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Led by France, 10 EU countries call on Brussels to label nuclear energy as green
- firstSpeaker 5y agoI hope in long term it reduces our dependency on fossil fuel for electricity production.
- jacquesm 5y agoUranium is a fossil fuel.
- pjerem 5y agoFrom Wikipedia > A fossil fuel is a fuel formed by natural processes, such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms, containing organic molecules originating in ancient photosynthesis[1] A fossil fuel is a fuel formed by natural processes, such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms, containing organic molecules originating in ancient photosynthesis that release energy in combustion.[2] that release energy in combustion. So, by this definition, Uranium is not a fossil fuel.
- anotherboffin 5y agoDespite the many shared traits with some fossil fuels: extraction by mining, finite amounts, subject to geopolitics… uranium is a chemical element and not a fossil fuel, especially the “fossil” part.
- q1w2 5y agoThis is obviously not correct.
- tonoto 5y agoVery good and hopefully that will make the collective opinion strong enough to force the politicians in Sweden to scale up instead of scaling down the nuclear plants. Instead of lots of stable energy we now have more of wind mills turning big areas of nature into industrial zones which in turn have made the electricity price to become even more expensive.
- silexia 5y agoNuclear is by far the greenest of energies... Per unit of power produced, it uses less carbon and is far safer than solar or wind power.
- pensatoio 5y agoGreat news. Let’s make it happen. Discussions about “green” energy that don’t involve nuclear are hypocritical at best and ignorant at worst.
- account4mypc 5y agoI think this is the right attitude. Even if you don't want to use nuclear power, it obviously warrants serious attention.
- BitwiseFool 5y agoI saw a photo of an entire hillside covered with solar panels and it was being touted as some green energy achievement. But then I realized that those solar panels have smothered the habitat and that the actual energy output of that solar panel array is very low compared to its footprint - not to mention all the resources that went into producing all those panels. It seems obvious to me that the best possible solution is Nuclear Energy.
- coldpie 5y agoYou're a bit off the mark with your perception of solar, although you do come to the right conclusion. Solar panels can interact well with the local environment[1] and their production resources are sufficiently low as to still be a genuinely clean source of energy[2]. Also, when comparing production costs, consider that nuclear plants don't build themselves and use a _lot_ of concrete, which has a major carbon cost. But your conclusion is right: nuclear is by far the best power option we have right now. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/06/bees-and-solar-panels-could-get-along-well-but-we-need-to-know-more/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/06/bees-and-solar-panel... [2] "Researchers found that it takes just 1 to 4 years for solar panels to “even out” or “pay back” their energy debt. When you consider the fact that panels are designed to last 20 to 25 years, on average, you can see why that’s an impressive rating." Includes link to source study, https://www.solarmelon.com/faqs/solar-panels-use-energy-manufacture-actually-produce/ https://www.solarmelon.com/faqs/solar-panels-use-energy-manu...
- egberts1 5y agoA good start, given that nth generation nuclear power plant is nearly meltdown proof.
- emj 5y agoThere is a Swedish sketch about probability and Nuclear power, it's written by a master of the form so the translation will not live up to the original. Still I do believe it reflects what experience tells us about "nearly bulletproof" in regards to fission. http://wootest.net/likelihood.html http://wootest.net/likelihood.html
- 08-15 5y agoI didn't completely get it, but it sure sounds scary. Probably because I don't know what happened at Harrisburg. Did people die there?
- emj 5y agoIt seems like "Three Mile Island accident" is the name that is used in the US. Do not think anyone died. > Cleanup started in August 1979 and officially ended in December 1993, with a total cleanup cost of about $1 billion
- jstsch 5y agoClimate change is an existential threat to humanity. To deny using an energy source that is nearly carbon neutral, whilst half the population of this planet is still living in energy poverty, is far from being the prudent choice...
- Ekaros 5y agoAnd one that can supply carbon neutral energy also during winters. Which considering amount of global population that requires heating to survive is quite critical.
- q1w2 5y agoDemocracy's are will of the average intelligence and sub-average emotional state. They seldom act with prudence. This is why nearly all nuclear plants under construction today are occurring in non-democratic nations.
- xvilka 5y agoGiven the Germany stupid move to get rid of nuclear (in favor of coal[1], as it turned out), not sure if it will support this decision. And nowadays they are dependent from one country's gas... [1] https://www.wired.com/story/germany-rejected-nuclear-power-and-deadly-emissions-spiked/ https://www.wired.com/story/germany-rejected-nuclear-power-a...
- llampx 5y agoI still see "Atomkraft? Nein, danke!" stickers here and there and am sad at the ignorance displayed by the people who sport them.
- rad_gruchalski 5y agoLet’s see if they still sport these stickers after the coming winter…
- llampx 5y agoYou underestimate the masochism of the average German, or at least the type to have such a sticker.
- rad_gruchalski 5y agoI live in Germany, I have seen a lot…
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoWell maybe Germans could just vote to freeze their energy prices, like Berliners voted to freeze their rents. /s
- Ekaros 5y agoOr buy the power plants and then sell the power for cheap...
- thoughtstheseus 5y agoGreen but potentially dangerous. Nuclear risks can be more easily managed anyway. Normalize nuclear power!
- pl-94 5y agoBy the way, with or without nuclear power, the FitFor55 proposal sounds completely unreasonable to me. 1. It projects a 35% increase of energy efficiency in 10 years. You might achieve it in virtual lifes, but not in the real world (ask a cow to burp less!?) 2. It concerns domestic net emissions. Meaning that the policy is incentiving to de-localisation of industry in China (which already explains most of the progress achieved so far).
- hannob 5y ago> It concerns domestic net emissions. Meaning that the policy is incentiving to de-localisation of industry in China This is simply not true. The EU is trying to adress this with a mechanism called CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism). It's complicated and not sure how well it'll work out, but claiming that this is not adressed is wrong.
- wumpus 5y ago> (ask a cow to burp less!?) Are you aware of research about reducing methane by feeding cows a small amount of seaweed? I'm guessing no.
- Manuel_D 5y agoNuclear power has net CO2 emissions at least as good as, and by some estimates better than, renewables like wind and solar: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_chapter7.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...
- linuxhansl 5y agoGood. Due do skewed and unreasonable public opinion it is currently almost impossible to start new nuclear power projects. As a result instead of modern, safe (passive cooling, etc) nuclear plants we're running 30-40 year old, unsafe old timers! Thorium pellet reactors, et al, are promising technologies for safe and local power generation. I believe the right answer is a mix of (safe) nuclear, renewables, together with energy storage such as pump hydro storage, can solve our energy needs. Then again, I'm a lay person in this area.
- mszyndel 5y agoWorth adding that in EU this is largely German public opinion. And somehow the tail wags the dog.
- lrem 5y agoIs it so? Constituting a quarter of the gdp, Germany doesn't seem to qualify as "the tail".
- buran77 5y agoIs public opinion weight a matter of GDP? Should it?
- moralestapia 5y agoGermany is also the most populated country in the EU.
- petre 5y agoThat's 26% of EU population. Still less than 50%.
- lrem 5y agoI'm afraid it usually is - just think of ways to sway it. Now, I would love to agree it shouldn't be, but there is no concrete system I can think of that could decouple it well. Ownership of media by the state oftentimes makes it a propaganda arm of whichever party is ruling. Private ownership, even in case of heavy subsidies, implies ownership by capital...
- tofflos 5y agoFrance, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania.
- petre 5y agoGreat to see Poland is part of the effort. They have zero reactors having sold their VVER reactor vessels to Hungary but realise they need to replace coal with something and the only ligical choice is nuclear.
- LatteLazy 5y agoAs long as those countries are happy to cover the cost of waste disposal or cleanup...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- q1w2 5y agoWaste disposal is a solved problem. One barrel per reactor per year is not a meaningful amount of waste.
- LatteLazy 5y agoWe have 1,000s of tonnes it here in the UK. And no idea what to do with it. It just sits in barrels or pools and leaks occassionally. This is the low cost option because it's only £2bn a year ($3bn). https://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-sellafield-nuclear-waste-decommissioning https://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-sellafield-nuclear-wa...
- q1w2 5y ago> no idea what to do with it This is a nonsense comment. The point of STORAGE is to do nothing with it. It's supposed to just sit there. Also, the only "leak" mentioned in the article, was not a leak at all. It was contained in the secondary container and then moved back into a new primary container. ...and it wasn't even radioactive - it was "just" nitric acid.
- tomp 5y agoIt should be labelled both as "green" and as "renewable" as well - it's just as renewable as e.g. solar (a.k.a. "sky nuclear").
- rhn_mk1 5y agoIf we are nit picking, we can look at entropy and conclude no fuel is renewable :)
- Factorium 5y agoWe also need to ban politicians from accepting donations, bribes and post-career board positions from fossil fuel companies; ie. Gerhard Shroder, former Chancellor of Germany who oversaw the beginning of their nuke shutdown, and now works for Rosneft! (A giant Russian fossil fuel company controlled by the Russian Government) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41447603 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41447603
- OnlyMortal 5y agoHaving grown up in the Cold War with the threat of MAD and the waste products from reactors, I do understand the hesitation of nuclear power. But, in a more practical world, there’s not much of a choice if we want an energy source that’s not killing us by air pollution. In the other hand, we seem to be yet again passing the problem onto future generations. Perhaps they’ll have the science to resolve nuclear waste but there’s no guarantee. At the end of the day, we’re currently consuming too much for the technology we have versus the population of the planet wrt to our biosphere. There are a few obvious fixes but none are palatable.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoBill Gates new nuclear power plant design being built in Wyoming These things are small and cheap. “ The project features a 345 megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor with molten salt-based energy storage that could boost the system's power output to 500 MW during peak power demand. TerraPower said last year that the plants would cost about $1 billion.” https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/utility-small-nuclear-reactor-firm-select-wyoming-next-us-site-2021-06-02/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/utility-small-nuclea...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Zenst 5y agoUnderstandable given France has invested heavily into such power generation due to policy many decades ago to be energy self sufficient. That has seen France build up a nice collection of skilled workers across the board from building such power stations thru to management. You can read up some background here: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr... I'd imagine having the green label will make export sales better as companies can bulk up their `green` quota of energy supplies much easier and that stigma hasn't helped. [EDIT ADD] If you look at the commissioning dates of the bulk of Frances reactors and the life-cycle of those reactors. You will notice that within the next ten years - many reactors will need decommissioning. So a push to get them labelled as green is very much in Frances interest to justify replacing end of life reactors. Otherwise they may well fall foul of energy production quota targets down the line by the EU.
- johnchristopher 5y ago5 or 10 years ago I watched a documentary about France's nuclear workers (I live in Belgium). One guy said they had lost a lot of their know how when building nuclear plants abroad and were spread too thin now to manage all the plants. He also said that privatization of small contractors to conduct routine maintenance had led to tighter schedules and an increase in small accidents. He wasn't confident the nuclear park was safe enough. Most signatures are from Eastern Europe. It'd be great for France's finances to build nuclear plants in western Europe, the west has a strong anti nuclear stance at the moment.
- orwin 5y ago> He also said that privatization of small contractors to conduct routine maintenance had led to tighter schedules and an increase in small accidents. He wasn't confident the nuclear park was safe enough. Yes, this is probably the biggest issue for nuclear, and the biggest safety risk. Some contractors are good. If you work in software, you know what percentage of them are good, and from those, what percentage actually get shit done.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
- cletus 5y agoThis seems to be an unpopular opinion on HN but I just don't trust humans to manage fission power in the long term at scale. First, there are the issues of storage and disposal of enrichment byproducts, specifically depleted Uranium Hexaflouride ("DUJF" or UF6). Second, there's what to do with old fuel rods. Proponents argue this is a solved problem and it can be stored for the long term in geologically stable storage facilities. This is just one political change away from becoming a huge problem. Neither really scales up to 100x or even 10x current fission energy production. Third, there's long-term maintenance of a plant. Arguments about the relative safety of fission point to deaths caused by coal. Coal is really the worst fossil fuel. LNG is better. But regardless of the numbers, the failure modes are just much, much worse for nuclear. 35 years later, the Chernobyl Absolute Exclusion Zone still stands at 1000 square miles. Parts of this zone will likely remain uninhabitable for centuries. I just don't trust governments or corporations for the long term inspection, maintenance and management of fission power plants in the long term. Lastly, the politics are against fission. This seems unlikely to change anytime soon.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y agoIt may not be popular, because it is just not very logical or pragmatic. Setting aside the vagaries of politics, as those will eventually change the same way pendulum swings, the simple reality is that we simply won't be able to dig around for coal, gas and oil for that much longer. Something has got to give.
- estaseuropano 5y agoThe op gives clear and sound reasons which you dismiss as illogical without any actual argument. Your answer also misses the obvious point of renewables. I fully agree with the op, no way nuclear is long-term safe and if we poured the trillions that have been poured into nuclear into renewables the world already would be a lot nicer. But renewables are much harder to monopolize so the big players never really wanted to support them.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
- johnchristopher 5y agoI read that letter in the newspaper this morning and I had a few questions about the claims being made: - They claim nuclear could create a million of jobs in Europe. What kind of jobs ? Is that job creation or job swapping ? - Switching to nuclear power guarantees energy independence. But where is the uranium we need ? How can we guarantee delivery ? The argument I hear against building new nuclear plants is that it's basically too late: - it takes 30 years or more to build one - it usually costs twice as planned - it's way more expensive than renewables - renewables can be deployed now I do believe we should have built more nuclear plants 20 or 30 years ago but we were drunk on cheap oil and gas.
- derlvative 5y agoAustralia is the country wih the world's largest uranium reserves. They seem to be a more agreeable trading partner than Russia.
- forty 5y agoFrom a French point of view, this might have become debatable lately ;)
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoFrom a French point of view it doesn't matter because: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOMAIR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOMAIR [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMINAK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMINAK [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Namibia#Trekkopje https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Namibia#Trek... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orano_Cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orano_Cycle
- forty 5y agoI was only joking on the topic of Australia vs Russia :)
- oblak 5y ago
- rusk 5y agoIt really would solve a lot of problems, in a relatively straightforward and abundant manner …
- vfclists 5y agoAccording to this page, the problem of nuclear waste disposal was solved over 20 years ago. It is based on a design where the "waste fuel" is used again by the reactor until it is depleted. The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project - http://skirsch.com/politics/globalwarming/ifr.htm http://skirsch.com/politics/globalwarming/ifr.htm
- beezischillin 5y agoCheap energy is the way to go green. I’d love electric heating and looked into it but the lowest monthly cost estimate I could come up with costs roughly the same for a month in electricity costs as a winter’s worth of firewood. (Well, maybe a bit less now with prices of everything skyrocketing, but the demand is there.) Still, it needs to go almost 6x to be worth it.