Reply #23: You mean your post doesn't change anything [View All]

No, coal isn't a quasi-governmental enterprise; it has a lot of power, but it isn't blended with the government.

Hydro is to the extent that we developed much of our hydro capacity during the Depression, a condition that established a government led economic model for development. But,if a project were to be done today it would not be a case where it was bid in any way different than a highway.

What makes nuclear unique is the danger associated with the spread of the technologies. WASTE, SAFETY & PROLIFERATION concerns dictate that a rigid state-run apparatus work hand in hand for development and deployment to a degree that no other industry requires. That the cost is showing itself to be so high that only state actors are able to execute the financing is troubling, but not as troubling as the fact that this approach, when pursued in combination with a market approach for renewable competition, is going to either crowd out renewables or result in very high numbers of bankruptcies. Also troubling would be the concentration of power that would accrue to an even tighter elite should the world orient itslef around powering civilization with nuclear fission.

Given that the civil nuclear fission programs are largely an outgrowth of military fission programs trying to find a way to capitalize on the huge investment of the people's money into these programs; and given that the security, safety and scale issues make total privatization unworkable, it is the government itself that has taken an active role in marketing fission technology in all the exporting nations.

Beyond that border the coal and nuclear industries are interchangeable lynch-pins in a system composed of a wide variety of industrial and economic interests. Let's call that the "Entrenched Energy Industries". Everything from raw resources for manufacturing and fuels to labor groups to project planning & development to closely-tied government regulators to shipping to mining to financial holdings to distribution to transmission & grid operations to utilities to vested state, local, county & municipal governments; all of these and their associated interdependent businesses have a direct economic interest in preserving the current method of producing and delivering power to the end user.

While it is true that many of these at the organizational level will also have a role in a renewable distributed grid, it is evident from the nature of the structural shift that their role will be diminished greatly even if they are survivors of the change-over. For example, transmission and distribution will be important, but the smart grid is going to create an entirely new management paradigm that will have to be adapted to and their function will shift more and more from one where they "keep the lights on" to one where they "top off your tank" when your more local neighborhood and home systems need supplementing. As for those "local systems", they will be dominated by a range of companies with new names but all having the characteristics of any other mass production good such as consumer electronics, cars, appliances, etc.

Change is an instinctually unsafe condition when you are in a secure immediate position. When the system that keeps you "safe" is preserved it is good and when it is threatened you tend to want to protect it. Renewables threaten that entire system, nuclear only a small slice of it.
Coal and nuclear are two sides of the same coin.