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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

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN leans to perfect diversity: power distribution is so boring. :D

It's not diverse. Whoever you are, HN always leans in perfect opposition to your ideas.

If there’s something we can all agree on, that’s our blind spot.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with nuclear mistakes is they aren't a few decades. They can be measured in centuries. So yeah. Regulation. Don't build a damn LWR on a fault line (Fukushima) 3mile Island - don't have so many damn errors printing out that everything is ignore Chernobyl - we all know I think. It's still being worked on to contain it fully. Goiânia accident (brazil) - caesium-137 - Time magazine has identified the accident…

I agree Chernobyl was an epic disaster, but Fukushima ? Last I heard the radiation level are basically normal even close to the reactor, and overall radiation wide there hasn't been much damage if at all. So it seems that fukushima is an example of something that should have been an EPIC accident, but actually was perfectly fine in the end. I may be wrong, but thats what I remembered from the wikipedia page.

Fukushima was partly an issue of flawed risk assessment. The tsunami that took down the plant was believed to be an incredibly rare even, expected to happen once every ten thousand years.

However, that was a result of faulty assumptions made when the plant was initially planned. With better data and methods, the event would have seemed a lot more likely.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't blow up nuclear reactors to learn how they failed like spaceX does with rockets.

Sure we can, just not out in the open with a bunch of spectators.

... Sooooo... time to fire back up the old range at Bikini Atoll?

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#464
post #283

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…

> "It’s really not, nuclear inherently requires extreme costs to operate."

Not just to operate, but to clean up and decommission at their end of life. In the UK, for example, early reactors were built cheaply without much consideration/provision for eventual decommissioning. This has left an enormous burden on future taxpayers, estimated to exceed £260 billion, much of it related to the handling and cleanup of vast quantities of nuclear waste [1].

Thankfully new reactors are being financed with eventual decommissioning costs "priced in", but this is another reason why they've become so expensive.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/23/uk-nucle...

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is going to take a long time and a lot of resources no matter what so maybe we should be building effective longterm solutions like nuclear instead of stopgap solar and batteries

Why would, e.g., solar and chemical or physical storage be a stopgap? Why spend 20 years of building a fission reactor these days (other than for research, medical, or defense purposes) which also make awful targets in a conflict? Maybe just wait till fusion reactors are there.

Because the reactor will still run 20 years after that while the solar and storage will need to be replaced by then

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#466

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…

A big part of the cost is financing the project. It is capital intensive, and even few interest points more impact a lot the cost over time.

Those project should be finance with the cheapest money possible (usually government backed loans). UK is an example of nuclear getting expensive due to private investment instead of government.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#468
post #283

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…

> 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.

This is based on reactors with poor efficiencies that leave a lot of unburned Uranium in their waste. Fast reactors and thorium reactors burn 90% of fissile material, so mining costs are significantly lower for the same power output.

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

Total death count from nuclear is lower than the death count of wind and solar. Falling off roofs happens a lot more frequently than nuclear accidents. This is a nothingburger, particularly given new reactor designs are meltdown proof.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#469
post #283

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…

Regulation still plays a role in the final cost. Sure it has to be safe. But we need to draw the line. Nuclear is arguably way too safe currently (zero death for a long time). Some regulations could be relaxed to speed up the construction, and make the operations cheaper.

We should have a discussion and review all the regulations surrounding nuclear.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#470
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’s really not, nuclear inherently requires extreme costs to operate." Not just to operate, but to clean up and decommission at their end of life. In the UK, for example, early reactors were built cheaply without much consideration/provision for eventual decommissioning. This has left an enormous burden on future taxpayers, estimated to exceed £260 billion, much of it related to the handling and cleanup of vast q…

> cleanup of vast quantities of nuclear waste

The total high level, dangerous nuclear waste of the entire world since we started playing with nuclear power 70 years ago fits in an American football stadium with plenty of room to spare. "Vast quantities" is a serious exaggeration.

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