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Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy

• jpgvm 4y ago
  About time. Nuclear is hardly an environmental risk even compared to the "cleaner" fossil fuels like gas. Hopefully this will allow the EU to return to competitive reactors designs instead of leaving China to pull humanities weight on that front. Though tbh I wouldn't be sad if we bought Chinese reactors until we are back up to speed, having Chinese nuclear > no nuclear. Everyone bitching about China stealing IP finally have something to steal back.
  • nix23 4y ago
    Funny that the real title is: >>Gas and Nuclear Turn Green as EU Parliament Approves New Taxonomy >>On the contrary, natural gas does emit greenhouse gas emissions, however, supporters claim it is less polluting than traditional fossil fuels and can thus be part of the energy transition. So less pollution then heavy oil is now "green" in Europe....bravo, thank you Germany.
    • nicohvi 4y ago
      Natural gas emits radically less CO2 than coal, which is why this is entirely necessary during the transition (Germany is now bruning coal to compensate for the Russian war). Gas emits so little CO2 compared to coal that it actually accounted for ONE THIRD of the drop in U.S. emissions from 2005 - 2016: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-us-carbon-emissions-have-fallen-14-since-2005/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-us-carbon-emissions....
      • kmlx 4y ago
        > The extraction and consumption of natural gas is a major and growing contributor to climate change. Both the gas itself (specifically methane) and carbon dioxide, which is released when natural gas is burned, are greenhouse gases. When burned for heat or electricity, natural gas emits fewer toxic air pollutants, less carbon dioxide, and almost no particulate matter compared to other fossil and biomass fuels. However, gas venting and flaring, along with unintended fugitive emissions throughout the supply chain, can result in natural gas having a similar carbon footprint to other fossil fuels overall. from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas
      • pfortuny 4y ago
        Yep, but that does not turn grey into green. This is just politics redacting facts... because they want the votes. These "neo-green policits" could perfectly say "we are green but we acknowledge but we need grey energy for a while". They chose redefining language, as always. (Cf. Victor Klemperer, "The language of the third reich" and also, as always, Orwell... "good is bad, bad is good" and "the past can be changed").
        • mcv 4y ago
          Instead of dividing them into grey and green, we should rank them in red, yellow and green. Red energy sources are the ones we immediately need to stop using: coal and oil. Yellow energy sources are the ones we should stop using only if we can safely do so, but if we can't (and we can't, right now) we should continue using them: gas and nuclear. Green energy sources are where we really need to go.
      • contravariant 4y ago
        I don't object to using gas over coal, I object to calling it green. We're in trouble when 100% green energy is not enough.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
      • herbst 4y ago
        Germany was burning coal the whole time. There are interesting docs on YouTube how they literally buy up small towns to turn them into coal mine areas in 2020 and ongoing.
      • trompetenaccoun 4y ago
        https://www.science.org/content/article/natural-gas-could-warm-planet-much-coal-short-term https://www.science.org/content/article/natural-gas-could-wa... That's a myth based on old data, no one who understands the models makes such simplified black and white claims. Methane (which is natural gas) is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2. As in up to 100x the warming potential in the first couple of years until it's naturally converted. When burned, it's turned into CO2 but the problem is there is leakage all over the place because methane is volatile. During production, during transportation, during storage - it gets leaked into the atmosphere all over the place. See this more recent article: https://www.iea.org/news/methane-emissions-from-the-energy-sector-are-70-higher-than-official-figures https://www.iea.org/news/methane-emissions-from-the-energy-s... As others have pointed out the title has been blatantly edited to omit the gas part. This is propaganda, declaring fossil fuel to be renewable energy doesn't make it so. Words still have meaning and the laws of physics still exist. It's really sad to see this sort of political science denial finds its way into HN now.
        • denton-scratch 4y ago
          I think the propagandistic title is just an expression of the Parliament's meaning; they've declared that nuclear and gas are to be treated as "green" for the purposes of various exemptions. You can legislate that Pi is equal to three, but that doesn't make it so. As parent notes, every molecule of methane burned turns into a molecule of CO2. Incidentally: I don't see how burning coal produces more CO2 than burning methane. Burning coal is worse than burning methane because burning coal produces lots of particulates, as well as nitric and sulphuric acids. Same for burning oil. Has anyone ever done testing on automobile exhaust similar to the testing that has been done on cigarette smoke? Of course not - nobody pretends that autombile exhaust is safe to inhale. Everyone knows it's much more carconogenic than ciggie smoke. So I'm not defending coal and oil; they're worse than methane. Just not because they produce more CO2.
          • trompetenaccoun 4y ago
            It's because of how it burns. It is true that you get more energy out producing the same amount of CO2 with gas compared to burning coal. This might sound counterintuitive but it has been studied and isn't controversial. Although I doubt that "one third" claim the other person made, but in principle that part of their argument is correct. The issue is, all extracted methane isn't burned, and that's where the trouble starts. Over the past years, we've seen estimates for how much of it is lost into the atmosphere grow and grow. Some recent studies already claim more than 3%: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/methane-leaks-erase-some-of-the-climate-benefits-of-natural-gas https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/methane-leaks-era... There has recently even been speculation that gas from certain sources where monitoring and environmental regulations aren't very strong could actually be worse than black coal. The truth is we don't really know this for sure yet. You're right about the pollution, this and some other considerations are important as well. In certain countries air pollution is a serious issue. Germany doesn't really have this problem and the German plants have good filters. Germany has it's own coal, gas has to be imported. They're experiencing the effects of a dependency on foreign gas as we speak. So in the end, they might have actually better kept their coal power. I doubt it's going to happen though, coal is dead for purely political reasons. It's simply extremely unpopular.
      • adolph 4y ago
        > Gas emits so little CO2 compared to coal At a molecular level this doesn't make sense to me. The fundamental carbon cycle value proposition is to harvest energy released when a carbon atom (re)joins two oxygens. For the same energy, how would methane and coal produce different amounts of CO2? That said, I can see how the oxygen reaction would be less efficient and create more byproducts (i.e. acid rain) using coal given its less refined nature. How methane would have a better energy to CO2 ratio doesn't seem to have an obvious mechanism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane Imagination, Physics, Fire & Trees - Richard Feynman (aka Trees grow from air, carbon cycle): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJLMysTpwhg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJLMysTpwhg
        • bloak 4y ago
          Coal: C + O2 -> CO2 Gas: CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O I don't know off hand exactly how many joules of energy (heat) are produced per mole in each case but it's not surprising that gas gives more joules per mole of CO2: it's a bit like you're burning hydrogen at the same time. EDIT: It's relevant that O-H bonds are stronger than C-H bonds, presumably.
          • adolph 4y ago
            Thanks, that makes some sense. I wonder how that additional bond works in the hydrolox to methalox comparison of rocket fuels.
          • 988747 4y ago
            You also need to consider that H2O itself is also a greenhouse gas, much worse than CO2, although much easier to remove from atmosphere.
            • nix23 4y ago
              >H2O Water...
          • pfdietz 4y ago
  • throw827474737 4y ago
    Strong disagree and just won't help besides fantasies. Lets not dig into the other mess again just because we never went and always deferred starting to do the right thing already 30 years back and now say: nuclear is the only way out. It isn't, it would be too late anyway, it will not scale to the world's power needs, it will cost too much.. and I just haven' touched the usual downsides of nuclear. Even some nuclear operators start seeing it this way now already..
    • ben_w 4y ago
      Nuclear is uneconomically expensive and currently looks like it may always be so, but there are ways to fairly rapidly scale it up to world demand if we really wanted to.
      • jpgvm 4y ago
        It appears to be expensive in the West for now. I'm waiting to see how China's rollout goes before declaring that it's straight up expensive. Even if you buy into crap like Chinese reactors being less safe or more poorly regulated they should still be a good benchmark for what is necessary to reach scale nuclear reactor production. Especially their small designs which are expected to be mass produced in factories and shipped to the site rather than built in-place as current Western designs have been been. Combined with their target reactor numbers should bring down the cost substantially due to economies of scale when producing 200+ of the same reactor. Only then will we have a decent picture of economics.
        • philipkglass 4y ago
          Chinese nuclear reactors built in China are completed faster than in other countries, and they probably [1] cost less. But it's not clear that Chinese nuclear reactors built in Western countries would be especially affordable. Consider this recently signed deal to build China's Hualong One reactor in Argentina: https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsargentina-optimistic-about-nuclear-ties-with-china-9658784 https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsargentina-optimistic-ab... It is supposed to take 8 years to build and cost $8 billion for 1090 net megawatts (1170 gross megawatts) [2]. That's far better than Western AP1000 and EPR projects currently under construction, if it meets its targets. But it's far worse than the planned costs that Western AP1000 and EPR projects had at project start. Or consider the relative pace of Chinese nuclear and renewable additions in China. China connected a record 8374 megawatts of nuclear power to its grid in 2018 [3]. (In 2021 it connected 2321 megawatts). At a 95% capacity factor, that's about 70 terawatt hours of electricity generated per year. In 2021, China added a record 54880 megawatts of solar power [4]. At a conservative 15% capacity factor, that much solar capacity will generate about 72 terawatt hours of electricity per year. It also added over 47000 megawatts of wind capacity in 2021 [5] which can be expected to yield more than 82 terawatt hours annually at a conservative capacity factor of 20%. In terms of added electrical output, Chinese renewable projects are outpacing Chinese nuclear projects despite the much lower capacity factors for renewables. I suspect that's because they are much cheaper to build. There may come a saturation point where adding more renewables no longer does anything to displace fossil fuel consumption, because additional supply is all curtailed due to mismatched supply/demand timing, but curtailment can go pretty high (more than 50%) before nuclear yields more marginal decarbonization per dollar of investment. [1] It's difficult to determine the ground level truth of Chinese project economics. The government is more heavily involved in the economy, press freedom is limited, and language barriers make it hard for people who only read English to keep abreast of what appears in Chinese publications. I am acutely aware that the only reports I read coming out of China are things that somebody else wanted translated into English. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hualong_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hualong_One [3] https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails.aspx?current=CN https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails.... [4] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-solar-power-capacity-set-record-increase-2022-industry-body-2022-02-23/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-solar-power-c... [5] https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1738591/china-reports-169gw-new-offshore-wind-2021 https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1738591/china-repor...
  • mytailorisrich 4y ago
    The problem here is that the term "green" means nothing and anything. It is always much better to define objectively what is the issue and what is the aim. It seems to me that the main issue is emissions and that the aim is therefore to reduce them as much as possible. In that context, nuclear is a perfectly valid option and probably unavoidable as things stand. Gas is 'bad' since it obviously does produce emissions but it's the least emitting among fossil fuels so realistically it could also be allowed as a last resort (with 'last resort' underlined 3 times in red).
    • pvaldes 4y ago
      The problem is that now there is less money for developing a grid of green energies and we need it for yesterday. Because nuclear will take a chunk of the grants, as is much more expensive to build and much more time consuming. So green energies, delayed in the last decades for political reasons, will need to wait, again. And this delay could turn to be a very bad decision in a few years.
      • jpgvm 4y ago
        That is just fear mongering. We have no evidence of nuclear being built in-place of cheaper renewables. Until we do it's just FUD.
        • pvaldes 4y ago
          > Until we do it's just FUD. And when we will do, it is too late to change our mind Too late, to little and, with bad luck, a very expensive error. Money is a limited resource. The only reason to tag nuclear as green is to grant nuclear access to subsides for green energy.
          • wizofaus 4y ago
            Who says money is a limited resource? I'd think only key things it can pay for (skilled human labour) are what're limited - you can "print" as much money as you like. We need far more people skilled in and dedicating their time toward developing low carbon energy sources. Given the number of us doing all manner of BS jobs, that doesn't seem like a hard problem to solve (even if it will necessarily take a number of years).
  • plutonorm 4y ago
    • jeroenhd 4y ago
      Gas is accepted if it's a replacement for much worse sources of energy such as coal or very old gas plants. This law basically classifies anything that's better as a green investment. Relatively, it is, of course. Activists want the EU to only brand renewables as green investments, but doing so would make replacing coal plants by much cleaner gas plants more expensive. Renewables have different characteristics than coal plants, which can operate at night in a storm during droughts, unlike many real green alternatives. I think we should aim towards a 100% green energy grid with the necessary battery banks to maintain power during difficult weather. However, it'll take us a while to get there.
    • koheripbal 4y ago
      It produces one quarter the CO2 compared to oil, so as long as we're burning oil, it makes sense to increase gas usage - especially since it requires almost no additional capital investment.
  • croes 4y ago
    Competitive reactor design sounds like corruption, botched construction and profit over security.
    • Aachen 4y ago
      Not sure it gets better when everyone gets paid regardless of performance, also things like corruption.
      • croes 4y ago
        Remember Boeings competitive 737 max? Competition is often about price.
        • ranguna 4y ago
          We are talking about the EU here. Sure there will always be corruption, but I'd say it's gonna be better than US & Boeing, albeit probably a bit slower in progress.
          • croes 4y ago
            McKinsey also works in the EU. Siemens also, and they have a long history of corruption. So I doubt that it is any better in the EU, just less known. Like Greece and Germany. The greece know there is corruption therefore their place in the corruption index, the germans ignore/don't know of corruption hence the better position in the index. And still who paid the corrupt politicians in Greece? companies like Siemens. Not to mention that certain types of corruption that are illegal in the modern world are still legal in Germany. Like giving politicianshigh positions afterwards. Because we know it isn't corruption if you got paid afterwards /s
            • ranguna 4y ago
              As I said, corruption will always exists, but still EU water is not as polluted with forever chemicals as the US is, and that's just one example.
  • WhompingWindows 4y ago
    The headline from HN: "Nuclear turn green" (why the typo?) The actual headline: "Gas and Nuclear Turn Green as EU Parliament Approves New Taxonomy" (HN left out gas) So gas is actually being considered "green" now, so calling it a "cleaner" fuel as you do is actually what they're doing.
    • Tuna-Fish 4y ago
      Not really. Under the rules, it's possible for a gas turbine investment to fall under the clean energy rules, but there is a lot of small print. Mostly, the gas turbine must be able to run on a clean fuel, and there must be actual plans for a switchover. When I first read that gas turbines can fit under clean energy rules now, I was kind of angry, but I calmed down after I read the full rules.
  • miniwark 4y ago
    I do not agree. Actual 'nuclear' (Uranium fission based) is a proved environmental risk: - Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi (INES level 7) are not some sort of small environmental incidents - Kyshtym, First Chalk River, Sellafield (1957), Three Mile Island, Goiânia (INES level 6 & 5), and maybe the Tomsk-7 explosion (not rated) where comparably smaller but the environmental impact was not small - we still do not know what to do with nuclear waste in the long term... But we do know than this waste is not a 'green' crap - fortunately nuclear waste is not drooped anymore in the ocean... but only since 1993! The quantity rooting under the sea is estimated around 200,000 tons (this also include waste from medical usage). Everybody look elsewhere and cross finger on this. - (we could also add 8 or 9 nuclear submarines rooting under the sea, and an unknown number of lost wea pons, but i agree than this not from civil reactors) - it is no secret than environmental researchers who study marines currents, already use "small leaks" from know origin since a long time. The quantity may not have environmental impact, but the leaks are big enough to be used in scientific studies. See for example https://hal-normandie-univ.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02433310/document https://hal-normandie-univ.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02433310... (and many more for the English channel) That said, Nuclear power could be environmental friendly. Thorium based reactor are promising. They are certainly not 'green' but, far less problematic. Also Fusion reactors could be the perfect 'green energy' if solved. But, Uranium fission based reactors, are useful: you could use them to start your nuclear bombs collection... And this is one of the historical reason why the Green parties and Greenpeace are against them. With reasons, because actual nuclear plants, do come from military origins (most are based from submarines reactors), and in nuclear power countries the separations between 'nuclear civil' and 'nuclear military' was never a real thing. The other big reason is the historical 'democratic' way all this nuclear plants where build: simply rain local authorities with money, and put anti-nuclear militants in prisons. Personally, my main problem with the uranium reactors is than it's a dead-end technology. It's true than it do not product greenhouse-effect gas and create a lot of energy, but it's like taking a very big loan instead on working on more secure and less risky nuclear energy. Or investing in more renewable energy, or in less energy consumption, or in non-battery powered electric cars... Saying than it's 'green' is just green-washing from the actual nuclear lobby.
    • theptip 4y ago
• henearkr 4y ago
  Please restore the full title. It is truncated, as noticed by an other comment.
• parkingrift 4y ago
  It’s about four decades too late to help anything.
  • MrPatan 4y ago
    Better late than never.
  • thrown_22 4y ago
    The best time to build a nuclear power plant in 20 years ago. The second best is today.
    • adrianN 4y ago
      That is only true if nothing has changed in the last twenty years. But in that timeframe alternatives to nuclear have dropped in price quite a bit and know how about nuclear has retired.
      • thrown_22 4y ago
        If that were the case there wouldn't be an energy crisis in every country without nuclear power. Yet the less nuclear power a country has the more electricity prices have risen since 2010.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
    • parkingrift 4y ago
      We need a rapid buildout of green energy. I like nuclear but the Green Democrats of the world ruined it. The world is worse off for their efforts, but someone has to win the race to peak stupidity.
• herbst 4y ago
  Thanks EU for making everything worse for no reason. Can't they just invent their own label. Gas likely is better than Germany still burning tons of coal every day for energy but it's not green. That's just sad really
  • Juliate 4y ago
    The point of the label is not that it's green or blue or whatever nature-friendly color. The point is to direct and strongly favor investments in less worse energy production sources. We're only sadly at a point where even some gas energy usage is a less worse option than no gas at all (because then, coal would be used instead).
    • kmlx 4y ago
      > We're only sadly at a point where even some gas energy usage is a less worse option than no gas at all (because then, coal would be used instead). good point, but still tragic.
    • mytailorisrich 4y ago
      There is no reason to favour investments in gas. This is a political compromise to placate Germany that drove itself into a corner by not wanting to hear about nuclear for ideological reasons.
      • Juliate 4y ago
        Cut completely gas out of the equation, you'll get coal instead and/or social uprising at the continent level. Unless you can favor fast nuclear reinstallment. The energy crisis we're facing for the coming century is ... not good.
        • mytailorisrich 4y ago
          That's besides the point. To get to net zero we can't favour new investments in gas. Maybe such investments are unavoidable in some cases but that's quite different. So, again, this is all on Germany. They should clean up their own mess themselves and drop ideological dogmas.
• ThePhysicist 4y ago
  De-nuclearization of other European countries is a long-held goal of the German environmentalist movement and the Green party. It's understandable that France doesn't want to go with that, as they don't want to be forced down the same ruinous path we're currently on here in Germany. And honestly, good for them. It's just sad to see how little actual science is respected in Germany. I did my PhD at the French nuclear energy agency and my French colleagues would always be puzzled when I talked about German energy policies and our anti-nuclear sentiment. But here in Germany the Green party will probably never reverse it's stance on nuclear energy, as their rise to popularity was strongly fueled by the anti-nuclear movement from the 80s and it's the one thing they can't abandon without losing a large number of followers. I partially blame the highly ideological stance on the way people rise to power in politics and administration in Germany. In France, top positions in the administration are usually filled by people that are technically excellent and have gone through the system of grandes écoles (ENS, ENA, X, ...), whereas in Germany most people rise through social engineering and party politics and most top positions in the administration are filled by people with law degrees that don't have a clue about technology. In my opinion that's also a reason why we completely fail in everything regarding digitalization, lawyers are simply not good technical problem solvers.
  • osuairt 4y ago
    The people that usually are puzzled about this approach, also avoid any of the arguments on why people don't want nuclear facilities as the basis of their energy infrastructure. Framing it as some closed minded ideological stance, and that Germany wouldn't be in a position to understand the pros and cons to nuclear technology, just looks to dismiss those that might have actual rationales for running their countries differently.
    • Juliate 4y ago
      Also, framing it as if Germany policy had not been also ... "influenced" by Russia's long-term strategy would be quite naive.
      • blub 4y ago
• rasz 4y ago
  "Gas and Nuclear Turn Green as EU Parliament Approves New Taxonomy" Why TF dont they unbundle obvious German written putin gas part from the Nuclear option and vote separately on those two?? Edit: this is such an obvious German EU blackmail - let us fund putin or you dont get clean Nuclear power plants.
  • JanSt 4y ago
    Germany planned to use gas to bridge times with little wind and solar power to be able to turn off nuclear energy. Not smart but true. The new plan is to build even more renewables. and massive storage capacity, a very optimistic undertaking.
    • Brometheus 4y ago
      The plan is to use the plenty of excess renewable production to generate hydrogen and then burn that in the gas plants. Therefore, all gas plants qualifying as "green" have to be able to burn hydrogen.
      • rasz 4y ago
        How about specifying its about hydrogen and hydrogen _only_ in the EU resolution then? Is it because its really about whats being pumped over Nord Stream? Lets face it, this resolution has Schroder/Scholz fingerprints all over it.
      • JanSt 4y ago
        Hydrogen is a form of storage. Much energy will be lost in between.
        • Brometheus 4y ago
          It doesn't matter when the energy is basically thrown away right now and therefore free. It's called Einspeisemanagement (EisMan or EinsMan). At the moment: Windy & sunny day? Just throw the energy away! Future: Windy & sunny day? Store the energy for a rainy day!
• seydor 4y ago
  Now that we agree that nuclear is a better future, we need to talk about where to source fissile materials, and what technologies can make it so safe we won't have to think twice.
• throwawayjun21 4y ago
  So stupid to hate nuclear energy. you dont need to be a rocket scientist to realize how good deal its. Where i am from a lot of activists hit the road and blocked many nuclear plant from bein built. Brainless activism is destroying democracies around the world
  • pvaldes 4y ago
    The same happened in Spain in 70s, and the ecologists saved several cities and the local economy of thee entire area when an earthquake hit at a few Km of were the smart people wanted to build the nuclear plant. So, some are brainless, other are genius able to predict the future and take the correct decision. Your mileage can vary.
    • hedora 4y ago
      So, the plan was to build a non-seismically protected nuclear power plant in a seismically active area? Do you have a source for that?
      • pvaldes 4y ago
        This was exactly the idea in 1973 Murcia, Spain, yup. BWR model. Same design as Fukushima plant at 30km of Lorca. Until a couple of dumb guys and a famous actor from the area see what was obvious, pick up some banners and saved the day. The action payback generously when in 2011 Lorca was hit by an 5.1 earthquake and no central nuclear was here to be hit. None of the tomato companies that sell vegetables to half Europe were destroyed, tourists keep coming as usual, and none of the fishermen were crushed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Lorca_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Lorca_earthquake
        • pfdietz 4y ago
          A 5.1 earthquake is rather weak. This would likely not have damaged an NPP near there.
• dsq 4y ago
  The problem with nuclear right now is that even if we decide to massively increase the share of nuclear power in the energy mix (in itself a very good idea), it will take a lot of time to build up the human technical capital necessary to plan, build, and operate these plants. This should have been started 5-10 years ago, and new graduates woukd be ready. Not to mention physical plant which also takes many years to finish. My worry is that once the energy crisis becomes completely obvious, with people shivering in blankets, govts will panic and push through emergency building plans, cutting all corners.
  • pawsforthought 4y ago
    “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
• sputr 4y ago
  When it comes to nuclear, no story is better than the story of the Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant in Austria. It was built, finished, ready to start providing 692 MW of power. But was prevented with a referendum on 5 November 1978 by a narrow majority of 50.47% against. So they didn't start it. They instead replace it with Dürnrohr Power Station, a termal power station burning coal and gas. The push for ideological purity that prevented them from accepting a less-than-perfect choice, lead to getting stuck with the worst-possible choice when reality came knocking. It's a cautionary tale for all ideologically “passionate” people, of which we have far too many in today's society.
  • sofixa 4y ago
    And to top it off, Austria imports nuclear energy from neighbours.
  • stefantalpalaru 4y ago
• henearkr 4y ago
  As I heard today again on the radio, the narrative is "to get energy whatever the weather, we cannot rely only on wind and solar". I'm surprised that they haven't heard of the possibility of energy storage. Both already available storage solutions, and the many other solutions in development, are largely enough to enable wind/solar and other renewable sources to replace fossil fuels, without relying on nuclear.
  • wronglyprepaid 4y ago
    > I'm surprised that they haven't heard of the possibility of energy storage. Have we not? I think the real issue is that we have capitalist pigscum that are greedy and want to burn the atmosphere if it can give them an extra buck and the EU is beholden to them that is why they made this change.
    • henearkr 4y ago
      But they are allowed to hide behind this false narrative because the population is not aware enough, which is why we should speak publicly a lot of the energy storage solutions and projects.
      • wronglyprepaid 4y ago
        They are allowed to hide behind the false narrative because governments only care about shareholders and not stakeholders.
  • jpgvm 4y ago
    I think you (and most people that talk about storage) drastically underestimate the scale of the storage required and just how tight supply is for the resources necessary to build it. For now EVs are going to consume the world's supply of batteries. Leaves you with thermal or potential energy storage like pumped hydro. All of which aren't even fully developed yet or are restricted to specific geography. As of right now, even ignoring new designs nuclear is 100% technically viable, it's just expensive. Expensive is generally easy to fix just needs scale like what we have for solar now.
• lakomen 4y ago
  "If reality doesn't fit our narrative, we'll just put our labels on reality and act as if we're the ones who decides what reality is" - aka children putting their hands on their eyes pretending no one sees them now. Von der Leyen and consorts are so ugly and stupid. The whole EU as an institution has to be teared down and rebuilt. It starts with the Lisboa treaty. When you create a construct on top of old but better constructs you get the results like increase right wing following, corruption and whatnot. It used to be that bad politicians were moved to the EU to have them out of sight of the real governments. Now those failures make laws that change what those governments can and can not do. It's a trojan horse only sitting on top, the pinnacle of uselessness.
• SpEd3Y 4y ago
  Isn't it smart to invest in Nuclear? Sure, there might be drawbacks right now but if we invest in research and improve it we might find a way to make it "greener"? Also we seem to be focusing on space exploration again. To take off we're always using fossil fuel. I'm going to take a wild guess and assume that you cannot take a ship into space with wind and solar. Also a wild guess but if we develop nuclear enough we might get smaller generators that are able to help a ship take off and then continue to have energy while in space. I know too little to make these claims but I'm sure the smart people here can help me understand if I am wrong or correct :)
  • mschuster91 4y ago
    > To take off we're always using fossil fuel. While yes, this is currently true even for SpaceX whose Falcon family uses RP-1, for the future the situation looks different - Starship uses liquid oxygen (which can be obtained by air liquefaction) and methane, which can be synthesized at high efficiencies [1] in a laboratory scale or captured from landfills. [1] https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/se/d0se01896a https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/se/d0se0... [2] https://news.mit.edu/2022/loci-methane-emissions-landfills-0202 https://news.mit.edu/2022/loci-methane-emissions-landfills-0...
• sylware 4y ago
  near-zero carbon energy without nuclear at the current level of energy needs? ...
• mcv 4y ago
  I think it's good to recognise gas and nuclear as being preferable to coal and oil, but green they are not. I consider them transitional energy sources; we will be stuck with them for a long time while we transition to greener energy, but coal and oil need to be stopped as soon as possible. After the Fukushima disaster, Germany closed its nuclear power plants and replaced them with coal plans; absolutely the worst possible reaction to that disaster. We do need a middle category to recognise that nuclear and gas are better than coal and oil, but I really don't want energy companies selling me nuclear and gas power as part of my green energy subscription.
  • viscountchocula 4y ago
    I get why gas isn't green, but why isn't nuclear?
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • mcv 4y ago
      Nuclear waste. Also, nuclear disasters tend to be quite dramatic, leading to birth defects and uninhabitable areas. Nuclear is only green when you only look at CO2. CO2 is the most pressing issue right now, which is why I support nuclear as a transitional energy source on our way to greener energy, but let's not fool ourselves and pretend it's as clean as wind.
      • inkblotuniverse 4y ago
        It's cleaner. Wind turbines break down, and chemical waste never decays.
• ketanip 4y ago
  I see a lot of opposition to Nuclear Energy in EU and particularly Germany, can anyone tell me why ? As far as I know, only nuclear has power to stop our reliance on fossil fuels as it can produce a constant supply of power and handle energy demand spikes like no other, and for Europe is more important as Russia can just cut energy supply to Europe and it will cause horrible effects to Europe's economy.
• sudden_dystopia 4y ago
  Too little too late. They clearly need nuclear power now. The west has made its energy bed and now we have to sleep in it.
• willcipriano 4y ago
  You know how I know environmentalists are just dragging their feet on nuclear for ideological reasons? When we talk about a storage facility for nuclear waste, a scenario they insist you prepare for: if human civilization completely collapses to the point that any of the currently spoken languages on earth are no longer able to be read how to we keep the, whatever comes after us, from busting up the concrete and digging down deep into the earth and playing with it. That's the last gasp of someone out of obstructionist ideas. I've had these people tell me that launching the waste into the sun would be dangerous for the sun, they aren't serious and need to be ignored. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warn...
  • dane-pgp 4y ago
    > if human civilization completely collapses Even if it doesn't, nuclear waste storage is still a very expensive and indefinitely long project (assuming you want to keep adding to it, stop it poisoning the ground water, and stop terrorists getting access to it, etc.) > I've had these people tell me that It's still strawmanning if you pick an actual bad argument that someone told you and don't just come up with the bad argument yourself. I'm sure you're smart enough to imagine the failure modes of trying to launch millions of rockets full of nuclear waste, so the environmentalists are right to oppose such an idea even if they can't articulate why.
    • pornel 4y ago
      You know nuclear waste isn't green glowing leaky barrells like in cartoons, right? It's stored as solid glass. For super-duper cautious extra safety it can be stored below ground water levels. The volume of the high-level waste is relatively tiny (roughly a swimming pool per year per country). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k
      • dane-pgp 4y ago
        You're right, it sounds like it should be easy to avoid these cartoonishly bad outcomes, but unfortunately reality doesn't always meet our expectations. "Why Germany is digging up its nuclear waste" "But the waste had to be stored somewhere, so the voices that warned against selecting Asse II were ignored." "The office concluded that the risk of groundwater contamination was too big, and the only truly safe option was to retrieve all the waste from the mine and store it elsewhere." https://euobserver.com/eu-political/132085 https://euobserver.com/eu-political/132085 (Thank you for offering a fact-based criticism, though, rather than just angrily downvoting.)
• rich_sasha 4y ago
  Some back-of-the-grubby-napkin maths. Nuclear is currently about 10% of global electricity production. We could go all-nuclear, therefore, by going 10x on nuclear reactors (less in fact because there are renewables too but nvm). There have been two major, critical nuclear energy incidents - Chernobyl and Fukushima. I'll count them both, though see caveat [1]. That's 2 incidents in 50 years. If we went all-nuclear and extrapolated, that'd be 20 incidents per 50 years, or 40 per century. UN estimates 4,000 deaths from Chernobyl (contentious but I'll stick with it). Wikipedia quotes Fukushima as 2,000 deaths - well, 2,002 deaths caused by evacuations and 1 in the incident. Let's not mince around and make it 4,000 per pop. 40 incidents per century at 4,000 deaths per event, that's a total of 160,000 deaths per _century_. In return, we're basically carbon-neutral and don't need storage. How many people die if we're not carbon-neutral? Millions for a start. It seems like a no-brainer to me. Also subtract all the deaths from not-generating power using these now-replaced means, improvements to air quality from not burning stuff, and I think humanity is in a much, much happier place. I'm not saying nuclear is without downsides, I'm saying if you take all the downsides on the chin, nuclearise through the nose, you're better off than the alternative of burning stuff. Solar and wind are great but plenty of regions would require months worth of storage, which we're nowhere near to technologically. So, now some nuance: [1] Chernobyl, as I understand it, was basically man-made. Fukushima happened in one of the most extreme environments - east coast of Japan, one of the world's most seismically active regions. Also nuclear safety went ahead since then - these were both designs from 70s (!), we're 50 years away from the 70s. [2] There are proliferation risks (though I still question whether they are as bad as global warming), but most of carbon emissions are from rich countries anyway (and we kinda equate rich with non-terrorist). [3] Nuclear is expensive, but it is because it got much safer. We could, presumably, just take the old, less safe designs and build using those - and recreate all the above back-of-the-napkin maths. We could instead assume nuclear is indeed very expensive, but then we'd need to reduce the expected death toll numbers. [4] Many regions can perhaps, indeed, do without nuclear and rely on solar, wind and hydro - great, good for you. Can you really do it without gas peaker plants or other "top ups"? Well if you can even nicer, but plenty of places cannot. But that's all good, that means we need less nuclear to achieve the same zero-carbon goal.
  • black_puppydog 4y ago
• traspler 4y ago
  I'm always a bit baffled by the amount of pro-nuclear comments on HN and their stance on how everyone who disagrees is just not educated enough. Please educate me: Is the waste problem solved? Are we not still fighting with all the previous attempts of handling it? Is "dig a hole in a salt deposit and keep it there" really good enough for the very, very, very long term? Are old powerplants properly decommissioned and replaced with new ones when the time comes? Can we really claim to be able to handle worst case scenarios well (e.g. Fukushima)?
  • automatic6131 4y ago
    >Is the waste problem solved? Are we not still fighting with all the previous attempts of handling it? Is "dig a hole in a salt deposit and keep it there" really good enough for the very, very, very long term? It is technically solved, but politically unsolved. YMMV about how much of a deal breaker this is. >Are old powerplants properly decommissioned and replaced with new ones when the time comes? Not a problem that you can solved today >Can we really claim to be able to handle worst case scenarios well (e.g. Fukushima)? Yes, also Fukushima can't happen in geologically inert Western Europe. However, what is clear is that the world needs consistent, plentiful, reliable carbon-free energy. The storage required to meet the first three conditions with renewables DOES NOT EXIST. It doesn't exist for anything outside of a few minutes. Nuclear power is: consistent, reliable and carbon-free; and humanity has known how to do it since the 1960s. In a contest between a technology we DO NOT HAVE, and one we DO, it is a no-brainer.
    • traspler 4y ago
      How is technically solved? We are talking enormous timelines for which we have to guarantee safe handling of the waste. Every try until now has proven to be inadequate. So we are in the situation where we live with old powerplants that are not up to standard and no way to handle that but we will definitely be in the future? „Can‘t happen“ is always the argument until it does and it‘s a difference if we are talking about something that will be over in short time or will remain a problem forever. But my point was more in the direction of how to handle that, if the solution is bury it and move far away from it, it‘s not something that can be scaled.
• brnt 4y ago
  The press release direct from the EU: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_4349 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_...
• fulafel 4y ago
  Egregriously editorialized title (real one: "Gas and Nuclear Turn Green as EU Parliament Approves New Taxonomy"), the big thing is the greenwashing of gas here. But you can always clickbait HN by focusing on nuclear, well played for internet points I guess.
• timwaagh 4y ago
  The bad part is Russian gas got the greenlight too (at least until 2035).
• GamerUncle 4y ago
  Ironically enough is the same "trust the science" crowd form Germany that has seemingly hindered the advance of nuclear
• why-el 4y ago
  How do people square climate change and violent currents across EU rivers with Nuclear installations so close to such rivers (for instance the Blayais power plant)? I am genuinely curious. Is the idea that we will build stations that can withstand such forces? It's not just warming rivers, but also notoriously unpredictable conditions and our inability to make up an accurate model of what might happen. If someone has a study that takes this angle I am happy to read it.
• worik 4y ago
  OMG. The first sentence: "designate natural gas and nuclear as environmentally sustainable energy sources" I argue that nuclear is making our descendants pay for our current consumption because of the waste. It can be argued that there are storage mechanisms that are safe tor two hundred millennium (I do not accept those arguments, but it is an argument). But natural gas: It is not sustainable (it is a fossil fuel, it will run out). Burning it produces CO2 which is burning the world, and producing it releases huge amounts of methane that cannot even be counted and that is worse than CO2 at burning the world. Such greed, such hubris, such willingness to ruin the world that we borrow from our children to satisfy our greed. Evil.
  • anonporridge 4y ago
    Morality is the privilege of the rich. In times of war, morality is often the first casualty.
• cbmuser 4y ago
  And it's backed by science, just in case someone is about to complain. See: https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/business_economy_euro/banking_and_finance/documents/210329-jrc-report-nuclear-energy-assessment_en.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/business_econo...
• kevinpet 4y ago
  Headline here omits part of the headline in the linked story: Gas and Nuclear are both now considered green. Which to me just reinforces the absurdity of environmental advocacy. It's clear that CO2 is the most urgent environmental issue today, and I say this as someone who is skeptical of many of the doom and gloom extreme claims and policy prescriptions that amount to shaming for wanting luxury. So in that regard nuclear is not just a bridge solution, but a long term (nearly indefinitely if we reprocess fuel and use breeder reactors), especially if we get our act together and stop making it cost a fortune. While natural gas is continuing to contribute to CO2 in the atmosphere.
• cassepipe 4y ago
  Seems like everybody is jumping on the "environmentalists that don't like nuclear power do it for ideological reasons and are paid by the oil lobby" resentment bandwagon. While I think it is a fair point and while I do think it's a stupid mistake to close nuclear plants, there are also issues that I rarely see addressed probably because they drown under all the rest : 1. Nuclear plants are very expensive and some projects have been pumping taxpayer's money. I suspect they are not so easy to conceive, build and maintain as other sources of clean energy. Especially since they become a security issue when they get old. 2. The problem of waste management has always been a problem. I hear it argued that it is a solved problem but certainly having this problem lying since the beginning of the industry has not helped not build trust. 3. The nuclear catastrophies have been overblown because they were more spectacular and a new thing affecting lot of people in a short period of time BUT it remains that it is hard to trust people that thought building a nuclear plant in an island that is the victim of dramatic eathquakes and tsunamis a good ides AND the problem is that it fucks up an entire area for who knows how long ? That is certainly scary, no need for oil producers lobbying there to explain distrust. 4. Is there even enough uranium for the world ? Is is sustainable to invest loads of money into systems whose fuel is on foreign countries that you have to dig up ? (so according you gathered by now I am not pro-oil. Keep it in the goddamn ground) 5. It is a single point of failure. Thank god no terrorist thought of "landing" a plane there. It's broken ? No power for an entire region. 6. Finally, but this is a minor point as those considerations may be a luxury during our climate crisis, the technology lends itself well to despotic elite rule, everyone depends on who can secure control of a little army of skilled workers and engineers. Those control the energy supply would have tremendous power.
  • wolverine876 4y ago
    We still don't need nuclear. We have many other solutions, including reduction of power consumption, cap-and-trade carbon credits, and much more. What's happened is that, bizarrely, people have completely conceded to the reactionaries. People have given in, and now give the reactionaries free reign, making it a fait accompli that none of those solutions will happen. If you quit trying and let the reactionaries off the hook, then nuclear is (arguably) what's left. The anti-nuclear power position of the 1980s didn't take into account - and shouldn't have taken into account - that the American conservatives and the fossil fuel industry would prevent any action on climate change for decades, even denying climate change was happening, then falling back to 'it's not caused by humans', and now to 'there's nothing we can do'. > Seems like everybody is jumping on the "environmentalists that don't like nuclear power do it for ideological reasons and are paid by the oil lobby" resentment bandwagon. Again, everyone has completely capitulated to the reactionaries, like people in Vichy France. They are jumping on the reactionary bandwagon. The reactionaries are exceptionally aggressive (an obvious, unimaginative tactic) and people feel powerless against them, so like people bullied on the playground, they find a safe position: Join the bullies and attack their targets.
• aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
  Why are Germans so stubbornly against nuclear power? Is it because of losing WWII? Is it because of the Holocaust? I don't get it.
• a3w 4y ago
  As with every complex problem, nuclear is a flawed option, but one that offers small advantages for a limited timeframe. Gas and nuclear will not be discarded for years. Real world applications are rarely “either/or”, but more of a market with many goods served. But, some facts for the pro nuke crowd here: Soon, rivers will be to warm to cool down nuclear reactors. Unless you want to kill many things living in the water, but no one proposed this, yet. And the rivers carry less and less water during summer. The storage was never done for the full time scale necessary, so we might overlook problems. Scientific knowledge progresses, but also earths bodily nature has some surprises in stock. Like in Fukushima, where expectations/specification and real natural phenomena collided catastrophically. Fusion and fission generate heat. While about 1 % as bad (source: minkorrekt podcast, german language only) as CO2 emissions, we still would need to compensate (even for having ideally cheap infinite fusion energy that would cause rebound effects of increased consumption) by for example using only short term tested carbon capture and storage on a global and permanent scale. Another way to cool down earth is painting the ground brightly. Or having plants that are brighter to heat radiation than concrete and tar in urban settings. Gras required water but does an ok job. Solar power panels have the same albedo as gras, generate electricity and require water only once during construction. So at least this kind of renewable energy source, but also others, tend to have lower hidden costs and/or effects of placement in a global heating scenario. Nowadays, wind power is so much cheaper than nuclear that that Germany imports power from denmark (with a high wind percentage) and exports it to France (where a high percentage is nuclear power). BTW, I really like the investigation of how to harness fusion energy: the project to do this creates scientific progress and productional-and-measurement capabilities which are going hand in hand in increasing our knowledge and capabilities of gaining more knowledge with all of these tools. The Stellerator project (Wendelstein) has a great return in investment. But using this energy source could be counterproductive for a long time on this planet.
• pyuser583 4y ago
  Good science doesn’t respect good ideology. There are ideologically inconvenient truths: men who have sex with men should not donate blood in the US, for example. Nuclear is safe. That’s a fact. Not a convenient fact. But a fact.