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

#371

Post by Rule35 » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

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…

That's not a technical problem, but a political one. Imagine if I said "yeah, solar sucks because people burn down the solar farms" and then you saw me sneaking away with a can of gas...

Deep geological storage, but not in salt beds, is a simple answer. And not entombed, etc. Just sitting on skids. Waiting to be inspected and repaired. I've been in deep hard-rock mines that individually would hold the entire world's waste.

The true answer though is breeder reactors and using 99% of the fuel, not 3%, and the waste being shorter-term byproducts as well.

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

#372

Post by chrisseaton » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

rpastuszak wrote: post #287

consp wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That coal waste is also radioactive. Natural, but still radioactive.

“Natural” as opposed to? :)

Natural as in naturally occurring. Coal is formed and burns in nature with no interaction from humans. Plutonium does not occur naturally in detectable quantities. It only does so through human action.

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

#373

Post by noinsight » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

cinntaile wrote: post #25

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…

It would be interesting to see some examples of EU countries that have solved the long-term storage problem? All I know of are countries that have been researching underground tunnels since the 70s and they're still not in production use.

Finland.

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

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

#374

Post by pyrale » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 10:39 PM UTC

Klinky wrote: post #170

cbmuser wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The French have been doing it for decades already with not a single casualty: > https://www.orano.group/en/nuclear-expertise/from-exploratio... It's not that they are doing the recycling in a cookie factory.

La Hague dumps radioactive waste liquids into the North Sea. Reactors currently cannot run 100% on MOX. Separation of Plutonium in the recycling process has proliferation concerns. Other countries have found building similar recycling plants challenging due to cost, with DoE estimating $50+ billion. La Hague was initially designed to extract Plutonium for weapons use, which likely justified its costs at the time. The…

> La Hague dumps radioactive waste liquids into the North Sea.

That would be a long pipeline, because La Hague is facing the channel, not the north sea.

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

#375

Post by jay_kyburz » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 10:39 PM UTC

michael1999 wrote: post #307

jay_kyburz wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to do some more reading about this, do you have any links? The wikipedia page is a little light on detail. I agree that we should have food security for everybody, and I agree that if we don't provide everyday people with power for heating and cooking they will just start burning things again which would create a bigger disaster. But when I look around me I see massive amounts of waste in every sector be…

The world population at the beginning of the 20th c (i.e. before the oil age) was ~1B, which was the highest in all of history. We are currently ~8B, on our way to 10-14 by the end of this century.

Absolutely agree that arresting population growth should be a number one priority.

Update: Thankfully, it looks like it has started to slow. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

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

#376

Post by whatever1 » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 10:39 PM UTC

dtech wrote: post #199

whatever1 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All plastics can be recycled. Does not mean they do. In fact, we have unmitigated leaking dumps here in the US, but since it is not in your backyard you don't care. Not your problem, someone elses problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site#:~:text=The%20Han... . I can play the environmentalist on the backs of other people as well. Super easy.

Most plastics are very hard if not impossible to recycle. Especially when different plastics are mixed or a product is made of multiple materials, i.e. nearly all products.

All plastics can be recycled. Is it economical? No. Same goes for nuclear waste.

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

#377

Post by gryn » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

selimthegrim wrote: post #365

alacombe wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Terrorists are not known to be the most logical people, to be honest Terrorists want blood and guts on national TV, not a statistical raise in cancer over 30 years.

Look around you at the world stricken by pandemic. What self respecting terrorist isn’t pivoting to bioweapons now instead of keeping Black Sunday or The Sum of All Fears on loop in the headquarters (for the life of me I can’t remember the name of the Tom Clancy book where Iran weaponizes Ebola)

> What self respecting terrorist isn’t pivoting to bioweapons

for some reason I find it funny to imagine a terrorist pondering about his long term career plans and prospects.

do they also have stuff like resume driven development?

the terrorist might find some operation ridiculous but does it anyway to make his resume better, that way he can get hired into the FAANGs of the terrorism sector.

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

#378

Post by IshKebab » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 10:42 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #234

IshKebab wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's a lot less waste, but most waste isn't radioactive!!

It also just isn't a lot of waste. It sounds like a lot, but consider that the US produces 100 million tons of coal waste per year (2014). Hell, solar has ~30ktons of waste a year (just PV panels). 11ktons over 60 years just is astronomically tiny. That's 138 tons a year, 150x less than solar and 500000x less than coal. They just don't compare.

I didn't say it was a lot of waste?

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

#379

Post by anoncake » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

acidburnNSA wrote: post #190

anoncake wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nuc…

Killing a predictable number of people each year is not danger, it's damage. The danger posed by hydro is real, but entirely negligible compared to nuclear.

But of course we should replace fossils by renewables and phase them out before nuclear. And if nuclear wouldn't take too long to build building new nuclear plants as a stopgap may actually make sense. Unfortunately, they do.

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

#380

Post by jnurmine » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 10:49 PM UTC

brtkdotse wrote: post #176

loeg wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, burn that methane. Is there enough of that to many any significant impact on energy needs?

Most busses and taxis in Sweden run on it, so there’s that

And the gas comes from biowaste, which is actually nice, because municipalities which have the most effective ways of collecting and processing biowaste can export the resulting biogas to e.g. surrounding municipalities and in this way generate income to run things for everyone.

This means waste must be sorted somehow, but this is a rational thing to do anyways.

And it pisses me off immensely to see some idiots throw plastic bags or non-food waste to the biowaste bins. There are signs in many languages and even with pictures, but some people still manage. Such biowaste cannot be used for gas generation, so it's kind of hurting all the inhabitants.