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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

dpa-international.com

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#741

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #461
throwaway2037 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did some research about that nuclear power plant. In 1985 dollars, the total construction cost was 5.6B USD. That is an astonishing amount of money. That is at least 16B USD in 2026 money. If you also include decomissioning costs of about 4-5B USD... how the fuck does nuclear power make any economic sense? PV solar plus batteries: ALL THE WAY. To be clear, I am not anti-nuclear power by any means. I think it is a t…

It’s not a choice between nuclear and PV. It’s a choice between nuclear and the other things that provide base load: gas and coal.

[deleted]

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#742

Post by db48x »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #596
badc0ffee wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shorthand for a Joule (unit of energy) per second (unit of time). Watt is the problem with that?

The real problem is the widespread usage of Wh as a unit of energy It would make way more sense to use J and J/h instead

I regard that as a downstream effect of giving power a unit in the first place, but yes. We should have just stuck to J and J/s. It would have prevented the kWh and also abominations like the mAh “capacity” ratings you see on batteries.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#743

Post by PearlRiver »

simplyluke wrote: post #556

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

I live close to the Belgian border. Some time ago there was concern about Belgian reactors (they are old and their concrete was fracturing) and they were distributing iodine pills. Keeping them open even longer just sounds peak Belgium.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#744

Post by petre »

cushychicken wrote: post #621
simplyluke wrote: post #556

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record. It’s also worth noting that the US Navy is the only organization with a perfect nuclear safety record. My point being: by god, let the Navy nukes train everyone else!

There's a video of Alvin Weinberg explainng why. It's the smaller scale that allows those safety guarantees.

https://youtu.be/iW8yuyk3Ugw?si=MEJpGpX8LQuGn7iv

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#745

Post by tolciho »

simplyluke wrote: post #556

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

What about the opposition from the not exactly environmentalist orgs?

> "The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale ... only the blind, or the biased, can now think that the money has been well spent. It is a defeat for the U.S. consumer and for the competitiveness of U.S. industry, for the utilities that undertook the program and for the private enterprise system that made it possible." — "Nuclear Follies". Forbes Magazine. 1985.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#746

Post by fireant »

simplyluke wrote: post #556

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

> Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions

I also used to believe that but now I'm not so sure. Nuclear carries massive and unpredictable risks on failure. We can fairly well predict what will happen on catastrophic wind turbine failure, but with nuclear it is much more difficult. And what is arguably worse is that nuclear catastrophic failures are very infrequent and so we have very hard time estimating and thinking about probabilities of them happening.

Personally I think that keeping existing reactors running is better than the alternatives, but I'm not so sure about building up new reactors compared to building more predictable green energy sources.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#747

Post by PearlRiver »

igorramazanov wrote: post #725
margalabargala wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind Not at all. Some people are depopulationists.

I've heard an opinion that having less people leads to a technological regression, because some things to create/research are so expensive that they become profitable and functioning only at the world's scale E.g. China is too small to have an isolated closed market for a competitive and efficient semiconductors manufactoring

No it is just that capitalism is a cancer. Nobody has actually cracked the code on how capitalism can work without perpetual growth.

Leaders are looking at Japan and they are panicking. Fascists are demanding more white babies.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#748

Post by petre »

socalgal2 wrote: post #732
skybrian wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their safety record is good, but can they generate power at a cost that's commercially competitive? If it's too expensive then the plan doesn't work.

They're expensive because of, arguably, over regulation. The are not inherently expensive, we've just declared them so. The next response will be "all that regulation is needed" but it's arguably that the over regulation is killing people by the unintended consequences of keeping things like coal viable, etc...

The over regulation is there becaused the Soviets have shown us what under regulation, disregard for safety and zealotry can lead to.

Even Japan managed to screw up. Yes, it took a 9 Richter scale earthquake and a tsunami, plus some mistakes that were made during development.

Passive safety works just fine, but it's expensive to build huge water tanks and containers that could withstand 9/11 type of events.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#749

Post by pbgcp2026 »

simplyluke wrote: post #556

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

"carbon emissions" LOL. Just lookup what's happening In Tuapse, and in other war zones. And we are penalising some poor bugger burning wood to warm his house at winter ...

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#750

Post by petre »

trollbridge wrote: post #720
illiac786 wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I have been saying for decades that I agree on almost everything wirh the local Green Party, _except_ the anti-nuclear stuff. Very emotional, very relatable but very dumb.

The anti-nuclear stuff seems to pair up quite well with "you need to start importing a lot of natural gas", which makes me think it is simply an agenda pushed by a certain rather large country to the east.

You don't have to wonder, because it is the agenda that you're thinking about and also the agenda of fossil fuel companies.

But we now have two lessons that teach us that being anti-nuclear was stupid: the Ukraine war and the current US administration's adventure in the Gulf.

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