by Tanada » Wed 13 Feb 2019, 06:41:54
California, home to the country’s most aggressive wind and solar mandates, is a cautionary tale. On sunny days, the state often winds up paying neighboring states to take unneeded power off its hands. Californians pay 50 percent more for electricity than the average U.S. consumer. And yet, California’s carbon emissions haven’t fallen any faster than those in the nation as a whole. Nonetheless, the state’s public utilities commission recently voted to shut down California’s last remaining nuclear power plant, which will take with it 9 percent of the state’s electric power.
On the global stage, Germany exemplifies green energy’s law of unintended consequences. The country has poured 150 billion euros into its ambitious Energiewende plan to wean itself from fossil fuels. Despite obtaining 38 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, Germany has made little progress bringing down carbon emissions. Meanwhile, electricity rates have doubled, air quality is miserable, and the country still depends on coal for about 40 percent of its power. Germany “is the biggest fraud globally,” one frustrated EU official said. France’s Macron, who came into office promising to shut down many of that country’s reactors, reversed course after observing the German example. “What did the Germans do when they shut all their nuclear in one go?” he asked rhetorically in a 2017 interview. “They worsened their CO2 footprint. It wasn’t good for the planet. So, I won’t do that.”
Will more policymakers start facing up to the yawning gap between renewable hype and energy reality? They may be forced to. The blistering summer of 2018 throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere pushed electricity usage to dangerous levels. Germany’s vaunted green-energy infrastructure couldn’t keep up, and the country had to rely on its few remaining reactors to fill the gap. South Korea moved to increase its number of operating reactors from 14 to 19. Japan accelerated a plan to reopen some of the plants closed after Fukushima, nearly doubling its nuclear capacity. And Taiwan reopened a formerly closed plant. Antinuclear sentiment runs high in all those countries, but their political leaders apparently decided that they would face a stiffer voter backlash if they allowed power blackouts.
Many pronuclear advocates hold out hope that “next-generation” nuclear power technologies might provide the needed breakthrough to revive the sector. Private investment is pouring into innovative new reactor concepts, including Small Modular Reactors, which could be factory-built, made impervious to meltdowns, and sited close to cities or industrial parks, where energy demand is highest. Proposals to build SMR demonstration plants are moving ahead in Idaho and Tennessee and in Canada. If these ideas pan out, they could indeed revolutionize power generation.
But rolling out such technology at scale could take decades. “We don’t need to wait for advanced nuclear,” Shellenberger warns. “Current reactor designs work fine, and they’ve been proven safe. We just need to keep using them.”
LINKI should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, write, balance accounts, build a wall, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, pitch manure, program a computer, cook, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
