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EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

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991–1000 of 1001 posts

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#991

Nuclear power capital costs should be cheap too. The incentives of the regulators are not aligned with the public. Regulators don't care about cheap electricity, they aren't going to get anything for that. They only care about reducing the risk of an accident however minor happening on their watch while not appearing to completely annihilate the technology because that would open them to political attacks. So the bal…

> Regulators don't care about cheap electricity, they aren't going to get anything for that.

Of course they do. It's going to feed directly into economic growth in a way that is about as visible as a major accident multiplied by its probability

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#992
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, your country fell way behind every other developed nation in this and you've missed out on a huge industry. In the end, your citizens will still use the products, they'll just probably end up having to pay more for the same functionality.

Other countries can shoulder the cost of the hand waving grift. If it turns out they succeed, lift their models and weights. Eat some potential IP liability for not incurring economic damage ("inefficient capital allocation") chasing magic. Be first, be smarter, or cheat ("you can just do things"). DeepSeek showed a bit of this (model training efficiency), as Apple does slow walking their gen AI. Why incur material e…

> Wall Street Journal columnist Christopher Mims shared another chart, saying: “The 'magnificent 7' spent more than $100 billion on data centers and the like in the past three months alone.” Man, are they optimistic. Mims linked to an article by Paul Kedrosky, who offers another perspective [1] on the AI bubble, as a percentage of GDP. Kedrosky, in turn, quoted Chinese President Xi Jinping, who warned of overinvesting in AI-focused datacenters. When Xi Jinping and Wall Street traders are on the same page, you know it’s bad. [2]

[1] https://paulkedrosky.com/honey-ai-capex-ate-the-economy/

[2] https://open.substack.com/pub/thealgorithmicbridge/p/im-an-a...

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#993

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you are in (or IP-geolocated to) the EU: https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/115068-000-A/nuclear-putin-s-d...

We have plenty of uranium in Europe. Australia also has plenty. Lots of countries have plenty, both friendly and not so friendly (that we still buy lots of stuff from anyway). We absolutely don't need Russian uranium. Uranium is also easy to store long-term (years). There is zero risk of a new stupid energy dependence on Russia.

True, there is uranium everywhere. Yet Russia still has a 40% marketshare on enriched uranium because enrichment is the difficult part, just ask the Iranians.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#994
post #663
post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard for humans to work with exponential curves. Solar went from 15 cents per kwh to 5 cents per kwh over the last 10 years. Anticipating such a rapid decline is hard and a lot of people still are stuck on outdated data. Sure China commissioned these plants in the past and will plan more, but it won't be due to cost.

But you don't need to work with exponential curves to know that you can use solar only for like half a day and even less during winter. Those solar installation now are big part of overall cost. And with majority of EU population living in flats where you gonna install them?

Solar installations are already so cheap that they are cheaper than the fuel being burned in existing power plants. So it makes sense to have them replace this kind of fuel burning.

They are still getting cheaper so there is no stopping solar.

I have seen statistics showing that solar parks currently cover less area than there are Golf courses (at least in Europe).

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#995

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cleaner than coal and oil. If you upgrade a coal plant to a gas plant, that's a step forward against climate change. Yes, we'd be much better off with wind farms, solar plants, and nuclear reactors, but a step forward is a step forward. Countries like Poland, running mostly on coal, would get cleaner air and contribute less to global warming if they were to upgrade their power plants to anything non-coal. Replac…

Clever use of the adjective “cleaner”. Try replacing it with “less dirty, but still pollutant and toxic” to see an alternative, correct version of what you have written.

I don't understand, "cleaner" and "less dirty" are perfectly synonymous to me. Are they not to you?

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#996
post #903
post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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... Sw…

There are 6000 to 7500 gray wolves in the US lower 48 states (and nearly 10000 in Alaska.)

The Eastern Coyote is larger than the western variety and has some wolf DNA. It seems to be evolving to fill the niche the wolf occupied in the eastern US. There may be as many as 4.7 million coyotes in the US. There's a pair in Central Park in New York City; Chicago has ~2000.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#997

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone also served by PG&E I don't think cheaper electricity will help. At peak hours electricity is $0.13/kwh but the delivery charge is $0.50/kwh.

At some point the electricity will be near-free, and we'll just pay transmission fees

Or, customer site storage will become so good they just drop off the grid.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#998

Asking because I don't know. How is enrichment governed? Say for instance if a country is only using it for energy vs defense/offense. And are there elements that can be specifically used for energy vs otherwise? Last I remember, having access to enriched uranium was grounds for a country to bomb another one.

Modern weapons use plutonium not uranium, uranium weapons can be constructed. All it takes is the enrichment to produce the fissile material for a weapon. As far as I know countries have agreed to not build weapons, with the exception of those that already have them, there is an international body that monitors enrichment sites, but checks are voluntary a country can choose to not accept inspections and/or build addi…

> Modern weapons use plutonium not uranium, uranium weapons can be constructed.

Thermonuclear bombs use uranium in the tamper of the secondary. Some use enriched uranium there.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#999

You know what, let’s turn popular city parks to windmill and solarparks. NY central park for example. Copenhagen has a few beloved open green places we could clean out and replace with solarcells, so does Berlin. Im unscientifically guessing support for nc energy would rise very quickly and wed have a whole bunch of them within a decade. Source, I live near a windmill, they are loud as f*k. I drive by solaparks nearl…

Yeah have seen them. Down south of EU, in Portugal, they are buying land used for agriculture for these huge solar farms. And it is as sad as it is here. Surely, food is more important no? If they were placed in some deserts like in Spain... maybe they make sense, but these are very arable lands. Wind is yeah... a whole other beast, although I do like what they have done in the Baltic and North seas.

The EU as a whole has a pretty large oversupply of food, so using arable land for other things than agriculture is no big deal.

Re: EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

#1000
post #859

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

ahahahaha. millions of immigrants from middle east are conservative policies. abandoning nuclear is conservative policies too?
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