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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

#851

Post by zekrioca »

pzo wrote: post #709
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60% of that energy is lost as waste heat and doesn't need replaced as we decarbonise and electrify. For already developed nations predictions are for electricity to double but energy use to halve at the same time as they electrify end uses.

Not everybody live in house and have enough rooftop area. In Europe majority people live in apartments. If you want to have wind warm and solar farm there is also energy wasted with power lines transmission. Energy powerbanks also have energy waste. I'm all in to have energy mix and more people to have solar panels if they can but it's not a holly grail

Nuclear by itself isn’t either. A balanced mix is needed.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#852

Post by mpweiher »

scandox wrote: post #780
gilbetron wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

It turns you are right that there was a ton of BS around the Chernobyl accident...but going in the other direction.

Every decade, the WHO publishes a report on the health effects of Chernobyl. Every decade, they had to reduce the projections for casualties.

By an order of magnitude.

When it happened, we didn't know better. Now we do.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#853

Post by nilslindemann »

adastra22 wrote: post #827
jerome-jh wrote: post #814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Meanwhile coal power alone is causing 60 deaths per day (20k per year). And that’s a conservative NIH number, not a biased nuclear industry estimate. 3 meltdowns in the past 60 years with minimal loss of life (even including Chernobyl, an outlier for so many reasons), is a massively safer alternative than the status quo.

See my brown bear vs car comparison above/below.

Also, solar causes less deaths, according to your counting method.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#854

Post by wahnfrieden »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #839
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?

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…

They're concerned about the safety of corrupt management. Several posters here reassure that Chernobyl etc. were poorly managed and that we've learned a lot since then. But ongoing corruption doesn't instill confidence that learnings will be incorporated safely.

Saying that catastrophes have been uncommon over decades is also not reassuring as one would expect catastrophes to increase if we go from not building and decommissioning to rapid building and recommissioning.

Maybe the upper limit of atomic power catastrophe is still a low casualty count. In that case we shouldn't reassure people that we've learned and improved and instead show that even rampantly corrupt administration cannot do much harm, if that's the case.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#855

Post by lima »

pfdietz wrote: post #702
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 was all for nuclear when it was the best option to displace fossil fuels. It is no longer, so I'm no longer all for it.

This. The time for new nuclear plants was 20 years ago. Now it's too late, and too expensive, even in purely practical terms without the question of safety.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#856

Post by zekrioca »

pzo wrote: post #648
AndyPa32 wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

They are easily recyclable. Nuclear isn’t, unless of course you have a 24/7 protected and monitored by 100’s of people storage place to keep all that safe for the next 10000 years. Very ‘cheap’ indeed.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#857

Post by zekrioca »

JackSlateur wrote: post #759
AndyPa32 wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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);

Solved problem? Have you ever waited 10000 years to see if the waste really decomposes and the area where it was stored is safe for kids to play?

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#859

Post by lima »

retinaros wrote: post #617
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.

[flagged]

Merkel era politics were anything but "woke". It was 15 years of overly conservative policies, stalling economical and societal progress.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#860

Post by [deleted] »

tiberius_p wrote: post #646
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 remember the anti-nuclear fever went viral in 2011 after the Fukushima nuclear accident caused by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. I think the correct lesson to be learned from that experience is not to built nuclear power plants in places where they can be damaged by natural disasters...and not to call for all nuclear power plants around the world to be shut down.

[deleted]
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