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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

#921

Post by pfdietz »

pzo wrote: post #771
pfdietz wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but all that can be taken into account in the analysis, and renewables and storage have become so cheap they're now the superior option. Europe is in an inferior position in a renewable-powered world compared to many other locations. I wonder if some of the reactionary takes trying to promote nuclear are a consequence of that. I think you're average far right type is not going to be comfortable living in a relat…

> Europe is in an inferior position in a renewable-powered world compared to many other locations. Compared to who? In shared link you can see most countries are relying on non renewable energy. The better one is France (nuclear powered) and Norway (hydropowered).

I was talking about the situation once fossil fuels are no longer used ("in a renewable powered world" was the relevant phrase). We are not yet in that situation, so your observation there is beside the point.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#922

Post by Retric »

naasking wrote: post #760
Retric wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Total death count from nuclear Total death count is a straw man argument, what matters here is the economic costs. Mining isn’t the major cost, nuclear fuel is expensive for other reasons. Refining gets rid of even more uranium before it gets to the reactor. CANDU tried to get around that by using unenriched uranium, but ran into other issues. And that’s what pro nuclear people seem to miss, really smart people hav…

> Total death count is a straw man argument, what matters here is the economic costs. Paying out lawsuits is an economic cost. Regardless, disposing of low level radioactive components of the reactor had to happen at some point, and the cases where it's not offset by decades of recouping on that investment is are incredibly rare. Regardless, this is mostly moot in new designs because they are considerably safer, as I…

> energy per gram of fuel

That just not a metric that matters.

Fuel is north of 1c/kWh for nuclear reactors, +/- if you count various things as fuel costs, that’s inherently a big deal if you’re trying to compete with 2c/kWh solar.

> Fast reactors weren't pursued because of nuclear weapon proliferation risk

They also just have higher costs per kWh.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#923

Post by pfdietz »

strawhatguy wrote: post #873
pfdietz wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables and storage have gotten so cheap that the areas where nuclear might still be competitive have greatly shrunk. Right now, the best remaining places for nuclear are in eastern Europe away from coasts. Even there, nuclear is at best competitive with optimistic assumptions. This also means that, globally, renewables are much cheaper than nuclear in most places. In a global economy, energy intensive industries…

Luckily EV mandates have been rolled back nationally (although not in my state yet). That’s a sure way to drive up the cost of storage anyway, when maybe battery storage is better served for this power station purpose instead. Obviously using used car batteries might be a way to recycle these more effectively than what is currently available.

It's going to have no effect on the global cost trajectory of battery storage. The US is not in the storage driver's seat, China is.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#924

Post by dalyons »

credit_guy wrote: post #476
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?

I'm a nuclear supporter. I think we might be able to satisfy our energy needs with renewables. I am not entirely sure, because I'm not in the field. But, if it's true that renewables are so much cheaper, then self-interested individuals will invest in them. There is no need to be anti-nuclear. People like me, who are pro-nuclear, do it because they believe that nuclear technology, like all technologies, could become…

Solar and wind are extremely simple machines and are thus much more amenable to manufacturing economies of scale than fundamentally complicated nuke plants. I very much doubt we’d get to 10x , 100x seems impossible.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#925

Post by dalyons »

boringg wrote: post #278
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?

Different energy product. And it doesn't preclude renewable energy from being deployed alongside. This pitting of renewables vs nuclear is not helpful for renewables or nuclear. They both work well together.

They don’t actually. Renewables on the grid make nukes uneconomical.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#926

Post by ZeroGravitas »

pzo wrote: post #771
pfdietz wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but all that can be taken into account in the analysis, and renewables and storage have become so cheap they're now the superior option. Europe is in an inferior position in a renewable-powered world compared to many other locations. I wonder if some of the reactionary takes trying to promote nuclear are a consequence of that. I think you're average far right type is not going to be comfortable living in a relat…

> Europe is in an inferior position in a renewable-powered world compared to many other locations. Compared to who? In shared link you can see most countries are relying on non renewable energy. The better one is France (nuclear powered) and Norway (hydropowered).

Global solar potential atlas:

https://globalsolaratlas.info/

Solar is the current cheapest and will be the biggest source of electricity in 2033 and continue to accelerate away from others for the rest of the century.

Offshore wind helps their situation somewhat.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#927

Post by ackfoobar »

zekrioca wrote: post #849
pzo wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but it's not 24/7 and europe even worse in winter and fall. Solar is unrealistic to replace most energy usage [1]. In EU it's just less than 5% usage. In germany less than 6% usage. And wind is not a replacement either (less than 11% energy usage in germany). And just for comparison in france nuclear power plants provides 37% of energy [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

Have you ever heard of batteries?

Have you done the math of how insufficient battery tech is, if we are to go 100% renewable? I'm so tired of renewable proponents just use the thought terminating cliche "BATTERIES!" when intermittency is brought up.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#928

Post by seanalltogether »

nilslindemann wrote: post #297

Whatever. No one wants to invest into it anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

I wonder what this chart would look like if wind and solar were required to provide storage in order to handle 24/7 delivery

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#929

Post by llsf »

pembrook wrote: post #892
jenadine wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't judge plane safety from the design of the brothers Wright aircraft

It's absolutely insane how safe we've managed to make plane travel considering all the variables involved. Statistically, taking a flight from NYC to London is safer than walking from 5th avenue to 4th avenue in Midtown Manhattan.

And yet we could regulate even more to make flying even safer, but likely negatively impacting the cost of flying.

This is a balance/tradeoff. We agree for some deaths, for a given price. It is the same for food safety, workplace safety.

With the latest designs and regulations there has been no major issue across all the nuclear facilities, except for Fukushima which sustained a 9 earthquake + a tsunami... and yet hardly any death (in the 10 years after, one death by cancer got compensated but still not clear if it was directly linked... the evacuation itself might be responsible for up to 50 deaths though, showing how the perception of nuclear can be overhyped).

It is possible that the nuclear industry is over-regulated (done mostly after Chernobyl) and could benefit to be reviewed based on the current knowledge.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#930

Post by pkoiralap »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #386
pkoiralap wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is scary. so the extra effort to move from, say, 20% to 85% is relatively small compared with the effort to get up to 20% in the first place. Might as well build a feature into the reactor so that it only works with <=20%

> Might as well build a feature into the reactor so that it only works with How would this help? Nuclear power plant and enrichment facility are separate entities.

I think two reasons. If reactors can't function above 20%, a country having access to >20% enriched payload is a certain violation. Vs "60% enrichment is still for clean energy, my reactor works with it". 2. If you are only buying the payload and not enriching it yourself, you can't do anything with >20% . More like mixing methyl alcohol in lab available ethyl alcohol, to deter lab techs from mixing water and having a rager.
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