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

411–420 of 1001 posts

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#411

Post by nilslindemann »

johanyc wrote: post #372
pfdietz wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with that, renewables are cheaper. One often hears the pearl clutching about land area, but even in Europe the cost of land for renewables would be quite affordable. Building very expensive nuclear power plants to save on relatively cheap land would be penny wise, pound foolish, an optimization of the wrong metric.

The core issue with renewables is reliability. Who cares it's cheap when it doesnt produce energy when I need it

No one cares, you buy it temporarily from the one who has it. And next time you may be the one who has it, and he may buy from you.

Do they produce coffee beans in your country? No? Were you ever worried about not having enough coffee?

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#413

Post by marcosdumay »

lukan wrote: post #76
exabrial wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the stuff that makes working reactors is the most difficult part of making a working weapons I'm unaware of this to be true. Civilian reactors are hardly-at-all-enirched uranium reactors. Creating highly enriched uranium or plutonium are completely different processes.

"Creating highly enriched uranium or plutonium are completely different processes." Not an expert, but isn't all you basically need to do is running the centrifuges a bit longer? Breeding plutonium is a different process than enriching uranium, sure, but with enough enriched uran you will have a nuclear bomb. And a dirty bomb is bad enough and simple to construct as well.

You need more centrifuges, several times more, but not orders of magnitude more.

And you need nuclear reactors to make plutonium. The weapons you can make with plutonium are qualitatively different from the ones you can make with uranium.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#414

Post by locallost »

This page and organization, WePlanet, is a rebrand of RePlanet. They advertise as a grassroots movement, but are funded by a hedge fund with a significant investment in fossil fuels [1].

I think their whole schtick is prolonging the current situation and betting on slow and expensive nuclear is a good strategy to prevent real change.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/30/climate-...

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#415

Post by throwawayffffas »

pkoiralap wrote: post #16

Asking because I don't know. How is enrichment governed? Say for instance if a country is only using it for energy vs defense/offense. And are there elements that can be specifically used for energy vs otherwise? Last I remember, having access to enriched uranium was grounds for a country to bomb another one.

Modern weapons use plutonium not uranium, uranium weapons can be constructed.

All it takes is the enrichment to produce the fissile material for a weapon.

As far as I know countries have agreed to not build weapons, with the exception of those that already have them, there is an international body that monitors enrichment sites, but checks are voluntary a country can choose to not accept inspections and/or build additional secret enrichment sites.

The fissile material is not sufficient for a weapon though, as I understand there is quite a bit of science that goes into making a bomb.

Additionally, first generation weapons are large and unwieldy, i.e it takes a bomber to deploy a single weapon with a very small yield.

Miniaturization, building a weapon small and light enough to put on a missile is a significant problem that took the current powers years to get over.

But that's about it, if you can figure out how to make a small bomb of variable yield, you can make bombs small enough to fit a large backpack, and thermonuclear weapons that fit in a ballistic missile as well.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#416

Post by thoroughburro »

theptip wrote: post #375
javcasas wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with nuclear is not the ultra-low probability of incidents, but the potential size of the incidents. And then you have bad faith actors. No one would ever put graphite tips in the control rods to save some money, wouldn't they? No one would station troops during war in a nuclear power plant, wouldn't they? No one would use a nuclear power plant to breed material for nuclear bombs, wouldn't they? Finally,…

Agreed that lumpiness is an issue and so in practice you wouldn’t want to argue for coal levels of death-per-MWh. This concern is, I believe, the crux of why folks are overly-conservative - the few well-known disasters are terrifying and therefore salient. Plus it’s hard to campaign for “more risk please”. But we should bite the bullet; yeah, more of the stuff you list would happen. And, the tradeoff is worth it.

> yeah, more of the stuff you list would happen. And, the tradeoff is worth it.

Next to you and your family, then, since you’re happy trading with their risks.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#417

Post by pfdietz »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #112
medlazik wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What do you mean? I mean it's not clean >one of the lowest impact mining of resources we have Not the point. It's not clean, it shouldn't be called clean end of the story.

Do you think rare earth minerals for batteries and photovoltaics grow on trees?

Photovoltaics don't use rare earth minerals (and Li-ion batteries only use yttrium in one particular variety of LFP cells.)

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#418

Post by nicce »

nradov wrote: post #318
nicce wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't that rare in general - if the U.S. opens the secrets of nuclear submarines - we had had mini reactors for decades.

Secrecy isn't the obstacle here. Naval reactors are optimized for combat performance, costs be damned. They aren't economically efficient for commercial power generation.

At least Russia is doing fine with SMRs, thought the fuel enrichment level is around 20%. They are building new reactors all the time and they seem pretty efficient. E.g. they have even floating nuclear plant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#419

Post by locallost »

preisschild wrote: post #367
froh wrote: 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…

I propose we store it in your basement. It's really not a flame war, but people that consider themselves rational argue it's no big deal, so they should be prepared to store it in their immediate vicinity. I support renewables and don't have a problem with solar panels on my roof or even a windmill in my backyard.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#420

Post by khalic »

Funny how all the nuclear chills forget the plethora of issues that come with that tech.

- who has access to nuclear power? - what happens to nuclear reactors during war? - where does the Uranium come from? - how long does it take to build a reactor? - how many long term solutions have been developed in the more than 60 years of this technology’s existence?

Not saying nuclear doesn’t have a place, but let’s not be blind to the long list of complications that come with it.

Post reply on HN