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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

#421

Post by barbazoo »

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 such a pain how certain groups are so hung up on specific energy sources. German greens will never consider nuclear energy, Albertans will never consider anything that didn't come out of the ground either as oil or oil derived. It's like belonging to a sports team, it's silly.

I used to be very much against nuclear energy because of the unsolved issue around dealing with it's waste. Two decades later after learning about climate change and understanding more about pros and cons of different fuels and ways to generate electricity, it's obvious that nuclear energy can play a useful role in the transition off fossil fuels.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#422

Post by yongjik »

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 ?

Fukushima also coincided with the largest earthquake Japan has ever seen (which caused Fukushima incident itself and complicated evacuation efforts). The expected death toll ranges between several hundred and several thousands.

By comparison, vehicle emission is expected cause ~20,000 premature deaths in the US, every year [1]. (Sorry, I couldn't find a stat for Japan.)

In other words, mankind's second worst nuclear disaster killed about as many people as vehicle emission kills in the US every month. That's not counting car accidents.

In fact the wikipedia page about the disaster [2] contains this amusing bit of information, which might not be a fair way of looking at it, but I can't say it's factually wrong:

> it has been estimated that if Japan had never adopted nuclear power, accidents and pollution from coal or gas plants would have caused more lost years of life.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/science-health-business-environme...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#423

Post by legulere »

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?

Winter is the time of the year most energy is produced by wind: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Germany_Monthly_Elec...

It's also not really an issue that nuclear is free from. It's very difficult for nuclear to follow demand and it is not as reliable as can be seen with France's current struggles.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#424

Post by belorn »

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 hold all power sources to the same standard. As long nuclear don't put their pollution into the air, storing it is almost infinitive better. Any energy source that just release pollution into the environment as a cost-saving strategy should be banned, which by economical standard makes all fossil fuel energy sources (and possible some bio fuel ones) nonviable.

The same is for handling worst case scenarios, and here we got a prime example for which to base a minimum standard. Hydropower dams has very bad worst case scenarios if they burst. For the person who dies, neither radiation poisoning or drowning is pretty pleasant, so which ever regulation and liability we want to apply to both is fine by me.

One option to is to ban any energy source the release pollution, and any energy source that has a risk to human lives. The candle industry would be happy, through I suspect there would be an increase in house fires.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#425

Post by yetanother-1 »

barbazoo wrote: post #421
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 such a pain how certain groups are so hung up on specific energy sources. German greens will never consider nuclear energy, Albertans will never consider anything that didn't come out of the ground either as oil or oil derived. It's like belonging to a sports team, it's silly. I used to be very much against nuclear energy because of the unsolved issue around dealing with it's waste. Two decades later after learn…

When oil producing countries are racing to get nuclear energy, it remains no surprise that it is something that will only help in the transition, because burning the fule is not a enough!

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#426

Post by legulere »

JanSt wrote: post #40
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.

Germany planned to use gas to bridge times with little wind and solar power to be able to turn off nuclear energy. Not smart but true. The new plan is to build even more renewables. and massive storage capacity, a very optimistic undertaking.

Less optimistic than expanding nuclear power when even France does not even manage to replace old failing reactors.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#427

Post by potatoz2 »

danenania wrote: post #354
potatoz2 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dat…

I see what you’re saying, but it seems impossible to prove it literally cannot happen if you just assume every safety system we put in place all fail at once, which is _possible_ I guess.

We live with worse tail risks daily though: we have nuclear weapons in the center of Europe (could be misused, there could be an accident, etc.), we have labs that handle or create deadly pathogens (there could be a leak, etc.), we live near volcanoes or in earthquake/tsunami prone areas, and of course we are living through climate change with unknown tail risk (to crops, to temperatures, etc.).

If you accept that sort of question with no real probability of happening (“what if 5G renders us all infertile because we misunderstand high frequency radio waves?”, “what if the flu vaccine produced this year kills us all?”), you can’t really do anything. It’s impossible to prove a negative, we have to deal with expected values given our knowledge.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#428

Post by why-el »

How do people square climate change and violent currents across EU rivers with Nuclear installations so close to such rivers (for instance the Blayais power plant)? I am genuinely curious. Is the idea that we will build stations that can withstand such forces? It's not just warming rivers, but also notoriously unpredictable conditions and our inability to make up an accurate model of what might happen. If someone has a study that takes this angle I am happy to read it.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#429

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #376
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the book before the numbers it cites were decades out of date. And even then, it made a pretty good case for renewables in the parts of the globe where most people live. Once you update it with current figures I'm assuming it can only make a stronger case. So are you just using the old figures and pretending those haven't changed? That's like trying to model the next iPhones specs from first principles with sp…

I'm mostly referring to the section on storage, which is still largely true today. Germany does not have enough mountain areas to build significant hydro storage, and no other storage technology currently comes close to that in terms of efficiency and scale. We could of course produce hydrogen and burn that again but there the round-trip efficiency is only around 20 % in the best case I think (up to 50 % if we could…

The section on storage that literally starts by pointing out that a renewable only or nuclear only plan would both require storage?

And then lays out multiple solutions, including 20Kwh of EV battery storage for every person which must have been basically science fiction at the time of writing but now sounds entirely boring and inevitable for reasons entirely separate from power storage.

Yeah I'd say that holds up pretty well, but I'm still not seeing the problem it apparently poses for today's world of cheap renewables?

We need and want to produce lots of green hydrogen for non-burning purposes. That fits perfectly into the demand response idea he lays out in reasonable detail. So why do you seem to think pumped hydro storage was the only solution he mentioned?

Even with his dated view on PV prices, he raises the possibility of importing hydrogen:

> "Solar photovoltaics were technically feasible for Europe, but I judged them too expensive. I hope I’m wrong, obviously. It will be wonderful if the cost of photovoltaic power drops in the same way that the cost of computer power has dropped over the last forty years."

What a great quote to look back on from a future where his hopes came true.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#430

Post by black_puppydog »

otter-rock wrote: post #394
black_puppydog wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll preface this by stating that I'm German and I'm intuitively against using nuclear. But hear me out anyhow. :) At this point the climate crisis is bad enough that I won't even fight against nuclear as such. If you can build it safely I won't stand in your way. I'll be busy across the street, fighting against coal, oil & gas. Thing is, the time scale at which nuclear stations are constructed isn't at all the same…

People often don't realize that intermittent renewables must be paired with backup generation or storage. But energy storage at the scale of a 100% renewable system is currently an unsolved problem. So you really only have two options: 1. Continue to back up with fossil fuels 2. Temporarily back up with nuclear Check my comment history for a debate on nuclear safety.

> Temporarily back up with nuclear

I think the assumption that we can build nuclear baseload capacity faster than storage solutions is... just that. An assumption. Needs citation.

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