| THE NEW CLIMATE WAR The Fight To Take Back the Planet Michael E. Mann New York: PublicAffairs, January 2021 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-5417-5823-0 | ||||
| ISBN-10 1-5417-5823-4 | 351pp. | HC/BWI | $29.00 | |
One thing that is so striking about the opponents of action on climate change is how many of them appear on the wrong side of other disputes. Chief among them were Frederick Seitz, veteran tobacco industry shill, and S. Fred Singer, contrarian on acid rain and the ozone hole as well as the link between smoking and lung cancer. Other prominent names were William Nierenberg, astrophysicist Robert Jastrow, MIT atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen, and Willie Soon. Political operatives included Myron Ebell and C. Boyden Gray, both supported by the Koch Brothers. Many of them had scientific training, just not in climatology or environmental science. The thing that united them seems to be "free-market fundamentalist": a belief that corporations, left unfettered, could solve any social problem — but governments could only muck things up.
Many other names might be mentioned — such as Patrick Michaels and Christopher Horner (whom Dr. Mann omits).
There are some new names, too. They are part of the campaigns to defeat a national bottle-and-can-recycling bill and the advocacy for flame retardants (as opposed to cigarettes that go out when not puffed on.) Dr. Mann covers these in Chapter 3. Note the parallel between these campaigns and climate-change deflection: all seek to shift responsibility from corporations to individuals.
In the world of politics today, almost anything—it seems—goes; reality and logic have gone out the window, replaced by ideologically and agenda-driven "alternative facts." – Page 35 |
Dr. Mann discusses nuclear power on pages 169-170. He writes:
There are a number of major obstacles, first of all, to safe, plentiful nuclear power. There is the risk of nuclear proliferation, and the danger that fissile materials and weapons-applicable technology could make it into the hands of hostile nations with militaristic intentions or terrorists. There is the challenge of safe long-term disposal of radioactive waste. And there are some profound examples of the acute environmental and human threat posed by nuclear power, most recently highlighted, for example, by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster north of Tokyo in March of 2011." – Page 169 |
These dangers exist. But the questions that must be asked are: How much worse would expanded reliance on nuclear power make them, and how can they be minimized? I don't think Dr. Mann has done enough research on this area. He seems to rely solely on an opinion piece by Robert Jay Lifton and Naomi Oreskes that appeared in The Boston Globe in 2019.1
These authors focus mainly on cost, citing the U.S. Energy Information Agency for the fact that nuclear energy averages $100 per Megawatt-hour, versus "$50 per megawatt-hour for solar and $30 to $40 per megawatt-hour for onshore wind." I couldn't find those data at the link given; the EIA page may have changed in the interim. In any case, this undoubtedly includes conventional nuclear plants. With a little searching I found an estimate for advanced nuclear entering service in 2026: a LCOE of $69.13/MW-hr. The same source pegs standalone solar at $32.78 and hybrid solar at $48.67. Exactly how these sources are defined is still unclear. Note too the capacity factors: 90% for nuclear versus 29% and 28% for the solar sources.2
The Lazard site provides an estimate for the fully depreciated conventional nuclear plant (exclusive of decommissioning costs) as $25 to $32 per MW-hr. This compares favorably with the levelized cost of utility-scale thin-film solar PV: $29 to $38, and is almost identical to the subsidized cost of solar.3 It's unclear if storage is factored into the costs for solar.
In the U.S., conventional nuclear power quickly belied its promise, and the outlook for conventional nuclear plants here continues to be miserable. As the Union of Concerned Scientists put it in 2015:
The first generation of nuclear power plants proved so costly to build that half of them were abandoned during construction. Those that were completed saw huge cost overruns, which were passed on to utility customers in the form of rate increases. By 1985, Forbes had labeled U.S. nuclear power "the largest managerial disaster in business history. The industry has failed to prove that things will be different this time around: soaring, uncertain costs continue to plague nuclear power in the 21st century. Between 2002 and 2008, for example, cost estimates for new nuclear plant construction rose from between $2 billion and $4 billion per unit to $9 billion per unit, according to a 2009 UCS report, while experience with new construction in Europe has seen costs continue to soar. – Source |
I trust the UCS and look forward to what they find about Gen-IV nuclear plant designs and their expected costs. In the meantime there are studies by pro-nuclear organizations — which may be too optimistic.4 Even for conventional designs, however, the picture in the U.S. is much worse than for several other nations. France, for example, gets 70 percent of its power from nuclear plants. Germany and Sweden have nearly identical GDPs — yet in 2016 Sweden's carbon emissions were half those of Germany. The secret is nuclear power. South Korea too has had success with building nuclear power. All these nations chose to certify standard designs, rather than making each plant unique as we do. Thus they can lower both costs and completion times.
And let's not forget our neighbor to the north. Goldstein and Qvist5 write:
The Canadian province of Ontario shows the feasibility, in this century, of replacing coal with nuclear power. With a population of 14 million, somewhat larger than Sweden's, Ontario is the industrial heartland of Canada. When it rolled out nuclear power plants, it built 16 reactors in seventeen years, 1976-1993. Then in 2003-2014, it upgraded the province's nuclear power stations to bring nuclear power from 42 percent to 60 percent of the total (hydropower supplied most of the rest). In 2014 Ontario closed its last coal-operated power plant. In one decade, CO2 emissions from Ontario's electric sector had fallen by almost 90 percent, with fossil fuels (all of it now methane) reduced to a small fraction. – A Bright Future, pages 207-8 |
Turning to safety considerations, Lifton and Oreskes write:
No technological system is ever perfect, but the vulnerability of nuclear power is particularly great. Improvements in design cannot eliminate the possibility of lethal meltdowns. These may result from extreme weather; from geophysical events such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis (such as the one that caused the Fukushima event); from technical failure; and from unavoidable human error. Climate change itself works against nuclear power; severe droughts have led to the shutting down of reactors as the surrounding waters become too warm to provide the vital cooling function. – Source |
Despite the claim that "Improvements in design cannot eliminate the possibility of lethal meltdowns" (which Dr. Mann repeats), there have been designs for meltdown-proof reactors for years.6 Without going into great detail, I'll just say that Nuscale's design for such a reactor has received NRC approval. The point is not to claim that nuclear power can be a panacea, or that advanced reactors will solve all its problems. The point is that it has a better safety record than coal or oil, that its lifetime carbon emissions are negligible in comparison, and that it should be one part of a comprehensive solution to climate change.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.