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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

#881

Post by marcyb5st »

defaultcompany wrote: post #862
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.

How about because spent nuclear fuel will be hazardous to humans for the next ~20 thousand years? How do you amortize that cost? You can't just assume someone else will deal with it and call that cost savings. People talk about burying it but in reality it sits in containment vessels above ground and the more there is the higher the cost to deal with it so the less likely it ever will be dealt with.

Isn't that only applicable for Uranium 235 based reactors? Thorium is converted to Uranium 233 and when split the byproducts have an half life of 10s of years, meaning that the radioactivity drops to safe levels in "only" few hundred years.

This is much more manageable.

Anyway, that is to say that nuclear is a spectrum, and the current mainstream tech I believe it is the one that won because of the military applications (and therefore funding) back in the cold-war era.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#882

Post by abenga »

arcane23 wrote: post #825
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.

>50 direct fatalities This is a crazy understatement of just how many human-years of life have been lost due to that incident. How many people got leukemia in neighboring countries and other complications that cut their lives short. I am amazed this isn't more widely known, and I always find it suspicious when people downplay the real extent of the damage that has been done, to human lives. Just saying that only 50 p…

> How many people got leukemia in neighboring countries and other complications that cut their lives short.

Not that many, according to long term studies.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#883

Post by zekrioca »

retinaros wrote: post #618
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.

sure state funded solar panel that you need to change every 10 year and batteries with rare minerals are cheaper.

Solar panels can now last as far as 30 years.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#884

Post by mensetmanusman »

nilslindemann wrote: post #853
adastra22 wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

Analogy doesn’t work, it’s deaths per TWhour that matter.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#885

Post by quantum_mcts »

jerome-jh wrote: post #814
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…

Total amount of reactor*years so far is roughly 20000. 3 core meltdowns amounts for 0.015% per reactor per year.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#887

Post by nec4b »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #681
nec4b wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would point to the law of economics which says only renewables can get cheaper with investments? And which law of physics makes renewables work in places, which have little wind and solar?

What percentage of the earth's surface have little wind and solar? What percentage of the human population live there? They have solar farms in Alaska and the Antarctic because it's cheaper than shipping in diesel for 6 months of the year. And the law of economics making modular renewables cheaper is Wright's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effect

>>What percentage of the earth's surface have little wind and solar? What percentage of the human population live there?

Large parts of USA, Canada, non Mediterranean Europe and northern half of Asia. A lot of people live there.

>> And the law of economics making modular renewables cheaper is Wright's Law:

I asked which economic law makes ONLY renewables getting cheaper with time. Why couldn't nuclear get cheaper in time?

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#888

Post by nilslindemann »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #867
nilslindemann wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And brown bears are less dangerous than cars because fewer people are killed by them. If you see a car, RUN. They are dangerous. Brown bears, not so much. Go ahead, pat their fur, statistically this is safe.

This analogy is probably wrong.

No. You just have an irrational fear of brown bears.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#889

Post by tcfhgj »

mpweiher wrote: post #571
tcfhgj wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France they aren't, Germany neither

Wrong on both counts. The only wrinkle is that when the German government made electricity production from nuclear power illegal, it had to take over some of those responsibilities, for obvious reasons. It also took over the money that had been saved up thus far, which is almost certainly more than needed to cover the costs. Well unless those costs are driven up to infinity with ever more creative mechanisms by polit…

it is not wrong, both countries subsidized nuclear power

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#890

Post by wolvesechoes »

goobatrooba wrote: post #785
wolvesechoes wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the cooling water from rivers cant be used any more to cool the reactors. So much about being future proof. There are more reactor types than water-cooled reactors, and modern energy plants should use cooling towers even if some water reservoir is available, nuclear or not. > it is because they are completely uneconomically This is why private sector cannot provide infrastructure. State is not a company.

Not all need a river to cool but every single nuclear power plant needs a consistent water source 1) to actually generate the energy (steam!), 2) to cool, 3) as emergency safeguard when things go wrong. If you followed the news about Russia's attack on Ukraine and the risks to Zaporizia much of it was about fear of an incident, among others due to water sources or the energy to bring water to the plant being at risk

> 1) to actually generate the energy (steam!)

Secondary loop can be made closed system. This reduces efficiency, but this could be acceptable considering water scarcity. Of course there would be some leaks etc. so water needs to be resupplied, but in much lesser amounts.

> 2) to cool

Not necessarily true, because primary loop doesn't need to have water (HTG, MSR, LMR reactors). HTG reactor actually doesn't need water at all and can power gas turbine directly. LMR, depending on chosen coolant, can do this as well, though it requires heat exchanger.

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