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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

#381

Post by walnutclosefarm »

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…

If by "Chernobyl" you mean any nuclear accident that results in some kind of radiation release, then of course, it is a possibility as long as we build any kind of nuclear reactor. But if by "Chernobyl" we mean a massive explosion of an uncontained reactor that contaminates thousand of square kilomoters of land severely, and spreads some degree of contamination across continental areas, then it's an entirely different story. It is possible to build reactors that simply don't have a catastrophic failure mode like the Soviet RBMK, or evenm like those of 1950s and 1960s designs for BWR (used at Fukushima) or PWR (Three Mile Island). Any design can fail, of course, but how they fail, matters.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#382

Post by YetAnotherNick »

trinovantes wrote: post #374
Patrol8394 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's talk Fukushima ?

Issues with Fukushima that could've prevented the disaster were raised by engineers/scientists but were ignored for years by the government/politicians

So? Anything could have been prevented on hindsight.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#383

Post by dane-pgp »

pornel wrote: post #314
dane-pgp wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if human civilization completely collapses Even if it doesn't, nuclear waste storage is still a very expensive and indefinitely long project (assuming you want to keep adding to it, stop it poisoning the ground water, and stop terrorists getting access to it, etc.) > I've had these people tell me that It's still strawmanning if you pick an actual bad argument that someone told you and don't just come up with the ba…

You know nuclear waste isn't green glowing leaky barrells like in cartoons, right? It's stored as solid glass. For super-duper cautious extra safety it can be stored below ground water levels. The volume of the high-level waste is relatively tiny (roughly a swimming pool per year per country). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k

You're right, it sounds like it should be easy to avoid these cartoonishly bad outcomes, but unfortunately reality doesn't always meet our expectations.

"Why Germany is digging up its nuclear waste"

"But the waste had to be stored somewhere, so the voices that warned against selecting Asse II were ignored."

"The office concluded that the risk of groundwater contamination was too big, and the only truly safe option was to retrieve all the waste from the mine and store it elsewhere."

https://euobserver.com/eu-political/132085

(Thank you for offering a fact-based criticism, though, rather than just angrily downvoting.)

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#384

Post by YetAnotherNick »

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…

> 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.

Isn't your choice of telling them false based purely on political agenda? Same happens on other side of the camp, both believe their science is actual science.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#385

Post by belorn »

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...

65 billion kWh from Nuclear and 45 billion kWh from solar, actually...

111 billion kWh from wind, 30 billion kWh from bio gas, 18 billion kWh from hydro, 156 billion kWh from coal, 65 billion kWh from gas.

25% of the total was from coal, making coal the single largest but source for energy in Germany.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#386

Post by pfdietz »

scythe wrote: post #219
ThePhysicist wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and wind alone won't work without support by gas or other non-renewable sources. Try to find a single scientific study that gives a detailed overview of how the German energy mix is supposed to work and that explains how supply will be matched to demand 24/7 all year round. None exists. The whole "Energiewende" is built on the hope that either our neighbors will produce the necessary base capacity to stabilize…

>Sustainable Energy: Without The Hot Air This book has come up on Hacker News before, and I've read it, and it has a crucial flaw, well, two actually: - It underestimates the efficiency of solar panels by quite a bit, supposing that 10% would be a lofty goal (and arguing on this basis that solar farms are not economically viable). In fact, panels on the market are approaching 20% [1], and 25% seems well within reach.…

I believe it also assumes significant input from biomass, which has a very large effect on the amount of land area needed because of the extremely low power/area of biomass.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#387

Post by dv_dt »

dimitar wrote: post #266
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…

Anti-nuclear sentiment (both environmentalist and anti-nuclear weapons) was generously sponsored by the Soviet Union. What a surprise than nowadays the same groups are serving the interests of Russia. The most cynical thing is that the biggest nuclear accident in history was caused by Soviet negligence and incompetence and yet they managed to exploit it politically.

That doesn't make any sense because Russian companies are significant suppliers within the nuclear power production logistics footprint.

edit: eg. https://www.wired.com/story/the-nuclear-reactors-of-the-futu...

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#388

Post by YetAnotherNick »

willcipriano wrote: post #154

You know how I know environmentalists are just dragging their feet on nuclear for ideological reasons? When we talk about a storage facility for nuclear waste, a scenario they insist you prepare for: if human civilization completely collapses to the point that any of the currently spoken languages on earth are no longer able to be read how to we keep the, whatever comes after us, from busting up the concrete and digg…

Also, as a more near term issue, say next 1000 years, what happens in case of war? Right now number of nuclear plants are so few that each could be tracked by the world, e.g. Russia getting hold of Chernobyl area was frightening. But if there are 10 times or even 100 times more number of plants in many more countries, some country will use some other's nuclear plant to prove collateral damage, what Iraq did to Kuwait(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_oil_fires)

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#389

Post by pfdietz »

lven wrote: post #307
goodpoint wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

New nuclear is decentralizing with micro reactors.

Unless microreactors are stacked up at centralized sites to share labor their operating costs are likely to be prohibitive.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#390

Post by throwaway5959 »

Patrol8394 wrote: post #363
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

Let's talk Fukushima ?

Let’s build a nuclear plant in a country famous for tsunamis next on the coast. What could go wrong?
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