Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LV: Chernobyl (and the Titanic, and 9/11)

A Russian television show ran a short film that, well, it mostly just tried to pack this whole "Things People Blame the Jews For" series into one segment:

Jews are responsible for the sinking of the Titanic, the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl and the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001, according to a short film broadcast recently on REN TV.

The documentary is an updated version of an earlier version broadcast in 2012, in which it was alleged that a group of “300 Jews, Illuminati and Freemasons” was behind the sinking of the British ship 100 years ago in order to cause an international crisis and take over the world.

We've already covered the Titanic here, and if 9/11 hasn't gotten an entry it's only because it was too easy. But I think Chernobyl, we genuinely haven't done before. Fukashima, yes (twice, in fact), but not Chernobyl.

So well done, REN TV, for keeping things at least a little fresh.

(Also, in a sign of the times, the Jewish Chronicle article linked to above was shortly after posting bombarded with social media trolls "thanking" them for their "revelation" about Chernobyl).

Nuke Jersey! (In the Best Way)

I am a big booster of nuclear power. It's probably the single issue I've moved furthest on over the past five years (from "not caring about it one way or the other" to "big booster"). The reason is simple: nuclear power (which is carbon emission-free) is an essential part of moving to deep decarbonization in the electricity sector, and deep decarbonization in the electricity sector is essential to stopping global warming.

On this score, recent (good) news out of New Jersey provides a compelling illustration. A new energy package offers subsidies that will keep nuclear power plants operational for the foreseeable future, while also supporting new renewable power resources. Why does that matter? Well, consider the alternative we're witnessing in Ohio and Pennsylvania:

[T]here are four nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania that are slated to close prematurely. Last week, the research consultancy Brattle Group released a report analyzing the impact of those retirements, which are all taking place in the PJM regional energy market. 

The results are startling. Closing those four nuclear plants would wipe out the carbon emissions benefits of all the renewable energy installed in the PJM energy market in the past 25 years. 

Simply replacing the lost nuclear power with renewable energy would cost $2 billion a year, and that enormous investment would not replace or prevent any fossil fuel generation.

The emphasis is mine, but read it again. In terms of carbon emission cuts, losing nuclear power is equivalent to losing 25 years worth of renewable energy installation. Without these nuclear plants, just getting back to even (not replacing any new fossil fuel plants) would cost $2 billion/year.

If the nuclear plants in New Jersey closed, the same thing would happen. New renewable installations would simply be replacing lost nuclear energy -- which means no net reduction in carbon emissions. With the nuclear plants still operating, by contrast, new renewable resources will knock out natural gas plants -- providing a genuine reduction in carbon emissions.

As the linked article concedes, the New Jersey package isn't policy optimal (a carbon pricing scheme would be best). But given politically feasible options, it isn't bad. Importantly, when states treat nuclear power as a linchpin of deep decarbonization, that's a major net win for climate policy hawks.

So kudos, New Jersey. Nuke away.

The New Trump Administration Push To Blow Up Energy Markets

David Roberts has a great post on efforts by Energy Secretary Rick Perry to essentially blow up the wholesale energy market in a naked effort to protect coal (and, to a lesser extent, nuclear) power plants from free competition. Basically, he proposed a new rule that would guarantee coal and nuclear power plants a positive return on their investments, regardless of whether their power capacity was used or even is economical. Whereas other power plants (ranging from wind to natural gas) make money based on their ability to compete effectively in the marketplace, a few preferred operators would get their profits guaranteed.

Nominally, this is because they uniquely contribute to grid "resilience" by being a source of power able to ramp up quickly in the event of a major disruption (like, say, a major weather event). The problem (well, the short version of the problem) is that all the relevant studies -- including those conducted by the DOE under the supervision of Secretary Perry in the hopes that they'd confirm his political preferences -- conclude that coal and nuclear power don't actually improve grid resilience, and that, in fact, the grid is generally quite reliable and resilient right now (and only improving). So the only real upshot is to serve as a massive intrusion on the market in favor of uneconomical coal power.* It's thus no surprise that one Republican former FERC commissioner described it as "the antithesis of good economics," or that simply said it would "blow the market up."

The whole article is worth your read, both as an introduction to how energy markets work (Roberts is great at explaining for a lay audience) and as an entry in the infinite-series of "Republicans don't actually care about market competition.

After laying out a litany of obstacles to passing the rule -- ranging from wall-to-wall opposition in the energy sector (outside of coal/nuke lobbyists) to severe time pressures to a complete lack of legal or policy justification necessary under the relevant statutes, Roberts concludes by saying the future of this proposal depends "on just how hackish and partisan FERC is willing to get." In other words, hold on tight.**

* As Roberts notes, while nuclear power is in a somewhat different boat from coal, this rule is also terrible policy as applied to supporting nukes.

** FERC is actually normally a relatively well-run agency, but at the moment it is controlled by Trump partisans who are, shall we say, not typically concerned with abiding by standards of technical expertise. So we'll see.

Nuclear Power: The Macho Man's Manly Path to Global Salvation

I've written a bit about nuclear power before, and how it may be our best hope at achieving deep decarbonization in a reasonable time frame while still meeting our electricity needs. Put simply, nuclear power has three characteristics that make it extremely attractive from a decarbonization perspective:

1. It's high capacity.
2. It's zero-emission.
3. It's dispatchable.

Back in the day, nuclear energy was attractive for a fourth reason -- people thought it would be inexpensive. Nuclear energy would famously be "too cheap to meter". This turned out to be a less than oracle-esque prophecy. Nuclear power plants have long been plagued with cost overruns, and their skyrocketing expense (along with a few very public safety scares) is what caused a long freeze in nuclear construction from which we are only just beginning to see a thaw.

But from my vantage, the issue blocking us from pursuing necessary anti-climate change action isn't monetary. We have the resources to do it. The problem is, for lack of a better word, cultural. Conservatives have gotten it into their heads that fighting climate change and promoting renewable power is something only woolly liberal hippies care about, because they hate capitalism or something. And since Cleek's Law states that "Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily," that means conservatives oppose pretty much anything on the clean power agenda.

Enter nuclear energy. Nuclear power is not coded as liberal -- if anything, its public valence is probably still more anti-environmental stemming from "nuclear-free zone" politics emerging out of the 70s and 80s (nuclear waste controversies stemmed from whether holding sites designed to last 10,000 years were sufficiently permanent. Given that we're staring down catastrophic climate change by the end of this century, that timeframe looks adorably quaint). It's muscular -- nuclear energy is something big, bad-ass countries produce -- unlike solar power which might turn your calculator on if you're not in a dark room. Sure some people fret about "safety" (although nuclear power is on net actually quite safe), but conservatives actually tend to be less risk-averse when it comes to nuclear energy than liberals. And conservatives actually have no problem expending resources when it comes to things they care about -- like funneling money to really rich people or building jet fighters.

Basically, nuclear energy is culturally coded in a way that makes it acceptable to conservatives in a way that other clean power sources aren't. And so regardless of whether it's theoretically possible to go 100% clean power without resort to nukes, nuclear energy is unique in its ability to not be rejected out of hand by conservatives who hate what renewable energy represents -- limp, paternalistic liberalism that wants to take away American muscle and replace it with some Dutch windmill and hippie solar communes.

Now I want to be 100% clear: This is a profoundly stupid reason to push for nuclear power (there are good reasons, but "nuclear power is manly" is not one). As a human, I'm embarrassed that the argument has come to this -- that we can only convince people to endorse global salvation if we can frame in a way that allows them to feel sufficiently manly about it. But we're past the point where my pride matters. If conservatives need to feel like they're sticking it to liberals and environmentalists by promoting nuclear energy, har-dee-harharhar, I say we indulge them.

So let's go, conservatives. Make electricity great again. Back a big nuclear energy push. That'll show me and my liberal pals what's what. It's the macho, manly way to save the planet.

Will Nukes Save the World?

David Roberts has a good beginner's rundown on what it will take to decarbonize the economy (and, accordingly, avoid the catastrophic global warming scenarios that are likely if we stay on our current path). As we've discussed on this blog, decarbonization is inextricably linked to electrification -- we want more of our energy needs met by electricity, and specifically carbon-emission free electricity.

The big challenge is that the most obvious renewable resources -- wind and solar -- have massive scalability issues because they are not dispatchable power resources. They don't generate power on an as-needed basis, they generate when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. And because electricity supply must meet demand on an instantaneous basis, the inability to control when wind and solar resources generate power is a huge problem that makes it virtually impossible for them to meet 100% of power load requirements without massive overbuilding.

What we need, then, is a dispatchable resource that can lower our carbon emissions. Natural gas is a possibility -- kind of. It is much cleaner than coal, but still emits carbon. Roberts estimates that switching primarily to natural gas could get us to roughly 60% decarbonization. That sounds pretty good, even if the target we need to hit is actually 80% - 100%. But there's a big problem:

Natural gas is cleaner than coal (by roughly half, depending on how you measure methane leakage), but it’s still a fossil fuel. At least without CCS [Carbon Capture Sequestration], it is incompatible with decarbonization beyond 60 percent or so.

If you build out a bunch of natural gas plants to get to 60 percent, then you’re stuck shutting them down to get past 60 percent.

It would be very difficult to strand all those assets. There would be a lot of resistance. It’s just one example of path dependence in energy — choices, once made, tend to perpetuate themselves through inertia. Leaning too heavily into natural gas in the next 20 years will make it more difficult to pull away in the subsequent 20.

Enter nuclear power, the new darling of (some) environmentalists. Nuclear power has a high capacity (it can generate a lot of power), zero-emission (no carbon), and dispatchable -- a holy trinity if your only goal is to decarbonize. It isn't renewable (though I don't think there's any immediate risk to our nuclear fuel reserves), and of course nuclear power has other risks and associations which make it politically controversial. But it strikes me as the most straight-forward, feasible, and immediately accessible method for taking big chunks out of our carbon footprint right now.

What are the alternatives? The best one is high-capacity energy storage (which can convert a variable resource like wind into a dispatchable one like nuclear). But the technology to have such storage on the scale and flexibility necessary is just not there yet, and while it's more than an eye-twinkle, it's also not particularly close at hand. After that, we could simply engage in massive, massive overbuilding of wind and solar. But even then we'd need to also basically globalize our transmission network (and massively upgrade that too), so that we could be confident that the wind is blowing/sun is shining somewhere.

Roberts indicates that there is a debate between those who think we can go 100% renewable (no nuclear, no CCS) versus those who want those options on the table. Count me decisively in the latter camp. It might theoretically be possible to design a grid system available today that is zero-emission and entirely renewable. But the political, economic, and technological obstacles to putting it together are more than formidable, they are towering. Nuclear power is a technology we have now, that checks all of the key decarbonization boxes.

Second Blush Thoughts on the Iran Deal

On Facebook, I noted that I was working hard to not have an opinion on the Iran deal, because I knew nothing about it and shouldn't come to a conclusion simply via rote mimicry of ideological cohorts. It was observed by a friend, though, that one of my God-given rights as an American is to "have an opinion based on nothing and then broadcast it publicly through as many channels as possible". And as a blogger, I try my best to live by that credo.

I should start by saying that I have not read the deal itself. This is because the technical characteristics of the deal probably wouldn't mean that much to me, and in particular they'd mean nothing out of context (specifically, the context of feasible alternatives). The sources I read to educate myself include Tom Friedman's interview with the President, Jeffrey Goldberg, AIPAC, Marc Goldberg, David Adesnik, Max Fisher's interview with arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis (highly recommended), Douglas Murray, and of course the metric ton of commentary folks have been blasting all across Facebook for the past few days. Here, then, is where I'm at now.

(1) Obviously, the deal can't be evaluated against an ideal world where America stands steely-eyed and strong and Iran capitulates to everything our heart's desire. One makes deals with autocratic regimes pursuing nuclear weapons under less-than-ideal circumstances -- that comes with the territory. Likewise, we can't evaluate the deal based on what we could have gotten 10 years ago. Assessing this deal is a comparative exercise -- how does reaching this accord compare to either no deal or another deal that could be realistically obtained now?

(2) This deal clearly has its eye on one thing and one thing only: slowing down Iran getting a nuclear weapon. It doesn't care about ending Iranian terrorism. It doesn't care about liberalizing the country. It doesn't care about rectifying the nation's many, many human rights abuses. All of these things are important, but they're not the subject of this deal (and were not, realistically, going to be improved by any deal). I have heard the argument that lifting the sanctions will nudge Iran in a more conciliatory direction, but I'm highly dubious. I'm also inclined to agree that the cash flow it is about to see stemming from the sanctions relief will redound to the benefit of the various terrorist groups Iran likes to fund.

(3) I am unconvinced that there was a "better deal to be made". As far as I've seen there were essentially two mechanisms America supposedly had for exerting more leverage over Tehran: continuing the current regime of exceptionally tight sanctions, or military strikes. The former doesn't work: The current sanctions regime was unsustainable -- the only way we got countries like Russia and China (and arguably even the EU) onboard with tighter sanctions was in service of getting a deal. If no deal was in sight, most of our international allies would have walked away from the sanctions and we'd be left with nothing. The military option is risky for a host of reasons; it might not work, it definitely will prompt retaliation, it definitely would be a diplomatic catastrophe for the United States in forums far afield from Iran, and it definitely will result in blowback that we really don't need. Robert Farley has long convinced me that the ability of pure airpower to bend other countries to our will is overstated, and the more resources we invest in ensuring that the military operation is successful, the more we risk being mired in yet another intractable Middle Eastern conflict.

(4) Indeed, one thing that Lewis said in his piece -- which, again, is the most informative of all the ones I read -- really stuck out for me. It's that "[e]very six months, the deal we could have gotten six months before looks better. Every time we tried to hold out for a better deal, and every time we got in the position of a worse deal." That dates back to the Bush administration, so this isn't a case of weak Obama being weak and not leading with leadership. The fact is the trendlines haven't been good for awhile now, and experientially speaking trying to get a "better deal" has only made things worse. To quote Lewis again:

I was talking to a colleague who is unhappy [with the deal], and it's kind of fascinating. He's unhappy because, he said, "We spent eight years, and the deal we got is not better than the deal we could have gotten eight years ago." And it's like, oh, no kidding. That's not an indictment of the deal, my friend, it's an indictment of eight years of fucking around. [...]

I would give [this deal] an A....[Now, c]ompared to the deal we could have gotten 10 years ago, if the Bush administration hadn't had their heads up their butts? Not an A! That would have been a great deal!

I remember when they had 164 centrifuges, in one cascade, and I said, "You know what, we should let them keep it in warm standby. No uranium, just gas." And people were like, "You're givin' away the store!"

In short, I think opponents of this deal bear a heavy burden of persuasion as to why this time things will be different. And for me at least, they haven't met that burden. I agree with Jeffrey Goldberg that "The dirty little secret of this whole story is that it is very difficult to stop a large nation that possesses both natural resources and human talent, and a deep desire for power, from getting the bomb."

(5) On the particular metric of "slowing down Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon" -- which again, is clearly the only thing the deal is concerned about -- it seems likely to be a net positive over other feasible alternatives. Lewis certainly seems to think so (including ranking it higher than the alternative of bombing Iran). A lot of the technical details of course mean nothing to me, both on the science side (what are the risks of the technology Iran is allowed to keep) and on the logistical side (is 24 days lead time for inspections a lot or a little?). That said, I don't think the deal's efficacy depends on Iran suddenly not being a power-hungry illiberal reactionary autocracy. The "snapback" provisions seem pretty robust and offer ample opportunities for western states to punish Iran for cheating (or suspected cheating). And notably, these provisions can kick in without assent by China or Russia, who are the players whose commitment is most dodgy.

(6) All of that said, I still have a serious concern, although it's an idiosyncratic one that maybe is only shared by me. One way of thinking about this deal is that it trades reduced Iranian nuclear capabilities (via inspections, etc.) for increased Iranian ability to sponsor terror (because of the cash infusion it will get when the sanctions are lifted). And my quite unique position is that I always thought that Iran getting a nuclear weapon was always exaggerated on the threat scale. Nuclear weapons are and have been easily deterrable via conventional modes of statecraft. Even countries which hate each other (like the US and the USSR) pulled it off for decades. And even if one thinks Iran is so entirely suffused with millennarian impulses with respect to Israel that it would risk itself being wiped off the map via an Israeli nuclear counterstrike, it's difficult to imagine that it would risk harming its own holy sites in Jerusalem. By contrast, Iran's sponsorship of terror organizations like Hezbollah has been a thicket that normal diplomatic statecraft has not been able to satisfactorily resolve. Hence, a trade that reduces the former risk while amplifying the latter strikes me as exactly backwards. This may explain why all major elements of the Israeli polity -- including the liberal opposition -- don't like the deal. It strengthens Iran on pretty much all axes save nuclear weaponry (of course it does -- that's what makes it a deal. Iran gives something -- ability to quickly get a nuclear weapon -- to get something -- increased resource access. Outside fantasies where America Green Lanterns Iran into a total capitulation, that was always going to be the result), and Israel quite reasonably doesn't want to see Iran strengthened. And of course, Israel will bear the brunt of an Iran more capable to fund its proxies in Syria, Lebanon, and around the Middle East.

(7) So if I was to argue against the deal, that would be my point of attack: it weakens Iran along a threat dimension whose danger was overstated at the expense of strengthening Iran along a threat dimension whose danger is understated. Yet ultimately, that argument seems more of a general criticism of misplaced global priorities than it is a specific criticism of this deal. Assuming I'm right that the sanctions would have been unsustainable absent a deal, the choice was never "weakened terror Iran/strengthened nuclear Ian versus strengthened terror Iran/weakened nuclear Iran". The alternative to weakening Iran's nuclear capacities while relieving it of international sanctions was to strengthen Iran's nuclear capacities while relieving it of international sanctions. The lifting of sanctions was baked into the cake -- they knew it, and we knew it, and the only question was whether we could use the leverage we temporarily possessed to get a deal that accomplished the one, solitary goal it set out to accomplish. Based on my read, and what I've seen, I think that it did. The result is, to be sure, an Iran that will in many ways be more powerful and more dangerous in 2020 than it is in 2015. That's a security risk that will need to be dealt with in its own way. But it wasn't an eventuality that this deal, in these circumstances, was capable of forestalling.

Admin Law Nerds, Rejoice!

The famous Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is back in the news!