Plausibility check: Earliest transition away from fossil fuels

At what point in the 20th Century could we have started reducing our dependence on fossil fuels in favor of cleaner means to run our electricity, transportation, etc.
 
Late 1970s/early 1980s. Ford or Reagan in '76, followed by a worse three mile island and some dem wins in 1980 on that platform.

The fact that nuclear energy is a great economic bridger to keep the system running until one can develop cost-effective means of running the power grid on wind and solar (Assuming you can even scrape up the absurd amount of capital that would be needed) suggests you'd have a lot smoother transition that's less likely to see backlash/rollbacks if nuclear power gets a boost rather than a moratorium. Besides, Three Mile Island was really more of a PR scare story than an actual crisis; people got more background radiation from the sun that day than they did from the minor leakage.
 
Cool. By the early 80's what would be the cheapest renewable energy sources?

I'd say geothermal or water power (IE dams). There isent the tech or capital for large scale efficient solar or wind, and even than those are pretty expensive relative to power output.
 

GarethC

Donor
Can you avoid WWII? If so, then without equating "nuclear" and "weapons" you can get a nuclear power industry in the 1950s focused on cheap(ish) power generation rather than effective weapons-material creation (with some power generation as an aftethought).
 
Besides, Three Mile Island was really more of a PR scare story than an actual crisis; people got more background radiation from the sun that day than they did from the minor leakage.

Indeed, if we could remove the Three Mile Island incident nuclear power would be more popular and we'd be better off for it. It's safe, clean, reliable and most importantly cost-effective, something that can't be said for other alternative energy sources.

More people died at Chappaquiddick than Three Mile Island.
 
Cool. By the early 80's what would be the cheapest renewable energy sources?

Nuclear power might as well be renewable, and it's definitely very, very low on the pollution end of the spectrum. Uranium (or thorium) mining certainly isn't though, but it's the earliest and easiest way to transition away from fossil fuels.

It's unfortunate there never was a major "yellow environmentalist" movement back in the day, given how opposed they were to many hydro dams (which was basically the only cheap and reliable source of renewable energy).

The fact that nuclear energy is a great economic bridger to keep the system running until one can develop cost-effective means of running the power grid on wind and solar (Assuming you can even scrape up the absurd amount of capital that would be needed) suggests you'd have a lot smoother transition that's less likely to see backlash/rollbacks if nuclear power gets a boost rather than a moratorium. Besides, Three Mile Island was really more of a PR scare story than an actual crisis; people got more background radiation from the sun that day than they did from the minor leakage.

Nuclear power itself requires such a huge capital investment you probably wouldn't even bother to transition to renewable power. Once your uranium-fueled plants reached the end of their lifespan (or supplies of uranium were running low/too expensive), you'd probably have long since planned to switch to thorium, and that will (almost) never run out.
 
Nuclear power might as well be renewable, and it's definitely very, very low on the pollution end of the spectrum. Uranium (or thorium) mining certainly isn't though, but it's the earliest and easiest way to transition away from fossil fuels.

It's unfortunate there never was a major "yellow environmentalist" movement back in the day, given how opposed they were to many hydro dams (which was basically the only cheap and reliable source of renewable energy).



Nuclear power itself requires such a huge capital investment you probably wouldn't even bother to transition to renewable power. Once your uranium-fueled plants reached the end of their lifespan (or supplies of uranium were running low/too expensive), you'd probably have long since planned to switch to thorium, and that will (almost) never run out.

Who would have had to be President of the US for this to be possible? Carter perhaps?
 

DougM

Donor
The real question is when could we have the technology to go renewable and that is a harder question.
Where it is available you have hydro back in the 30s. But in most areas that is not available in enough quantity to do the job. But solar and wind power is just now getting practical and usually used for spicific reasons or is financially backed by something else.
And even today’s vehicles are limited.
So from a technology point of view we are still not there
 
The fact that nuclear energy is a great economic bridger to keep the system running until one can develop cost-effective means of running the power grid on wind and solar (Assuming you can even scrape up the absurd amount of capital that would be needed) suggests you'd have a lot smoother transition that's less likely to see backlash/rollbacks if nuclear power gets a boost rather than a moratorium. Besides, Three Mile Island was really more of a PR scare story than an actual crisis; people got more background radiation from the sun that day than they did from the minor leakage.
we're talking about americans, all you need is image and if they get enough fear about three mile island they'd vote accordingly
 
By "we", I assume the OP is referring to the US.

Fossil Fuel costs need to increase in order for serious adoption of alternatives to occur (serious adoption" by my definition is solutions that scale to meet a large percentage of demand). Humans didn't adopt fossil fuels because the had to - we did it because they (Fossil Fuels) are "better" than what we were using (from an energy/cost perspective). It's basic economics. When the price of fossil fuels enter a pattern of terminal increase, society and industry will start to look at alternatives. I'm ruling out adoption to concern over climate change and pollution because humans are notorious for putting off long-term and invisible problems for acute ones. Short of ASB ("The Day After Tomorrow" level events or humans suddenly becoming 100 times more sensitive to pollution) I don't see that motivating behavior changes in the US public and/or industry beyond what has occurred in OTL.

Also, Presidents don't make these decisions: economies (Capital Investors, Industry etc) and geopolitical climates do. Alternative energy adoption in the US didn't die because Regan was elected. It never flourished because the economic conditions that spawned it existed for a short time and then passed and the old economic conditions returned. I'm referring to the decline in US domestic conventional oil production that started in 1970 coupled with the OPEC crisis - both of which were mitigated by the Brent Crude and Alaskan North Slope coming online. This pattern continues today with fracking and shale-oil/tar-sands. Coal production a whole different story... We have a lot of it.

We need to find a POD that introduces blindingly-evident long-term economic and geopolitical drivers for a shift to alternative energies. The challenge is that the POD also needs to occur in a way that a.) doesn't wreck the economy before new technologies are available (it takes a lot of money to develop technology that scales to meet the needs for 250-300 M people) and it takes a lot of capital to build out the infrastructure) and b.) provides enough compelling evidence early enough for viable and scalable alternative energy technologies to be developed in the first place and c.) galvanizes the political and economic will of the nation towards solving the challenge. This will be tough to find.

Indeed, if we could remove the Three Mile Island incident nuclear power would be more popular and we'd be better off for it. It's safe, clean, reliable and most importantly cost-effective, something that can't be said for other alternative energy sources.

Upfront, nuclear energy is relatively clean and safe. Reactor designs are generally very safe today. Of course, treating a reactor as an experimental platform against the advice of the people that understand it (Chernobyl) and building plants in Tsunami Zones (Fukushima) are generally going to cause nasty problems. These types of accidents/leaks are what scare most people (any yes, neither had occurred in the early 80s). However, on the tail-end, there is a bigger issue: Disposal of the spent fuel. And by "Disposal" I mean converting to an inert/safe material, firing it at the sun etc. Storage is the only solution we have today and only postpones the real cost indefinitely. Yucca Mountain has a regulatory compliance term of 10,000 years - twice that of recorded history - when I head that, I hear the sound of a can being kicked down a road and not a "real" solution. My point being that: until there is a solution to the safe disposal (by my definition, above) of spent fuel, it's impossible to determine the long-term costs, and how safe nuclear energy really is.
 
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we're talking about americans, all you need is image and if they get enough fear about three mile island they'd vote accordingly

First off, that's nation-ist against Americans. As one, I demand an apology for your bigotry :p

But yes; that's what happened IOTL. Hence why there's a moritorium on building new plants in the country. However, as I said it was a media scare story, not a factual concern; if it'd had been reported differently there very well could have been more moves towards nuclear power.
 
Sure, I could see TTL having 20-30 more nuclear reactors than OTL before the usual scare stories and lawyers using them kill the expansion.
 
By "we", I assume the OP is referring to the US.

Fossil Fuel costs need to increase in order for serious adoption of alternatives to occur (serious adoption" by my definition is solutions that scale to meet a large percentage of demand). Humans didn't adopt fossil fuels because the had to - we did it because they (Fossil Fuels) are "better" than what we were using (from an energy/cost perspective). It's basic economics. When the price of fossil fuels enter a pattern of terminal increase, society and industry will start to look at alternatives. I'm ruling out adoption to concern over climate change and pollution because humans are notorious for putting off long-term and invisible problems for acute ones. Short of ASB ("The Day After Tomorrow" level events or humans suddenly becoming 100 times more sensitive to pollution) I don't see that motivating behavior changes in the US public and/or industry beyond what has occurred in OTL.

Also, Presidents don't make these decisions: economies (Capital Investors, Industry etc) and geopolitical climates do. Alternative energy adoption in the US didn't die because Regan was elected. It never flourished because the economic conditions that spawned it existed for a short time and then passed and the old economic conditions returned. I'm referring to the decline in US domestic conventional oil production that started in 1970 coupled with the OPEC crisis - both of which were mitigated by the Brent Crude and Alaskan North Slope coming online. This pattern continues today with fracking and shale-oil/tar-sands. Coal production a whole different story... We have a lot of it.

We need to find a POD that introduces blindingly-evident long-term economic and geopolitical drivers for a shift to alternative energies. The challenge is that the POD also needs to occur in a way that a.) doesn't wreck the economy before new technologies are available (it takes a lot of money to develop technology that scales to meet the needs for 250-300 M people) and it takes a lot of capital to build out the infrastructure) and b.) provides enough compelling evidence early enough for viable and scalable alternative energy technologies to be developed in the first place and c.) galvanizes the political and economic will of the nation towards solving the challenge. This will be tough to find.

Certainly, that's why the transition needs to occur via fossil fuels becoming politically unpalatable to support and alternative energy a great political cause to give subsidies to (otherwise fossil fuels can easily wreck any renewable fuel given the free market). Wind power of couse dates to windmills, and solar power originated in the 19th century, but I don't see wind power ever becoming the main source of energy for a society, and solar power would require a ton of R&D. That leaves us with hydro power and nuclear power, each of which faced huge opposition from the environmentalist movement. Nuclear power was certainly not a mature technology in that era, but if more research had been spent on it (for instance, declaring nuclear fusion, which always seems to be a few years away, as pure science fiction), then maybe we'd have cheaper nuclear reactors and earlier Generation III reactors. Ideally having thorium-powered reactors would be nice--we'd solve the "problem" of rare-earth minerals (since monazite, a key source of thorium, is also a major source of rare-earth elements), as well as having borderline limitless energy (not technically renewable, but close to it since thorium is pretty common compared to uranium). I'm assuming that thorium-based nuclear power would pose less of a problem than uranium mining has historically, although like all mining, it no doubt would leave many Superfund sites in its wake.

Instead of putting in the capital costs to build all these power plants and keep researching new designs, we chose to kick the can down the road and take the risks with fossils fuels. Which seems pretty logical in the 70s, when the risks of climate change weren't as well publicised as the past 15-20 years.

Upfront, nuclear energy is relatively clean and safe. Reactor designs are generally very safe today. Of course, treating a reactor as an experimental platform against the advice of the people that understand it (Chernobyl) and building plants in Tsunami Zones (Fukushima) are generally going to cause nasty problems. These types of accidents/leaks are what scare most people (any yes, neither had occurred in the early 80s). However, on the tail-end, there is a bigger issue: Disposal of the spent fuel. And by "Disposal" I mean converting to an inert/safe material, firing it at the sun etc. Storage is the only solution we have today and only postpones the real cost indefinitely. Yucca Mountain has a regulatory compliance term of 10,000 years - twice that of recorded history - when I head that, I hear the sound of a can being kicked down a road and not a "real" solution. My point being that: until there is a solution to the safe disposal (by my definition, above) of spent fuel, it's impossible to determine the long-term costs, and how safe nuclear energy really is.

Fukushima was an easily preventable disaster. Consider that the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Alabama was nearly struck by an EF5 tornado in 2011. Even if it had been directly hit (which would've been a pretty rare event), it probably wouldn't have caused too much damage. Fly ash spills cause huge environmental damage, including releasing radioactive materials into the environment, yet no incident has ever had the impact Chernobyl or Fukushima has had. If the nuclear industry had the industry to bury incidents the way the fossil fuels industry had, then Chernobyl might be somewhat worse than Deepwater Horizon, Fukushima would be on the level of Deepwater Horizon, and Three Mile Island would be like the fly ash spills which occur every few years that decimate local rivers (if that, since Three Mile Island killed less people than were killed from US/Soviet nuclear weapon testing).

Nuclear waste storage is such an overrated problem. If it became a real problem which you couldn't confine to remote mountains and wastelands (we do have Antarctica if Nevada isn't remote enough...), then the economy would develop the launch vehicles to shoot it into the Sun (or wherever was easiest--Venus might be the simplest since it's the easiest planet to reach and the surface of Venus is for all intents and purposes literally hell). A lot of nuclear waste, incidentally, can be harvested for products like transuranic "waste" (plutonium, americium, curium, etc. is good for many purposes) or for RTGs (like strontium-90). It can even be transmuted into other elements (the technetium-99 produced in fission can be turned into ruthenium, a precious metal). Widespread nuclear technology is a good path to nuclear transmutation being a viable source of some rare elements (osmium, rhodium, etc.) which would allow further research (since it would be cheaper) and thus more commercial uses.
 
Sure, I could see TTL having 20-30 more nuclear reactors than OTL before the usual scare stories and lawyers using them kill the expansion.

The more reactors you have that aren't causing perceived risks, though, the less vulnerable the more familer population is going to be to scare tactics, and you'll also get the sufficent scale of "Big Nuclear" to have the incentive/resources to create an effective lobby and public relations campaign.
 

Devvy

Donor
Hydroelectric is probably the best bet. The US is a huge country, with ample potential for hydroelectric, which even by the 1970s is a stable and mature technology for generating ample green electricity cheaply once built.

California, Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Montana all have huge untapped potentials for hydroelectricity even today in OTL; many other states have smaller but still reasonable potential for hydroelectric. I'd guess mid-late 1970s, after the oil crisis is probably the best time, politics could easily swing further to a secure national energy policy.
 
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