auditor-s-report-finds-1.1214076
The Canadian Press
Published Wednesday, March 27, 2013 3:10PM PDT
Last Updated Wednesday, March 27, 2013 7:56PM PDT
VICTORIA – Auditor general John Doyle calls the B.C. government’s carbon offset program a sham.
“For his part, Doyle says his office was subjected an unprecedented and orchestrated campaign of delay and interference, led by the carbon trust and the interests behind carbon offsets.”
the BC carbon tax is a disaster. the auditor general has made this clear in no uncertain terms. it has made absolutely no difference, while draining public funds that could have been used to upgrade boilers in schools, hospitals and public facilities.
instead the funds went to private industry to largely pay for 2 projects that would have been built anyways.
any why do the people of BC not know this? because the auditor generals report was slammed by the very same people feeding off the tax even before it was released. somehow they got a copy, even before it was made public.
CARBON TAX = CARBON CORRUPTION
There is NO such thing as a “revenue neutral” tax. Governments ALWAYS waste money.
===========
governments don’t waste money. they skim the cream off the top and give to their friends in return for campaign contributions and other favors. whatever is left they give back to us. while telling us how lucky we are to get any of our own money back.
this is revenue neutral in that no money was destroyed in the process. many poor people give a little each so that a few rich people can benefit a lot. All in the name of saving the planet.
Leo Geiger says:
March 31, 2014 at 5:45 pm
“Wayne Delbeke says: “No one I know believes it is revenue neutral either.”
Good thing it isn’t a matter of belief but is instead a matter of law:
Well government must have gotten a lot more efficient since I was involved in studies of the cost of program delivery 20 years ago when the cost varied from 25 t0 80% of the program budget. If they are taking in C$5 billion dollars, giving back 3 million business tax, 1 billion in personal tax, and 1 billion in “low income tax credits” then were are the administrative costs coming from and where is the money coming for the annual updates. I would guess there is a billion dollars missing somewhere in the accounting and audit departments.
And fredberple added the icing to this cake. But I suppose I am just a curmudgeon that grew up in BC in better times.
Re thorium as a future basis for nuclear power:
Some of the drawbacks of LFTR include,
1) The Oak Ridge National Laboratory LFTR was an experimental, small-scale partial system only, not a full power plant. It was only 7 MW of thermal output, meaning serious scale-up would be required to achieve a commercial-size unit. Roughly, 450-to-1 scale-up is required to obtain a 1,000 MWe output reactor. That degree of scale-up is not trivial, nor is it even guaranteed to be successful. Chinese researchers are today attempting the scale-up.
2) Materials used in the reactor developed serious inter-granular cracking in all metal surfaces exposed to the molten salt. This cracking would seriously limit the life of a commercial-scale reactor. It is questionable if such a reactor could last for 30 years.
see e.g. http://moltensalt.org.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/references/static/downloads/pdf/ORNL-TM-6002.pdf
Public fears over the reactors cracking apart like a dropped egg would be sufficient to cause massive demonstrations to halt such technology. It would be especially difficult to prove to the NRC that a reactor at 20 years of life is sufficiently un-cracked to continue operation. We have enough troubles today with pitting, erosion, and metal loss in nuclear reactor tube walls. Inherent cracks in the LFTR metal surfaces will be a PR nightmare.
3) Costs to construct and operate are speculative at best. So is the safety of such a system, especially given the inherent cracking mentioned above.
T3 is not the best fingerprint. Stratospheric cooling is.
@ur momisugly phlogiston March 31, 2014 at 12:55 pm
“France falsifies your argument.”
That talking point is full of misdirection. France nationalized the entire power industry. Then charged whatever price they wanted to. It makes sense, too, because one of the few things that France exports is, well, nuclear power plants. It would make for very bad PR if the home country had realistic power prices, not fully subsidized by the government.
@ur momisugly Gary Pearse March 31, 2014 at 1:41 pm
“I am aware of your dated argument about the prohibitive costs of fission energy. A large part of the cost was due to over-redundant design in the the anti nuclear lobby’s pressures.”
Actually, the designs are rational and reasonable steps to contain live nuclear fuel, with thousands of little pellets in close proximity inside the reactor.
The costs I quote in my article are not dated, they are fresh and up-to-date. As evidence, the South Texas Nuclear Project planned expansion was cancelled because the cost was to be $17 billion – or more. The vendor would not say exactly how much more.
Also, again as evidenced, the Vogtle expansion project presently underway in Georgia is expected to cost $15 billion or more, even with the creative financing that bills the power company’s customers for power that they are not yet receiving. In effect, that knocks off 25 percent from the price. Severance is absolutely on-target with his cost estimate of $10,000 per kW.
@ur momisugly Col Mosby at March 31, 2014 at 1:07 pm
“I have no idea where people get these figures from. “
My article, linked, gives great detail on the origin of those figures. In brief, Severance, MIT, and California Energy Commission, all three independent and credible sources without an axe to grind in the nuclear debate.
@ur momisugly Graham Green at March 31, 2014 at 1:49 pm
“The UK government have agreed a strike price of £92.50/MwH with the French firm EDF for the first new reactor station. “
Well then, the Brits didn’t negotiate as well as did the Indians. India settled on a price of 6 rs per kWh, which, converting both the British and Indian prices to common USDollar, is 15 cents for Brits, and 10 cents for India, per kWh.
see http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-03-09/news/48051208_1_india-and-france-european-pressurised-reactors-major-hurdle
The international nuclear plant vendors are having to give away their product, in an effort to sell anything at all. The French agreed to cut their cost of finance to around 4 percent for the Indian plant.
@ur momisugly FreeTheNukes at March 31, 2014 at 2:34 pm
“Some of the assumptions that Roger makes are incorrect. I’m not sure why he adds in 4 cents per kw/hour for the installation of cooling towers, pumps, and steam bypass valves.”
That is incorrect. The 4 cents additional is for “,. . .a larger condenser, cooling pumps, and cooling tower must be built to achieve this. Also, steam bypass lines, control valves, and a control system must be installed.”
These equipment are in addition to existing equipment. Of course, I am always open to a different but safe way of achieving load-following. The French claim to have done this, but it seems highly dubious. Its always with their New reactors… has anybody any experience at all with following load with a nuclear power plant?
Some suggestions when people are arguing that nuclear is not competitive:
Determine their assumed cost of capital, you can make any capital intensive project look very expensive by assuming an above market rate for capital. Just a few percentage points will make a huge difference.
Consider the time value of money. The same thing that makes them expensive in the early years makes them cheap in the later years. That is because of their high initial costs. You are paying for tomorrow’s electricity at today’s rates…..it removes inflation from a large portion of the costs. As some others have mentioned on the thread.
The pay as you build models save customers millions or billions in financing costs by not paying interest on interest. Nothing complicated just basic math.
But hasn’t the slope of that cooling lessened in the last 15 or so years so the cooling is less than was projected?
@Wayne Delbeke says: March 31, 2014 at 3:52 pm
@Ira Glickstein 1:56pm
THANKS Wayne for your comments and questions on my comment!
No. As I said, the STRAIGHT CARBON TAX is collected at the port, well, and mine, and therefore only on fossil fuels that have been sequestered for eons. Wood is short-term sequester of carbon, absorbing CO2 (aka “Plant Food”) from the Atmosphere as it grows and then releasing it back to the Atmosphere as it burns or rots a relatively short time later. In the context of fossil fuels, a dozen or a hundred years is a short time. Therefore, wood is counted as biomass, not a fossil fuel.
No, no, and no. The advantage of a STRAIGHT CARBON TAX on fossil fuels at the port, well, and mine is that it does NOT require the government to hire an army of investigators to check and monitor the entire economy and sniff out everyone who “passes gas” :^). We already regulate and tax fossil fuel commerce at the port, well and mine so it should be easy (even for an incompetent government) to figure out how much oil, gas, and coal is produced, and hard for the producers to cheat by very much. Of course there will be some carbon that will get by the system, but, by and large, most of it will be accounted for by utilizing the records already required by our corporate tax system. (The CAP and TRADE SCAM is exactly opposite in this respect. It is hard to administer and easy to cheat on.)
Yes. A STRAIGHT CARBON TAX on fossil fuels collected at the port, well, and mine will include ALL such carbon, regardless of where it is destined to be utilized. No exceptions for supposedly “good” uses (such as fossil fuels used to construct water or wind or nuclear plants) and no special penalties for supposedly “bad” uses (fossil fuels used to construct coal-fired power plants). The whole idea is to make it easy for the government to collect the taxes using the present corporate tax system, and not to require any additional government inspectors with their noses in the details of our lives and our businesses.
Is a person lying on the beach a “port, well, or mine”? NO! Therefore, he or she can breath out CO2 all he or she wants, and the government will not tax that activity under a STRAIGHT CARBON TAX on fossil fuels.
You missed the main point! What Hansen, Krauthammer, the Wall Street Journal and I are proposing is NOT calculating or taxing anyone’s “carbon footprint”. We propose taxing the carbon in fossil fuels at the SOURCE (port, well, mine), which will raise the price of all fossil fuel power to the individual consumer or industrial consumer, and thereby make alternate energy sources relatively less costly to them. They will then use their own best interest to either adopt whichever alternative power source (water, wind, nuclear, biomass…) makes economic sense to THEMSELVES, -OR- to stick with fossil fuel power, if that is less expensive TO THEM.
The government will not be in the business of picking winners and losers and rewarding or penalizing particular parts of the economy on the basis of political connections. (This is NOT the CAP and TRADE SCAM.)
We propose a REVENUE NEUTRAL accounting where all citizens and legal residents (but NOT illegal aliens) share EQUALLY per capita 100% of the tax revenue, probably as a credit to their income tax.
This may be a way to split off some of the portion of the citizenry who usually votes for the Democratic Party because it will help poorer residents who generally use less energy and will thus pocket some of their share of the carbon tax revenue.
It will also help those who conserve energy by driving energy-efficient cars (like my 10-year old Prius) and by insulating their homes, moderating their heating and air conditioning, etc.
It will penalize those, like Al Gore, who live large in their mansions and fly often in private jets because their share of the carbon tax revenue will not cover the added cost of their fuel costs.
Ira
“Left 14 years ago. ”
Twenty years ago I decided to go back to graduate school school for environmental engineering after more than 20 years in the nuclear field. The power industry has a history of booms and busts. It takes a lot more people to design and build power plants than it does to keep them running. While people like the Clinton/Gore are anti-nukes if it a solution for AGW, they just talk about renewable energy.
At the end of the week, I head back to China to continue putting the finishing touches on a nuke under construction. Going toe work at the nuke plant requires driving by a huge coal plant running on imported coal. In 2005, China could no longer produce enough coal to meet rapidly growing demand.
The new nuke plant is designed to load follow just like every nuke plant I have worked at. Nuke plants load follow just fine. The economics of load following depend on the cost of replacement fuel. For the next 100 years!
Folks like Hansen and Sowell make predictions our of a sense of self importance that few believe. More importantly. The people who are responsible for producing power have to make choices based on many interrelated uncertainties.
“ferd berple says:
March 31, 2014 at 5:39 pm
Sad that he’s in favor of “behavior modification by taxation”
================
negative incentives do not work. psychology has shown over and over again that people do not react the way you expect when given a negative incentive. rather, they will cheat, lie, steal, and do all sorts of things to mess up your carefully orchestrated plans.
you can’t hit someone with a stick and expect them to like it. they will do their best to turn the stick against you. the only long term way to motivate people is via positive incentives.”
Hi Fred,
That’s what I meant….sticks (hockey or otherwise) are pretty much useless as motivation. Carrots (or carats 🙂 ) are better…
It seems that the only thing politicians from every stripe can agree upon is increasing taxes, or their income/pensions…everything else is a matter of contention….
“Of the people, by the people, for the people” …yep, we’ve heard of it….sad…we need more Lincolns and fewer of the current lot….
ferdberple says: “…the BC carbon tax is a disaster. the auditor general has made this clear in no uncertain terms.”
You are completely mistaken, in no uncertain terms. The (highly contested) BC auditor report was about a carbon offset program. It was not about the revenue neutral carbon tax.
I can understand why you are confused, though. Even some media reports couldn’t keep these two completely different things straight in some of the reporting.
Wayne Delbeke says: Well government must have gotten a lot more efficient since I was involved in studies of the cost of program delivery….. I would guess there is a billion dollars missing somewhere in the accounting and audit departments.
So now “guessing” there is money missing is a valid criticism of a policy? There is no “program” to deliver either. It’s just tax collection and setting rates, which the government is already doing anyway.
Roger Sowell:
Your website is a rabidly anti-NPP with all kinds of misinformation about the cost of nuclear power. Nuclear power plants in this country are expensive because our government wants them to be. Nobody in their right mind would invest in NPPs here. Ditto for coal power plants.
It won’t matter as the Chinese can build a nuke a month and a coal powered plant every ten days. Consequently they will enjoy really cheap electricity. They can build a Westinghouse AP-1000 for $2 billion. Over its 40 year life at 0.85 capacity this reactor produces 300,000,000,000 kWh of electricity so the $ 2 billion “Overnight Cost” works out at less than $0.01/kWh.
I took the trouble to spend a week in a nuclear power plant and can tell you that your “Experts” are full of it:
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/electric-power-in-florida/
@Peter at 5:44 pm
I confess a myopia about Thorium = LFTR. I thank you for bringing up the Pebble Bed Rector concept and the Germany Thorium High-Temp gas cooled Reactor project (THTR-300 (Wikipedia))
I do not agree that Thorium Pebble Bed Reactors are “proven” technology. There is still a learning curve to climb. The THTR-300 only ran from 1983-1989, generating power from 1985. It had the misfortune to have a radioactive dust release in 1989 during the Chernobyl fallout.
I don’t think I would call any High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HGTR) proven technology at commercial scale yet. From Wikipedia VHTR
The moderator of HGTRs is graphite, either as prismatic blocks, or graphite pebbles.
I grew up in Colorado. Fort St. Vrain was a problem child of the electric utility. High pressure, high temp helium is a leaky problematic fluid. It has theoretically attractive thermal and neutron properties, but it is an engineering challenge for a working electrical utility.
I’ll confess I suffer from a Chernobyl Syndrome: graphite moderated reactor designs give me the willies. I understand graphite is a lovely substance in high temperature applications. But it is also a 1000 degree lump of coal provisionally starved of oxygen. Never let air get to it. Our oxygen rich atmosphere makes it possible for an accident to get so much worse.
Naturally liquid sodium isn’t my favorite primary loop fluid either.
Gary says:
March 31, 2014 at 12:43 pm
Dr. Hansen is mistaken in his opinion that the “fee-and-dividend approach is by its nature a conservative agenda, allowing the market to work.” It fails to recognize that setting the fee is manipulation by government, not the market, which falsifies his idea.
Exactly right – Hansen is correct only if you first assume the emission of CO2 is an external cost and that cost can be and will be accurately priced by the government. None of those assumptions have any basis in reality.