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EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

reuters.com

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Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#11

Post by tarboreus »

dstick wrote: post #3
seanhandley wrote: post #2

This is a good move. Nuclear power is poorly understood and easily stigmatised but on balance is far less harmful than burning fossil fuels.

After having read Gates’ latest book on climate change, one metaphor that stuck with me was the one on nuclear energy. It’s as if the Wright brothers invented the first airplane, flew off, crashed, lost every passenger, and then we collectively dropped the entire technology and every promise it held. Never to be visited again. Humans are weird. (and I know the accidents were worse, but we iterated on car and plane sa…

I think it really comes down to the A-bomb and how large it loomed in the left politics of the mid-twentieth century. Unfortunately, I think well-meaning greens have majorly contributed to climate change by opposing nuclear. The mistake is understandable, but we need to be reversing it as fast as possible.

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#12

Post by chpatrick »

dstick wrote: post #3
seanhandley wrote: post #2

This is a good move. Nuclear power is poorly understood and easily stigmatised but on balance is far less harmful than burning fossil fuels.

After having read Gates’ latest book on climate change, one metaphor that stuck with me was the one on nuclear energy. It’s as if the Wright brothers invented the first airplane, flew off, crashed, lost every passenger, and then we collectively dropped the entire technology and every promise it held. Never to be visited again. Humans are weird. (and I know the accidents were worse, but we iterated on car and plane sa…

As far as I know there are also economic problems with nuclear. Nuclear power plants are enormous investments, then take decades to build and eventually decomission. If renewable energy gets efficient enough, nuclear is not worth the effort.

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#13

Post by natch »

dstick wrote: post #3
seanhandley wrote: post #2

This is a good move. Nuclear power is poorly understood and easily stigmatised but on balance is far less harmful than burning fossil fuels.

After having read Gates’ latest book on climate change, one metaphor that stuck with me was the one on nuclear energy. It’s as if the Wright brothers invented the first airplane, flew off, crashed, lost every passenger, and then we collectively dropped the entire technology and every promise it held. Never to be visited again. Humans are weird. (and I know the accidents were worse, but we iterated on car and plane sa…

I don’t know, cost differences that exemplify the concept of “orders of magnitude” could be one reason.

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#14

Post by pydry »

chpatrick wrote: post #12
dstick wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After having read Gates’ latest book on climate change, one metaphor that stuck with me was the one on nuclear energy. It’s as if the Wright brothers invented the first airplane, flew off, crashed, lost every passenger, and then we collectively dropped the entire technology and every promise it held. Never to be visited again. Humans are weird. (and I know the accidents were worse, but we iterated on car and plane sa…

As far as I know there are also economic problems with nuclear. Nuclear power plants are enormous investments, then take decades to build and eventually decomission. If renewable energy gets efficient enough, nuclear is not worth the effort.

This is the real issue. It's 3x as expensive as other renewables. Every dollar of subsidy producing 1 MWh of nuclear could provide 3 MWh of solar or wind.

Added to which, being a baseload power source is not nearly as useful as being dispatchable (like hydro and natural gas are), and it's insanely capital intensive (which leads to cost overruns - see hinkley point c, corruption & fat profit margins).

It's got real lobbying muscle though, especially from defense and military.

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#15

Post by chmod775 »

There's a lot of straw men being fought in the comments again.

The main issue with nuclear power in Europe has always been the storage of nuclear waste, for which many countries still don't have a long-term solution.

Proponents of nuclear power like to pretend the opposition exists merely on the basis of "but what if it goes boom!", so they don't need to face the reality that countries like Germany are sitting on a lot of nuclear waste right now that is just "temporarily" stashed away in various places - some of which already had issues with flooding, like Asse II.

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#16

Post by kcmastrpc »

pitaj wrote: post #10
didibus wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, but the challenge, and I say that as a supporter of Nuclear in general, is that you don't sign up for the experiment. If you're in the radius of the plant if it were to fail, you might be wary of it.

People don't sign up for pollution from fossil fuels either.

Yes, they do. If you drive a car, heat your home via gas/electricity, use the internet (to post this) -- you signed up for it.

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#17

Post by pitaj »

chpatrick wrote: post #12
dstick wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After having read Gates’ latest book on climate change, one metaphor that stuck with me was the one on nuclear energy. It’s as if the Wright brothers invented the first airplane, flew off, crashed, lost every passenger, and then we collectively dropped the entire technology and every promise it held. Never to be visited again. Humans are weird. (and I know the accidents were worse, but we iterated on car and plane sa…

As far as I know there are also economic problems with nuclear. Nuclear power plants are enormous investments, then take decades to build and eventually decomission. If renewable energy gets efficient enough, nuclear is not worth the effort.

The economic problems are tied directly to policy problems, like the broken regulatory structure. For instance, as I understand it, a nuclear plant that began construction 10 years ago and is ready to go online by the standards when it began construction has to comply with all regulations created since. This makes creating new plants very expensive.

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#18

Post by hekker »

seanhandley wrote: post #2

This is a good move. Nuclear power is poorly understood and easily stigmatised but on balance is far less harmful than burning fossil fuels.

Curious, I am pro nuclear as well, looking at the technological benefits, but how are we practically going to handle nuclear waste that will be there for thousands of future generations to handle?

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#19

Post by pitaj »

kcmastrpc wrote: post #16
pitaj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't sign up for pollution from fossil fuels either.

Yes, they do. If you drive a car, heat your home via gas/electricity, use the internet (to post this) -- you signed up for it.

Okay then by the same logic people do sign up for nuclear by using the electricity for their homes, the internet, etc

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#20

Post by Haemm0r »

dijit wrote: post #6
dstick wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After having read Gates’ latest book on climate change, one metaphor that stuck with me was the one on nuclear energy. It’s as if the Wright brothers invented the first airplane, flew off, crashed, lost every passenger, and then we collectively dropped the entire technology and every promise it held. Never to be visited again. Humans are weird. (and I know the accidents were worse, but we iterated on car and plane sa…

It's worse than that. It's like they succeeded and then many decades later flight MH17 happened and the world collectively lost its mind and declared air travel as inherently unsafe and condemned all research into it as dangerous. The issue though, is that energy production is mostly quiet unless there's a problem, but people do see personal benefit in air travel. Add to that: Coal is a silent killer, it's not obviou…

The comparison of a happening with basically no longterm consequences to future generations like MH17 to nuclear fallout / necessary waste treatment is quite lame imho.

Nuclear energy without subsidies is not sustainable at all. Just do the math if you need decades to dismantle and decontaminate an old nuclear power plant alone.

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