Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#31

Post by JanSt » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:10 AM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #16

De-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…

There are also many institutes (e.g IDW) constantly pumping out papers that conclude nuclear energy has highest costs, highest danger, will leave unsolvable toxic waste problems, renewable energy is extremely cheap, building enough storage is no problem etc.

These people are constantly invited to present these „Zukunftsenergien“ as opposed to the old bad nuclear in talk shows.

And yet Germany, after two decades and close to a trillion dollar in renewable energies, has one of the most expensive AND highest CO2 energy in Europe.

In 2021 the 6 remaining nuclear power plants produced more power than all installed solar capacity in Germany. 3 were closed at year end.

Now we are reliant on russian gas and the politicians still want to keep closing the remaining three nuclear power plants.

The same talk show people now talk about how we have a heat and not a power problem, so we don‘t need the nuclear power. We are still burning gas and restarted coal power plants.

It‘s ridicioulous.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#32

Post by osuairt » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:10 AM UTC

herbst wrote: post #8

Thanks 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

"Thanks EU for making everything worse for no reason. Can't they just invent their own label."

I am going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't live in Europe.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#33

Post by pvaldes » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:11 AM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #13

jpgvm wrote: post #2

About 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…

The problem here is that the term "green" means nothing and anything. It is always much better to define objectively what is the issue and what is the aim. It seems to me that the main issue is emissions and that the aim is therefore to reduce them as much as possible. In that context, nuclear is a perfectly valid option and probably unavoidable as things stand. Gas is 'bad' since it obviously does produce emissions…

The problem is that now there is less money for developing a grid of green energies and we need it for yesterday. Because nuclear will take a chunk of the grants, as is much more expensive to build and much more time consuming.

So green energies, delayed in the last decades for political reasons, will need to wait, again. And this delay could turn to be a very bad decision in a few years.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#34

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:11 AM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #23

Juliate wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's besides the point. To get to net zero we can't favour new investments in gas. Maybe such investments are unavoidable in some cases but that's quite different. So, again, this is all on Germany. They should clean up their own mess themselves and drop ideological dogmas.

[deleted]

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#35

Post by Juliate » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:12 AM UTC

osuairt wrote: post #24

throw827474737 wrote: post #5

Earlier 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…

Yes, Agreed. 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 s…

It's not the only alternative, it's an inevitable part of the mix, where it serves as the raw large power source (similar to hydraulic, only much larger).

Until we have found ways to drastically cut down power usage AND to store huge quantities of energy OR found another similar and cleaner and safer energy source, we will need it in the mix to balance with other renewable sources.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#36

Post by osuairt » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:12 AM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #18

Juliate wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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.

"ideological reasons"

Can you tell us what those ideological reasons why be?

Or are you straight up trying to dismiss their approach as irrational and dogmatic in the eyes of reader by suggesting it is ideological only?

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#37

Post by herbst » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:13 AM UTC

nicohvi wrote: post #7

nix23 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that the real title is: >>Gas and Nuclear Turn Green as EU Parliament Approves New Taxonomy >>On the contrary, natural gas does emit greenhouse gas emissions, however, supporters claim it is less polluting than traditional fossil fuels and can thus be part of the energy transition. So less pollution then heavy oil is now "green" in Europe....bravo, thank you Germany.

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... .

Germany was burning coal the whole time. There are interesting docs on YouTube how they literally buy up small towns to turn them into coal mine areas in 2020 and ongoing.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#38

Post by bambax » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:15 AM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #16

De-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…

> In France, top positions in the administration are usually filled by people that are technically excellent and have gone through the system of grandes écoles (ENS, ENA, X, ...)

That's a misconception. ENS has two branches, science and literature. ENS Sciences is technical, the other isn't. X (Polytechnique) is an engineering school in theory, but in practice very few of its students become actual engineers.

ENA is essentially a law school; it's even less than that, it only teaches how the French administration works, not law.

The one thing these schools have in common is that they are extremely competitive, and select for extreme dedication (and a bizarre capacity to study with high intensity at an age when other people are dating or partying).

But at the top level of the French government you mostly find only énarques (= people who attended ENA); they are not technical in the least, "don't have a clue about technology", but think they know everything. It's a terrible, terrible system.

Source: am French.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#39

Post by herbst » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:16 AM UTC

osuairt wrote: post #32

herbst wrote: post #8

Thanks 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

"Thanks EU for making everything worse for no reason. Can't they just invent their own label." I am going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't live in Europe.

I do live in the heart of Europe but not in the EU. Best of both worlds I guess.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#40

Post by JanSt » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:17 AM UTC

rasz wrote: post #25

"Gas and Nuclear Turn Green as EU Parliament Approves New Taxonomy" Why 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.

Germany planned to use gas to bridge times with little wind and solar power to be able to turn off nuclear energy. Not smart but true. The new plan is to build even more renewables. and massive storage capacity, a very optimistic undertaking.