I think a good exercise for the reader is to reflect on why they were ever against nuclear power in the first place. Nuclear power was always the greenest, most climate friendly, safest, cheapest (save for what we do to ourselves), most energy dense, most long lasting, option.
EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy
561–570 of 1001 posts
Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy
#562Clean, but not insurable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...
Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy
#563Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sure, it might cost more I think this is more than good enough to be the "straight answer" you're looking for all on its own (& it's definitely not a case of "it might" - it definitely will). However, on top of the cost, there's three additional reasons: 2. It will take longer 3. It will need to be geographically distributed to an extent that will incur a significantly broader variety of local logistical red tape &…
> It will take longer Longer than nuclear? Where did you get that idea from? Anyway, about #4, nuclear can't economically work in a grid with renewables without batteries. With renewables, you can always temporarily switch to a more expensive generator when they go out, but anything intermittent that competes with nuclear will bankrupt it.
Nuclear is baseload which is why it always runs. Gas peakers is what you turn on and off.
Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy
#564Clean, but not insurable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...
It is not beyond insurance.
https://gordianknotbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/nuke_...
Insurance already insures extremely complicated industries.
Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy
#565Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Renewables make the net-demand curve (demand - renewable generation) very lumpy which generally favors dispatchable (peaker plants, batteries, etc.) generation over baseload. Even without renewables in the equation, the demand side of the curve is already extremely lumpy. If you're only affordable when you're operating near 100% of the time (i.e. "baseload") you simply can't make up the majority of power generation…
If the goal is 100% carbon-free energy, then we simply can't let economics get in the way. Otherwise we will always be stuck building some natural gas peaker plants. And one option is to mass produce nuclear power plants, get prices down even further via economics of scale and then run them uneconomically. Uneconomically doesn't mean "at a loss", just that you aren't making as much profit as you could optimally. With…
... voters (or however we want to handwave preference aggregation) are very passive about carbon-free energy (and global warming and sustainability and economics and ...)
they either pick some pet peeves (coral reefs, rainforests, global South inequality, desertification) and usually start buying things (EVs, PV panels, heat pumps)
but when it comes to policy they usually revert to Greenpeace/degrowth/NIMBY cult members
Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy
#566Earlier 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.
There's plenty for a few thousand years. We might have solved fusion power by then.
Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy
#567I’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?
It would actually cost a lot less to use renewables and storage than a bunch of nuclear. For a completely decarbinized grid, there are two paths: 1) 100% renewables plus storage, or 2) ~90% renewable plus storage, and 10% nuclear/advanced geothermal. There's lots of debate about which one would be cheapest. But the true answer depends on how the cost curve of technologies develops over the coming 20 years. (Personall…
Yes, this is the real answer. Nuclear, which is currently dropping as a percentage of global electricity demand and is now under 10% needs a miracle to reverse that and maybe reach 15% if everything goes well for it.
Meanwhile renewables are surging and every relevant expert suggests they'll dominate the future.
https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/the-world-is-gettin...
The graph without the relatively flat hydro is even more stark.
The stuff people say about nuclear on this forum is on the level of flat earthism and they seem totally unashamed of this.
Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy
#568We 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…
The comment you reply to talk about regulatory costs but you choose to talk about cost in general. No one thinks its cost is 0.
Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy
#569Article claims Germany is beginning to shift. I wouldn’t count on that. Despite having to import all of their energy aside from renewables, there is a wide-spread suspicion of nuclear here. The CDU made a lot of noise about it while they were in the opposition, but turning those closed plants back on is highly unlikely. Very costly and I’m not certain the expertise can be hired.
German people mostly just listen to what their leaders tell them. If their leaders change their mind then the German people will step in line and believe they changed their mind out of their own free will too.
Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy
#570Misleading title. The controversial part is that they ruled both nuclear energy AND natural gas plants as clean energy.
That's because nuclear + gas is the climate friendly solution.