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

EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

weplanet.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 1001 posts

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#351

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

nicce wrote: post #149
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…

It isn't that rare in general - if the U.S. opens the secrets of nuclear submarines - we had had mini reactors for decades.

Total non starter.

Nuclear submarine power plants are not in any way a technology useful for utility scale power generation.

To start with they use fuel enriched to weapons grade.

They aren't cost effective vs the amount of power produced, and the designs don't scale up to utility scale power.

Submarine plants are not some sort of miracle SMR we can just roll out.

The Navy is willing to page cost premiums a utility company cannot, because for the Navy it's about having a necessary capability. There's no economic break even to consider.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#352

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #233
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has stopped actively trying to sabotage France on nuclear energy at every occasion in the EU. That’s a start. Give you hope that at some point, they might even move on the brain dead competition policies in the energy market and we might end up with a sensible energy policy.

France is sabotaging France on nuclear. Flamanville 3 is a complete joke and the EPR2 program is in absolute shambles. Currently they can’t even agree on how to fund the absolutely insanely bonkers subsidies. Now targeting investment decision in 2026… And the French government just fell because they are underwater in debt and have a spending problem which they can’t agree on how to fix. A massive handout to the dead…

The EU is fining France because they don’t have enough clean energy in their mix despite France having the cleanest energy in Europe because nuclear used to not count. They are also forcing the French national energy company to resell their electricity at a loss to competitor moving money which should be used to invest into the pocket of private investors. And let’s not talk about the utter stupidity of the current discussion on the dams.

Then you realise that a significant part of France new debts was due to them shielding their population for the soaring prices of electricity despite France producing cheap energy, said prices being due to Germany brain dead strategy leading to a dependence on Russian gas and the obligation to go through the European market, and you start to see the double whammy.

Well, at least, the energy market is not as bad as the ECB rules.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#353

Post by Retric »

lclarkmichalek wrote: post #304
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…

I think if you regulated coal on a linear no threshold risk model, you'd find the costs to be somewhat closer.

Coal is already losing, and things are only getting worse for steady state production.

Grid solar drives wholesale rates for most of the day really low long before new nuclear gets decommissioned. If nighttime rates rise above daytime rates a great deal of demand is going to shift to the day. Which then forces nuclear to try and survive on peak pricing, but batteries cap peak pricing over that same timescale.

Nuclear thus really needs to drop significantly below current coal prices or find some way to do cheap energy storage. I’m somewhat hopeful on heat storage, but now you need to have a lot of turbines and cooling that’s only useful for a fraction of the day. On top of that heat storage means a lower working temperature costing you thermodynamic efficiency.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#354

Post by roody15 »

The EU may have a geopolitical interest in taking another look at nuclear. The dependance on Russian natural gas and expensive imported US natural gas is not good for their economic outlook long term. Honestly I am surprised Germany has not fired back up a couple of its plants considering its difficulties with Industrial output and competing in a world market.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#355

Post by 7952 »

theptip wrote: post #294
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…

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.

The challenge though is how to hit safety levels with a high level of accuracy. And we keep rediscovering how tough that can be. The space shuttle and 737 max are examples of that.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#356

Post by Hilift »

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…

Or acknowledge the true cost of $10 billion to build a reactor. Look at recent implementations. Finland was complaining that they had to deal with the mafia. The plant cost €11 billion, original proposal: €3 billion. Yikes.

"... 3,800 employees from 500 companies. 80% of the workers are foreigners, mostly from eastern European countries. In 2012 it was reported that one Bulgarian contracting firm is owned by the mafia, and that Bulgarian workers have been required to pay weekly protection fees to the mafia, wages have been unpaid, employees have been told not to join a union and that employers also reneged on social security payments."

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

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#357

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

hvb2 wrote: post #236
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that renewable tends to be intermittent and long-term storage is an open problem. You can do find in a day with battery but you can’t really produce a lot in the summer and use in winter. It means you either need an alternative when production is too low such as coal or gas-fired power plants or a lot of capacity sufficiently stretched out than they are not stopped at the same time. Managing such a large…

> You can do find in a day with battery but you can’t really produce a lot in the summer and use in winter. Batteries aren't the only storage. The better options in my opinion are the places where you can use the landscape to your advantage. Pump a lake full when there's too much power and let it drain when there's too little. Also in a connected grid setup, the sun always shines somewhere though that does come with…

> The better options in my opinion are the places where you can use the landscape to your advantage.

We already do that. France notably has a lot of hydropower and they pump water up when they don’t want to shutdown a nuclear unit.

The issue is that there is very little places where you could build new dams in Europe and water shortage is becoming a regular occurrence.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#358

Post by preisschild »

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…

> If we'd build smaller, modular reactors that are literally exactly the same every single time you would begin to get economies of scale

You can also build standardized, modular LARGE nuclear power reactors. The French and the Japanese did it and managed to builds lots of large reactors with relatively short build times

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#359

Post by preisschild »

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]

I completely agree with you and I'm pro nuclear. But those regulations have to be streamlined and the regulator needs to have enough manpower so licenses aren't stuck in limbo for years.

It's also unacceptable that the regulations can change during builds and then you have to make large parts completely new before you get the license to load fuel into the reactor.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#360

Post by jayd16 »

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…

It's regulation holding back nuclear power...in every country?
Post reply on HN