Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power • Hacker News Board

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#41

Post by actionfromafar » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:19 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #30

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…

It's not that simple. People quote low prices for renewables today that we might be scoffing at in 50 years just like we scoff at the early claim that "nuclear power is too cheap to meter" Specifically, you can't compare a nuclear reactor that delivers predictable power to solar and wind systems that deliver power when they want to deliver power. Germany has already had episodes where the spot price for electricity w…

Base power is nice, but I think we need to be more creative in setting up infrastructure that can work with varying price.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#42

Post by nabla9 » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:19 PM UTC

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…

As others have said, nuclear not is comparable to wind and solar. Nuclear provides base load, something that wind or solar can't do.

Here is a graph: https://i.imgur.com/SaC1HR4.jpeg

Wind electricity production in x-axis (MWh/h), y-axis is consumption of electricity (MWh/h). Each do is one hour, dot color is a month. There is no correlation.

Here is great summary of how Finland can go 100% fossil fuel free electricity with nuclear: http://smartenergytransition.fi/en/clean-electricity-product...

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#43

Post by pydry » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:21 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #30

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…

It's not that simple. People quote low prices for renewables today that we might be scoffing at in 50 years just like we scoff at the early claim that "nuclear power is too cheap to meter" Specifically, you can't compare a nuclear reactor that delivers predictable power to solar and wind systems that deliver power when they want to deliver power. Germany has already had episodes where the spot price for electricity w…

Pumped storage combined with solar and wind isnt orders of magnitude more than nuclear power. It's still cheaper. Fengning is less than half the cost of a nuclear plant and delivers twice as much power. It's a very effective battery.

Pumped (or indeed, any kind of) storage just isnt very economic when youve got oodles of cheap, dispatchable gas.

Nuclear power almost always exists to help prop up military nuclear requirements. This is as true in Finland (whose plants were built by Russia) as it is anywhere else.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#44

Post by Synaesthesia » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

One of the biggest issues which makes it hard for the public to judge how well nuclear does, is the association of nuclear power with nuclear weapons which are totally shrouded in secrecy.

Nuclear power and nuclear weapons were developed together, often with nuclear power plants providing fuel for the weapons. All of this data, including disposal and environmental issues are completely classified.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#45

Post by ageofwant » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

jamil7 wrote: post #37

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.

Australia exports millions of tons of thermal coal annually, we have vast gas fields of WA. These are profitable because a international market exist. The market exist because of a lack of affordable alternatives. So no, with enough baseload tech Australia will be probably be OK without nuclear. Solar to H2/Ammonia for example.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#46

Post by lbriner » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #38

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…

I think I understand where they are coming from but let's not pretend that dads in prison doesn't also have a massive effect on the development of their children (or not!).

In some ways the only people who should be in prison are the most violent and who are a danger to the public but we don't have a great range of alternatives for someone who e.g. steals a large amount of money but is not dangerous to the public per-se.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#47

Post by bryanlarsen » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

csours wrote: post #10

If Germany's Green Party takes the same line, I think it will be a huge blow to Russia. Also, it's about time.

If they did, Putin would cheer. It takes 20 years to build a nuclear plant, so the likely result world be that Germany would be "temporarily" dependent on Russian gas for another 20 years.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#48

Post by ageofwant » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

raxxorraxor wrote: post #33

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 h…

Nuclear waste is process and reactor specific. These are engineering problems and are several magnitudes of order smaller problems to deal with that dealing with carbon waste.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#49

Post by lbriner » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #18

Is this a case of politics, like science, proceeds one funeral at a time? Did the 1970s anti-nuclear people age out of the party leadership and membership so this could get revisited?

There is a healthy dose of pragmatism. Probably, very few people would choose nuclear if there were loads of alternatives, the capital cost and build times are insane and despite improvements, let's not pretend that nuclear fuel is easy to deal with.

But take away gas and coal and you are left with the green alternatives like solar, wind and waves which all have their own challenges the first two have high variability and aren't great for base-load and the third has challenges building equipment that can survive the extremely harsh ocean currents for a period of time that will not leave a trail of rusting relics (afaik).

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#50

Post by jansan » Mon, May 23, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

csours wrote: post #10

If Germany's Green Party takes the same line, I think it will be a huge blow to Russia. Also, it's about time.

The German green party demanded a ban on sending weapons to conflict zones just at the end of last year, now they would love to send all our army's equipment to Ukraine immediately.

They fought tooth and nail for the ban of genertical modified food, but now are in favor of a mandatory mRNA vaccination even for young people.

So why shouldn't they make another 180 on their fight against nuclear power, for which they could finally claim victory after the last three nuclear power plants will be switched off by the end of this year.