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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

#531

Post by pstuart »

edbaskerville wrote: post #120
pstuart wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a new kind of "drill baby drill" which we should be embracing: geothermal energy. There's a lot of advancements in that space and it is a perfect base load generation source.

Yeah, advanced geothermal is very interesting. They're taking fracking techniques and using them to get to hot rocks, which opens up geothermal to a much, much wider set of locations. Interested parties say it could provide everything we need beyond wind/solar, and seems much simpler than building out nuclear plants. Check out: https://www.volts.wtf/p/catching-up-with-enhanced-geothermal

And leveraging fusion research to rethink how drilling is done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8sjdOjNxIE

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#532

Post by BrtByte »

jama211 wrote: post #84

I’m totally fine with nuclear honestly, but I feel like I don’t understand something. No one seems to be able to give me a straight answer with proper facts that explain why we couldn’t just make a whole load more renewable energy generators instead. Sure, it might cost more, but in theory any amount of power a nuclear plant would generate could also be achieved with large amounts of renewables no?

In theory, you can replace nuclear with a massive buildout of renewables and storage and grid upgrades and overcapacity to handle intermittency. The challenge is that doing all of that fast enough

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#533

Post by BrtByte »

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…

A lot of the cost isn't the tech, it's the years of delays, endless permitting, and political whiplash

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#534

Post by chickenbig »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #224
alexey-salmin wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Germany invested all their renewable money into nuclear, they would be carbon-neutral today. Not by 2050 but today. Instead the CO2 per capita in Germany is 2x the one in France. And France had built their reactors in the 70s for a modest price. The "whole load more renewable energy" idea is peak wishful thinking and it's incredible people still buy it today.

No they couldn't have. Germany has spent $700B on renewable energy and need 250GW of power. Not even China could have built 250GW of nuclear power for $700B although they could come close. Germany likely would have needed to spend $5T. Much of that $700B was spent in the 2000's and 2010's when renewable was more expensive than nuclear. But renewables are far cheaper than nuclear in the 2020's.

> Germany has spent $700B on renewable energy and need 250GW of power.

Germany has just over 250GW of installed capacity. [0] indicates peak power is 75GW. Replicating the Olkiluoto EPR build for 75GW of capacity would have cost perhaps 500B EUR.

[1] speculates about what would have happened if Germany had retained its nuclear power stations and performed a fleet build-out.

[0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-industry-has-lar...

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14786451.2024.2...

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#535

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

avidiax wrote: post #442
SCUSKU wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True that SVP benefits from not serving a rural area, but we also need to consider again that PGE is a for-profit organization that in 2024 posted $2.5B in profits, which were distributed to shareholders[1]. If PGE were owned by the state with no such fiduciary duty, this money could instead be used to lower rates and/or invest in infrastructure. [1] - https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/PCG/income-statement?icid=...

My napkin math is that the $2.5B in profits accounts for about $0.14/kWH. This is based on total electrical energy production of 17,301 GWh, since PG&E doesn't seem to publish their total distributed energy. https://www.google.com/search?q=%242.5+billion+%2F+17%2C301+... https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=CA#tabs-1

Great idea to napkin math it, but I think you're off by a very large margin. CA energy commission shows PG&E's energy consumption to be over 70,000 GWh.

$2,500,000,000 profit/70,000,000,000 kWh consumed is ~$0.035 per kWh.

So not exactly the smoking gun that CA ratepayers are looking for.

site: https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#536

Post by BrtByte »

beeflet wrote: post #227
9dev wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you factor in all the cost usually externalised in nuclear power, it’s often a lot more expensive than people realise. Decommissioning nuclear waste and old reactors is a huge, time-consuming, and thus extremely expensive operation.

Nuclear waste is a problem caused by activists preventing disposal sites like yucca mountain from being built

Yep, the "nuclear waste problem" is 90% political, not technical

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#537

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

reenorap wrote: post #127
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should look more closely at your PG&E bill. There are some hidden CA taxes in there. Also PG&E was forced to divest most of their generation assets, so I believe that much of the grid power down there is not under PG&E's control Edit: Finally, any Western US utility needs to bear the cost of wildfire liability. Whether that is a state-owned utility or private, the cost is still there.

PG&E is in no way a victim here. Their CEO is being paid $50M a year, and our rates got increased 6 times last year. Nevada the next state over, the prices are 20% of California's.

$50M is obscene, but not really a needle mover for rate payers. You could pay the whole executive team $0 and it would save the average residential ratepayer a few bucks per month, probably less than $5 per month.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#538

Post by BrtByte »

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…

Bottom line: nuclear will never be "cheap and easy," but I think there is headroom to reduce costs meaningfully

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#539

Post by chickenbig »

nilslindemann wrote: post #411
johanyc wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core issue with renewables is reliability. Who cares it's cheap when it doesnt produce energy when I need it

No one cares, you buy it temporarily from the one who has it. And next time you may be the one who has it, and he may buy from you. Do they produce coffee beans in your country? No? Were you ever worried about not having enough coffee?

> Were you ever worried about not having enough coffee?

Yet people are worried about delivery of oil and gas. The consequences of not having sufficient energy are more severe than a headache. I would not trivialise a life without electricity; how many people died in the Iberian Peninsular blackout?

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#540

Post by chickenbig »

fundatus wrote: post #282
notatoad wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ignoring the fact that we live in the real world where money isn't infinite: nuclear provides stable base power generation, and it does it without taking up a lot of space. Renewables produce power intermittently, and require storage to match demand. Storage either requires non-renewable resources like lithium, or else large amounts of land. in theory yes, any amount of power could be produced by renewables, but in p…

Nuclear also requires non-infinite resources like uranium.

Wind and solar require non-infinite resources too.
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