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Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

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Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#51

Post by ThePhysicist »

bambax wrote: post #38
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…

I had colleagues that went through École Polytechnique and the Corps de Mines (usually reserved to the top 2 graduates of a given graduating class of several grandes ecoles) that then went on to work for the government. And I think it's still mandatory to work a certain number of years in the administration after going through some of the grandes écoles, not sure if that was changed (I graduated in 2012 so it was a while ago).

Of course not everyone is graduating with a technical degree, but coming from Germany where top politicians often don't even have a finished university degree and high-ranked politicians are regularly found out to have been plagiarizing their PhD work it was pretty impressive to see a working elite system. It also has some negative aspects and nepotism is a thing as well (in the sense that people who went through the system know how to game it to get their children in with high probability) but it's much better than what we have here, in my opinion.

Germany was and still is scared of anything that can be considered elitist as people always associate it with the elitism from the Third Reich.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#52

Post by LtWorf »

osuairt wrote: post #36
mytailorisrich wrote: post #18

Earlier 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.

"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?

By your answer we can learn that:

1. you're german

2. you hate nuclear for ideological reasons

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#53

Post by konschubert »

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 grande école aristocracy in France isn't desirable either. It's a form of nepotism.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#54

Post by osuairt »

Juliate wrote: post #35
osuairt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That just isn't the case.

And I am sorry to say but the many countries have made great strides on running their countries on more and more renewable energy sources.

In 2018, Scotland generated 98% their energy from wind alone.

Denmark 72%, Germany 45%, Uruguay 97%, Norway 93%.

It's a whole patchwork of solutions, depending on geography.

Nuclear is not this magic bullet, and just means flipping a switch, it has a major cost, logistical, technological and risk overhead associated with it. If you are France, great, but they have been doing Nuclear since the beginning, it doesn't mean that the world has to do the same, when far simpler, cheaper and safer alternatives are in abundance.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#55

Post by dsq »

The problem with nuclear right now is that even if we decide to massively increase the share of nuclear power in the energy mix (in itself a very good idea), it will take a lot of time to build up the human technical capital necessary to plan, build, and operate these plants. This should have been started 5-10 years ago, and new graduates woukd be ready. Not to mention physical plant which also takes many years to finish. My worry is that once the energy crisis becomes completely obvious, with people shivering in blankets, govts will panic and push through emergency building plans, cutting all corners.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#57

Post by konschubert »

LtWorf wrote: post #49
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"

Well, is it not?

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#58

Post by ZeroGravitas »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #42
JanSt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 govern…

Technically, you're still not removing taxes from the equation, because the state owned nuclear plants in France are also funded by taxes, it's just not taxes that are added to the cost of units of electricity.

Which actually makes sense, if you have a high upfront cost, constant output source iike nuclear, taxing each individual unit makes no sense since the marginal cost is effectively zero up till you need to build a new plant. Whereas if you burn coal or gas, you want to incentivise people to cut back for cost, carbon and pollution reasons.

An even more sensible approach would be to tax the carbon directly and charge more for peak electricity since that contributes more to the infrastructure requirements, which I guess both countries will already be moving towards as is the current trend in most places.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#59

Post by sputr »

When it comes to nuclear, no story is better than the story of the Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant in Austria.

It was built, finished, ready to start providing 692 MW of power.

But was prevented with a referendum on 5 November 1978 by a narrow majority of 50.47% against.

So they didn't start it.

They instead replace it with Dürnrohr Power Station, a termal power station burning coal and gas.

The push for ideological purity that prevented them from accepting a less-than-perfect choice, lead to getting stuck with the worst-possible choice when reality came knocking. It's a cautionary tale for all ideologically “passionate” people, of which we have far too many in today's society.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#60

Post by henearkr »

As I heard today again on the radio, the narrative is "to get energy whatever the weather, we cannot rely only on wind and solar".

I'm surprised that they haven't heard of the possibility of energy storage.

Both already available storage solutions, and the many other solutions in development, are largely enough to enable wind/solar and other renewable sources to replace fossil fuels, without relying on nuclear.

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