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Nuclear investments desperately need to be recognized as green so you don't have oxymoronic policies similar to Germany's current plan where you're decommission

Nuclear investments desperately need to be recognized as green so you don't have oxymoronic policies similar to Germany's current plan where you're decommissioning nuclear to become more "green" yet producing much more carbon dioxide.

freemint 5y ago
Nuclear Energy becomes decidedly less green (but still greener than out of the ground Methane) when building, maintenance and decomissioning as well as fuel transports are included. [1] But once the fix costs are accounted for making it run longer seems smart. There seems to be quiet bimodal distribution of CO2e estimates for carbon. Some are like 5 other >100 in the same unit. [1] https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/NuclearVsWWS.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/Nucl...
- AQuantized 5y ago
  Also owing consideration is the many advances to those processes that could occur with more substantial investment in nuclear power. However the primary benefit to nuclear, beyond its acceptable carbon emissions, is that functioning as a base load removes a lot of the difficultly with building enough battery infrastructure to enable solar power to power peak load and through the night. This is particularly the case for service based economies whose peak load is often after dark.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    One nice thing about solar is the economics of making the night shift more expensive and less common.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  > when building, maintenance and decomissioning OK, but the same applies to wind turbines. I don't see a lot of Teslas hauling wind turbines down I-80. Let's not set up double standards just for nuclear.
  - AQuantized 5y ago
    There's already large contemporary investment in wind and solar relative to the past, not quite the same for nuclear. A lot of processes are inherited from very old projects back in its heyday.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
throwawaylinux 5y ago
The "green" movement to squash nuclear going back to the 60s was the best investment the fossil fuel industry has ever made.
- xcambar 5y ago
  I'm really curious in reading more about this. If you have some resources, don't hesitate to share.
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    About fossil fuel companies donating money to anti-nuclear "environmental" movements? https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear Hopefully you don't believe it would be a step too far for the fossil fuel industry that has been responsible for wars and regime change and cartel behavior going back over a century to subvert or create fake environmental movements to keep their competition down. It would be more outlandish to believe the fossil fuel industry isn't a major driving force behind the anti-scientific anti-environmental anti-nuclear movement. Follow the money.
- odiroot 5y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised to discover that USSR (and then Russia) was sponsoring these movements.
  - tada131 5y ago
    USSR and Russia exported nuclear energy (in form of builded power plants, too). For green movements, your own coal lobbyists are suffice ;)
Yaina 5y ago
What Germany did was very quickly turn off all nuclear power plants without any plans on replacing them with sustainable alternatives. Now they're offline, what's done is done. France still has nuclear power plants, and they're really pushing for nuclear energy to be considered green. This is about investing and creating incentives. So IMHO Germany shouldn't build new plants and France shouldn't get EU funding for their existing ones and everyone, but especially these wealthy countries should focus on truly sustainable energy. Every euro spend on a "transitional" does not go towards the truly sustainable technologies.
- Zenst 5y ago
  Oh, they only a few days ago turned off a load more, reducing their nuclear capacity by half...just before winter. https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-germany-nuclear-reactors-energy-crisis.html https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-germany-nuclear-reactors... Which will increase the pressure upon Gas demand at a time that is probably one of the worst for a long time, let alone the usual winter pressure. Shame nuclear didn't get that green EU label years ago when, as France could of green lit it's updated nuclear plant program instead of stagnating in limbo at a time in which many of their existing plants are entering end of life and with current timescales, would at best see a few pushed past that or some serious shortfalls in energy production. As for Germany building new plants, with the public opinion, I would suspect that Germany's nuclear production is something they are happy to offshore to France and buy in that green energy cheaply without any of the political fallout/protests on it's doorstep.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  > Every euro spen[t] on a "transitional" does not go towards the truly sustainable technologies. We won't have many euros left if we need to fight climate change effects while we wait for new technologies. We need to use the technology we already have. In addition to that, in parallel, we also need to find enough land owners that are willing to have a wind turbine in their proverbial back yard. And in parallel install solar panels on available surfaces. And introduce (pumped, battery, etc.) energy storage. We need all of it. Renewables don't have a money problem, it's a political and humanitarian problem. It literally costs money to have money (ask your bank), so the big money owners want to invest it. It's well known that solar panels and wind turbines pay for itself easily and are very low risk (lower even than an index fund if you operate more than a single device). Nuclear isn't so simple, but has unique advantages. We don't have the luxury to play politics around whether nuclear is renewable or not, it's low on greenhouse gases and doesn't require a lot of land per MWh. No point delaying further while we debate for another five years about whether we should really fund this not-truly-renewable technology. For gas, I mostly agree with you because that's an ongoing emission source with much higher greenhouse gas emissions. Building new gas plants isn't going to get us very far (even if its merits vs. alternatives need to be weighed on a case-by-case basis). But nuclear is different from gas: it's a calculable emission source for the initial construction, and over its lifetime will be orders of magnitude lower, in the same ballpark as wind and hydro. I'd love to go with only truly renewable sources (not that "renewables" like wind and solar have renewable or long-lived hardware, but it's a good start). I just don't see that as an option in densely populated western Europe. I'm happy that the EU looks at merits here rather than ideologies.
wraptile 5y ago
I'm really excited to see how China's 150 new reactor plan in the next 15 years[1] works out: > China says its plans could prevent about 1.5 billion tons of annual carbon emissions, more than what’s generated by the U.K., Spain, France and Germany combined Even if this is an overly-optimistic estimate it's still a colossal step forward! 1 - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-climate-goals-hinge-on-440-billion-nuclear-power-plan-to-rival-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli...
locallost 5y ago
Germany's carbon dioxide emissions have been going down steadily since they started switching off their aging nuclear plants. It's amazing to me how people can think they have a rational argument that's based entirely on fiction. Data: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/2_abb_thg-emissionen-seit-1990-nach-gasen_2021_0.png https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38...
- funklute 5y ago
  How does that compare to (projected) decreases if they didn't switch off their nuclear plants? It seems to me that is what the debate is really about.
  - locallost 5y ago
    No, the debate I was having was about the explicit mention of "increasing CO2", which is just plain false. There are a lot of people that parrot this around the world, by just guessing in line with their beliefs, but the data is pretty clear.
    - funklute 5y ago
      > No, the debate I was having was about the explicit mention of "increasing CO2", which is just plain false. In the context it seems pretty clear to me that "increasing CO2" is meant to refer to relative changes, not absolute changes. Playing semantics is a fairly pointless distraction from the actual argument. So, as I asked before, how would these changes compare to projected decreases, if the nuclear plants were not switched off?
      - locallost 5y ago
        The word "increase" has a clear meaning, and it means that there is more of something than there was before. The word opposite of increase is called "decrease", and Germany's CO2 emissions have decreased since they started switching off nuclear power plants. Calling a decrease an increase is something I would call playing semantics.
sfifs 5y ago
Europe is small and densely populated. They can't afford to take the risk of having large swaths of land rendered un-inhabitable due to nuclear accidents. If there's one thing the last 60 odd years of nuclear experience has taught us, it is that Human organizations and societies cannot be trusted with maintaining high standards of safety in the long term that is required for fission power plants - even the Japanese who have developed a post-world war reputation for careful engineering and management couldn't manage it. Therefore, fission is simply not suitable for such densely populated countries. Japan and US learned this from failures. Germany smartly learned this from others failings. France will soon change their tune after their turn having a major accident (I sincerely hope they don't, but human fallibility is inevitable). Now if you have millions of square kilometres of desert or uninhabited wasteland you are willing to sacrifice, sure you can plonk fission reactors there and take risks with the inevitable nuclear accident. US and Canada do have but are unwilling to sacrifice (aka NIMBYism). Russia does have but doesn't really need more nuclear power than it already has for it's fairly small population. China and to a smaller extant India do have such wastelands and the population to need nuclear power. If instead they plonk the new reactors in fertile populated areas, they in their turn will learn the hard way from their own accidents. Now you can and modern reactors do design for "safe" failure. But frankly why bother when Solar and Wind have become so cheap that virtually no new coal plants are being planned in major economies in the last two years.
- iso1210 5y ago
  How many millions of square kilometres of Japan are uninhabitable due to nuclear energy?
  - sfifs 5y ago
    Japan's habitable area according to [1] is about 125k sq Km. Fukushima official Exclusion Zone is about 370 sq km [2] - so that's 0.3% which is quite a significant loss in itself. However given the events, there's a lot of migration out of the surrounding towns and villages outside the exclusion zone due to fear of radiation amd a very marked population decline in the region. Young families don't want to risk raising children in such an area - so the population effects are significantly amplified and towns will go desolate as the older folks who stay pass away. [1] https://www.gdrc.org/uem/footprints/tokyo-fprint.html https://www.gdrc.org/uem/footprints/tokyo-fprint.html [2] https://blog.japanwondertravel.com/report-of-fukushima-exclusion-zone-tour-from-tokyo-10784 https://blog.japanwondertravel.com/report-of-fukushima-exclu... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4199020/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4199020/

freemint 5y ago

Nuclear Energy becomes decidedly less green (but still greener than out of the ground Methane) when building, maintenance and decomissioning as well as fuel transports are included. [1] But once the fix costs are accounted for making it run longer seems smart. There seems to be quiet bimodal distribution of CO2e estimates for carbon. Some are like 5 other >100 in the same unit. [1] https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/NuclearVsWWS.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/Nucl...

AQuantized 5y ago
Also owing consideration is the many advances to those processes that could occur with more substantial investment in nuclear power. However the primary benefit to nuclear, beyond its acceptable carbon emissions, is that functioning as a base load removes a lot of the difficultly with building enough battery infrastructure to enable solar power to power peak load and through the night. This is particularly the case for service based economies whose peak load is often after dark.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  One nice thing about solar is the economics of making the night shift more expensive and less common.
bpodgursky 5y ago
> when building, maintenance and decomissioning OK, but the same applies to wind turbines. I don't see a lot of Teslas hauling wind turbines down I-80. Let's not set up double standards just for nuclear.
- AQuantized 5y ago
  There's already large contemporary investment in wind and solar relative to the past, not quite the same for nuclear. A lot of processes are inherited from very old projects back in its heyday.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

throwawaylinux 5y ago

The "green" movement to squash nuclear going back to the 60s was the best investment the fossil fuel industry has ever made.

xcambar 5y ago
I'm really curious in reading more about this. If you have some resources, don't hesitate to share.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  About fossil fuel companies donating money to anti-nuclear "environmental" movements? https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear Hopefully you don't believe it would be a step too far for the fossil fuel industry that has been responsible for wars and regime change and cartel behavior going back over a century to subvert or create fake environmental movements to keep their competition down. It would be more outlandish to believe the fossil fuel industry isn't a major driving force behind the anti-scientific anti-environmental anti-nuclear movement. Follow the money.
odiroot 5y ago
I wouldn't be surprised to discover that USSR (and then Russia) was sponsoring these movements.
- tada131 5y ago
  USSR and Russia exported nuclear energy (in form of builded power plants, too). For green movements, your own coal lobbyists are suffice ;)

Yaina 5y ago

What Germany did was very quickly turn off all nuclear power plants without any plans on replacing them with sustainable alternatives. Now they're offline, what's done is done. France still has nuclear power plants, and they're really pushing for nuclear energy to be considered green. This is about investing and creating incentives. So IMHO Germany shouldn't build new plants and France shouldn't get EU funding for their existing ones and everyone, but especially these wealthy countries should focus on truly sustainable energy. Every euro spend on a "transitional" does not go towards the truly sustainable technologies.

Zenst 5y ago
Oh, they only a few days ago turned off a load more, reducing their nuclear capacity by half...just before winter. https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-germany-nuclear-reactors-energy-crisis.html https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-germany-nuclear-reactors... Which will increase the pressure upon Gas demand at a time that is probably one of the worst for a long time, let alone the usual winter pressure. Shame nuclear didn't get that green EU label years ago when, as France could of green lit it's updated nuclear plant program instead of stagnating in limbo at a time in which many of their existing plants are entering end of life and with current timescales, would at best see a few pushed past that or some serious shortfalls in energy production. As for Germany building new plants, with the public opinion, I would suspect that Germany's nuclear production is something they are happy to offshore to France and buy in that green energy cheaply without any of the political fallout/protests on it's doorstep.
lucb1e 5y ago
> Every euro spen[t] on a "transitional" does not go towards the truly sustainable technologies. We won't have many euros left if we need to fight climate change effects while we wait for new technologies. We need to use the technology we already have. In addition to that, in parallel, we also need to find enough land owners that are willing to have a wind turbine in their proverbial back yard. And in parallel install solar panels on available surfaces. And introduce (pumped, battery, etc.) energy storage. We need all of it. Renewables don't have a money problem, it's a political and humanitarian problem. It literally costs money to have money (ask your bank), so the big money owners want to invest it. It's well known that solar panels and wind turbines pay for itself easily and are very low risk (lower even than an index fund if you operate more than a single device). Nuclear isn't so simple, but has unique advantages. We don't have the luxury to play politics around whether nuclear is renewable or not, it's low on greenhouse gases and doesn't require a lot of land per MWh. No point delaying further while we debate for another five years about whether we should really fund this not-truly-renewable technology. For gas, I mostly agree with you because that's an ongoing emission source with much higher greenhouse gas emissions. Building new gas plants isn't going to get us very far (even if its merits vs. alternatives need to be weighed on a case-by-case basis). But nuclear is different from gas: it's a calculable emission source for the initial construction, and over its lifetime will be orders of magnitude lower, in the same ballpark as wind and hydro. I'd love to go with only truly renewable sources (not that "renewables" like wind and solar have renewable or long-lived hardware, but it's a good start). I just don't see that as an option in densely populated western Europe. I'm happy that the EU looks at merits here rather than ideologies.

wraptile 5y ago

I'm really excited to see how China's 150 new reactor plan in the next 15 years[1] works out: > China says its plans could prevent about 1.5 billion tons of annual carbon emissions, more than what’s generated by the U.K., Spain, France and Germany combined Even if this is an overly-optimistic estimate it's still a colossal step forward! 1 - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-climate-goals-hinge-on-440-billion-nuclear-power-plan-to-rival-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli...

locallost 5y ago

Germany's carbon dioxide emissions have been going down steadily since they started switching off their aging nuclear plants. It's amazing to me how people can think they have a rational argument that's based entirely on fiction. Data: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/2_abb_thg-emissionen-seit-1990-nach-gasen_2021_0.png https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38...

funklute 5y ago
How does that compare to (projected) decreases if they didn't switch off their nuclear plants? It seems to me that is what the debate is really about.
- locallost 5y ago
  No, the debate I was having was about the explicit mention of "increasing CO2", which is just plain false. There are a lot of people that parrot this around the world, by just guessing in line with their beliefs, but the data is pretty clear.
  - funklute 5y ago
    > No, the debate I was having was about the explicit mention of "increasing CO2", which is just plain false. In the context it seems pretty clear to me that "increasing CO2" is meant to refer to relative changes, not absolute changes. Playing semantics is a fairly pointless distraction from the actual argument. So, as I asked before, how would these changes compare to projected decreases, if the nuclear plants were not switched off?
    - locallost 5y ago
      The word "increase" has a clear meaning, and it means that there is more of something than there was before. The word opposite of increase is called "decrease", and Germany's CO2 emissions have decreased since they started switching off nuclear power plants. Calling a decrease an increase is something I would call playing semantics.

sfifs 5y ago

Europe is small and densely populated. They can't afford to take the risk of having large swaths of land rendered un-inhabitable due to nuclear accidents. If there's one thing the last 60 odd years of nuclear experience has taught us, it is that Human organizations and societies cannot be trusted with maintaining high standards of safety in the long term that is required for fission power plants - even the Japanese who have developed a post-world war reputation for careful engineering and management couldn't manage it. Therefore, fission is simply not suitable for such densely populated countries. Japan and US learned this from failures. Germany smartly learned this from others failings. France will soon change their tune after their turn having a major accident (I sincerely hope they don't, but human fallibility is inevitable). Now if you have millions of square kilometres of desert or uninhabited wasteland you are willing to sacrifice, sure you can plonk fission reactors there and take risks with the inevitable nuclear accident. US and Canada do have but are unwilling to sacrifice (aka NIMBYism). Russia does have but doesn't really need more nuclear power than it already has for it's fairly small population. China and to a smaller extant India do have such wastelands and the population to need nuclear power. If instead they plonk the new reactors in fertile populated areas, they in their turn will learn the hard way from their own accidents. Now you can and modern reactors do design for "safe" failure. But frankly why bother when Solar and Wind have become so cheap that virtually no new coal plants are being planned in major economies in the last two years.

iso1210 5y ago
How many millions of square kilometres of Japan are uninhabitable due to nuclear energy?
- sfifs 5y ago
  Japan's habitable area according to [1] is about 125k sq Km. Fukushima official Exclusion Zone is about 370 sq km [2] - so that's 0.3% which is quite a significant loss in itself. However given the events, there's a lot of migration out of the surrounding towns and villages outside the exclusion zone due to fear of radiation amd a very marked population decline in the region. Young families don't want to risk raising children in such an area - so the population effects are significantly amplified and towns will go desolate as the older folks who stay pass away. [1] https://www.gdrc.org/uem/footprints/tokyo-fprint.html https://www.gdrc.org/uem/footprints/tokyo-fprint.html [2] https://blog.japanwondertravel.com/report-of-fukushima-exclusion-zone-tour-from-tokyo-10784 https://blog.japanwondertravel.com/report-of-fukushima-exclu... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4199020/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4199020/