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Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

allianceforscience.cornell.edu

161–170 of 306 posts

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Germany is right in the middle of the biggest and most stable grid on this planet. They don't have to build storage within a year because they don't have to store all that stuff. They can take their time and continue to expand their national grid. Something they've been doing even during the last 16 years where the conservative government has been crippling the expansion of renewable energy.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Storage will be built when it makes sense to build storage. For storage to be useful, you need enought renewables to charge it from.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#163
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often enough, France cannot even power itself, less so export electricity 24/7. And the number of operational reactors is going down, not up. France is only a strong exporter in the times where there is low demand - exporting surplus nuclear energy is of course far better than regulating the reactors down - both from an economic standpoint as well as an ecologic one.

Macron announced[1][2][3] plans to build 14 new reactors. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/11/business/nuclear-power-france... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/world/europe/france-macro... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/10/france-to-buil...

None of the money spent on cancelled reactors is ever given back.

And, they will all be cancelled, so all that is unknown is how much money will turn out to have been diverted from renewables, first.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of nitpicking terminology, let's talk about the issue directly: What do you do when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing? There isn't enough batteries on earth to even make a dent in the storage you would need. We don't want to burn any more hydrocarbons. What are our other options? Massive pumped hydro might get us there, but that construction is on a similar time horizon to a new nuclear plant a…

We'd need about 50 TWh of batteries. We can build that faster than we can build a single nuclear plant. And what do nukes do during peak periods of they are supplying base power?

> We'd need about 50 TWh of batteries. We can build that faster than we can build a single nuclear plant.

That's a huge [citation needed]. Global battery production is currently around 0.5 TWh per year[1]. Even if we continue to scale battery production, 50TWh is decades worth of our manufacturing capacity.

Also, don't forget that the latest and greatest battery packs last ~10 years. Just the upkeep on your grid scale battery is 5 TWh/year. We don't have anything close to enough manufacturing.

[1] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#165
post #99

Uh, yeah, so should every green-type party. It's ridiculous to not be encouraging nuclear power when there are plenty of fossil-fuel power plants (especially coal) being operated and built. We can talk about switching away from nuclear when that's done. Nuclear power generation is far better for the environment and far safer (having cause many, many fewer deaths in history, per unit of power generated).

Building nukes just means burning fossil fuels for another decade or more. Big Oil loves nuke projects.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#166
post #113
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating genetically modified food isn't genetic modification, either.

I don't think any credible person or German party ever claimed that. It's the food you're eating that's modified, not that you get genetically modified from eating it (Of course gmo is a thousand times better than previous practices with random mutation)

You are correct, nobody claimed that. But environmentalists often warned of "unknown risks" [1] when consuming genetically modified food. Why at the same time there should be no unkown risks when injecting mRNA vaccines into children is beyond me.

[1] htts://www.bund.net/themen/landwirtschaft/gentechnik/risiken/gesundheit/?wc=23315

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#168
post #23
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?

One of the main reasons is the nuclear waste which for the purposes of the timescales of human civilization and planning are indefinitely dangerous. In the US in particular there's never been a great plan implemented to actually deal with that waste long term. It mostly just gets shuffled around to current running reactors when one shuts down.

Waste management is the smallest of nukes' problems.

That doesn't mean it is negligible, it just means the others are much bigger.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#169
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think the fuel for the reactors will come from?

Well not Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p...

And who do you think has a huge influence over Kazakhstan (and recently helped them prevent a coup).

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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!

Germany is right in the middle of the biggest and most stable grid on this planet. They don't have to build storage within a year because they don't have to store all that stuff. They can take their time and continue to expand their national grid. Something they've been doing even during the last 16 years where the conservative government has been crippling the expansion of renewable energy.

Germany derives 25% of its energy consumption from natural gas. In order to remove this, they'll need to replace it with something. If they want to replace it with renewable energy, then they'll need storage. In no universe can they simply swap 25% of their energy consumption within a year without additional infrastructure.
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