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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

#591

Post by m101 »

AndyPa32 wrote: post #587
m101 wrote: post #561

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.

I disagree with cheapest. If you factor in twenty years build time and nuclear waste disposal, the whole thing is not economically viable. Then there's a problem with nuclear fuel. The sources are mostly countries you don't want to depend on. You are of course right with your assessment that nuclear is green, safe and eco-friendly. That's a hard one to swallow for a lot of eco activists.

It is expensive because of the regulatory burdens associated with making it unreasonably safe. By unreasonably safe I mean that harms predicted by radiation models are unscientific, and death rate expectations are far lower than alternative power generation technologies.

Nuclear fuel storage is relatively straightforward, and volumes have potential to be reduced 30x through recycling.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#592

Post by peterfirefly »

phs318u wrote: post #337
theptip wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is. Nuclear is 100-1000x safer than coal. By insisting on such an aggressive safety target, we force prices up and actually incur much higher levels of mortality - just delivered in the boring old ways of pollution and climate-driven harms. See https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy for detailed stats. I think we should target “risk parity with Gas” until climate change is under control.

When the nuclear industry feels confident enough to not need its own special law to protect it from liability in case of accidents, I’ll feel a little more confident in their safety rhetoric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...

That law says more about the reliability of US courts than about the safety of nuclear power.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#593

Post by m101 »

kpmcc wrote: post #585
m101 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear + gas is the climate friendly solution.

What is climate friendly about natural gas?

Is it less climate unfriendly than the alternatives. Every form of energy generation releases CO2. Gas also has the benefit that it doesn't need all sorts of extras to make it dispatachable when needed (which also require CO2).

I forgot to say hydro is also great where possible.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#594

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

m101 wrote: post #563
marcosdumay wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

All around Europe nuclear plants are forced off the markets because the electricity prices are for weeks lower than their wear and tear and fuel costs.

Why should someone with rooftop solar and a battery buy extremely expensive nuclear powered electricity from the grid when they can make their own?

”Baseload” is a title earned by having the lowest marginal costs. There is nothing fundamental about it.

Today renewables have the cheapest marginal cost at 0. They are the new ”baseload”.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#595

Post by m101 »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #594
m101 wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is baseload which is why it always runs. Gas peakers is what you turn on and off.

All around Europe nuclear plants are forced off the markets because the electricity prices are for weeks lower than their wear and tear and fuel costs. Why should someone with rooftop solar and a battery buy extremely expensive nuclear powered electricity from the grid when they can make their own? ”Baseload” is a title earned by having the lowest marginal costs. There is nothing fundamental about it. Today renewable…

This is not true. I assume you are talking about the french nuclear reactors and their abysmal capacity factors?

The reason for the french case is that they were required to reduce output to allow more space for other new energy generation types. Fortunately the French have realised the error of their ways.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#596

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

chickenbig wrote: post #534
bryanlarsen wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/g…

Citing [1] means that you are only here to sow discord citing research you know is factually wrong.

That study is laughably bad. To the point that they double counted all renewable investment.

See: https://www.isi.fraunhofer.de/en/blog/2024/kritische-stellun...

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#597

Post by out_of_protocol »

m101 wrote: post #581
Luker88 wrote: post #559

I am not sure people understand the implications of this. First, it's not just nuclear, it's also Natural gas. Second, lots of nations have incentives for "clean" energy. And now magically, all those incentives apply to nuclear and gas. It's a money grab from nuclear and gas manufacturers. It's not that the courts were involved for nothing. Still, we should use more nuclear. If only it was less expensive to build...

Nuclear + gas is the climate friendly solution.

Nuclear produces constant amount of energy (while consumption is not stable), Solar and Wind are highly unstable, with peaks not matching consumption. Adding gas (which is fast to adjust/turn on/turn off) for maneuvers makes whole system cheaper and more stable

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#598

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

realusername wrote: post #526
epistasis wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Renewables and storage are always over delivering, while nuclear always under delivers Well no, storage would need another 100x improvement for being usable in a 100% renewable scenario in any country you have any sort of winter. Say what you want on nuclear but we have example of countries which managed it successfully, for renewables, we still haven't.

Which is entering emergency reserve territory. Nuclear power CAPEX to build an emergency reserve would seem to be utterly insane.

The easy solution is gas turbines. We already have them and as aviation and maritime shipping decarbonize utilize the same fuel. Whether that is syngas, ammonia or biofuels.

Or earmark the biofuels for grid usage. Today the US produces enough ethanol used as a blend in for gasoline to run the grid without help for 14 days.

As we switch to BEVs repurpose that for grid duties while ensuring the inputs also decarbonize.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#599

Post by tonkinai »

tonkinai wrote: post #431
theptip wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is. Nuclear is 100-1000x safer than coal. By insisting on such an aggressive safety target, we force prices up and actually incur much higher levels of mortality - just delivered in the boring old ways of pollution and climate-driven harms. See https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy for detailed stats. I think we should target “risk parity with Gas” until climate change is under control.

Climate has never stopped changing since the day the earth was formed, that's why we are here. Keep it "under control" is a wild target.

I’d like to apologize. Realized that the wording in my comment wasn’t appropriate.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#600

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #537
reenorap wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do they pay him that amount because he is really good at keeping end user prices down?

Or do they pay him that much because he's good at extracting as much money from the situation as possible?

When given an option that would double costs and profits or halves costs and profits which is he incentivized to do?

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