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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#821

Post by torpfactory »

Filligree wrote: post #806
pjc50 wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the actual build times of nuclear plants in Europe, vs the renewables build out rate, we need solar and wind to tide us over for a decade or more before the nuclear plants come on line.

Solar and wind cannot do that. We'll need oil and gas to tide us over for that decade or more.

Solar and wind are scaling much faster than gas and oil right now. After the recent Iran war I think it would be insane to rely on new oil or gas. Yeah let’s rely on this commodity whose supply and price are controlled by the dumbest egomaniacs on the planet.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#822

Post by tcfhgj »

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.

well, regardless of what you think, they are not

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#823

Post by snovv_crash »

margalabargala wrote: post #722
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 in my mind Not at all. Some people are depopulationists.

And yet somehow those people are never advocating for leading by example.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#824

Post by tcfhgj »

julienfr112 wrote: post #808
boshomi wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powerprice in Germany today minus 500€/MWh. Nuclear power is economic madness in an environment where we see negative electricity prices practically every day.

If Germany power prices are so low, why are Germans power bills so high ? Maybe you are cherry picking spot/marginal price and not netting the subsides ?

higher prices means more incentives to be energy efficient

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#825

Post by tcfhgj »

leonidasrup wrote: post #756
fireant wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 infreque…

Burning coal in coal power plants causes more deaths each year in Europe than the total deaths caused by Chernobyl accident (4000-8000). "The health burden of European CPP emission-induced PM2.5, estimated with the Global Exposure Mortality Model, amounts to at least 16 800 (CI95 14 800–18 700) excess deaths per year over the European domain" https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349938542_Disease_b... https://www…

I live in Germany and dead wild animals are still burned instead of eaten because of radioactive contamination

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#826

Post by watwut »

Cwizard wrote: post #791
fireant wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 infreque…

Serious question, when has there been a serious nuclear accident? Fukushima was caused by a natural disaster that killed far more people than the nuclear failure did. Chernobyl was pure communist stupidity. This level of incompetence would never happen in a well functioning country. So that leaves Three Mile island? Meanwhile coal kills millions each year (mostly the old and children). And what are these predictable…

The category of "well functioning country" is unstable. It takes two elections to make it dysfunctional.

A country can go from well functioning to disasterous shit show in 8 years.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#827

Post by tcfhgj »

UltraSane wrote: post #694
florkbork wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be deliberately obtuse. It is more like being a firefighter and being opposed to airlifting icebergs to drop on fires. Sure, you'll get water eventually and you might even extinguish a fire; but how long does it take to organise and deliver, what can go wrong in the process, what are the consequences of a mistake like dropping it prematurely, and why are we ignoring the honking great big cheap river rig…

The time to build nuclear reactors is a completely pointless argument because humanity is going to need low CO2 power forever. Without nuclear wind and solar will ALWAYS require gas turbines for backup.

> Without nuclear wind and solar will ALWAYS require gas turbines for backup.

So this myth is what you need to tell yourself we need nuclear?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#828

Post by DeusExMachina »

maybewhenthesun wrote: post #795
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 might be a theoretically solved problem, anybody looking at belgium's crumbling nuclear powerplants can help but feeling slightly nervous! I agree we probably need nuclear to bridge the gap until solar or wind can take over fully, but there are a lot of problems with nuclear and the most pressing ones are connected to the unwillingness of people to spend money before a disaster happens. On top of…

> the storage of the nuclear waste is very far from a solved engineering problem.

Nuclear waste is small and solid, not a leaky green ooze like you see in the Simpsons. You can just bury it deep in a mountain, which is where you extracted the uranium from in the first place.

- https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...

- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

- https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/03/11...

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#829

Post by i_love_retros »

torpfactory wrote: post #821
Filligree wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and wind cannot do that. We'll need oil and gas to tide us over for that decade or more.

Solar and wind are scaling much faster than gas and oil right now. After the recent Iran war I think it would be insane to rely on new oil or gas. Yeah let’s rely on this commodity whose supply and price are controlled by the dumbest egomaniacs on the planet.

>Yeah let’s rely on this commodity whose supply and price are controlled by the dumbest egomaniacs on the planet.

Don't talk about Americans that way!

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#830

Post by williamdclt »

snovv_crash wrote: post #818
lostlogin wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of nuance to these situations. Destroying a whole valley for hydro is something locals could easily oppose. Similar with huge solar farms. You can be a proponent of a technology but anti a particular project.

NIMBY != Nuance

Reducing every personal reason to oppose every specific project to "NIMBY" is not nuance.
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