I found this article interesting but object to comparing early era nuclear engineers and their supporters as Atomic Malthusians. Nuclear energy pioneers did see nuclear energy as a way for humanity to have sufficient resources to realize our potential. That is much different than Malthusian theory that leans heavily on population control. In fact the term “Atomic Malthusian” first appeared in 1971 in a Bulletin of Atomic Scientist that feared abundant energy from nuclear energy could lead to growing populations and extravagant consumption. Atomic Scientist generally are avid anti-nuclear energy proponents. I am a great fan of Decouple and have learned a lot from the series of excellent podcast with fantastic guest and lively conversations. But be careful about the rose colored glass mocking. Any deep dive into the great inventors of history, and we can include Elon Musk and SpaceX in our time, demonstrate that it is indeed a much improved version of the world that leaves humanity in awe of what can be accomplished. The Experimental Breeder Reactor II was successful on almost every metric, and had that work been allowed to go on there is a possibility nuclear energy deployment would be decades ahead of where it is now. There is not some great central authority suited to dictate to humanity what shall be the technology to deploy. It’s a complicated, messy, and psychological process. But in the end free people working together to innovate find the right paths, and standardization is probably the last step. You mentioned, our early nuclear energy pioneers thought it might take hundreds of years to transition from fossil fuels to nuclear energy. We’re 80 years in now, I think they are still correct.
Thanks for sticking up for nuclear. I never heard the term 'atomic malthusian' before, and wondered what in the world that was about - I agree with you that the early promoters of peaceful nuclear power were certainly not malthusians. And I thought the breeder reactor was successful, as you say, and was confused by decouple seeming to say it wasn't.
The NetZero Australia was a fascinating but flawed study. I think how those flaws work through are iinstructive though.
The biggest flaws is that there was a constraint set that all of the main scenarios would export as much energy in the net0 future as it does currently. But the products and end users / use cases are not the same, so this is a very contingent assumption.
The other big one is that as far as I can tell the costs were assigned to the domestic and export sectors as a share of the energy used. But the export sector accommodates the bulk of the generation imposed flexibility requirements. I.e. in low output hours the domestic system gets to cherry pick the power it needs, and the export system has to accommodate that, but the export system sucks up the full cost.
This leaves the domestic system showing lower costs than market rate assignment would result in, and higher export sector costs. This is critical as the domestic sector costs are the sensitive ones for perception, and there was no reality check on there being a market for the export sector.
The cost per GJ goes from (IIIRC) $6 now to $36 when fully net0. Since the vast increase in exports of ammonia and H2 would need to be taken up as energy carriers, once we account for end user efficiency we are looking at $200-$250/MWh marginal cost of electricity, and a large volume needing to be produced. The assumption is that this market exists and doesn't get undercut by nuclear or LNG in those export markets. This was not tested in the study though.
The version that produces DRI sponge and aluminum for export is at least the most realistic among them...
Australia, with a comparatively tiny population to power up, has a crap ton of the planet's uranium deposits. They really could build the desalination plants to green their deserts, dramatically boosting their GDP & population in the process.
World’s largest reserves, according to World Nuckear Association.
From the link I provided…
——
Australia's uranium has been mined since 1954, and three mines are currently operating. More are planned.
Australia's known uranium resources are the world's largest – almost one-third of the world total.
In 2022 Australia produced 4820 tonnes of U3O8 (4087 tU). In 2022 it was the world’s fourth ranking producer, producing 8% of global uranium.
All Australia’s uranium production is exported.
Australia uses no nuclear power, but with high reliance on coal any likely carbon constraints on electricity generation will make it a strong possibility.
In May 2016 the South Australian government's royal commission on the nuclear fuel cycle reported. Its main recommendation was for an international high-level nuclear waste repository, though this was not accepted.
What do the metals uranium and lithium have in common? They are both used only once and then stacked into warehouses and stored for decades, hidden and waiting, with promises of being recycled, someday, because neither can ever be put into landfills.
Yes. My point is that lithium (from EVs and grid storage) is effectively not sustainable or recycled any more than spent nuclear fuel rods. Lithium should be easier to recycle, but it's an open question if it will ever actually be done at commercial scale. Until that happens, EV's, wind and solar are no more renewable than nuclear power.
Another magical aspect of nuclear power is the vision of nuclear fusion power as “just over the horizon”. Billions of dollars later the research seems to be where it started in fanciful thinking. Advocates of small fusion research are held at bay by governments which restrict access to deuterium, thinking it could be used for bomb making. Only recently did the US eliminate such restrictions as not related to nuclear safety. Now aneutronic fusion is being studied in Australia using laser interactions with boron. Similar work is also being done at LPP Fusion in the US using a pinch process called Focus Fusion.
I read recently that due to the fact that nuclear reactors can’t be turned on and off instantly, the only justification for the setup costs of nuclear is if it becomes the sole source of Australia’s base load power. If it is attempted to have nuclear as supplement to wind and solar, you are effectively needing to provide triple the infrastructure for only 1x the power generation overall. The context was that solar and wind will always be intermittent supply and so we will be stuck with gas as the backup because focusing on wind and solar makes uranium permanently non economical…
Slavery is ancient. It provided the renewable sustainable biodegradable energy for the elites for millennia.
Interracial slavery did not become commonplace until a leap in transportation technology in the 16th Century allowed slaves sold by Africans to be transported to the Americas to provide sustainable renewable energy for the elites. Technological improvements in energy production later made it possible to eliminate slavery in the West. Within approximately 100 years of the Watt-Wilkinson collaboration that produced an efficient fossil fueled steam engine, slavery was abolished in the West.
Slavery reappeared in Germany during the fossil fuel shortage of the first half of the 1940s. (Audrey Hepburn’s half-brother along with many other Belgians, Dutch, French and other Europeans were enslaved to ameliorate the fossil fuel shortage)
Slavery did not become obsolete because mankind became better. It became obsolete because fossil fueled power is more efficient.
Decouple I love that you’re on Substack now
I found this article interesting but object to comparing early era nuclear engineers and their supporters as Atomic Malthusians. Nuclear energy pioneers did see nuclear energy as a way for humanity to have sufficient resources to realize our potential. That is much different than Malthusian theory that leans heavily on population control. In fact the term “Atomic Malthusian” first appeared in 1971 in a Bulletin of Atomic Scientist that feared abundant energy from nuclear energy could lead to growing populations and extravagant consumption. Atomic Scientist generally are avid anti-nuclear energy proponents. I am a great fan of Decouple and have learned a lot from the series of excellent podcast with fantastic guest and lively conversations. But be careful about the rose colored glass mocking. Any deep dive into the great inventors of history, and we can include Elon Musk and SpaceX in our time, demonstrate that it is indeed a much improved version of the world that leaves humanity in awe of what can be accomplished. The Experimental Breeder Reactor II was successful on almost every metric, and had that work been allowed to go on there is a possibility nuclear energy deployment would be decades ahead of where it is now. There is not some great central authority suited to dictate to humanity what shall be the technology to deploy. It’s a complicated, messy, and psychological process. But in the end free people working together to innovate find the right paths, and standardization is probably the last step. You mentioned, our early nuclear energy pioneers thought it might take hundreds of years to transition from fossil fuels to nuclear energy. We’re 80 years in now, I think they are still correct.
Thanks for sticking up for nuclear. I never heard the term 'atomic malthusian' before, and wondered what in the world that was about - I agree with you that the early promoters of peaceful nuclear power were certainly not malthusians. And I thought the breeder reactor was successful, as you say, and was confused by decouple seeming to say it wasn't.
The NetZero Australia was a fascinating but flawed study. I think how those flaws work through are iinstructive though.
The biggest flaws is that there was a constraint set that all of the main scenarios would export as much energy in the net0 future as it does currently. But the products and end users / use cases are not the same, so this is a very contingent assumption.
The other big one is that as far as I can tell the costs were assigned to the domestic and export sectors as a share of the energy used. But the export sector accommodates the bulk of the generation imposed flexibility requirements. I.e. in low output hours the domestic system gets to cherry pick the power it needs, and the export system has to accommodate that, but the export system sucks up the full cost.
This leaves the domestic system showing lower costs than market rate assignment would result in, and higher export sector costs. This is critical as the domestic sector costs are the sensitive ones for perception, and there was no reality check on there being a market for the export sector.
The cost per GJ goes from (IIIRC) $6 now to $36 when fully net0. Since the vast increase in exports of ammonia and H2 would need to be taken up as energy carriers, once we account for end user efficiency we are looking at $200-$250/MWh marginal cost of electricity, and a large volume needing to be produced. The assumption is that this market exists and doesn't get undercut by nuclear or LNG in those export markets. This was not tested in the study though.
The version that produces DRI sponge and aluminum for export is at least the most realistic among them...
Excellent article from both an historical perspective and the logical progression of the prose. Keep up the superlative writing.
Australia, with a comparatively tiny population to power up, has a crap ton of the planet's uranium deposits. They really could build the desalination plants to green their deserts, dramatically boosting their GDP & population in the process.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/australia
I don't know much about Australia. Are you saying they have lots of uranium that could be mined?
World’s largest reserves, according to World Nuckear Association.
From the link I provided…
——
Australia's uranium has been mined since 1954, and three mines are currently operating. More are planned.
Australia's known uranium resources are the world's largest – almost one-third of the world total.
In 2022 Australia produced 4820 tonnes of U3O8 (4087 tU). In 2022 it was the world’s fourth ranking producer, producing 8% of global uranium.
All Australia’s uranium production is exported.
Australia uses no nuclear power, but with high reliance on coal any likely carbon constraints on electricity generation will make it a strong possibility.
In May 2016 the South Australian government's royal commission on the nuclear fuel cycle reported. Its main recommendation was for an international high-level nuclear waste repository, though this was not accepted.
What do the metals uranium and lithium have in common? They are both used only once and then stacked into warehouses and stored for decades, hidden and waiting, with promises of being recycled, someday, because neither can ever be put into landfills.
Spent nuclear fuel is stored in concrete dry casks and can be re-used if we can get advanced reactors approved and built.
Yes. My point is that lithium (from EVs and grid storage) is effectively not sustainable or recycled any more than spent nuclear fuel rods. Lithium should be easier to recycle, but it's an open question if it will ever actually be done at commercial scale. Until that happens, EV's, wind and solar are no more renewable than nuclear power.
Thanks Chris. We desperately need nuclear power, even if it is slow to develop.
Another magical aspect of nuclear power is the vision of nuclear fusion power as “just over the horizon”. Billions of dollars later the research seems to be where it started in fanciful thinking. Advocates of small fusion research are held at bay by governments which restrict access to deuterium, thinking it could be used for bomb making. Only recently did the US eliminate such restrictions as not related to nuclear safety. Now aneutronic fusion is being studied in Australia using laser interactions with boron. Similar work is also being done at LPP Fusion in the US using a pinch process called Focus Fusion.
I read recently that due to the fact that nuclear reactors can’t be turned on and off instantly, the only justification for the setup costs of nuclear is if it becomes the sole source of Australia’s base load power. If it is attempted to have nuclear as supplement to wind and solar, you are effectively needing to provide triple the infrastructure for only 1x the power generation overall. The context was that solar and wind will always be intermittent supply and so we will be stuck with gas as the backup because focusing on wind and solar makes uranium permanently non economical…
Slavery is ancient. It provided the renewable sustainable biodegradable energy for the elites for millennia.
Interracial slavery did not become commonplace until a leap in transportation technology in the 16th Century allowed slaves sold by Africans to be transported to the Americas to provide sustainable renewable energy for the elites. Technological improvements in energy production later made it possible to eliminate slavery in the West. Within approximately 100 years of the Watt-Wilkinson collaboration that produced an efficient fossil fueled steam engine, slavery was abolished in the West.
Slavery reappeared in Germany during the fossil fuel shortage of the first half of the 1940s. (Audrey Hepburn’s half-brother along with many other Belgians, Dutch, French and other Europeans were enslaved to ameliorate the fossil fuel shortage)
Slavery did not become obsolete because mankind became better. It became obsolete because fossil fueled power is more efficient.