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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

#421

Post by pfdietz »

everforward wrote: post #348
happosai wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That tsunami killed 20.000+ people, and spilled massive amounts of chemicals and toxic junk to the ocean. Yet people keep fixating over the radioactive pollution, including evicting people from their homes for truly minor amounts of radiation. Turns out the "worst case scenario" of nuclear accidents is jackpot for nature. By clearing Fukushima from humans, nature is thriving: https://www.sciencealert.com/animals-aren…

To put a number on it, linear no threshold models predict ~130 deaths as a result of the radiation (and are known to over-estimate lethalities at low doses). Around 50 people a year die while clearing snow in Japan, so it's ~ twice as dangerous as shoveling snow in worst-case predictions.

LNT is not known to over-estimate lethalities at low doses. The actual situation is that the predicted deaths at low doses occur at such a low rate that the signal cannot be detected above the noise. That doesn't mean the prediction was wrong, just that it cannot be verified. It's possible (as in, consistent with evidence) that LNT under-predicts deaths at low doses.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#422

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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…

> 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.

It's true that a pound of nuclear fuel costs more than a pound of coal. But it also has a million times more energy content, which is why fuel is only 15-20% of the operating costs compared to >60% for coal. And that's for legacy nuclear plants designed to use moderately high enrichment rates, not newer designs that can do without that.

> Nuclear must have a more complicated boiler setup with an extra coolant loop.

You're describing a heat exchanger and some pipes. If this is the thing that costs a billion dollars, you're making the argument that this is a regulatory cost problem.

> You need shielding and equipment to move spent fuel and a spent fuel cooling pond.

Shielding is concrete and lead and water. None of those are particularly expensive.

Equipment to move things is something you need at refueling intervals, i.e. more than a year apart. If this is both expensive and rarely used then why does each plant need its own instead of being something that comes on the truck with the new fuel and then goes back to be used at the next plant?

> Insurance isn’t cheap when mistakes can cost hundreds of billions.

This is the regulatory asymmetry again. When a hydroelectric dam messes up bad enough, the dam breaks and it can wipe out an entire city. When oil companies mess up, Deep Water Horizon and Exxon Valdez. When coal companies just operate in their ordinary manner as if this is fine, they leave behind a sea of environmental disaster sites that the government spends many billions of dollars in superfund money to clean up. That stuff costs as much in real life as nuclear disasters do in theory. And that's before we even consider climate change.

But then one of them is required to carry that amount of insurance when the others aren't. It should either be both or neither, right?

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#423

Post by stinkbeetle »

phs318u wrote: post #337
theptip wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When the nuclear industry feels confident enough to not need its own special law to protect it from liability in case of accidents, I’ll feel a little more confident in their safety rhetoric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...

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

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#424

Post by pfdietz »

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

With proper system design this becomes a non-problem. This adds cost, but done properly it's cheaper than a system based on nuclear, especially going forward as renewable and storage costs continue their relentless decline (at a pace nuclear could only dream of).

In more detail: you want two kinds of storage, one optimized for daily charge discharge, and one for long term storage, to handle different frequencies in the power spectrum of the power-demand mismatch curve. The first is batteries, and the second is various techologies (like thermal or hydrogen) that will be brought into play for the last 5% or so of grid decarbonization.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#425

Post by roenxi »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #422
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…

> 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. It's true that a pound of nuclear fuel costs more than a pound of coal. But it also has a million times more energy content, which is why fuel is only 15-20% of the operating costs compared to >60% for coal. And that's for legacy n…

> Shielding is concrete and lead and water. None of those are particularly expensive.

Well, anything is expensive in enough quantity. But there is a bit of a tell not covered where of regulatory problems because nuclear plant projects keep going way over budget. Even stupid planners can notice trends of that magnitude and account for them, there is something hitting plant builds that isn't a technical factor and it is driving up costs.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#426

Post by kjkjadksj »

javcasas wrote: post #366
theptip wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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,…

Climate change is planet wide. No nuclear incident has ever had such a widespread effect.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#427

Post by locallost »

preisschild wrote: post #364
nilslindemann wrote: post #297

Whatever. No one wants to invest into it anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

LCOE does not account for the full (system) costs. Nuclear power plants have capacity factors over 90%, while PV/Wind have less than 25%. LCOE does not account for the added costs, such as increased transmission and storage/backup costs.

LCOE refers to the price in MWh (produced electricity), so it takes capacity factor into account. Whatever electricity you produce and sell depends on your installed capacity multiplied with the capacity factor.

Similarly, you pay for the electricity you receive and this is priced as say 40$ per MWh. Obviously when you receive nothing the price is 0, you don't pay them to idle, they either produce or not. Thus when storage costs kick in you don't add the costs of both together. You either pay one or the other, not both.

You might average them out taking into consideration what their output is, but you don't stack the costs on top of each other which I often see people do.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#428

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

theptip wrote: post #331
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you know, build renewables and storage which has in recent years reduced Californias fossil gas dependency by 40%.

“All of the above” seems a good approach. If this is an existential crisis, why would we not hedge our bets? (Not everywhere has good sun for solar.)

That is what we did 20 years ago when the renewable industry barely existed.

What has happened since is that the nuclear industry essentially collapsed given the outcome of Virgil C. Summer, Vogtle, Olkiluoto, Flamanville and Hinkley Point C and can't build new plants while renewables and storage are delivering over 90% of new capacity in the US. Being the cheapest energy source in human history.

We've gone past the "throw stuff at the wall" phase, now we know what sticks and that is renewables and storage.

The places with worse sun conditions tend to have amazing wind resources. Or be such a tiny niche that caring about them is irrelevant, like the few people living in the wind kill of the arctic high north of the polar circle.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#429

Post by bobmcnamara »

quickthrowman wrote: post #196
xrisk wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The (authoritarian?) nation of Finland has already solved the problem of what to do with nuclear waste: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re... I watched a very interesting documentary about Onkalo, which happens to be on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayLxB9fV2y4

Last I read Onkalo was testing empty casks and had stored zero waste for zero years.

Bit of a rush to close the GitHub ticket eh?

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#430

Post by pfdietz »

RandomBacon wrote: post #248
epistasis wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which regulations? What would change in the construction process? China builds the same designs as the EU and US, yet faster. What is different? I saw toooooooons of reports of construction mishaps in the US at Vogtle and Summer. I didn't see anything about "oh if we changed this sort of regulation it would have saved us money." It's a very worthwhile to read the retrospectives on these builds. There are lots of plan…

> What is different? All of the NIMBY roadblocks that ties up U.S. projects in court, that China doesn't give a F about considering they'll displace 1.3 million people to build a damn.

The recent US builds were not tied up by "NIMBY roadblocks".

It's interesting that in China, which you assert lacks roadblocks, renewables are being installed to a much greater extent than nuclear.

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