Green Nukes?

Nuking Your Insurance

Of late, the nuclear power industry has been ginning up a campaign to represent itself as a “green alternative” to hydrocarbon-based methods of electricity generation. Never mind, for the moment, the abysmal failure of the industry’s original claim, that nuclear power would produce electricity that was “too cheap to meter.” Never mind, as well, the fact that, decades on, we still have no permanent nuclear waste storage facility. Let’s look at the safety issue. And let’s look at it not from the point of view of “alarmist environmentalists” or the “poorly informed” public, but from the point of view of the industry itself, and from the point of view of those dispassionate number crunchers in the insurance industry.

We are repeatedly and strenuously assured that modern nuclear power plant design is completely safe, that we have nothing to fear from nuclear accidents.

This would be easier to accept if the industry actually believed its own rhetoric; it does not.

Exhibit A in this regard is the Price-Anderson Act first passed more than fifty years ago, in 1957.

In the fine print at the back of just about any insurance policy you hold–homeowner’s, renter’s, auto, even your contact lens insurance–there is a clause which exempts both your insurer and nuclear power plant operators from liability if your property is damaged as a result of a nuclear accident, whether at a nuclear power plant, fuel reprocessing facility or via the transportation or storage of nuclear waste. Damage resulting from nuclear war (declared or undeclared) is likewise exempt.

That’s the result of the Price-Anderson Act. The nuclear power industry, from its infancy, has never been willing to shoulder the financial risks of the accident or accidents that are “never going to happen.”

Don’t worry, though, you’re still covered: the federal government picks up the tab in the event of nuclear misadventures. And since the government gets its money from you. . . That means that you’ll just pay yourself. Simple.

The arithmetic of the Price-Anderson Act is simple, as well:

It provides an annual subsidy to the nuclear industry worth more than $3 billion—which is more than four times the annual federal expenditure on alternative energy projects and research.

It caps the total insurance coverage of the industry at just over $9 billion, while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s worst case estimate for the cost of a serious nuclear accident exceeds $300 billion.

Nothing new here. Just another industry privatizing the profits and socializing the costs, telling the public we have nothing to worry about, telling the government that the risks of their business are too great for the industry to bear.

If reactor operators really have the strength of their convictions behind them, let them lobby for the repeal of the Price-Anderson Act. Let them put up their own money in guarantee, not ours.

People Don't Like My Car!

It’s not a good sign that people don’t like my car.

People are agog over the Toyota Prius and the Prius is a respectable achievement, four doors, five passengers, room for at least some cargo. But it’s not uncommon for the car to not break 50 mpg (Consumer Reports put the real world mileage at 44 mpg).

I’m driving the car that was the first hybrid to come to the US, the Honda Insight (beat the Prius by a few months).

My r/t commute is 100 mi. door-to-door.

I get 65 mpg on a normal day; 58 mpg if I drive aggressively; 75 mpg with a little effort; and my record is 85 mpg (which involves annoying other people on the road—I’m in the right lane and I’m saving my inertia; I’m really sorry if you’re behind me; I like speed too).

This model (though not my car) has been hacked to get 100 mpg.

My car is the 2000 model year, the first to make it to the US, a year after release in Japan. And you have to figure a development cycle of how long—at least five years, maybe more. So they started working on this in 1995 or earlier. The 100 mpg car? It’s not the car of the future; it’s the car of the past!

The past and fading, because 2007 was the last model year the Insight was available. Off the market. Gone.

So why don’t people like my car?

Well, okay, people seem to like it—point at it, wave, ask questions about it. What they don’t seem to have done is buy it.

Cool car. Nice for you. I’ll take the Hummer, thanks!

The Insight is limited. No doubt. Only two seats, minimal cargo room. Will go over 85 mph but takes some time getting there (that’s what I’m told anyway, officer, I would never, of course, myself. . .) And for people who suffer road anxiety, well it ain’t big. A little bumpy on the high pressure tires, a little jiggity in the wind.

As far as I’m concerned though, it’s the perfect commuter car, the perfect second car. Most of what I need to do (in my one child, no pets family) is get to and from work, drive my wife or (not and) daughter somewhere, and do errands that involve more grocery bags than lumber. Can’t drive the carpool in this car. For that I take our BIG CAR, the two door Honda Civic.

But, but, but. . . 75MPG on a good day!! According to the government, the combined average for the US fleet in 2005 didn’t quite crack 20 mpg.

Who killed the Insight? I’m thinking we did, that Honda just couldn’t sell enough of them to make a profit (I believe they were selling them at a loss, too, which didn’t help).

Sounds like market failure to me. Can you say Carbon Tax? Betcha can. Not a fun word but something’s got to help the market along, provide some signals and incentives.

Sigh. . .

The potential power of making up words

What’s the point of trying to popularize a word like Hydrocarbonaholic? Words name problems in useful ways; naming can be the beginning of solving.

Alcoholics Anonymous has been much more effective at reducing the impact of alcoholism than prohibition ever was or could have been. And a core part of that success rests on the first word in the organization’s name.

“Alcoholic” is a word so familiar it feels like it’s always been with us. It hasn’t. It was coined some hundred and fifty years ago, in 1849, by Swedish physician Magnus Huss. Huss wrote Alcoholismus Chronicus, or Chronic Alcohol Illness: A Contribution to the Study of Dyscrasias Based on my Personal Experience and the Experience of Others. Jean-Charles Sournia, writes about Huss in “A History of Alcoholism,” (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1990).

Why does the word matter? And why should it be more effective than “Demon Rum”? It matters because it “medicalizes” the problem, tags it as an addiction rather than merely a moral failing. Whether or not we see medical problems as more easily solved than moral problems, it is certainly easier to accept the accusation that one is “sick” rather than “bad.”

If you’re bad, getting better is an iffy proposition; maybe you can manage it maybe you can’t. If you’re sick, there’s always the chance of a cure. And if we believe in medicine over magic, then getting better from an illness is a scientific process: There are steps to take, data to be assessed, approaches to be tested.

And so to Global Climate Change. . . I’m not interested in castigating anyone, myself included, because of the desire to be warm in the winter, cool in the summer, to enjoy the fruits of modern technology. Doesn’t make me bad; doesn’t make you bad either. And if we can do it efficiently, more power to us!

If we can’t do it efficiently, however, if we’re stuck in a cycle where we just have to keep guzzling gas or we can’t get out of bed, can’t get where we need to go, can’t do what we need to do. . . Well, I’m thinking that’s a problem. I’m thinking that describes a system, describes a lifestyle, that’s unsustainable and unhealthy.

I’m a hydrocarbonaholic, an oil addict, a fossil fuel fool. Not proud of that but I’m not beating myself up about it either. I need the stuff. I admit it. Having admitted it, I want to see what I can do about it. Not bad; just a guy with a problem.

Name It. Start to Change It.

What is a hydrocarbonaholic?

Having coined and trademarked the word, I’ll define it.

Hydrocarbonaholic [hidro-car-bin-uh-haw-lik]: –noun A person, or culture, addicted to the consumption of fossil fuels, e.g. oil, gasoline, coal, natural gas, etc.

Who is a hydrocarbonaholic? Well, I know I am. Hard to see how you aren’t one too. No offense. We can argue about whether or not a cigarette, a gin & tonic, or even a cuppa coffee is necessary to get you started in the morning.

No gas? You’re not starting your car.

And while I joke about working in datacomm in the 1980s by talking about coal-powered mainframes, given how we generate our electricity in the US, the internet really does run on coal.

Problem is, hydrocarbs are all around us all the time (like cigs, alcohol, and caffeine, but n’mind). And we really do need them to do pretty much anything.

Supply may be an issue in the near to mid-term future, depending on who you believe and what source you look at (lotsa coal; less oil ), but the bigger problem, as with any addiction, is that the pushers are trashing the neighborhood. They tend toward violence, and they dump their garbage in everybody’s yards—what pusher walks around with a candy wrapper in his pocket, looking for a garbage pail?

I won’t get into the “we invaded Iraq for the oil” argument—which is not to say that I don’t think there’s something to it. But we spend a chunk o’ money in the Persian Gulf to keep the goo coming, for ourselves and for the world economy overall.

More important, of course, is global climate change (knew that was coming, right?). If gasoline came out of my garden hose, free of charge, running my car would be a lot cheaper, but I would be melting Greenland a lot faster. I like Greenland. I also like the fact that Manhattan is one island—not two, bisected by the river that used to be 52^nd Street.

We’re done with the “equal time” sham(e) where we get one of each: a talking head shilling for Big Oil who says “there are still questions” while a real scientist, representing the overwhelming global consensus of the scientific community says “not on the matter of whether or not CO2 from human activities is warming the atmosphere,” and then we cut to commercial (Zoom Zoom!!).

We. Have. A. Problem.

Me, I’m tired of muttering to myself about this, I’m looking for a virtual church basement where we can talk about what to do, Hydrocarbonaholics Anonymous. I already have a creed. And I like my mottos both inverted and hopeful:

We are NOT powerless before our addiction!