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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

#831

Post by District5524 »

pera wrote: post #806
prinny_ wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am against nuclear energy because my government is deeply corrupted and give contracts to their friends. They also appoint unqualified people to the highest positions to award them big salaries and the results are catastrophic tragedies with tens of casualties each time. I don’t trust them to operate the railroads, why would I trust them to operate a nuclear facility?

This is the main reason why I am, generally speaking, against nuclear as a universal solution. A question for pro-nuclear folks: Would you be okay with having a highly corrupt low HDI country building nuclear facilities (conversion and deconversion, enrichment, power plants) next to your borders?

This is similar to the reasoning of Austria vehemently opposing nuclear reactors to be built in neighbouring countries, even if downstream on the Danube, even if 200 km from their border.

The latest decision (although on the surface, not on an environmental issue like the article is about, but on state aid measures - but actually not the real reason for Austria's opposition): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62...

So, I believe, yes, low HDI countries with high corruption do have the right to build nuclear facilities. This is not like a combination of low HDI and high corruption index awarded by some international organization has the approval rights to such questions of sovereignity. There is a whole range of special regulation regarding who can build nuclear stations and under what conditions, with a special agency to ensure the safe use (IAEA) - that should be the only criteria for letting nations build nuclear stations, not corruption, HDI or how rich the countries are.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#832

Post by nilslindemann »

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

But how much does a modern jet cost, including insurance? Compared to an armada of solar driven mini drones?

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#833

Post by KerrAvon »

rpdillon wrote: post #824
scandox wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm open to Nuclear if it can be done safely and if we can show we have the cultural maturity to keep it safe...but in the case of Chernobyl at least I think that statistics and other officious BS has been used to greatly downplay the true human cost in death, sickness, displacement and on many other metrics.

Two points: Chernobyl was a poor, badly run reactor that was designed badly decades ago. I don't know why we paint all of nuclear with that brush, other than folks fall victim to availability bias all the time. The other point is that we sweep aside externalities for all forms of power generation. People don't think of coal as dangerous, but it's killed far more than nuclear.

We don’t actually do that, at least not in the USA. America’s industrial policy — until Trump — has been (politicians from certain areas of the country excepted) a gradual phaseout of coal and other fossil fuels. It’s taking time because West Virginia produces a lot of coal and their politicians have been assholes about it.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#834

Post by dgellow »

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.

How is it not economically viable given it is actively used since multiple decades in France? I also disagree with saying it is the cheapest, in practice it is actually pretty expensive compared to solar and wind, but economically nuclear makes a lot of sense, it fits a really good role in the grid

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#835

Post by mpweiher »

natmaka wrote: post #802
scrlk wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because they had built the tsunami-wall to spec. If you're referring to the Onagawa plant, one engineer (Yanosuke Hirai) pushed for the height of the wall to be increased beyond the original spec: > A nuclear plant in a neighboring area, meanwhile, had been built to withstand the tsunamis. A solitary civil engineer employed by the Tohoku Electric Power Company knew the story of the massive Jogan tsunami of the year…

The point is not about "someone may not err" but about "someone may err", or more precisely "someone WILL err", coupled with the effects of such mistakes. Failing to correctly design, build, exploit or maintain a wind turbine or solar panel isn't a big deal. Failing to do so on a nuclear reactor can become a huge and lasting disaster for many.

Wind turbines cause more deaths than nuclear reactors.

Fact.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#836

Post by dgellow »

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...

Not just build, it is expensive to maintain, and insanely expensive and time consuming to dismantle. Still necessary to complement other green energies in the grid

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#837

Post by southernplaces7 »

gilbetron wrote: post #769
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…

And yet if you look at the "Fatalities" column, you see a stream of zeroes with a handful of non-zeroes, the worst being Chernobyl at 50 direct fatalities. Rooftop solar accounts for more deaths. Nuke plants are scary when they fail, but the actual threat is way lower than we play it out to be.

Why you would be downvoted for mentioning this is beyond me. The numbers are well documented and hold up. Compared to every other major source of energy production, nuclear has the lower rate of fatalities by far, by any metric, and this despite it being far from a minor source of power globally.

Not only that, but it also produces less radioactive leakage than many other kinds of power sources that depend on resource mining on a large scale (looking at coal plants in particular here)

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#838

Post by pfdietz »

strawhatguy wrote: post #408
jama211 wrote: post #84

I’m totally fine with nuclear honestly, but I feel like I don’t understand something. No one seems to be able to give me a straight answer with proper facts that explain why we couldn’t just make a whole load more renewable energy generators instead. Sure, it might cost more, but in theory any amount of power a nuclear plant would generate could also be achieved with large amounts of renewables no?

Yes? Any sort of system that generates power... can generate lots of power if there's more of that system. What I find odd is that it has to be an all-or-nothing approach. Maybe sunny areas can do more with solar, great! But that won't work everywhere, and probably isn't a complete replacement anywhere . Other places that are cloudy, it might be better to go nuclear. Or even gas. The regulations and the subsidies oug…

Renewables and storage have gotten so cheap that the areas where nuclear might still be competitive have greatly shrunk. Right now, the best remaining places for nuclear are in eastern Europe away from coasts. Even there, nuclear is at best competitive with optimistic assumptions.

This also means that, globally, renewables are much cheaper than nuclear in most places. In a global economy, energy intensive industries will migrate to these renewable-rich regions as fossil fuels are phased out. The relative energy ghetto regions will not save their heavy industries by going nuclear.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#839

Post by southernplaces7 »

prinny_ wrote: post #779
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 am against nuclear energy because my government is deeply corrupted and give contracts to their friends. They also appoint unqualified people to the highest positions to award them big salaries and the results are catastrophic tragedies with tens of casualties each time. I don’t trust them to operate the railroads, why would I trust them to operate a nuclear facility?

So you would oppose an entire, globe-spanning branch of deeply necessary technology (clean energy) with all its vast opportunities for improvement, innovation, and management under all kinds of more responsible means, because the government functionaries in your specific part of the world can't get their moral shit together (and given what you describe, wouldn't be able to do it well no matter what kid of large-scale energy is put into their hands)?

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#840

Post by alphazard »

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.

Or why there is a "clean" energy distinction that some authority has control over in the first place. If CO2 is the thing we care about, then tax CO2 and let everything sort itself out. The fact there are subsidies instead of carbon taxes is revealing all on its own.
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