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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

#901

Post by adastra22 »

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...

Solar, wind, and nuclear are all within error of each other in that counting. Three points on that:

1. Almost ALL of that is due to Chernobyl, which has to be recognized as an outlier for multiple reasons. Both in that it should never have happened, and that had they a containment shield it wouldn’t have been any worse than 3MI or Fukushima.

2. Both wind and solar have a lot of industrial and resource extraction costs & pollution that are not being counted here.

3. Land use and environmental impact are a far worse story for wind and solar.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#902

Post by m101 »

Kon5ole wrote: post #817
m101 wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even in survivors of nuclear blasts only 3% died because of the effects of radiation

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#903

Post by pqtyw »

sandos wrote: post #788
pqtyw wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they want to preserve the nature as it is. In Norway? Or by nature as it is you mean managed nature "parks" or reindeer herding areas? Don't Scandinavians generally vehemently support the eradication of native species like wolves (despite much bigger number of them doing just fine in much denser areas like Italy or Poland).

"Don't Scandinavians generally vehemently support the eradication of native species like wolves" - Don't know where you got this idea from. Yes, Sweden has started allowing licensed (very regulated) hunting of wolf, but only because the population has increased a lot. There is already tension between livestock farmers and wolfs in places, and I believe allowing wolfes to become much more than what we currently would…

> but only because the population has increased a lot

Swedish wolf population is extremely small relative to its geographical size.

There are less than 400 wolves in Sweden. For example there are 1500 wolves in Poland, possibly twice that in Italy. How many times more farmers livestock those countries have? Let alone people. The Baltic states have more than twice as many wolves as Sweden and Norway put together...

Sweden is 50% larger than Italy and six times less people, yet somehow several times less area available for wildlife?

Talking about farmers..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_use_statistics_by_country

Sweden has only slightly more cultivated land than Lithuania (and Norway several times less than that), let alone Poland or Italy...

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#904

Post by whatevertrevor »

nilslindemann wrote: post #832
jenadine wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Without doing or seeing the actual math, my intuition leans on the side of it's probably much more efficient to put people together under certain constraints and fly them in one big container, than lots of unconstrained individual containers. See public transport vs cars for a similar tradeoff.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#905

Post by thbb123 »

rcyeh wrote: post #845
thbb123 wrote: post #812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm trying to reconcile your numbers with the Wikipedia "Aviation safety” article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety which for 2019 describes "0.5 accidents per million departures" and "40 fatalities per trillion revenue passenger kilometers". Considering that many or most passengers fly close to 800-1000 km/h, we're still quite a bit above above 1 fatality per 100 million passenger hours. Would a factor…

My numbers come from conversations I recall with René Amalberti, a notable specialist in the area, having advised, among others, Airbus. The conversations were around 1993-96, when I was doing my PhD, and thus may be a bit blurry by now. Also, it is perfectly possible the reference values and measurement units have evolved since then.

Still your projection shows that both reference indicators and actual values are in the ballpark of the estimates I cited.

My (and Amalberti's) main point is that safety assessment is not just about minimizing the raw number of accidents, but involves tradeoffs between various concerns, including psychological perception and revenue. Otherwise, the safest airline would be the one that does not fly anyone.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#906

Post by pqtyw »

zvrba wrote: post #784
pqtyw wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they want to preserve the nature as it is. In Norway? Or by nature as it is you mean managed nature "parks" or reindeer herding areas? Don't Scandinavians generally vehemently support the eradication of native species like wolves (despite much bigger number of them doing just fine in much denser areas like Italy or Poland).

By "nature" i mean e.g., mountains. Not necessarily managed park. IIRC, the people have also protested against high-voltage lines because... dunno, they "ruin the view" across the fjord I guess. > reindeer herding areas There was recently a case in the highest court, Sami people vs state where they wanted newly built wind park in Finnmark to be torn down because... reindeer, native land and rights. They (Sami) won. F…

> ATTACKS ON THE LIVE-STOCK!

It's rather interesting how Italy or Poland can fit several times more livestock, people and wolves into significantly less area.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/APRO_MT_LSCAT...

Italy is more densely populated than Denmark for example (and Sweden is an empty wasteland in comparison), yet also somehow has enough space both for wolves and cows/sheep/etc.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#907

Post by whatevertrevor »

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…

In addition to what other comments have said below, it's also important to state that the indirect impacts of the alternatives aren't widely studied, so it's practically impossible to compare. How do we figure out how many people have a significant impact on their life because of the fossil fuel we burn and put all sorts of crap into the atmosphere?

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#908

Post by patapong »

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.

Okay, my reflection is as follows. Investing in nuclear power today is a bit akin to betting against solar/wind + battery. In my opinion it is a losing bet.

For a nuclear powerplant to be economically feasible, it first needs to be built (10+ years at this point), and then run for tens of years at consistent output rates. To make this worth it for investors, the state often guarantees the price for energy for tens of years after construction, picking up the difference if the electricity price falls.

So in essence, building a nuclear power plant today is locking in that price of electricity for something like 50 years. Solar is today already much cheaper than nuclear, and is coming down in price very quickly, as are batteries and other storage methods. If this development continues and there are further breakthroughs in storage, the taxpayer would have to keep footing the bill to buy expensive nuclear energy for years in the future.

Therefore, instead of investing in reviving nuclear, I would much rather invest the same amount in upgrading the grid, researching storage methods, and subsidizing grid-scale solar and wind. I think this will be the better choice for the taxpayer in the long run.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#909

Post by nilslindemann »

adastra22 wrote: post #901
nilslindemann wrote: post #853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Solar, wind, and nuclear are all within error of each other in that counting. Three points on that: 1. Almost ALL of that is due to Chernobyl, which has to be recognized as an outlier for multiple reasons. Both in that it should never have happened, and that had they a containment shield it wouldn’t have been any worse than 3MI or Fukushima. 2. Both wind and solar have a lot of industrial and resource extraction cost…

1. I am with you in that nuclear plants should not explode.

2. Yeah, and nuclear plants have a lot of costs which are not accounted, like the already mentioned unaffordable insurance costs that are passed on to the taxpayer in the event of an incident.

3. Land radiation and environmental impact are a far worse story for nuclear in case of an accident.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#910

Post by jama211 »

GoatInGrey wrote: post #447
lucideer wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, it might cost more I think this is more than good enough to be the "straight answer" you're looking for all on its own (& it's definitely not a case of "it might" - it definitely will). However, on top of the cost, there's three additional reasons: 2. It will take longer 3. It will need to be geographically distributed to an extent that will incur a significantly broader variety of local logistical red tape &…

You're wasting your energy on that user, I suspect. > No one seems to be able to give me a straight answer with proper facts ...is commonly a rhetorical pattern meaning "I've predetermined my conclusion, but I want to save face by appearing rational and casting those I disagree with as biased or incompetent in one fell swoop." It's the "Aren't there any REAL men anymore?" of contentious topics.

No? I’m genuinely curious I just was frustrated by not having my questions answered properly. Most people in this thread have been very helpful.

This isn’t reddit, don’t read so deeply into my motivations here.

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