Re: Have we become that stupid ..

Charlie Self wrote: 
Duane Bozarth wrote:

Tim Daneliuk wrote:
...

I fundamentally disagree that "we aren't hurting ...".  Let's do a thought
experiment.  Suppose we built a bunch of small regional power generators
using, say, the Pebble Bed technology the Chinese are currently pushing
(in a huge way).  This would have the eventual effect of making
electricity so cheap that it would be logically "free" (i.e., So cheap
the price wouldn't matter much.)  ...


...

No matter how many you build, they will never be cheap enough to be
considered "free".  Somewhat less expensive than current generation
LWRs, <maybe>, but "free"--no way.  Somewhere the construction and
operational costs as well as the fuel cycle have to be recovered.  I
don't think there's any way it could possibly be done for less than
perhaps 2/3-rds the cost of current generation facilities irregardless
of scale, and I think that estimate optimistic.

I recall when I started school as NE that was the current mantra of the
old AEC--"too cheap to meter".  Didn't happen then, won't happen now or
in the future. It is simply not possible to create an infrastructure of
such magnitude at no cost.



The maintenance costs over decades need to be remembered, too, as does
the simple fact that low cost energy always seems to encourage waste,
or at least very careless use, which drives up needs rapidly. When an
infrastructure is built, it must be maintained, something that a great
many people today seem to forget. In many areas, the Interstate system
is in pretty rough shape. Much of it has been in place for nearly 40
years, in heavy use for more than two and a half decades, and has
gotten relatively small amounts of maintenance...and upgrading has not
always been done in a timely manner, nor in the directions actually
required as traffic loads increased.

Just one example. Physical plants do deteriorate, and they do cost
money to repair, even if properly maintained.



This is an entirely fair and reasonable point. It's why I originally
said "cheap enough to not matter" and not "free". Take an example from
the telephone company. I pay a flat $50/mo for unlimited local and
domestic phone service. It's not "free", but it is so cheap, I don't
care if someone comes over and spends 4 hours on a long distance call to
their friends.

New (actually not so new) nuclear technologies hold this promise. If
you've not read about pebble bed reactors, I heartily encourage you to
do so. For example, see:

    http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china.html

This kind of stuff holds immense promise on the *generation* and waste
disposal side of the equation. The much larger problem is the
*distribution* side - the "grid". The grid grew irrationally, has not
been well maintained, did not transition well from a regulated
environment to a free market, and is IMHO a ticking time bomb. But here
too, pebble beds offer hope. By building lots and lots of *small local*
generation sites (something done in other nations and long advocated by
people like Freeman Dyson, a Nobel lauriate physicist), we can begin to
make "the grid" a more local and scalable phenomenon.  Who needs a
national grid when every state in the country can have a small,
safe, clean nuke, that's easy to secure, can be locally funded and
maintained, and has a minimal waste disposal problem?  It's not a
perfect solution, but it's certainly better than today's trajectory
(no new nukes, lots of coal, Arab oil, and all the rest).

The larger point is that so long as we listen to the irrational
environmentalists (as opposed to the thoughtful ones), as long as we
keep trying to hark back to the days of quasi-socialist regulation, so
long as we play the Not In My Back Yard game, we are effectively
fiddling while Rome burns. These technologies are going to take several
decades to be implemented and debugged. If we don't start now, we are
NEVER going to catch up and China and the rest of the emerging
undeveloped world are going to eclipse the West as the dominant economic
and world power. We don't need more government programs to do this. We
need to let markets do their work AND allow the people/companies who
take the risks to benefit from their bets without exgregious taxation,
unreasonable regulation, and social stigma. So long as an institution
produces wealth without resorting to fraud, force, or threat, in my view
they can never be "too profitable" nor ought we to hold them to the
"serving the larger society" nonsense. I want a world where we don't
have to say Mother May I to the Arabic penninsula or end up begging
energy from the Chinese. This can only happen with free markets and the
legal protection of the profits made thereby.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk     tundra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
PGP Key:         http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/
.

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