4 ms·

Rarely have I read such unmitigated bullshit, with wordy arrogance as topping. "We" didn't have a "Promethean backlash" in the 1970's, we had the first oil-avai

Rarely have I read such unmitigated bullshit, with wordy arrogance as topping. "We" didn't have a "Promethean backlash" in the 1970's, we had the first oil-availability crisis. Same as 2008 when conventional oil peaked, 2016 when... Just read the IEA reports, the IPCC reports...

wmf 4y ago
Shouldn't an oil crisis increase investment in nuclear power? Why did we have the opposite?
- thebooktocome 4y ago
  Hypothesis: Oil crises increase the political power of fossil fuel extractors, which can then use regulatory capture to prevent competition.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  Because every time society figures out how much they depend on Oil, they'd rather go back to it than impoverish themselves
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  It had that effect in France and Japan.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Other forces at play. The nuclear energy movement in the 1970s was closely affiliated with the nuclear weapons movement. As one indicator of the latter, the phrase "ban the bomb" was already peaking in 1963, as the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was being proposed: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ban+the+bomb&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ban+the+bomb&y...> (Google Ngram viewer) A similar search for "anti-nuclear movement" shows a later peak, in the late 1970s, which would correspond with the Three Mile Island incident (1979): <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=anti-nuclear+movement%2CThree+Mile+Island&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=anti-nuclear+m...> Essentially, nuclear power had a significant public-image problem, and it got markedly worse just as embargo-based oil shortages were peaking for a second (and far more significant) time, with the Iranian Oil Embargo (also 1979): <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_oil_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_oil_crisis>
- encoderer 4y ago
  3 mile island at the same time.
- cauch 4y ago
  Well, renewable power saw their investment increased, I think. I think the reason why the investment in nuclear power did not increase is because nuclear is very much not an attractive investment. Such project needs a LOT of money just to start, and that will take YEARS to be finished. But the success of this project depends on variables that are extremely hard to predict: in 10 years, what will be the electricity demand curve, what will be the import and export market with other countries, or within the same country, what will be the environmental surrounding (if it turns out the river you use to provide cooling is changing, or if the site turns out to not be exactly as predicted during the initial survey, ...). If you have just one small problem in the chain, you have very expensive consequences. For example, defects in the structure may render the whole plant totally useless. And what about the workforce: you build a plant in 10 years, and when it is finished, you have only a handful of people knowing how to make it works (you cannot force people to choose specific studies if they don't want to, and forming people takes ages), so you need to increase their salary and, again, you end up with a situation were you lose money. And what if the laws change, and some subsidies that you were including in your planning disappear, or some local governance comes up with some restrictions, ..? And, on top of that, a failed nuclear power plant project will still cost you money for decades. If it never runs, you will have huge debt with absolutely nothing that can give you a bit of money back. If it runs a little bit, you will need to pay a lot to dismantle it properly. I think it's the main reason why investment in nuclear power did not increase as much as one could naively think: investors, when they look closely at it, see that it is still a huge gamble, with a big probability to be disastrous for them.
  - thworp 4y ago
    > Such project needs a LOT of money just to start, and that will take YEARS to be finished. But the success of this project depends on variables that are extremely hard to predict: [...] You could say the same thing about chip fabs or large mines. I'd say chip fabs face even more uncertainty. While baseload electricity will always be in demand, in the chip industry your 3 billion $ fab could be completed at the bottom end of boom-bust cycle and lead you into bankruptcy.
    - cauch 4y ago
- philipkglass 4y ago
  There was some use of oil for generating electric power, but most oil then (as now) was used for transportation. In the US in 1970 only 6.1% of oil was consumed for generating electricity [1]. Electricity has only recently become a viable substitute for liquid fuels in ground transportation and it still can't substitute for long distance shipping or air travel. Since electricity couldn't replace transportation fuel at the time, and there wasn't a lot of oil consumed in electricity generation in the first place, nuclear power could not do much to compensate for swiftly rising oil prices. [1] https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metacrs9912/m1/1/high_res_d/RL31849_2006Oct06.pdf https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metacrs9912/m1/1/... See table 3.

wmf 4y ago

Shouldn't an oil crisis increase investment in nuclear power? Why did we have the opposite?

thebooktocome 4y ago
Hypothesis: Oil crises increase the political power of fossil fuel extractors, which can then use regulatory capture to prevent competition.
adam_arthur 4y ago
Because every time society figures out how much they depend on Oil, they'd rather go back to it than impoverish themselves
inglor_cz 4y ago
It had that effect in France and Japan.
dredmorbius 4y ago
Other forces at play. The nuclear energy movement in the 1970s was closely affiliated with the nuclear weapons movement. As one indicator of the latter, the phrase "ban the bomb" was already peaking in 1963, as the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was being proposed: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ban+the+bomb&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ban+the+bomb&y...> (Google Ngram viewer) A similar search for "anti-nuclear movement" shows a later peak, in the late 1970s, which would correspond with the Three Mile Island incident (1979): <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=anti-nuclear+movement%2CThree+Mile+Island&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=anti-nuclear+m...> Essentially, nuclear power had a significant public-image problem, and it got markedly worse just as embargo-based oil shortages were peaking for a second (and far more significant) time, with the Iranian Oil Embargo (also 1979): <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_oil_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_oil_crisis>
encoderer 4y ago
3 mile island at the same time.
cauch 4y ago
Well, renewable power saw their investment increased, I think. I think the reason why the investment in nuclear power did not increase is because nuclear is very much not an attractive investment. Such project needs a LOT of money just to start, and that will take YEARS to be finished. But the success of this project depends on variables that are extremely hard to predict: in 10 years, what will be the electricity demand curve, what will be the import and export market with other countries, or within the same country, what will be the environmental surrounding (if it turns out the river you use to provide cooling is changing, or if the site turns out to not be exactly as predicted during the initial survey, ...). If you have just one small problem in the chain, you have very expensive consequences. For example, defects in the structure may render the whole plant totally useless. And what about the workforce: you build a plant in 10 years, and when it is finished, you have only a handful of people knowing how to make it works (you cannot force people to choose specific studies if they don't want to, and forming people takes ages), so you need to increase their salary and, again, you end up with a situation were you lose money. And what if the laws change, and some subsidies that you were including in your planning disappear, or some local governance comes up with some restrictions, ..? And, on top of that, a failed nuclear power plant project will still cost you money for decades. If it never runs, you will have huge debt with absolutely nothing that can give you a bit of money back. If it runs a little bit, you will need to pay a lot to dismantle it properly. I think it's the main reason why investment in nuclear power did not increase as much as one could naively think: investors, when they look closely at it, see that it is still a huge gamble, with a big probability to be disastrous for them.
- thworp 4y ago
  > Such project needs a LOT of money just to start, and that will take YEARS to be finished. But the success of this project depends on variables that are extremely hard to predict: [...] You could say the same thing about chip fabs or large mines. I'd say chip fabs face even more uncertainty. While baseload electricity will always be in demand, in the chip industry your 3 billion $ fab could be completed at the bottom end of boom-bust cycle and lead you into bankruptcy.
  - cauch 4y ago
philipkglass 4y ago
There was some use of oil for generating electric power, but most oil then (as now) was used for transportation. In the US in 1970 only 6.1% of oil was consumed for generating electricity [1]. Electricity has only recently become a viable substitute for liquid fuels in ground transportation and it still can't substitute for long distance shipping or air travel. Since electricity couldn't replace transportation fuel at the time, and there wasn't a lot of oil consumed in electricity generation in the first place, nuclear power could not do much to compensate for swiftly rising oil prices. [1] https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metacrs9912/m1/1/high_res_d/RL31849_2006Oct06.pdf https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metacrs9912/m1/1/... See table 3.