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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

#601

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

DennisP wrote: post #457
virtue3 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with nuclear mistakes is they aren't a few decades. They can be measured in centuries. So yeah. Regulation. Don't build a damn LWR on a fault line (Fukushima) 3mile Island - don't have so many damn errors printing out that everything is ignore Chernobyl - we all know I think. It's still being worked on to contain it fully. Goiânia accident (brazil) - caesium-137 - Time magazine has identified the accident…

And then there's coal. The difference between nuclear and coal is that when nuclear has a horrible accident, it kills fewer people than coal kills as part of its normal expected operation.

The great thing is that coal is not the alternative in 2025.

Renewables are forcing enormous amounts of coals and fossil gas off grids around the world as we speak.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#602

Post by LtdJorge »

epistasis wrote: post #504
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?

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…

> projections of all experts severely overestimate storage and renewables costs, while simultaneously severely underestimating the costs of nuclear

Does that mean you’re expert-er?

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#603

Post by oneshtein »

m101 wrote: post #591
AndyPa32 wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nuclear power plants require international laws and international cooperation for insurance, because one serious incident, such as Chornobyl, can wipe a continent.

In Ukraine, profits from all nuclear plants will cover damages, caused by Chornobyl, in 1000-5000 years IF nothing more will happen to Chornobyl or other an other nuclear power plant in those years, which is unlikely.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#604

Post by flohofwoe »

m101 wrote: post #589
flohofwoe wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most long lasting ...which also applies to nuclear waste unfortunately, and that answers part of your question - e.g. as irrational as it may be, but at least in Germany nobody wants to have a nuclear waste storage in their backyard (the other part of the answer is Chornobyl - and for the same 'not in my backyard' reason). Also when looking at recent years, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to have a few large nucle…

When I referenced long lasting I mean that some nuclear power stations are no forecast to keep going for 120 years. CO2 in the atmosphere is also long lasting, do you have a problem with that type of storage? Spent nuclear fuel is dangerous to stand near for 500 years (without centimetres of concrete), and then dangerous to consume for an further many thousand. It is within our technology to look after the quantities…

See that's the thing, you're trying to argue rationally ;)

But the discussion around nuclear energy stopped being rational decades ago. On one side you have the old guard of the environmentalist movement which got started with anti-nuclear protests in the first place and then had their "I told you so" moment in 1986, and on the other side you have that new "nuclear grassroots movement" which tells me that nuclear power is akshually completely safe, and even if an incident happens it's not doing any harm and btw those Chornobyl death numbers are completely overblown, the radiation was actually good for the environment or whatever.

Then I'm seeing that the latest European NPP in Finland was about 15 years late and 3x more expensive than planned (from 3.5 to 11 billion Eu) while wind and solar farms are just popping up everywhere around me without much fanfare, built by whoever has some money and a bit of unused farmland or roof space to spare. And I really can't imagine those same people pooling their money and starting to build nuclear power plants instead ;)

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#606

Post by oneshtein »

m101 wrote: post #589
flohofwoe wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most long lasting ...which also applies to nuclear waste unfortunately, and that answers part of your question - e.g. as irrational as it may be, but at least in Germany nobody wants to have a nuclear waste storage in their backyard (the other part of the answer is Chornobyl - and for the same 'not in my backyard' reason). Also when looking at recent years, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to have a few large nucle…

When I referenced long lasting I mean that some nuclear power stations are no forecast to keep going for 120 years. CO2 in the atmosphere is also long lasting, do you have a problem with that type of storage? Spent nuclear fuel is dangerous to stand near for 500 years (without centimetres of concrete), and then dangerous to consume for an further many thousand. It is within our technology to look after the quantities…

> CO2 in the atmosphere is also long lasting, do you have a problem with that type of storage?

Yes, we have problem with CO2. The solution is to use Solar + Wind + Hydro + Batteries + long lasting storage. Nuclear causes more problems than it solves unless it used to make nukes also.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#607

Post by tietjens »

kulahan wrote: post #211
oceanplexian wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s simple, Germany isn’t going to be participating in the next industrial revolution. It will be the US vs. China. You can already see it happening with their car industry as they struggle to keep up with new technology.

Could you expand more on your car point? I thought BMW and Benz were doing great at the moment. I dunno much about Audi or VW, but Mini also seems to be doing well (which I thought was British, but one of their models has literally the same engine as my last bimmer, so I guess they were sold at some point?).

The German car companies are struggling intensely against Chinese competition, everywhere outside of the US, and especially in China. The Chinese electric cars sell for 3 times less than the German ones in EU. The Chinese also invested heavily in e tech. The Germans? Not so much.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#608

Post by LinXitoW »

pil0u wrote: post #230
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?

Nuclear has serious advantages over renewables when you consider the physical constraints: to match a large nuclear plant solely with wind or solar, you’d need far more land, material, and backup or storage to deal with intermittency. Renewable sources can’t reliably deliver the same baseload without huge infrastructure and/or major reductions in energy demand. The trade-offs make nuclear almost unavoidable if we wan…

Alternatively, renewables have the massive advantage of being distributed and often closer to the consumer, possibly even their rooftop, or their parking space, or even on top of their shading device (big umbrellas etc.), or their agricultural land, which is already suffering from the higher temperatures.

And price and time to market are of course giant points as well.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#609

Post by neobrain »

froh wrote: post #317

> Germany, long a symbol of anti-nuclear politics, is beginning to shift. err, no. it's not. industry lobby tries again and again, yes, and party officials parrot that lobbying, yes. but no: there is no Endlager (permanent spent nuclear fuel waste site) in sight, the costs of dismantling used plants are outrageous and if it were not for nimbyism, we'd be essentially self sustaining on wind and solar within a decade.…

> err, no. it's not. industry lobby tries again and again, yes, and party officials parrot that lobbying, yes.

Is the lobby trying? Last I checked the head of RWE himself said that going back to nuclear in Germany was infeasible. It seems to be conservative politicians who had been keen on it before winning the election and before the industry pointed out that it's a bad idea actually.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#610

Post by LinXitoW »

peterfirefly wrote: post #566
fundatus wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear also requires non-infinite resources like uranium.

There's plenty for a few thousand years. We might have solved fusion power by then.

How plenty is the supply that's not in some other countries control, that might make us dependent on them, yet again, like with Germany, gas and Russia.
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