Earlier quoted context omitted.
Natural gas emits radically less CO2 than coal, which is why this is entirely necessary during the transition (Germany is now bruning coal to compensate for the Russian war). Gas emits so little CO2 compared to coal that it actually accounted for ONE THIRD of the drop in U.S. emissions from 2005 - 2016: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-us-carbon-emissions... .
I don't object to using gas over coal, I object to calling it green. We're in trouble when 100% green energy is not enough.
Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy
21–30 of 676 posts
Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy
#22De-nuclearization of other European countries is a long-held goal of the German environmentalist movement and the Green party. It's understandable that France doesn't want to go with that, as they don't want to be forced down the same ruinous path we're currently on here in Germany. And honestly, good for them. It's just sad to see how little actual science is respected in Germany. I did my PhD at the French nuclear…
The people that usually are puzzled about this approach, also avoid any of the arguments on why people don't want nuclear facilities as the basis of their energy infrastructure. Framing it as some closed minded ideological stance, and that Germany wouldn't be in a position to understand the pros and cons to nuclear technology, just looks to dismiss those that might have actual rationales for running their countries d…
Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no reason to favour investments in gas. This is a political compromise to placate Germany that drove itself into a corner by not wanting to hear about nuclear for ideological reasons.
Cut completely gas out of the equation, you'll get coal instead and/or social uprising at the continent level. Unless you can favor fast nuclear reinstallment. The energy crisis we're facing for the coming century is ... not good.
So, again, this is all on Germany. They should clean up their own mess themselves and drop ideological dogmas.
Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy
#24About time. Nuclear is hardly an environmental risk even compared to the "cleaner" fossil fuels like gas. Hopefully this will allow the EU to return to competitive reactors designs instead of leaving China to pull humanities weight on that front. Though tbh I wouldn't be sad if we bought Chinese reactors until we are back up to speed, having Chinese nuclear > no nuclear. Everyone bitching about China stealing IP fina…
Strong disagree and just won't help besides fantasies. Lets not dig into the other mess again just because we never went and always deferred starting to do the right thing already 30 years back and now say: nuclear is the only way out. It isn't, it would be too late anyway, it will not scale to the world's power needs, it will cost too much.. and I just haven' touched the usual downsides of nuclear. Even some nuclear…
There seems to be a tendency by pro-Nuclear people, to try and frame nuclear as the only alternative energy source. They will say things like, "nuclear is by far the safer option, especially considering coal or gas"..
They keep trying to frame the use of nuclear next to fossil fuels, while pretending that solar, wind, hydro and geothermal haven't increasingly been adopted for 10 years now.
It is a very selective way of framing nuclear.
Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy
#25Why TF dont they unbundle obvious German written putin gas part from the Nuclear option and vote separately on those two??
Edit: this is such an obvious German EU blackmail - let us fund putin or you dont get clean Nuclear power plants.
Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy
#26Thanks EU for making everything worse for no reason. Can't they just invent their own label. Gas likely is better than Germany still burning tons of coal every day for energy but it's not green. That's just sad really
The point of the label is not that it's green or blue or whatever nature-friendly color. The point is to direct and strongly favor investments in less worse energy production sources. We're only sadly at a point where even some gas energy usage is a less worse option than no gas at all (because then, coal would be used instead).
I wouldn't care about the label wouldn't it destroy years of work for a better environment.
Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy
#27It’s about four decades too late to help anything.
Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy
#28De-nuclearization of other European countries is a long-held goal of the German environmentalist movement and the Green party. It's understandable that France doesn't want to go with that, as they don't want to be forced down the same ruinous path we're currently on here in Germany. And honestly, good for them. It's just sad to see how little actual science is respected in Germany. I did my PhD at the French nuclear…
Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Strong disagree and just won't help besides fantasies. Lets not dig into the other mess again just because we never went and always deferred starting to do the right thing already 30 years back and now say: nuclear is the only way out. It isn't, it would be too late anyway, it will not scale to the world's power needs, it will cost too much.. and I just haven' touched the usual downsides of nuclear. Even some nuclear…
Nuclear is uneconomically expensive and currently looks like it may always be so, but there are ways to fairly rapidly scale it up to world demand if we really wanted to.
Even if you buy into crap like Chinese reactors being less safe or more poorly regulated they should still be a good benchmark for what is necessary to reach scale nuclear reactor production.
Especially their small designs which are expected to be mass produced in factories and shipped to the site rather than built in-place as current Western designs have been been.
Combined with their target reactor numbers should bring down the cost substantially due to economies of scale when producing 200+ of the same reactor.
Only then will we have a decent picture of economics.
Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Strong disagree and just won't help besides fantasies. Lets not dig into the other mess again just because we never went and always deferred starting to do the right thing already 30 years back and now say: nuclear is the only way out. It isn't, it would be too late anyway, it will not scale to the world's power needs, it will cost too much.. and I just haven' touched the usual downsides of nuclear. Even some nuclear…
Nuclear is uneconomically expensive and currently looks like it may always be so, but there are ways to fairly rapidly scale it up to world demand if we really wanted to.
But 1. a large part of that is regulatory expenses not inherent to the technology, and 2. are we sure it is uneconomically expensive after taking into account the expenses spared by not completely fucking up our climate stability?