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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

#41

Post by chmod775 »

Lammy wrote: post #37
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…

I think the standard response is “but what about a hypothetical future civilization somehow disconnected enough from ours to not know what nuclear waste is who find it and dig it up thinking it’s holy or whatever” and a link to the spiky ground and “this is not a place of honor”. Assuming a future civilization gets to exist considering we keep burning petroleum products and calling them clean while we waste time argu…

> I think the standard response is “but what about a hypothetical future civilization somehow disconnected enough from ours to not know what nuclear waste is who find it and dig it up thinking it’s holy or whatever”

It is not. Why is it one straw man after another in this discussion?

The response is that countries like Germany have already spent a lot of time looking for a suitable place, and haven't found one. At this point it seems likely there isn't one.

If a place is found, by all means, go build nuclear reactors. But sort the waste problem out first. We've already done the "build first, figure the waste problem out later". Many decades later, here we are.

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

#42

Post by [deleted] »

sushisource wrote: post #22
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 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…

[deleted]

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

#43

Post by oblio »

lokimedes wrote: post #27
chpatrick wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know there are also economic problems with nuclear. Nuclear power plants are enormous investments, then take decades to build and eventually decomission. If renewable energy gets efficient enough, nuclear is not worth the effort.

It’s actually pretty easy to build a nuclear reactor, but is as expensive to make it safe today as it is to maintain a Windows NT 4.0 server in 2021 when it comes to making it regulatory compliant. Also when comparing nuclear to “renewable” energy, you are really comparing distributed low density investments with monolithic ones. Nuclear is 1e6 the energy density of chemical reactions. And wind/solar is basically hea…

> What really boggles my physicist brain is how we expect a bunch of volatile solar and wind stitched together with fragile infrastructure and lithium piles to ever become a stable base load alternative. I put my hope on the Engineers knowing better than me :)

I don't work in this field, but I'd have a bunch of basic assumption you could dismantle:

1. We need a solid power grid, anyway, you know, for transporting electricity where it's needed. So shouldn't that stitching be quite solid anyway? Also, at a national level, I'd imagine solar and wind probably have rather solid statistical patterns, and those random factors can be abstracted away to a degree (the whole "what happens when the wind is not blowing?" - kind of hard to have the wind stop blowing all over 300k sqkm, all at once :-) ).

2. Once that power grid is solid, does it matter how small and distributed those solar and wind patches are?

3. I don't think Lithium-Ion is the only/main energy storage tech being investigated/invested in for grid purposes. And why couldn't it become a solid alternative for base load? Are base load-capacity energy storage facilities not competitive with gas/nuclear/coal power plants, factoring in pollution or other risks?

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

#44

Post by j-pb »

sushisource wrote: post #22
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 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 issue is not finding a place that's geologically stable now. But finding one that's geologically stable in 850.000 years.

And to find a place where no post worldwar 5 civilization accidentally diggs is up.

And to have a tracking chain where no fuel gets into the wrong hands.

Do you know how germany decided on the position of its long term nuclest storage facilities?

East germany choose the salt mine closest to the west german border. And in retaliation west germany build theirs right next to it, in the closest saly mine that they had to the east german border.

Nuclear tech is awesome and great, and too dangerous for careless, political, corrupt, humanity to be trusted with.

So I'd rather spend that money on renewables, where the worst thing that can happen is someone hitting you with a PV cell.

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

#45

Post by Lammy »

chmod775 wrote: post #41
Lammy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the standard response is “but what about a hypothetical future civilization somehow disconnected enough from ours to not know what nuclear waste is who find it and dig it up thinking it’s holy or whatever” and a link to the spiky ground and “this is not a place of honor”. Assuming a future civilization gets to exist considering we keep burning petroleum products and calling them clean while we waste time argu…

> I think the standard response is “but what about a hypothetical future civilization somehow disconnected enough from ours to not know what nuclear waste is who find it and dig it up thinking it’s holy or whatever” It is not. Why is it one straw man after another in this discussion? The response is that countries like Germany have already spent a lot of time looking for a suitable place, and haven't found one. At th…

The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

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

#46

Post by makomk »

dstick wrote: post #3
seanhandley wrote: post #2

This is a good move. Nuclear power is poorly understood and easily stigmatised but on balance is far less harmful than burning fossil fuels.

After having read Gates’ latest book on climate change, one metaphor that stuck with me was the one on nuclear energy. It’s as if the Wright brothers invented the first airplane, flew off, crashed, lost every passenger, and then we collectively dropped the entire technology and every promise it held. Never to be visited again. Humans are weird. (and I know the accidents were worse, but we iterated on car and plane sa…

The actual answer is that we did improve on nuclear safety, and that all the regulations required to - for example - make sure that power plant designers didn't route all the redundant monitoring and control wiring down the same cableways and stuff them full of highly flammable foam are part of the reason nuclear power has become increasingly unaffordable. This is not some hypothetical example I'm making up, nuclear power plants in the US really did do that with predictable results and apparently the fire safety regulations really are a major cost. The Trump administration tried to fix this by giving more flexibility to designers, but of course that just made it proportionally harder to show the designs were safe and achieved nothing.

Because of this, one common refrain from nuclear proponents on HN is that we should just get rid of all those safety regulations and go back to 70s-era levels of nuclear safety because it's safe enough, which would be like if we'd just accepted planes were unsafe back when accidents were more common and not tried to fix it. It also misses one of the key lessons of airplane safety: this kind of normalization of deviance is a major cause of serious accidents. For every major disaster, there is a chain of less serious incidents where things just didn't happen to align right to cause lots of deaths, until one day they did... and nuclear power has the potential for some really impressive disasters. It also probably wouldn't be enough to make nuclear power viable again; it has a lot of cost problems.

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

#48

Post by bryanrasmussen »

sushisource wrote: post #22
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 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…

Where is somewhere actually geologically stable long term? Here is a map of seismic areas worldwide

https://www.thoughtco.com/seismic-hazard-maps-of-the-world-1...

Are there other instabilities to take into account? Finally there is also a question as to the political viability of burying waste at a particular location.

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

#49

Post by lostlogin »

tpmx wrote: post #21
natch wrote: post #7

Let’s just ignore the carbon released by cement production.

In Europe: That cement (which is used to create concrete) is by far mostly going into the huge foundations needed for the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of 150m+ tall wind power plants that only produce power sometimes.

Yes, but compare their CO2 footprints to nuclear. Have you a source that shows Nuclear is better? I hunted around a while back and got a large range of answers, but nuclear seemed consistent worse. Eg see page 29 of this link. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...

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

#50

Post by freeone3000 »

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…

Find a mountain and shove it in there. Doesn't have to be that hard.
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