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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

#521

Post by zbrozek »

oezi wrote: post #506
xxpor wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeez, I know electricity prices in Europe are higher than in the US generally, but a 6.5c per kwh tax would have been a rate of around 66% at the beginning of 2021 when it was 1.20 USD/EUR and the average US residential rate was ~13c/kwh.

Yes, rates can be much higher. We pay 37c for instance at the moment. On the other hand: To have higher energy prices provides incentives for less use and must be part of an intermediate strategy to bring down CO2 emissions.

Or it's an incentive to use cheaper energy. In my area gas is cheaper than electricity, but policy tries to push folks to use electricity. It would make more sense to drive down the cost of electricity so that it is the economic choice as well as the environmental one.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#522

Post by ask_b123 »

pornel wrote: post #489
dane-pgp wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just not convinced by the argument "Nuclear power is safe as long as we don't make any of the mistakes of previous generations". Chernobyl didn't make the mistakes of Windscale; Fukushima didn't make the mistakes of Chernobyl; and future nuclear power stations won't make the mistakes of Fukushima (hopefully). It's possible that the track record for nuclear plants, and handling radioactive waste, is getting better…

Count how many people have died in these accidents directly and possibly from thyroid cancers, and compare to lung cancers attributed to coal. Coal kills way more people. It's killing right now. There are estimates that more people died from fuel poverty due to closure of Fukushima and subsequent raise in fuel prices, than the Fukushima accident itself. Coal power plants release more radioactive pollution than nuclea…

Here's the comparison: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#523

Post by Nimitz14 »

oezi wrote: post #500
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…

Your comment gets it entirely backwards. France is currently in a terrible spot with their monoculture of nuclear because the hot temperatures have caused shutdowns of many reactors, many old plants are offline because of security concerns and the French operator of the nuclear plants is close to bankruptcy and needs to be pulled back into government ownership because renewables can be so much cheaper today. What Ger…

The problems of nuclear you mention seem fixable and french electricity prices are waaaaaaay cheaper than german ones. I fail to see how france is in a terrible spot when it's germany that's likely to freeze this winter (and has literally no solution for that, other than begging their enemy).

Why do you think solar will get cheaper by another order of magnitude?

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#524

Post by spfzero »

cassepipe wrote: post #502

Seems like everybody is jumping on the "environmentalists that don't like nuclear power do it for ideological reasons and are paid by the oil lobby" resentment bandwagon. While I think it is a fair point and while I do think it's a stupid mistake to close nuclear plants, there are also issues that I rarely see addressed probably because they drown under all the rest : 1. Nuclear plants are very expensive and some pro…

It lends itself to despotic elite rule a lot less effectively than oil though, as you need so much less of it and the economic cost of it is so much less.

Consider if you compare the cost of keeping a petroleum-burning 5 MW plant going for 40 years vs. a nuclear one. How many tankers full of $100 per barrel oil would that be? Just the fuel used by the tankers themselves would dwarf the uranium ore needed for the nuclear plant.

That's not even taking into account newer designs that could be powered from the existing waste of older plants.

As for despotic elite rule, that's what we have faced for decades with oil. Uranium ore is found on all continents, with the largest supplies in Australia and Canada. Oil is run by the Saudis, Putin, Maduro...

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#525

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

worik wrote: post #444
MattGaiser wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kind of depends on what you consider a fact. I support nuclear scientifically. I don’t think it has a chance politically. Scientifically, nuclear waste disposal is very much solvable problem. Politically, expect to spend billions upon billions and then have things like Yucca Mountain canned after lots of construction. Both are true and which ones you consider lead to very different conclusions.

> Scientifically, nuclear waste disposal is very much solvable problem. No it is not. There is no place on Earth that we know is geologically stable for the time periods required We have no way of knowing what society will be like ten thousand years from now, let alone 100,000 years. How do we communicate with those people bout the danger of what we left behind? Greed. Hubris.

If we continue on the current path there will be no society at all. This argument is seriously f'ed up for so many reasons

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#526

Post by markvdb »

arcticbull wrote: post #459
worik wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Waste disposal is a solved problem: you put the spicy rocks back where they came from. In the Australian outback those are places people used to live. How are you going to stop people returning for 200,000 years? Greed. Hubris.

Do you think those aren't solved problems? First, fast reactors yield waste products that principally live only a couple of hundred years. [1] And even to answer your original question directly, there's a whole area of study that's fascinating on how to provide long-term warnings. [3] Not necessarily in the Australian outback, Yucca Mountain is a great choice. [2] [edit](That area is adjacent to the Nevada Test Site…

> fast reactors yield waste products that principally live only a couple of hundred years.

Hundreds of years is not acceptable. Humanity is not able to handle projects spanning hundreds of years time. Look at the Zaporizhia atomic energy site for an extreme example of what I mean.

The problem is not just the time scale either. There are other areas humanity fails at time and again.

P.S. Thank you nevertheless for pointing out several advantages of fast breeder reactors.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#527

Post by wolverine876 »

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

> A lot of the anti-nuclear opinion is passionately opposed to scientific analysis.

It's easy to disparage people who disagree with you (and if they disagree, they must be unscientific! They couldn't be difficult issues and serious concerns). It only poisons attempts to move forward and learn anything.

Much of anti-nuclear energy opinion has been led by scientists and most of the more scientifically sophisticated people I know are very skeptical about nuclear power (including me).

The disparagement makes it look like reactionary politics, not scientific interest - that is their modus operendi - and of course, the reactionary attempt to discredit anything progressive is currently focused on nuclear energy policy.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#528

Post by MorrisMinor »

worik wrote: post #444
MattGaiser wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kind of depends on what you consider a fact. I support nuclear scientifically. I don’t think it has a chance politically. Scientifically, nuclear waste disposal is very much solvable problem. Politically, expect to spend billions upon billions and then have things like Yucca Mountain canned after lots of construction. Both are true and which ones you consider lead to very different conclusions.

> Scientifically, nuclear waste disposal is very much solvable problem. No it is not. There is no place on Earth that we know is geologically stable for the time periods required We have no way of knowing what society will be like ten thousand years from now, let alone 100,000 years. How do we communicate with those people bout the danger of what we left behind? Greed. Hubris.

Nuclear waste disposal has already been solved at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#529

Post by Turing_Machine »

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 ?

1) Outdated design

2) Magnitude 9 earthquake

3) Devastating tsunami

4) Catastrophic fire causing loss of power to all control systems

One (1) person died from radiation.

Just how safe do you expect something to be?

How many fatalities would there be if there were a similar sequence of events affecting something like (e.g.) the Three Gorges Dam in China?

A lot more than one, you can bet.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#530

Post by MerelyMortal »

dv_dt wrote: post #392
throw827474737 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong disagree and just won't help besides fantasies. Lets not dig into the other mess again just because we never went and always deferred starting to do the right thing already 30 years back and now say: nuclear is the only way out. It isn't, it would be too late anyway, it will not scale to the world's power needs, it will cost too much.. and I just haven' touched the usual downsides of nuclear. Even some nuclear…

It would be pretty ridiculous if the lesson of energy after the disruption of energy during the war in the Ukraine is to build more nuclear plants, creating more central points of high disruption in potential conflicts.

As opposed to a dam, solar farm, or wind farm, which are also central points of disruption?
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