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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

#541
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

36 billion tons of CO2 came from industry and fossil fuel combustion in 2019. [1] CO2 is about 27% carbon by mass. Cellulose is about 44% carbon by mass [2]. That means about 22 billion tons of cellulose needed to offset one year's worth of CO2 emissions.

In 2014, use of wood products in all notable categories combined was about 1.25 billion tons [3]. Including just sawnwood and wood paneling, it was 0.827 billion tons. Since there's no plausible way to use 2500% as much lumber for structural purposes as we do now, and just harvesting wood and leaving it outdoors will lead to decomposition on short (decades) time scales, people consider charring it and/or burying it underground. Just building more structures out of wood is barely going to put a dent in the problem.

Likewise, dynamically shifting the equilibrium toward wood from CO2 doesn't help much if the wood persists for only decades. The time scale for CO2 to naturally return to its pre-industrial equilibrium is more like 100,000 years [4]. We need sequestration measures that prevent CO2 from returning to the atmosphere over longer time periods than wood takes to decay naturally.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose

[3] https://www.forest2market.com/blog/fao-report-highlights-res...

[4] https://www.amazon.com/Long-Thaw-Changing-Climate-Princeton/...

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

#542
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the odds of having large chunks of learned knowledge wiped out at this point? When the Romans did it, few could read/write and few people had access to the stored information of the day. That made it very easy to sequester knowledge. At this point in time, other than ELE type of events, can knowledge be kept away from all of humanity now? Sure, dictators can make it hard for the parts they control, but the r…

There is zero chance that we can communicate anything at those timespans. As I already wrote we have trouble to tell what happened 4000 years ago (how were the Pyramids build exactly?) and that is just a blink of an eye when compared to a million years. Ancient Egypt was a super advanced civilization continuously existing for 4000 years! Yet shortly after the decline nobody could read Hieroglyphs anymore. We don't kn…

>There is zero chance that we can communicate anything at those timespans.

That is a ridiculously strong statement.

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

#544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can tell there is no real point in discussing this with you, so I'll withdraw from this discussion.

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

#545
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's an easy problem that doesn't really require a solution.

It doesn't really help with costs, so there's no hurry, and it's a political quagmire. So it just did not happen. (WIPP kind of happened, and is happening, but it's for non-commercial nuclear waste.)

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

#546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

36 billion tons of CO2 came from industry and fossil fuel combustion in 2019. [1] CO2 is about 27% carbon by mass. Cellulose is about 44% carbon by mass [2]. That means about 22 billion tons of cellulose needed to offset one year's worth of CO2 emissions. In 2014, use of wood products in all notable categories combined was about 1.25 billion tons [3]. Including just sawnwood and wood paneling, it was 0.827 billion to…

True, but this proves that wood alone isn't a total solution. Along with reduction in FF dependency and other forms of carbon capture, it could be. "only decades" is enough time to come up with better solutions, including bio masses with a better per $ rate of carbon capture.

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

#548
post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are trying that since 66 years, since the first nuclear power plant. Evidently not very hard, as I've seen in my home state of California. Any nuclear development gets constant fierce pushback, and if it does somehow come to life, every last issue with it becomes yet another reason to kill it in the crib. If we were earnestly trying to achieve energy independence, then Rancho Seco (near where I grew up) would've…

> Evidently not very hard, as I've seen in my home state of California The US had been one of THE major proponents of nuclear technology. If the country lost interest, there must be a deeper reason than 'we did not try hard enough'. I would guess that the US invested more than a trillion dollar (in todays money) in its nuclear industry. Instead lately the US invested in fracking with huge climate impact and President…

It’s weird that in the post-9/11 years everyone seemed to talk about how the USA waged wars for oil and how oil is what props up USD, but now two decades later there “must be a deeper reason” why nuclear didn’t get to succeed on its own merits.

We are literally ruled by oilmen so this should not be a surprise lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HRG_Group#Early_business_histo...

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

#549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a genuine pyramid theory which posits that the Great Pyramid was, in fact, used for power generation. It's actually quite fun: the theory goes that the huge mass of the pyramid was used to couple seismic vibrations into the enormous granite blocks above the King's Chamber. Being stuffed with quartz crystals, this generated a varying electric field which excited a hydrogen atmosphere (provided by a chemical r…

Masers don't maser anywhere close to room temperatures.

I didn't say it was realistic...

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

#550
post #527
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After solar and wind take off completely, the reality is that for 99% of people out there, they will be as centralized as nuclear is. Both because of industry consolidation and because of practical realities.

You are confusing centralization of manufacturing, which is possible and not so bad, with centralization of energy production, which is much more insidious.

No, I'm not.

The only "personal" production of energy is from solar panels. Which still comes with its own problems, as you generally still want to be connected to a grid, in which case utility companies generally attach a lot of strings.

Solar will seem to be less centralized but in reality and over the long term we will have huge solar farms owned by big companies, for the same reason we generally have huge actual farms owned by big companies. And what difference does it really make for the regular user if they get their power from 40 nuclear plants or from 200 solar farms?

Wind is super centralized, big companies are building wind farms and big companies are operating them. You need a ton of capital for wind farms.

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