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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

#131

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…

Agreed. I edited my sibling comment. I totally agree that electric grids and base loads are pretty complicated things. It's just that the base knowledge level is infuriatingly low.

I quite often see journalists writing about energy politics confusing power and energy.

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

#132

Post by oblio »

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.

> demand adapts to more variable supply and dynamic pricing

You want demand to adapt? I'm supposed to turn the lights out when the wind's not blowing, or what?

Demand shouldn't adapt, supply should adapt. Connect more and bigger power grids, add energy storage to the grid in large enough quantities.

Your "solution" is like telling people to give up cars. They won't.

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

#133

Post by pydry »

doikor wrote: post #74
Haemm0r wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Nuclear energy without subsidies is not sustainable at all And yet we seem to be doing just that here in Finland. The for profit companies operating and building the plants have been trying to get permits to build more (and very likely are going to get another one soon). Even with the "failure" of Olkiluoto 3 they seem to find a way to do it in a profitable enough way that they (2 companies TVO and Fennovoima) want…

This reactor?

>This month, the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant in Finland was supposed to start producing power. Instead, the plant is at least three and a half years late and more than 50 percent over-budget. Olkiluoto was to be the “poster child” for the new generation of nuclear power plant designs that would drive the “Nuclear Renaissance” and if any nuclear project was going to go well. Instead, it has become an example of all that can go wrong in economic terms with new reactors. The vendor (Areva NP) and the utility are in bitter dispute over who will bear the cost overruns and there is a real risk now that the utility will default.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130728115821/http://www.psr.or...

There does seem to be another reactor being built in Finland, but it's being built by Russia.

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

#135

Post by logifail »

cbmuser wrote: post #84
j-pb wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is not finding a place that's geologically stable now. But finding one that's geologically stable in 850.000 years. And to find a place where no post worldwar 5 civilization accidentally diggs is up. And to have a tracking chain where no fuel gets into the wrong hands. Do you know how germany decided on the position of its long term nuclest storage facilities? East germany choose the salt mine closest to th…

> The issue is not finding a place that's geologically stable now. But finding one that's geologically stable in 850.000 years. Something that takes several hundred thousand years for decay isn't actually dangerous. Short half-life: High radioactivity. Long half-life: Low radioactivity. Furthermore, spent nuclear fuel can be recycled up to 95%: > https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... > https…

> Renewables have actually caused multiple deaths [...]

Question: in which sectors do we currently optimise for minimum deaths (above anything else)?

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

#136

Post by kieranmaine »

natch wrote: post #7

Let’s just ignore the carbon released by cement production.

This problem is being worked on. I recently listened to this podcast which outlines two approaches to low carbon concrete - https://www.npr.org/transcripts/923966126

Take away points:

* The first approach is to use a different mix that can nearly half the temperature required to produce the concrete. This can reduce the CO2 emissions to produce the concrete by up to 40%

* The second approach uses pure CO2 to cure the concrete which locks away more CO2 in the concrete

* The concrete produced by these approaches need to be fully tested before the methods can be rolled out and costs reduced

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

#137

Post by Gwypaas »

oblio wrote: post #121
Gwypaas wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either way, in almost every online discussion I see the term base load is used in the wrong context. Base load exists on the consumer side, as the minimum power the grid needs to operate during a cycle of X hours/days/weeks/years/whatever. It used to exist on the producer side since the cheapest power plants were also inflexible regarding ramping their power up and down coupled with high fixed costs and low marginal…

Base load exists on the consumer side and unless energy storage ramps up 1000-10000x across the world, I don't see how solar and wind could ever cover it until then. Human power usage patterns don't change that much because we don't change much. You need to be able to provide X energy at all times, no ifs and buts. Actually, there is one thing, we need super capable and reliable super long distance power grid connect…

With HVDC and UHVDC lines there are progress on the transmission front. The main question though is the economical race between geographically decoupling your renewable power supply versus storage, this is something we will see play out in the next 10-15 years.

China recently finished a 3300 km UHVDC line from Xinjiang to the east coast with an expected loss of 1.5% per 1000 km.

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

#138

Post by anoncake »

pydry wrote: post #97
cbmuser wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wea…

> 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.

This. Nuclear power doesn't give you nuclear bombs, but it does give you the ability to start building them within months.

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

#139

Post by orangecat »

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…

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

I'm very suspicious of these claims. First, there's stuff like this: https://energycentral.com/c/ec/germany-solar-and-wind-triple.... Second, the position of most nuclear opponents is not "solar and wind can provide clean energy for everyone at a fraction of the cost", but rather "everyone needs to radically cut back on energy use and alter their lifestyles". I get the same sense as I do from religious conservatives who oppose STD vaccines because they allow people to continue their sinful ways.

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

#140

Post by drran »

freeone3000 wrote: post #50
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…

Find a mountain and shove it in there. Doesn't have to be that hard.

Yeah, we can send all our nuclear waste to Afghanistan. They will find a place to store it.
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