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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

#211

Post by pizzapill »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #181
pizzapill wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about time frames that are many times longer than the existence of modern humans as a species. We have absolute zero clue what most humans did 200k years ago, we have only little knowledge what humans did 4000 years ago. How can you expect us to communicate with a world in eight hundred thousand years, or 1.6 million years? We don't even manage to get any of the nuclear waste out of our oceans we put t…

> We are talking about time frames that are many times longer than the existence of modern humans as a species. No, we absolutely are not. "Long half-life" = "less radioactive". By definition. Do you know what the half life of CO2 is? Infinity.

The half life of Plutonium is ~24k years. That's way beyond a time frame we have any grip on. Then its still very, very dangerous. Uranium (nuclear fuel) has a half life of 200k - 4.4 million years. Then its half as dangerous.

CO2 has a half life of ~ 10 years in our atmosphere btw.

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

#212

Post by hu3 »

godelski wrote: post #173
sushisource wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Until then we can figure out a solution. Something that seems crazy now will be trivial by then. For example an electromagnetic cannon to shoot waste into outer space [1].

[1] I just Googled and of course there's a Wikipedia page for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver#On_Earth

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

#213

Post by nickik »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #163
rando57 wrote: post #69

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)

Nuclear engineer here. I've spent lots of time fighting against persistent myths about thorium. All the things you mention are characteristics of breeder reactors , not just thorium breeders. Uranium-based breeder reactors can do these things as well. Thorium has only one actual physical advantage, and that is that it can do breeding with slow neutrons rather than fast ones. This is a technicality and has lots of com…

Yes, this. I am a huge fan of thorium breeders and there are few other minor advantages but people have gone of the deep end.

If you are not doing a breeder, uranium is just fine.

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

#214

Post by dtech »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #144
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-.…

Saying Nuclear waste is not a problem is like saying taking a shit in your neighbors yard is not a problem. Shit can be packed into plastic bags, composted, and eventually stops smelling. Some of us believe that if we can't generate power without creating waste for future generations, we should go without the power. Seriously, we don't need it.

There is almost no way to generate energy without waste for future generations, CO2 for fossil fuels, nuclear waste, electronic and heavy-metal waste for solar and batteries.

Saying we should only use methods that don't provide waste is saying we should reduce energy consumption to 1-5% of current global and ditch all cars, ships and airplanes. Even if you are 100% morally right you're never going to convince humanity of that.

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

#215

Post by athrowaway3z »

I've been thinking about nuclear this last week and i have some assumptions that i would appreciate if somebody more knowledgeable can quickly filter:

We want more energy per person in the future.

Stable energy is required to make industry sustainable.

Stable 'free' energy allows you to do really cool new things (like melt trash for resources?)

Waste & environmental impact is negligible compared to fossil fuels.

A nation needs to agree to the risk/reward of a nuclear power plant, it must be owned and payed for primarily by the government.

Having a country/state that offers free energy will pay itself back easily. Cost should not be an issue, 20 % of GDP should be on the table. ( Money is made up, Jules are real ).

Solar and wind are mostly done innovating. Nuclear has a relatively clear path of improvements ahead in terms of $/joule.

Storage based on hydrogen or thermal are too inefficient and don't scale well enough to power homes and industries during the winter.

Any comments are welcome.

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

#216

Post by rhodozelia »

oblio wrote: post #43
lokimedes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s actually pretty easy to build a nuclear reactor, but is as expensive to make it safe today as it is to maintain a Windows NT 4.0 server in 2021 when it comes to making it regulatory compliant. Also when comparing nuclear to “renewable” energy, you are really comparing distributed low density investments with monolithic ones. Nuclear is 1e6 the energy density of chemical reactions. And wind/solar is basically hea…

> What really boggles my physicist brain is how we expect a bunch of volatile solar and wind stitched together with fragile infrastructure and lithium piles to ever become a stable base load alternative. I put my hope on the Engineers knowing better than me :) I don't work in this field, but I'd have a bunch of basic assumption you could dismantle: 1. We need a solid power grid, anyway, you know, for transporting ele…

Imagine how overbuilt and under utilized a communications network would have to be in order for it to work the same way people imagine solar and wind power can be transported across the country.

Networks offer the best return on investment when they are fully utilized not sitting idle.

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

#217

Post by IshKebab »

tpmx wrote: post #150
pydry wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... Wind $26-$54 Nuclear $129-$198

Wind power is cheap when it's windy. When it's still the cost is $+inf. The grid still needs to maintain it's AC frequency. Wind power producers should be required to buy some kind of base load generation credits.

It's always windy somewhere. You just need to expand the electrical grid.

We are still far from the point where we have enough wind that any of it goes unused.

Also what is the cost of storing that energy? It's so much cheaper to generate it might still come out cheaper.

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

#218

Post by gehsty »

natch wrote: post #7

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

If you are going to use cement to build anything, a nuclear power station is probably the best use for it.

I don’t think anyone is ignoring the problem, having huge amounts of zero carbon power is the starting point for lots of things that will let us solve a lot of the harder problems like cement, or jet fuel etc.

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

#219

Post by Slikey »

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.

Given that mountains are a result of geological activity, this is for sure the worst place to store it. You'll have a better chance digging out a big hole in the desert - which the EU doesn't have.

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

#220

Post by option »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #206
option wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, nuclear waste is like taking a 10x smaller than the grain of rise shit in your neighbor’s yard.

Sure, but even a grain of sand that I can't build on or walk over is still going to be annoying. It's still just rude no matter how small you think the problem is.

we are in a climate crisis and wind/solar alone are just not going to cut it.

And nuclear is the safest power source (measured in deaths/twh) which humans have been using for decades.

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