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

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#271

Post by Aachen » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

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…

You're asking us to Google all of these things for you and summarize the results into a neat coherent summary? I'd be more interested in why you're baffled by the popular opinion to begin with. What are the problems you see with the topics you bring up? Then we can cut to the misunderstandings rather than starting from scratch.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#272

Post by mort96 » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #241

mort96 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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? _Hiroshima_ was re-inhabited just a few years later, and it was literally hit by a nuclear bomb.

Ōkuma, Fukushima is still largely a ghost town from what I can tell. Only parts of the town have been declared successfully decontaminated with residents allowed to return, and only as late as 2019.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#273

Post by derrasterpunkt » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

littlecranky67 wrote: post #184

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 buil…

Yes, taxes and subsidies distort the actual costs of energy production. But if you look at my example, 90% of the Stromsteuer (tax on your energy bill as a household) don't go into funding of energy production, but to stabilize the (very broken) german mandatory pension/retirment system. But yes, one could argue that it is just moving around taxes in the government spending household.

This is because taxes in Germany can’t be tied to a specified purpose. This is intentional.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#274

Post by BurningFrog » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #263

BurningFrog wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the anti-nuclear opinion is passionately opposed to scientific analysis. They're convinced Chernobyl can happen again, and that scientists are arrogantly playing god when they explain what can and can't happen

What "scientific" analysis has claimed "chernobyl can't happen again" ? It would be as ridiculous as someone claiming the new Airbus XXX model can't crash. Even analysis of the type "a chernobyl will happen once every XX years" are more political in nature than scientific, since you are assuming a stable society for decades to come (i.e. no degradation in the skill level of constructors or operators, etc. -- even for…

Chernobyl can't happen again because the awful design that made that failure possible is long ago abandoned.

It's a bit like how the Airbus A380 can't crash like the Hindenburg airship did.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#275

Post by denton-scratch » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 4:42 PM UTC

teakettle42 wrote: post #249

denton-scratch wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s not what decommissioning means and what you’re asking for is childishly ridiculous. How, by your definition, would you decommission the coal and gas plants we’ve been running for forty years while people like yourself threw ignorant tantrums over nuclear? How would you “reverse all harmful results of the operation of a plant”? How are you going to recapture all the pollution they dumped into our air, exactly?

> That’s not what decommissioning means

The word apparently means whatever the responsible authorities want it to mean.

> How, by your definition, would you decommission the coal and gas plants

We used to make gas by heating coal with steam; the result was a contaminated site, coal gas, and coke for steel. But the site was left contaminated with chemical waste - stuff that can in principle be chemically denatured, or buried fairly safely. Thing is, I'm against making new coal-to-gas plants, as much as I'm against new nukes.

I don't have to defend coal and gas power plants; I don't have to explain how to reverse their effects; I'm against building any new ones, and my lack of any remedies for the effects of plants built before I was born doesn't invalidate my stance.

[Edit] I think I missed your point, which was probably based on my use of the word "reversing". You're effectively asking me how to complete the decommissioning of plants that were put out of use before I was born. If you want childish, that's childish: you're asking me for a proposal for reversing climate change.

I'm talking about how to build a nuclear power plant that can be properly decommissioned, in the sense that there's no persistent environmental pollution, and the land can safely be returned to normal uses, such as agriculture and residential housing. I'm against repeating the mistakes my grandparents made, in all their ignorance.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#276

Post by JanSt » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 4:42 PM UTC

Brometheus wrote: post #212

JanSt wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen is a form of storage. Much energy will be lost in between.

It doesn't matter when the energy is basically thrown away right now and therefore free. It's called Einspeisemanagement (EisMan or EinsMan). At the moment: Windy & sunny day? Just throw the energy away! Future: Windy & sunny day? Store the energy for a rainy day!

Yeah it‘s not that easy is it? Enthusiasm and optimism is good but Germany is currently like a train speeding to a wall and people shout: „go faster! We will build breaks easily!“ Russia just took off another big break. And still people don‘t change. This is an emergency situation and people just keep going on the same path. Would be funny if it wouldn‘t be so terrible.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#277

Post by hedora » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #263

BurningFrog wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the anti-nuclear opinion is passionately opposed to scientific analysis. They're convinced Chernobyl can happen again, and that scientists are arrogantly playing god when they explain what can and can't happen

What "scientific" analysis has claimed "chernobyl can't happen again" ? It would be as ridiculous as someone claiming the new Airbus XXX model can't crash. Even analysis of the type "a chernobyl will happen once every XX years" are more political in nature than scientific, since you are assuming a stable society for decades to come (i.e. no degradation in the skill level of constructors or operators, etc. -- even for…

Here's an article from 2018 describing a commercial implementation of a reactor that cannot melt down. (The technology was decades old at that point.)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/01/24/can-we-ma...

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#278

Post by AshamedCaptain » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #274

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What "scientific" analysis has claimed "chernobyl can't happen again" ? It would be as ridiculous as someone claiming the new Airbus XXX model can't crash. Even analysis of the type "a chernobyl will happen once every XX years" are more political in nature than scientific, since you are assuming a stable society for decades to come (i.e. no degradation in the skill level of constructors or operators, etc. -- even for…

Chernobyl can't happen again because the awful design that made that failure possible is long ago abandoned. It's a bit like how the Airbus A380 can't crash like the Hindenburg airship did.

I'm quite sure that no one who asks "can chernobyl can happen again?" is actually interested in the response to "can chernobyl happen again _in exactly the same way_"?. This is malicious nitpicking.

In the same way that I'm sure the victims of the next Airbus crash will be happy to know that "it didn't crash like the Hindenburg did".

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#279

Post by philipkglass » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 4:44 PM UTC

jpgvm wrote: post #29

ben_w wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is uneconomically expensive and currently looks like it may always be so, but there are ways to fairly rapidly scale it up to world demand if we really wanted to.

It appears to be expensive in the West for now. I'm waiting to see how China's rollout goes before declaring that it's straight up expensive. Even if you buy into crap like Chinese reactors being less safe or more poorly regulated they should still be a good benchmark for what is necessary to reach scale nuclear reactor production. Especially their small designs which are expected to be mass produced in factories and…

Chinese nuclear reactors built in China are completed faster than in other countries, and they probably [1] cost less. But it's not clear that Chinese nuclear reactors built in Western countries would be especially affordable. Consider this recently signed deal to build China's Hualong One reactor in Argentina:

https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsargentina-optimistic-ab...

It is supposed to take 8 years to build and cost $8 billion for 1090 net megawatts (1170 gross megawatts) [2]. That's far better than Western AP1000 and EPR projects currently under construction, if it meets its targets. But it's far worse than the planned costs that Western AP1000 and EPR projects had at project start.

Or consider the relative pace of Chinese nuclear and renewable additions in China. China connected a record 8374 megawatts of nuclear power to its grid in 2018 [3]. (In 2021 it connected 2321 megawatts). At a 95% capacity factor, that's about 70 terawatt hours of electricity generated per year. In 2021, China added a record 54880 megawatts of solar power [4]. At a conservative 15% capacity factor, that much solar capacity will generate about 72 terawatt hours of electricity per year. It also added over 47000 megawatts of wind capacity in 2021 [5] which can be expected to yield more than 82 terawatt hours annually at a conservative capacity factor of 20%.

In terms of added electrical output, Chinese renewable projects are outpacing Chinese nuclear projects despite the much lower capacity factors for renewables. I suspect that's because they are much cheaper to build. There may come a saturation point where adding more renewables no longer does anything to displace fossil fuel consumption, because additional supply is all curtailed due to mismatched supply/demand timing, but curtailment can go pretty high (more than 50%) before nuclear yields more marginal decarbonization per dollar of investment.

[1] It's difficult to determine the ground level truth of Chinese project economics. The government is more heavily involved in the economy, press freedom is limited, and language barriers make it hard for people who only read English to keep abreast of what appears in Chinese publications. I am acutely aware that the only reports I read coming out of China are things that somebody else wanted translated into English.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hualong_One

[3] https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails....

[4] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-solar-power-c...

[5] https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1738591/china-repor...

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#280

Post by miniwark » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 4:44 PM UTC

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…

I do not agree.

Actual 'nuclear' (Uranium fission based) is a proved environmental risk:

- Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi (INES level 7) are not some sort of small environmental incidents

- Kyshtym, First Chalk River, Sellafield (1957), Three Mile Island, Goiânia (INES level 6 & 5), and maybe the Tomsk-7 explosion (not rated) where comparably smaller but the environmental impact was not small

- we still do not know what to do with nuclear waste in the long term... But we do know than this waste is not a 'green' crap

- fortunately nuclear waste is not drooped anymore in the ocean... but only since 1993! The quantity rooting under the sea is estimated around 200,000 tons (this also include waste from medical usage). Everybody look elsewhere and cross finger on this.

- (we could also add 8 or 9 nuclear submarines rooting under the sea, and an unknown number of lost wea pons, but i agree than this not from civil reactors)

- it is no secret than environmental researchers who study marines currents, already use "small leaks" from know origin since a long time. The quantity may not have environmental impact, but the leaks are big enough to be used in scientific studies. See for example https://hal-normandie-univ.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02433310... (and many more for the English channel)

That said, Nuclear power could be environmental friendly. Thorium based reactor are promising. They are certainly not 'green' but, far less problematic. Also Fusion reactors could be the perfect 'green energy' if solved.

But, Uranium fission based reactors, are useful: you could use them to start your nuclear bombs collection... And this is one of the historical reason why the Green parties and Greenpeace are against them. With reasons, because actual nuclear plants, do come from military origins (most are based from submarines reactors), and in nuclear power countries the separations between 'nuclear civil' and 'nuclear military' was never a real thing. The other big reason is the historical 'democratic' way all this nuclear plants where build: simply rain local authorities with money, and put anti-nuclear militants in prisons.

Personally, my main problem with the uranium reactors is than it's a dead-end technology. It's true than it do not product greenhouse-effect gas and create a lot of energy, but it's like taking a very big loan instead on working on more secure and less risky nuclear energy. Or investing in more renewable energy, or in less energy consumption, or in non-battery powered electric cars...

Saying than it's 'green' is just green-washing from the actual nuclear lobby.