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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

#431

Post by ben_w »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #155
ben_w wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. then it would be even less politically acceptable, which is already the biggest problem. 2. yes we are sure, because even current green tech — PV and "enough" batteries — is already cost-competitive with nuclear, and we have good reasons to expect both PV and storage to get cheaper.

I doubt it’s a good strategy to put all our eggs in a photovoltaic basket. I love PV tech, I think it’s incredibly useful for small and medium scale self sustainability. And yes, in many areas it makes sense to dedicate a bunch of space to PVs and energy storage. But PV is inherently intermittent and unless you massively overbuild capacity you’ll always face a weather threat. Until we manage to harness nuclear fusion…

> I doubt it’s a good strategy to put all our eggs in a photovoltaic basket.

This is why I still support nuclear despite the cost.

Although…

> But PV is inherently intermittent and unless you massively overbuild capacity you’ll always face a weather threat.

isn't strictly true. In a magical alternative reality where we can do mega-projects and can ignore geopolitics, antipodal power grids are technically fine, much cheaper than batteries, and don't need any backups.

(I'm not sure how easy/hard it would be to make one without such assumptions, only that it takes a minimum of about one years' global aluminium production, so treat it as merely an interesting though experiment at this point).

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#432

Post by CardenB »

potatoz2 wrote: post #427
danenania wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s a very fair argument.

One consideration that comes to mind is if the scale necessary for operating nuclear is much greater than the examples you cited?

Thinking out loud, without taking a stance on either side, it seems we would need to scale nuclear power to the hands of many lesser qualified people than in the cases you mentioned, which would push the tail risk much harder.

That said, I haven’t thought deeply about the comparison here. If we need heavy magnitude of power, then we are bound to have to accept the risk of disaster as such concentrated power centers inevitably become unstable.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#433

Post by pojzon »

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…

Its really funny that this description not only fits my country also but probably quite a few other.

Issue that happens world wide is that politics is filled with “nice face” or “easy to buy” by corporations.

There are no engineers with passion or corruptless ppl joining politics.

Smile and wave guys, smile and wave.

Ps. Here in Poland we talk about German politics as they were those competent ones, go figure.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#434

Post by rich_sasha »

black_puppydog wrote: post #430
otter-rock wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, in principle, we know how to build nuclear. We're slow at it, it's expensive, but it's sort of off-the-shelf.

Long term energy storage, by batter or otherwise..? I don't believe anyone has done it. We're not talking about maybe smoothing out energy supply/demand over 24h, were talking producing energy in the summer for the winter.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#435

Post by parkingrift »

thrown_22 wrote: post #27
parkingrift wrote: post #6

It’s about four decades too late to help anything.

The best time to build a nuclear power plant in 20 years ago. The second best is today.

We need a rapid buildout of green energy. I like nuclear but the Green Democrats of the world ruined it. The world is worse off for their efforts, but someone has to win the race to peak stupidity.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#436

Post by ch4s3 »

pfdietz wrote: post #296
denton-scratch wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are radionuclides in those casks with half-lives of 200,000 years - much longer than human civilisation, and much longer still than the lifetime of a human writing system. We don't even know how to make a label that will make sense in 200,000 years. This attitude only makes sense if one's view is that humanity isn't going to last more than 10,000 years. Unless we can find a way of rendering nuclear waste safe,…

No, the attitude makes sense because of the time value of money. At any point, if interest rates aren't pretty much exactly zero, it pays to delay burying waste. The present cost of guarding it at the surface is The only real argument against this is that the waste ceases to be self-protecting from "amateur" diversion of plutonium in about 300 years, which could greatly increase the cost of guarding. But that's no ju…

> "amateur" diversion

This is always a funny topic when people wax philosophical about dirty bombs as though you wouldn't get cooked trying to open a cask.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#437

Post by dane-pgp »

jpgvm wrote: post #200
dane-pgp wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to pick up on your specific examples, but I don't know why you are classifying alcohol deaths as under-estimated and abortions as over-estimated(?). For the record, the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics reports there are about 95,000 alcohol-related deaths in the United States annually[0], while the CDC reports over 600,000 abortions per year.[1] It's true that someone who reads PR/marketing material is…

Abortions aren't deaths. Even if they were I wasn't looking to draw comparisons, these were just examples of things people don't have informed opinions on.

> Abortions aren't deaths. ... people don't have informed opinions

Well, you've definitely proven your point.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#438

Post by kelnos »

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

> They're convinced Chernobyl can happen again

Of course it can! It's almost certainly much less likely now, but I don't think anyone has presented convincing evidence that it's impossible that something like that could happen again.

And that's a really big deal. Even if the risk of another Chernobyl is ridiculously low, another Chernobyl would be so bad that it's worth considering.

Having said that, I do support nuclear energy, and wish there wasn't so much FUD spread about it. But let's not delude ourselves into believing there are no safety concerns, or that we've solved the waste storage/disposal problem.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#439

Post by AtlasBarfed »

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…

- LCOE of solar and wind beats the pants off of nuclear and coal currently. If it isn't in Germany, well, that's a political and management issue.

- maybe you keep the existing nuclear around for levelling, well, fine. But just be ready for it to get "nuked" once the battery/storage costs combined with wind/solar drop under everything. That day isn't today, and it isn't next year, but with cheap sodium ion and many other chemistries in active improvement... it will.

- nuclear waste disposal is solved... if you have a LFTR or similar tech to "burn" it. Otherwise, the usual handwave on nuclear waste is a telltale sign of "old nuclear", as are the people that say it is safe. Solid fuel rod designs are not safe.

I am not saying that LFTR should be the only path forward for nuclear, but the advantages of LFTR should be what a "real" nuclear solution has. LFTR is:

- scalable in size - meltdown-proof (plug and pool where the liquid loses criticality) - burns/breeds virtually all of its fuel, and IIRC can "burn" spend rod waste - somewhat proliferation resistant

Again, I don't know if the LFTR design challenges are truly problematic, but the CAPABILITIES of LFTR should be a standard next-gen nuclear must be held to.

The Greens aren't correct generally in engineering or science, but what they are right about, indirectly, is the culture of nuclear power that grew up in the Cold War and attached to military needs for weapons isotopes.

Those political priorities overrode safety, good design, economic performance, and other concerns, and left us with the terrible solid fuel rod design.

LFTR got canned in the US in a backroom political power move, and the same nuclear establishment keeps it restricted from funds and research.

Again, I'm not saying LFTR is the "one true path". But its core abilities address the Green concerns: meltdown proof and virtually waste free. Those two aspects are the base table stakes a "next gen nuclear" would need. Maybe you have a combined reactor approach where one design produces from solid or pebble fuel, and then that gets fed to LFTRs for final burn off.

So I guess I would recommend Germany / France keep their nukes going for now, but view them as life support: these things are going away once battery/storage tech scales to meet the need, a virtually guaranteed proposition in the five year near future timeline.

For nuclear to be relevant long term you'll need the safety tablestakes mentioned, but all nuclear projects are 10 years out: you'll need a stable price to target/combat 10 years out from wind/solar, and you don't know that right now.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#440

Post by kelnos »

BurningFrog wrote: post #330
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".

If all you mean by "chernobyl happening again" is "a serious accident could happen", you've moved the goalposts beyond where I think meaningful discussion is possible. It also means that a "new chernobyl" can happen at any power station, be it hydro, coal, solar, etc.

I think this is a disingenuous take.

If the original argument was "the exact same thing that happened at Chernobyl will happen again", then that's meaningless and irrelevant, because... who cares? What people actually care about is whether a nuclear disaster could happen again, one that kills a bunch of people and makes a significant area of land uninhabitable for some long period of time.

If you think that's "moving the goalposts", then I don't think you're here to have a good-faith discussion about why people are worried about nuclear energy.

Having said that, I do believe that a significant accidental nuclear disaster is much much much less likely now than in Chernobyl's time. But that doesn't mean it's impossible, or that we shouldn't think about or be worried about it. And also consider that's "accidental": we also need to consider the possibility of terrorist- or state-level attacks, which may be harder to protect against.

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