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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

#811

Post by natmaka »

Luker88 wrote: post #559

I am not sure people understand the implications of this. First, it's not just nuclear, it's also Natural gas. Second, lots of nations have incentives for "clean" energy. And now magically, all those incentives apply to nuclear and gas. It's a money grab from nuclear and gas manufacturers. It's not that the courts were involved for nothing. Still, we should use more nuclear. If only it was less expensive to build...

> it's not just nuclear, it's also Natural gas

No, it can be a continental renewable mix + storage, with a "backup" made of green hydrogen turbines.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#812

Post by thbb123 »

jenadine wrote: post #763
teamonkey wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think a good exercise for the reader is to reflect on why they were ever against nuclear power in the first place. The context is a long string of nuclear incidents throughout the Cold War through to the ‘90s. Not just Chernobyl, not just Fukushima, but the string of disasters at Windscale / Sellafield and many others across the globe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident... https://en.wik…

Don't judge plane safety from the design of the brothers Wright aircraft

Fun fact: in the 90's, the reference gauge for aircraft safety was 1 accidental fatality per 100 million hours of passenger flight. Which is amazingly safe, far better than car and on a par with train.

Now, facing the growth of air travel, it was decided to raise this bar to 1 per billion hour. Not as an end by itself - this comes at very high cost and had a significant impact on travel prices. But because, with the growth of air travel, this would have implied one major accident per fortnight on average. And because those accident are more spectacular and relayed by media, civil aviation authorities feared this might raise angst and deter the public from air travel.

So, safety was enhanced, but mostly for marketing reasons.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#813

Post by newyankee »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #727
sdfssdf wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A look at destatis tells me something else for Germany (in 2024): Solar has a share of 15 %, and wind 28 %. In total 57 % of the produced energy comes from renewable sources. ( https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energ... )

They are trying to switch the conversation from electricity where renewables are making unmistakably swift progress, to all energy (e.g. gas for heat in homes and factories and oil for cars and trucks). They think the horrific inefficiency of fossil fuels in these uses makes progress look slow and futile as it massively inflates the total energy usage. In reality, once we get the easy bits of renewable electricity do…

I really want to see a heat pump being used to make a real world high temperature process more efficient and cut natural gas use by 40% or so, this might destroy the latest talking point

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#814

Post by jerome-jh »

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.

From the top of my head, for about 300 nuclear power plants around the globe, there have been 3 core meltdown accidents. It is a 1% catastrophic failure rate. It is quite bad!

Whatever the circumstances of these accidents, human nature and unexpected events allowed them to occur. Just like every accident, you can say after the fact they could have been avoided. However it is impossible to revert the consequences of a core meltdown at human time scale.

I am not anti-nuclear at all. But I certainly wonder what kind of organization is required to operate it safely.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#815

Post by tomatocracy »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #755
tomatocracy wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

Solar has this problem to a much greater extent though. If you have a market where solar is >100% of demand during the day then it will be dispatching at or below $0/MWh for almost all of its life.

But of course the marginal market is not the whole story. In reality solar largely receives effectively fixed prices in most markets (via CfDs or PPAs). Nuclear does the same and can also take capacity payments and sell into flexibility markets where those exist.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#816

Post by gpm »

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…

It's funny how you're proposing this in bad faith as a terrible idea having tried to think of the worst place you could possibly put these things.

And yet we've done it, and everyone around it likes it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExPlace_Wind_Turbine#/media/Fi...

It's not particularly practical of course, because the real estate is expensive and the tall things in a city all fuck with the airflow... but then that's why this is a publicity stunt and not where we usually put them.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#817

Post by Kon5ole »

m101 wrote: post #717
LinXitoW wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do NOT get to constantly taut the low mortality rates of nuclear AND call for less regulation at the same time. But even from a very matter of fact point of view, I'd rather have 1000 people die every year for 20 years, than have 20.000 people die on a single bad day/week. The economic and social impact is far, far bigger when it can't be "spread out" over multiple years.

Do you even know anything about the relative death rates historically? You should look it up.

That's faulty logic, it's like claiming nuclear bombs were safe until Hiroshima.

We know nuclear reactor accidents could potentially kill millions of humans, even it hasn't done so yet.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#818

Post by aydyn »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #747
oneshtein wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> can wipe a continent Sorry, but no. Chernobyl exclusion zone is less than a single area of the Agent Orange usage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chernobyl_radiation_map_1... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aerial-herbicide-spray-mi...

Again, Chernobyl was not the worst case scenario. Everyone knows the story, some heroes sacrified their lives to prevent it.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#819

Post by bluefirebrand »

procaryote wrote: post #551
bluefirebrand wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you should dismiss opposition to wind as mere NIMBYism Windmills can be super loud and disruptive if they are built near you Take a look around online and you can find people posting videos along the lines of "A windmill was built near my house, now every evening it's like a strobe light in here as the sun sets behind the windmill" I wouldn't want to live anywhere near one myself

Isn't that exactly what NIMBY means? People want the power to stay on but they don't want the power generation built near them.

I think if something is built near you that materially lowers the quality of your life, being angry about it is not NIMBYism

I personally think NIMBYism is more along the lines of "this doesn't negatively impact my day to day life, but I'm worried it will lower my property value"

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#820

Post by Kon5ole »

BrtByte wrote: post #530

Whether you're pro-nuclear or not, this ruling feels like a turning point. For decades, nuclear has been stuck in a weird limbo. Fascinating how youth climate activists are now some of the strongest voices for nuclear. That would've been unthinkable 10 years ago

It makes perfect sense, they are mostly uninformed about the risks and consequences of nuclear but have heard about global warming all their lives.
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