The Private and External Costs of Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out

NBER Dec 2019. The Private and External Costs of Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out by Stephen Jarvis, Olivier Deschenes, Akshaya Jha.

“Many countries have phased out nuclear electricity production in response to concerns about nuclear waste and the risk of nuclear accidents. This paper examines the impact of the shutdown of roughly half of the nuclear production capacity in Germany after the Fukushima accident in 2011. We use hourly data on power plant operations and a novel machine learning framework to estimate how plants would have operated differently if the phase-out had not occurred. We find that the lost nuclear electricity production due to the phase-out was replaced primarily by coal-fired production and net electricity imports. The social cost of this shift from nuclear to coal is approximately 12 billion dollars per year. Over 70% of this cost comes from the increased mortality risk associated with exposure to the local air pollution emitted when burning fossil fuels. Even the largest estimates of the reduction in the costs associated with nuclear accident risk and waste disposal due to the phase-out are far smaller than 12 billion dollars.”

Paper Here.

Jobs, Stories of energy transition

They Grew Up Around Fossil Fuels.
Now, Their Jobs Are in Renewables. / NY times 

“Chris Riley comes from a coal town and a coal family, but he founded a company that could hasten coal’s decline. Lee Van Horn, whose father worked underground in the mines, spends some days more than 300 feet in the air atop a wind turbine. They, and the other people in this story, represent a shift, not just in power generation but in generations of workers as well.

They come from places where fossil fuels like coal provided lifelong employment for their parents, grandparents and neighbors. They found a different path, but not necessarily out of a deep environmental commitment. In America today there is more employment in wind and solar power than in mining and burning coal. And a job’s a job....”

 

Me: fascinating accounts of how the economics of wind and solar and the direction of energy markets is convincing a new generation to work in wind and solar over coal and oil  

link here: 

 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/26/climate/wind-solar-energy-workers.html