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Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

allianceforscience.cornell.edu

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Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#31

Post by hericium »

hans1729 wrote: post #21
toxik wrote: post #6

The big problem for nuclear in Sweden at least is that no new staff has been trained for a long time. We couldn’t really run our shutdown reactors if we tried.

The same applies for Germany; our plants that have been shut down can, de facto, not be reactivated. The effort would be too big, and the industry lacks the experts as priorities shifted for obvious reasons. In other news, Germany just started a partnership with Quatar to import Gas, because, you know, we don't want to support abusive regimes :-) Everything just gets more messy and distorted by the day.

There's also coal electricity from Poland and France seems to be nuking up to serve as Europe's reserve battery for when greens aren't producing or a large exporter misbehaves in politics next time.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#32

Post by happytoexplain »

Nicksil wrote: post #27
pastor_bob wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fukushima

>fukushima What about it?

The GP asked for reasons why nuclear power might be less popular in recent history, and the parent posited Fukushima as one possibility.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#33

Post by raxxorraxor »

ageofwant wrote: post #2

The Greens' idiotic anti-nuclear stance has empowered and embolden decades of coal and oil exploration and proliferation. As a Green voter I desperately hope this pattern gets adopted and replicated here in Australia the sooner the better.

It isn't idiotic. While it is partially ideological reasoning behind their rejection, nuclear power is overall a bad deal with current technologies. France might have problems operating theirs because they have a drought and rivers aren't able to cool the plants. Uranium is only available in limited supply additionally to the high costs of nuclear energy this will become a problem in the long term. We only recently have opened the first permanent storage for nuclear waste (would need to look up if it really opened).

Part of the problems are regulation, taxes and missing expertise. I guess Finland wants nuclear energy because prices skyrocketed as Russia capped the lines. But nuclear energy could never be a solution to solve that deficit.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#34

Post by goodpoint »

chadash wrote: post #3

I have heard a lot of chatter recently about how nuclear has fallen out of favor among certain circles on the left. Can someone explain what the reasons for that are?

It's difficult to have a rational discussion about nuclear power with all the pro-nuclear shilling and the anti-nuclear FUD. However the following concerns are standing:

- Nuclear is becoming more expensive while solar and wind are becoming much cheaper. Nuclear and renewables compete for investments so people disagree on what to invest to.

- Nuclear proliferation is an unsolved problem and the risk is growing due to increasing tension.

- Centralized power production is more vulnerable to war, social unrest and floods compared to distributed power production. Risks of social unrest and climate change is increasing.

- Unlike solar, nuclear technology is difficult to deploy safely in developing countries, increasing inequality in energy access.

- Centralized [power] production is intrinsically less democratic than distributed.

- Safe very-long-term storage of nuclear waste is still being debated. Affordable solutions to reprocess and destroy existing waste have not been adopted yet.

- Deployment of new nuclear power takes decades and might be too slow do address climate change.

- Many argue that society should address overproduction and overconsumption of goods, and therefore energy, rather than increasing energy production.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#35

Post by thatfrenchguy »

epistasis wrote: post #16

This is great, and hopefully it will stop the premature shutdown of existing nuclear reactors. But it's pretty tiny climate news overall. Nuclear reactors are aging out and nobody in Western Europe or the US seems to know how to build in a cost competitive way anymore. Deploying 5GW of solar and storage, or 3-4GW of wind, is far easier, faster, and cheaper than trying to build a new reactor, which won't come on line…

Deploying solar or wind is nice and stuff, but it doesn’t remove fossil plants, because when there is no sun / wind (which happens a lot in Europe), you need to burn fossil fuels. Storage is not viable today, both because it emits a lot of co2/kWh (especially if you wanted to eliminate fossil plants, you’d need to overprovision) and because of supply constraints.

Hydro and nuclear is the only low-carbon future.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#36

Post by RealityVoid »

sexy_panda wrote: post #15
api wrote: post #4

Wait… someone in the realm of politics changed their mind in a… sane… rational direction? I feel like I could count instances of that in my lifetime on one hand. Everywhere on the political spectrum everyone seems to have been utterly losing their minds for a long time.

Running nuclear power plants isn't a sane thing to do, but let's pretend Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island never happend.

Yeah, let's pretend thousands of people dying prematurely because of pollution isn't happening as well. Perfect is the enemy of good and looking for a "perfect" solution (zero carbon, zero risk) is just causing suffering and driving us to early extinction.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#37

Post by jamil7 »

ageofwant wrote: post #2

The Greens' idiotic anti-nuclear stance has empowered and embolden decades of coal and oil exploration and proliferation. As a Green voter I desperately hope this pattern gets adopted and replicated here in Australia the sooner the better.

Sorry, I'm kind of hijacking this comment. Honest question, would Australia actually need nuclear? The whole continent looks like it could become a renewable powerhouse for wind/solar/hydro, there's also quite a lot of lithium there from what I understand.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#38

Post by OJFord »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #9

If the Greens in England and Wales dropped their opposition to nuclear and also binned off a few of their more anti-egalitarian positions (I cannot in good faith support criminal sentencing where a man goes to jail but a woman doesn't for the same crime for example) and I'd probably vote for them at this point. They've only recently been seen as a 'serious' party with mainstream appeal but climate change doesn't real…

> a few of their more anti-egalitarian positions (I cannot in good faith support criminal sentencing where a man goes to jail but a woman doesn't for the same crime for example)

That's nuts, haven't heard that before (not that I'm a supporter or anything), any more info on that - what crime for example?

Searching not turning up much, since it's being sued for the opposite sexism at the moment; grepping https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/cj.html, are you referring to these?

> CJ381 Recognising the nature of the female prison population, with high levels of mental illness, experience of being a victim of crimes such as sexual assault and domestic violence, and caring responsibilities for children, the only women who should be in custody are those very few that commit serious and violent crimes and who present a threat to the public.

> CJ382 For the vast majority of women in the criminal justice system, solutions in the community are more appropriate. Community sentences must be designed to take account of women’s particular vulnerabilities and domestic and childcare commitments. The restrictions placed on sentencers around breaches of community orders must be made more flexible.

(Emphasis added.) Does seem a bit weird.

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