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

reuters.com

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

#271

Post by fulafel »

tpmx wrote: post #246
fulafel wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why would the electricity prices become unaffordable for heat pump heating in your well insulated houses with local hydro and nuclear power? By non electric heating methods I meant CHP and biomass based heating. But yes, old energy inefficient houses in cold climates should be replaced. There's no need to get dramatic over it, houses are machines for living and it depends on circumstances how far to extend their l…

> So why would the electricity prices become unaffordable for heat pump heating in your well insulated houses with local hydro and nuclear power? Umm. This whole thread is about the existence of nuclear power. Is it hard to understand that if nuclear power went away, the baseload would become extremely expensive during cold and wind-free days? That's a substantial part of the year, here.

In a nuclear rampdown scenario, hopefully it would not come as an overnight surprise. Usually there are plans on a 10 year timescale or more. But I'm not arguing against nuclear, just for dynamic electricity pricing.

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

#272

Post by StreamBright »

cbmuser wrote: post #93
random_kris wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but i can imagine as we scale the hall like that will soon be able to contain only 10 years worth of material. Then 1 year etc...

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…

Your face when people figure out that burning coal produces 100x amount nuclear waste than an average nuclear power plant.

Your face #2 when people realise that this nuclear waste goes to the environment unfiltered.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-sta...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-po...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.ih.gov/20005612/

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

#273

Post by yellowapple »

vidarh wrote: post #128
loeg wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could throw it in the fucking ocean and it would be better than coal plants, and arguably better than natural gas.

You could grind it up and intentionally pump it into the air, and it still would likely kill a tiny portion of the number of people killed by coal plants. I mean a whole lot of coal plants do pump uranium dust into the air. If you did it with the nuclear waste you'd pump worse isotopes into the air, but the volume would be tiny.

Hell, I'd bet you could mix it into soft drinks and sell it as "Nuka Cola Quantum" and it'd still be significantly less deadly than coal.

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

#274

Post by inglor_cz »

isodev wrote: post #226
sushisource wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't really see how this is true. Isn't the basic idea to just dig a really deep hole somewhere geologically stable and dump it in? My impression isn't that the problem isn't solvable, but simply that no one has actually made the appropriate investment yet. That sounds like the same catch-22 as the rest of this. We've thrown up our hands and gone "Not worth it" and then our lack of investment in proper storag…

The challenge with nuclear waste is that you can’t just throw money at it and expect it to work. Radioactivity and chemical toxicity persists for hundreds and thousands of years. What is needed to design, build and maintain such sites is beyond “extreme engineering” and also very expensive. Who knows... perhaps in a few years we can dump the nuclear waste into space.

"Who knows... perhaps in a few years we can dump the nuclear waste into space."

Please no. A launch failure with several tons of radioactive dirt as a payload is about as bad as it gets.

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

#275

Post by anonporridge »

Angostura wrote: post #101
chmod775 wrote: post #15

There's a lot of straw men being fought in the comments again. The main issue with nuclear power in Europe has always been the storage of nuclear waste, for which many countries still don't have a long-term solution. Proponents of nuclear power like to pretend the opposition exists merely on the basis of "but what if it goes boom!", so they don't need to face the reality that countries like Germany are sitting on a l…

I absolutely agree that we don't have a long term solution for storing nuclear waste. The thing is, we don't have a long term solution for storing CO2 either. The thing I like about nuclear waste is is it's obvious, its tangle and it sits around in sinister looking containers. As opposed to CO2.

The fact that this simple line of reasoning seems to be completely missing from the minds of anti nuclear activists is...perplexing.

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

#276

Post by lispm »

cbmuser wrote: post #65
pydry wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima cleanup costs will be between $470 and $660 billion. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radi... US nuclear power gets a liability cap of $0.2 billion. The nuclear industry will keep telling us it is safe but it will refuse to shoulder the insurance costs beyond a minimal level. That's the taxpayer's job and the taxpayer's job alone. And, EVEN INCLUDING that, nuclear is about 3x more exp…

> Fukushima cleanup costs will be between $470 and $660 billion. Germany's nuclear phase out costs the country $12 billion per year plus 1100 additional deaths due to air pollution: > https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP304.pdf > And, EVEN INCLUDING that, nuclear is about 3x more expensive than solar and wind. Except you are comparing levelized costs of electrity with the total system costs. Wind and solar…

> Nuclear was never subsidized in Germany

You don't really believe that, don't you?

> Anyone who claims that nuclear power is a step towards nuclear weapons has no clue about the history of nuclear technology and has no clue how Uranium and Plutonium for nuclear bombs is made.

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

"Japan was reported in 2012 to have 9 tonnes of plutonium in Japan, enough for more than 1,000 nuclear warheads, and an additional 35 tonnes stored in Europe.[37][38] It has constructed the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant, which could produce further plutonium.[37] Japan has a considerable quantity of highly enriched uranium (HEU), supplied by the U.S. and UK, for use in its research reactors and fast neutron reactor research programs; approximately 1,200 to 1,400 kg of HEU as of 2014.[39] Japan also possesses an indigenous uranium enrichment plant[32][40] which could hypothetically be used to make highly enriched uranium suitable for weapons use."

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

#278

Post by corty »

dathinab wrote: post #249
corty wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IPCC report on climate change mitigation puts nuclear median cost on par with wind power (cheaper than offshore, slightly more expensive than onshore), cheaper than solar, more expensive than hydro. In total, squarely on par with the usual suspects for green energy. And they include fuel and decommissioning in that cost. See page 71 of https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5... (caution, huge…

hm interesting the numbers are somewhat different then what I have seen in other places. I mean don't get me wrong offshore wind power is always expensive but enough sources list solar, on-shore wind power as cheaper. Hydro power as comparable and Geothermal power as much cheaper.

Problem with most sources is, there are always assumptions and caveats: Such as cost-based calculations (maybe or maybe not) including teardown and recycling, storage cost, capital cost, land cost, etc. Others do market-price-based calculations (preferably in those markets that prove their point), so you get renewable prices from Germany (where renewables are hugely subsidized and have to be consumed preferentially) that are sometimes even negative, or you get nuclear prices from France, where the owner of all nuclear power plants is a state owned corp (EDF) that is "rescued" from bancruptcy every few years to keep prices down.

I did pick the IPCC reports because those are usually regarded as being careful amalgamations of the available scientific data. Since there are lots of eyes on those reports, larger mistakes should have been pointed out already.

But you are right that there is contradictory information out there, and I don't really have the perfect authoritative source either.

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

#279

Post by thebean11 »

IshKebab wrote: post #217
tpmx wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind power is cheap when it's windy. When it's still the cost is $+inf. The grid still needs to maintain it's AC frequency. Wind power producers should be required to buy some kind of base load generation credits.

It's always windy somewhere. You just need to expand the electrical grid. We are still far from the point where we have enough wind that any of it goes unused. Also what is the cost of storing that energy? It's so much cheaper to generate it might still come out cheaper.

Storing it is extremely expensive, at least with any currently available technology.

This is apparent looking at how much energy prices change throughout the day / month based on usage and cost of production, and how predictable those changes are.

If storing energy were cost effective you could make a killing buying low and selling high on the national grid.

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

#280

Post by Kuinox »

jhgb wrote: post #196
Kuinox wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Windmills didn't have 2MW power output either.

Did you actually watched the video ?

"Turbines in the 1 to 2 MW range typically use 130 to 240 m3 of concrete for the foundations". https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/onshore-wind/...

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