Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

earth.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 676 posts

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#561

Post by throwawayjun21 »

pvaldes wrote: post #462
pfdietz wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 5.1 earthquake is rather weak. This would likely not have damaged an NPP near there.

Fortunately we will never know it. The damage to homes was 36 million euro in any case, but this is not the only thing that matters really. The bad press of an European Fukushima in the year of Fukushima would have destroyed the tourism in thousands of Km of the Mediterranean Spanish Coast. Would you buy tomatoes cultured near a central nuclear that "may not have been damaged" by an earthquake?. Would you pass your h…

Same story everywhere, Not in my backyard protests. People get what they deserve.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#562

Post by henearkr »

paganel wrote: post #168
henearkr wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it be scalable? Most of the solutions I know of are scalable (those that do not require rare minerals).

What solutions do you know? The hydro ones are not scalable, that's for sure. One, you'd never, ever get the environmental permits to build the dams behind them, and two, you can only build them in mountainous, maybe hilly terrain, that would add tons of costs related to distribution. I had also read something about using salt deposits, but maybe I'm remembering wrong. And no, Tesla-like batteries, or any batteries f…

For example redox flow batteries, or molten salt energy storages.

Probably many other systems too.

They are scalable.

As for dams: you can also imagine small-scale gravity storages, like water towers. No need for a mountain like to build a dam.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#563

Post by henearkr »

moffkalast wrote: post #337
paganel wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What solutions do you know? The hydro ones are not scalable, that's for sure. One, you'd never, ever get the environmental permits to build the dams behind them, and two, you can only build them in mountainous, maybe hilly terrain, that would add tons of costs related to distribution. I had also read something about using salt deposits, but maybe I'm remembering wrong. And no, Tesla-like batteries, or any batteries f…

There's nothing quite as infuriating when people scream about NIMBY being a deal breaker for nuclear, then peddle damming up entire valleys where people actually live right now to use as pumped hydro storage. It's like they can't even hear themselves speak. And as you point out, most recent battery advances seem to be on par with graphene in that they promise everything yet can't seem to leave the lab, much less be m…

I'm not doing NIMBY.

There are a lot of promising storage solutions, some of which went online recently, and they were pretty much large scale.

A lot more are planned, for example just in Australia: https://www.energy-storage.news/australian-large-scale-batte...

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#564

Post by BenoitP »

7952 wrote: post #324
automatic6131 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? It is technically solved, but politically unsolved. YMMV about how much of a deal breaker this is. >Are old powerplants properly decommissioned and replaced with new ones when the time comes? Not a problem that…

But it isn't a competition between technology. It is a competition between industrial-societal complexes that include supply chains, resources, training, politics and a large number of flawed human beings. Having the best technology isn't enough. The human infrastructure behind is what wins. And in that respect the renewables/battery complex is just more successful. We may well be able to scale up storage to support…

> We may

Here it is. We just don't base the immediate future of the underlying infrastructure of our whole economies on a 'may'. We do it with proven, existing, scalable tech.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#565

Post by guerrilla »

wolverine876 wrote: post #541
guerrilla wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a mistake to see that as one sided. Bringing Russia closer to Europe and (according to the now falsified theory) creating conditions for peace while also getting cheap energy has been a goal of plenty of European elites.

> Bringing Russia closer to Europe and (according to the now falsified theory) creating conditions for peace It's not falsified. It may have improved conditions for peace; the situation could have been far worse now. Real-world issues don't work out neatly; they are extremely complex; you never know what the alternative outcome would have been. As an analogy, eating healthy food and getting exercise isn't 'falsified'…

Yeah, definitely. I meant the position that it would be sufficient or decreased the probability much more than it could have (and did.) I'm actually of the opinion that it was the right thing to do and really we didn't do enough connecting the economies, bridging the cultures and elites and that's why we ended up in this situation. On the other hand, we probably shouldn't have gone that far in on gas without having done the rest of that and seeing actual results. If the long-term costs were accounted for, I think green was actually cheaper all along.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#566

Post by ryan93 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #514
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…

We still don't need nuclear. We have many other solutions, including reduction of power consumption, cap-and-trade carbon credits, and much more. What's happened is that, bizarrely, people have completely conceded to the reactionaries. People have given in, and now give the reactionaries free reign, making it a fait accompli that none of those solutions will happen. If you quit trying and let the reactionaries off th…

If people took climate change seriously in the 80s nuclear would have been a dramatically better option than solar/wind

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#567

Post by BurningFrog »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #342
BurningFrog wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. WTF? Chernobyl will NEVER happen exactly the same way again, that much is obvious since a) it was already a pretty rare event to begin with, b) the event is likely referenced during the training of every nuclear operator _worldwide_, making an exact…

OK, I'll clarify:

Modern reactors all have a containment shell made of concrete and steel that is capable of keeping the melted down uranium core inside it, if the worst possible event would happen. Had Chernobyl had this, the incident might have destroyed the reactor and even killed some employees, but that would have been the end of it, and the world would never even have heard about the incident.

There are also plenty of other security improvements since that ancient design, but the containment shell alone makes what I would call "chernobyl happening again" just about impossible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment_building

Biggest dam accident is arguably worse than Chernobyl: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#568

Post by dane-pgp »

jpgvm wrote: post #499
dane-pgp wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Abortions aren't deaths. ... people don't have informed opinions Well, you've definitely proven your point.

No, you have proven mine. Abortions aren't deaths any more than pulling out constitutes murder. It's just a bunch of cells like any other until it becomes able to sustain life independently at which point abortion is essentially illegal everywhere in the world except in seriously extreme circumstances. Attempting to define it otherwise takes some fairly substantial mental gymnastics. If I have to amputate my arm did…

> until it becomes able to sustain life independently

You mean get a job and earn a living, or just forage in the woods for berries?

> at which point abortion is essentially illegal everywhere in the world except in seriously extreme circumstances.

Assuming you mean "at fetal viability" (the RvW standard), I think you may be surprised to learn that 6 states plus DC allow abortions at any stage of development and for any reason.[0]

> If I have to amputate my arm did I "kill" my arm?

Does your arm have distinct DNA from the rest of your body? Was your arm going to naturally develop into a healthy individual with their own rights and desires?

> Is a baby part of the mother or is it special because some of the DNA was donated externally?

Thank you for correctly using the term "baby". I ask your question back to you in the context of a hypothetical law allowing the abortion of newborns. Would your answer change if this hypothetical law only applied to newborns with life expectancies less than 5 years?

> What distinguishes it from viral infections that introduce foreign RNA?

The baby has human DNA (and RNA). That seems relevant if we are asking whether the baby should have human rights or not.

> I don't think I'm uninformed.

It seems like you've thought about your position a lot, which is great, but I'm not sure if you've fully considered enough of the possible counter-points to it. Thank you for sharing your position with me, though.

[0] https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/state-indicator/ges...

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#569

Post by AtlasBarfed »

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…

A MSR/LFTR can simply have a heat plug and a "cooling pool" where the fuel spreads out (the pool is not actively cooled at all). So if the reaction is going off the rails, the plug melts, the liquid disperses in the pool, and neutron economy cliffdives and the fuel stops reacting automatically

A solid fuel rod just needs the right disruption, and you have a meltdown. It's inherent to solid fuel designs because they are ... solid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Fukushima_Daii...

I look at that timeline and all the active systems that are necessary in solid fuel rod. LFTR doesn't need those to cool, it is a somewhat self-regulating design. There's no high-pressure steam to worry about regulating.

Additionally LFTR:

1) breeds its fuel from Thorium, a low radioactivity element, so some stockpile of heavily radioactive stuff isn't hanging around.

2) "burns" most/all of its fuel, so there isn't some stockpile of bad waste that can get washed away.

I'm not sure if pebble bed type stuff or other schemes could have similar guarantees, and it's not like an underwater LFTR wouldn't have lots of strange elements leaking, but there are so many failure events in that fukushima timeline that IMO a LFTR design would have simply shut down and no big deal.

http://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/timeline/

Again, all those pressure events and active cooling system failure points.

LFTR is generally an unproven design, but it has so many good features that I view it as the starting point of next gen nuclear. I think its scalability is the key to nuclear's relevance in the future to compete economically with mature solar/wind/battery.

To get back to your point about the politics: the current nuclear industry... the lobbyists, the regulators, the "culture" ... is gravitationally bound with the solid fuel rod design. A clean slate is needed, and wind/solar sweeping away the economically unviable and inherently dangerous old designs and their political structures is probably doing nuclear a favor in the long run.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#570

Post by dv_dt »

MerelyMortal wrote: post #530
dv_dt wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A lets say 1GW nuclear reactor is much more central vs 1000 1MW solar utility grade installs. If you say some portion of them are residential scale 24-40kW installs, then it would be incredibly difficult to remove electrical power from a nation.
Post reply on HN