I wanted to bring a post by economist John Cochrane which in turn elaborates on one by Tyler Cowen to your attention. The post is about the effects of regulation on economic growth (it decreases it). He concludes:
If all this adds up, though, it asks the question just why “policy-making” technocratic elite, who have been so wrong about so much for so long remain able to impose such things on the rest of us. Why are they so immune from competition?
Are we running out of ideas or just constrained by bad regulation to do anything with good ideas? Case not yet closed, I think. Quantifying the damage of regulation is awfully hard.
to which I’d like to add a few thoughts. First, let me hasten to mention that I am not opposed to regulation. As I have pointed out before a pure market economy only promises to optimize production. It does not promise that the distribution of incomes or assets or goods will be egalitarian or even tolerable. Doing some things, like regulating entry into the banking business or providing health care services, are prudent but they do reduce economic growth and introduce distortions into the economy. Regulation is not a “one and done” phenomenon. Regulations must be adjusted over time as they are proven ineffectual or rendered obsolete.
But for regulators regulation is a self-licking lollipop. More is always better. Metrics are rarely applied to determine whether a regulation is merited. Regulations develop constituencies of their own.
When even Canada is subjecting new regulations to cost-benefit analysis, we are clearly doing something wrong.
In conclusion I should point out that when our economy is growing rapidly we can afford more regulations but when economic growth is already depressed due to their distortionary effects further regulations are a drag on the economy we might not be able to afford.
We have supposedly been deregulating since Trump came into office and we haven’t seen any effect from it. Regulations are much more complicated than just being bad and removing them doesnt always make things better. His example of nuclear energy ignores several issues. The cost of a Chernobyl is very high. We have trouble figuring out how to dispose of waste now, so why it would get easier if we had 30 times more nuclear power? Cost effectiveness analysis? Sounds good.
Steve
Chernobyl did not happen in this country. The Soviets were sloppy and it happened a long time ago.
If you want carbon neutral, clean energy, as I assume you do, nuclear is your dream. trust the science.
I wouldn’t argue that regulations are bad but that they aren’t always good or effective. Metrics need to be maintained and used. Why retain regulations that aren’t working?
The answer to that question is that somebody, somewhere is making a buck from them. That’s why we need more thoughtful regulation.
Thorium reactors don’t have either the security or the waste problems that the reactors we have built historically do. The reason we didn’t build them is they’re no use in building weapons. Win-win-win.
“What are the downsides of Thorium?
We don’t have as much experience with Th. The nuclear industry is quite conservative, and the biggest problem with Thorium is that we are lacking in operational experience with it. When money is at stake, it’s difficult to get people to change from the norm.
Thorium fuel is a bit harder to prepare. Thorium dioxide melts at 550 degrees higher temperatures than traditional Uranium dioxide, so very high temperatures are required to produce high-quality solid fuel. Additionally, Th is quite inert, making it difficult to chemically process. This is irrelevant for fluid-fueled reactors discussed below.
Irradiated Thorium is more dangerously radioactive in the short term. The Th-U cycle invariably produces some U-232, which decays to Tl-208, which has a 2.6 MeV gamma ray decay mode. Bi-212 also causes problems. These gamma rays are very hard to shield, requiring more expensive spent fuel handling and/or reprocessing.
Thorium doesn’t work as well as U-Pu in a fast reactor. While U-233 an excellent fuel in the thermal spectrum, it is between U-235 and Pu-239 in the fast spectrum. So for reactors that require excellent neutron economy (such as breed-and-burn concepts), Thorium is not ideal.”
I view regulation a lot like I view public spending – value is more important than the amount. And, as is the case with public spending, I think people spend far too much time focusing on the aggregate, usually deceptively.
My experience in the military and federal civil service led me to believe there are far too many regulations that provide little value but come with substantial compliance costs in terms of time and/or money. Many regulations conflict with each other. Many others are not properly prioritized or even prioritized at all.
In my civil service job, which was ostensibly about training and supporting analysts, I’d say at least 1/4 of my time was spent on various forms of compliance and another 1/4 on additional duties which were arguably compliance as well since they were required functions but lacked sufficient dedicated personnel to perform them.
“Thorium is not ideal”
So we’re back to windmills,,,,,, sigh.
I would say that thorium has the potential to be superior to our current reactors, but people often talk about them as though they have no problems when they actually do have their own issues, including waste. Just the fact that it won’t make plutonium is a big plus.
In my time in the military I thought we had too many regulations, especially stupid ones. Now I am dealing with a lot of new regs on handling drugs because of the opioid crisis that are stupid and dangerous. They are affecting how we handle drugs besides narcotics and even IV fluids. It is now essentially illegal to prepare ahead of time for trauma cases or major emergencies. The people making these regs are not practicing clinicians and they seem to think that stuff just happens by magic. So we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to work around the regs or how we can cheat without getting caught.
That said, a number of the regs passed over the last 10 years have saved lives and lots of money. I think some of this is that we just don’t notice rules and regs so much when they positive effects and make sense.
Steve