EU experts to say nuclear power qualifies for green investment label: document • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by loeg » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

croes wrote: post #484

loeg wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Navy.[0] > By 2003 the U.S. Navy had accumulated over 5,400 "reactor years" of accident-free experience, and operated more than 80 nuclear-powered ships. They've been sailing nuclear subs since the 1950s without major safety incident. The big carriers supply grid power when they're docked in Hawaii. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_navy

Yeah, because the military never lies or tries to cover up something. https://apnews.com/article/559da885ca7c3f6252d67e400e92a846

> a minor mishap in which ″there were no serious injuries or radiological problems, the ship remained fully capable to perform any mission required of it and there was no damage to the reactor.″

> Lt. Cmdr. Craig Quigley, a Navy spokesman, responded: ″We did not try to cover anything up. Everything about this incident was properly reported through Navy channels.

That's neither a cover-up, nor damning evidence that the navy cannot safely operate reactors.

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

#532

Post by loeg » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #528

Dma54rhs wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When or a tree dies, or burns, during the decomposition process it releases the carbon back to atmosphere. Maybe you could bury them somewhere where decomposition it's slower or more difficult but hard to imagine doing it at scale.

Surely lumber, treated cellulose, contains a high % of the original carbon content (minus water)?

Lumber isn't a permanent removal from the carbon cycle. Wooden structures have a shelf life, and eventually the wood decomposes and re-enters the carbon cycle. The only way to sequester carbon via lumber would be to bury it in a way that prevents decomposition. I don't think this is an especially efficient method of carbon capture.

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

#533

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #528

Dma54rhs wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When or a tree dies, or burns, during the decomposition process it releases the carbon back to atmosphere. Maybe you could bury them somewhere where decomposition it's slower or more difficult but hard to imagine doing it at scale.

Surely lumber, treated cellulose, contains a high % of the original carbon content (minus water)?

[deleted]

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

#534

Post by jnurmine » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

brtkdotse wrote: post #489

jnurmine wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the gas comes from biowaste, which is actually nice, because municipalities which have the most effective ways of collecting and processing biowaste can export the resulting biogas to e.g. surrounding municipalities and in this way generate income to run things for everyone. This means waste must be sorted somehow, but this is a rational thing to do anyways. And it pisses me off immensely to see some idiots throw…

Household waste comprised a minuscule percentage of the total substrate. The majority is sewage and food processing refuse. Source: my wife used to work at a biogas plant

Maybe not all plants are alike?

According to VafabMiljö [1], who runs the local biogas facility, in the year 2020 they processed 16157 tons of household biowaste, i.e. 66% of entire processing that year. The other stuff was sewage sludge and slurry from packaged/unpackaged food items (total of 8246 tons).

16157 tons of household biowaste turned into gas to run buses with and not dumped into a landfill is a good thing.

In 2012 the municipality collected 60% of overall food waste to turn it into biogas. Back then they hoped to reach 80% eventually. [2]

I didn't find newer collection numbers (they are somewhere, I just stopped iterating), but the number can only be higher today.

[1] https://www.vafabmiljo.se [2] Naturvårdsverket rapport 6518, September 2012 (ISBN 978-91-620-6518-8).

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

#535

Post by Chris2048 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 8:35 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #532

Chris2048 wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely lumber, treated cellulose, contains a high % of the original carbon content (minus water)?

Lumber isn't a permanent removal from the carbon cycle. Wooden structures have a shelf life, and eventually the wood decomposes and re-enters the carbon cycle. The only way to sequester carbon via lumber would be to bury it in a way that prevents decomposition. I don't think this is an especially efficient method of carbon capture.

By the same measure, CO2 is not a permanent state either, but it's an issue because of the imbalance in dynamic processes - The carbon stored by lumber is the amount of lumber in the world minus decaying lumber.

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

#536

Post by Hani1337 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 8:39 PM UTC

kergonath wrote: post #175

Hani1337 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but we have a lot of terrorists

“A lot of terrorists”? In Germany? I’m not saying it is perfect, but you might want to balance a bit your news sources.

I was including France in the group in that statement

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

#537

Post by andbberger » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

cinntaile wrote: post #513

andbberger wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Climate change is an existential problem that nuclear energy is one of few legitimately promising solutions to, so I don't think it's a stretch to compare the vapid and uninformed anti-nuclear arguments that pop up in every HN thread to anti-maskers: harmful rhetoric with no scientific basis.

I am not anti-nuclear though, I don't know where you got that from. Your example isn't even in production use yet so what I said was factually correct and if this is the only country in the entire world then this problem will persist for at least another few decades. It seems like you have very strong feelings about this and that is clouding your rational judgement.

You are spreading factually incorrect nuclear dogma. You're kidding yourself if you think you're not anti-nuclear. You claim this is an unsolved problem, Finland says otherwise. Moreover, deep geological storage is only needed for super long-term storage (like, long after the last humans have kicked the bucket). In the medium-term, storing high-level waste onsite is a perfectly adequate solution. The so-called waste problem is complete bullshit - there was never a problem.

My rational judgement is not in question here, but that of all anti-nuclear proponents should be. And you're right, I do have strong feelings. Can you really blame me? I'm inheriting a broken world that looks existential climate change in the face, shrugs, lights up a spliff and says "well solar is pretty cheap". We've had the technological solution to climate change in hand for 60+ years: rocks so spicy they'll power our entire civilization for millenia. Yet we (the people) got outplayed so hard by the oil lobby that not only is nuclear energy on the decline, threads like these where supposedly technologically literate people espouse greenpeace's old talking points abound. And while this baseless and frustrating 'debate' continues, the water rises.

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

#538

Post by neoromantique » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

lispm wrote: post #466

neoromantique wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think there is not much reason pretending that the russian nuclear industry is especially competent. Yeah, except for the decades upon decades of research they've been doing on the topic ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Like how to run dangerously outdated reactor designs for decades?

Xenophobia isn't productive

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

#539

Post by XorNot » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:58 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #518

XorNot wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was implied in the parent context that the fact coal is "naturally" radioactive somehow matters to the fact that it is. Asbestos is naturally occurring and incredibly dangerous. "natural" has nothing to do with risk to human life.

> "natural" has nothing to do with risk to human life. Not sure who you think you're disagreeing with? Nobody said otherwise if you read the thread.

Then I have no idea it was necessary to talk about the "naturalness" of radioactive sources at all given the subject matter.

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

#540

Post by acidburnNSA » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:41 PM UTC

_ph_ wrote: post #491

acidburnNSA wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sustainability: Nuclear fission fuel on earth can last about 4 billion years using breeder reactors [1]. Safety: Fossil and biofuel waste kill 8 million per year, compared to "up to 4000" total, ever, from commercial nuclear power. Cost: Fossil and biofuel cause those health effects and climate change. Nuclear does not. If those were considered in markets, nuclear would be excellent. Furthermore, modern nuclear build…

Can you point me to some operating breeding reactors? Especially in western nations? What were the reasons the few operational ones were shut down and not replaced?

> Can you point me to some operating breeding reactors?

* India: FBTR (operating)and PFBR (under construction)

* China: CEFR (operating) and CDFR (under construction)

* Japan: Joyo (Monju is shut down)

* Russia: BN-600, BN-800

Shut down ones include:

* US: EBR-1, EBR-2, Fermi-1, FFTF

* France: Phénix, SuperPhénix

* UK: Dounreay, PFR

* Germany: KNK-2, SNR-300

The shut down ones mostly shut down because uranium minerals were found to be sufficient for the world nuclear demand for now. We really only need to go through the complexity of breeding when you have 1000 GW-scale nuclear plants or more. Today we have only about 400.