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.
Nuclear is too expensive and takes to long. We can't afford to waste the resources that could go into a fully green grid in a couple of years taking decades building a fraction of that capacity as nuclear.
Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#942Believing 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.
Powerprice in Germany today minus 500€/MWh. Nuclear power is economic madness in an environment where we see negative electricity prices practically every day.
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#943Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happens when there is wide bad weather for renewables? ( for a range of days from 1 - several) Where would the power needed come from? If, it was to be from some kind of storage, Extra capacity would be needed to allow recharging of the storage
Mind that nuclear power relies on favorable weather as well. It's not uncommon in Europe that nuclear power plants have to shut down, because the rivers they use for cooling become too hot.
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#944Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason why people tend to get a bit cheerleadery about nuclear power is because it has some great PR and it resonates with them. It needs the PR because it is so unconscionably expensive. The public needs to be primed to consent to indirect and direct subsidies. The reason China, US, France, it is because it shares a skills base and supply chain with nukes. The reason Sweden, Poland, Iran, etc. build a few plants…
very little supply chain is shared with weapons, dont spread nonsense. If you want weapons it's far cheaper to have just an enrichement facility exactly for that. And nuclear is cheap. Look at lazard estimate for existing fleet. Or open swiss data. Or even german data
I dont think it was price or global warming that got Poland suddenly interested in 2023. They dont want to build a nuke today but if their existing nuclear umbrella suddenly gets yanked away...
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#945Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ?
Taxes and levies make up up to 60% of the energy prices. https://blackout-news.de/en/news/electricity-prices-in-germa...
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#946Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#947Believing 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 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…
https://ourworldindata.org/low-carbon-technologies-need-far-...
docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80580.pdf
https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/LCA_3_FINAL%20...
The question is simple, if you are afraid of nuclear, are you willing to erase any more dangerous tech? I'm not even mentioning cars which cause each 2y same nr of fatalities in Germany as Chernobyl is expected during whole lifetime per UN (or even worse if we look at updated uncsear reports)
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#948Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#949Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
My point is that since we have had so few nuclear incidents, but they have done massive damage, it is very possible that we don't actually know much worse it could get. We have only seen a few points from a distribution that could be much wider than we think. Compared to renewable failures for which we have a pretty good idea.
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#950Earlier quoted context omitted.
very little supply chain is shared with weapons, dont spread nonsense. If you want weapons it's far cheaper to have just an enrichement facility exactly for that. And nuclear is cheap. Look at lazard estimate for existing fleet. Or open swiss data. Or even german data
Nuclear costs about 5x as much as solar and wind according to Lazard. This doesnt even include catastrophe insurance (taxpayers are on the hook in the event it goes boom and there's an $800 billion fukushima style cleanup fee). I dont think it was price or global warming that got Poland suddenly interested in 2023. They dont want to build a nuke today but if their existing nuclear umbrella suddenly gets yanked away..…
Fukushima cleanup could have costed much less. Jp govt wanted it to be expensive.
"They dont want to build a nuke today but if their existing nuclear umbrella suddenly gets yanked away..." - again, it's unrelated. If you want weapons you can have some secret enrichemnt facility for that. Much cheaper. Npp without enrichment are pointless anyway for weapons due to parasitic isotopes.