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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

#61

Post by winter_blue »

chmod775 wrote: post #15

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 l…

The solution to nuclear waste is to use breeder reactors extensively. Breeder reactors both (1) substantially reduce the radioactivity of nuclear waste, and (2) allow you to get up to 100 times the energy out of the same quantity of initial nuclear fuel.

A lot of the final breeder reactor products are non-transuranic general nuclear fission products (like iodine, caesium, strontium, xenon and barium, etc); and if a radioactive isotope, often with much shorter half-lives. Some of these are even useful in industry.

There are new kinds of reactors, like the Traveling Wave Reactor (TVR) which efficiently use fuel like breeder reactors as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor

There were challenges in the past with breeder reactor design (for example as this article outlines: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jul/30/fast-bre...), but this is an area that there should be a lot more active research in. The long-term benefits of doing so would be immense.

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

#62

Post by oblio »

natch wrote: post #9
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.

It’s far more centralized and prone to overly bloated government contracts, big industry, corruption, accounting shenanigans, excessive taxation to pay for the mistakes, and loss of individual freedom and control over where your energy dollars go to. Especially as compared to solar but it’s even bad compared to fossil fuels in these respects.

After solar and wind take off completely, the reality is that for 99% of people out there, they will be as centralized as nuclear is. Both because of industry consolidation and because of practical realities.

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

#63

Post by sunkenvicar »

Nuclear fission produces spent fuel. All the spent fuel a plant produces in it’s lifetime fits in the parking lot.

But the fuel is not really spent. It contains vast amounts of energy that can be extracted at a reprocessing plant.

People who want to landfill spent fuel lack credibility. Perhaps they own shares in a uranium mining company?

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

#64

Post by oblio »

tpmx wrote: post #59
oblio wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cleanup costs of ONE uranium mine alone could buy Germany enough solar to replace 3 nuclear reactors. Germany needs nuclear for base load. The current alternatives for base load are natural gas (meh, but maybe not horrible) and coal (horribly dirty, and Germany transitioned from nuclear to coal [!!!], making their energy mix dirtier than the French one, as France still uses a ton of nuclear power plants). Solar…

I was writing a comment on how hard/impossible it is to get politicians to understand the fundamentals of what makes an electric grid work - then I saw the other comments here and despaired. It's like all the people who didn't understand grade 7-9 physics conspired to make us all miserable.

Is it grade 7-9 physics, though? I learned about power grid structure (base load, etc.) and such at the university.

To the down voters: just because you learn about electricity in secondary school, it doesn't mean that the second or third level effects are obvious and that you immediately understand what their impact on a power grid is. But hey, maybe some people were super interested in power grids or just super gifted ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#65

Post by cbmuser »

pydry wrote: post #38
tpmx wrote: post #5

Germany's populistic policy decisions following Fukushima set us back so much.

Fukushima cleanup costs will be between $470 and $660 billion. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radi... US nuclear power gets a liability cap of $0.2 billion. The nuclear industry will keep telling us it is safe but it will refuse to shoulder the insurance costs beyond a minimal level. That's the taxpayer's job and the taxpayer's job alone. And, EVEN INCLUDING that, nuclear is about 3x more exp…

> Fukushima cleanup costs will be between $470 and $660 billion.

Germany's nuclear phase out costs the country $12 billion per year plus 1100 additional deaths due to air pollution:

> https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP304.pdf

> And, EVEN INCLUDING that, nuclear is about 3x more expensive than solar and wind.

Except you are comparing levelized costs of electrity with the total system costs. Wind and solar need backup and/or storage, nuclear doesn't.

> Nuclear is only competitive with lavish subsidies beyond those it already has.

Nuclear was *never* subsidized in Germany:

> http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/14/080/1408084.pdf (p. 16, answer 27)

> It's about nuclear arsenal maintenance at this point, with decarbonization as an excuse.

It's not. Please compare which countries have nuclear weapons and which have nuclear power. North Korea has nuclear weapons, they don't have nuclear power. South Korea is the opposite.

Anyone who claims that nuclear power is a step towards nuclear weapons has no clue about the history of nuclear technology and has no clue how Uranium and Plutonium for nuclear bombs is made.

Hint: It's not made with BWRs or PWRs, that would be way too inefficient and expensive.

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

#66

Post by hanniabu »

pydry wrote: post #38
tpmx wrote: post #5

Germany's populistic policy decisions following Fukushima set us back so much.

Fukushima cleanup costs will be between $470 and $660 billion. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radi... US nuclear power gets a liability cap of $0.2 billion. The nuclear industry will keep telling us it is safe but it will refuse to shoulder the insurance costs beyond a minimal level. That's the taxpayer's job and the taxpayer's job alone. And, EVEN INCLUDING that, nuclear is about 3x more exp…

Yup, and everyone says nuclear is safe but that's only technologically speaking. The technology is safe, but it's the human and regulatory aspect that has glaring red flags...

This first link here makes me absolutely furious. There's too much to quote from here, but this succinct excerpt touches on loosening safety tests. It goes into more detail in other parts of the article. The post has numerous example of very concerning issues.

> When valves leaked, more leakage was allowed — up to 20 times the original limit. When rampant cracking caused radioactive leaks from steam generator tubing, an easier test of the tubes was devised, so plants could meet standards.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna43455859

> The proposal comes as most of the nation’s nuclear power plants, which were designed and built in the 1960s or 1970s, are reaching the end of their original 40- to 50-year operating licenses. Many plant operators have sought licenses to extend the operating life of their plants past the original deadlines, even as experts have warned that aging plants come with heightened concerns about safety.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/climate/nrc-nuclear-inspe...

> The nuclear industry is also pushing the NRC to cut down on safety inspections and rely instead on plants to police themselves. The NRC “is listening” to this advice, the Associated Press reported last month. “Annie Caputo, a former nuclear-energy lobbyist now serving as one of four board members appointed or reappointed by President Donald Trump, told an industry meeting this week that she was ‘open to self-assessments’ by nuclear plant operators, who are proposing that self-reporting by operators take the place of some NRC inspections.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/153465/its-not-just-pork-tru...

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

#67

Post by dmos62 »

chmod775 wrote: post #15

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 l…

> some of which already had issues with flooding

Is flooding a problem for nuclear waste? It's hard to imagine it being stored in a way that it could contaminate water.

Either way, that's a minute detail. A straw man, if you will. Even with the occassional accidents, whether it's kaboom or something more benign, nuclear energy is cleaner than fossil.

Plus, that used fuel will likely be reused in the future. I think having to store a lot of nuclear fuel is a much better problem than having to extract carbon out of the atmosphere, or building difficult to recycle chemical batteries out of scarce resources.

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

#68

Post by cbmuser »

Hani1337 wrote: post #39
lrem wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have all that many tsunamis in Germany...

No but we have a lot of terrorists

Modern nuclear power plants such as the German Konvoi or modern Russian VVER survive plane crashes. Some German plants even have military defense systems on site.

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

#69

Post by rando57 »

I hope that in the future we will seriously consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

Compared to current methods of producing nuclear energy, thorium:

- produces significantly more energy per ton

- produces significantly less waste

- the waste is significantly less dangerous (cools down in x00 years, instead of x0000 years)

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

#70

Post by tpmx »

oblio wrote: post #64
tpmx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was writing a comment on how hard/impossible it is to get politicians to understand the fundamentals of what makes an electric grid work - then I saw the other comments here and despaired. It's like all the people who didn't understand grade 7-9 physics conspired to make us all miserable.

Is it grade 7-9 physics, though? I learned about power grid structure (base load, etc.) and such at the university. To the down voters: just because you learn about electricity in secondary school, it doesn't mean that the second or third level effects are obvious and that you immediately understand what their impact on a power grid is. But hey, maybe some people were super interested in power grids or just super gif…

You're not wrong, but I honestly think most don't really even understand the difference between power and energy. If you don't understand that, trying to explain base load is an uphill battle.
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