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EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

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Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the hype for a limitless clean energy source, something that could benefit every aspect of humanity more than any other invention in human history considered “weird”?

> limitless clean energy source Like the guy you're responding to, I'm not a nuclear hater. We also have other "limitless clean energy sources" however, wind and solar. How is nuclear going to benefit humanity in ways electrical energy hasn't already? We haven't been energy constrained in the past 10-20 years. It really doesn't seem like additional energy production is going to make that much of a difference.

There are hard limits on wind and solar.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#393
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".

A country is not forced to have AI farms running in it. Building giant powerplant for the AI tech (possible) bubble not seems wise. The plant will take 5 - 10 years to build, who knows what demands AI will have at that point. SO let some countries that want to spent enormous amounts of their energy on AI do so, adn the rest can connect to those.

This is shortsighted. China routinely experiences large overcapacity in their electricity grid just to deal with the unknown unknowns of outages and other new demands. Suppose that the AI bubble burst and AI energy use is negligible, the extra capacity could be used for something else: retire your traditional coal fired furnaces for steel making and replacing them with electric arc furnaces; produce more aluminum; build more EV chargers.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#394

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.

Which costs are you thinking about here? Please be specifc, provide details about regulations which are not needed, why they're not needed, and what they add to the cost of a nuclear plant.

Sorry for the tone, but I think your statement is extraordinarily wrong - and at the same time it's being repeated very often lately but never with any specifics. I'm genuinely curious what it is based on.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#395
post #317

> Germany, long a symbol of anti-nuclear politics, is beginning to shift. err, no. it's not. industry lobby tries again and again, yes, and party officials parrot that lobbying, yes. but no: there is no Endlager (permanent spent nuclear fuel waste site) in sight, the costs of dismantling used plants are outrageous and if it were not for nimbyism, we'd be essentially self sustaining on wind and solar within a decade.…

> but no: there is no Endlager (permanent nuclear waste site) in sight The Problem in Germany is that by law the state has to build a repository, while the operators have to pay for it. The operators did pay (~24 bln EUR), but politically either NIMBY parties (such as CDU/CSU/SPD) block it, or the Greens (under Habeck) block progress so they can continue to shout "what about the waste???" In Finland the operators can…

Finland is the world's first and only such facility so far.

the law to build it is pretty universal, the world has essentially agreed to not export nuclear waste.

associating the progressive innovative green party with blocking progress is an interesting turn, there was no progress in the topic for decades, and the reason is rather that nuclear waste is like toddler art: first no one wants to take it, trying to toss it is met with loud and hefty protest, and at the end nobody knows where to take it.

don't the alps have lovely granite areas for the Finnish model?

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could you expand more on your car point? I thought BMW and Benz were doing great at the moment. I dunno much about Audi or VW, but Mini also seems to be doing well (which I thought was British, but one of their models has literally the same engine as my last bimmer, so I guess they were sold at some point?).

Heh, it was bought by BMW in ‘94.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#397
post #317

> Germany, long a symbol of anti-nuclear politics, is beginning to shift. err, no. it's not. industry lobby tries again and again, yes, and party officials parrot that lobbying, yes. but no: there is no Endlager (permanent spent nuclear fuel waste site) in sight, the costs of dismantling used plants are outrageous and if it were not for nimbyism, we'd be essentially self sustaining on wind and solar within a decade.…

State level NIMBYism is what's happening with nuclear. The state decides we won't have that in our back yard in the case of Germany.

Fear uncertainty and doubt is the only thing blocking nuclear power.

The irony is that the fud has been spread by "environmentalists" and has only managed to keep fossil fuels around for the last 20 years greatly exacerbating our climate change predicament.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#398
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.

You are making a common mistake, your source does only considers things that have happened, not things that could happen. But we know what could happen, which is why the security standards have to be high for nuclear power.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ignoring the fact that we live in the real world where money isn't infinite: nuclear provides stable base power generation, and it does it without taking up a lot of space. Renewables produce power intermittently, and require storage to match demand. Storage either requires non-renewable resources like lithium, or else large amounts of land. in theory yes, any amount of power could be produced by renewables, but in p…

Nuclear also requires non-infinite resources like uranium.

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