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Goldberg On Yucca Mountain
Credit where due, Jonah Goldberg has a nice piece on the hysterical scare tactics being used by opponents of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage initiative. In the interests of fairness and balance, the real problem with Yucca Mountain is that it simply isn't big enough to actually store our nuclear waste for a very long period of time were it to enter into operation. At the same time, there aren't exactly dozens of comparable sites that it would be easy to bring online once Yucca gets filled up. Nevertheless, anyone who takes the global warming problem seriously needs to take expanding the world's nuclear power capacity seriously. Since I don't think The National Review is among those who do take the global warming problem seriously, I'm not totally sure what their interest in this initiative is (if you exclude the carbon externalities from the analysis -- which the logic of rightwing climate change skepticism suggests you should) then there's no reason to prefer nuclear power to, say, coal power which is significantly cheaper.
August 16, 2004 | Permalink
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» Comment on Yucca Mountain from Alas, a Blog
Today, Matt Yglesias commented on Jonah Goldberg's piece on Yucca Mountain, a proposed repository for radioactive waste. Both Matt and Jonah discuss the impact of this proposed repository on the future of nuclear power generation. Using nuclear power w... [Read More]
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Sweet Blessings, a new Christian-based online shop featuring cookie bouquets, candy bouquets and gift baskets, opens with a campaign to donate a portion of all profits to Habitat For Humanity. The devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, while not a... [Read More]
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Comments
Forget Yucca mountain. Nuclear waste should be scattered widely throughout pristine natural areas-starting with those most threatened with development. The effect on local flora and fauna would be de minimus-but it would actively discourage human visitation and habitation. Credit Rivkin for this brilliant proposal.
Posted by: martin | Aug 16, 2004 11:03:31 AM
The problem not the hole, but getting it to the hole.
Posted by: judson | Aug 16, 2004 11:03:48 AM
Matt,
You are going to get roasted now. Taking on any engineering-related topic from the left is a sure road to blog comment disaster.
Bring on the religious certainty!
Cranky
Posted by: Cranky Observer | Aug 16, 2004 11:09:43 AM
MY: I know you are pro-nuke, but I'm not even sure the European nuclear plants are economically viable; I think France makes a concious effort to rely on nuclear power in order to reduce its petroleum reliance, with the side effect of increasing the cost/kwH of power.
I'm pro-nuke too, but if it's not economically viable, then I think we're better off beefing up wind, LNH, and hydroelectric power.
Posted by: niq | Aug 16, 2004 11:21:39 AM
Well, if coal power were fully priced, nuclear power would benefit in comparison.
Posted by: praktike | Aug 16, 2004 11:45:18 AM
Right, nuclear power would be economically viable if coal power were subject to taxes aimed at capturing the negative externalities from carbon and sulfur emissions.
Posted by: Matthew Yglesias | Aug 16, 2004 11:55:57 AM
Nope, they would just add scrubber technology to the coal plants and sequester the CO2. This would be cheaper than present day nukes if you add waste disposal costs to both.
Posted by: Tim H. | Aug 16, 2004 11:59:41 AM
Matt, there are more problems with coal than just the carbon externalities: there are health side effects from the emissions as well. I don't think you need to take the carbon contribution to global warming into account at all to be in favor of other energy sources.
Posted by: Todd Fletcher | Aug 16, 2004 12:09:13 PM
I guess conservatives aren't allowed to consider cleaner air or acid rain even a little bit? Not allowed to weigh it out at all?
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | Aug 16, 2004 12:11:33 PM
Who pays for adding the scrubber technology? The shareholders or the rate-payers? SOMEONE has to pay for it.
Whenever you invent a new technology that has side effects and costs, people want it to pay for itself, without thinking that existing technology also has side effects and costs that may not pay for themselves but that no one thinks about because it's been around for so long, since before people began trying to calculate those costs. For example, mass transit needs to be subsidized in obvious ways, but car & truck travel is also subsidized in maybe not so obvious ways.
New energy technologies need assistance, but so do oil and coal, only their assistance is hidden (by those who benefit from selling oil and coal).
Posted by: Tom Beck | Aug 16, 2004 12:12:06 PM
Coal mining is also pretty destructive, and that has to be factored in as well.
Or rather, the price of coal could better incorporate externalities if bond requirements were greater, or coal companies didn't have such outrageously corrupt habits.
Posted by: praktike | Aug 16, 2004 12:31:33 PM
While I agree that Jonah's doing a good job of defusing the hysteria, the problem with Yucca, at least from what I've heard, is something more basic (pointed out by an astute commentator on Lehrer NewsHour): the solution to nuclear waste is dig a giant hole in the ground and put it in there for a really long time. And that's really not much of a solution; it's really just rearranging things. Eventually Yucca will be full (particularly if, with the availability of Yucca, suddenly nuclear looks good again for power delivery), and then what? Another one? Just dig big holes until... what, exactly?
Don't get me wrong, I think Yucca is happening regardless. But it's more like putting your stuff in mini-storage than actually doing something to get rid of it. And that's the problem, it seems to me.
Posted by: weboy | Aug 16, 2004 12:45:26 PM
While I agree that Jonah's doing a good job of defusing the hysteria, the problem with Yucca, at least from what I've heard, is something more basic (pointed out by an astute commentator on Lehrer NewsHour): the solution to nuclear waste is dig a giant hole in the ground and put it in there for a really long time. And that's really not much of a solution; it's really just rearranging things. Eventually Yucca will be full (particularly if, with the availability of Yucca, suddenly nuclear looks good again for power delivery), and then what? Another one? Just dig big holes until... what, exactly?
Don't get me wrong, I think ucca is happening regardless. But it's more like putting your stuff in mini-storage than actually doing something to get rid of it. And that's the problem, it seems to me.
Posted by: weboy | Aug 16, 2004 12:45:48 PM
Mr. Niq,
France itself actually lacks coal. Coal was historically very expensive in France. It was one of the reasons why France never could match Britain and Germany in steel production. French railroad engines were specially designed to be particularly fuel-efficient.
France also has limited hydro-power resources, and these seemto have mostly been exploited. Short of relying on oil-imports or coal-imports or electric-power imports from Germany, France had no domestic options for electric power.
Posted by: lusalegria | Aug 16, 2004 12:47:44 PM
Goldberg's motives are quite obvious - it has nothing to do with policy. He's irritated by uppity-ness.
Posted by: Alden | Aug 16, 2004 12:50:47 PM
Mr. Weboy,
Its a big world, with a lot of room for holes. No technology can be expected to last forever, there will always be a resource that becomes over-exploited.
This is no reason to object to nuclear power.
One day there will be some cheaper technology, but it will have its own demands.
Posted by: luisalegria | Aug 16, 2004 12:52:15 PM
> Eventually Yucca will be full (particularly
> if, with the availability of Yucca, suddenly
> nuclear looks good again for power
> delivery), and then what? Another one? Just
> dig big holes until... what, exactly?
(Speaking as an old coal-fired powerplant engineer) The volume of nuclear waste is tiny compared to the volume of coal waste. Some of the byproducts of coal burning can be recycled, but a lot can't, and even a midsized coal unit produces enough cubic volume of unusable waste to bury a small town.
So yes, when Yucca is full, we build another one. By the time THAT one is full, either we have developed a better source of energy, or it is unlikely our energy-intensive civilization will still be running.
Cranky
Posted by: Cranky Observer | Aug 16, 2004 12:55:12 PM
There are places that are better than Yucca Mountain for storing waste.
Yucca mountain is still seizmically active.
Personally, I'd suggest putting the site in Wasahatchie, TX, amongst the remnants of the cancelled SSSC.
Posted by: Matthew Saroff | Aug 16, 2004 12:57:47 PM
I don't think Goldberg had any ulterior motives in writing this. There are a lot of very stupid arguments made against nuclear power. A person can refute those arguments without necessarily supporting funding for nuclear power. I know the National Review is partisan, but that doesn't mean every word they print has a political agenda.
Posted by: Xavier | Aug 16, 2004 1:36:22 PM
One of the big problems with trying to use nuclear power to deal with global warming is that to make any significant dent in carbon emissions, you're not talking about a couple more nuclear power plants. You're talking about hundreds. Aside from the massive increase in nuclear waste, we'll run out of uranium fairly quickly if we start burning it at that rate. You can do somewhat better from both a fuel and a waste perspective if you start reprocessing the waste, but that makes the security/weapons proliferation issue much more difficult to deal with. I just don't see large scale expansion of nuclear power in the cards.
As for expanding hydropower, as someone suggested above, forget it. There's already a dam almost everywhere it's worth putting one. Wind is also more expensive than coal, but as mentioned above, when you start factoring in the real cost of coal (actually making plants stop emitting sulfur and mercury, etc) it's competitive. The main problem is that most US wind resources are in remote areas, away from energy demand. Still, we could definitely expand our use of wind to at least some extent.
Posted by: MattT | Aug 16, 2004 1:44:50 PM
May I yet again pitch my totally irrelevant idea to have Yucca carved into a Recumbant Ronnie Reagan after it becomes the Nuclear Depository?
As a warning, of course....
And yet again, ask if oceanic subduction zones might be the place to put glassified nuclear waste? It would presumably ride the conveyor of continental subjuction to the mantle and be so thoroughly mixed with other subducted material as to be close to background when it reached the surface several mllion years later.
Posted by: Mr. Bill | Aug 16, 2004 1:49:09 PM
>>And yet again, ask if oceanic subduction zones might be the place to put glassified nuclear waste?
This idea has been discussed.... Practically any idea you can think of has been discussed!
>>Taking on any engineering-related topic from the left is a sure road to blog comment disaster.
Hmmm... is there such a thing as blog comment disaster? I would think matt likes comments!
Posted by: lucia | Aug 16, 2004 2:01:39 PM
> Still, we could definitely expand our use
> of wind to at least some extent.
Except that wind power produces horrifying visual pollution. And I say that as a person who finds oil refineries beautiful.
Cranky
Posted by: Cranky Observer | Aug 16, 2004 2:24:55 PM
S. Arizona would be vastly preferable to Yucca Mountain as a disposal site. It's one of the most geologically stable areas on the planet, has almost as little rainfall, and salt mines BELOW the water table that could be used presto-pronto.
The problem (of course) is politics.
Posted by: Jeffrey Davis | Aug 16, 2004 2:44:07 PM
"Personally, I'd suggest putting the site in Wasahatchie, TX, amongst the remnants of the cancelled SSSC."
It is Waxahatchie, and only a Texas toadjump south of me. NIMBY.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | Aug 16, 2004 2:49:41 PM
