site banner
PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26202 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Happy new year, all. More geopolitics that I don't understand:

Why doesn't the US or some other nuclear power Simply (tm) operate nuclear power plants at a profit on foreign soil on behalf of the local government? This would defuse narratives of the tech tree being made inaccessible to developing nations due to climate change campaigns. It would also promote nuclear non-proliferation and defuse narratives of preventing access to effective power technologies due to the risk of dual-use tech development. Finally, it would stabilize local power grids in regressing states and promote both stability, enabling eventual growth, and loyalty/dependency on the operator in the region. For the cost of single-digit billions of investment, the US (frex) infuses money into American industry, develops the region, and effectively infuses an extra quantum of stability and pseudo prosperity into regions that desperately need it, while extending and securing American hegemony and economic entertwinement/influence.

To what end? Staffed with who? Lets say you are France, probably the international leader in nukes. How are you going to get thousands of good nuclear plant employees in Ethiopia? The locals are out. They don't have the training. So you are going to have to use French engineers and operators, and heck, even janitors. And whats the premium you are going to have to pay them to live in a country either in a civil war, or on the brink of one for much of the last half century? a 100% premium? 200%? And how are you going to sell that electricity? The Ethiopians can barely afford the electricity coming out of a coal plant, let alone nuke energy that costs 3x what it does in France.

This is why Belt and Road is kind of a joke. At best it gets China some raw material mines in an exploitive posture. Developing the Congo has proven elusive because the locals are bad employees.

Who’s trying to defuse tech tree narratives?

Opposition to nuclear comes from fears of 1) weapons proliferation and 2) environmental catastrophe. Building more plants out in the 3rd world doesn’t provide leverage on either of those blocs, so it’s a nonstarter.

The US actually has done this is the past, but domestic political opposition has resulted in the projects being cancelled. Two particularly famous examples are with North Korea and Iran.

In North Korea: In 1994, the Clinton administration and North Korea signed the Joint Agreement Agreed Framework that resulted in North Korea stopping it's nuclear program in exchange for 2 US-built nuclear power plants. The details are complicated, but essentially the new power plants were a proliferation resistant design and North Korea agreed to regular international inspections by the IAEA that would ensure no nuclear material was diverted to weapons development. The Bush administration, however, effectively canceled the agreement. The stated reason for the cancellation was that North Korea was not abiding by the terms of the agreement and was continuing to develop nuclear weapons in secret. The North Koreans claim that the US was the first to break the agreement by failing to construct the power plants and deliver other agreed upon aid.

More recently in Iran: Obama signed the JCPOA in 2015 with Iran. The idea of the treaty was that the US would supply Iran with "medium enriched uranium". At 20% enrichment, this would be sufficient to power Iran's domestic nuclear power plants and manufacture medical isotopes, but would not be sufficient for weapons manufacturing. In exchange, Iran would agree to dismantle it's infrastructure for uranium enrichment. In 2018, however, Trump withdrew from the JCPOA. Although Trump made claims about Iran failing to uphold it's end of the bargain, this was essentially a move to appeal to his domestic base.

In both cases, we have democratic presidents agreeing to nuclear treaties that would at least in theory prevent proliferation (and in my opinion would have). Then republican presidents dismantling those treaties. This type of pattern is very common in American international relations, and makes foreign countries (especially those not very closely aligned with US interests) very hesitant to enter longterm agreements with the US.

This vacillation in American foreign policy has long been known, and both Iran and North Korea were very hesitant to enter into these particular agreements for fear of the US not following through. Both countries, however, were under lots of internal stress at the time of the agreements (North Korea due to the breakup of the USSR and subsequent 1992 famine, Iran due to sanctions and the various middle eastern color revolutions), and they probably would not have entered these agreements if they were in a more favorable negotiating position.

(I was a nuclear officer in the US navy, and participate in unofficial diplomatic efforts with North Korea.)

This vacillation in American foreign policy has long been known, and both Iran and North Korea were very hesitant to enter into these particular agreements for fear of the US not following through

TO elaborate, this isn't a 1 sided fear. The reason the US vacillates is because Democrats trust these regimes to follow through, while Republicans have not. There is no domestic buy in in the US from an entire major political party. IMO for good reasons, the JCPOA, in particular, looks like it was drafted by college freshmen writing for their Intro to Middle Eastern Poly Sci class (wherein they probably don't even note or know that Iran is not majority Arab).

Obama played games with the definition of "treaty" to try to get around the 2/3 Senate requirement to pass them, claiming it was merely a "non-binding political commitment." Republicans had stated their displeasure, too; the House voted down a resolution of approval (269 to 162), and Senate Democrats only managed to kill the resolution of disapproval by filibustering it (54 Reps opposed, along with 4 Dems). (And yes, that is down-voted resolution of approval, and a filibustered resolution of disapproval, which is what happens when you start the process with procedural gamesmanship.) Having avoided the work of getting buy-in from Republicans, and declaring it "non-binding," you don't get to complain when Republicans feel not-bound by it.

Clinton's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework was not the Joint Declaration you linked to, but a response to that falling apart. It was also not approved by the Senate as a treaty, again because he knew the Republican Senate did not approve of it. This was all 5 years before Bush was elected and had a chance to pounce.

So, let's adjust this statement to be accurate:

In both cases, we have democratic presidents agreeing to nuclear treaties that would at least in theory prevent proliferation (and in my opinion would have). Then republican presidents dismantling those treaties.

In both cases we have democratic presidents pretending to have treaties, but not actually passing a treaty like the constitution requires. Shockingly, Republican presidents did not feel bound by these non-treaties that their parties had always opposed.

I appreciate your technical clarifications. I think these corrections only reinforce my main point though that getting long term domestic support for nuclear cooperation is very hard in the US, and that's why we don't see more of it even if it could be an effective foreign policy tool.

Well heck. Thanks for the expert take!

It would also promote nuclear non-proliferation and defuse narratives of preventing access to effective power technologies due to the risk of dual-use tech development.

Building nuclear plants in nations not indigenously able to for political or human capital reasons seems that it would promote nuclear proliferation, not non-proliferation. At the material level you are giving (non weapon)nuclear capability to non nuclear states, that is not non proliferation. And as others have pointed out - the west losing control of its expensive infrastructure investments in the 3rd world has been very common. If/when the recipient country takes control the entry cost to weaponization is significantly lower than if they didn't have a nuclear facility already.

Why doesn't the US or some other nuclear power Simply (tm) operate nuclear power plants at a profit on foreign soil on behalf of the local government?

Because it is impossible to operate a nuclear power plant at a profit anywhere. I can't find a single example of a nuclear power plant that's run at a profit without a galaxy of government subsidies - the EROEI is not high enough to do so (and no, France doesn't count). You'd have to clear that particular hurdle first, and so far nobody has managed it.

Is there any evidence the EROEI is negative? I've looked at a few sources and the numbers vary wildly, but they've all been positive for nuclear.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-measure-true-cost-fossil-fuels/ - this one has Nuclear as one of the lowest.

https://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Weissbach_EROI_preprint.pdf - this study shows the opposite with Nuclear as one of the highest.

Regardless, both have a positive number for nuclear.

In general, my surface-level research has shown wildly varying levels of claims.

Wikipedia claims there was a 2019 study by the economic thinktank DIW Berlin showing no nuclear plants were profitable, but the source is some guy's blog, and his blog doesn't have a source to the article he claimed he saw it in. There then is a source to a counterclaim study that goes nowhere...

This source here says only 1/3 of US power plants are unprofitable

But on the other hand, there is this report from 2021 and 2022 indicating that at least in the northeastern part of the united states Nuclear energy was making profit in recent years.

I've even seen articles claiming renewable energy like solar and wind is cheaper and more profitable than nuclear energy, but I don't know if the profit/cost values used in the comparisons were calculated using the same methodology. Like if they're factoring in subsidies for nuclear but not for solar for example.

It's pretty clear each source is calculating costs and profits differently. All I've been able to gather from my short research is that like most hot topics, there are different groups with different biases in calculating and claiming things to support their agenda, and that it is extremely difficult for a person to be able to discern the truth without investing a lot of effort into looking into the actual methodologies and processes behind the calculation and sources of data. Perhaps I'll take a deeper look at another time.

On a somewhat related note, one thing to keep in mind about nuclear energy is that it is incredibly space efficient compared to other renewable energy sources such as wind/solar/hydro energy. There is only so much land use we can dedicate to wind/solar so as long humans continue to demand energy usage I think there is no choice but to eventually go to more nuclear energy, unless new more efficient forms of energy generation are discovered.

  1. If nuclear power plants are unprofitable then why have so many countries built them, even when they're not pursuing nuclear weapons? Vietnam, South Korea, Sweden, Canada, Belgium, Spain...
  2. The high capital costs and sensitive nature of the plants (with regard to national energy security, waste and enrichment) invite government subsidies and regulation. Normal investors don't make investments that pay off over decades. Nuclear energy deserves subsidies because it enables energy security.
  3. Nuclear energy can be unprofitable when other sources of energy are cheap, when oil prices are low... but oil prices are highly volatile.
  4. The construction cost of South Korean nuclear plants stayed low unlike US and French plants and are absolutely cost-competitive with fossil fuels.
  5. The harder-to-quantify externalities of reliability v renewables and safety v fossil fuels (deaths per terawatt are very low) are considerable
  1. They provide a variety of other benefits - medical isotopes, etc. But at the same time, I really don't think that "a government decided to build it" is a compelling argument for something being profitable. Governments do unprofitable things all the time for a variety of reasons.
  2. Nuclear energy only deserves subsidies if it actually does enable energy security! If the total lifetime EROEI is negative, nuclear energy does the opposite.
  3. Oil prices play a huge part in the actual cost of nuclear plants. Petroleum is used to manufacture them, maintain them, extract that fuel and then transport the fuel to the nuclear plant. As the price of oil rises, nuclear is going to rise up as well as a result.
  4. This is just a statement of fact that I can't disagree with, but at the same time I don't actually see any evidence for it.
  5. I agree that fossil fuels are actually bad for the environment and the people around them in a lot of ways, but nuclear presents its own problems that we haven't really grappled with yet. What are the lifetime costs of having radioactive material stuck in the environment? That's a question that's going to take hundreds of thousands of years to answer. Of course, climate change and resource depletion are going to cause a lot of damage already, so this does in fact remain an open question in my book.

Nuclear energy is only expensive when it's sabotaged, introducing unnecessary costs in construction:

For example, Koomey and Hultman (2007) showed that while construction costs ($/kW) of the least and most expensive nuclear reactors in the US differed by a factor of 12, the lowest and highest levelized cost of electricity ($/kWh) from these reactors only differed by a factor of 4.

Only a factor of 4! Factor of 4 price difference within the same country is insane to think about. There was a huge spike in the cost of building reactors after three mile island (where no radiation was released and nobody died) in the US because of dumb regulations. They didn't allow any new construction for decades, preventing learning by doing. In fact, they complicated construction, demanding redesigns and tearing out parts to be replaced. Thus factor of 12 price difference in construction costs. This had nothing to do with EROEI since Korea is unaffected by US stupidity but would be affected by energy prices (since they import their fuels).

Nuclear plants can run for sixty years if designed properly (and not shut down early by Greens). They absolutely are profitable, even in the US.

See page 388, it's right there in black and white, plant profitability. If it's in brackets, it's unprofitable for the year, paying off fuel, operations and capital. If not, it's profitable. 2020 was a bad year because of low demand so no plant was profitable. But see all the years before, especially 2008! On the whole, nuclear plants are profitable, even in tough market conditions.

https://www.monitoringanalytics.com/reports/PJM_State_of_the_Market/2021/2021q3-som-pjm-sec7.pdf

And if they're profitable in the US, they're profitable in the rest of the world where things are run much more competently. These plants include many victims of the factor-of-12-megasabotage campaign.

Radioactive material stuck in the environment has negligible cost, just stick it in a box and leave the boxes in a desert. The quantities are so small it's trivial to deal with but everyone is addicted to bungling, building long-term storage complexes like Yucca mountain and then not using them.

Complete and utter nonsense about EROEI.

A gigawatt plant operating 70-80% of the time for decades puts out unimaginably large amounts of power.

Uranium is less than 1% of plant operating costs.

Reactor is the only unique part, steam turbines/electric machinery used are identical to those in other plants and are you really in camp of "couple of thousand tons of reinforced concrete' require gigawatt years worth of power?

Nuclear power isn't competitive because laws were made - e.g Alara so it couldn't be.

I'm talking about the actual EROEI - this means including all of the energy required to build, staff and maintain the plant over its lifetime. Actually digging up the uranium and transporting it to the power plant might indeed be les than 1% of plant operating costs, but that doesn't mean you get to ignore the other 99% and leave them out from your calculations. A "couple of thousand tons of reinforced concrete" does actually require gigawatt years of power when you remember the complicated machinery that goes into nuclear reactors and the incredible importance of regular maintenance.

[citation needed] for this claims

even under extreme security bondoogles required nowadays nuclear is energy positive - and if we would reduce safety requirements to match coal, hydro or solar, then costs would drop further

incredible importance of regular maintenance

this does not require gigawatt years of power

Here's a breakdown on EROEI of nuclear reactors.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/energy-return-on-investment.aspx

You are probably riffing off this BS.

http://theoildrum.com/node/3877

Tyner was the author (or co-author) on the 1988 and 1997 reports which are examples of the lower EROI numbers -- less than 5:1. Tyner’s 1997 paper reported an “optimistic value” of 3.84 and a “less-optimistic” value of 1.86 and may be based on “pessimistic” cost estimates. For example capital monetary costs were 2.5 times higher than those reported for Generation III and III+ plants (Bruce Power 2007, see below). Fleay’s 2006 on line paper at least gives very detailed numerical analyses of costs and gains and hence probably can be checked explicitly. Different boundaries are used for these “low EROI” studies than most other recent studies that effect the results. For example Tyner takes interest (with a 4-5x larger energy cost magnitude than capital energy costs) into account in EROI (Tyner 1997). The two large EROI values reported here were for nuclear lifecycles which used centrifuge fuel enrichment as opposed to diffusion-based enrichment. Centrifuge enrichment uses much less electricity than other methods (Global Security 2007). We do not know how to interpret these analyses because centrifugal separation is an old technology. Newer rotor materials allow more rapid rotor spin which might influence results. At present much of the enriched uranium used for nuclear power is coming from dismantled nuclear warheads from the US-Russian agreement to decrease nuclear warheads but, apparently, that program will soon come to an end and we will have to contemplate again generating nuclear power from mined uranium. Much of the arguments about the great or small potential of future nuclear power comes from those who argue about the importance of technology vs. those who focus on depletion. As usual, however, technology is in a race with depletion and the winner can be determined only from empirical analysis, of which there seems to be far too little.

As anyone with a modicum of general knowledge can see, these people have no idea what they're talking about whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the world nuclear gives a clear breakdown of energy needed due to materials.

As anyone with a modicum of general knowledge can see, these people have no idea what they're talking about whatsoever.

I like to believe I have a modicum of general knowledge but it is not clear to me what is wrong here.

Though for start, EROI of 1.86 is still positive anyway. So it still goes against FirmWeird's claims.

  1. For starters, the idea that gaseous diffusion could cost more energy than you can get out of splitting uranium.

  2. Or the idea that you need to do a lot of enrichment to get useful fuel. That's only true for certain compact military and such designs, which in some cases use bomb grade material or something close to it. Famously, the RBMK reactor and the British Magnox ones can use natural uranium. It's not very efficient but good to have if you like nuclear warheads because you can extract plutonium from the 'spent' fuel.

  3. or writing that reactors use uranium from bomb warheads. The fissile elements in practically all bombs is plutonium.

You are making an extraordinary claim and should provide the source for that BS.

I remember that hogwash from the Peak Oil years when s certain contingent of doomers was getting incredibly high on their own supply, ignoring that we have enough shitty coal for centuries of early 20th cen industry.

Why does France not count?

Because their nuclear power system is failing, taking on vast amounts of debt and is on the verge of being nationalised due to financial problems, which is why it isn't an example of a successful, profitable nuclear power system.

the EROEI is not high enough to do so

Nuclear should have an excellent EROEI. The problems with profitability come from organizational dysfunction.

They also deal with a galaxy of government regulations.

I still dont know if they'd be profitable without both the regulations and the subsidies, but it at least makes me uncertain.

I'd also guess that the best application for nuclear engines is strictly forbidden by regulations: maritime usage. The US Navy has nuclear submarines and nuclear powered aircraft carriers. The US Navy isn't stupid. Nuclear power has a really good power density ratio, especially when you are surrounded by unlimited water.

Disclaimer: all guesses, just talking out of my ass.

Maritime/naval usage is indeed the best use-case for nuclear power, and that's one of the reasons why the military uses nuclear-powered vessels.

As for the government regulations, I'm not actually too bothered by them on nuclear. I don't have a problem with laws preventing my neighbours from operating a backyard nuclear reactor or building a perfect replica of the demon core in order to test their reactions and screwdriver control. I'm sure a case can be made that those regulations are badly written and far too onerous, but I'm very happy that we do actually regulate them.

I'm sure a case can be made that those regulations are badly written and far too onerous, but I'm very happy that we do actually regulate them.

I might be misinterpreting you because of the "but" in your sentence:

It is not contradictory to think "I'm glad a thing is regulated" and "the regulations on that thing are too onerous".

A regulation can be too onerous when the cost of the regulation is greater than the expected benefit in safety.

An example: imagine a 1 in 10 chance of a $1 million dollar disaster -$100k expected value. A safety regulation reduces that chance by 50%, meaning the value of that safety regulation is $50k. If it costs more than $50k to implement it is onerous.

Some laws pass this hurdle, others don't. Seatbelt laws pass. Child safety seat laws fail.

There are multiple reasons to believe that nuclear power regulations are going to tend to be more onerous:

  1. Fears of radiation are overblown. Most voters don't understand the actual dangers of radiation and nuclear power plants, politicians have an incentive to cater to these fears.
  2. The US military doesn't care about economics and costs and just wants to make sure certain capabilities remain outside of civilian control.
  3. Bootleggers and Baptists type story with oil producers and environmentalists.

Has anyone calculated the price per KWh for nuclear to break even without subsidies, and compared that to other power sources? My problem with this argument is that energy gets subsidized up the wazoo regardless whether it's nuclear, "green", or fossil fuels, so just shouting "look, subsidies!" doesn't really prove anything.

Sabine Hossenfelder looked at the topic and came up with numbers of Nuclear costing 2-3 times more compared to other sources of energy. Mostly due to longer building time, which increases financial costs (interest) which in turn feeds into a lot of negative feedback loops.

Nevertheless I am still very skeptical about any cost calcultions. Nuclear seems to be the worst, but it is also the most thorough source of energy where everybody is obsessed about everything due to decades long campaign against this type of energy. As far as I know it may be the only source of energy where we calculate all costs ranging from building costs, operation costs including nuclear fuel as well as decommissioning cost. I am yet to see some comparisons where let's say fossil fuel costs will also include all the damages caused by climate change, respiratory diseases and/or hypothetical costs of carbon capture and storing of all the CO2 released - that would be equivalent of nuclear waste storage and power plant decommissioning for nuclear power.

I am also vastly skeptical regarding the prices of wind/solar as this new and cheap perfect solution. Renewable energy is supposed to be the most efficient and greenest energy - and yet the one country that heavily invested in the plan of turning their energy system to this new source (Germany) sees rapid rise of energy prices. Try even googling things like "total cost of German Energiewende" and you will see widely different estimates ranging from tens of billions to trillions of EUR. The costs are hidden in various types of subsidies, surcharges but also regular infrastructure projects. I am more inclined to see the costs in hundreds of billions just by looking at one project of new north-south grid that is supposed to bring wind power from windy North to industrial South with the price tag according to Bloomberg from years ago exceeding EUR 100 billion and that was in 2020. This grid upgrade alone has the price equivalent to that of around 9 nuclear power plants similar to highly criticized one constructed in Finland. These 9 nuclear power plants could produce 130 TWh of reliable baseload output that could be thrown onto the old grid providing over 20% of energy production in Germany (all renewables now produce 40% of electricity). And we are talking only about grid cables - the costs are insane.

When the cost varies by several hundred procent thats a bit hard to do.

Are we going with the cost per kW/h of a EPR1 reactor at Hinkely point C or a APR1400 reactor like the one in Barakah?

The more the merrier, but either one will do, really.

It is very hard to do which why combined with the very strong partisan interests involved and data secrecy it hasn't really been done. You have to make fairly major assumptions and these are inherently going to be politicised.

You can read the following report if you want but be aware of the severe limitations in the assumptions. https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020. Read the actual report and not what they created graphics for at the website.

My impression is that more rigorous analyses are probably only going to be done as we start to really experience the problems of decarbonisation and renewables.

I would also caution you to be very suspicious of LCOE and LCOE calculations in general. Never take them at face value.

Suppose there's a coup and a new leader shows up who nationalizes the power plant. Historically it's within the rights of states to nationalize foreign-owned assets in their country. Take Suez or Iranian oil. Then this mildly untrustworthy turned very untrustworthy country has a nuclear plant, which is the goal you wanted to prevent. You can't get away from dual-use that easily. Plus you probably make a loss because nuclear plants are capital-intensive investments that pay off over decades. Furthermore no country would allow such an imposition on their sovereignty.

I think a more realistic reason is that the US is so incompetent and useless when it comes to nuclear power plant construction nobody would be interested - recent US nuclear plants have been amongst the most expensive in history. South Korea would do a better job but they're not interested in such a deal. They're eager to export their nuclear technology normally, as opposed to this weird way! Same with Russia, they just export to their friends:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Russia

What country are you thinking of, that would be suitable for this approach? Iran? The US hates them, plus they have their own nuclear industry, plus Israel would probably bomb it like they did in Syria. The US sent some light water reactors to North Korea back in the day under a deal that both sides later reneged on - then NK acquired nuclear weapons.

I'd imagined that the site would be diplomatically (edit: and militarily) privileged somehow, so that the US could operate and secure the site, and quietly have a standing plan to irreparably scram the plant and make the equipment useless in case of being overrun. My ignorance shows in lack of details, I'm afraid.

Iran, for the use case of providing nuclear power without exposing nuclear tech to a hostile power. The various countries in and including South Africa, for sponsoring stability and prosperity, since Warographics tells me they've been notably incompetent and corrupt in administering their domestic infrastructure in the last decade and might welcome some foreign investment slash paternalism.

For the benefit of the unaware, South Africa is a particularly interesting case w/r/t nuclear technology: they already have a single 1980s era nuclear power plant (supplied and partially owned by the French nuclear power company Framatome), and formerly had nuclear weapons until dismantling them in the lead-up to the end of Apartheid/power transfer to the ANC.

I wish I were knowledgeable enough to provide commentary on this state of affairs but I don't know much beyond what's on these wiki pages.

No sane country wants to risk getting their national power grid shut down any time the state department is upset with them.

Plenty of countries, including the US, will export nuclear reactors: https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/nuclear-reactors

Which countries are you expecting to be clients of this program?

Why doesn't the US or some other nuclear power Simply (tm) operate nuclear power plants at a profit on foreign soil on behalf of the local government?

From wikipedia: A hydraulic empire, also known as a hydraulic despotism, hydraulic society, hydraulic civilization, or water monopoly empire, is a social or government structure which maintains power and control through exclusive control over access to water. It arises through the need for flood control and irrigation, which requires central coordination and a specialized bureaucracy.[1]

Often associated with these terms and concepts is the notion of a water dynasty. This body is a political structure which is commonly characterized by a system of hierarchy and control often based on class or caste. Power, both over resources (food, water, energy) and a means of enforcement such as the military, is vital for the maintenance of control.

TLDR: You become vassal of the US if you literally want to have lights on.

What prevents the client state from building sufficient capacity to not rely on the foreign plant? It's economically unfavorable while they can't get their shit together, sure, but that just means hard, not impossible or actively prevented. Or is your thought that the nuclear plant would be operated at a loss and price out other sources to cause dependency?

For what it’s worth, nuclear actually does tend to price very cheap per kWh. At least in markets which bid on capacity.

The cost to spin up a natural gas plant is relatively low. Coal is slower and thus more expensive. You don’t want to run one of those one day at a time; you want to keep it going overnight at lower capacity, even if that means selling the produced electricity for cheap. Then you spool back up for peak hours without having to pay startup costs again. Nuclear is much, much more extreme than this, and it also doesn’t need to stop very often. As a result, the nuclear plants in our market always bid a cheap floor so they’d be tapped to stay online. The only ones which bid lower were solar and hydro, since they would be producing whenever the sun/river was working.

This isn’t the same as operating at a loss, but it would have a chilling effect on building other plants. Same way that any other giant foreign investment could discourage a domestic competitor.

You become vassal of the US if you literally want to have lights on.

As Europe has been learning for the past couple of years (aside from the French), this is true for natural gas as well- they had ample opportunity to learn back in '73 that American foreign policy own-goals/failures would affect them as well but chose not to for some reason.

Not at all. The thing is that for oil and gas because they can be stored switching supplies (in secret) is possible even if expensive. For electricity it is not. if you want to switch to different sphere of influence - you can't take over the powerplant before it gets made inoperable and any neighboring country that will be ramping up capacity to fill in the void can't hide it. So the state department can shut down in the worst possible for you moment.

I have a nuclear engineer in my distant family (and I cry every time I compare his salary to mine), so by the transitive property I am about 12.5% qualified to comment on this haha. (And I do try and keep up with nuclear power)

To an extent, the US does indirectly assist other countries in getting domestic nuclear power up and running. If you're a talented engineer from an allied or at least neutral country, you have every chance to study under the best in the States and then bring your knowhow back home, assuming you don't get hooked and settle down right there. You're then a prize for any competent government you hail from, that seeks to establish their own nuclear power plants. Of course, many countries, like Russia, China, India and so on, independently began their own power/weapon programs, because of some degree of hostility from the States (and the Soviets drank directly from the source).

I emphasize competent, most countries that strongly desire nuclear power have programs up and running, and many who would love to have nuclear power either lack state capacity or are untrustworthy/volatile.

If the US decided to operate nuclear plants in such nations, well, for one, the latter would be effectively ceding a great deal of sovereignty, I do not foresee the State Department being happy in the least to operate a plant that isn't secured by US forces, and with strict vetting and control over who works there. It would work closer to a military base rather than say, an embassy, and also prove to be a liability in case of the kind of volatility that many potential hosts suffer from.

Then there's also the usual slowdown or red tape from environmental lobbyists, which is bad enough for nuclear power in the States.

This is not to say that this isn't a good idea, it is, as far as I'm concerned. Sadly not every good idea gets pursued, and the US has enough trouble just keeping their own domestic nuclear from going under. Plus with how cheap renewables have gotten, you might as well just ship them solar panels and batteries, with much less in the way of domestic or international opposition, or the inconvenient considerations about what to do when a state falls to a coup, a revolution, or simply turns hostile.

I think the most elegant solution would be something along the lines of running a thick power cable from a nuclear-powered ship, along the lines of an aircraft carrier. You isolate yourself from a great deal of the troubles on land, and have the option to cut and run at a moment's notice if needed. Presumably existing aircraft carriers have other things to be doing, but the Navy are the experts when it comes to modular, reliable and most importantly portable nuclear power, and have been so for decades. China is currently exploring nuclear-powered cargo ships, likely both because it's a sensible idea in itself, and because they want to minimize reliance on oil in case Taiwan goes hot. Such a ship, with some modifications, would probably be a great design for nuclear power on tap.

and many who would love to have nuclear power either lack state capacity or are untrustworthy/volatile.

Do the newer small reactor designs effectively discourage proliferation? I'm not familiar with the nuclear specifics, but it seems like the risk factor of your average tinpot dictator seizing the plants and using them to generate plutonium for weapons remains. I could see it working within friendly jurisdictions, though.

Plus with how cheap renewables have gotten, you might as well just ship them solar panels and batteries

While this is true for electricity generation, especially in tropical latitudes, last I heard it isn't as practical as you might like for heating applications in colder climates. There isn't a storage technology today that can convert, say, Canada's long summer days into heating on its cold, long winter nights. And unfortunately most sources tend to mix "energy" and "electricity" breakdown in ways that make overall consumption numbers difficult to evaluate. Canada primarily heats houses with forced-air furnaces (combustion) and electric baseboard (which follows the grid's energy sources -- in winter -- which varies by province).

A complete elimination of fossil fuels probably requires a wholesale shift to electric (ideally heat pump) heating, which I only rarely see accounted for in energy discussions: it quite possibly changes grid energy usage patterns enough to require even more generation, and some substantive transmission changes.

They do.

A lot of modern designs are made to be modular, operated sealed for years and refuelled only in factory. Breeding plutonium next to the reactor can be prevented by sealing access.

Power plants today have links and continual monitoring. No big deal with internet.

Proliferation isn't really the problem...

I'd be curious to read more if you have any sources to recommend. I'm less concerned for this particular point about proliferation while the plant is monitored and controlled from the West and more about a dictator that nationalizes it and is free to (ignoring workplace safety, as is dictatorial tradition) disassemble it and focus on a weapons program. But I'm not really an expert here, so perhaps that's not the concern, or we just exclude countries at risk of such things, although that hasn't been the most predictable in the past.

New York has already banned new natural gas hookups in favor of everyone being stuck with barely-any-heat pumps. And they're shutting down generation, not building new; they tried to get New Jersey to generate for them (North Bergen Liberty Generating Station) but the NJ governor is opposed. (Personally as an NJ resident I'd say go ahead and build, and put a special tax on the power generated, the "green silliness tax")

A couple of points- I'm not married to any of them, but I think all of them are at least worth considering. I definitely invite anyone who has further information/context/pushback on any of these to bring it.

  1. Atoms for peace was a thing, once. Cold war era programs tend to get wound down even if they were actually kind of cool, but "a nuclear power provides enough assistance to running a nuclear power plant in your country that you can't use it to build a weapon" isn't unprecedented, and winding it down out of bureaucratic inertia is just bureaucratic inertia.

  2. The environmental movement has a pretty big anti-nuclear wing. In my more optimistic moments I think this is because they're wildly misinformed; in my more cynical moments I think it's because they don't actually want a solution to carbon emissions, they want a continuing problem that gets money sent to their NGO's. In my really depressing moments I think it's because they have a solution in mind, and it's "everybody be poor", and that like lockdowners in 2020, they're not interested in discussing alternatives because they've settled on a solution and anyone who disagrees with them is axiomatically evil. I don't think there's a nice explanation for the anti-nuclear environmentalists and I also don't think they're Alex Jones villians who just hate whites or whatever; surely some are, but there's enough of them pushing electric cars and the like that I think they mostly are motivated by climate change and sinecures.

  3. The environmental movement is bound up in progressive signalling. This is I guess a subset of 2, but it seems worth pulling out separately. Nuclear energy(and hydropower, and now that I think about it any workable solution) is a right-wing coded solution so a group that wants to signal progressive credentials will avoid it in favor of rambling about things that can't solve the problem.

  4. The institutions dedicated to brainstorming solutions for climate change have a habit of not noticing the developing world. Like, that it exists. Yes, this habit is bad and they should feel bad for it. But we can't really change it; these institutions treat "now, what's your plan for the developing world" as "what about China" bad faith trolling. And that attitude just bleeds over; these people see their mission as making the US, CANZUK, EU carbon neutral by means x,y,z. They are very committed to both sides of that equation and nuclear power plants aren't part of it.

Isn't this is part of what SMRs are intended to do?

They will be constructed and disposed of in a 'safe' country and running them will be relatively simple and low risk so it can be done in more places.

You're running on mistake theory. Nuclear power would already be useful against climate change even used at home, but the left doesn't support that because of anti-nuclear and anti-electricity ideology. How good the anti-nuclear arguments are is nearly irrelevant.

Conflict theory will tell you that saying "you're mistaken, nuclear power can be good" isn't going to work when fighting ideology.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats