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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

#331

Post by Tuna-Fish »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #245
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…

The headline from HN: "Nuclear turn green" (why the typo?) The actual headline: "Gas and Nuclear Turn Green as EU Parliament Approves New Taxonomy" (HN left out gas) So gas is actually being considered "green" now, so calling it a "cleaner" fuel as you do is actually what they're doing.

Not really. Under the rules, it's possible for a gas turbine investment to fall under the clean energy rules, but there is a lot of small print.

Mostly, the gas turbine must be able to run on a clean fuel, and there must be actual plans for a switchover.

When I first read that gas turbines can fit under clean energy rules now, I was kind of angry, but I calmed down after I read the full rules.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#332

Post by BurningFrog »

neuronexmachina wrote: post #320
k__ wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I heard a physicist evaluate nuclear, it didn't look like any notable improvements happened in the last 20 years.

Do you have the source where you heard that? Also worth noting that Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island were all built 50-60 years ago.

Right. This is a bit like evaluating airline safety based on the design of Amelia Earhart's plane.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#333

Post by cure »

knorker wrote: post #292
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

> 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)

But... we all know that it takes a lot longer to build a nuclear plant (on the order of 10-20 years) than it does to build (large) solar or wind farms (on the order of 1-5 years).

So.... yeah, if it was magically possible to replace all coal with nuclear right now, that would be a net improvement in terms of carbon output and general pollution.

But we live in the real world, and that is not possible, so I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, to be honest.

I'm pretty sure that enough solar/wind + storage can be built to replace a significant percentage (30%? 50%?) of the remaining coal plants, before the first new nuclear plant's plans and siting are even finalized, let alone before a new nuclear plant is fully operational.

And it's going to be a lot cheaper, too.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#334

Post by greedo »

pydry wrote: post #312
concordDance wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In Germany the maximum insurance liability for nuclear disasters is $2.5 billion. In the US it's $0.35 billion. Fukushima cost $800 billion. This happened essentially because without a liability cap the entire insurance industry considers nuclear power to be ridiculously risky. So the government, who wanted to protect investors, stepped in. I feel like a lot of people who dont know this want to educate me about how s…

Governments insure a lot of things, some that are arguably idiotic. The US gov insures people who build houses right on the coast. The homeowners couldn't afford private insurance since the expected costs would be astronomical. So the Gov steps up. Same with New Orleans, built on an unsustainable location. So every decade or so, the Gov chips in a couple hundred billion so people can go to Mardi Gras...

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#335

Post by ricardobayes »

touisteur wrote: post #289
ricardobayes wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The message and reality have always been detached in Europe: almost every physics department I know has a nuclear institute. And funding is there, too. The know-how was never lost in my opinion.

I think the engineering know-how isn't there as much. When you haven't actually built a plant in 30 years and all the experienced building and designer engineers have moved on, you don't actually know how to build one any more. I feel the delays on the new projects are mostly caused by lack of experience, lack of clarity on actual risks, a lot of second system syndrome (we're doing it right this time , say the mainta…

Hungary is just building one right now.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#336

Post by theptip »

miniwark wrote: post #280
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 wha…

Fukushima is a good case study. Everybody freaked out about it, but if you actually look at the data objectively, I can't see how it's anything other than a resounding success for nuclear.

In a once-in-a-generation worst-case scenario (an earthquake beyond the safety parameters to which the plant was designed), you have something on the order of a hundred deaths caused by the reactor leak (this estimate attempting to include lifetime deaths from cancer and so on). Compare this to the death toll of the disaster itself -- something like ten thousand people died from the tsunami. And the conclusion we draw is that nuclear is unsafe? Certainly, the damage and disruption caused by the exclusion zone were substantial. But you'll notice that despite the tsunami, people want to move right back into the tsunami zone even though they know there is a once-in-a-generation risk of a 10k death disaster. Contrasting that tsunami risk with nuclear, "this is worse than climate change and we need to turn off existing reactors" is the opposite conclusion than we should have come to. The correct conclusion IMO is "even extremely rare disasters now result in relatively small damage and death toll". In other words, Fukushima should update you towards thinking that modern nuclear is quite safe, not away from that.

One PR problem that nuclear has is that we have extremely sensitive detectors for radiation, so it was possible to detect an increase in radiation in Pacific fish following the Fukushima disaster. The lay public doesn't understand that this is increase was something like one banana's worth of radiation per fish, completely harmless. We simply have extremely sensitive detectors, and most people aren't able to understand the concept of orders of magnitude that small.

While I definitely don't advocate for dumping nuclear waste in the ocean as a general approach, it's worth noting that deep underwater is not the worst place for a small amount of nuclear waste to end up. There is a lot of water in which to dissolve the radioactive particles, and so it's unlikely to actually cause harm. For example the one-off plan to discharge Fukushima cleanup waste water in the ocean was controversial but probably makes sense.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#337

Post by moffkalast »

paganel wrote: post #168
henearkr wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it be scalable? Most of the solutions I know of are scalable (those that do not require rare minerals).

What solutions do you know? The hydro ones are not scalable, that's for sure. One, you'd never, ever get the environmental permits to build the dams behind them, and two, you can only build them in mountainous, maybe hilly terrain, that would add tons of costs related to distribution. I had also read something about using salt deposits, but maybe I'm remembering wrong. And no, Tesla-like batteries, or any batteries f…

There's nothing quite as infuriating when people scream about NIMBY being a deal breaker for nuclear, then peddle damming up entire valleys where people actually live right now to use as pumped hydro storage. It's like they can't even hear themselves speak.

And as you point out, most recent battery advances seem to be on par with graphene in that they promise everything yet can't seem to leave the lab, much less be manufactured anywhere close to the scales required.

Out of all the renewables I suppose wave power is the most prospective right now. It's consistent, runs 24/7, and could be placed at most shore locations. Probably not quite enough output to make a dent though.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#338

Post by cogman10 »

tobias3 wrote: post #327
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.

RBMK-1000 is actually still in use in Russia at three locations (they obviously fixed the bug that lead to the disaster, so it won't repeat 1:1...). That also points at one issue. All the now >50 year old reactors should have been replaced with newer versions at some point. Just think about what kind of electronics there is in those things. This didn't happen anywhere. Not in Germany and not in France.

> All the now >50 year old reactors should have been replaced with newer versions at some point.

Seems like an issue with how humans think in general. "It's not an issue now, so why worry about it?"

These sorts of creeping disasters never seem to be addressed by any society in a timely fashion.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#339

Post by fallingknife »

pydry wrote: post #312
concordDance wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In Germany the maximum insurance liability for nuclear disasters is $2.5 billion. In the US it's $0.35 billion. Fukushima cost $800 billion. This happened essentially because without a liability cap the entire insurance industry considers nuclear power to be ridiculously risky. So the government, who wanted to protect investors, stepped in. I feel like a lot of people who dont know this want to educate me about how s…

That's not going to protect the investors. If a company causes damages beyond its liability insurance cap, plaintiffs can sue the company for the difference.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#340

Post by rmbyrro »

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…

> blame the highly ideological stance on the way people rise to power in politics and administration in Germany

Don't be so harsh on your country. It's like that everywhere. But it gets better over time. It used to be a lot worse centuries ago...

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