“Noah acknowledges, in passing, one particular provision of the existing nuclear regulatory framework on the United States that’s very important: radiation is held to the As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) standard, which makes it essentially impossible for nuclear to be cost-competitive.
Suppose I had a design for a cost-effective nuclear reactor, and I said I should be allowed to build it, because electricity is good and air pollution is bad. The regulator is going to look at it and say, “Well, that reactor seems awfully cheap to build, why not add a bunch more features to make the radiation levels even lower?” And then I will say, “That would be hideously expensive in a way that is net bad for public health, because it leads to more burning of fossil fuels and worse air pollution.” But the regulator comes back and says, “We’re not using a cost-benefit framework, we’re using ALARA.” And I say, “That doesn’t make sense, coal ash is radioactive — you are creating more radiation by raising my costs.” And the regulator says, “I don’t regulate coal plants, I regulate you — ALARA!”
As Jason Crawford writes, “any technology, any operational improvement, anything that reduces costs, simply gives the regulator more room and more excuse to push for more stringent safety requirements, until the cost once again rises to make nuclear just a bit more expensive than everything else. Actually, it‘s worse than that: it essentially says that if nuclear becomes cheap, then the regulators have not done their job.”
This is a deeply dysfunctional regulatory paradigm, and it reflects the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s origins in 1974 legislation that was explicitly motivated by a belief that the old Atomic Energy Commission was too friendly to the industry.
In 2019, Congress passed the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, which, among other things, “requires the NRC to develop new processes for licensing nuclear reactors, including staged licensing of advanced nuclear reactors.” The hope of NEIMA’s proponents was to change 45 years of the NRC fundamentally being an agency that says “no” to stuff and make them into an agency that would create a regulatory pathway under which new kinds of nuclear reactors could be licensed and built. And after several years, the NRC did get around to writing the new rules for SMRs, but they came up with an even longer and more cumbersome regulatory process.
Earlier this summer, the ADVANCE Act reiterated Congress’s determination for the NRC to change.
But the NRC staff, to the best of my knowledge, fundamentally does not believe that America’s elected officials genuinely want them to make it faster and cheaper to build nuclear reactors. And one reason they don’t believe it is that even though the Biden administration says lots of pro-nuclear stuff, has plenty of pro-nuclear appointees, signed the ADVANCE Act, and has done a lot to help with SMRs in terms of financing, they still coughed-up an NRC nominee who basically supports the status quo. You need a team of political appointees at the agency who are willing to both drive change and also personally take the heat when change makes people mad. You can’t “just use nuclear, bro.” You need to put people in place to actually drive specific policy change in a way that will let the industry grow and work.
And of course, even if you did that, it might not work.”
“The blackout is the culmination of decades of disinvestment, an economic crisis, and global factors affecting the country’s oil supply, and there doesn’t seem to be a long-term solution to the crisis.
The Cuban government regularly imposes hours-long blackouts in different parts of the country to conserve the fuel necessary to run the electrical plants. But the current outage is different. It was sparked by a breakdown at one of the country’s aging electrical stations and has affected every facet of life for ordinary people: They cannot cool or light their homes, food is spoiling in refrigerators, they cannot cook, and many can’t access water to drink or wash.
Though the situation has now reached a crisis point, it’s a tragedy that has developed over time and emphasizes Cuba’s fragile economy, development imperatives, and its tenuous place in world politics.”
“Check the U.S. Constitution, and you’ll see that Article 1, Section 8 clearly gives Congress sole authority over “Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises.” Unfortunately, Congress traded away much of that power during the 20th century, beginning in the aftermath of the Great Depression—which was considerably worsened by a series of tariffs passed by Congress—and continuing with various laws passed in the 1960s and 1970s, as the Cato report details.
In theory, handing over those powers made sense. Lawmakers were more likely to be influenced by parochial interests and would favor protectionism that benefited some local industry, even if it came at the expense of the nation’s economy as a whole. Presidents, it was assumed, would take a more expansive view of the benefits of trade and would use those powers to reduce barriers like tariffs.
For a long time, that was true. It no longer is. Both Trump and President Joe Biden have favored protectionism, and have faced scant opposition from Congress or the courts.
If Trump returns to the White House in 2025, he would assume huge power over the flow of goods into the United States “without substantial procedural or institutional safeguards” due to the “broad and ambiguous language” included in many of those trade laws passed decades ago, Packard and Lincicome write.
The tariffs that Trump imposed during his term in office took advantage of many of those same powers.”
“Whether LNG is better for the climate than other options is a topic of intense debate. If it replaces coal, then in general, yes. Since it’s made mostly of methane, it burns more cleanly than coal, producing roughly half of the greenhouse gas emissions. But it’s still a fossil fuel that contributes to warming, and every new gas terminal, transport tanker, and power plant implies these emissions will continue for decades more.
By one estimate, US LNG shipments to China reduced the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions — the amount of greenhouse gases released per unit of energy — by as much as 57 percent. Other analyses have also found that countries that import LNG produce power with lower emissions than with local coal. Another advantage is that gas produces fewer air polluting substances like particulates, so turning away from coal has immediate health benefits. And having more cheap gas on the global market could undermine the case for new coal power plants in some countries, if they can secure a reliable gas supplier.
But some environmental activists say this paints too optimistic a picture. For gas importers like the United Kingdom, LNG has a greenhouse gas footprint four times larger than gas extracted locally. Methane is itself a heat-trapping gas, about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide, so small leaks from gas infrastructure — as little as 0.2 percent — can quickly overwhelm any environmental advantages. The added steps of chilling and shipping gas create even more opportunities for LNG to escape, and the industry has done a poor job of tracking its fugitive emissions. In addition, some LNG exports will simply fill in existing gas needs, as they do in parts of Europe, so the climate impact overall is at best a wash, though likely worse than more locally produced gas. At the same time, renewable energy is already the cheapest source of electricity in many parts of the world, and climate activists argue that gas no longer serves as a bridge to a low-carbon world.”
“Part of the reason that Texas sometimes struggles to make enough electricity is that it has a freewheeling power market with fewer interventions from regulators than those in other states. The priority is to sell electricity in real time at the lowest possible cost, with little backup margin, although that’s starting to change. Spurred by the 2021 blackout in Texas from Winter Storm Uri that cut off power to 4 million customers and killed at least 246 people, ERCOT implemented rules to encourage more reserve power on its grid.”