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

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#41

Post by jpgvm » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:17 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 option and it -is- better than coal or gas.

Solar, wind, hydro and geothermal are going to be important parts of the mix (perhaps even the dominant parts in many places of the world) but all have unsolved challenges that are much more difficult than nuclear. Storage ofcourse, the world is almost already maxed out on what hydro it can build, geothermal is only viable in very few places in the world. Solar is gated on Chinese polysilicate and cell production unless some other country wants to step up and make what is needed.

Don't make good the enemy of perfect. Nuclear is a very good option to killing off fossil fuels in addition to the obvious renewables.

It also provides key features that they don't, like being almost entirely independent of weather and geography, good in places like Japan that are hard to build other renewables after they max out on hydro. They have no space for solar, wind is hard to build with their terrain, off-shore wind is hard because they have too many tsunamis and adverse conditions etc.

Renewables good, nuclear also pretty good, coal and oil bad.

If nuclear is replacing coal and oil we should be happy, if we are building it -instead- of cheaper renewables despite having the correct sites, enough storage and enough supply then I would be against it but we aren't. The economics of renewables should put them at a consistent cost advantage to nuclear except the cases where they aren't viable - where nuclear should be able to slot in.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#42

Post by littlecranky67 » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:17 AM UTC

JanSt wrote: post #31

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 c…

> And yet Germany, after two decades and close to a trillion dollar in renewable energies, has one of the most expensive

Do you have any sources? Last time I checked, Germany and France weren't that far apart, if you remove taxes out of the costs. The thing is that Germany has a lot of Taxes that have nothing todo with how we generate the electricity. I.e. 90% of the electricity tax (Stromsteuer) goes into the government pension fund.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#43

Post by adrianN » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:18 AM UTC

thrown_22 wrote: post #27

parkingrift wrote: post #6

It’s about four decades too late to help anything.

The best time to build a nuclear power plant in 20 years ago. The second best is today.

That is only true if nothing has changed in the last twenty years. But in that timeframe alternatives to nuclear have dropped in price quite a bit and know how about nuclear has retired.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#44

Post by jpgvm » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:18 AM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #33

mytailorisrich wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is just fear mongering. We have no evidence of nuclear being built in-place of cheaper renewables. Until we do it's just FUD.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#45

Post by Veen » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:20 AM UTC

osuairt wrote: post #20

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…

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…

I'm puzzled about why nuclear is deemed less satisfactory than dependence on Putin's Russia for the energy requirements of the world's 4th biggest economy.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#46

Post by seydor » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:20 AM UTC

Now that we agree that nuclear is a better future, we need to talk about where to source fissile materials, and what technologies can make it so safe we won't have to think twice.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#47

Post by throwawayjun21 » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:21 AM UTC

So stupid to hate nuclear energy. you dont need to be a rocket scientist to realize how good deal its. Where i am from a lot of activists hit the road and blocked many nuclear plant from bein built.

Brainless activism is destroying democracies around the world

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#48

Post by ZeroGravitas » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:21 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…

And yet weirdly, those non-technical people seem to have accidentally stumbled on the solution that the whole world is moving towards, while the highly technical French have forgotten how to build nuclear and even their most ambitious goals include using less nuclear and replacing it with the stuff the ideological German's came up with, because it's better. And it wasn't that long ago that they were threatening to scrap the whole idea of nuclear if the industry didn't produce one on time and budget, which still seems to be the main problem, they've just been given another chance to fail.

Weird, it's almost like these ideological people were listening to experts, but you didn't like what the experts were saying, and so you labelled 'following expert advice' as 'ideological' to help you continue to ignore expert opinion.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#49

Post by LtWorf » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:22 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 was the main push behind "burning wood = renewable energy"

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#50

Post by LtWorf » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 10:23 AM UTC

herbst wrote: post #39

osuairt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Unless you're poor…