Use Nuclear Power to Fight Global Warming

 The Economist magazine has an excellent article on the importance of nuclear power in fighting global warming. It says:

Because nuclear power is expensive in ways that show up in profits, whereas damage to the climate is not priced into burning fossil fuels, this would be unsurprising even if it were popular with environmentalists—which, by and large, it is not. But it is still too bad. The paradigm-shifting drop in the cost of renewable electricity in the past decade is central to the decarbonisation pathway the world is fitfully following. But a clean-energy system requires redundancy and reliability in its electricity grids that are hard to achieve with renewables alone. It will probably also require lots of hydrogen for, say, powering aircraft and making steel and chemicals, which reactors could provide.

Nuclear power has its drawbacks, as do all energy sources. But when well-regulated it is reliable and, despite its reputation, extremely safe. That is why it is foolish to close down perfectly good nuclear power stations such as Diablo Canyon, in California, because of little more than prejudice. It is why some countries, most notably China, are building out their nuclear fleets. It helps explain why others—including, as it happens, Saudi Arabia—are getting into the game for the first time. And it is why approaches to reducing nuclear energy’s cost penalty are at last coming into their own.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/11/13/the-discreet-charm-of-nuclear-power

Nuclear Energy at COP26

 

Time Magazine reports that nuclear energy is having a mixed reception at COP26,  One group sees it as a source of energy that does not contribute to global warming, but another sees it as just another source of pollution.  Natural gas faces an equally mixed reception, since it contributes less to global warming than coal, but it still releases carbon dioxde.  France and Russia are champions of nuclear power, with US support, but Germany, Belgium, New Zealand, and Austria oppose including nuclear as a green power source. 

One argument against nuclear plants is that they take a long time to build and are expensive.  But that may be an argument to get started soon if we are going to need them. 

 

Biden's Plan vs the New Deal

 

Biden has often compared what he wants to do with his Build Back Better plan to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.  When Roosevelt was elected during the Great Depression, unemployment was a huge problem.  People needed money, and there was no work.  Roosevelt created a number of programs to put people to work.  These included the Civilian Conservation Corp, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Public Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration.  

Unemployment was a big problem only at the beginning of the Covid pandemic.  It soon developed that many office workers could work from home over the Internet.  Many of those who couldn’t work from home continued to work in their service jobs at grocery stores, farms, etc.  Those who lost their jobs, mainly lost them because many travel-related businesses closed or became much smaller, hotels, restaurants, airlines, etc. Thee was a huge spike in unemployment, but it did not last long. 

Covid meant that a jobs program like the CCC was inappropriate because of fears about infection from concentrations of workers.  Thus the government just gave money to citizens to support them while they had to stay home.  There were some relief programs like this under the New Deal – the Federal Emergency Relief Act and the Social Security Act – but relatively few compare to jobs programs. 

Now, as the threat of Covid is reduced and people can go back to work, they don’t want to.  There are many jobs that cannot be filled, as more people drop out of the labor force.  Whether they will return for higher salaries remains to be seen.  What effect the higher salaries will have on the national economy remains to be seen.  It is not clear that there will be enough skilled workers to build Biden’s infrastructure projects.  Workers may have to come from other countries. 

In addition to paying people to stay home, the government reduced interest rates to almost zero in order to spur the economy.  The worked almost immediately.  After a big loss, the stock market recovered robustly, making many people rich in the process.  The government response had the perverse effect of increasing the gap between the rich and the poor in America.  While it prevented the poor from starving, it made the upper classes much wealthier, so that the pandemic was the best thing that had happened to them in a generation. 

The New Deal probably made some people rich, but not nearly as many as the pandemic did. It was quickly followed by World War II, which put everyone to work, but also used up all the nation’s resources, so that almost everything was rationed, for rich and poor. People made sacrifices for the Depression and for World War II, but nobody has made any sacrifices to deal with the pandemic, except for some doctors, nurses, and other service employees like grocery workers and meatpackers.    

Carbon Trading at COP26

 

COP26 is having a hard time developing a carbon trading market structure, which is bad news for nuclear power. Nuclear power is more expensive than some forms of fossil fueled power plants, but it would be more competitive if there were a real carbon tax on the greenhouse gases emitted by the fossil fuels.  No carbon tax encourages continued release of greenhouse gases. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, Brazil has been receptive to carbon trading proposals at COP26.  However, Bloomberg reports that poorer countries want more money from trading to pay for their costs to adapt to climate change, and the EU objects to giving them part of the funds from carbon credit exchanges between countries. 

There are also efforts to develop carbon trading markets outside of COP26, but a worldwide regime would be a big boost.  Identifying a cost for emitting CO2 seems like one of the best ways to limit it.  Of course, like all laws and markets, enforcement would be a problem.