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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

#351

Post by merb »

breadloaf wrote: post #189
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…

I'm always a bit baffled by the amount of pro-renewables comments on HN. Is energy storage solved problem, or are people in northern latitudes going to freeze to death during winter?

you either have wind or you have solar. most of the time in a country as big as france there is always a place where you have tons of either one. storage is only needed for spikes, which btw. is also needed for nuclear (or you can use gas). btw. your argument is the one I think is so stupid from the pro nuclear crowd, as if peak nuclear is a solved problem. (p.s. it isn't no country in the world does use nuclear for peaks not even france.)

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#352

Post by merb »

rasz wrote: post #25

"Gas and Nuclear Turn Green as EU Parliament Approves New Taxonomy" Why TF dont they unbundle obvious German written putin gas part from the Nuclear option and vote separately on those two?? Edit: this is such an obvious German EU blackmail - let us fund putin or you dont get clean Nuclear power plants.

btw. the gas push was not only by germany, in fact if you have nuclear you have the same remaining problem as renwables. germany btw. was one of the countries which wanted to block the nuclear part. In fact there were some countries (and still are) who wants to block the whole law (both of it). in fact the gas turbines that are getting funded do need to support hydrogen. (btw. the whole law is mostly about funding)

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#353

Post by andbberger »

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…

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

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#354

Post by danenania »

potatoz2 wrote: post #350
danenania wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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-nu…

Isn’t this like comparing the safety of a motorcycle to that of an A380? The “tail risk” of the latter is 800+ dead versus a single rider, but the expected value is way lower in the plane’s case.

In that case, there's plenty of data that shows the plane is safer mile-for-mile. There have been enough flights (of all jet models, not just the A380) and enough crashes to provide a reasonable estimate for the odds of a crash. From there, it's basic math to prove that the motorcycle is far more dangerous.

The challenge with nuclear energy is we don't have a big enough sample to say with certainty, just from the data, what the odds are of a disaster 1000x worse than Chernobyl.

My understanding is Chernobyl itself could have been 1000x worse and rendered much of Eastern Europe uninhabitable if the appropriate steps weren't taken in time, so to a neutral, non-expert observer, that would seem to indicate the odds are greater than zero.

This is what many anti-nuclear people are concerned about, so if you want to get them on your side, you need to explain in detail why that kind of event is no longer possible. Just stating that it hasn't happened, as if that were proof it can't happen, isn't convincing.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#355

Post by blablabla123 »

JanSt wrote: post #31
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…

There are also many institutes (e.g IDW) constantly pumping out papers that conclude nuclear energy has highest costs, highest danger, will leave unsolvable toxic waste problems, renewable energy is extremely cheap, building enough storage is no problem etc. These people are constantly invited to present these „Zukunftsenergien“ as opposed to the old bad nuclear in talk shows. And yet Germany, after two decades and c…

> In 2021 the 6 remaining nuclear power plants produced more power than all installed solar capacity in Germany. 3 were closed at year end.

65 billion kWh from Nuclear and 220 billion kWh from renewables actually

https://www-destatis-de.translate.goog/DE/Presse/Pressemitte...

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#356

Post by anotheracctfo »

JanSt wrote: post #341
Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"While price gouging Germany for gas" Huh?!? Price is settled somewhere in Netherlands, what Russia has to do with it?

They send very little gas (much less than agreed upon) through NS1 to send a message and try to force-open NS2, which leads to very high spot prices

Yeah the OPEC model. Except you can't end it by threatening to "nuke their ass and take their gas."

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#357

Post by switchbak »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #344
cure wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)…

> it takes a lot longer to build a nuclear plant (on the order of 10-20 years) Because of the red tape the mob has strung up. China builds these in two years [1]. France does it in five [2]. [1] https://interestingengineering.com/china-moves-toward-nuclea... [2] https://lemielleux.com/how-long-does-it-take-france-to-build...

That red tape was installed (in North America) post-Five Mile Island however.

South Korea is also very capable at building these quickly, though I've heard concerns raised about their safety (grain of salt, I have no opinion myself).

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#358

Post by Nitramp »

mlindner wrote: post #270
JanSt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also many institutes (e.g IDW) constantly pumping out papers that conclude nuclear energy has highest costs, highest danger, will leave unsolvable toxic waste problems, renewable energy is extremely cheap, building enough storage is no problem etc. These people are constantly invited to present these „Zukunftsenergien“ as opposed to the old bad nuclear in talk shows. And yet Germany, after two decades and c…

> The same talk show people now talk about how we have a heat and not a power problem, so we don‘t need the nuclear power. We are still burning gas and restarted coal power plants. Heating problem IS a power problem given the high efficiency of heat pumps nowadays. And yes they work perfectly fine in Germany's relatively moderate winters.

Only in the most abstract sense, if you're willing to ignore actual installed capacity (and thus reality to some degree).

There are around 350k heat pumps in Germany right now, of 40 million households (ignoring offices, ignoring multi family homes etc).

There is no way Germany could install enough heatpumps to counteract the Russia induced gas crisis, not even over a timeframe of a decade or more. Optimistically you could fix this by 2050.

So yes, there's a heating crisis, not an electricity crisis.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#359

Post by hello_marmalade »

tb0ne wrote: post #295
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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://o…

The reason people are skittish about nuclear is because when it does fail, it fails catastrophically. The biggest failures in memory are all failures that risked making a multi kilometer area potentially completely uninhabitable for decades. Even if the risk is only 1%, coal is a much less scary prospect.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#360

Post by greedo »

denton-scratch wrote: post #285
teakettle42 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, step forward, the insurer of last resort: my grandchildren! We’re the grandchildren of the eco-ideologists that spent the last forty years dumping coal and gas pollution into the atmosphere because they were afraid of nuclear power.

My father was born in 1914; they didn't invent nuclear power until he was 40. It wasn't until the early 2000s that there was consensus that coal and gas caused pollution that was a very serious problem, if you set aside the smogs of the early 50s. My grandparents were from the era of steam-powered mills; I doubt the word "pollution" had been coined before they died. I'm pretty sure the term "ecology" dates from the m…

The term pollution dates back to the 14th Century...
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