Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#191

Post by pfdietz » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

ch4s3 wrote: post #166

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"fully decommissioned" by some somewhat unintuitive definitions: > The DOE was required by contract and statute to begin removing spent nuclear fuel and GTCC waste by January 31, 1998. To date, the DOE has not removed any spent fuel or GTCC waste from the CY site, and it is unknown when it will. The current 'plan' is for the companies looking after the waste on the original site to sue the government every few years…

The casks are safe where they are and should hold safely for at least 90 years according tot he notoriously conservative NRC. They should be moved, and congress needs to get its shit together, I agree. We really need to get deep storage unstuck from the Yucca Mountain issue, but I think this still counts as decommissioned.

Why do we need to get deep storage unstuck? Putting the waste in dry casks is cheaper.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#192

Post by plutonorm » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 2:57 PM UTC

jpgvm wrote: post #2

About time. Nuclear is hardly an environmental risk even compared to the "cleaner" fossil fuels like gas. Hopefully this will allow the EU to return to competitive reactors designs instead of leaving China to pull humanities weight on that front. Though tbh I wouldn't be sad if we bought Chinese reactors until we are back up to speed, having Chinese nuclear > no nuclear. Everyone bitching about China stealing IP fina…

No post body was provided.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#193

Post by pfdietz » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 2:58 PM UTC

RandomLensman wrote: post #63

ThePhysicist wrote: post #16

De-nuclearization of other European countries is a long-held goal of the German environmentalist movement and the Green party. It's understandable that France doesn't want to go with that, as they don't want to be forced down the same ruinous path we're currently on here in Germany. And honestly, good for them. It's just sad to see how little actual science is respected in Germany. I did my PhD at the French nuclear…

Nuclear does have a cost problem in the sense that costs have not really dropped since forever, which is not boding well for a technology (unlike, for example costs for solar). So I can accept people arguing that way - but could also still argue for nuclear as an expensive baseload technology. The whole taxonomic discussion is a distraction anyway. We are long past some simple carbon reduction path making a dent (and…

One could argue ten years ago for nuclear as an expensive (but still overall desirable) baseload technology, but I think the window on that argument has closed.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#194

Post by liftm » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

petre wrote: post #163

JanSt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also many institutes (e.g IDW) constantly pumping out papers that conclude nuclear energy has highest costs, highest danger, will leave unsolvable toxic waste problems, renewable energy is extremely cheap, building enough storage is no problem etc. These people are constantly invited to present these „Zukunftsenergien“ as opposed to the old bad nuclear in talk shows. And yet Germany, after two decades and c…

> The same talk show people now talk about how we have a heat and not a power problem, so we don‘t need the nuclear power. Which is even more ridiculos because heat is the primary product of nuclear reactors. Their thermal rating of a nuclear reactor is about 3x the electrical rating.

Out of curiosity, are there any nuclear reactor cogeneration plants in operation?

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#195

Post by dane-pgp » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

willcipriano wrote: post #154

You know how I know environmentalists are just dragging their feet on nuclear for ideological reasons? When we talk about a storage facility for nuclear waste, a scenario they insist you prepare for: if human civilization completely collapses to the point that any of the currently spoken languages on earth are no longer able to be read how to we keep the, whatever comes after us, from busting up the concrete and digg…

> if human civilization completely collapses

Even if it doesn't, nuclear waste storage is still a very expensive and indefinitely long project (assuming you want to keep adding to it, stop it poisoning the ground water, and stop terrorists getting access to it, etc.)

> I've had these people tell me that

It's still strawmanning if you pick an actual bad argument that someone told you and don't just come up with the bad argument yourself. I'm sure you're smart enough to imagine the failure modes of trying to launch millions of rockets full of nuclear waste, so the environmentalists are right to oppose such an idea even if they can't articulate why.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#196

Post by schmeckleberg » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

traspler wrote: post #171

I'm always a bit baffled by the amount of pro-nuclear comments on HN and their stance on how everyone who disagrees is just not educated enough. Please educate me: Is the waste problem solved? Are we not still fighting with all the previous attempts of handling it? Is "dig a hole in a salt deposit and keep it there" really good enough for the very, very, very long term? Are old powerplants properly decommissioned and…

We need an alliance between nuclear fans and wind (heh) fans. You situate the nuclear fans in front of the wind fans' wind turbines. The wind fans then ask the nuclear fans about nuclear's ongoing problems with going over-budget on new builds and unresolved multi-century waste management commitments. The nuclear fans immediately try to hand-wave these objections away. The resulting draft turns the wind turbines. Viola, clean, green energy!

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#197

Post by pfdietz » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

Swenrekcah wrote: post #155

ben_w wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. then it would be even less politically acceptable, which is already the biggest problem. 2. yes we are sure, because even current green tech — PV and "enough" batteries — is already cost-competitive with nuclear, and we have good reasons to expect both PV and storage to get cheaper.

I doubt it’s a good strategy to put all our eggs in a photovoltaic basket. I love PV tech, I think it’s incredibly useful for small and medium scale self sustainability. And yes, in many areas it makes sense to dedicate a bunch of space to PVs and energy storage. But PV is inherently intermittent and unless you massively overbuild capacity you’ll always face a weather threat. Until we manage to harness nuclear fusion…

No, we don't need nuclear. Intermittency of renewables is a problem that has solutions, and the cost of those solutions is low enough to render new construction nuclear entirely uncompetitive in the US and Europe, and likely elsewhere. At worst, if the cost estimates of the solutions are grossly underestimated, this just means we're paying a bit more. At the same time, costs of nuclear power plants are consistently grossly underestimated, so one should honestly address the cost risk on both sides.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#198

Post by doe88 » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #16

De-nuclearization of other European countries is a long-held goal of the German environmentalist movement and the Green party. It's understandable that France doesn't want to go with that, as they don't want to be forced down the same ruinous path we're currently on here in Germany. And honestly, good for them. It's just sad to see how little actual science is respected in Germany. I did my PhD at the French nuclear…

While it's evident nuclear sentiment is not great in germany, from my point of view, I wouldn't characterize it as great in france either. Sadly, I think in this domain (as in many) france lives with the infrastructure and build of its past and currently fails to invest for its future, it's more managing decline than anything else. I think as current nuclear plants become older and mismatch between current needs and true green energies production become more apparent, people still live in a bubble and don't see the urgency nor courage to really invest in new reactors and plants and prepare the future, for france and europe. My dream would be that france, with help of germany and other willing eu countries would build new reactors with an overcapacity for france alone such that it would then provide this energy to other ue countries. Nuclear energy is a chance and is not mutually exclusive with other energies.

(of course i'm french)

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#199

Post by tut-urut-utut » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:06 PM UTC

throw_a_grenade wrote: post #188

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dependence on Putin's Russia First, it's Russia, not Putin's Russia. It's derogatory to frame discussion like that. Should we also start putting "Biden's USA" and "Macron's France"? Just writing this way, and suddenly both USA and France appear like some fourth world banana republics. Second, both Russia and Soviet Union before were the most reliable energy partner. They didn't fail their obligations a single time.…

> Second, both Russia and Soviet Union before were the most reliable energy partner. They didn't fail their obligations a single time. Sorry, this is bollocks. For more than 30 years Russia is using energy supplies as a weapon against pretty much all the eastern and central Europe.

Can you give one single example when it was Russia's guilt for not delivering gas?

The only time when we had issue with gas it was some ten years ago when Ukraine stopped the transit hoping to blackmail both Russia and the EU to get a better deal for themselves. Ukraine was a failed state then that couldn't pay for gas they used.

Re: Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

#200

Post by jpgvm » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:08 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #190

jpgvm wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the same reason why people turn a blind eye to oil, coal, guns, alcohol and cigarettes yet have a problem with cannabis, abortions, nuclear power, gun control and until recently electric cars. PR/marketing trumps all because people aren't sufficiently educated in science and statistics to understand what represents risk vs what is feasible, etc. Because they can't interpret the data themselves they defer to media…

Sorry to pick up on your specific examples, but I don't know why you are classifying alcohol deaths as under-estimated and abortions as over-estimated(?). For the record, the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics reports there are about 95,000 alcohol-related deaths in the United States annually[0], while the CDC reports over 600,000 abortions per year.[1] It's true that someone who reads PR/marketing material is…

Abortions aren't deaths. Even if they were I wasn't looking to draw comparisons, these were just examples of things people don't have informed opinions on.