Showing OPEC the Door:

Broadly speaking, the nuclear energy community is in favor of a diverse energy mix. The current mood of the country has tied nuclear power ever closer to its green brethren, and the energy companies that own nuclear energy plants are likewise friends of old man Sol and Aeolus god of the wind. However, oil is driving everyone nuts. Here's Lester Thurow in the Los Angeles Times:

There is a solution to the rising cost of oil, but it is a painful one. Let's say there is a lot of $20-a-barrel oil in the world -- deep-sea oil, Canadian tar sands. But who would look for $20-a-barrel oil if someone else (Saudi Arabia) has lots of $5-a-barrel oil? The answer is: no one.

Basically, American taxpayers have to guarantee potential producers that the price in the future will not fall below $20 a barrel and that they will not lose their investments.

This is easy to do. The U.S. needs to guarantee that it will buy all of its oil at $20 a barrel before buying anything from OPEC. This forces the price of oil down to $20 a barrel, but it eliminates the possibility that it will ever go back to $5 a barrel.

Thurow is a professor of management and economics and dean emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management, so he knows whereof he speaks. But "This is easy to do?"

You might call this a stealth action in favor of alternative energy - that hybrid car idea that Jay Zawatsky was pushing the other day certainly gains an allure - but Thurow seems to be on a higher floor of the ivory tower than most. Ground level, the word is nuts.

Comments

Anonymous said…

Interesting article. I was reading not too long ago about massive reserves of oil in the Bakken Formation in North Dakota. Couple that with Dr. Thurow's ideas, and we can drastically reduce our dependency on foreign oil in just a few years. Of course, whoever owns the drilling rights to that land will probably want to charge as much as the market will bear, rather than a fixed price as Thurow suggested, so there's a little bit of wishful thinking involved.

In the longer term, we still need to drastically reduce our oil consumption. At this point, plug-in hybrids and nuclear power seem to be the best option... but we're still several years away from any meaningful adoption of the plug-in hybrid technology.

April 11, 2008 at 9:53 PM

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

How Much Land Does Nuclear, Wind and Solar Really Need?

Not too long ago, we reviewed a report that looked at nuclear energy (and other energy sources) as biodiversity agents. This had to do, in part, with the amount of land a facility needs to function. Nuclear energy and fossil fuel plants use relatively little, wind farms and solar arrays quite a lot of land . Based on an objective and transparent analysis of our sustainable energy choices, we have come to the evidence-based conclusion that nuclear energy is a good option for biodiversity conservation (and society in general) and that other alternatives to fossil fuels should be subjected to the same cost–benefit analyses (in terms of biodiversity and climate outcomes, as well as sociopolitical imperatives) before accepting or dismissing them. Writer Barry Brook, who collected 75 scientists to endorse his paper, is interested in land use as it impacts flora and fauna. Biodiversity concerns do not get as much play as they might – and, when they do, it annoys many when land is withdraw...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog