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All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

world-nuclear-news.org

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Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#61

Post by sandGorgon »

So a lot of the discussions here are around EU or US opinions about nuclear power. The problem is something entirely different.

India and China will move to emphatically reject coal restrictions during COP26. Remember India has probably some of the largest investments in renewable rightnow. But I dont think people outside of these countries have even an idea of the amount of hunger for power that is being generated as huge populations start clawing out of hunger and poverty.

3 years back, there were 240 million Indians who had NO electricity - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-01-24/living-in... So talking about pollution in this context is only solvable through large sources of clean power. We dont have enough land in India to support renewables for 1.3 billion people. Neither does China. Europe ? Very easily so.

Coal ban is not an option. Unless nuclear power and technology transfer is on the table.

India and China have both rejected targets - https://www.ft.com/content/eef90c01-4cbe-48b7-8b2c-2beb398a4...

COP26 basically seems to be a non starter now. with coal being pushed back in and nuclear pushed back out.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#62

Post by theGeatZhopa »

What about drilling for geothermal energy? And what about thermal fusion which is upcoming? For what do we need fission any longer, except to bridge the time up to availability of fusion? As long there is no good concept for the nuclear waste, that long nuclear shouldn't be praised as solution to anything, except for bridging.

There have been news on here, for a newly developed technique to "recycle" and/or to "treat" the nuclear waste by utilizing a collider. May be this is an solution for the nuclear industry? Safety of the power plants is, I think, comparably given by learnings of the accidents in history. Which shows quite a lot of incidences.. It's difficult. Me dunna want to have the power to decide on here.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#63

Post by mlindner »

6510 wrote: post #37
holomorphically wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this good?

Nuke plants make great targets to bomb.

They're not "nuke plants". "nuke" is a word that means "nuclear weapons".

Secondly, they're heavily surrounded by highly reinforced concrete with extremely high levels of security. The furthest any activist with a bomb belt could get is jumping a fence and getting immediately caught. Even if they could drive a truck through the front gate and set off a car bomb, they're not getting through the extremely thick concrete.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#64

Post by fsh »

mlindner wrote: post #39
whatever1 wrote: post #5

Neither the technology nor the fuel for nuclear plants are abundant or renewable. For example, can Iran build its own reactors? No. Can Somalia run its hypothetical reactors? No. Can Syria import enriched uranium? No. Can we have reactors without them blowing up every 50 years? No. Do we have a solution for containing nuclear waste without leaks and without ruining the local communities? No. Enough with this joke of…

Nuclear fuel is incredibly abundant. People talk about the small amounts of nuclear fuel available but completely ignore how energy dense it is. You need very little of it. There's vastly more energy in nuclear ore in the ground than there is even coal and oil combined in the ground.

Do you have a source for this? To my knowledge, uranium would run out in a decade or two if one would use it to supply 100% of the world primary energy consumption [1]. Coal is obviously way more abundant.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo...

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#65

Post by glogla »

sandGorgon wrote: post #61

So a lot of the discussions here are around EU or US opinions about nuclear power. The problem is something entirely different. India and China will move to emphatically reject coal restrictions during COP26. Remember India has probably some of the largest investments in renewable rightnow. But I dont think people outside of these countries have even an idea of the amount of hunger for power that is being generated a…

Yes. This is a huge win for coal lobby. This might be the turning point that kills humanity.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#66

Post by aetherspawn »

Unpopular opinion in this thread but ... I don't want a world with nuclear. That makes me anxious. It's not if there will be a problem, but when.

I'd rather the world spend money on batteries and solar/wind energy, like South Australia. And by focusing on that technology, the market will drive innovation in that class of renewables. That technology is reusable in other applications, like domestic (rooftop), EVs and Space.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#67

Post by kergonath »

yodacola wrote: post #28
roenxi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should work on a nuclear plant that can be turned on and off quickly then. The basic nuclear value proposition is [negligible fuel -> enough energy to power a country]. We should be exploring the options, vigorously. There will be less pollution than the alternatives where [large amounts of stuff -> enough energy to power part of a country].

The whole reason why nuclear energy is not because it technically is inferior, but, rather, the NIMBY mentality of nuclear energy at large. Many people see the consequences of mishandled nuclear energy and immediately see this as a eventual reality for all nuclear plants.

We suck at risk assessment. We fret about radiation whilst fossil fuelled power plants have been releasing radionuclides and particles in the open air for about a century.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#68

Post by whatever1 »

mlindner wrote: post #42
pickledolives wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don‘t forget all the CO2 emitted a) at mining and enriching uranium and b) in storing nuclear waste for 100000 years and c) in tearing down highly radioactive retired nuclear power plants. In Germany we started tearing down the GDRs only nuclear power plant in the early 90s and we‘re still not done. 30+ years of daily ops of a highly specialised destruction company operating heavy machinery requiring insulation from…

CO2 is only emitted during mining and refining because the grid itself isn't clean. The same thing is true of solar panels and batteries until the grid is made green. But you can't say "we can't make green tech because it would produce CO2" as it completely ignores the lifetime of things. > in storing nuclear waste for 100000 years That's a red herring. You only need to store nuclear waste for around 100 years (or le…

Wow, just avoided all of the points with what-about answers

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#69

Post by mlindner »

beders wrote: post #51
mlindner wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CO2 is only emitted during mining and refining because the grid itself isn't clean. The same thing is true of solar panels and batteries until the grid is made green. But you can't say "we can't make green tech because it would produce CO2" as it completely ignores the lifetime of things. > in storing nuclear waste for 100000 years That's a red herring. You only need to store nuclear waste for around 100 years (or le…

oh yeah, the French are so confident with their nuclear power plants they built many of them on their eastern border (with mostly west winds blowing any fall out nicely into Belgium and Germany)

Oh please. Don't lie on hacker news, especially on something so verifiable.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Nuclear_...

And another version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nuclear_power_plants_map_...

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#70

Post by ep103 »

Goety wrote: post #19

Nuclear is not a palatable political solution for a lot of people and it is easily simpler to reject the proliferation of such materials. The current 'theater' from a geopolitical standpoint for nuclear is China and it does not appear to be succeeding well. I don't expect France to succeed given all that has occurred. Smaller nuclear devices will need constant care and monitoring that it is highly likely people will…

What happened with France?
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