Energy firms in secret talks on nuclear 'levy'

The "nuclear renaissance" is in financial meltdown before it even started.
It just keeps getting worse.
Now they're talking about a secret tax.
You can't trust the nuclear industry.

Dependence on NG has not exactly been without its ups and downs for the Brits in recent years. I wonder how many of them are thinking about that, or if they think NG is going to somehow magically stabilize in price for them.

Bottom line: nuclear is more expensive than the competing alternatives for reducing CO2 - it will result in more greenhouse gasses, not less.

edit to add: The answer to your question is, yes, they have been thinking about, and nuclear still comes out worse.

I'm sure you've noticed that public discourse on NG has developed along a general theme, which might be caricatured as:



You've got a contingent that wants to build out renewables, and handle the intermittency with NG. You've got the people pointing out that it's better than coal in terms of emissions/kWhr. You've got the NG cornucopists enthused about how we've got 50 years of NG laying around under the Appalachians up into western NY.

On The Other Hand...

We have climate modeling data that indicates we need to reduce our GHG emissions by 90%, preferably via time-traveling back to 1990 and doing it then, but otherwise in the next 10 years, or some such absolutely un-obtainable timeline. And NG, being a gas, has a fractional flow curve that drops off a cliff even more appallingly fast than oil. And you've got little tastes of the geopolitical future like the UK being reamed up the ass by that huge NG price spike. And apparently they are cheerfully planning to increase their dependence on NG after that incident.

I think NG has a lot of momentum, but I think we're going to live to regret that.

I agree that all you say regarding circumstances is true (except perhaps degree of price volatility going forward). However, what that means is that natural gas is a transitional energy source that can and will be replaced with derivatives from biological waste streams. It is simply the last fossil fuel in line to be replaced. Would you rather coal have that honor?

As for the overall argument you are making, I'm afraid I'm conditioned to read what you write largely in the context of your advocacy for nuclear power. So implicit in what you wrote I read an argument that says "this kooky renewable plan doesn't work because the idiots forgot that natural gas is a fossil fuel and is going to create a whole host of problems if we try to solve climate change with renewables."

The response to that unstated message is that if we moved to nuclear as a CC solution it would probably require more natural gas than renewables would. The price of nuclear means that nuclear might replace all baseload coal, however ALL peaking power now met by coal fired spinning reserves would almost certainly shift to natural gas generation. Combine that with all the peaking power we now use natgas to meet and I'd wager a *much higher dependence* on natgas with nuclear than with renewables.

I do propose that their environmental impact is going to be higher than most people imagine. Now, when I make a statement like that in this forum, it might be perilous because most people in this forum have spent more time thinking about these issues than your average person pulled off the street.

Then again, I recall the first time, a year or two ago, when news of that big 8500-acre solar project in CA came up, there were a few renewable advocates in this forum who's reaction was "hey, wait just a goddam minute, that's protected desert!" And so I think my proposal is grounded in some direct experience, both in and out of this forum.

One thing that I like to do in this forum, independent of my pro-nuke windmill tilting, is simply trying to imagine what the future is going to be like. I think starting about now we're going to see some big build-outs of various forms of solar and wind energy. I'm really totally fine with that. We will get energy from it, and maybe more importantly we will learn about what large scale wind and solar are really like. We will learn about its effects on our electric grid, we'll learn about its effects on the environment, and we'll learn about its economics.

The best way to learn is by doing.

Whatever our civilization decides to build, I hope we build it fast. Time has grown short.