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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

#751

Post by wolvesechoes »

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…

You are sarcastic, but seriously I sometimes have an impression that people are so invested in the slogan of green energy that they would be fine with cutting down last tree on this planet to put a solar panel in its place, while believing they save the planet and environment.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#752

Post by pqtyw »

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.

Still, though, if nuclear continued growing at the same pace it was until the 80s we'd be in a massively better spot climate change wise.

Sure, these days its too expensive in relative terms but switching back to fossil fuels due to all the Chornobyl/Three Mile panic (but mainly likely because of the cost) might end up being one of the bigger mistakes in human history.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#753

Post by jcattle »

tomatocracy wrote: post #733
Nursie wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The less a traditional nuclear reactor contributes to the grid the worse its economics.

If you have a nuclear reactor you want to run it 24/7 at max output for it to make any economic sense. Otherwise you have all your fixed costs which need to be offset by the few hours that the reactor is actually selling energy, making this energy even more expensive.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#755

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

tomatocracy wrote: post #729
nilslindemann wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the data suggests that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

This doesn't measure the cost of providing dispatchable electricity though. If I want 1MWh of electricity at night provided by solar, it's going to cost more than solar's LCoE because I will also need to pay for a way to store and dispatch it.

Which again does not capture the cost of a nuclear plant being forced off the market because no one is buying its electricity during the day and they have to amortize the cost over a 40% capacity factor instead of 85% like they target.

And this can be a purely economical factor. Sure a plant may have a 90% capacity factor but if the market clears at $0 50% of the time they still need to recoup all the costs on the remaining 50%, pushing up the costs to what would be a the equivalent to a 42.5% capacity factor when running steady state.

Take Vogtle running at a 40% capacity factor, the electricty now costs 40 cents/kwh or $400 MWh. That is pure insanity. Get Vogtle down to 20%, which is very likely as we already have renewable grids at 75% renewables and it is 80 cents/kWh.

Take a look at Australia for the future of old inflexible "baseload" (which always was an economic construct coming from marginal cost) plants.

Coal plants forced to become peakers or be decommissioned.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant...

You can say that "no one would do that" but it is the end state of the market.

Electricity is fundamentally priced on the margin and if you start forcing nuclear costs on the ratepayers they will build rooftop solar and storage like crazy, leaving you without any takers for the nuclear based electricity.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#756

Post by [deleted] »

gnatolf wrote: post #667
pzo wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but comparing to solar / wind there you also have to factor batteries production, battery replacement, wind turbine replacement and recycling (they are not easily recyclable), cleaning solar panels etc.

'recyclable' is such a vague term. E.g. radiation-affected typically easily recycled materials are very hard to deal with (think e.g. pipe steel from power plants) and are effectively non-recyclable, instead of close to 100% recyclable, as their non-contaminated counterparts. Opposed to that, battery recycling is mostly hard to deal with in terms of economics, and admittedly the chemistry involved is complex, but at…

[deleted]

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#757

Post by JackSlateur »

nilslindemann wrote: post #707
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.

Yep, the data suggests that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

And some of those data seems sane: the cost of solar panels reduces due to tech improvements: ok

The cost of coal increases a bit, maybe due to geopolicital issues: ok, seems legit

The cost of nuclear increases .. why ? Why the step between 2016 and 2017 ? Does tech "de-improved" ?

More insights would be interesting

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#758

Post by pqtyw »

mentalgear wrote: post #743

France, heavily invested in nuclear, now has to shut down their reactors each summer as, due to climate change, the cooling water from rivers cant be used any more to cool the reactors. So much about being future proof. And let's not even get into the argument why no private company ever financed a nuclear reactor, but only build them with huge subsidies from states. Hint: it is because they are completely uneconomic…

There are nuclear plants in much warmer places than France. And well.. in hindsight climate change probably wouldn't be as bad as it is if nuclear continued growing at the same pace as in the 60s and 70s.

> Hint: it is because they are completely uneconomically

Yes, natural gas and fossil fuels were cheaper than nuclear too. That and the irrational panic is what killed it. At this point its probably too late (and renewables are more feasible option unless there are some significant technological advancements), but if you add up all the long-term costs and externalities nuclear would have turned out to be much cheaper in the 80s and 90s than it seemed on paper.

Just coal alone used to kill (probably still does worldwide) more people every year than Chernobyl ever did... What is the cost of that?

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#759

Post by JackSlateur »

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.

From a technical point of view, nuclear waste is a solved problem. The issue is political.

Ibidem for the fuel: yes, you can depends on wild countries; You can also depends on Australia, Canada and India, which seems like not-so-bad countries (in my opinion);

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#760

Post by naasking »

Retric wrote: post #520
naasking wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is based on reactors with poor efficiencies that leave a lot of unburned Uranium in their waste. Fast reactors and thorium reactors burn 90% of fissile material, so mi…

> Total death count from nuclear Total death count is a straw man argument, what matters here is the economic costs. Mining isn’t the major cost, nuclear fuel is expensive for other reasons. Refining gets rid of even more uranium before it gets to the reactor. CANDU tried to get around that by using unenriched uranium, but ran into other issues. And that’s what pro nuclear people seem to miss, really smart people hav…

> Total death count is a straw man argument, what matters here is the economic costs.

Paying out lawsuits is an economic cost. Regardless, disposing of low level radioactive components of the reactor had to happen at some point, and the cases where it's not offset by decades of recouping on that investment is are incredibly rare. Regardless, this is mostly moot in new designs because they are considerably safer, as I said. What's left is really the regulatory burden. In France and China, they build reactors in less than a decade. Can't happen here in America.

> Mining isn’t the major cost, nuclear fuel is expensive for other reasons.

Which is besides the point, as I said, you get a lot more energy per gram of fuel with modern designs or fast reactors, which mostly mitigates the objection about fuel cost, regardless of what stage the highest cost to obtain fuel is incurred.

Fast reactors weren't pursued because of nuclear weapon proliferation risk, which leaves the modern designs on the table where this risk is even lower than LWR.

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