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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

#551

Post by elgenie »

Manuel_D wrote: post #463
worik wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Tectonic plates don't move nearly quick enough to be a concern in the span of 100k years. A spot square in the middle of a plate is going to be safe from earthquakes for millions of years. And not to mention, how does ground vibration bring sometimes buried under 500 meters of solid rock back onto the surface? Earthquakes shake the ground, they don't dig deep boreholes.

You’re incorrect about the middle of tectonic plates being safe from earthquakes by definition. Locating naively built skyscrapers in New Madrid, MO, for example, would be a bad idea. [1]

On a geological timescale, tectonic plates occasionally rift down the middle, both successfully (East Africa) and unsuccessfully (a failed plate rift produced the Great Lakes).

With that said, identifying strata that are going to remain seismically stable for a looooong time is a solved problem, and earthquakes generally damage only those things not attached to the (moving) earth.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intraplate_earthquake

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#552

Post by pawsforthought »

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…

To your fifth point, nuclear reactor containment vessels can easily withstand a plane crashing into them [1].

[1]: https://youtu.be/F4CX-9lkRMQ

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#553

Post by cure »

belorn wrote: post #364
cure wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> 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.

Perhaps. But 10-20 years ago, solar/wind/storage was a lot more expensive and a lot less efficient. The situation is quite different now.

> 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?

Realistically, there will probably still be knuckleheads who will be burning coal, oil and gas in 10-20 years from now. But hopefully they will be a very small minority.

The main thing that gives me hope is that it is now so much cheaper to build/run renewables than fossil fuel plants, that the latter will be phased out sooner rather than later, just for economic reasons. Those 6 out of touch old people on the supreme court are trying to delay things - and their actions will have very bad consequences for all of us - but the trend is clear.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#554

Post by c1ccccc1 »

worik wrote: post #455
colechristensen wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let the waste sit in place for decades to decay away much of its radioactivity, dig a hole in a geologically boring mountain away from people, dump waste in the hole. Alternative first step: build breeder reactors to recycle most of the waste into nuclear fuel and dump the smaller amount of leftovers in the mountain.

> dig a hole in a geologically boring mountain away from people Where? Where on Earth will you find a place that will still be like that in 200,000 years.

200,000 years is not much on geological timescales. Here's one example of a place with very stable geology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield

The other main thing to remember when burying nuclear waste is that it's important to keep it away from aquifers and generally any flow of water under the ground. Obviously you'd probably want to seal it in waterproof containers anyway, but it's better to not have to rely on the container staying intact over long spans of time.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#555

Post by pawsforthought »

mschuster91 wrote: post #112
henearkr wrote: post #60

As I heard today again on the radio, the narrative is "to get energy whatever the weather, we cannot rely only on wind and solar". I'm surprised that they haven't heard of the possibility of energy storage . Both already available storage solutions, and the many other solutions in development, are largely enough to enable wind/solar and other renewable sources to replace fossil fuels, without relying on nuclear.

The key thing is, we need a better grid in Europe. While we do have a better grid than the US, simply measured by checking outage rates, it is nowhere near large enough to allow large scale transfer of power across the continent. Assuming we had a decently sized cross-continental grid, it would be possible to have a lot of overcapacity in wind farms pretty much anywhere on the European coast lines - particularly in P…

> Europe simply has nowhere to store the waste of nuclear energy.

Hmm, well Finland is building a spent fuel repository:

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

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#556

Post by pawsforthought »

dsq wrote: post #55

The problem with nuclear right now is that even if we decide to massively increase the share of nuclear power in the energy mix (in itself a very good idea), it will take a lot of time to build up the human technical capital necessary to plan, build, and operate these plants. This should have been started 5-10 years ago, and new graduates woukd be ready. Not to mention physical plant which also takes many years to fi…

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#557

Post by MR4D »

oezi wrote: post #518
MR4D wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of your comments/predictions will be true after this coming winter.

I am not looking forward to my gas bill indeed. Still hard to forsee that nuclear could come to the rescue in any way. Even in France they have scaled back eletric heating and will face hard times when cold weather strikes.

I’m less concerned about high prices than I am about rationing.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#558

Post by freshpots »

belorn wrote: post #546
worik wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There are water around mines that will be toxic to human life until the sun collapse and the earth burns up. People will have to be aware of those dangers for as long human exist, unless humans mutate enough to tolerate lead and sulfur in their fresh water. How should we communicate to those people of those dangers?

Lead and sulfur are relatively easy to remove from water. Wildlife, however, will be affected by that. We have bigger issues.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#559

Post by freshpots »

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.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5329835/canadas-nuclear-waste-to-...

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#560

Post by tb0ne »

kelnos wrote: post #452
tb0ne wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that, but really you have the option of either going all-in on nuclear and potentially making patches of several km² uninhabitable, or going all-in on fossil fuels and making gigantic regions of the earth uninhabitable due to climate change. It is a choice between a very local problem or a global one. There is no free lunch.

No, we also have the option to go all-in on solar and wind power, and avoid both of those bad outcomes. Of course, solar and wind aren't perfect either, and have other problems that need solving (energy storage for nighttime and dark/calm days, for one thing), but "nuclear or fossil fuels" is the falsest of false dichotomies.

You can't just snap your finger and say "we go 100% renewables now!". Germany is probably one of the country that commits the strongest to transitioning to renewables right now, and we started that process in 2011 and expect to reach 100% renewables between 2035 and 2040 the earliest. In the meantime, you HAVE to use another source.

That is 30 years for which you have decide to etiher use fossil fuels or nuclear. So do you wan't to dump CO2 into the air for 30 years and further advance climate change, plus kill millions due to air pollution? Or do you want to accumulate nuclear waste for 30 years, but have way fewer deaths and you don't worsen climate change further?

It is not a nice choice, but it is a choice that has to be made. And Germany decided to choose fossil fuels instead of nuclear.

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