Nuclear-Solar Climate Club by Dennis Peterson
Please find below the
Finalist Evaluation
Judges'' comments
Thank you for participating in the 2015 Climate CoLab Global Climate Action Plan contest, and for the time you spent in creating your entry.
The Judges have strongly considered your proposal, and have chosen to not advance it as a Finalist for this contest.
We, the Judges and contest Fellows, are truly grateful for your contribution to the Climate CoLab and for your commitment to address climate change at a global level.
We encourage you to keep developing your work and to submit it into future contests and very much hope you will stay involved in the Climate CoLab community. Please support and comment on other proposals on the platform and vote for the Global proposal you think is the most promising one.
Keep up the great work. And thank you again for being a part of this mission to harness the world’s collective efforts to develop and share innovative climate change solutions.
All the best,
2015 Climate CoLab Judges
Additional comments from the Judges:
This is an interesting combination of carbon pricing and a technology push to make a viable mitigation option. But -- as noted by the author -- the acceptability of nuclear in the current environment is a big question, as is the feasibility of an agreement on a global carbon price. Further, the proposal looks at only United States and Europe; it does not apply to other regions of the world, as requested by the contest criteria. Thank you for the bold submission however we choose to not advance it for this contest.
Semi-Finalist Evaluation
Judges'' ratings
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Judges'' comments
Congratulations! Your proposal, "Nuclear Climate Club", in the MIT Global Climate Action Plan contest, has been selected to advance to the Semi-Finalists round.
You will be able to revise your proposal and add new collaborators if you wish, from now until November 4, 2015, at 11:59pm midnight Eastern Time. We’ve also included feedback that will be posted under the Evaluation tab of your proposal. Please incorporate this feedback in your revisions. As you make revisions, we recommend you save an offline copy as a backup.
At the revision deadline mentioned above, your proposal will be locked and considered in final form. The Judges will undergo another round of evaluation to ensure that Semi-Finalist proposals have addressed the feedback given, and select which proposals will continue to the Finalists round.
Finalists will be eligible for the contest’s Judges Choice award, as well as for public voting to select the contest’s Popular Choice award. The Winners will be recognized and widely publicized by the Climate CoLab. Global climate action plans include ideas from all the people who contributed to the sub-proposals, not just those who created the integrated proposal itself. To recognize all these contributions, a winning integrated proposal receives CoLab Points that are distributed among all these people. The top point-getters will receive shares of a cash prize of $10,000. For more details on CoLab Points, please visit: http://climatecolab.org/resources/-/wiki/Main/Climate+CoLab+Points
Thank you for your great work and good luck!
All the best,
2015 Climate CoLab Judges
Judges' Comments:
1)It still remains unclear that the nuclear is less expensive than production, storage, and long-distance transmission of solar and wind. As a result I state the benefits/impact is not entirely clear because I am not convinced that the economics will work in favor of wide expansion of nuclear (and also would have to have a lot of movement on regulations/social acceptance as you note - could elaborate on how this will be addressed more).
It also is unclear how you will bypass social opposition esp. for the Terrestrial Energy and others that don't eliminate waste.
The first commercial reactors should be available within a decade - given this, would be helpful to explain how this will be scaled up so quickly. And what would have happened to solar, wind and natural gas in the meantime (which presumably would have benefited from the strong carbon price). To this effect you write, "Cost advantages would be irrelevant if we weren't actually able to deploy advanced nuclear at a rapid rate. The EnROADS model seems to assume that's the case, since even radical cost reductions of nuclear have little effect."
How does the $1 billion for each reactor get funded? Seems like very high upfront costs, not to mention the regulatory hurdles and social acceptance challenges you acknowledge.
Would be helpful to talk about how you will secure the strong carbon price too.
2. This proposal presents a unique combination of a technology push through regulatory mechnisms. However its premise of agreement on a universal carbon price in the Paris talks is doubtful. Further the likely social acceptability of the nuclear option further (esp after the Fukushima disaster) raises questions. The role of nuclear in climate mitigation, has arisen time and again, and the proposed idea could be a plausible scenario if a few powerful "nuclear" countries support it.
Fellows comments:
You may wish to revise your text for added clarity and focus, and such that your dual goals of global carbon pricing and expanding nuclear as a climate strategy are clear from the onset. Moreover, you will want to clearly lay out the mitigation potential of these approaches, and practical steps toward their adoption and implementation.
You will want to continue selecting varied regional proposals that support and help develop your premise globally. A major intent of this contest is to use these sub-proposals as building blocks for a larger whole; please continue to revise this section on integration of the sub-proposals.
Finally, you will want to address the questions of political feasibility of your proposal, namely, that a global price on carbon in the immediate near-term (e.g., by COP21 as you reference) is unlikely, and address steps that might be taken in the coming months toward that end.
 Dennis Peterson Nov 4, 2015 03:24  | Proposal creator I made a number of changes to the proposal in response to these comments. The biggest change, reflected in the proposal name, is a new emphasis on solar PV expansion over the next fifteen years. This is synergistic with nuclear in several ways, detailed in the proposal. The introduction is rearranged and expanded accordingly, along with the beginning of the "fit together" section. I added information on the high cost of a near-exclusive solar/wind/storage system, in the introduction and references sections. I changed the model to EnROADS, with corresponding changes to the impact section. Regarding waste, the "Global Fuel Cycle Eliminates Waste" subsection emphasizes that the overall ecosystem can eliminate all long-term waste, even if some reactors do produce it. This gives us flexibility to emphasize either nonproliferation or waste consumption, depending on country. (However if Transatomic is successful, we'll have a single design that accomplishes both.) Regarding social acceptance, I added material in the "challenges" section, including a post-Fukushima Gallop poll and material on the massive nuclear expansion in China. The "other plans" section is almost entirely new, with material on the advantages of carbon price negotiations rather than caps, including the relative ease of finding agreement on a price. The proposal does not depend on a uniform price agreement at Paris, though of course that would be nice. In the timeline I suggest approximately 2018 as an agreement date. In "other plans" there's also a link to a plan on nuclear regulatory reform. I also added two plans that reduce emissions from the transportation sector; these aren't a core part of this proposal, but are good fits to the abundant carbon-free energy available in our solar/nuclear economy. The "cost" section has additional information on finding initial R&D money, and some justification for the favorable economics of molten salt reactors. More detailed nuclear cost information is in the references section. |
