EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by fulafel » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #36

j-pb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima is what caused the setback, because it proved that, again, "risk of a fault is neglegible" turns out to be not neglegible enough. I don't care if nuclear can be made safe on paper, as long as it's build by humans it's going to be messed up somehow. I once took a school trip to a nuclear power station in northern germany, turns out they had a direct link to their local coal plant to manage demand. That link…

> 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…

Base load is just a made up convention though closely related to traditional fixed rate prices, and may become increasingly fictional in the future as demand adapts to more variable supply and dynamic pricing.

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

#92

Post by jcelerier » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

well, a lot of people simply refuse to air travel because of perceived safety issues

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

#93

Post by cbmuser » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:02 PM UTC

random_kris wrote: post #82

cbmuser wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Nuclear waste isn't a problem. It's actually the best type of waste that exists. It's extremely dense, is solid and any leakage can easily detected. And the best part of it, 95% of it can be recycled: > https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-.…

Yeah but i can imagine as we scale the hall like that will soon be able to contain only 10 years worth of material. Then 1 year etc...

That single hall is for the _whole_ country for _decades_.

Nuclear is the _only_ technology where the fuel and the waste for decades can be stored on-site. It's just extremely dense.

The Russians have a single hall for all their waste plus the waste of other countries such as Bulgaria or Ukraine:

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uN0bZBOic&t=105s

The US even had a nuclear power plant with full fuel reprocessing on site:

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp1Xja6HlIU

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

#94

Post by hedora » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:02 PM UTC

fermienrico wrote: post #54

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…

Ridiculous Arm-chair Concept: - What if we make a 1 meter wall thick lead / steel container and seal the waste in and leave it? Surely nothing can break it, not even an earthquake. Just make a giant tennis court sized containers and dump stuff in there. We know how to build bridges, surely we can build large containers. Just want to learn, I am sure this is proposed and would love to know why its a stupid idea.

What if we made a giant four sided pyramid out of stone, and used the inner 1% of its volume to store your box? We could put it in the middle of the desert, and hope it gets covered in sand.

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

#95

Post by tpmx » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:03 PM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #91

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…

Base load is just a made up convention though closely related to traditional fixed rate prices, and may become increasingly fictional in the future as demand adapts to more variable supply and dynamic pricing.

> Base load is just a made up convention.

Seriously.

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

#96

Post by jhgb » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:03 PM UTC

pitaj wrote: post #17

chpatrick wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> like the broken regulatory structure

Doubt it. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/mit-study-lays-...

> It turns out that the main reason for spiraling nuclear plant construction bills is soft costs, the indirect expenses related to activities such as engineering design, purchasing, planning, scheduling and — ironically — estimating and cost control.

> These indirect expenses accounted for 72 percent of the increase seen in reactor construction costs between 1976 and 1987, a period in which the amount of money needed for containment buildings rose by almost 118 percent.

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

#97

Post by pydry » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:03 PM UTC

cbmuser wrote: post #65

pydry wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Nuclear was never subsidized in Germany

When nuclear plants were built in Germany you couldn't get green electricity for $33 / MWh.

>It's not. Please compare which countries have nuclear weapons and which have nuclear power.

This is equally true of everywhere else. It's not about who built them 30 years ago. It's about who still wants to build them.

>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.

I didn't say that nuclear plants are being built to create plutonium. I said that they were being kept around because of the skills and tech - it's a more or less cost-neutral way of keeping a ready supply of nuclear engineers and a supporting industry.

In the UK it's partly about nuclear submarines, too (which are PWRs).

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

#98

Post by dathinab » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:03 PM UTC

sushisource wrote: post #22

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…

I just don't really see how this is true. Isn't the basic idea to just dig a really deep hole somewhere geologically stable and dump it in? My impression isn't that the problem isn't solvable, but simply that no one has actually made the appropriate investment yet. That sounds like the same catch-22 as the rest of this. We've thrown up our hands and gone "Not worth it" and then our lack of investment in proper storag…

> geologically stable

Isn't really a think when we thing about the time scale of nuclear wast...

Additionally Politicians mess in seriously bad ways with anything related to nuclear.

Like pushing for nuclear power but if it's found that the objective best place to store the wast underground is around where they live they will try all kind of things to exclude the best suited place from the list of potential candidates.

Or adding a unsuited place close to the border of the neighbor country they don't like "because of reasons".

Or pushing for nuclear power with arguments like it's electricity being very cheap while it's actually the most expensive electricity source in their country and that is even through it's highly subsidized (which the much cheaper alternatives are not).

Etc. Etc.

I would love I people would start to have a purely objective discussion about this.

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

#99

Post by brtkdotse » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #85

brtkdotse wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural gas or biogas? Same gas but the first is fossil while the other is made from fermenting sewage and hence renewable

Either? The problem is that combusting it produces CO₂.

Not quite, it depend where the carbon forming the CO2 comes from. Carbon extracted from sewage is already in the carbon cycle giving a net 0 carbon when burned. Extracting and burning fossile carbon ADDS carbon to the cycle, hence the problem

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

#100

Post by anoncake » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

lrem wrote: post #30

j-pb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima is what caused the setback, because it proved that, again, "risk of a fault is neglegible" turns out to be not neglegible enough. I don't care if nuclear can be made safe on paper, as long as it's build by humans it's going to be messed up somehow. I once took a school trip to a nuclear power station in northern germany, turns out they had a direct link to their local coal plant to manage demand. That link…

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

I'm sure our nuclear plants are safe against all foreseeable dangers. So only unforeseeable dangers are a problem. I can't foresee any, so we're safe?