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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

#291

Post by xienze »

V__ wrote: post #91
oceanplexian wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the hype for a limitless clean energy source, something that could benefit every aspect of humanity more than any other invention in human history considered “weird”?

Because this limitless clean energy source is too expensive, even though it had 60+ years time. I hope the day fusion energy finally has its big breakthrough isn't too far away, but conventional nuclear won't solve our problems.

> Because this limitless clean energy source is too expensive

I’m laughing in $0.11/kWh nuclear energy while Germany’s “cheaper” green energy is uh... quite a bit more expensive.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#292

Post by epistasis »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #246
krisoft wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If regulations are the cost, name them and a solution. That is a funny ask. Regulation doesnt have to be a single thing. It can very well be cost-overrun by a thousand paper cut. You can drown any project in endless paperwork, environmental and national security reviews. In fact unclear and contradictory requirements are much more conductive to drive costs up than a single Lets-make-nuclear-expensive-Act. That bein…

You're getting downvoted, but you're correct. It's death by a thousand cuts, because ALARA forces radiation exposure-reduction expenditures to scale upward forever, despite the fact that radiation exposure from plants long ago reached levels far below those that result in any risk. There is no lower bound, so the regulators never stop reducing exposure further, raising costs further and further over time. Under ALARA…

ALARA would indicate that the increased costs from regulation are due to the design of the reactor.

However, my example is of reactors that China can build cost effectively, but which Europe can not. (And the AP1000 is an example where China can build the design cost effectively, but the US can not.)

That would indicate that nuclear reactors could be built cost effectively, with the same design, and without changing ALARA.

Removing ALARA may provide some sort of cost savings, but without some concrete and specific indication of how that would change the design, and to what savings during construction, it's hard to agree that ALARA is at fault.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#293

Post by opo »

pydry wrote: post #48
yellowapple wrote: post #14

[flagged]

Poland is the dirtiest coal producer in Europe but a point in its favor (for some) was that it didnt prove conclusively that you could decarbonize your electric grid without any help at all from nuclear power. So, it didnt attract any hate or shaming from the nuclear industry's faux - environmentalist public relations arm. Unlike Germany, whom they really hate and for whom the FUD and lies was nearly constant. (E.g.…

Why are you implying that Germany has decarbonized their grid? Germany has a long term goal of decarbonizing the grid, but it isn’t there yet. They made the decision to keep coal plants burning and shut down their nuclear power plants. And even years later in 2025 they continue to burn coal - the most dangerous and dirty source of power ever invented.

>…The share of electricity produced with fossil fuels in Germany increased by ten percent between January and the end of June 2025, compared to the same period one year before, while power production from renewables declined by almost six percent, the country’s statistical office

>… Coal-fired power production increased 9.3 percent, while electricity production from fossil gas increased by 11.6 percent.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/fossil-electricity-prod...

The direct deaths caused by burning coal are significant. I didn’t see any current estimates for those being killed downwind from Germany's reckless burning of coal, but overall the EU has a high death rate:

>…Europe, coal kills around 23,300 people per year and the estimated economic costs of the health consequences from coal burning is about US $70 billion per year, with 250,600 life years lost.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030147972...

Never mind that all those coal plants are also contributing to climate change and are poisoning the oceans enough that many species of fish are not safe to eat. The waste problem from coal will also be a problem for future generations to deal with - not all the ash from burning coal is being deposited in people's lungs.

In 2023, I saw a stat that in 2023 about 17.0% of Germany electrical production was from burning coal. As a comparison, I believe that before the phase out of nuclear power, it generated about 25% of the electricity.

If Germany wanted to shut down nuclear power plants after they had decarbonized their grid, that would be their choice - shutting them down when you are still burning coal is almost unbelievable. I don’t think future generations will look kindly on countries who shut down a clean form of power while they still are running the most dangerous and dirty form of power generation ever created.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#294

Post by theptip »

Retric wrote: post #283
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…

> Most of it are fake costs due to regulation. It’s really not, nuclear inherently requires extreme costs to operate. Compare costs vs coal which isn’t cost competitive these days. Nuclear inherently need a lot more effort refining fuel as you can’t just dig a shovel full of ore and burn it. Even after refining you can’t just dump fuel in, you need fuel assemblies. Nuclear must have a more complicated boiler setup wi…

It really is. Nuclear is 100-1000x safer than coal. By insisting on such an aggressive safety target, we force prices up and actually incur much higher levels of mortality - just delivered in the boring old ways of pollution and climate-driven harms.

See https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy for detailed stats.

I think we should target “risk parity with Gas” until climate change is under control.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#295

Post by jraph »

ciconia wrote: post #169
mixdup wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What is needed is a SpaceX-like enterprise

I'm not sure. They have more injuries per worker than their competition [1]. Space should already not be "let's work too fast at safety's cost", nuclear really can't.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/18/spacex-worker-injury-rates...

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#296

Post by qwertox »

justahuman74 wrote: post #226
GloriousKoji wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone also served by PG&E I don't think cheaper electricity will help. At peak hours electricity is $0.13/kwh but the delivery charge is $0.50/kwh.

At some point the electricity will be near-free, and we'll just pay transmission fees

Companies certainly won't pay for the maintenance. They'll let them degrade and then the government will have to take over. So we get charged twice, that is the real price.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#298

Post by theptip »

GloriousKoji wrote: post #212
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…

As someone also served by PG&E I don't think cheaper electricity will help. At peak hours electricity is $0.13/kwh but the delivery charge is $0.50/kwh.

The goal of making nuclear cheaper isn’t to lower consumer costs. It’s to displace CO2 emitting baseload sources like coal and gas.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#299

Post by nicce »

Retric wrote: post #283
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…

> Most of it are fake costs due to regulation. It’s really not, nuclear inherently requires extreme costs to operate. Compare costs vs coal which isn’t cost competitive these days. Nuclear inherently need a lot more effort refining fuel as you can’t just dig a shovel full of ore and burn it. Even after refining you can’t just dump fuel in, you need fuel assemblies. Nuclear must have a more complicated boiler setup wi…

> It’s really not, nuclear inherently requires extreme costs to operate. Compare costs vs coal which isn’t cost competitive these days. Nuclear inherently need a lot more effort refining fuel as you can’t just dig a shovel full of ore and burn it. Even after refining you can’t just dump fuel in, you need fuel assemblies. Nuclear must have a more complicated boiler setup with an extra coolant loop. You need shielding and equipment to move spent fuel and a spent fuel cooling pond. Insurance isn’t cheap when mistakes can cost hundreds of billions. Etc etc.

Without the fear of dual use, we could just enrich the fuel to higher levels and refuel once per 30 years.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#300

Post by Retric »

gruez wrote: post #289
Retric wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of it are fake costs due to regulation. It’s really not, nuclear inherently requires extreme costs to operate. Compare costs vs coal which isn’t cost competitive these days. Nuclear inherently need a lot more effort refining fuel as you can’t just dig a shovel full of ore and burn it. Even after refining you can’t just dump fuel in, you need fuel assemblies. Nuclear must have a more complicated boiler setup wi…

>> Most of it are fake costs due to regulation. >It’s really not, nuclear inherently requires extreme costs to operate. Compare costs vs coal which isn’t cost competitive these days Maybe it can't be as cheap as coal, but at the very least it shouldn't be absurdly expensive compared to what South Korea and China can do. https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20250906_WBC...

That’s fair, but everything else is outcompeting coal these days.

So even if we can drop prices down to what China pays, nuclear still loses in China.

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