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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

#291

Post by Gravityloss »

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…

This is a very good (and long) article looking at the history of nuclear energy in Germany in a broader context. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/20/germany-nuclear-power-e...

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#292

Post by knorker »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #278
BurningFrog wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Is it not malicious to scream "chernobyl!" willfully deceptively or willfully ignorantly confusing what can and cannot happen?

More people die every single year from radiation in coal than have died in the entire history of nuclear power. Replacing all coal with nuclear would save more lives and health than fighting nuclear ever could, even in theory.

And delaying coal to nuclear under the banner of "wind and solar maybe one day can help a bit" has blood on its hands.

Every year coal is still here, instead of nuclear, is 100 years of death. If building powerplants (of any type) were instant, and solar were one year away, then we should STILL replace all coal with nuclear TODAY, to minimize harm. (in a spherical chickens in a vacuum sort of way)

And not only do we not have enough solar, we don't even have a plan for energy storage for solar and wind. We have ideas, not a plan.

So solar&wind replacing coal&nuclear is further away than fusion power, by multiples.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#293

Post by concordDance »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #239
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…

Nuclear power was ended in Germany for political reasons. The public has an incorrect idea of how dangerous nuclear power is and how dangerous nuclear waste is and it was easier for the politicians to go along with it for points than stand it's ground.

If you're making policy based on scientifically inaccurate ideas then you aren't respecting the science.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#294

Post by hedora »

rich_sasha wrote: post #169

Some back-of-the-grubby-napkin maths. Nuclear is currently about 10% of global electricity production. We could go all-nuclear, therefore, by going 10x on nuclear reactors (less in fact because there are renewables too but nvm). There have been two major, critical nuclear energy incidents - Chernobyl and Fukushima. I'll count them both, though see caveat [1]. That's 2 incidents in 50 years. If we went all-nuclear and…

Rooftop solar PV kills about 10x more people than nuclear per terawatt hour, at least according to this 2008 study:

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all...

There might have been big advances in rooftop safety since then (but I doubt it).

(I think we need more solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, and whatever other carbon neutral renewable energy sources you can think of.)

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#295

Post by tb0ne »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #239
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…

It is stuff like people religiously dissmising you when you tell them that nuclear is nearly the safest power source in terms of deaths per TWh [1].

They don't base their opinion regarding safety on data, they base it on the feeling that they get from seeing large disasters and not seeing the countless deaths caused in silence, and they refuse to update their view even in the face of contradicting data.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#296

Post by pfdietz »

denton-scratch wrote: post #235
pfdietz wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

No, the attitude makes sense because of the time value of money.

At any point, if interest rates aren't pretty much exactly zero, it pays to delay burying waste. The present cost of guarding it at the surface is The only real argument against this is that the waste ceases to be self-protecting from "amateur" diversion of plutonium in about 300 years, which could greatly increase the cost of guarding. But that's no justification for burying it now.

Waiting also reduces the thermal output from fission products, which reduces heat buildup in the repository, at least a bit. And it would allow the waste to be reprocessed (and more easily) if that (perhaps unexpectedly) becomes appropriate. It would also allow time for other disposal methods, such as launching into space, to become competitive. How cheap will the descendants of SpaceX's launchers be in 300 years?

I think there may have been an argument for rapidly burying waste during the cold war, where surface waste could be volatilized by a direct H bomb strike, causing enhanced local long term fallout. That's more an argument against nuclear power itself, though, as NPPs could also be disrupted by direct strikes.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#297

Post by titzer »

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…

The high-order bit is that nuclear waste isn't very much, is solid and is manageable. Your average US nuclear plant will produce 3 cubic meters of solid waste each year. That's about the size of a refrigerator. In the US, the vast majority of such waste is sitting inert in cooling ponds doing no harm at all, where it has been sitting for decades with no real incidents.

Compare that with a coal-fired power plant where the waste is gaseous, toxic, and enormous. Thousands and millions of tons. And fly ash is radioactive. Far more radiation is produced by coal plants than nuclear plants because of the radioactive isotopes of carbon and other trace elements. And that's just blasted right into the air. Not to mention the CO2!

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#298

Post by goodpoint »

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…

Instead of accusing people of being ideological and irrational why don't you address all the issues around nuclear?

Political stability VS centralization of power is one. Nuclear power is highly centralized and vulnerable to corruption.

And also to war, terrorism and social unrest.

If we are to expect extreme climate and social instability in the next 50 years, it's safer to democratize and localize energy production and storage.

Renewables go in that direction. Nuclear goes in the opposite direction.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#299

Post by danenania »

GuB-42 wrote: post #243
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? It has never been a problem in the first place. At least not a technical problem. Sure, it is nasty stuff, to be treated with respect, but not worse than toxic chemicals we regularly deal with. It is also potentially useful stuff: rare, exotic matter that gives off energy. Compare with coal plants that also produce nuclear waste (there are radioisotopes in coal), but that waste is dumpe…

"In the end, even with Chernobyl, nuclear power is still one of the safest per unit of energy produced."

I'm not anti-nuclear at all, but I see this argument used a lot and I don't think it's a good one. The concerns with nuclear are all about tail risk. Comparing past results to other forms of energy doesn't address this since neither Chernobyl nor Fukushima were worst case scenarios for nuclear.

An effective pro-nuclear argument should address the tail risk concern head-on rather than talking past it.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#300

Post by athinggoingon »

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…

Germany's anti-nuclear environmental movement was, in part, funded by Russia. https://www.transparency.org/en/press/germany-state-governme...
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