Can you explain how you think the latter part would work? Since Ontario closed all its coal plants and subsidized alternative energy generation, the prices have skyrocketed almost 300% in the past decade (from 0.065 per KW to over 0.16), and the government has announced they’ll increase by another 42% within 5 years, with no end in sight for substantial increases. During that time the economy has also underperformed relative to the rest of Canada and unemployment has remained at historical highs. A carbon tax would be catastrophic.
MikeJ
1882
Revenue generated from carbon tax income can be used to lower other taxes, such as income and payroll taxes, or used to help pay for social support programs, depending on your desired distributional impact. As with any tax, there is associated deadweight loss, but I’d argue that burning carbon has significant external costs that are not accounted for the in the current system so burning less carbon offsets at least some and possibly most of the deadweight loss. On top of that, using the revenue to reduce taxes would reduce deadweight loss in other areas.
Ontario does not have a carbon tax. They went more a dictatorial/heavy subsidy route. The heaviest polluting coal plants were shut, and producers of wind and solar power were guaranteed that they could sell their power at a very high rate into the grid. So a nuclear plant gets something like $0.06/kWh while a solar farm gets something like $0.35/kWh. Since solar and wind are somewhat erratic, they also had to replace the capacity lost by shutting down the coal plants by building more natural gas plants, which ALSO had to be given guarantees that they would be paid even if they weren’t used. Then to put the cherry on top, when locals objected to plants in some politically important areas, they government cancelled the projects at huge cancellation fees and still had to pay to build more plants elsewhere.
All of these subsidies and payoffs (and the debt incurred by not paying the full costs of electricity in previous generations) are now being paid out of the electricity bills of people in Ontario, resulting in the increases you mentioned.
I think this system is very different from a carbon tax. The Ontario government attempted to pick winning technologies and basically dictate a solution that was more driven by politics and optics than efficiency. A carbon tax puts an additional price on carbon to reflect the negative externality of burning fossil fuels, and let the market sort out the most efficient solution. If that means keeping some existing coal plants running for a while until better systems are in place for storing and distributing fluctuating wind and solar power, then so be it.
The other factor here is that there is an obvious coordination problem. The negative externalities of burning fossil fuels don’t respect borders, so large trade groups having a coordinated carbon policy is better than one province going it alone. Of course, the solution to a difficult coordination problem is not for each party to say “I’ll wait until everyone else does it first.” I think there was some logic in the Harper government saying that they would keep Canada’s emissions goals in line with those of the US. Of course, now that the US is setting up more ambitious goals, suddenly it’s not feasible for us to keep up.
MikeJ
1883
I think an existing nuclear plant is significantly cheaper to run than an existing coal plant. It might even be cheaper to build and run a new nuclear plant than building and running a new coal plant. However, I think replacing and existing coal plant with a new nuclear plant takes a very long time to pay off. A carbon tax makes that payoff faster, so it would be economical to have nuclear could replace coal faster. Time is of the essence.
You’re falling prey to the old, “nuclear power plants take a long time to build” fallacy.
They don’t. All of the time associated with construction is basically all in the permitting stage.
I’m more pointing at the idea that since we haven’t built many nuclear plants for a long time, ramping up the industry to build a whole bunch of them really quickly would be a very tall order. There’s a lack of trained people, and a lack of facilities to build the reactors and their components.
The other point is a question of practicality. Just as it is not reasonable to believe people are going to stop oil exploration right away (too much money in it right now), it is not reasonable to believe that the public’s attitude towards nuclear power is going become completely positive overnight. I agree that fear of the nukes is counter-productive, just as a I think sinking so much into oil exploration is counter-productive. But in both cases, the situation is what it is.
At minimum, carbon tax aside, nuclear power should be heavily subsidized by the state.
Timex
1885
Not really. While the US basically stopped construction of new nuclear plants until recently (although we’re building some now), the rest of the world didn’t. The nuclear industry still exists. And manufacturing associated with it is far more mature than any other alternative energy source. What’s more, for reactors like the AP1000, it’s built in a heavily modular manner that makes construction faster and easier on site.
I mean, ok… you couldn’t instantly build a hundred simultaneously… but it’s a false dichotomy to suggest that it’s either instant transition to 100% nuclear power, or zero transition to it.
It actually is totally reasonable to expect that, because there is absolutely no rational reason to oppose nuclear power.
Oil exploration takes place because there is money to be had. Expecting people to stop wanting money is foolish.
Building nuclear plants merely means expecting people to stop being afraid of imaginary nuclear bogey monsters.
CraigM
1886
Well it may be reasonable to expect that the public support nuclear, in the sense that it is an obvious and positive solution, it is not realistic to expect people to get on board. Because people are idiots.
Also public discourse is controlled by fear (see the part about people being idiots), and big money in fossil fuels know they can stoke said irrational fear of nuclear.
Nuclear is not a clear saviour for us though. It has issues, longterm issues and let’s not forget Chernobyl or Long Island (iirc?) or Fukushima. It is however part of the solution to our over use of dirty fossil fuels and the CO2 issue, and it would fit nicely alongside a proper roll out of green energy (rather than the piecemeal half-hearted approach mostly taken).
CraigM
1888
Nuclear is objectively better long term than more fossil fuels though. Yes there is dangers, there always are, but the problem is not the amount of damage. You as well as anyone know how serious the long term effects of carbon based energies. They’re ugly and serious, but diffuse. The problem is that when nuclear goes wrong it has very spectacular effect on a small area. So an area gets completely ruined, and that the media can sell. While arguably long term damage from carbon, such as droughts, have more harmful effects but are harder to sell on TV.
Australia is so frustrating. We sit on the world’s largest, most stupendous resources of Uranium and should be leading the global charge on nuclear energy. For years, we should have been investing and proving in not only our own infrastructure, but also pioneering technology advancements in nuclear energy. We should have been positioning ourselves to be world leaders in ore export, technology, services, IP and general influencers as the rest of the world ramps up adoption.
But instead we dig up and export more damn coal instead of aggressively re-purposing and re-skilling an industry with numbered days.
Timex
1890
Ok, I’m going to be blunt here.
What you are saying here is profoundly ignorant, and indicative of exactly the kind of uneducated nonsense that backs the entire anti-nuclear movement.
Let’s look at exactly those cases:
- Chernobyl - This was a flawed soviet reactor design that depended upon a fixed thermal mass to cool the reactor. Basically, it had a bunch of sand around the reactor core, which was used as a heat absorber. No modern reactor works like this. The events of chernobyl are, literally, impossible to occur for modern reactor designs.
- 3 Mile Island - This was a case with multiple failures, both in the reactor hardware and the management by the personnel working the plant. Basically, everything fucked up that could. And you know what the impact was? ABSOLUTELY ZERO. Literally, NOTHING negative happened as a result of it, other than bad PR. ZERO radiation was released into the environment. ZERO people were harmed in even the most trivial manner. I live in the region where this happened. I can see the cooling tower from the reactor that failed every time I fly into Harrisburg airport. This event, which effectively shut down development of the nuclear industry in the US for the past 30 years, is entirely a figment of the public’s imagination, as absolutely nothing bad resulted from it. And yet, as you illustrate, there is some kind of perception among the uneducated that something terrible happened… Mainly based on a freaking movie that happened to be made at the time. Turns out China Syndrome was fiction, not a documentary.
Fukishima - This was, without question, a legitimate disaster in the west, with a reasonably modern nuclear reactor. But there are numerous things to consider:
- It was hit by the largest earthquake in recorded human history
- It was THEN hit by the resulting Tsunami
And even after that, it still didn’t result in the kinds of crazy shit that folks were afraid of after watching the China Syndrome. The aftermath of Fukishima, in terms of harm to the population, was way less than the aftermath of the Earthquake and Tsunami themselves.
But you know what’s the most important thing? MOST PLACES DON’T HAVE MASSIVE EARTHQUAKES FOLLOWED BY TSUNAMIS. If you aren’t in freaking Japan or some other tiny island country in a geologically unstable region like the ring of fire, then Tsunamis aren’t something that is ever gonna happen to you.
And even beyond THAT, modern reactors like the AP1000 wouldn’t have even failed in THAT case most likely. The actual core damage probablility an AP1000 reactor is like 1 failure over an operating lifetime of an absolutely ridiculous 5,000,000 years. To be clear, if you run an AP1000 for five MILLION years, it will have an accident that damages the core in some way. Note, this doesn’t even mean that it would necessarily do anything bad to the environment… Merely that there would be some event that damaged the core in some way.
Amen.
I’m happy as peaches that today’s youth are like wtf is the problem with same sex marriage, but I would be happy as applesauce if they also learn to keep their heads out of their goddamn asses about how the media and big business propaganda fuck around with us on the energy issue.
Actually Timex despite the flawed design elements of Chernobyl, it still took a lot of effort to make that disaster happen. The Soviets weren’t dummies, there were numerous safety systems that could have worked, except for the chain of events both locally, at a management level, and externally. Complete with staff disabling safety systems and even ignoring alarms for the sake of a ‘test’ prompted by management and done in a rush to meet an arbitrary deadline. Plus pushing buttons Homer-Simpson style in an effort to contain it that made it worse.
Fukushima was also not a modern design; with construction in 1967 the design likely started in the 50’s. The emphasis is that even then and despite a 30 foot high wave of water, the disaster was managed without direct loss of life.
What I’m saying is I fundamentally agree: electricity as an energy problem doesn’t need have to be. Nuclear base plus wind/solar when available. Any of the latest modern vetted designs within the US, Canada, or UK among others, simply won’t have a significant future disaster.
Timex
1893
Chernobyl didn’t have to happen, but the fact that it even could happen was largely due to the design, which was recognized as flawed before that accident even occurred… and such an accident couldn’t actually happen with a modern (or even old) western reactor designs.
I had thought Fukushima was newer than that, but if it really was made in the 60’s then as you point out, it’s a testament to the safety of the technology… Even when hit by a crazy combination of natural disasters which really have zero chance of happening in the US, it still didn’t actually kill anyone.
On some level, when you have a core failure rate of 5x10^-7, the risk is at such a ridiculously small level that there is really no rational reason to oppose the technology for safety reasons.
I have heard that the amount of fall out if a reactor goes critical is still less than the amount of radiation that a coal plant produces over its life time. Is that righf?
MikeJ
1895
Here is an article talking about the issue. I think the comparison is that a coal plant operating normally is much greater than the radiation released from a nuclear plant operating normally. However, the health effects in both cases are relatively negligible (coal does its damage chemically). A chernobyl-style event is obviously going to have a much larger effect on habitability than the radiation content of coal alone.
MikeJ
1896
I am a proponent of nuclear power. My dad worked at a nuclear power plant for 35 years. So I am not suggesting such a dichotomy. I hope we build more plants, but I am very doubtful (considering opposition and the scaling up problems) that we can build enough of them quickly enough to solve the problem. We can’t build 100 right away, and we need many 100’s.
Ten years ago China was building a new coal plant about every week. I’m not sure what’s going on today (hopefully fewer?).
I think the idea that increased government revenue, as a result of a comprehensive new tax, is going to be offset by reduced taxes is, well, “optimistic” - even though there might be some short term reductions passed concurrently with a new tax as part of the sales pitch to rationalize the tax.
But overall, excellent response - lots of informative stuff in there that you explained well.
Timex
1898
Yeah, I’m sorry for jumping down your throat. I get pissed at how we’ve dragged our feet on nuclear power for decades now, and often the loudest voices about the dangers of climate change due to carbon emissions either ignore the fact that we basically already have a perfectly viable alternative energy source that can replace fossil fuels (and does not really require further development to be used as a primary energy source, unlike virtually every other alternative energy source), or they actually oppose its use and thus perpetuate the continued use of fossil fuels.
The reality is that we are never going to reduce our energy requirements. We will always need more energy, and the only way we can get it aside from fossil fuels is nuclear power. Pick your poison. It’s coal or its nuclear power. Any belief that there is some magical third choice is false… and really, is just choosing coal.
MikeJ
1899
I think anti-tax forces are pretty well organized at this point, so I don’t think there is a lot of political room for big increases in the overall level of taxation (but perhaps changes to the distribution or complexity are possible). It’s not founded on any particular numbers but just an overall sense of who is yelling the loudest.
But overall, excellent response - lots of informative stuff in there that you explained well.
I’ve become a bit concerned about how polarized politics seems to be these days, and how easy it is to succumb to psychological biases. So I’m trying harder lately not to throw gasoline on the fire.
MikeJ
1900
Public fear is a frustrating dynamic for sure. I recently read a proposal to bury some low-grade nuclear waste (mostly stuff like radiation suits that have been near the reactor) something like 1000 feet down in solid, geologically stable, dense limestone. From an engineer perspective, it’s being extremely cautious. Yet the headline is how this could poison the Great Lakes. The more cautious you are, the more people are afraid of the stuff.
The reality is that we are never going to reduce our energy requirements.
I think there is a lot of scope for improved energy efficiency in a place like North America, though that effect will be swamped by increased demand in other parts of the globe as they become more developed. I think past a certain level of development, increased standard of living is less energy-dependent.
