The nucleus of sanity

In our ongoing quest to explore strange new worlds of climate sanity, we want to seek out new nuclear plants and new applications. For instance, Matthew Zeitlin on Heatmap trumpets that “Microsoft’s Mega Deal Is a Massive Victory for Nuclear Power”. It is. And also for common sense.

Even the New York Times saw it, if a bit reluctantly:

“In a striking sign of renewed interest in nuclear power, Constellation Energy said on Friday that it plans to reopen the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, the site of the worst reactor accident in United States history. Three Mile Island became shorthand for the risks posed by nuclear energy after one of the plant’s two reactors partly melted down in 1979. The other reactor kept operating safely for decades until finally closing, for economic reasons, five years ago. Now a revival is at hand. Microsoft, which needs tremendous amounts of electricity for its growing fleet of data centers, has agreed to buy as much power as it can from the plant for 20 years. Constellation plans to spend $1.6 billion to refurbish the reactor that recently closed and restart it by 2028, pending regulatory approval.”

It would have been fair to mention that this “worst reactor accident in United States history” and partial meltdown killed exactly no people. Though in the interest of completeness we should concede that it also didn’t make anyone ill, except the nuclear industry.

Still, as the Times notes:

“with energy demand spiking and fears of climate change rising, many states and businesses are reconsidering nuclear power, which can produce electricity around the clock without emitting the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet.”

OK, we didn’t say they’d gone completely sane. But one thing at a time. And a particularly interesting point Zeitlin makes is that:

“The days of nuclear power plants shuttering not because of old age, safety concerns, or local opposition, but because of the economics of subsidized wind and solar and cheap natural gas, are likely over.”

The safety concerns were always badly overdone and especially with newer technologies. And local opposition was generally driven precisely by those overdone fears. But the fact that subsidized wind and solar have rather run their course is highly significant, as is his exaggerated but not completely misplaced description of nuclear as “non-carbon-emitting power”. Everything emits some carbon, and if it has cement it emits more. But nuclear is low-carbon. And while it’s possible to subsidize small wind or solar facilities or factories and claim, and believe, it’s just part of getting to the fabled economies of scale to come, when you start trying to do it on a municipal, state/provincial or national level the multiplication of the per megawatt-hour subsidy by the huge number of megawatt-hours makes the cost impossible to hide or ignore.

In fact, Robert Bryce recently calculated, in the United States “‘Green’ Hydrogen Subsidies Are 1,900x Larger Than What’s Given To Nuclear”. Not a good deal no matter the hype. According to him:

“Hydrogen producers can get up to $25B per EJ in federal tax credits! That’s 9x solar, 47x wind, & 1,800x hydrocarbons”.

EJ being, of course, Exajoules, the joule being a measure of energy that equals 1/1,000 of a BTU (British Thermal Unit or approximately the energy needed to raise a pound of liquid water 1°F, and if that doesn’t clarify the matter much it’s also about the total energy released by burning a match; if you’re too young to know what a match is we can’t help you) and the Exa supplying 18 zeroes so an exajoule is a quadrillion BTU. But as the issue here is the relative size of the subsidies per unit of energy produced there won’t be a test on that part later.

There will be one on the fact that nuclear is slightly behind hydrocarbons in the subsidy parade and a million miles behind the others. So it’s way cheaper.

If you don’t think carbon is bad, you might decline to care. But if policy is going to be made by people who do think carbon is bad, and it will affect the cost and availability of energy and also your tax bill, you want them to care and get it right. Amazingly, and encouragingly, they show signs of doing so.