Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on Renewable Energy
Here’s Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. talking about renewable energy, the externalities of fossil fuels and nuclear, subsidies for oil companies, corruption, energy policy, climate change, ocean acidification, etc. Wow. Not only do he and I agree on literally everything, we even use a lot of the same words and phrases to tell the story.
I’m going to send him copies of my books by way of introduction, and see if I can’t drum up some way of contributing to his efforts.
From the article:
“Coal plants take 10 years to build, Kennedy points out, and nuclear power plants can take as many 30 years. The solar plant costs $3 billion a gigawatt versus $15 billion for a nuke plant, one-fifth of the cost. Alternative energy sources like solar and wind are not only environmentally-friendly policies, but they’re also smarter economic choices too, Kennedy says.”
It would appear that Kennedy is uninformed. Nuclear plants have been built in as little as FIVE YEARS. Of course some have taken far too long to build, and the average is longer than five years, but probably the average can be reduced to less than five years. The statement “nuclear power plants can take as many 30 years” while technically true, is highly misleading.
Also, he has greatly exaggerated the cost of nuclear plants. Avoidable construction delays greatly push up costs by increasing the cost of interest on the investment. He has also understated the cost of wind and solar plants by not taking into account that they cannot continuously produce their name-plate related power.
It should be noted that wind farms require far more resources than nuclear or coal plants. They require about 10 times as much steel and 30 times as much concrete as coal plants
It should also be noted that France, for the generation of electricity, went from 0% nuclear to 80% nuclear in ten years. Obviously if Kennedy’s implied assertions were correct, that would have been impossible. Moreover, France did that some years ago. Presumably advances should make it possible to build nuclear plants faster now than when France did it.
Rather than decry the problems associated with nuclear power, it would make more sense to put more effort into R & D to circumvent those problems by making ready for implementation a better nuclear technology which would probably be the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), although there could be other possibilities.
Also, it’s difficult to see how intermittent sources of power can be “smarter economic choices.” Even if they were “smarter economic choices,” they would be politically impossible once the public experienced their unreliability. In countries where existing traditional sources of power are adequate, the unreliability of renewable sources probably would not become immediately obvious since the traditional sources could back up the renewable sources. But as traditional sources wore out (which they would do faster when stopped and started frequently) and as the demand for power increased, which it will be eventually even with conservation efforts, the unreliability of renewables would become inescapably obvious. Even before then, the increased cost of electricity would present political problems.
Unless we put more effort into R & D to make ready a better nuclear technology, we will, after the limitations of renewables become inescapably obvious, end up expanding a bad nuclear technology on a crash bases with too little concern for safety.
Probably what we should do is, while doing the necessary R & D to make ready a better nuclear technology, rapidly build Westinghouse AP1000 plants and / or improved European designs then, when a better nuclear technology becomes ready and proven, expand it as rapidly as possible and use the existing nuclear waste as fuel in the new nuclear plants. Later, the Westinghouse AP1000 and similar plants, as they wear out, can be replaced by the better nuclear technology. We must also help developing countries increase their electricity generation in a responsible manner since if we fail to do so and they accelerate the implementation of fossil fuel generating plants, on a global bases it would make little difference what we do.
Although it is too late to prevent problems resulting from global warming, we can at least limit the effect if we take effective action. Beyond that, we will have to learn to live with global warming as well as possible.
Error correction.
In my previous post, I wrote, “It should also be noted that France, for the generation of electricity, went from 0% nuclear to 80% nuclear in ten years.” I should have written 20 years instead of 10 years.
It’s unfortunate that this system, unlike some systems, has no edit capability.
If you’re logged in as a user, you can edit your posts. You might want to try that.