Today, Roger Pielke mentioned that “Secretary Chu Supports Exploitation of Canadian Tar Sands”. Yesterday, I read that Obama and EPA allow mountaintop coal removal.
So, is the goal to first lower the costs of mining or pumping oil and then tax it? This might make sense if the government’s primary goal is to maximize revenue. Or is there some other goal? I know balancing economic, ecological and national security interests is complicated, but does anyone have any insights?
Lucia:
I’m astounded as you are! Perhaps there will be some rational clarification or correction in the next few days?
I am beginning to wonder if this administration is beginning to see the economic hole/legacy they have already created, and are looking for revenue to lessen the hole and to find funding for the big ticket items (health care) that they still want. Cap & trade is not going to be the revenue source that it was meant to be.
And yet they don’t want to proceed with Yucca Mountain, throwing a monkey wrench into any plans for further nuclear power. It’s almost as if they don’t believe their own rhetoric…
Curt–
Yes. Closing out Yucca mountain but permitting people to blast off the tops of mountains to reduce the cost of mining coal strikes me as not the way to reduce carbon.
But then…. nuclear plants wouldn’t buy many carbon allowances, would they? But coal producers will. So, maybe increasing tax revenue is the primary goal. Or not.
Or maybe someone is donating a lot of money to political campaigns. Or maybe… I really don’t know. But it all seems rather incoherent.
Incoherence on the left. Hardly newsworthy.
From Roger’s article, a more complete quote from the Secretary is:
“It’s a complicated issue, because certainly Canada is a close and trusted neighbor and the oil from Canada has all sorts of good things. But there is this environmental concern, so I think we’re going to have to work our way through that,†he said. “But I’m a big believer in technology.â€
So he’s not saying we want to use existing technology to extract the oil and increase global warming, he’s saying we need to wait until the technology develops.
But I don’t get”…the oil from Canada has all sorts of good things.” To me, good things from Canada are moose, maple syrup, muskies, and… and… help me out, people.
Peter– To be fair, there is often incoherence on the right too. I probably shouldn’t be surprised politics can be incoherent. Still. . .
Doug– Do you mean the technology to burn oil without increasing CO2? Or the technology to not mess up the local environment when extracting the oil? These are different things.
Sort of like the issue of blowing off mountain tops to get coal is somewhat different from the issue of CO2 release when it’s burned. Carbon sequestration technology might take care of the second, but the mountain top is still blown off. Still, letting producers use low cost methods that have negative environmental consequences does lower the price of their products. So, I”m sort of puzzled about the coal issue. Has the EPA decided that method is environmentally ok?
Good things from Canada …. my wife, the Habs, Molson
Obama is so inexperienced and so unprepared for the position he was elected to that he has no firm policies or positions. He simply wasn’t ready for this level of responsibility. This situation is simply indicative of the many turn-abouts, flip-flops and conflicting messages we can expect for the remainder of his term. I think analyzing the administration’s actions from the assumption that they are logical in the first place is a mistake.
Douggerell: Don’t forget poutine, Lablatts and Canadian bacon! Yum!
Perhaps President Obama is taking note of the fact that China wants to purchase oil from Canada and it will not relieve the “foreign oil” dilemma that is causing so much concern for North America?
Mmmm….Revenue. Delicious!
But oh, that Heart-ur, Earth burn might come back to bite me…
(No, for the record, I’m not going warmer. It’s just a great joke.)
I think that Sec Chu is just being realistic. Being a Canadian, I’m aware that we are your largest supplier of “non-domestic” oil, despite media growls about wealthy oil sheiks and the middle east.
We have it, you need it and it’s going to be recovered and used. A cleaner way to do it would be nice, but they won’t be waiting for new technology, oil is up 25% in the last few months and really has nowhere to go but up. As pointed out above, if you don’t want it the Chinese are not picky about what they use for energy, or it’s impact on the environment.
The good thing is, you don’t need to spend your oil dollars supporting any repressive or autocratic regimes in some far off corner of the globe, just send it next door ;).
As for other good things from Canada, hmmm?
How about the insulin? Basketball? Hockey? AM radio? Standard Time? Canola oil? Sonar? The Snowmobile? Easyoff oven cleaner? the electron microscope? Superman? JAVA? the Fields Medal for math? the pacemaker? Trivial Pursuit? Cirque du Soleil? Neil Young? Brian Adams? The Band? The Guess Who? Alice Cooper? Rush? Paul Anka? Glen Gould? Jeff Healy? Diane Krall? Micheal Buble?
Heck, take the Canadian content out of Hollywood and some large chunks of “Americana” would disappear overnight. Tonto, the Blues Brothers, Ironsides, Baywatch, The Mask, 24, Up in Smoke, Growing Pains, The Facts of Life, Superman, Pineapple Express, etc…. would all lose major cast members, not to mention that Warner Brothers and MGM would have never existed, maybe even United Artists.
Really, where would Liar, Liar be without Jim Carrey and Jennifer Tilly? Or Star Trek without William Shatner or James Doohan? Or the Momma’s and the Papa’s without Denny Doherty? Bonanza without Lorne Green? Ghostbusters without Dan Akroyd and Rick Moranis? The Matrix without Carrie-Anne Moss and Keanu Reeves? The Postcard without Ryan Reynolds and Rachel McAdams?
We’ve been working at turning you into Canadians for years, you want to be us, you just need it “framed” in the right manner, lol.
Mitchell,
Alice Cooper is Canadian? He rocked! Brian Adams, not so much.
Ok.. but John Belushi was from Chicago. So don’t get to carried away!
I agree that Chu is probably being realistic. But… still… basically, it’s hard to see the difference between some of his decisions and those advocated by Palin on the campaign trail.
Belushi was from Chicago but Dan Aykroyd is Canadian and lets throw in Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell just to show that we could keep going, not to mention Reginald Fessenden, the father of radio broadcasting.
Yes. Obama and his administration are out of their depth on a good number of files. The Chinese last week made an oh-so not too subtle comment that they are not impressed with how the White House is going about things.
That said, as much as our host is a “luke warmer”, I would like to remind readers here that until further notice there is no statistically meaningful evidence that CO2 emissions have anything to do with changes in global temperatures. If anyone can provide robust and verifiable data that shows not just a possible correlation between increases in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and increases in global temperatures but also a verifiable causation, and I mean data that can withstand some serious due diligence, I will stand corrected.
Until then and given that there is an increasing understanding all around that there exists no meaningful alternative to hydrocarbon energy sources for the foreseeable future, what is the problem with using them, including the Canadian oil sands?
Consider the possibility that Obama and Co have in fact understood the above, Democrat/Socialist/Enviroreligious rhetoric notwithstanding…
lucia: you may have also noticed a concerted effort to rollback on ethanol. There has been a steady stream of buried stories building the case abandon ethanol subsidies.
In other news… Canadian tar sands were a victim of congressional legislation instituted in 2007 and renewed last year; wherein Congress forbade purchases of distillates from crude with higher CO2 emissions during extraction and refining. This threatened to block tar sands crude from the US market because of source contamination questions. Needless to say, the Canadians have been lobbing hard in diplomatic channels.
See for reference: Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, Section 526
Mitchell44,
I did notice that you mentioned the band Rush in your post.
You rock, dude. 😉
Andrew
Now I know! Yay Canada!
More Canadiana:
Mike Myers, Shania Twain, Celine Dion, Pamela Anderson, Neve Campbell, Elisha Cuthbert, the Sutherland boys (Donald and Keifer), John Candy, Sandra Oh, Matthew Perry, Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, Eric McCormack, Evangeline Lilly, Sarah Mclachlin, Alanis Morissette, Avril Lavigne, Nelly Furtado, Ellen Page, Ryan Reynolds, Hayden Christensen, Howie Mandel, Nickelback, Tom Green, James Cameron… the list can go on and on and on….
Entertaining comments re: Canadianna. (A little uncharacteristically immodest for my fellow Canucks, though?) On a serious note, the technology to which Secretary Chu looks to lessen oil sands environmental impacts is much broader than CCS, and has potential to bring heavy oils worldwide – not just ours – much closer to the footprint of the rapidly disappearing light crudes. Some information here: http://oilsands.alberta.ca/
By the way, didn’t see anyone mention the Stanley Cup as a Canadian export our friends in the U.S. seem to have taken a shine to…. Send it back someday, would you?
– David Sands, for the Government of Alberta
Alice Cooper is from Detroit not Canada.
1) The President’s ambitious energy plan will tank without broad support from Democrats from states that mine and/or burn lots of coal. Hence the concession. Enviros can attack the rulemaking and delay or defeat it by litigation while Obama gets the political chits he needs. The first pebbles that bounce downhill over the barriers and splash into into a stream will prompt an action under the Clean Water Act.
2) I don’t think Chu said anything definitive. It sounded more like: “Golly wouldn’t it be great if technology made this whole shale oil thing less messy so we could go ahead and buy more oil from Canada.”
yes but, I understand that Canada can now buy Detroit cheap if they want to claim Alice Cooper.
Also, Tom Green? Nothing to boast about.
Obama is clearly of the Clinton mold. Say whatever makes the base happy and do whatever makes the most sense – pay not mind when these things diverge.
The Obama Administration is making it up as they go along.
It would not be surprising if they already regret banning offshore drilling for oil and gas, production of which would reduce dependance on foreign energy sources, improve the trade balance, increase taxes, but offend their base.
On a personal note, Lucia, I got one of your wildly popular mugs last week, and while I am satisfied, some people may wish it kept the coffee catastrophically hot after reaching a tipping point.
Don B,
Introducing the C02 Mug! Made from actual C02, it makes any old coffee warmer than you like it, by just sitting there!
Andrew
DonB–
Yes. I notice that hot coffee does cool to lukewarm if I don’t drink it quickly. If I leave it on the counter, it even cools to room temperature!
Eric,
I’m against letting the Canadians have Detroit. I know it may seem like a worthless piece of economically devastated property now and it’s hard to imagine the Canadians would want it today. But remember, we’ve fought the Canadians over Detroit before. The Canadians were pretty good fighters. If the Canadian’s take Michigan, Chicago and Wisconsin won’t be safe!
Canadians are entertaining, eh?
…I’m half French Canadian, BTW.
Andrew_FL–
Well, let’s split a cruller, eh?
My bad on Alice Cooper, and notice that no one has mentioned Celine Dion, not one of my faves, but everyone has their own taste.
Realistically speaking, energy needs over the next 100 years or so (baring a Nobel worthy breakthrough in alternative sources or storage), are going to strip protection legislation from pretty much every source named above within the US. Offshore drilling and drilling in environmentally sensitive areas is going to happen. Waiting to do it is, I think, a good thing as the technology and skill at minimizing disruptions to the environment is only going to get better with time. But they are going to recover those resources, it’s going to become to valuable to the nation to leave it in the ground.
Just my opinion of course, and that and a few bucks will buy you a Tim Horton’s Coffee.
We will trade Detroit, for Celine Dion. You can keep the Red Wings, though.
I thought we deported Celine to Las Vegas. How did she sneak across the border?
On Topic, all of the emissions from ALL of Canada’s mining and oil and gas extraction, emitted about 2% of Canada’s total emissions in 2006, according to StatCan. This % also includes all conventional drilling; nickel mining; diamond mining; gold mining; coal, etc; and not just Oil Sands extraction.
Using Pembina Foundation numbers (an environmental/policy group in Alberta-see page 39 of the NEB report), by 2015, the oil sand mining operations in Canada, will emit 67 million tonnes CO2/year. This still only represents about 9% of Canada’s total CURRENT emissions, or about 0.2% of CURRENT global emissions.
Note this number quoted by the Pembina (67 MM tonne), may be high, as ALL extraction currently currently emits 15.6 MM tonne.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/iea/Notes%20for%20Table%20H_1cco2.html
http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/16-201-XIE/2007000/part1.htm
http://www.neb.gc.ca/clf-nsi/rnrgynfmtn/nrgyrprt/lsnd/pprtntsndchllngs20152006/pprtntsndchllngs20152006-eng.pdf
Mitchel44–
I’m all for improving the technology so that resources can be obtained with less negative impact on the environment. If that’s what Chu meant, then great!
I am rather worried about the closing of Yucca mountain. This move represents a roadblock to one potential source of low CO2 energy: Nuclear.
If we place roadblocks in the way of potential low CO2 energy sources, and solar and wind don’t pann out as splendidly as their advocates insist they will, we will feel pinched. In that case, I’d bet a dozen Dunkin’s to Tim Horton’s that in 10 years, push will come to shove and many coal fired plants will be built and brought on line fast.
Poor, poor Canadians – fated to spend their lives boasting about Lorne Greene and Celine Dion.
Don’t worry, we like you anyway 😉
Les,
I just don’t see Celine as presenting a credible military defense against potential invasion by angry Toronto-ites should the hostillities of 1812 ever resume. I’ll keep Detroit with all its husky Michiganders. I’m not trading Buffalo for Celine Dion either.
I was at first surprised that Canada would want the failing Detroit economy and then that the US would rather keep it!
Andrew_FL– I speak for myself and not all of America. Living in Illinois, I value Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota as our first line of defense should Canada ever become bellicose and decide to invade. I’m sure those in Nebraska value both North and South Dakota for the same reason. (Given the population of N and S Dakota, it probably would take both states to muster forces to repel invading Canadians.)
You, in Florida, naturally have little to fear.
To those Canadians who wonder why I might fear invasion: Well, we have lots of valuable corn and soybeans growing on endless flat almost featureless land here in Illinois. I think anyone could see the temptation to seize the state could be overwhelming! 😉
Lucia,
I see Celine’s vocal equipment as more of a weapon than an instrument, have you heard how long she can hold a note — pity about her song selection.
On or near Topic
Here in Australia parliment is debating the proposed Carbon Trading Scheme or ETS and while the govt (left of centre Labor) will get it past the lower house where they have a clear majority it is likely to fail in the Senate where it is opposed by the Greens by being too weak and by the Liberals because it is Labor’s proposal and by the Nationals (right wing rural party) because they are deniers. The debate is fun though
Lucia: your
You, in Florida, naturally have little to fear.
As I understand, Florida is invaded every winter, by cold Canucks seeking warmth…
hmmmm….there might be some sort of allegory in this annual invasion.
Actually, the snow birds are largely cold Americans-but yes, people do like warmer whether generally, and are moving south in increasing numbers. In fact, you get interesting results if you weight temperature changes by population at the time-it rises much faster!
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/08/05/ccsp-climate-impacts-report-a-perversion-of-science/
Heat is not, itself, bad for people, and deep down, they know it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRwiH18QwpU
Ahh, some things you can’t resist.
but this one is the rebuttal, for sure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOzG7bBylRo&feature=related
Lucia, I agree that any steps we take to lessen pollution and negative impacts on the immediate environment are in our favour, (well maybe not CCS programs, they seem like a waste of money to me).
Unfortunately, we reached this standard of living with a relatively small population, dirty getting here, but not off the scale. I’m not confident that the rest of the world is going match our environmental record and I feel that our historical pollution “footprint” is going to disappear fast enough to make your head spin.
But optics count, and the coming pollution wave being 1/2 way around the world, well, out of sight, out of mind so to speak.
Same reason Michelle Obama did not go on this current trip, having her come off the plane in the “required” dress code would have caused some eyebrows to be raised in the US.
Used to be (circa 1970) Myrtle Beach, SC was a prime destination for the Canadians. Signs all over the place saying they took Canadian dollars and spoke french.
Mitchell44–
See why I worry about giving Canada Detroit? You piss the Candians off and the next thing you know the first lady has to spend the day ordering people to rescue all the paintings and furniture in the White House. I’m not sure the current generation of First Ladies will be as attentive to duty as Dolly Madison. We need Detroit to slow down the invasion.
I went to Myrtle Beach in 1964 on Spring Break. Lots of Canadians there. People drove then and it was a lot closer than Florida.
Canadians??
Yes, let’s not forget all the propagan err, uh, News Readers that have infested the MSM all my life who were from Canada!!!
Lucia,
maybe closing Yucca is the back door to reversing the old policy against fast breeder reactors?? I mean, Pres O just proclaimed Iran has a RIGHT to Nuclear power so, who could possibly be worried about nuclear proliferation now?? (not to mention the little mistake advertising all the companies storing nuclear waste!!)
Although I want drilling, biodiesel growing bacteria, solar, geothermal… I would still like to have more nuclear and breeders as they are the only sure thing for the massive amounts of energy the world actually needs to provide for third world countries (not to mention our own needs).
Here’s some new technology.
Electro Thermal Dynamic Stripping Oil Recovery Could Unlock 400 Billion More Barrels of Oil in Alberta at $26/Barrel
See – http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/04/electro-thermal-dynamic-stripping-oil.html
” ET Energy’s Electro Thermal technology could be used to pump out 600 billion barrels of Alberta’s oil sands bitumen. That’s more than triple the Alberta government’s best guess at what’s currently recoverable from the oil sands, and enough to satisfy total global demand for twenty years.”
The power of fascists comes from the image of a united nation, entirely behind its leader. It’s not for the coal-miners’ votes; it’s for their support even out of election season. A leader with a 70% approval rate is a lot more powerful than one with a 50%.
Steve-I have a T-Shirt from Myrtle Beach and as I recall their were some Canadians there. It is lovely but to cold for my taste (at least as far as Beach vacations-the water was unbearable) but I suppose when you live in the great white North, any sunny “warm” retreat appeals.
Solvent Banks…and Marshall McLuhan
Semi off topic, but Senator Inhofe (whatever you may think of his AGW views ) gave what is, IMHO, a great pro-nuclear power speech here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbSYGa73Xhw
Another Canadian here, I annually invade Florida’s west coast….Siesta Key. If there is a better place to be in winter, I haven’t found it. As far as comparing Obama to Clinton, Eric, don’t. Clinton threw bones to the base but was closer to Friedman than Marx, Obama and his ivory tower crew are pure idealogues, implementing the lefty manifesto verbatim. The inflation train has left the station, get ready for a decade of economic pain which is in “the pipeline”. If he continues unchecked for three more years, I may buy Siesta Key for $100 CDN in a few years.
The West Coast also has fewer old people and liberals crowding the beaches-distinguished in my neck o’ the woods from the Left Coast by these features and in my house by the name (and I would know about about old people crowding beaches-I’m related to some of them!)
Hm, I wonder how close Siesta key is to Naples?
Siesta Key is just off Sarasota.
Sorry, I’m totally ignorant of my local geography :blush:
I’ll go get a map…
Two words applicable to the admin’s comments and also to something good from Canada: Strange Brew.
Well in Europe we’ve had some 2 000 years of experience which gave us a nice statistical collection of all possible governants , policies and initiatives .
It ranges from political geniuses (f.ex Hanibal , Philip II , Bismarck) through complete psychopathical morons (f.ex Robespierre , Trotski , Hitler) .
The study has never been done but if the Europeans quantified the performances of the governments and governants through 2000 years , I’d bet that the result would be a gaussian .
As a great history reader , I have always wondered how long the USA will escape the rule of statistics .
While in their short historical statistical sample there have hardly been any geniuses (though imho G.Washington was not bad) , there have been no total failures either .
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I am deeply convinced that “at last” you americans hold one world class failure right now – Obama .
Obama has all it takes to destroy a country – complete political inexperience , ideologicaly motivated radical advisors , ignorance of economy , clear preference for symbols and images (e.g “Yes we can”) , conviction of being chosen by the Providence .
So I am not surprised to see already appear inconsistencies and contradictions like in the Sec.Chu’s statements subject of this thread .
I guess the americans will wake up one day and realize that they will never be able to pay back the debt that they accumulated during a couple of Obama’s years and that is only one of the lesser evils that lurk .
That is the subprimes story all over again but at an astronomically bigger scale .
It reminds me the R.Jordan’s Wheel of Time series – after “The shadow rising” comes “The lord of Chaos” and then “The gathering storm” 🙂
Personnaly I can’t do much about it but at the minimum I and most of my friends are liquidating all our $ assets as fast as we can .
Tom–
It looks like people are selling long term US securities and buying short term ones. This is not a sign of confidence in the US dollar or ability of the government to repay. (I suspect the major concern is inflation and devaluation of the dollar. Yah… so what if you get paid back the way the contract says, but the US dollar is worth nothing compared to your local currency?)
Tom–
I should have added that with respect to intelligence, usually people consider Lincoln the president who was specifically outstandingly intelligent. Washington wasn’t a dummy, but IQ specifically was not his prominent attribute. ( Benjamin Franklin is widely credited as a genius. He was never president. But he really was a genius.)
The shut-down of Yucca Mountain will have little or no impact on the long-term progress of nuclear power in the US.
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As long as there remains a reasonable possibility that nuclear fuel reprocessing could become a paying proposition, it is not a sensible policy to bury spent nuclear fuel. Monitored retrievable storage has always been the rational approach.
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The single most important roadblock to accelerating nuclear power in the US is high up-front capital costs. It costs three times as much and takes twice as long to construct a 1000 megawatt reactor in the US as it does in Asia. And we are talking the same reactor designs here.
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A ramp up of nuclear power in the US must be done cautiously at a slow and deliberate pace. If we go too fast, we will see a repetition of the 1970s-era cost control issues and quality assurance issues that wracked the nuclear construction industry three decades ago.
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In the meantime, while we are working diligently on getting the nuclear industry tuned up again, conservation is the only practical alternative above and beyond what additonal wind and solar can provide.
Scott–
Why do you think monitored retrievable storage is the rational approach? Also, is there anything wrong with the retrievable storage being in an underground facility? What sort of storage are you envisioning?
Could you give us any theories why capital costs for nuclear are higher in the US than in Asia? Is it because raw materials cost us more? Or labor? If so, won’t turbines also cost 3 times more here? Or solar panels etc?
I have nothing against conservation, solar or wind. But I suspect using past regulatory roadblocks as an excuse to create future regulatory road blocks to nuclear and closing down possible storage facilities is a good way to ensure we will end up building coal fired plants now and even more in the fufure.
Lucia: “Why do you think monitored retrievable storage is the rational approach? Also, is there anything wrong with the retrievable storage being in an underground facility? What sort of storage are you envisioning?”
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For all practical purposes, MRS is the waste management approach that is currently operative. Spent nuclear fuel is held in casks on site with few real problems other than the ususal public relations issues. In contrast with geologic disposal, MRS has a well-defined and well-understood regulatory framework. As we have seen for the last 25 years, opening a geologic repository means pushing the regulatory process envelope to its absolute limits but with an uncertain regulatory outcome. So leave the spent fuel where it is sitting in on-site MRS, or centralize the MRS in a few regional locations, if some localities can be found to host it.
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Lucia: “Could you give us any theories why capital costs for nuclear are higher in the US than in Asia? Is it because raw materials cost us more? Or labor? If so, won’t turbines also cost 3 times more here? Or solar panels etc?”
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For a variety of reasons, the US is no longer an industrial nation in the same sense as we were thirty years ago. In addition, America is an extremely expensive place to do business. Everything associated with constructing a large industrial facility in the US is more expensive and takes more time than in Asia. The two main problems are: (1) the high cost and lack of availability of a qualified work force, and (2) the lack of an adequate construction support infrastructure for materials, equipment, and manufacturing expertise as existed twenty-five years ago.
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Lucia: ” I have nothing against conservation, solar or wind. But I suspect using past regulatory roadblocks as an excuse to create future regulatory road blocks to nuclear and closing down possible storage facilities is a good way to ensure we will end up building coal fired plants now and even more in the fufure.”
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Regulatory roadblocks are not currently an issue with reactor construction. Follow the NRC’s rules and processes, and follow the siting processes that state and local governments employ to manage the nuclear industry in their particular localities, and the regulatory framework will be there to support the nuclear revival. The real issue with nuclear construction is gaining access to limited supplies of nuclear qualified labor, nuclear technology, and nuclear-grade equipment and materials; and in controlling costs and schedules in an environment when there is great competition for the nuclear-capable human and material resources needed to effect a strong recovery of the nuclear industry.
Could you describe MRS beyond simply providing an acronym? I found this MRS website http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/sec_subscribe.asp?CID=6834&DID=176959 .
The titles of papers all include words like “Underground Characterization Started for the Spent Fuel Repository in Finland”
Development of the Supercontainer Design for Deep Geological Disposal of High-Level Heat Emitting Radioactive Waste in Belgium.
This seems to suggest that MRS is somehow related to “deep geological disposal”.
I also found http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/monitoring-retrievable.html which says:
This suggests that MRS is a form of temporary storage. Are you suggesting that we should just be happy with temporary storage forever? Or are you aware of any specific solutions for long term storage that have been worked out. If you are, please share.
Of course competition for materials is an issue. Competition for resources affects the price of everything, and will affect the price of solar panels, and materials for wind turbines. So, could you flesh your argument out to explain why this is some sort of unique issue vis-a-vis nuclear as opposed to say, cocoa beans?
Also, beyond simply decreeing regulatory hurdles non-existent, could you explain why you believe they are non-existent?
On your point (1) Out of curiosity, since you are posting this in response to my question about why nuclear would be cheaper in Asia than here…. do the Asians have a highly trained nuclear work force just milling around waiting to take low payiing jobs to build these things? ? Or adequate construction support infrastructure to facilitate these things at no cost? (If you think so, could you provide evidence.)
One (2) when I asked you to explain why the capital costs are will be 1/3rd the cost in Asia relative to the US and specifically asked “If so, won’t turbines also cost 3 times more here? Or solar panels etc?”.
Sure, nearly everything is more expensive in the US than Asia. This would mean solar and wind will also be more expensive here than in Asia. So this price differential even if accurate doesn’t argue against nuclear in the US at all. After all, we aren’t going to get our energy from Asia; we do need to generate it on this continent.
It seems to me that you are making irrelevant comparisons. It might make sense to explain that it’s cheaper to knit sweaters in China and ship them here. I’m sure it might be cheaper to get my hair cut in China than here in the Chicago burbs–but I can’t really just import a hair cut. Similarly, even if it is cheaper to build any sort of power plant in China, we really aren’t going to ship the energy here.
These provide for higher capital costs are more general would apply to any industrial installation and even small ones. Decaying construction support infrastruture is a general problem is a problem that needs to be addressed period. It’s going to affect our ability implement large scale anything. And even if people think of solar as being small panels, erecting zillions on lots in the desert and distributing the energy to people elsewhere ends up being a large scale industrial project.
Monitored Retrievable Storage in its very simplist form means loading the spent fuel into casks and letting it cool under monitored conditions on the surface as opposed to underground.
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Long-term MRS would be similar in concept to DOE’s own description for it, as you have quoted their description above, except that when the cask has reached the end of its design life, or if it shows signs of deterioration before then, the fuel is moved to another cask. Handling spent fuel is a routine operation in the nuclear industry. For any particular set of spent fuel rods, if we keep on doing that periodically for a thousand years, so what?
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Of course, there is this potential problem of the physical deterioration of the spent fuel rods themselves, complicating the transfer of the rods to a new cask. Some — or eventually all — of the spent rods may have to be reprocessed at some point in the distant future, regardless of the profitability (or lack thereof) of the spent fuel reprocessing operation. At that point, the piper will have to be paid. But again, so what? It’s all part of the cost of doing business, if we choose to take the nuclear energy route.
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In any case, shutting down Yucca Mountain has effectively and permanently foreclosed the option of a geologic repository in the United States. The national political consensus that supported Yucca Mountain has been shattered, and with it all prospects for a future geologic repository. Some form of MRS — most likely local on-site storage — is what will now be done for the long-term future. And by inference, some form of fuel reprocessing must eventually be adopted too, although it may be fifty or a hundred years before there is clearly no other choice but to pursue it, regardless of the expense.
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And if an operating nuclear plant runs out of spent fuel storage space, and if local authorities don’t approve the needed additional space, and if the plant is permanently shut down as a result — so be it. The people, acting through their local representatives, will have had their appropriate say in the matter.
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I make reference to Asia because that is where much the world’s nuclear construction expertise resides today (along with France), and because that is where competition for nuclear-capable human and material resources will become most acute. If you want cost effective nuclear talent in the areas of construction design implementation, construction engineering, and skilled construction craft, India and Pakistan are the places to get it these days.
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As for the complexity of nuclear projects as compared with other types of large technology projects, nuclear is different. If it’s nuclear, you have to do an excellent job at everything you do. And I mean everything — no excuses, no exceptions, and from Day One of the project on through to final completion.
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History has demonstrated that building the kind of organization and the kind of industrial support infrastructure needed to do a cost effective job of nuclear construction is a difficult and time-consuming task. Now, I have no doubts we can get from here to there eventually. It will just take time.
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Scott said “”Regulatory roadblocks are not currently an issue with reactor construction. Follow the NRC’s rules and processes, and follow the siting processes that state and local governments employ to manage the nuclear industry in their particular localities, and the regulatory framework will be there to support the nuclear revival.””
Unfortunately, there are such things as COG’s, Council of Governments, for example in the regulatory framework of “local”. Once, we had several discharge permits held up at the coast of the Carolinas due to lack of approval from the local COG’s. So, I went ot explain what we did in designing remediation systems to see what the hold-up was. The hold-up was that they determined “acceptance” by feeling (I like this design) or by philosophy (I don’t like discharges from remediation sites), not by treat the benzene to 50 ppb rather than 100 ppb and we will let you have it.
From http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/news/articles/2008/10/ENERGY-Nuclear-power-play/ “”Building a new nuclear plant is a complex proposition. The plants are expensive to build, though a mixture of federal incentives such as loan guarantees and production tax credits have made cost less of an issue. And safety and environmental concerns remain.
“I think it’s going to be a huge fight,” says Tom Drennen, a Hobart and William Smith Colleges professor who studies energy issues. “People will come out of the woodwork to protest nuclear again.”
These protests have to addressed per the regulations at least in terms of responsing, so yes, regulations can increase cost.
I would like to see the figures about costs and their breakdown. I understood that the costs of labor, in general, and goods, in general, was what caused the price differential; not specialized labor, nor special high tech goods. I know, at the not too distant past, they did not have the skilled labor in several areas and wantedit. I was in a consultant firm that wanted to sell my services to China or other developing nations for that reason. If they have the skilled labor pool, I bet they developed it. They may still be buying it. If we no longer have it, we could easily do it. The old paper manuals are probably around somewhere. I still have some of my old stuff in nuclear, and in environmental.
John, I’m not going to say that passing through the local facility siting process won’t be an arduous and painful task in many, if not most cases.
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On the other hand, those promoting any particular nuclear construction project have every incentive to get all their ducks in a row well ahead of time.
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If the ducks don’t all quack more or less in unison, then it’s back to the project management drawing board. In other words, if the case for new construction isn’t clearly made the first time around, then better luck next time.
Scott–
As far as I can see, all you are saying is that you approve of the decision to artificially elevate the costs of dealing with nuclear wastes because, as far as you concern, if doing so makes nuclear energy uneconomical, “But again, so what?”
And, based on your answer, I have little doubt that given your preferences, you would be happy to cancel all projects permitting solutions to any existing problems. (i.e. like encouraging closure of yucca mountain to take away that option.)
Then, for lack of solutions, you are happy to decree the option of nuclear dead. And then decree, so what?
By the way: Yucca mountain being closed now doesn’t mean it can’t be put back on the table. It just means that it will cost more and take more time to do so. If wind and solar don’t deliver in 10 years, I predict that we will build more coal plants. Then, the plans for nuclear will be resurrected and implemented. At that point, the political dynamic will be to rush nuclear projects, leading to unnecessary risk.
Am I sure of this? No. But people don’t like their standard of living to go down. So closing Yucca was a very risky move– in my opinion.
Lucia, you are going off the deep end here in misconstruing and/or misinterpreting what I’m telling you.
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I’m telling you that a disciplined, well-managed, and orderly approach must be taken in bringing the nuclear construction industry back to the levels of quality assurance and cost effciency that existed at the end of the 1980s.
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A whole new generation of managers and technologists must be instructed as to the realities of doing nuclear construction in a way that is quality conscious, affordable, and environmentally acceptable to the regulators and to the public.
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As for Yucca Mountain, the decision is made and the impact is irreversible. Regardless of any number of Blue Ribbon panels that might be called together, MRS is what will eventually happen, if nothing else by default.
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If you want nuclear power as an option, get used to dealing with the hard realities of the situation and do whatever is necessary technically and managerially to make it happen.
Scott–
You have said many things in addition to suggesting that a disciplined orderly approach is required to bring nuclear back. You’ve advocated one storage method over another, made claims about the permanency of political decisions and made claims about economics of various decisions.
You now seem to want to suggest the orderliness of bringing on nuclear power is your major point: who ever suggested bringing it on line in a non-orderly way was advantageous? Are you presenting that as a counter argument to anyone? Has anyone disagreed with you that bringing it on line in an orderly manner is a bad idea?
It is unfortunate that the extremely poor decision has been made to close Yucca mountain. You suggest the decision is somehow permaent. I suspect that eventually, some idea for a federal repository will be resurrected. After all, we have Federal waste at Hanford, Savannah River, Rocky Flats, Oak Ridge and numerous other locations, and the idea of storing it in a manner that requires perpetual care is hardly intelligent. Because the decision to close Yucca off as an option was as foolish as storing spent fuel in K-East and K-West at Hanford, the decision to create a better federal repository is destined to be resurrected. (I think both K-East and K-West are now cleaned up– at great expense.)
Yes. Closing Yucca mountain has irreversible costs. It makes the cost of waste disposal unnecessarily expensive. That fact that it’s been a costly decision doesn’t mean the decision can never be reversed. It only means the foolish decision was wasteful and expensive.
That said: I have not stated an objection to storing waste in MRS during the interim if that is forced on us by those who would prefer to ensure that the cost of nuclear will be unnecessarily high. If we have to do store the waste temporarily, then we do. I haven’t said otherwise. But seem to be suggesting that this decision is somehow better than geological storage. But your reasons seem to be that it’s better because if nuclear gets too costly because we make political decisions to close of safe and inexpensive disposal options, so what?
Scott Brim:
“If you want nuclear power as an option, get used to dealing with the hard realities of the situation and do whatever is necessary technically and managerially to make it happen.”
The reality is that trying to build nuclear you will run into the same issue that has prevented even ONE new petroleum refinery to be built in about the last thirty years.
That is, the eco groups will sue you so far into frustration that you eventually give up, if the Courts don’t decide against you before then.
Lucia
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I was speaking of POLITICAL geniuses 🙂
I am not sure that political geniuses can be measured by IQ .
When you analyse a big enough sample like 2000 years of history , you observe that high IQ doesn’t necessarily lead to an exceptional political performance and conversely .
The political geniuses and there are not so many have more for characteristic an astonishingly relevant long term vision (Hanibal was impressive on this point) , an ability to judge people , an ability to choose advisors and an ability to decide .
Based on that for me the best US President was R.Reagan and , as I already said , G.Washington .
I don’t know the IQ of R.Reagan and I wouldn’t like to insult his memory but it is not impossible that there were several US president with higher IQ but who won’t be remembered for their results .
So while Obama might have an OK IQ , he’s spectacularly missing everything else that is necessary to make a good President what makes him a candidate for a potential world class failure and that is not good news for you (americans) but we (europeans) are also concerned because of the size of the US economy which is too strongly connected to ours .
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Yes , you are perfectly right about the securities .
It’s the russian debt all over again – in 1906 people buy paper with state warranty , insurance and all and 10 years later the debt was not worth the paper it was printed on .
I was still optimistic before Obama’s election but now I keep away from $ papers (be they long or short term) like from the devil .
Indeed as you said – it is the change rate €/$ because there are 2 scenarios :
– it’s like the russian debt from 1906 and I loose everything
– I get partly a $ value back which is worth much less € than what I initially put in
In both cases it is a catastrophic investment
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The only “good” side is that there are still $ oriented economies but that are not US .
For instance I bought an appartment in Buenos Aires several months ago (price in $) and I paid it yesterday . As the $ fell in the meantime , it cost me 10 000 € (14 000$) less .
But I’d prefer not to win this money and have a solid US adiministration instead .
Tom–
Washington was certainly politically and militarily astute. Oddly, some of his best decisions sprung from his not wanting to be a despot. After all: He voluntarily chose not to run for a third term when he was popular. This was a major thing back in the days when countries were typically ruled by someone who was in power until the day he died.
Washington was just not the sort of politician who typically rises up during any sort of revolution.
Ohh… Remind me to come squat at your place in Buenos Aires in January. (I’m planning to squat at Tetris’s in August. Shh…. don’t tell him.)
Kuhnkat, those investors who are willing to risk their cash on near-term nuclear projects have weighed the potential influence of anti-nuclear groups and are moving forward anyway. Lucia, regarding Yucca Mountain, you are sparring with a ghost here as I am not going to take the bait on the various gory details of this particular topic. What’s done is done.
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FYI, K East and K West are not yet cleaned up, although the spent fuel has been moved to a central storage facility. K Basins Sludge has been removed but has yet to be treated. Also, significant contamination remains under the K East reactor and there is talk the reactor core may actually be completely removed on an accelerated schedule as opposed to being cacooned for 75 years.
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They should have kept PUREX running for another two years in the late 1980s and reprocessed all of Hanford’s spent fuel through the system, thereby saving several billions of dollars of the taxpayer’s money, resources which could have been applied to other projects. But they didn’t, for reasons which seemed right at the time but which don’t make a lot of sense when viewed from 20/20 hindsight twenty years later.
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IMHO, while most of Hanford’s current surface area will eventually be released to the public, the smaller central core of the site will remain under strong institutional control forever. Furthermore, the Yucca Mountain decision guarantees — for all practical purposes — that Hanford’s vitrified/solidified wastes will never leave the site. (Oops, I said the Y.M. words again. Darn.)
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The Savannah River Site will remain open indefinitely as an important national asset for performing a variety of nuclear projects, and also as an ecological preservation site for the southeast region.
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Now that Y.M. is toast, it is probable the vitrified/solidified wastes at the Savannah River Site will stay there permanently as well. Managing the waste storage activities for that material will simply be one more task in a laundry list of routine nuclear-related tasks being performed at SRS (Just my personal opinion, of course.)
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Scott–
You jumped in to this blog post with this as your initial comment.
If you do not wish to support your claims about what is or is not a sensible or rational approach, you are not required to do so. However, people will notice. So far, you have given no evidence that monitored storage is the more rational approach.
If by “what’s done is done”, you mean Obama has made a decision: Sure.
However, to date, no one has exploded a bomb inside Yucca mountain causing it to collapse to the ground. No political decision is irreversible. Until Obama pulls a Mayor Daily and rolls trucks in secretly at night to demolish the thing, the decision could be reversed by someone at some point.
On K-E and W, I was referring to waste being removed from the basins when I said cleaned up. Sure.. it’s not completely done. I had read K-E had been cleared out, and I’ll admit that’s what I was thinking off when I posted my comment. The reactor is not the basin.
I don’t know why you think the reasons for closing purex down seemed to make sense at the time. It made sense to some people at the time, just as closing Yucca mountain seems to make sense to some one people now. That those who disagree didn’t prevail does not mean that the problems could not be foreseen. Closing Yuccaa will cause problems in the future. It is a costly, wasteful decision.
Precisely. And it means that the waste will be stored in a sub-optimal condition and at higher cost relative to Yucca mountain. Closing Yucca mountain is unwise for this reason. That it is an unwise decision is foreseeable.
Once again: This will be done at much greater cost and present greater risk to the populace. So, bone headed move to close Yucca mountain.
That is, the boneheaded nature of the decision to close Yucca mountain is obvious now, unless the plan is to make nuclear power unfeasible by closing off lower cost, lower risk methods of storing the current inventory of nuclear waste in order to
a) buttress talking points of those who oppose nuclear energy and
b) escalate the cost of commercial nuclear energy.
As far as I can determine, this is how you framing your rhetoric with regard to Yucca mountain. You start by dropping in and suggesting that surface storage was the better notion. Then, you switch to explaining the expense and safety issues of the method. Then say those are just costs that must be considered if we are to use commercial nuclear. Then, when we go back to the notion of suggesting that future admistrations could always revert to the lower cost safer method you want to just suggest that issue can’t be discussed because closing Yucca mountain is some sort of done deal.
Administrations change. Yucca mountain and/or underground geological storage is a better idea that surface storage at Hanford or Savannah river. The idea of underground storage will be resurrected. Likely not by Obama, but by someone. I suspect it will take a decade, it will cost a lot. But at any point constructing a geological repository will have economic beneifts provided someone doesn’t make the boneheaded move to close it up when it’s nearly completed.
The plan to store waste in a geological repository will return, if only to store the pre-existing waste. But it will return even more forcefully if solar and wind energy does not pan out.
IMHO as long as reprocessing of the spent nuclear fuel is a future possibility, because of the potential future economic value of the material, that option should not be foreclosed by permanently burying it. Maintaining the spent fuel on each reactor plant site is a public relations problem, not a true nuclear operations management problem.
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On the other hand, the vitrified/solidifed wastes produced from the radioactive source liquids in the Hanford and Savannah River Site tank farms are a different matter, as they have no future value and are therefore actually “waste” in an economic sense.
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However, the vitrified liquid waste forms (glass logs) will be highly stable solids containing immobilized cesium and strontium; and in about 300 years, their radioactivity will have decayed to less than 1 percent of what it is today. Maintaining these glass logs on the Hanford and Savannah River sites for the next 300 years is a public relations problem, not a true nuclear operations management problem.
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The bottom line is this: roughly $14 billion has been spent on Yucca Mountain so far, and perhaps another $8 to $10 billion would have been spent over the next ten to twelve years before it actually opened, had it not been terminated. What is the present value of MRS-related operational costs for maintaining the spent fuel aboveground for the next 100 years, discounted at an appropriate interest rate? I’ll bet that its present value is substantially less than $24 billion dollars.
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Scott–
It’s more expensive and less safe than storing it in a geological repository. That’s why the plan was for a geologic repository.
I bet you have no idea and are posting a guess based on what you’d like it to cost.
Lucia, this discussion is getting to be like the one in the Far Side cartoon where the ancient scientists are waving their arms at each other debating the structure of the dirt molecule.
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My opinions are based on previous experience working in nuclear waste management operations and also working for a time in the civilian repository project. My opinions remain opinions, however.
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Regardless of what either of us thinks about these costs, future studies are bound to be conducted which will update previous estimates as to what long-term MRS operational costs will be in comparison with other possible alternatives such as spent fuel reprocessing. Then we will have a definitive and objective answer.
Scott Brim
Which is to say that, in fact, you don’t know the cost estimates. And it is also to say that, notwitstanding your claims to the contrary, the decision about Yucca Mountain will be revisited and discussed not only in blog comments here, but in the wider world.
As for a more general comment: If you want to state your opinions, that’s fine. But appearing in blog comments here or anywhere, initiating a discussing point, stating your opinion as fact, and responding to requests that you back up your opinions with information with statements that amount to “I don’t want to talk about that, the subject is now closed” is pointless. It doesn’t matter what your background is, if you don’t want to discuss it, you have the option of not introducing a discussion topic in the first place.
Your strategy of raising a point, telling people your opinion and suggesting further discussion would be tabled would also have been pointless at the endless discussions of waste remediation options I participated in when I worked for PNNL.
Thinking of that… I need to buy my friends father a Richland Bombers sweatshirt. Do they have any slick new styles?
As far as I’m aware, there is just the usual mushroom cloud framed in yellow and green.
There used to be a version with a little bomber flying over the could and a logo that said “Nuke ’em”. A friend of mine visiting for the summer bought that on. I own the classic green with the mushroom cloud.
There are periodic calls, roughly every five years, for getting rid of the mushroom cloud logo. These have always been rejected, fortunately. Richland High would simply not be Richland High without it.
Tom Vonk,
I’m currently thinking that Juan Peron of Argentina is the best (or worst depending on how you look at it) comparison of a relatively recent head of state to Obama. I seriously hope I’m wrong, though.
Scott- I was there during the amazing “Japanese Apple Grower Incident”. The mayor of Spokane (I think) had managed to do something insulting to the Japanese. The apple growers, whose hope was to negotiate favorable import export agreements with the Japanese, frantically phoned, found space in Richland and moved the meeting. They told all their visitors. It was all set.
The article ran in the Tri-City Herald… and all the readers reacted with “OMG!!!! The Japanese will all be walking into a big room with THE mushroom cloud painted on the floor! ” Somehow, someone was very diplomatic ironed out the problem explained the embarrassing situation to the Japanese. The meeting took place at Richland High and the contracts went well.
At one of our National La-bor-a-tories, one of the several we have that build the finest fusion weapons of mass destruction on the entire planet, there was a T-shirt that showed a bomber making a hard turn away from one of those clouds. The caption said, “It’s Miller time.”
All in a day’s work.
I remember very clearly that on August 6th, 1985, while I was driving out to the 200 East Area in my Pontiac Firebird, I glanced in the rear view mirror and discovered that I was apparently being chased by a gaggle of small Japanese pickup trucks. Fortunately for me, the drivers of these vehicles turned out to be friendlies, as it were.