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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

#231

Post by jefftk »

jpgvm wrote: post #94
henearkr wrote: post #60

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.

I think you (and most people that talk about storage) drastically underestimate the scale of the storage required and just how tight supply is for the resources necessary to build it. For now EVs are going to consume the world's supply of batteries. Leaves you with thermal or potential energy storage like pumped hydro. All of which aren't even fully developed yet or are restricted to specific geography. As of right n…

> EVs are going to consume the world's supply of batteries

The ideal battery technologies for electric vehicles are completely different than what you want for balancing the grid: vehicles need very high energy density because they need to move the batteries, while the grid can use bulky heavy options.

For example, a friend is working on very heavy iron-air batteries targeting grid applications: https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#232

Post by floxy »

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…

>No nuclear power plant has ever been fully decommissioned.

Trojan?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#233

Post by jpgvm »

jefftk wrote: post #231
jpgvm wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you (and most people that talk about storage) drastically underestimate the scale of the storage required and just how tight supply is for the resources necessary to build it. For now EVs are going to consume the world's supply of batteries. Leaves you with thermal or potential energy storage like pumped hydro. All of which aren't even fully developed yet or are restricted to specific geography. As of right n…

> EVs are going to consume the world's supply of batteries The ideal battery technologies for electric vehicles are completely different than what you want for balancing the grid: vehicles need very high energy density because they need to move the batteries, while the grid can use bulky heavy options. For example, a friend is working on very heavy iron-air batteries targeting grid applications: https://formenergy.co…

I get that but they are also not ready yet. Right now both cars and stationary storage are competing for LFP capacity (somewhat also NCA).

Which is exactly the problem with the storage argument, simply not ready yet.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#234

Post by adolph »

bloak wrote: post #203
adolph wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gas emits so little CO2 compared to coal At a molecular level this doesn't make sense to me. The fundamental carbon cycle value proposition is to harvest energy released when a carbon atom (re)joins two oxygens. For the same energy, how would methane and coal produce different amounts of CO2? That said, I can see how the oxygen reaction would be less efficient and create more byproducts (i.e. acid rain) using coal…

Coal: C + O2 -> CO2 Gas: CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O I don't know off hand exactly how many joules of energy (heat) are produced per mole in each case but it's not surprising that gas gives more joules per mole of CO2: it's a bit like you're burning hydrogen at the same time. EDIT: It's relevant that O-H bonds are stronger than C-H bonds, presumably.

Thanks, that makes some sense. I wonder how that additional bond works in the hydrolox to methalox comparison of rocket fuels.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#235

Post by denton-scratch »

pfdietz wrote: post #191
ch4s3 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The casks are safe where they are and should hold safely for at least 90 years according tot he notoriously conservative NRC. They should be moved, and congress needs to get its shit together, I agree. We really need to get deep storage unstuck from the Yucca Mountain issue, but I think this still counts as decommissioned.

Why do we need to get deep storage unstuck? Putting the waste in dry casks is cheaper.

There are radionuclides in those casks with half-lives of 200,000 years - much longer than human civilisation, and much longer still than the lifetime of a human writing system. We don't even know how to make a label that will make sense in 200,000 years.

This attitude only makes sense if one's view is that humanity isn't going to last more than 10,000 years.

Unless we can find a way of rendering nuclear waste safe, then we have to find a way of making it so inaccessible that a future civilisation is unlikely to come across it by accident, and so secure that even a major earthquake won't cause it to leak into the environment.

Storing this stuff in metal tins on the surface isn't even a gesture at a solution.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#236

Post by fulafel »

Egregriously editorialized title (real one: "Gas and Nuclear Turn Green as EU Parliament Approves New Taxonomy"), the big thing is the greenwashing of gas here.

But you can always clickbait HN by focusing on nuclear, well played for internet points I guess.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#237

Post by Paradigma11 »

henearkr wrote: post #145
jpgvm wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear safety in war time is unproven sure but I would argue that a nuclear power plant is much less dangerous than a hydro dam. Imagine a strike on Three Gorges Dam, at minimum millions would die, without needing to use a nuclear weapon. Sure it's a tough pile of concrete, but that is exactly what a nuclear power plant is too. Nuclear fuel is a non-issue if it was profitable to mine it. Australia has vast supplies…

I concur that, for this kind of near-civilzation-collapse risks, dams are less desirable than wind/solar facilities. But I can't compare the risk posed by a dam and the risk posed by a nuclear fission plant. One is an instant and relatively local disaster, the other is a long term and wide-spread (before containment) pita. However, I suspect that dams are much harder to turn into a catastrophe than nuclear plants. Wh…

"One is an instant and relatively local disaster, the other is a long term and wide-spread (before containment) pita."

And then the flood crashes into a chemical plant or two and suddenly the problem is very long term and wide spread.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#238

Post by KptMarchewa »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #150
ThePhysicist wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and wind alone won't work without support by gas or other non-renewable sources. Try to find a single scientific study that gives a detailed overview of how the German energy mix is supposed to work and that explains how supply will be matched to demand 24/7 all year round. None exists. The whole "Energiewende" is built on the hope that either our neighbors will produce the necessary base capacity to stabilize…

I read the book before the numbers it cites were decades out of date. And even then, it made a pretty good case for renewables in the parts of the globe where most people live. Once you update it with current figures I'm assuming it can only make a stronger case. So are you just using the old figures and pretending those haven't changed? That's like trying to model the next iPhones specs from first principles with sp…

UK did this and that, and yet currently gas + nuclear generates over half of energy production.

https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/GB

Also, UK has one of the best in the world conditions for wind power. Wind sucks in Poland or Czech Republic.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#239

Post by AshamedCaptain »

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…

> It's just sad to see how little actual science is respected in Germany.

What part of this entire discussion has anything do to with science? Is anyone actually contesting the science?

Is it a discussion about the number of orbitals of uranium atoms? Or is it a discussion on which entities handle the long-term financials obligations, whether we favor or not decentralized grids, whether we favor short term or longer term solutions -- which in turn depends on whether the (possibly international) risks are long term or short term, etc. Not much of the later is "science".

Politics is not a science and never can be. This entire story -- the word "green" itself -- is as unscientific as it gets. Not in the "science contradicts it" sense; I mean in the "this is neither provable nor falsifiable and science has nothing to do with it" sense.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#240

Post by kergonath »

logifail wrote: post #225
doe88 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Aren't "modern" nuclear plants such as the EPR all a) very late and b) massively over budget?

The Finnish one was both due to epic project management failures, from bad suppliers with dodgy welds, to changing the reactor design as it was being built to accommodate future regulations. Flamanville is also late and over budget for much of the same reasons (shoddy project management and unreliable suppliers; this time the concrete was out of specs as well). These sort of issues get sorted naturally if yew build in series instead of one-of-a kind.

The Chinese did not have any problem building two, and the British one is progressing more or less as planned.

Also, the EPR is not really a modern design.

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