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EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

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Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#161

Post by a3w »

Clean, mostly. With future? No, it creates primary heat. Wind and solar do not.

Water power also does not, but power from damns is not clean if you want an eco-friendly power source.

Wind currently also has a bigger environment impact than solar, but is of course a source available more frequently at night [citation needed, just kidding].

And waste we need to dispose of, which no countries has long term experience in storing. Except for costly disasters in how not to intermediately store it, here in Germany.

If the very finite amount of nuclear fuel is so useful, why not make future generations happy by preserving it for them, and for now, limiting its use until we learned how to add to the initial price the full cost of long term storage, with further disasters as a learning experience for that?

Saving lives and being cost-effective in the short run might work, but every energy expert says in 50 years, nuclear will have to be phased out anyway. And fusion could provide clean, but also primary heat inducing energy. So even that will not save us.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#162

Post by mulmen »

otikik wrote: post #104
delusional wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> limitless clean energy source Like the guy you're responding to, I'm not a nuclear hater. We also have other "limitless clean energy sources" however, wind and solar. How is nuclear going to benefit humanity in ways electrical energy hasn't already? We haven't been energy constrained in the past 10-20 years. It really doesn't seem like additional energy production is going to make that much of a difference.

“Limitless” in that context means “it still happens in a cloudy week with no wind”

That is what storage and long distance transmission are for. It’s very hard to take these tired arguments seriously.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#163

Post by boringg »

reenorap wrote: post #24

We need to drive down the costs of implementing nuclear energy. Most of it are fake costs due to regulation. I understand that regulation is needed but we also need nuclear energy, we have to find a streamlined way to get more plants up and running as soon as possible. I think they should all be government projects so that private companies can't complain that they're losing money and keep have to ratchet up the pric…

This should be a quick reminder to the crowd -- Nuclear is almost always a public/private partnership to manage the project development costs and to keep the cost of capital in a reasonable range. The costs are large for a private company to put up the capital with the risk involved.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#164

Post by yongjik »

jama211 wrote: post #84

I’m totally fine with nuclear honestly, but I feel like I don’t understand something. No one seems to be able to give me a straight answer with proper facts that explain why we couldn’t just make a whole load more renewable energy generators instead. Sure, it might cost more, but in theory any amount of power a nuclear plant would generate could also be achieved with large amounts of renewables no?

As a supporter of nuclear, I think most nuclear supporters will be happy if we achieve carbon neutrality by any means.

But as other commenters pointed out, renewables are not achieving that in most places. According to Google, a staunchly anti-nuclear Germany has 6.95 tons per capita at 2023. France achieved that at 1986 (!!) and is now at 4.14.

It's really a question that should be directed at renewables: "If renewables are so cheap and fast to deploy, how come 39 years after Chernobyl, Germany still cannot get below France in CO2 emission?"

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#165

Post by bluGill »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #119
jama211 wrote: post #84

I’m totally fine with nuclear honestly, but I feel like I don’t understand something. No one seems to be able to give me a straight answer with proper facts that explain why we couldn’t just make a whole load more renewable energy generators instead. Sure, it might cost more, but in theory any amount of power a nuclear plant would generate could also be achieved with large amounts of renewables no?

(just based on a little googling, don't shoot me if I'm wrong) 1 nuclear plant: 8 billion kilowatt hours/year 1 avg. wind turbine: 6 million kwh/yr, so 1300 turbines to match one nuke. It's obviously silly to bring up the Simpsons, but picturing 1300 turbines surrounding Springfield would be a funny visual gag. Difficult to get numbers for solar plants because they vary wildly in size, but they seem to be commonly me…

Meanwhile Iowa has more than 6000 wind turbines and is building 2-3 more every single day. You can find places in Iowa where there are wind turbines evenly spaced in all direction much farther than the eye can see. You wouldn't see 1300 turbines around Springfield because they don't put them close enough together to see that many. Most of those turbines are built by "German" companies, though the factory is local.

Get building Germany. Wind turbines are easy to scale.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#166

Post by avidiax »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #77
reenorap wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes 15 years to build a nuclear power plant. It shouldn't take this long at all and it's strictly because of regulations. If we cut down the time it takes to build a plant the cost plummets.

But what are the specific regulations you would cut, dude?

I have heard it claimed, at least for US construction, that a nuclear plant under construction has to implement new safety measures even if those measures were adopted after the design approval or construction start date.

This means that the design can change multiple times during construction, which both slows construction and exposes the project to even more safety design changes.

Ironically, the creaky old plants that were built long ago don't need to adopt such new safety requirements. They are grandfathered in, but can't be economically replaced because the costs of a replacement are artificially inflated.

A car analogy would be that we continue driving 1955 Chevy Bel-Airs with no seat belts since an up-to-date car is too expensive to develop, since we can't start production until the latest LIDAR and AI has been added. Once the LIDAR is in, pray that there's no new self-driving hardware released before full production, or we'll have to include that too.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#167

Post by boringg »

jsbisviewtiful wrote: post #160
reenorap wrote: post #24

We need to drive down the costs of implementing nuclear energy. Most of it are fake costs due to regulation. I understand that regulation is needed but we also need nuclear energy, we have to find a streamlined way to get more plants up and running as soon as possible. I think they should all be government projects so that private companies can't complain that they're losing money and keep have to ratchet up the pric…

[flagged]

Nuclear safety to provide safety is important but not to stifle any innovation or deployment which is what it has been.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#168

Post by happosai »

nilslindemann wrote: post #87
exabrial wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are incorrect fortunately. Western designs are safe, most Soviet-era ones are/were not. It's unfortunate that nuclear power still has this stigma, as it's like saying "all cars are unsafe" while comparing the crash test ratings of a modern sedan to a 1960's chevy bel aire.

Then why did Fukushima happen?

That tsunami killed 20.000+ people, and spilled massive amounts of chemicals and toxic junk to the ocean.

Yet people keep fixating over the radioactive pollution, including evicting people from their homes for truly minor amounts of radiation.

Turns out the "worst case scenario" of nuclear accidents is jackpot for nature. By clearing Fukushima from humans, nature is thriving: https://www.sciencealert.com/animals-aren-t-just-surviving-i...

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#169

Post by ciconia »

mixdup wrote: post #137
reenorap wrote: post #24

We need to drive down the costs of implementing nuclear energy. Most of it are fake costs due to regulation. I understand that regulation is needed but we also need nuclear energy, we have to find a streamlined way to get more plants up and running as soon as possible. I think they should all be government projects so that private companies can't complain that they're losing money and keep have to ratchet up the pric…

A major reason nuclear plants are super expensive is because we do it so rarely Every reactor and every plant is bespoke, even if they are based on a common "design" each instance is different enough that every project has to be managed from the ground up as a new thing, you get certified only on a single plant, operators can't move from plant to plant without recertification, etc Part of that is because they are so…

Exactly. What is needed is a SpaceX-like enterprise, where the engineering effort is concentrated in building economies of scale. To me it's clear that nuclear energy's pros largely outweigh the cons, and that it is a perfect complement to solar and wind power generation.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#170

Post by _aavaa_ »

cyberax wrote: post #27
tietjens wrote: post #2

Article claims Germany is beginning to shift. I wouldn’t count on that. Despite having to import all of their energy aside from renewables, there is a wide-spread suspicion of nuclear here. The CDU made a lot of noise about it while they were in the opposition, but turning those closed plants back on is highly unlikely. Very costly and I’m not certain the expertise can be hired.

Germany will come around when their Green ship comes aground. Probably within the next ~5 years. The coal phaseout will happen, but only by replacing it with natural gas. It will result in the last easily achievable reduction in CO2, but it will also increase the already sky-high energy prices in Germany. After that? There's nothing. There are no credible plans that will result in further CO2 reductions. The noises a…

The data does not back up this narrative: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun...

The share of electricity production that coal lost is primarily take up by wind and solar, not gas.

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