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Jamaica’s nuclear future [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

By William McClain
In [Slow Boring]
February 22, 2023
253 views
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  • Happy President’s Day! – This week is a holiday for D.C. Public Schools, so the family is spending it in Jamaica.
  • Jamaican Politics – Prime Minister Andrew Holness is pushing forward with plans to ditch the monarchy and become a republic.
  • Vacation Mailbag – Noah Smith wrote a post just before Christmas on Jamaica’s economic development, and the tl;dr is that Jamaica hasn’t managed to get on the manufacturing train to complement tourism.
  • Bauxite Mining – Jamaica doesn’t make aluminum because they don’t have enough electricity, and electricity prices in Jamaica are high.
  • Small Island Problems – Islands are vulnerable to climate change, have limited interregional power transmission, and are too small to support multiple competing oil refineries.
  • Renewables in the Caribbean – Renewables are pollution-free, but they take up a lot of land and the market is just not large enough to support them.
  • Energy Middle Income-ness – Jamaica needs the ability to consume much more energy. They have low motor vehicle per capita, air conditioning is rare, and they suffer from water insecurity.
  • In Search of a Can Opener – There is no magical solution to the energy scarcity problem, but it’s important to take all dimensions of the energy problem seriously.
  • Industry Higher Up the Value Chain: Developing countries need more energy to get richer and cope with climate change. This will enable them to access more cars and air conditioners, and improve their quality of life. Air conditioning can also help kids learn more in school and improve productivity in private industry.
  • In Search of a Can Opener: There is no magical solution to the energy scarcity problem, but it is important to take all dimensions of the problem seriously.
  • Nuclear Power: Advanced microreactor designs could be built and operated much more cheaply than traditional large light-water reactors. The existing American regulatory framework is poorly designed to give them a chance.
  • Jamaica Could Do the World a Favor: Jamaica has its own nuclear regulatory agency and Charlyne Smith, a Jamaican-born nuclear engineer. Striking a deal with one or several nuclear startups could be beneficial to Jamaica and the world.
  • U.S. Population Density: When discussing population density, it is best to discuss the contiguous U.S. including all 50 states. This does not actually change the population density much, but it eliminates Alaskan objections.

Published February 20, 2023
Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post Jamaica’s nuclear future

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China must stop its coal industry [Noah Smith, Noahpinion]

By William McClain
In Noah Smith [Noahpinion]
February 17, 2023
235 views
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  • China is the world’s chief emitter of carbon dioxide, dwarfing the U.S.
  • China is rapidly transitioning to renewables, building more solar in one year than all the solar installed in the U.S.
  • China is still the world’s coal superpower and coal consumption is expected to continue increasing for at least 3 years
  • The coal industry is politically very powerful in China, with coal companies, provincial governments, and industry workers all relying on it for income and jobs
  • The U.S. may be able to help China transition away from coal by making solar cheaper, cutting a deal to reduce oil use, or by imposing carbon tariffs
  • Leaving coal in the ground provides a form of insurance against future collapses of civilization

Published February 17, 2023
Visit Noahpinion to read Noah Smith’s original post China must stop its coal industry

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The Real Obstacle to Nuclear Power [Jonathan Rauch, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 7, 2023
306 views
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• Kairos Power is building a test facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to simulate a new kind of nuclear reactor.
• The reactor is small and safe, and could be used to power a chemical or steel plant, or a few linked together to power a city.
• John Muratore, a former NASA and SpaceX engineer, is running the test operation.
• Nuclear power is essential to replace fossil fuels, but has consistently flopped as a commercial proposition.
• Environmentalists are coming around to the idea of nuclear power, as it is carbon-free, fantastically safe, and has a small footprint.
• The U.S. has two big commercial reactors under construction in Georgia, but the licensing process began in 2008 and the projected cost has mushroomed to $30 billion.
• The industry has not seen fundamental innovation since the 1960s, with plants becoming increasingly expensive and public hostility growing.
• A new generation of nuclear entrepreneurs are looking to revolutionize the industry, taking inspiration from SpaceX and Tesla.
• Companies like Kairos Power, NuScale Power, Ultra Safe Nuclear, and X-energy are all working on small, advanced nuclear reactors, with the goal of mass production.
• The biggest challenge is modernizing the slow-moving federal regulatory apparatus, as well as finding risk-friendly investors and customers.
• The fight against global warming and continued reliance on oil and gas has motivated the reinvention of the nuclear industry.
• China and Russia are in the race to perfect advanced, unconventional technologies.
• Kairos Power is conducting a simulation experiment in Albuquerque to test their salt-cooled reactor.
• The company is devising a business technology to make the project faster, simpler, more efficient, and cheaper.
• Davis Libbey, a recent recruit from SpaceX, is the test director.
• Elizabeth Muller and her father founded a company, Deep Isolation, to address the nuclear waste problem by using computer-assisted directional drilling.
• Deep Isolation has won customer contracts in multiple countries and is an example of how the Big Nuclear mindset is cracking.

Published February 7, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Jonathan Rauch’s original post The Real Obstacle to Nuclear Power

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America needs more Class VI wells [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

By Spencer Chen
In [Slow Boring]
January 19, 2023
270 views
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• Public support for action on climate change is broad, but people are disinclined to be personally inconvenienced for the sake of the issue.
• Even if progressive jurisdictions ban new natural gas hookups, people will still be buying new gas appliances 15-20 years from now and those appliances will still be running 30-40 years from now.
• California is planning to ban the sale of new internal combustion engine cars in 2035, but ICE cars will still be on the road in 2050.
• Carbon capture technology exists at a small scale, but it is too expensive to solve the huge problems.
• The Inflation Reduction Act created financial incentives to deploy carbon capture technology, but the EPA needs to move on licensing Class VI wells or creating more state primacy deals.
• Carbon capture has been controversial for years in the environmental community, but it is important to keep in mind that lower-income Democrats were very upset about rising energy costs last year.
• Carbon capture could be used to make natural gas + carbon capture a cost-effective means of generating zero-carbon electricity.
• There is no perfect way to make electricity, and all energy sources have their own costs and benefits.
• Solar and wind power are not necessarily more virtuous than other sources such as carbon capture, nuclear, and geothermal.
• To make renewables work at a large scale, we need to build lots more transmission lines, batteries, and lithium mines.
• Even if we had an all-renewables grid, we would still need solutions for agriculture, industry, aviation, and maritime shipping.
• Carbon capture may be the solution to these problems, but we need to have the infrastructure in place to take advantage of it.ement on nature.

Published January 19, 2023
Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post America needs more Class VI wells

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The Fusion Breakthrough: 70 Years in the Making [Peter Zeihan, Zeihan on Geopolitics]

By William McClain
In Peter Zeihan [Zeihan on Geopolitics], Politics
December 15, 2022
293 views
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  • The Biden Administration and Department of Energy have announced the successful achievement of the first exothermic fusion reaction, which produces more energy than was put in.
  • Fusion has been a goal of research for the past 70 years, with the potential to generate huge amounts of electricity with zero carbon footprint.
  • Despite this major breakthrough, there are still many steps to go before commercial-grade fusion reactors are available. These steps include scaling up the energy required to power the lasers, designing and building the facility, producing tritium, and transmission of the energy.
  • The Biden Administration has committed to a project to develop a commercial-grade reactor within 10 years, however it is likely to take decades before tritium and superconductor issues are solved, and Fusion is available at scale.

link to original vlog published December 15, 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjybBP2ohbo

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The big NEPA roundup [Noah Smith, Noahpinion]

By Spencer Chen
In Noah Smith [Noahpinion]
December 9, 2022
275 views
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  • NEPA is a procedural requirement for any project with federal involvement to do an environmental impact review before starting construction.
  • NEPA reviews often take several years to complete and can be used as a weapon by activist groups to delay or cancel projects they don’t like.
  • Op-eds have argued that NEPA allows excessive community input and is un-democratic, and that progressives are doing themselves a disservice by opposing Joe Manchin’s proposed permitting reforms.
  • Abolishing NEPA and replacing it with other procedures for enforcing environmental law has been suggested, though no guidance has been given on how to do that.
  • NEPA is a federal law that requires environmental reviews for certain projects, but it often delays projects that would improve environmental quality.
  • Think tanks have proposed various reforms to NEPA, such as extending favorable treatment to renewable energy projects, limiting judicial review, and creating special “corridors” with reduced permitting requirements.
  • Defenders of NEPA argue that it is necessary to protect the environment, and that delays are often due to other environmental regulations or lack of bureaucratic capacity.
  • They also suggest that NEPA can be a tool for speeding up decisions by coordinating information sharing between agencies.
  • NEPA is seen as a major obstacle to rapid deep decarbonization of the US economy.
  • Reforms to NEPA have been proposed, such as increasing agency staffing, using programmatic Environmental Impact Statements, allowing more renewable projects to use Environment Assessments and Categorical Exclusions, imposing time limits on some NEPA reviews, and requiring agencies to consider the positive environmental effects of a construction project.
  • James W. Coleman suggests that Congress should step in to restore a balance between making reviews more predictable and timelier while maintaining their rigor, and that energy projects should receive expedited review in the D.C. Circuit, with permits eventually being immunized from invalidation under NEPA if they are forced to wait an unreasonable length of time.

Click HERE for original. Published December 9, 2022

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The dream of bringing back Bell Labs [Noah Smith, Noahpinion]

By Spencer Chen
In Noah Smith [Noahpinion]
December 8, 2022
189 views
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  • Bell Labs was a famous corporate lab in the mid 20th century that was responsible for many breakthrough discoveries.
  • The rise of university research and the decline of corporate labs has changed the way America innovates.
  • There are attractive features of big corporate labs that the new innovation supply chain might lack, such as multi-disciplinary research and focus on general-purpose technologies.
  • A national electrical utility, Energy Bell, could potentially be a way to bring back something akin to the old Bell Labs.
  • The university-DARPA-startup innovation system is likely here to stay, and should be focused on making it more efficient, purposeful, and well-integrated.

Click HERE for original. Published December 8, 2022

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