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Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
131–140 of 306 posts
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for pointing out his typo. He is correct, though. These people should be ignored and they are not serious people. “Humanity should change its baseline behavior“ is a sign of someone who is more interested in decrying the status quo than they are in fixing anything. You cannot fundamentally change humanity. Next proposal, please.
> “Humanity should change its baseline behavior“ is a sign of someone who is more interested in decrying the status quo than they are in fixing anything. The last 20 years in improving building and vehicle energy efficiency never happened? > You cannot fundamentally change humanity Also the last 10.000 years never happened.
> The last 20 years in improving building and vehicle energy efficiency never happened?
What about that demonstrates a fundamental change in humanity, or specifically, a reduction in the overproduction or overconsumption of goods?
> Also the last 10.000 years never happened.
Do you have 10k years to spare?
If anything, I’d argue that most of our contemporary problems are a result of our fundamental nature failing to adapt to the new environment — and new problems — that we’ve created over the past 10,000 years.
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#133Some context: The Green Party had long been diametrically opposed to nuclear, to the extent that they have twice exited a coalition government in protest of granting additional reactor permits. Over the past ten years their position has gradually shifted though, thanks to STEM-oriented Greens in particular, as it has become obvious that AGW is a bigger threat than nuclear. This in spite of several setbacks: – Obvious…
There have been some ideas floated around to use the Hanhikivi plant site for building small modular reactors (SMR:s).
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#134If Germany's Green Party takes the same line, I think it will be a huge blow to Russia. Also, it's about time.
Germany is a lot bigger, and for Germany nuclear power certainly isn't sustainable. The population isn't on board for one thing. For another, the supply chain and the complicated life cycle has a tendency to bind huge amounts of resources and manpower that can't be easily used elsewhere in the economy, if you can find it in the first place (France has a shortage of nuclear engineers for example). Add to that the impo…
>We can do that in a year or two with renewable energy and other means while avoiding a lot of the other problems.
How can you do that? Can you create build storage in 1 year for entire Germany needs? How?, please explain!
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#135Some context: The Green Party had long been diametrically opposed to nuclear, to the extent that they have twice exited a coalition government in protest of granting additional reactor permits. Over the past ten years their position has gradually shifted though, thanks to STEM-oriented Greens in particular, as it has become obvious that AGW is a bigger threat than nuclear. This in spite of several setbacks: – Obvious…
Now all the people who insisted the Greens had been co-opted by Big Oil will be completely silent about their having now been co-opted by Big Nuke. But Big Oil/Gas/Coal loves new nuke projects; each represents a decade or more of still buying fossil fuels, instead of incrementallly displacing fossil with renewables.
What this really means is probably that their position is moot, because no new nukes are planned or likely.
Delays and cost overruns on a nuke construction project are, for many stakeholders, the whole point of the project. Actually beginning to deliver power to the grid is the end of their income stream, thus to be fought tooth and nail. The larger a project is, the more stakeholders it usually needs, and thus the more active participants who do not want it delivered. The prevalence of this dynamic varies from place to place; it has long been dominant in the US, not just for nuke projects, but for urban tunnels and other big public works projects.
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#136Fision power is no long term solution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kahih8RT1k
There is a comment against that video by user jem780 that claims to quote an Australian academic to counter the argument that there are inadequate uranium reserves.
When I was watching the video, that argument reminded me of the Peak Oil campaign from about twenty years ago. This claimed that the world had reached a point where the amount of oil available would be in decline going forward, and claiming that this justified major changes. At the time, this Peak Oil claim got a lot of sympathetic coverage in mainstream media. Oil production has been healthy in the years since, and technology changes have opened up new reserves.
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#137Some context: The Green Party had long been diametrically opposed to nuclear, to the extent that they have twice exited a coalition government in protest of granting additional reactor permits. Over the past ten years their position has gradually shifted though, thanks to STEM-oriented Greens in particular, as it has become obvious that AGW is a bigger threat than nuclear. This in spite of several setbacks: – Obvious…
Now all the people who insisted the Greens had been co-opted by Big Oil will be completely silent about their having now been co-opted by Big Nuke. But Big Oil/Gas/Coal loves new nuke projects; each represents a decade or more of still buying fossil fuels, instead of incrementallly displacing fossil with renewables. What this really means is probably that their position is moot, because no new nukes are planned or li…
Eh, many of the stakeholders of the Hanhikivi project were individual municipalities which very much would have liked to get their carbon-free source of electricity. In the case of OL3, the only winners were probably lawyers due to the years of court battles between Finnish stakeholders and the French reactor supplier Areva. Everybody else lost.
The Greens' new position is mostly relevant in the context of small, modular reactor (SMR) units. Whether or not commercial SMRs ever prove feasible, I'd wager that right now their future looks brighter than that of huge gigawatt-scale reactor projects.
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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" There's a huge difference between nuclear and renewables that firmly comes down on the side of renewables: they can be deployed incrementally with variable levels of capital investment, and can be iterated on rapidly. Solar can be deployed at a scale…
Moreso, when only seed money is needed to start a project, and money added translates very directly and visibly to increased capacity, the need to pay graft to those who could veto the project falls away. Probably a strict majority of money spent on huge lump-sum public-works projects such as nukes and tunnels goes to pay such graft.
"Small modular reactors" installed presumably incrementally threaten the graft infrastructure for nuke procurement, so will be unattractive to those involved in nuke finance, even where the alternative is no new nuke projects at all. If you can't block a nuke project, you can't profit from unblocking it, and then why be involved at all? For renewables, the prospect of graft is not what attracted most people to the field. That may come in time.
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#139This 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…
> 5GW of solar [in Finland]
Okay I'm afraid that's it for me. Being on a discussion board that has to debate "is deploying solar in Finland a good idea?" is not worth it.
Incidentally, yes, it took Finland 10 years to build their last reactor. They commissioned it a week or so ago, mere days before Russia disconnected them. Literally nothing we can effectively do to mitigate climate change takes <5 any more, including a fair few GW-scale wind farms I know of. Refusal to face that is why we are facing the calamity we are. Cheers.
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#140This 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 5GW of solar and storage, or 3-4GW of wind, is far easier, faster, and cheaper than trying to build a new reactor Besides the intermittency of renewables everyone else has already mentioned, a nuclear reactor has a life of 50 years, which is extendable with maintenance. There are literally reactors built in the 1950s still operating today. Solar and wind installations have to be fully rebuilt every 15-20…
This is abuse disadvantage for nuclear, not an advantage. Current high costs are locked in for a very long time.
Whereas with solar and storage, after 15 years (for the storage) or 30 years (solar) you can take advantage of technology advancement. And of technology has not advanced much, you can simply maintain or repair the existing infrastructure, just like nuclear or other large capital expenditures.