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106 comments on Andris Piebalgs: Nuclear and the EU's Energy Policy
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Wind and solar already get obscene subsidies per kWh delivered; what more can you ask for?
Subsidies for nuclear power are a pittance in comparison to the unreasonable costs being leveraged on it. In the US the difference between the best experience and worst experience cost for equivalent reactors was at one point a factor 4. What accounts for the difference is that some reactors were held up for many years while paying labour to sit around, being forced to incorporate new features into the design during construction, accruing debt due to interest on a huge loan and being held up by legal hearings; while some reactors were not.
Nuclear power is held to an exceptional safety standard that no other power source has to endure. Fossil fuels in particular literally get away with murder.
If you agree to provide a stable regulatory environment and increase safety and environmental standards for all other power sources to bring them in line with nuclear power(in terms of deaths/TWh) I'd be happy to see the subsidies go away entirely.
I don't believe either solar or wind present much safety or environmental risk, but I'm sure no one would mind if they were held to the same standards as nuclear.
As far as the "obsene subsidies per kWh" wind and solar receive, why not level the playing field and give the same per kWh subsidy to all non-fossil fuel power generation (with no other subsidies)?
Even though the past subsidies for nuclear still dwarf anything solar or wind has received, a level playing field with a equal per-kWh subsidy would allow the private sector to allocate investment with minimal market distortions. I suspect nuclear would not see much investment under such a scenario however.
That's the funniest thing I've heard on TOD for ages!
I mean no disrespect, I just genuinely find that a rib-tickler!
Given that level playing field, solar PV would not exist, and wind might be in grave difficulties for anything but small amounts of power.
The profits of the French nuclear program would be immense - they already produce some of the cheapest power in Europe.
In principle though, I agree with your comments - you will never entirely remove the sticky hand of government, but the subsidy system is absurd.
New technologies should be financed by risk capital during their development, even if it is provided by the government, not supports at so much per kwh on the grounds that at some point it will get cheaper with mass production.
The biggest waste is in the Tokamac fusion research program, which is wholly impractical and will never produce economic power - other approaches are far superior.
There are two ways to view the subsidy question, in terms of allowing the differing technologies to compete on a level playing field.
One is to consider all past subsidies.
Assuming aggregate subsidies for nuclear total $90B in current dollars, $4B for solar and $6B for wind, it would take some serious R&D spending and production subsidies before the three can be compared on equal footing. One could also make the comparison between nuclear per kWh costs in 1970, or whenever it was that nuclear had received an R&D investment equal to what wind or solar have received now.
Given that present-day solar startups feel they will be able to compete with coal/nuclear/natural gas shortly and have only spent a fraction of $1B each, it would not be surprising that further R&D investments substantially higher would bring its costs below that of nuclear, and the same holds for wind power.
The other is ignore correcting past subsidy imbalances, and only look forward with equal subsidies for power generated.
Under this scenario, with say a $0.04/kWh generated subsidy, there would be no private sector investment in nuclear.
In the US, wind receieves a subsidy half that size and is growing exponentially, so doubling the subsidy would only increase the deployment rate.
Nuclear only works in the most socialistic of environments.
Your figures are cherry-picked in several respects.
Firstly, most of the subsidies for nuclear power are for the military and weapons programs, and had little to do with the peaceful generation of power, as are clean up costs.
In fact, programs such as the molten salt thorium rector were discontinued, partly because it is no good at producing material for nuclear weapons and partly because no money would have been made on processing fuel for them.
Your comments on wind are also wide of the mark, as at present wind power produces a very small percentage of power in the US.
At higher levels of penetration the grid would need beefing up substantially, and back-up, usually based on fossil fuels would be needed.
Your costings in fact take no account of that.
In contrast in practise and not as a matter of theory nuclear energy provides the vast majority of electricity for France, and at much lower than average European rates - that difference will only increase with the rising prices of gas.
A tax on carbon emissions would hit wind heavily, since in practise that is what is used for back-up.
The solution you are proposing is in practice only proven for a small percentage of generating capacity, usually by countries fortunate enough to have hydro back-up, and even then it is at high cost.
The wind resources of the States are excellent, far better than in Europe, but proposals to run the country on it are not in the realms of reality.
When the historic subsidies are off by a factor of twenty, what can you say?
By the time solar has seen additional investments of ~$85B, it is hard to say what the per kWh cost will be. Since a number of solar firms think they will be competitive with fossil fuel based power sources in two to three years, after a further $80B in R&D it could even be "too cheap to meter".
At that time, a fair comparison with today's nuclear costs will be possible.
Presumably you would be happy if the $85bn went exclusively into funding a space based system to build a missile defence system ,as that is about as relevant to domestic power production as most of the $85 bn was to civil nuclear power.
Even if you took that grossly inflated figure and distributed it across the number of Terawatts of electricity produce by nuclear power, you would still have a much lower figure than you would get by distributing the research dollars and subsidies across solar's power production.
For the record, I strongly support solar power and think it will have a very big part to play in providing energy, when used in sensible places, ie where it is sunny, and used appropriately, ie for peaking power at the moment, not baseload power.
That is why attempts to contrast solar and nuclear power and say that you could go all solar ignore present engineering and economics, especially for northern areas like Europe.
You are comparing your fantasy solution with a practical way of generating Europe's power.
Solar energy may improve vastly, but to put this forward as a 'proposal' at the present time is a disconnect with reality, particularly for northern Europe with its very poor isolation for several months in winter.
To be fair, we ought to stick to what we can engineer, not what you think may be possible at some time in the future, if we only throw enough money at it.
When making decisions about the future there always exist a very real set of alternatives.
The original post proposed:
"With an income tax of 0,1% to 0,2% on each EU citizen, a value in the order of 4 to 8 Giga €uros (4 to 8 short billion €uros) could be raised every year. That money could get a lot people and a lot of resources working together to develop the EU's energy future."
The question is, should taxpayer money be used to subsidize nuclear power, should it be used for solar and wind, or should the free market be left to work it out on its own.
The question of prior R&D spending is relevant because it gives one an idea of where a technology is on the investment/cost curve.
The more money invested in a given technology, the lower the costs.
Solar and wind are still way behind nuclear in total R&D investment, and one could argue have much more potential for lower costs in the future as the R&D spending catches up.
Your other posts make it abundantly clear that you know nothing whatsoever about the issues you pontificate on, as you are even unaware that both nuclear and renewables costs vary from country to country.
Since the subject of this thread is submissions to the European commission we will make sure that the relevant authorities are informed that an American on a blog doesn't like nuclear power, and has even taken the trouble to do a two minute google to confirm his prejudices! :-)
I guess if you don't want to discuss the issues, that response is as good as any.
As I pointed out below, I stated that new nuclear plant construction is going to have similar costs, not that renewable costs do not vary by location. Reread the posts.
I know you're worried that I'm going to influence European nuclear subsidy policies with my ill-informed posts, but I really think you should relax a bit. Isn't it the middle of the night there anyway?
Past subsidies is no indicator for future performace.
And the results do not scale with the spending, see for instance "war on cancer" in the 70:s or when Sweden in the 80:s poured billions into renewables after a referendum to phase out nuclear power. Both medicine and renewable energy were advanced by the efforts but the results were not in scale to the efforts.
Subsidizing power sources for historical fairness is economical lunacy. RnD money should be distributed according to future potential plus a wide margin for academic freedom and new innovations.
And when you implement the solutions please do it with a free market approach since we can not afford suboptimal solutions when we get resource bottlenecks.
I disagree that "past subsidies is no indicator for future performance".
Prior R&D spending is relevant because it gives one an idea of where a technology is on the investment/cost curve. The more money invested in a given technology, the lower the costs. Solar and wind are still way behind nuclear in total R&D investment, and one could argue have much more potential for lower costs in the future as the R&D spending catches up.
I agree there would be no point in "subsidizing power sources for historical fairness". I was only pointing it out for its relevance to the point above.
Any time you are discussing billions in new taxes to be injected somehow into the market, you've left the realm of the free market.
However, done properly, such action could accelerate the adoption of new, superior technologies. The question is how to apply the funds with the best odds of picking good solutions, without trying to "pick winners".
Historically, organizations with the most political influence get most of the funds. Obviously it would be nice to improve the present system.
One idea would be to create a set of large venture capital funds with the tax money. Citizens would have shares in the funds, and could vote on which fund directors to operate the fund. The directors would explain the investing stragegy they planned to use. Citizens would then receive profits based on how well their funds did. They could choose funds that were more short term focused, or ones that focused on a specific technology they believed in.
Are there urgent energy issues or aren't there ?
[sarcasm]
If not then perhaps there should be some movement for energy class equality (energy source class warfare). We must historically equalize funding for all energy source classes. And historically reparations for insufficient funding for underdeveloped energy classes. But why not also parse the energy sources by type within the energy classes. Equalize Thorium and molten salt reactors against the pressure water and boiler water reactors. Equalize the types of fusion reactors (laser ignition versus tokomaks, IEC/bussard fusion versus tokomaks). Equalize solar thing film CIGS versus silicon PV panels. Equalize Concentrated solar (various types) Parabolic trough versus dish versus power tower versus the new balloon and SUNRGI approach.
It is not like we have any urgent problems like running low on fossil fuels or just having expensive fossil fuels to worry about.
[/sarcasm]
Obviously we need to focus on what will work best now with the new money that will put to work on energy infrastructure. Whatever "unfairness" or "unequal" subsidization occured then "too damn bad".
Here is my view of energy externalities
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/01/energy-costs-with-externalities.html
All I care about are the real costs, but I include the rest because of these kinds of debates. Air pollution is a ongoing and continuing real cost of fossil fuels.
===
I am intellectually fine with an equalized $0.04/kWh [or whatever level] generated subsidy, if combined with a carbon tax related to the cost of air pollution.
Solar power would nearly disappear if such a rule were adopted. Perhaps some of the new concentrated solar power (Coolearth and sunrgi would continue)
Of course it is all hypothetical (and pointless) because there will not be such a universally enacted policy.
Political realities are also realities.
If solar and wind are the 89 pound weaklings in getting subsidies (except for places that like feed-in tariffs) then so be it. They should try to ally themselves with nuclear companies and get some mutually beneficial policies (like new cap and trade to hinder coal). The coal industry is a mighty adversary with a lot of money to work the system. This is why it is idiotic for pro-renewable people to pick too many enemies. It is not practical. Or in current cases it looks like many pro-renewable people have chosen to ally with coal against nuclear. Even though nuclear is cleaner for the environment.