The studies use data that aren't made public. It's all science performed poorly, hidden, and if ever found out protected from accountability. Read my comment more closely. I wasn't talking about the obsolescence of coal. I was talking about the necessary effect when you destroy capital. It impoverishes the society. Capital destruction is a factor to wage stagnation. I am not claiming it is the largest, but it is a factor.
Deez. Don't accept the false narrative. It doesn't help. People aren't dieing from air pollution which was a result of burning coal in a power plant.
I'm very suspicious of that study. I can accept that air pollution at high levels can cause health problems. However, I have a very hard time believing that there is real causation established between coal use and the €43 billion figure. I highly suspect that a lot of the treatment that they're blaming on coal should actually be blamed on rampant cigarette smoking. I can't disapprove it though. My point is that even if the study is rock solid, the remedy isn't what the environmentalist crackpots advocate. Germany largely adopted the crackpots' agenda to an extreme degree, and it's not working. They're having to boost their coal use literally just to keep the lights on, which should supposedly make this health problem (if real) worse.
Yeah. I read that the studies where they studied air pollution affects on health were based on amounts of PM2.5 in the air. Smoking one cigarette exposed a person to 10,000 times more PM2.5 than the air where coal plants exist. The EPA actually tried to trigger asmatics by exposing them to huge concentrations of PM2.5. It was still less than a cigarette. It didn't have any affect. But it shows how unethical the EPA is. They are willing to expose people to what they think is a harmful material just to prove their point.
And of course, the EPA is far more ethical and far more accountable than the environmental regulators in Europe. The EPA at least theoretically is limited by an enabling statute and can be taken to federal court. By comparison, EU regulators are kings on thrones.
Just wanted to add a tweet here that shows how closely linked labor productivity is to wages. When you destroy capital you are decreasing overall productivity in the economy. Good news of this graph is that even with our foolishness, things are still improving.
@Seattle Husker You questioned whether this technology exists. Article is actually in Grist: The power plant of the future could run on nuclear waste Oklo is just one of several nuclear startupsworking on advanced reactors. There’s NuScale, building small, modular reactors, Terrestrial aims to have a liquid-salt reactor going before 2030, Bill Gates’ TerraPower is working on a traveling-wave reactor, and then there’s Kairos, X-Energy and many others each with investors betting millions that they’ll be able to find a way to make clean energy safely and cheaply.
There is no doubt that nuclear can be cost efficient. The problem is that no investment has been made until recently to continue to improve the process for efficiency and safety. There is also Thorium which is a type of nuclear fuel that is consumed in the liquid state. That means it is inherently safe. The problem with traditional nuclear is the high pressure tanks used for the cooling baths. That is the source of the explosions, not the radioactivity itself.
Huh??? The DOE has an entire program on this very thing. The new reactor types mentioned above are fail-safe technologies.
There is investment in technology here in the US. Gen 3 plants are being built all over the world. They are much better than the older plants in the US and Japan.
Again. Really? I haven't heard of nuclear being built only decommissioned. Where are these new reactors being built?
US has 2 under construction: one in GA and the other in SC that is currently delayed due to cost overruns.
When I was in Lianyungang, PRC for a plant start-up, we met some good ole boys from Tennessee at the airport who were there starting up a nuclear reactor. I drove past it one time. You should get out more.
Glad to see them being built. Again though my comment wasn't than investment isn't happening today, but that is wasn't being pursued much in the recent past. Good to see the trend is changing.
Where are the antinuke dumb-fucks? Why aren't they protesting China building so many of these? It's disturbing that so few of these plants are being built in the West. This is what pisses me off about the modern environmentalist. While we're falling all over ourselves to build these stupid wind turbines and banning plastic straws, China is building a mess of nuclear power plants and dumping assloads of plastic into the ocean. And the environmentalists don't give two squirts of piss about it.
I have a non-smoking friend dying of lung cancer and my wife's best friend, also a nonsmoker died of the disease in 2010. Is Smoky Joe Barton to blame? I don't know and I'm not accusing, but I worry about the health impacts of air pollution.