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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

#731

Post by slightwinder »

out_of_protocol wrote: post #597
m101 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Except, most regions don't need constant supply, it's actually even harmful for the grid. German grid for example seems to have become significant better since the last nuclear plants were removed.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#732

Post by xkbarkar »

You know what, let’s turn popular city parks to windmill and solarparks. NY central park for example. Copenhagen has a few beloved open green places we could clean out and replace with solarcells, so does Berlin.

Im unscientifically guessing support for nc energy would rise very quickly and wed have a whole bunch of them within a decade.

Source, I live near a windmill, they are loud as f*k. I drive by solaparks nearly every day.

They remind me of those horrible deforested areas in Sweden called kalhygge. Nothing green about those atrocities.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#733

Post by tomatocracy »

Nursie wrote: post #723
jeroenhd wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until we solve the long-term energy storage problem that renewable sources have, we're going to need a backup of some sort. Something you can turn up late at night in the middle of winter. So far the cleanest solution we've come up with is gas plants, but gas plants made Europe extremely dependent on Russia. The alternatives are oppressive regimes or the US, which has been starting trade wars seemingly out of boredom…

> we're going to need a backup of some sort. Something you can turn up late at night in the middle of winter. AFAICT this is not really nuclear. They excel at constant production, not switch ability to fill in around renewables.

Nuclear can be turned up and down relatively easily. It's on/off that takes a long time. And you can supplement nuclear with pumped storage hydro to steepen its turn up/down curve in extremis.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#734

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Nursie wrote: post #722
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…

It won’t be competitive with anything. But that’s OK, Theresa May signed a guarantee that they’d get paid an uncompetitive price by the taxpayer, regardless.

But that expensive guaranteed price still wasn't enough to cover the actual costs and the EdF CFO resigned in protest.

Once that became too obvious to deny, after the French government had renationalised EdF, they were begging the UK government to give them more money, possibly buried in the contract for the second plant build.

For that build they stopped using CFD, a financial instrument designed for nuclear but which has massively helped renewables, be ause it couldn't hide the nuclear cost overruns. They're now charging electricity users in advance for the nuclear they are going to build with no guarantee of eventual costs.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#735

Post by mpweiher »

scrlk wrote: post #682
mpweiher wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or if you build them there, build them so they can withstand that disaster. There was another similar plant even closer to the epicenter, and it was hit with a (slightly) higher tsunami crest. It survived basically undamaged and even served as shelter for tsunami refugees. Because they had built the tsunami-wall to spec. And didn't partially dismantle it to make access easier like what was done in Fukushima. Oh, and…

> Because they had built the tsunami-wall to spec. If you're referring to the Onagawa plant, one engineer (Yanosuke Hirai) pushed for the height of the wall to be increased beyond the original spec: > A nuclear plant in a neighboring area, meanwhile, had been built to withstand the tsunamis. A solitary civil engineer employed by the Tohoku Electric Power Company knew the story of the massive Jogan tsunami of the year…

Yes. And in Fukushima, they apparently actually lowered an existing natural barrier.

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Tepco-Rem...

In addition, they didn't have hydrogen recombinators, which for example are/were standard in all German plants. Those plants also had special requirements for bunkers for the Diesel backup generators so they couldn't be knocked out by water.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#736

Post by oneshtein »

quotemstr wrote: post #324
Retric wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Nuclear inherently need a lot more effort refining fuel as you can’t just dig a shovel full of ore and burn it. You have to take scale into account. This is 20 years of spent fuel. https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/cca0b8d/21474836... That's it. 20 years. Just that, for a constant, quiet output of just about a gigawatt. And that's an old, decommissioned reactor. You're right about nuclear fuel refinement,…

You forgot to include the decommissioned reactor and waste water.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#738

Post by luckystarr »

xkbarkar wrote: post #732

You know what, let’s turn popular city parks to windmill and solarparks. NY central park for example. Copenhagen has a few beloved open green places we could clean out and replace with solarcells, so does Berlin. Im unscientifically guessing support for nc energy would rise very quickly and wed have a whole bunch of them within a decade. Source, I live near a windmill, they are loud as f*k. I drive by solaparks nearl…

Newer wind turbines don't have a gearbox and are almost completely silent. When standing next to one, the loudest components are the electrical inverters/transformers.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#739

Post by tomatocracy »

strken wrote: post #683
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.

That's blatantly wrong. Hydro stands out in the data as being the cheapest reliable carbon neutral option (wind and solar aren't reliable, and when you factor in storage to make them reliable then they're not cheap). Hydro requires large sums of capital to get started, destroys entire valleys, is only viable in a limited number of places, has significant risks if not maintained, and isn't energy dense in the slightes…

Run-of-the-river hydro in all but a handful of sites tends to be quite dependent on rainfall levels. This means production levels can vary quite meaningfully both seasonally and more importantly year-to-year.

It's definitely reliable in the sense that hydro stations can basically last forever if properly maintained (there are plenty of hydro stations operating today which are more than 100 years old) but it's not quite a silver bullet.

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