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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

#171

Post by jsnell »

cinntaile wrote: post #25
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…

It would be interesting to see some examples of EU countries that have solved the long-term storage problem? All I know of are countries that have been researching underground tunnels since the 70s and they're still not in production use.

Finland's long term storage is expected to be operational in a couple of years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

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

#172

Post by dragonwriter »

tsimionescu wrote: post #165
fulafel wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you believe the grid can be said to be working well with occasional dips to 0MWh? Or is some base load in fact an obvious necessity? You may argue that the current value of the base load is artificially high, but there obviously is some fundamental base load given by the kinds of consumers you have.

> So you believe the grid can be said to be working well with occasional dips to 0MWh?

With distributed generation and storage, yes, it's plausible to have periods of 0MW grid demand.

> there obviously is some fundamental base load given by the kinds of consumers you have.

The kinds of consumers you have are not a fixed quantity; particularly their on-site use, generation, and storage patterns all vary over time.

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

#173

Post by godelski »

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…

It also is an issue we have a lot of time to solve. It isn't like humans are going anywhere soon. It also isn't like there's that much waste. Honestly it probably won't happen until there is enough waste that local storage becomes a problem. Which at this rate would take a few hundred more years.

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

#174

Post by why_Mr_Anderson »

j-pb wrote: post #123
cbmuser wrote: post #84

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. 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…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morsleben_radioactive_waste_... Yeah because only fuel is highly radioactive... Texas failed to secure their electrical grid, that has nothing to do with renewables. We got renewables running in far worse weather conditions. Capitalism and greed killed those texans. You're making my case that people can't be trusted with nuclear, even though the tech in and of itself could be safe.

Ok, i'll bite. You know nothing about the operational details of power grid infrastructure in Texas and what lead to the problems encountered.

Here is a good video explaining what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08mwXICY4JM

Just FYI, Grady from Practical Engineering channel who made the video is a civil engineer. I also recommend his entire series about power grid (well, actually all his videos are great). )

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

#175

Post by kergonath »

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

“A lot of terrorists”? In Germany? I’m not saying it is perfect, but you might want to balance a bit your news sources.

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

#176

Post by brtkdotse »

loeg wrote: post #117
enkid wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methane is going to come out of sewage whether we process it or not, and methane itself is a greenhouse gas. It's not going to come out of the ground without help (in the quantities we are using).

Sure, burn that methane. Is there enough of that to many any significant impact on energy needs?

Most busses and taxis in Sweden run on it, so there’s that

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

#177

Post by tpmx »

fulafel wrote: post #169
tpmx wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when it gets really cold and there's little wind, we'll freeze to death? Gotcha.

People who decided to use directly grid electricity for heating but are not willing or able to pay for it during cold spells will find they have a summer house. Consumers can of course have electricity contracts that have fixed monthly prices as a derivative bought from electricity market actors. As the transition doesn't happen overnight, people and the social safety net will have time to cope and adapt. In cold cli…

Well, it's good that you're transparent. People should abandon their homes because of your policy.

Which energy sources that emit less co2/kWh than nuclear power should be used to heat houses in that case?

> (In cold climates people have well insulated houses that are relatively affordable to heat, and mostly use non electricity heating, like thus far)

What are talking about? What kind of non-electricity heating? Let's burn some coal or what?

I'm in Sweden. It gets cold. Houses are well insulated and typically heated via quite efficient electric air-to-air or air-to-water heat pumps. Our electricity has been like 98% co2 neutral since the 70s because of a 50/50 mix of hydro and nuclear as a base load.

Now, ironically, the leftist politicians (including the green party) here are dismantling all of this because they and the journalists don't understand the concept of base power, because they don't understand the difference between power and energy. Their solution is to build lots and lots of wind power plants.

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

#178

Post by acidburnNSA »

natch wrote: post #7

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

Lifecycle emissions of wind, solar, and nuclear are well known to be very low carbon. Lifecycle includes the cement used in their production [1]. When you're job isn't to turn immense flows of carbon + oxygen into CO₂ and energy (like fossil and biofuel do), it's easy to be low carbon.

[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-wind-nuclear-amazingly-low...

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

#179

Post by doikor »

Haemm0r wrote: post #141
doikor wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Where is the money coming from for the mentioned reactor? According to the wikipedia page a lot of French money is involved of a company connected to the French state.. edit: A breeder would for sure be a good way to reduce waste as you said..

For Olkiluoto 3 TVO got the original 3.2 billion from its owners and some loans. And it was a fixed price contract but TVO has given into Areva a bit and is now projecting that it will cost them 5 billion. Areva at the moment projects the total price to be 8.5 billion so they will be taking a loss on it (who is going to pay what part of the overruns was in some courts at one point haven't really followed up if there was some verdict and what it was)

Funnily enough most of these loans are from German banks and various export agencies backed by the French government. Even still all these loans were given at market rates so EU would not kill the project (Greenpeace etc did make a complaint to EU and a investigation was done)

This kind of seller arranging some part of the loans is very normal in large infrastructure projects like these.

The other new project I mentioned is Hanhiviki in which Rosatom won the bidding. Areva and Toshiba also left their bids but as I understand it Areva was thrown out due to their failure to deliver Olkiluoto 3 in time/budget and Toshibas bid was not competetive. Though this Hanhikivi plant is still waiting for permits and there has been some obvious issues with it being built by Rosatom and the Russian sanctions going around. It also has some American and UK interests as Rosatom contracted the turbines to some GE subsidiary and Rolls Royce.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanhikivi_Nuclear_Power_Plant

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

#180

Post by s5300 »

Am I the only person who thinks we're just going to be sending nuclear waste into space/storing it on moons with SpaceX Starships/whatever comes next?

Can somebody tell me why this won't be a viable option? Seems simple enough, and it's not like we've not done worse.

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