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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

#221

Post by Brometheus »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #172
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"fully decommissioned" by some somewhat unintuitive definitions: > The DOE was required by contract and statute to begin removing spent nuclear fuel and GTCC waste by January 31, 1998. To date, the DOE has not removed any spent fuel or GTCC waste from the CY site, and it is unknown when it will. The current 'plan' is for the companies looking after the waste on the original site to sue the government every few years…

this is exactly the idealism thats causing problems -the energy futures in germany reaches the highest price in recorded history, the industry is being decimated and it's importing gas from a tyran that has started a war on Gemany's doorstep. Without Europe's gas dollars he would not be able to fund it's millatry and 12 million ukranians would never become homeless refugees. Meanwhile you are complaining about waste…

No, what's creating the problems is the gas and coal lobby that dug into the conserveratives (CDU) and social democrats (SPD) to prevent the Energiewende from completion by creating burocratic and economical hurdles.

For example, it was forbidden to have more than 50GW installed capacity of solar. By Law.

oh and also destroying the industries building the solar panels, therefore losing the entire market to China…

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#222

Post by themitigating »

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, ...)"

These are schools that train bueurocrats, "technically excellent" yes, at politics and public service but not engineers. For example the new energy transition minister has a business degree and went to ENA.

I'm not one to call people elites but it's strange how you are using this to differentiate between France and German

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#223

Post by Krssst »

mort96 wrote: post #207
Georgelemental wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is "dig a hole in a salt deposit and keep it there" really good enough for the very, very, very long term? Yes. It's not that dangerous, the whole reason it is waste is that it's no longer radioactive enough to power the plant. (And as plant technology improves, the threshold for "no longer radioactive enough" will get even lower) > Can we really claim to be able to handle worst case scenarios well (e.g. Fukushima)…

You're not gonna convince many sceptical people by looking only at death counts. How many people had to be relocated? How large of an area is now uninhabitable? How many would have died if our luck had been just a bit worse that day? Is there anything about the technology in all currently operating power plants which completely rules out a worst-case meltdown scenario? People are mainly afraid of nuclear because the…

If we only replace coal with gas and leave climate change go awry, several order of magnitudes more will become inhabitable.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#224

Post by denton-scratch »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #172
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"fully decommissioned" by some somewhat unintuitive definitions: > The DOE was required by contract and statute to begin removing spent nuclear fuel and GTCC waste by January 31, 1998. To date, the DOE has not removed any spent fuel or GTCC waste from the CY site, and it is unknown when it will. The current 'plan' is for the companies looking after the waste on the original site to sue the government every few years…

this is exactly the idealism thats causing problems -the energy futures in germany reaches the highest price in recorded history, the industry is being decimated and it's importing gas from a tyran that has started a war on Gemany's doorstep. Without Europe's gas dollars he would not be able to fund it's millatry and 12 million ukranians would never become homeless refugees. Meanwhile you are complaining about waste…

I think that misses the point.

If you reckon it's OK to leave waste lying around, especially in constrained economic and political circumstances, that's a legitimate point of view. Argue for that. But don't declare that "decommissioning" simply means something like "Do your best, and then be done with it". That's dishonest (I'm not accusing you personally of any dishonesty).

If "decommissioning" doesn't mean complete reversal of all harmful results of the operation of a plant, then we need a new word that does mean that.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#225

Post by logifail »

doe88 wrote: post #198
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…

While it's evident nuclear sentiment is not great in germany, from my point of view, I wouldn't characterize it as great in france either. Sadly, I think in this domain (as in many) france lives with the infrastructure and build of its past and currently fails to invest for its future, it's more managing decline than anything else. I think as current nuclear plants become older and mismatch between current needs and…

> My dream would be that france, with help of germany and other eu countries would build new reactors with an overcapacity for france alone and would then provide this energy to other ue countries. Nuclear energy is a chance and is not mutually exclusive with other energies.

I think this will stay a dream. Aren't "modern" nuclear plants such as the EPR all a) very late and b) massively over budget?

The EPR project is basically a complete train-wreck.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#226

Post by croes »

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…

Seems like France nuclear power has it's own problems

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/business/france-nuclear-p...

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#227

Post by traspler »

automatic6131 wrote: post #180
traspler wrote: post #171

I'm always a bit baffled by the amount of pro-nuclear comments on HN and their stance on how everyone who disagrees is just not educated enough. Please educate me: Is the waste problem solved? Are we not still fighting with all the previous attempts of handling it? Is "dig a hole in a salt deposit and keep it there" really good enough for the very, very, very long term? Are old powerplants properly decommissioned and…

>Is the waste problem solved? Are we not still fighting with all the previous attempts of handling it? Is "dig a hole in a salt deposit and keep it there" really good enough for the very, very, very long term? It is technically solved, but politically unsolved. YMMV about how much of a deal breaker this is. >Are old powerplants properly decommissioned and replaced with new ones when the time comes? Not a problem that…

How is technically solved? We are talking enormous timelines for which we have to guarantee safe handling of the waste. Every try until now has proven to be inadequate.

So we are in the situation where we live with old powerplants that are not up to standard and no way to handle that but we will definitely be in the future?

„Can‘t happen“ is always the argument until it does and it‘s a difference if we are talking about something that will be over in short time or will remain a problem forever. But my point was more in the direction of how to handle that, if the solution is bury it and move far away from it, it‘s not something that can be scaled.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#228

Post by the_gipsy »

denton-scratch wrote: post #113
IMTDb wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the highly technical French have forgotten how to build nuclear They haven't forgotten, they were fighting a witch-hunt orchestrated by the greens. The same eco-ideologist that ruined Germany have made it impossible to properly invest in the nuclear plants in France and to ensure knowledge and expertise is properly transmitted and developed with the younger generation. For years the message was "don't invest in nuc…

> Nuclear is here to stay for the next decades (plural). That's the problem with nuclear; even if every nuclear power plant on the planet were shut-down today, "nuclear" would still be here to stay for at least a century or two. No nuclear power plant has ever been fully decommissioned. Decommissioning of the first UK nuclear power plants is expected to last another century. That's being paid for by taxpayers. The bu…

> even if every nuclear power plant on the planet were shut-down today, "nuclear" would still be here to stay for at least a century or two.

Is this really a problem, though?

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#229

Post by croes »

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…

Competitive reactor design sounds like corruption, botched construction and profit over security.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#230

Post by croes »

automatic6131 wrote: post #180
traspler wrote: post #171

I'm always a bit baffled by the amount of pro-nuclear comments on HN and their stance on how everyone who disagrees is just not educated enough. Please educate me: Is the waste problem solved? Are we not still fighting with all the previous attempts of handling it? Is "dig a hole in a salt deposit and keep it there" really good enough for the very, very, very long term? Are old powerplants properly decommissioned and…

>Is the waste problem solved? Are we not still fighting with all the previous attempts of handling it? Is "dig a hole in a salt deposit and keep it there" really good enough for the very, very, very long term? It is technically solved, but politically unsolved. YMMV about how much of a deal breaker this is. >Are old powerplants properly decommissioned and replaced with new ones when the time comes? Not a problem that…

Reliable?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/business/france-nuclear-p...

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