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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

#471

Post by Lammy »

lispm wrote: post #283
yellowapple wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has a lot of unwanted side effects So does literally every other power source. Nuclear is, if anything, among the least bad options in this regard. > and it just does not scale to solve the problem. It absolutely does, if we're willing to actually try. Evidently, we'd rather just keep killing ourselves with coal.

> It absolutely does, if we're willing to actually try. We are trying that since 66 years, since the first nuclear power plant. What we have achieved so far is a nuclear industry which is hardly able to keep the status quo of installed power generation, sky high rising costs for building nuclear power plants, extremely long build times, very little technological progress in the last decade, unsolved financial and tec…

The costs are hard to argue with, yeah. I certainly wouldn’t try with my limited understanding of the world of energy politics. I did enjoy learning more about the history of why nuclear is so expensive though even if it isn’t entirely useful knowledge. It’s pretty dry and I don’t have a PDF link handy to share, but I found the “President’s Report on Three Mile Island” (iirc, prepared for Carter while in office) to be a very very interesting read. Also these guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Three

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

#472

Post by R0b0t1 »

Angostura wrote: post #101
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 absolutely agree that we don't have a long term solution for storing nuclear waste. The thing is, we don't have a long term solution for storing CO2 either. The thing I like about nuclear waste is is it's obvious, its tangle and it sits around in sinister looking containers. As opposed to CO2.

We do have long term solutions. Large low oxygen beryllium copper caskets encased in steel. Drop them into a shaft bored into a mountain.

There's other ways, of course, but this was the best one I remember reading about; it's expensive but less so than the incidentals of CO2 and particulate release.

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

#473

Post by adrianN »

asdf333 wrote: post #445
godelski wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bigger factor to note is that 95% of radiation is contained within 1% of the waste. I think the problem here is that people don't realize how small this number is. Because 11ktons sounds like a lot. But if you compare it to any other waste in the world it is tiny. Perspective is lost. I also don't understand why not having a geological repository is an issue. Many researchers propose just storing it in place after…

asking people to store something for a very long time is very hard. Take the nuclear waste from the US atom bomb tests in the pacific. They capped the thing w/ tons of concrete but sea level rise and cracks are making it inevitable its going to cause a mess. And thats literally less than a century ago. The half life of these things is tens of thousands of years. I think you underestimate how 'temporary' many seemingl…

Eventually we'll just burn the "spent" fuel in breeder reactors. Anything else doesn't make much sense.

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

#474

Post by R0b0t1 »

cinntaile wrote: post #431
pas wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. This is not a real problem. If it were NPPs would not store spent fuel on site. The reality is that it's a hypothetical problem. Even the simple real problem of storing spent fuel is not that of a problem, because there's not that much of it. And while it's hot it needs water then moving air anyway. Long term storage is a nice idea, but in reality it's easy (dump anywhere down enough that it doesn't matter) and t…

If it was an easy problem then it wouldn't have taken 50 years to build a long term storage facility. Most problems are not easy, it just looks easy to outsiders.

It took that long because idiots routinely hold up the process with infinite questions. At some point you need to realize your existing behavior is worse and just move on, do not let perfect be the enemy of good enough.

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

#475

Post by adrianN »

godelski wrote: post #200
whatever1 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All plastics can be recycled. Does not mean they do. In fact, we have unmitigated leaking dumps here in the US, but since it is not in your backyard you don't care. Not your problem, someone elses problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site#:~:text=The%20Han... . I can play the environmentalist on the backs of other people as well. Super easy.

Most plastics aren't actually recyclable, which is why they aren't recycled. But we say that we can because it shifts the burden. Companies like Coke have been saying that they'll have 50% recycled material in the next 20 years for the last 60. ~~Fusion~~Full recycled product chain is only 20 years away! Also, 17% of France's energy comes from recycled nuclear (70% from nuclear)[0] [0] https://www.world-nuclear.org/i…

Most plastics can be recycled into energy by burning them, just like "spent" nuclear fuel. The difference is that plastic waste occurs everywhere and collecting it would cost way too much, but nuclear waste collection works very well.

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

#476

Post by adrianN »

aszantu wrote: post #336
godelski wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saying Nuclear waste is not a problem is like saying taking a shit in your neighbors yard is not a problem. The weird thing is that you're taking a shit in your neighbor's yard. I mean if they do it in their own yard it's weird, but there's nothing wrong with it. I mean this is what we do with dog shit. The problem is that everyone shits. Sure, nuclear shit smells a lot more than solar shit or coal shit, but there'…

The places where uranium is mined is uninhabitable afterwards :(

The places where lignite is mined look like this afterwards:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagebau_Garzweiler#/media/Date...

and are planned to become lakes (but at least in Germany nobody knows where the water is supposed to come from).

The places where coal is mined under ground need to run pumps forever or the surrounding cities are destroyed. The pumps in Germany's Ruhrgebiet consume about 70MW continuously. In a couple of decades the pumps will have consumed more energy than we got out of the coal.

And, of course, if we continue to burn coal in a couple of decades largeish parts of the globe might become uninhabitable to humans.

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

#477

Post by fulafel »

p_l wrote: post #430
fulafel wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a nuclear rampdown scenario, hopefully it would not come as an overnight surprise. Usually there are plans on a 10 year timescale or more. But I'm not arguing against nuclear, just for dynamic electricity pricing.

Like some people found out in Texas, with 5 digit bills due to short term spike?

That's the kind of thing we need to design for and handle using contracts containing hedges or cutoffs and price reactive usage. Texas isn't a cold climate place so relying on grid electricity to cover the exceptional weather is probably not the best plan in the post fossil future. But insulation will help with this and hot weather AC electricity usage both.

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

#478

Post by RealityVoid »

Lammy wrote: post #470
lispm wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not shutting down plants is an alternative to instead slowing down phasing out coal, like Germany did. Germany accelerated the development of renewable energy. That was the goal. Nuclear had to go first. Coal is following. The Germany time scale to rebuild its electricity landscape goes over many decades. By investing many many billions into renewables, instead of investing them into nuclear, Germany helped to kick…

Renewables seem like a great way to cap the total possible energy usage of humanity and keep us in a lower-evolved state. I want the future promised by unlimited nuclear energy instead.

Don't worry, it won't. At some point a large nation will eventually start using nuclear at scale and the competitive advantage will be clear so then everyone will have to follow suit.

That is, of course, presuming civilization does no collapse because of climate change. Fingers crossed!

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

#479

Post by kbelder »

Chris2048 wrote: post #437
j-pb wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

What happens when post worldwar 5 civilization digs up an old Uranium mine? Or even any site where uranium ore, and/or radioactive gas exists?

If they can dig kilometers deep, they'll be advanced enough to notice the radiation, and take precautions. If they're smarter than us, they'll mine the stuff and use it to power their sky cities.

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

#480

Post by random_kris »

cbmuser wrote: post #93
random_kris wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but i can imagine as we scale the hall like that will soon be able to contain only 10 years worth of material. Then 1 year etc...

That single hall is for the _whole_ country for _decades_. Nuclear is the _only_ technology where the fuel and the waste for decades can be stored on-site. It's just extremely dense. The Russians have a single hall for all their waste plus the waste of other countries such as Bulgaria or Ukraine: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uN0bZBOic&t=105s The US even had a nuclear power plant with full fuel reprocessing on…

When our energy consumption increases by 10000 times where will.we store the waste? I am not against the nuclear, I am for it but I like to ask hard questions
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