Stossel - Who'll Keep The Lights On 5/12/2011

[JacobG18]

 

[Working Poor]

John much have an investment in nuke.:/

 

[axiomata]

John much have an investment in nuke.:/

Or not. In context he mentioned that he had an investment in a restaurant but refused to plug it. Why do you think he some kind of nuke shill? He opposed subsidies to nuclear. He also speaks positively about natural gas. Is he also speaking as an investor in that source? Quite a baseless claim to make.

Good episode on energy though, worth the watch.

 

[Stary Hickory]

let the markets decide subsidize nothing and let people choose their form of electricity. Nuclear is the best option atm, maybe later solar will be competitive, currently it is not....as in not even viable.

 

[axiomata]

let the markets decide subsidize nothing and let people choose their form of electricity. Nuclear is the best option atm, maybe later solar will be competitive, currently it is not....as in not even viable.

I'm not convinced that nuclear would win out in the market (but it might). Sure, it doesn't have as many direct subsidies as wind or clean coal, but it relies on many hard to quantify indirect subsidies such as loan guarantees, DoE R&D grants, used fuel rod disposal and decommission currently paid for by taxpayers through the DoE as well as liability limits in case of meltdown etc.

According to this wikipedia page, the following DOE chart comes with the info that "The availability of various incentives including state or federal tax credits can also impact these costs. The values shown in the table do not incorporate any such incentives."

So somehow they tried to take out the costs of subsidies in their analysis. And according to such an analysis combined cycle gas power is the cheapest and is 2/3rds the annualized cost of nuclear and 53% the cost of wind.

 

[JohnRego]

LOL, he had someone on his show earlier telling him that Nuclear is not profitable without subsidies.

 

[Captain Shays]

let the markets decide subsidize nothing and let people choose their form of electricity. Nuclear is the best option atm, maybe later solar will be competitive, currently it is not....as in not even viable.

I agree that there should be no subsidies for any technology and that the free markets should determine what forms of energy we should use. But, I don't agree with solar isn't viable or that nuclear is the best available option.

For o e thing, when doing a cost benefit comparison between the technologies we must consider that the dominant paradigm is a centralized paradigm. In other words, relative to energy, we make it in big chunks and distribute it out through the 500Kv distribution grid. But in the process, the line losses due to voltage drop and other issues combine to reject 53.2% of all the energy that is produced. It's wasted in the transmission. The longer the distance that we must send the energy the greater the accumulated loss. This dynamic doesn't change whether the centralized production is nuclear, gas, hydro, solar, wind or cow farts.
In a decentralized paradigm we would be producing the energy right at the location of the load or onsite which would eliminate all of those associated line losses and the corresponding wasted energy. In that system energy would be produced in millions of locations. Your house, My business. Our church. ALL government buildings, street light, traffic signals, police depts, municipal building etc. At each location whatever the source of energy might be whether solar panels on your roof, or wind turbines on that bridge or micro turbines fueled by gas in your garage, no natural disaster or terrorist attack could ever again threaten our grid and the distribution of the energy would be efficient to the point of some day achieving an all electric ground transportation and shipping system with domestic produced forms of energy.

So when people compare solar panels on your roof tot he energy that is produced by a nuclear power plant 60 miles away, they aren't factoring in the line losses and rejected energy, and the costs of military protections of the power plants and the irradiated fuel rods or the disproportionate subsidies that the nuclear industry has received over the years. In fact, there is no way in a free market that the nuclear industry would have ever gotten off the ground in the first place let alone sustain itself commercially.

That said, there is no doubt a supply-demand log jam that exists with renewable resource technologies especially solar. In fact ALL grants, tax breaks and subsidies are designed with the intent to increase production by tapping into a demand in hopes that a critical level will be reached some day and the costs will come down to the point that we wouldn't need any artificial government support mechanisms to inspire us to purchase solar panels. But that doesn't work and never will work.

I think what would help along those lines though is for us to force our government at every level to purchase solar panels for their own use. We own our government and we pay the electric bills so who is to say that we must buy it from a nuclear power plant 60 miles away then have to may for extra military protection of the power plant then the nuclear waste for 10,000 years instead of buying solar panels that last at least 100 years which is essence is like buying all the electricity that the street light will use for the next 100 years all at one time which is also an investment in our infrastructure?

 

[Legend1104]

can't wait to watch this tonight. I love watching Stossel.

 

[Legend1104]

I love Stossel's show. He uses sound, well-thought out arguments that does not come off as crazy like some libertarians do, but rather logical common sense arguments. That is why when people like Ron Paul debates neo-cons, they always use fear or one-liners because you cannot argue with most libertarian common sense ideas.