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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

#651

Post by mpweiher »

rootsofallevil wrote: post #624
freetonik wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long build times are often the result of constantly changing regulations. Also it’s interesting that build times in Japan are almost 2 times smaller than in US.

Nuclear doesn't have a great record in other countries either. I might have the wrong figures but Hinkley Points C is over 2 times over budget and likely to be 5+ years late. The exemption being France and maybe China? France did a programme of nuclear power stations rather than the 1 or 2 offs that seem to be the norm elsewhere and that seems to have worked pretty well. I'd be surprised if HPC is competitive with so…

No, the exceptions are builds like HPC.

The average build time is currently 6.5 years. The median is lower at 5.8. The variations across both time and space of those average are neither large nor particularly systematic.

There have always been outliers, so if you focus on those you can "prove" anything you like.

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi...

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#652

Post by Paradigma11 »

pfdietz wrote: post #424
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

With proper system design this becomes a non-problem. This adds cost, but done properly it's cheaper than a system based on nuclear, especially going forward as renewable and storage costs continue their relentless decline (at a pace nuclear could only dream of). In more detail: you want two kinds of storage, one optimized for daily charge discharge, and one for long term storage, to handle different frequencies in t…

And we do have detailed weather data for the last 70 years in Europe.

So it should be easy for proponents of renewables plus batteries like you to show that their proposed solutions would have worked all those years.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#653

Post by epistasis »

LtdJorge wrote: post #602
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…

> 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?

I expect that if I had to put numbers on things, I would be subject to the same biases as everyone else.

Or perhaps not, sometimes not being an "expert" in the traditional sense can remove the biases of an industry. Sci-fi author Ramez Naam had some of the most accurate forecasts in the past by doing the simplest thing possible: looking at the past curve and extending it. That is probably the simple type of projection I would make!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23185166

The IEA and EIA are two very respectable organizations that make comically bad projections, just absolutely awful. I know I could beat their projections!

Jenny Chase is a highly prominent solar analyst that has some great anecdotes about how wrong solar estimates always are, and she challenges that new analysts face, but I'm having trouble finding the podcast right now... in any case always read the Jenny Chase megathreads on the state of solar or her interviews in order to get some really great insights into what's going on.

In any case the rate of learning in solar tech far exceeds the expectations of most "energy" experts, and also usually exceeds the expectations of even the solar experts.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#654

Post by mpweiher »

looofooo0 wrote: post #628
rootsofallevil wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear doesn't have a great record in other countries either. I might have the wrong figures but Hinkley Points C is over 2 times over budget and likely to be 5+ years late. The exemption being France and maybe China? France did a programme of nuclear power stations rather than the 1 or 2 offs that seem to be the norm elsewhere and that seems to have worked pretty well. I'd be surprised if HPC is competitive with so…

South Korean company build a NPP in 7 years in Saudi Arabia.

United Arab Emirates.

Fastest build times are Japan with under 4 years.

Germany built its Konvois in just shy of 6 years.

Just before we stopped building altogether.

France built 50+ reactors in 15 years.

We know how to build nuclear quickly, reliably and (relatively) cheaply. We also know how to do it slowly, eratically and expensively.

Fortunately the former comes almost but not entirely automatically with building lots of them.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#655

Post by fnordian_slip »

retinaros wrote: post #617
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.

[flagged]

Please don't lie

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#656

Post by mpweiher »

grafmax wrote: post #650
m101 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear + gas is the climate friendly solution.

Gas isn’t climate friendly just because of its debatable attractiveness vs coal. And nuclear comes with catastrophic risks that require large costs to mitigate. Let’s not pretend it’s some panacea. Renewables are better than both.

Fun fact: The US achieved more for the climate with fracking gas than Germany did with its "Energiewende".

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#657

Post by close04 »

oneshtein wrote: post #603
m101 wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We can make nuclear safe (enough) but after one big incident nobody wanted the political career suicide to push for this. So we are stuck with criticizing stone-age level nuclear power because we never took it further. The West never stopped doing something just because the USSR didn’t do it properly.

If we did the same with commercial air travel after the first disasters we’d still cross the oceans in boats. Car accidents kill 10-15 times more people every year worldwide than Chernobyl did but we don’t give up on cars either. Heck, smoking kills 7-8 times more people than cars every year (that’s 80-100 Chernobyls worth every year) and we still allow it.

The reasons are political not technically or financially insurmountable obstacles. We didn’t shut down nuclear in Europe for “green” reasons or because we can’t improve it, or because it kills too many people, but because enough Russian money went into politicians’ pockets to do this.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#658

Post by pzo »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #170
cyberax wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany will come around when their Green ship comes aground. Probably within the next ~5 years. The coal phaseout will happen, but only by replacing it with natural gas. It will result in the last easily achievable reduction in CO2, but it will also increase the already sky-high energy prices in Germany. After that? There's nothing. There are no credible plans that will result in further CO2 reductions. The noises a…

The data does not back up this narrative: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun... The share of electricity production that coal lost is primarily take up by wind and solar, not gas.

electricity is only one power source - you not gonna use it for e.g. heating because its expensive. When you look at graph with energy consumption by source german situation is bad and solar provides less than 6% and wind less than 11% [1]. Now go compare with france where nuclear provides 37% of energy.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#659

Post by kubav027 »

pzo wrote: post #641
kolinko wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far it was either the cheapest or the safest. Also, solar is now both cheaper and safer.

but it's not 24/7 and europe even worse in winter and fall. Solar is unrealistic to replace most energy usage [1]. In EU it's just less than 5% usage. In germany less than 6% usage. And wind is not a replacement either (less than 11% energy usage in germany). And just for comparison in france nuclear power plants provides 37% of energy [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

During summer french nuclear power plants reduced their energy production because there were problems with cooling caused by heat and drought. So we probably need mixture of all those technologies to make electrical grid stable. Even nuclear energy is not imune to climate change.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#660

Post by LunaSea »

T-A wrote: post #638
kpmcc wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is climate friendly about natural gas?

A methane molecule is one carbon atom bound to four hydrogen atoms. More than half of the energy released by burning it (53% according to [1]) comes from oxidizing the hydrogen to water. So it's roughly half as bad as coal in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, and does not have the additional problems of sulfur (acid rain) and soot. [1] https://people.wou.edu/~courtna/GS361/Energy_From_Fossil_Fue...

So not climate friendly.
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