EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document • Hacker News Board

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#181

Post by Turing_Machine » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

pizzapill wrote: post #166

spideymans wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And to find a place where no post worldwar 5 civilization accidentally diggs is up. This is premised on the idea that some future civilization would dig kilometres deep in some random and remote location and just happen to come across some nuclear waste stored in a space that is no larger than a small house. It's also presumes that future civilizations will have no recollection whatsoever of humanity storing nuclear…

We are talking about time frames that are many times longer than the existence of modern humans as a species. We have absolute zero clue what most humans did 200k years ago, we have only little knowledge what humans did 4000 years ago. How can you expect us to communicate with a world in eight hundred thousand years, or 1.6 million years? We don't even manage to get any of the nuclear waste out of our oceans we put t…

> We are talking about time frames that are many times longer than the existence of modern humans as a species.

No, we absolutely are not.

"Long half-life" = "less radioactive". By definition.

Do you know what the half life of CO2 is? Infinity.

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#182

Post by acidburnNSA » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

s5300 wrote: post #180

Am I the only person who thinks we're just going to be sending nuclear waste into space/storing it on moons with SpaceX Starships/whatever comes next? Can somebody tell me why this won't be a viable option? Seems simple enough, and it's not like we've not done worse.

It's both cheaper and more likely to remain isolated from the biosphere in stable geologic formations like crystalline bedrock than going through the trouble of (relatively unreliably) getting into (and out of) orbit.

Current nuclear waste solutions are perfectly sufficient and appropriate [1].

[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#183

Post by fastball » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

laurent92 wrote: post #161

cbmuser wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That single hall is for the _whole_ country for _decades_. Nuclear is the _only_ technology where the fuel and the waste for decades can be stored on-site. It's just extremely dense. The Russians have a single hall for all their waste plus the waste of other countries such as Bulgaria or Ukraine: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uN0bZBOic&t=105s The US even had a nuclear power plant with full fuel reprocessing on…

Just for everyone to have a picture, uranium doesn’t take much room because it is quite heavy: 19.1g/cm3, denser than lead (11.3) but slightly less than gold (19.3) and plutonium (19.8).

The density of uranium is secondary to just how unbelievably energetic (per unit mass of fuel) fission is.

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#184

Post by tsimionescu » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #172

tsimionescu wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you believe the grid can be said to be working well with occasional dips to 0MWh? Or is some base load in fact an obvious necessity? You may argue that the current value of the base load is artificially high, but there obviously is some fundamental base load given by the kinds of consumers you have.

> So you believe the grid can be said to be working well with occasional dips to 0MWh? With distributed generation and storage, yes, it's plausible to have periods of 0MW grid demand. > there obviously is some fundamental base load given by the kinds of consumers you have. The kinds of consumers you have are not a fixed quantity; particularly their on-site use, generation, and storage patterns all vary over time.

I'm talking about 0 MWh for the entire grid, which includes all of the distributed generators. So, by definition, shutting down each and every piece of electric equipment connected to the entire grid. You truly believe that is a tenable position?

If not, than you must accept there exists some necessary base load. That can be provided from base production like it is today, or it could theoretically be provided from storage and over-production in a hypothetical renweables-only grid.

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#185

Post by acidburnNSA » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:49 PM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #78

arrosenberg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say the same thing about any power source though - humans have created way bigger disasters with fossil fuels than nuclear power. > The cleanup costs of ONE uranium mine alone could buy germany enough solar to replace 3 nuclear reactors. How much do those solar panels cost once you factor in environmental remediation, EOL recycling, land use, etc.? Since that's the standard nuclear is held to, it would be g…

Sites of nuclear accidents can't be remediated. They're essentially lost "forever".

This is highly debatable. There are places on Earth with natural radiation fields greater than large swaths of the evacuation zone around Fukushima. For Chernobyl, see [1].

https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/what-about-radioactive...

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#186

Post by imtringued » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:49 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #121

Gwypaas wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either way, in almost every online discussion I see the term base load is used in the wrong context. Base load exists on the consumer side, as the minimum power the grid needs to operate during a cycle of X hours/days/weeks/years/whatever. It used to exist on the producer side since the cheapest power plants were also inflexible regarding ramping their power up and down coupled with high fixed costs and low marginal…

Base load exists on the consumer side and unless energy storage ramps up 1000-10000x across the world, I don't see how solar and wind could ever cover it until then. Human power usage patterns don't change that much because we don't change much. You need to be able to provide X energy at all times, no ifs and buts. Actually, there is one thing, we need super capable and reliable super long distance power grid connect…

Energy storage is not a problem in the long term. Making sure that polluting power plants only run 10% of the time is a short term problem that has a solution today.

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#187

Post by Kuinox » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:49 PM UTC

jhgb wrote: post #105

Kuinox wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, cement production for the windmills: https://youtu.be/0vE6QkvcV-s?t=13

Windmills didn't use cement. I assume they used lime mortar like most medieval structures.

Yes my bad, not cement, it's not mortar but concrete, 150-300m^3 of concrete per 2MW windmill.

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#188

Post by Turing_Machine » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

j-pb wrote: post #29

tpmx wrote: post #5

Germany's populistic policy decisions following Fukushima set us back so much.

Fukushima is what caused the setback, because it proved that, again, "risk of a fault is neglegible" turns out to be not neglegible enough. I don't care if nuclear can be made safe on paper, as long as it's build by humans it's going to be messed up somehow. I once took a school trip to a nuclear power station in northern germany, turns out they had a direct link to their local coal plant to manage demand. That link…

> Fukushima is what caused the setback, because it proved that, again, "risk of a fault is neglegible" turns out to be not neglegible enough.

The Fukushima plant was hit by:

1) Magnitude 9 (!) earthquake 2) Devastating tsunami 3) Massive fire 4) Total loss of all power to control circuitry.

Even after that, it still didn't kill anybody from radioactivity (some firefighters were killed fighting the fire, not from radiation).

What do you suppose would happen if a similar series of catastrophes struck a hydroelectric dam? Say, the Three Gorges Dam in China?

Hint: nothing good.

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#189

Post by kmonsen » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

sobellian wrote: post #56

j-pb wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is not finding a place that's geologically stable now. But finding one that's geologically stable in 850.000 years. And to find a place where no post worldwar 5 civilization accidentally diggs is up. And to have a tracking chain where no fuel gets into the wrong hands. Do you know how germany decided on the position of its long term nuclest storage facilities? East germany choose the salt mine closest to th…

If World Wars 3, 4, and 5 all occur then I think we can safely say the global population has already been thoroughly irradiated.

Yeah, if the dangerous scenario is what if ww3 happens, wipes out all human knowledge, civilization is rebuilt and accidentally digs a kilometer down and finds some nuclear waste then I mean the whole ww3 is probably a bigger deal.

Also continents can moving in 800.00 years, sure but we can also move the nuclear deposits. It's not like they have to stay in that exact spot for all eternity.

Nuclear is all about buying humanity time to solve the energy problems. I think we might need that time to get to full renewables, if we ever get there.

Re: EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document

#190

Post by acidburnNSA » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

anoncake wrote: post #100

lrem wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have all that many tsunamis in Germany...

I'm sure our nuclear plants are safe against all foreseeable dangers. So only unforeseeable dangers are a problem. I can't foresee any, so we're safe?

Nothing is perfectly safe. Hydro dams fail. Wind turbines throw ice. People fall off roofs installing solar.

But 8 million people per year are killed by particulate emissions from normally-operating fossil and biofuel combustion plants. Nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro are all orders of magnitude safer ways, per TWh generated, than the dominant worldwide sources. Therefore we should replace fossil and biofuel with nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro.

Conveniently, those 4 are also very low carbon, so they prevent climate change along the way.

[1] https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy