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

301–310 of 1001 posts

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#301

Post by Retric »

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.

None of what I said really relates to safety. 3 mile island was a complete non issue when it comes to safety, but one day the nuclear reactor went from a useful tool to an expensive cleanup.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#302

Post by strictnein »

tirant wrote: post #218
jsbisviewtiful wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Advocating for deregulation in order to achieve innovation is the opposite of conservative. It’s not a matter of being a for profit or not. It’s an also matter of technological development. Most of the early incidents in nuclear plants happened under the management of public or state controlled companies.

> Advocating for deregulation in order to achieve innovation is the opposite of conservative.

Not sure how it's the opposite of conservatism to remove unneeded government roadblocks to enable industry. That's pretty solidly in the traditional American conservative viewpoint (not to be confused with whatever viewpoint currently dominates the GOP).

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#303

Post by epistasis »

boringg wrote: post #154
epistasis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which are the fake costs from regulation? We have new builds in Europe of the EPR, in France and Finland, and it has had disastrous costs. China has built some too, presumably cheaper, since they keep on building more. What is the regulatory difference there? I have yet to find any concrete defense of the idea that costs are coming from regulation, rather than the costs of construction in advanced economies. If regul…

Its multifold. 1. Regulations are a big asterisk to any project. If you don't think you will get licensed or your project will get axed halfway through or there is a risk (Which has been very high in the past). Investors who would put money up for the project won't do it OR they require a significantly higher cost of capital. 2. There is very little muscle memory in the fabrication of reactors and reactor components…

China is building US and EU designs of reactors at a fraction of the costs in the US and Europe.

Your examples of regulatory asterisks are on the design side of things. I don't think that the cost of capital for Vogtle & Summer in the US, or Flamanville and Olkiluoto in the EU, were excessively high. As for your 3rd point, there were tons of adjustments during the build of Vogtle, which is a big reason for its large cost overruns. Regulation didn't necessitate those changes, they were all construction bungles.

Which I think leads to your point 2, construction competence, being the primary cause, which aligns with everything else I have read on the subject. For example, another poster pointed to this paper:

> We observe that nth-of-a-kind plants have been more, not less, expensive than first-of-a-kind plants. “Soft” factors external to standardized reactor hardware, such as labor supervision, contributed over half of the cost rise from 1976 to 1987. Relatedly, containment building costs more than doubled from 1976 to 2017, due only in part to safety regulations.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#304

Post by lclarkmichalek »

Retric wrote: post #283
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…

> 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.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#305

Post by wnevets »

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…

> We need to drive down the costs of implementing nuclear energy. Most of it are fake costs due to regulation.

I shouldn't be surprised by this comment. There are so many people who believe we should allow more pollution in the air we breathe and water we drink [1] just to increase the profit margins for shareholders.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/05/14/nx...

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#306

Post by nicce »

GloriousKoji wrote: post #212
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…

As someone also served by PG&E I don't think cheaper electricity will help. At peak hours electricity is $0.13/kwh but the delivery charge is $0.50/kwh.

> At peak hours electricity is $0.13/kwh but the delivery charge is $0.50/kwh.

Unfortunately, transmission has a natural monopoly risk, unless the government owns without profit requirements. The price peak is when it is just cheaper to make second set of lines next to old one and you can still pay the investment with fewer customers and lower price.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#307

Post by gpm »

mikepavone wrote: post #274
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?

You totally can do it with some combination of overbuilding, storage and increased interconnection. It just starts to get expensive the higher the portion of your generation you want to supply with renewables. There's a good Construction Physics article[0] about this (though it simplifies by only looking at solar, batteries and natural gas plants and mostly does not distinguish between peaker and more baseload orient…

> Renewables make the net-demand curve (demand - renewable generation) very lumpy which generally favors dispatchable (peaker plants, batteries, etc.) generation over baseload.

Even without renewables in the equation, the demand side of the curve is already extremely lumpy. If you're only affordable when you're operating near 100% of the time (i.e. "baseload") you simply can't make up the majority of power generation. Batteries are poised to change this - but at that point you've got to be cheaper than the intermittent power sources.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#308

Post by lucideer »

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?

> Sure, it might cost more

I think this is more than good enough to be the "straight answer" you're looking for all on its own (& it's definitely not a case of "it might" - it definitely will).

However, on top of the cost, there's three additional reasons:

2. It will take longer

3. It will need to be geographically distributed to an extent that will incur a significantly broader variety of local logistical red tape & hurdles

4. One of the largest components that will cost more is grid balancing energy storage, which is not only a cost & logistical difficulty, but also an ongoing research area needing significant r&d investment as well.

Given all those comparators, it's a testament to the taboo that's been built up around nuclear that we have in fact been pursuing your "all renewable" suggestion anyway.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#309

Post by nicce »

tirant wrote: post #218
jsbisviewtiful wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Advocating for deregulation in order to achieve innovation is the opposite of conservative. It’s not a matter of being a for profit or not. It’s an also matter of technological development. Most of the early incidents in nuclear plants happened under the management of public or state controlled companies.

> Most of the early incidents in nuclear plants happened under the management of public or state controlled companies.

Not a fair comparison since back then nobody else had the resources.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#310

Post by lillecarl »

oceanplexian wrote: post #29
kulahan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With AI on the horizon and each server farm using as much energy as a medium-sized city, I have no idea how they hope to meet demand otherwise, unless the plan is just some equivalent to "drill baby drill".

It’s simple, Germany isn’t going to be participating in the next industrial revolution. It will be the US vs. China. You can already see it happening with their car industry as they struggle to keep up with new technology.

Sure, talk to your grid operators about that! :)
Post reply on HN