Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

earth.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 676 posts

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#361

Post by philipkglass »

yk wrote: post #319
hedora wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

A article reiterating a press release from a company that doesn't have a prototype is not exactly a good source. And at any rate, the article claims that > The small size and large surface area-to-volume ratio of NuScale’s reactor core, that sits below ground in a super seismic-resistant heat sink, allows natural processes to cool it indefinitely in the case of complete power blackout. Of course, the surface that all…

> 2) refueling of this reactor does not require the nuclear plant to shut down.

That is very nice when you're trying to breed plutonium, the natural uranium fuel assemblies only have to irradiated a few weeks and then you would already need to shut the reactor down. When you can switch during operation, than there's less downtime.

So in total I guess it's a pretty inefficient reactor that's perhaps a nice addition to your weapons program.

This is incorrect. The NuScale reactor is not an online-refueling design like the CANDU (which is indeed easily adapted for breeding high grade plutonium simply by adjusting irradation time). It is an offline-refueling design like every other operating PWR. See this NuScale presentation about refueling operations:

https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1515/ML15159A311.pdf

The reactor has to be completely shut down for more than a week during refueling (slide 13). The plant can stay online because a plant contains a minimum of 4 reactor modules:

https://www.nuscalepower.com/about-us/faq

So by staggering refueling times, the plant can continuously generate at least 75% of rated output.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#362

Post by mannerheim »

wsc981 wrote: post #130
agapon wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you the famous (and maybe fake) quote 'The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them' ? It's the same here, but with selling energy to "capitalists". What Europeans might have seen as purely economic affair for the USSR / Russia was just means of getting money to grow and support its army, to buy Western politicians and media influence, etc.

Germany is just the b*tch of the USA though, that becomes very clear in this press conference. Germany has nothing to say over Nordstream: https://youtu.be/OS4O8rGRLf8?t=74

'US Senate approves Nord Stream 2 Russia-Germany pipeline sanctions | The move by US lawmakers is part of a push to counter Russian influence in Europe, but European [i.e., German] lawmakers have said the US should mind its own business.' 2019 December 17 https://www.dw.com/en/us-senate-approves-nord-stream-2-russi...

'Why Germany pipes down when talk turns to Nord Stream 2 sanctions | Chancellor Olaf Scholz won’t say pipeline is finished if Russia attacks Ukraine, despite strong pressure from allies.' 2022 February 8 https://www.politico.eu/article/olaf-scholz-silence-on-nord-...

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#363

Post by Patrol8394 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #251
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…

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

Let's talk Fukushima ?

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#364

Post by belorn »

cure wrote: post #333
knorker wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

People who made those exact arguments 10-20 years ago where wrong, since those plants would have prevented a lot of coal, oil and gas from being burned. Those people have both blood and an ongoing climate crisis on their hands.

Who should we blame in 10-20 from now if people still are burning coal, oil and gas? Who will take responsibility for the inaction?

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#365

Post by elgenie »

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".

Distinguishing between failure modes isn’t nitpicking when the difference is between the plant being totaled for the purposes of future power generation as opposed to spewing radioactivity over a third of a continent.

An Airbus that loses an engine and has to immediately land has objectively failed; however, acting like that’s equivalent to a plane homing into a skyscraper and exploding is not helpful.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#366

Post by bobro »

blablabla123 wrote: post #355
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…

> 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...

The table in that page says photovoltaics are 41B kWh.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#367

Post by greedo »

guerrilla wrote: post #83
Juliate wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, framing it as if Germany policy had not been also ... "influenced" by Russia's long-term strategy would be quite naive.

I think it's a mistake to see that as one sided. Bringing Russia closer to Europe and (according to the now falsified theory) creating conditions for peace while also getting cheap energy has been a goal of plenty of European elites.

Elites who have been compensated handsomely by the Kremlin. "Useful idiots" comes to mind.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#368

Post by greedo »

blub wrote: post #79
Veen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm puzzled about why nuclear is deemed less satisfactory than dependence on Putin's Russia for the energy requirements of the world's 4th biggest economy.

Dependence on the Soviet Union and later Russia worked for 50 years. This partnership, which was being undermined by the US from the beginning, is attributed to establishing a basis for cooperation between the Soviet Union and Western Europe. Considering that the Soviets pulled out peacefully of Eastern Germany, that worked pretty great.

Yes, please give the Soviets due credit for how well they treated the Eastern Bloc countries. The Czechs and Slovaks, along with the Hungarians might like a word with you, to point out a few extreme examples. Same with the rest of the Bloc countries that had to cope with decades of repression.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#369

Post by oldsecondhand »

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…

The German greens were more against nuclear power than fossil. If you care about the environment that's a pretty irrational choice.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#370

Post by zajio1am »

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…

> Goiânia

That (and many others similar incidents, e.g. Ciudad Juárez) is an incident related to medical nuclear technology, caused by radiation source for radiation therapy. Irrelevant to nuclear energy discussion.

Post reply on HN