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

431–440 of 1001 posts

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#431

Post by tonkinai »

theptip wrote: post #294
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…

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.

Climate has never stopped changing since the day the earth was formed, that's why we are here. Keep it "under control" is a wild target.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#432

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #352
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is sabotaging France on nuclear. Flamanville 3 is a complete joke and the EPR2 program is in absolute shambles. Currently they can’t even agree on how to fund the absolutely insanely bonkers subsidies. Now targeting investment decision in 2026… And the French government just fell because they are underwater in debt and have a spending problem which they can’t agree on how to fix. A massive handout to the dead…

The EU is fining France because they don’t have enough clean energy in their mix despite France having the cleanest energy in Europe because nuclear used to not count. They are also forcing the French national energy company to resell their electricity at a loss to competitor moving money which should be used to invest into the pocket of private investors. And let’s not talk about the utter stupidity of the current d…

You do know that a large portion of the energy crisis was caused by half the French nuclear fleet being online when it was for once truly absolutely needed?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr...

I also note that you didn’t have anything to say about the EPR2 program and the absolutely insanely bonkers large subsidies needed to get it off the ground.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#433

Post by IMTDb »

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...

This exists because of a cognitive bias: we tend to focus on direct, attributable harm while overlooking larger, diffuse, and indirect harm.

A nuclear plant could operate safely for 50 years, causing no harm, but if it explodes once and kills 10,000 people, there's gonna be a trial. A coal plant could run for the same 50 years without any dramatic accident, yet contribute to 2,000 premature deaths every single year through air pollution—adding up to 100,000 deaths. Nobody notices, nobody is sued, business as usual. It's legally safer today to be "1% responsible for 1000 death" than to be "100% responsible for a single one". Fix this and that law goes away.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#435

Post by kieranmaine »

strawhatguy wrote: post #401
kieranmaine wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's really a question that should be directed at renewables: "If renewables are so cheap and fast to deploy, how come 39 years after Chernobyl, Germany still cannot get below France in CO2 emission?" Because renewables and storage have only been produced at the scale and price required to achieve this for the last 5 years. [1] The following article "Solar electricity every hour of every day is here and it changes…

just looked at 2, using their own numbers, and it says 97% to 24/365, in a sunny area (Las Vegas), which is like an outage 43 minutes out of every day (24 * 0.03 * 60). That's not what many would consider as 24/365, and certainly not "every hour of every day".

The report mentions this:

> Las Vegas can reach 97% of the way to 1 GW constant supply.

My take away from the report is not that 24/365 is achieveable everywhere, but how solar + batteries is rapidly dropping in price and is now cheaper with other forms of generation, which will result in solar + batteries making up the majority of generation on the grid.

> In a sunny city like Las Vegas, the estimated Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) at this 97% benchmark is $104/MWh. This is already 22% lower than the $132/MWh estimate based on global average capital costs of solar and battery a year earlier. It is also more cost-effective than coal in many regions ($118/MWh) and far cheaper than nuclear ($182/MWh).

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#436

Post by pfdietz »

boringg wrote: post #143
happosai wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear regulations are no worse than aviation regulation. Yet planes manage to be cost competitive. Cutting regulations isn't necessary the win people think. If safety regulations are cut, it risks accidents in future. Nuclear needs to move from bespoke builds to serial production.

Thats not the full picture. Aviation exploded in growth -- you can easily expand operations and work to smaller margins. The US shut down the nuclear industry intentionally from the 80s until the last 5 years from regulations.

It's a bogus talking point that the nuclear industry in the US was shut down due to increase in regulation.

The actual situation was that relentless 7%/year demand growth for electrical energy suddenly stalled, while at the same time a large amount of new capacity from cogeneration, made possible by the passage of PURPA in 1978, suddenly started to come on line. In this environment, and with the cost overruns and delays of the earlier nuclear builds, utilities could not make a case for new nuclear construction. High interest rates also didn't help.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#437

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

kergonath wrote: post #361
Hilift wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or acknowledge the true cost of $10 billion to build a reactor. Look at recent implementations. Finland was complaining that they had to deal with the mafia. The plant cost €11 billion, original proposal: €3 billion. Yikes. "... 3,800 employees from 500 companies. 80% of the workers are foreigners, mostly from eastern European countries. In 2012 it was reported that one Bulgarian contracting firm is owned by the mafi…

> Or acknowledge the true cost of $10 billion to build a reactor. Look at recent implementations. Finland was complaining that they had to deal with the mafia. The plant cost €11 billion, original proposal: €3 billion. Yikes. This particular plant is a terrible example. It was the first of its kind, so it was bound to be more difficult than as part of a series. For example, there were issues with contractors that wou…

It is not like nth of a kind Hinkley Point C, EPR reactor number 5 and 6, at $32.5B per reactor is going any better?

Also do note that no one knows the true cost of Olkiluoto 3. The $11B figure is from a settlement many years before it was completed as interest and construction costs kept accumulating.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#438

Post by Terr_ »

tonkinai wrote: post #431
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.

Climate has never stopped changing since the day the earth was formed, that's why we are here. Keep it "under control" is a wild target.

"All wooden boats always leak a little, so stopping people from drilling holes through the hull is a wild target."

It's a strawman to pretend that 10,000 year slow changes are qualitatively the same as what's been going on in the last hundred.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#439

Post by zeroq »

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…

I can see a future where everyone can have free access to nuclear power.

I'm not an expert but I recall watching documentary on the eve of personal computing and someone saying that the phrase "personal computer" sounded as alien as "personal space station".

Sure, won't happen tomorrow, but it's nice thing to dream of.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#440

Post by ifdefdebug »

ryao wrote: post #114
medlazik wrote: post #45

Uranium mining isn't clean at all. Between Greenpeace (full of business school hacks) and lobby pressured EU courts, there's a middle ground.

Why mine uranium? Only about 4% of nuclear fuel is actually used before the fuel rods need replacement, which makes uranium highly recyclable. Given all of the “spent” fuel rods in storage, mining operations for additional uranium are unnecessary. We have enough uranium to supply our energy needs for millennia, provided we are willing to begin a recycling program. Interestingly, the 4% actual “waste” is also quite va…

Sure, now show us how to recycle spent fuel rods (and become a billionaire).
Post reply on HN