9 ms·

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 competi

by 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

by jpgvm 4y ago

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