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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

#241

Post by corty »

orangecat wrote: post #139
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…

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…

Nuclear costs about the same as wind power and is cheaper than solar, all inclusive. Page 71 of https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5... (pdf is huge).

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

#242

Post by rrss »

dathinab wrote: post #221
rrss wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't really a think when we thing about the time scale of nuclear waste... it is. drill a few miles down into the miles-thick crystalline salt in the permian basin. it will not go anywhere for millions of years.

There is no Permian Basin in Germany ...

There are similar basins in Europe, probably similarly suitable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian_Basin_(Europe)

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

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

#243

Post by f6v »

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…

Let’s just build nuclear(power plants and storage) in places that aren’t flooded.

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

#244

Post by lispm »

vidarh wrote: post #153
chmod775 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the standard response is “but what about a hypothetical future civilization somehow disconnected enough from ours to not know what nuclear waste is who find it and dig it up thinking it’s holy or whatever” It is not. Why is it one straw man after another in this discussion? The response is that countries like Germany have already spent a lot of time looking for a suitable place, and haven't found one. At th…

The problem is that in the meantime the alternatives that are actually being used are killing thousands of people a year right now .

Nuclear is not an alternative. It has a lot of unwanted side effects and it just does not scale to solve the problem. It's extremely costly, comes with costly unsolved problems and is slow to build up.

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

#245

Post by ben_w »

IshKebab wrote: post #202
godelski wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bigger factor to note is that 95% of radiation is contained within 1% of the waste. I think the problem here is that people don't realize how small this number is. Because 11ktons sounds like a lot. But if you compare it to any other waste in the world it is tiny. Perspective is lost. I also don't understand why not having a geological repository is an issue. Many researchers propose just storing it in place after…

Yes it's a lot less waste, but most waste isn't radioactive!!

Ironically, most waste is radioactive. Obviously not as radioactive or we wouldn’t be having this discussion, but turns out almost everything is at least a bit.

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

#246

Post by tpmx »

fulafel wrote: post #232
tpmx wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So why would the electricity prices become unaffordable for heat pump heating in your well insulated houses with local hydro and nuclear power? By non electric heating methods I meant CHP and biomass based heating. But yes, old energy inefficient houses in cold climates should be replaced. There's no need to get dramatic over it, houses are machines for living and it depends on circumstances how far to extend their l…

> So why would the electricity prices become unaffordable for heat pump heating in your well insulated houses with local hydro and nuclear power?

Umm. This whole thread is about the existence of nuclear power. Is it hard to understand that if nuclear power went away, the baseload would become extremely expensive during cold and wind-free days? That's a substantial part of the year, here.

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

#247

Post by lispm »

random5634 wrote: post #83
fermienrico wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is in part the anti-nuclear folks don't want the problem to be solved. So you can build a skyscraper 100 feet tall in a high earthquake zone, but you can't build a container. The normal approach (france etc) is to recycle and then vitrify the leftovers and store in a container. You get much shorter half lives, much less waste. So even if it comes out the container, it's still "in" something. Of course, yo…

There are a lot of authoritarian and pro-nuclear countries which have not solved the problem. Actually some of them (Russia, ...) have the worst environmental track record when it comes to nuclear technology.

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

#248

Post by consp »

godelski wrote: post #234
IshKebab wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's a lot less waste, but most waste isn't radioactive!!

It also just isn't a lot of waste. It sounds like a lot, but consider that the US produces 100 million tons of coal waste per year (2014). Hell, solar has ~30ktons of waste a year (just PV panels). 11ktons over 60 years just is astronomically tiny. That's 138 tons a year, 150x less than solar and 500000x less than coal. They just don't compare.

That coal waste is also radioactive. Natural, but still radioactive.

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

#249

Post by dathinab »

corty wrote: post #193
dathinab wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 candidate…

The IPCC report on climate change mitigation puts nuclear median cost on par with wind power (cheaper than offshore, slightly more expensive than onshore), cheaper than solar, more expensive than hydro. In total, squarely on par with the usual suspects for green energy. And they include fuel and decommissioning in that cost. See page 71 of https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5... (caution, huge…

hm interesting the numbers are somewhat different then what I have seen in other places.

I mean don't get me wrong offshore wind power is always expensive but enough sources list solar, on-shore wind power as cheaper. Hydro power as comparable and Geothermal power as much cheaper.

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

#250

Post by stale2002 »

hanniabu wrote: post #78
arrosenberg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say the same thing about any power source though - humans have created way bigger disasters with fossil fuels than nuclear power. > The cleanup costs of ONE uranium mine alone could buy germany enough solar to replace 3 nuclear reactors. How much do those solar panels cost once you factor in environmental remediation, EOL recycling, land use, etc.? Since that's the standard nuclear is held to, it would be g…

Sites of nuclear accidents can't be remediated. They're essentially lost "forever".

No, thats not true. It is only because people are mis-informed on the actual facts and dangers of nuclear reactors, that we treat them as if they are lost forever.
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