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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#771

Post by ZeroGravitas »

simplyluke wrote: post #572
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do so many nuclear fans try to suggest climate change only exists if you like nuclear? It's very odd. Compare: If you believe COVID exists you need to use hydroxychloroquine. It makes you sound like you don't even believe in the problem you are proposing an (unpopular with experts) solution for.

> suggest climate change only exists if you like nuclear That is a very uncharitable reading of what I'm saying. What I am saying is that if you're serious about believing climate change is a large threat (I do), you should be all-in on known solutions for reliable grid-level power. The current fallback for when renewables can't meet grid demand is burning natural gas in modernized grids and coal in grids stuck in th…

You are accusing environmental organizations of not believing in climate change as a debating tactic. That is uncharitable! But also just weird.

Just leave that part out, it only detracts from your message.

"I think environmental orgs should support nuclear as it is low carbon and generally aligned with their goals. I'm disappointed that many of their members seem to be unaware of the true record on plant safety, particularly compared with coal"

Adding anything about them not believing in climate change makes it sound like you are repeating talking points you picked up from fossil fuel funded propagandists, who to this day are pushing that message.

(Your opinions on nuclear also reveal that media diet, but in a much more subtle way).

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#772

Post by fsh »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #769
grahar64 wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be fair to say that because the US Navy is not running it as a for-profit power generation that would help. Like every accident seems to be a list of cost saving shortcuts being responsible

Chernobyl was a state owned and operated facility.

Chernobyl was supposed to be an economically viable means of generating electricity. Comparing a tiny billion-dollar submarine reactor to a power plant simply doesn't make any sense.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#773

Post by mpweiher »

frollogaston wrote: post #738
yawaramin wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they're not entitled to their own facts.

There's not much trust in anyone who says nuclear is completely safe, "we fixed it now," etc. That shouldn't be the motto. But fossil fuel is already killing more people, coal puts more radioactive uranium dust into the air even, and that's before getting into climate change. I think people who are anti-nuclear and environmentalist are wrong, but it's not an insane opinion to have. There's no fact you can point to th…

Nothing man-made is "completely safe". No such thing.

However, nuclear energy is the safest form of energy production we have.

By far.

And that includes Chernobyl and Fukushima.

People overestimate the danger from nuclear energy by incredible amounts.

That doesn't mean that close exposure to a running nuclear reactor won't kill you in short order. That's why we build these things with shielding. A lot of other things will kill you in short order if exposed to them: cars/trains in motion, for example.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#774

Post by herecomesyour_ »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #422
herecomesyour_ wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heartening to see someone talking about both the pros and cons. I find here and on, for example reddit or twitter, that people are unanimously in favour of Nuclear. I really don't think costs and delays are well understood. The costs are astronomical and in the UK the cost of energy has been monstrously subsidized. Consumers (public) are paying for this before the plants are running and for hundreds of years after th…

It doesn’t really matter if people on HN or Reddit are in favor of nuclear. At the end of the day, nuclear will get built if someone thinks the cost is worth it over the alternatives. The Internet fan club is mostly irrelevant.

How the public understand what they are (or are not) signing up for is critical though.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#775

Post by danmaz74 »

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.

Funnily (or tragically?) enough, lots of environmentalists here in Italy are opposing solar and wind projects too. I find that crazy.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#776

Post by mpweiher »

legulere wrote: post #550
thrownthatway wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What nuclear disasters? Exactly? Name one nuclear disaster at an old nuclear plant whose lessons weren’t applied to the whole fleet.

Chernobyl lacked a containment and there are still reactors of the same type running without containment in Russia.

Well yes, Russia is Russia. The RBMK with its well-known design flaws could never have been certified/built in the West. Yes, these design flaws were well-known long before the Chernobyl accident.

In his posthumously published memoirs, Valery Legasov, the First Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, revealed that the institute's scientists had long known that the RBMK had significant design flaws. Legasov's suicide in 1988, following frustrated attempts to promote nuclear and industrial safety reform, caused shockwaves throughout the scientific community.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK#Improvements_since_the_Ch...

A list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK#Design_flaws_and_safety_i...

However, the units that are still operating were modified after the accident to remove at least a few of the elements of the accident chain that made the reactor inherently unsafe.

Still no containment, and still not anywhere close to the requirements for Western reactors, but they seem to be operating reasonably safely.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#777

Post by boshomi »

graphenus wrote: post #768

I see that here a viewpoint is widely reflected that we can substitute nuclear with solar/wind. And maybe today it could be feasible in certain areas albeit not always economical. What this viewpoint misses, is the fact that we will need an increasingly more power, as we always did, and I am certain that if we would have a chance to go 100 years into the future, power demand will be so high that our current abilities…

Nuclear energy is pure economic madness in a context where wind and solar power are generating a surplus of electricity. Today, May 1, electricity prices in Europe are in some cases at the technical minimum of minus €500/MWh.

Thermal power generation, which is difficult to control, is completely unnecessary in an environment where we have negative electricity prices practically every day from March to October. In Europe, we need rapidly controllable energy sources—obviously more storage capacity.

Due to the many hours during which electricity prices are close to zero, the economically viable full-load hours of a nuclear power plant are reduced to barely 3,000 hours per year, effectively tripling the real levelized cost of electricity (LOCE). In addition to the high costs of nuclear power plants, there is also the enormous expense incurred by the government for military and police security at the facilities.

Since the government prioritizes nuclear power, this leads to heavily manipulated electricity prices, with homeowners with solar panels being among the biggest losers, as they are required to feed electricity into the grid but are effectively paid the full negative prices (usually via weighted average pricing methods)

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#778

Post by taegee »

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.

Here we go again ...

Did those plants suddenly became manageable? No.

Did those plants suddenly became cheap? No.

Do we suddenly have a solution for the waste? No.

Have new uranium deposits suddenly been discovered? No.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#779

Post by don_esteban »

Ray20 wrote: post #499
pqtyw wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All nuclear reactors are massively safer than coal power plants though. If you excluded climate change and Co2 emissions entirely and measured harm/deaths adjusted by the amount of power generated the difference would be astronomical.

> measured harm/deaths adjusted by the amount of power generated In this case, we find that nuclear nuclear reactors are 2 orders of magnitude more dangerous than gas and coal power plants.

do you account for all the air pollution and downstream health effects coal power plants cause?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#780

Post by Moldoteck »

dalyons wrote: post #647
Moldoteck wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

china wants nuclear to provide 10-20% of their needs. If china wants that, they'll achieve it. Nuclear is extremely competitive in china.

competitive is the wrong word. It does not have to compete on price or all in lifecycle cost, because its single party state that owns everything and cant be voted out. But i do agree that if they want it, they'll make it happen.

it's not a wrong word. Competitive - it's in the sesnse of what price can it sell to get profits, even if the price is set by govt. Even our existing fleet of npp is competitive on the market ->

www.kkg.ch/de/uns/geschaefts-nachhaltigkeitsberichte.html

https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th...

But chinese nuclear is built faster and cheaper vs our units even during messmer in france. So their price guarantee is lower too. Probably similar to what distributed solar got there of 0.4y/kwh in the past. Albeit subsidies for solar were cut last year to stimulate a healthier growth

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