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Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear

91 points by ericdanielski 3y ago

Gud 3y ago
Humans are guided by emotion. Public opinion will swing back in favor of nuclear power as more and more people grow up without having known the disasters that were Three Mile Island and Chernobyl first hand. Kids these days don't give a shit about Chernobyl - And Fukushima was already more than a decade ago. Most 30 somethings are most likely not even aware of the Harrisburg accident. What they do know is that their apartments are smaller than their parents were when they were their age. They can't afford to drive cars like their parents did and they can barely afford to pay the electric bills in the winter. At the same time they are well informed about the causes of climate change, an enormous release of green house gasses into the atmosphere, to power the economy. So what else is there to feed the economy with energy? Wind & Solar? Get real. The obvious solution is to run those electric generators using steam turbines fueled by uranium.
ggm 3y ago
Do please remember that amongst the reasons nuclear is expensive and slow is the weight of legal peril and delay intruded by .. the anti nuclear movement. Not all, by any means but in the "it takes too long" side of things, there's a reason.
- pipo234 3y ago
  Wind and solar have legal perils as well. Mostly NIMBYs, but some sincere concerns exist about impact on wildlife, loss of agricultural space, etc. I think the reason the effects of those concerns in monetary terms pale in contrast to nuclear, is that nuclear technology is much more complex and complicated and therefore many more issues need to be addressed. At this stage, it's still a pretty immature technology and it can't progress very fast because it's considered more hazardous than alternatives. As it is, I'm tempted to agree with the young climate activists if nuclear could short term buy us time to instantly shut down coal and gradually transition to renewable sources. Problem is, that even building "off the shelf" nuclear plants tends to take way longer than wind or solar.
  - smackeyacky 3y ago
    Instant is not a word associated with the building of nuclear power plants.
    - Loic 3y ago
      They can pack a nuclear power plant on a boat/submarine. It means, they can build a system which is compact and reproducible. If the authorities would be ready to allow the use of such systems as stationary deployment and provide financial incentives to get them online fast for "base load", I expect Rolls Royce and cie. to quickly deliver.
      - smackeyacky 3y ago
        Even a reactor designed to power an aircraft carrier wouldn't do much more than power a few suburbs. We would need many, many boat powerplants to replace a single coal fired power station which looks impractical against batteries and wind/solar both on cost and deployment speed.
        ggm 3y ago
        I'm not here to try and float the nuclear boat, 'that ship has sailed' -but I think your economics are true now, but somewhat shallow. There have been decades lost getting PV and wind viable to power a few suburbs and the LCOE of SMR would have been just fine if the industry had been allowed to achieve the same economies of scale of production. Now? It's two to three or more times expensive than solar/wind. (CSIRO) Instead we've got billions of overspend on giant Reactor complexes like Hinckley. It can't compete. But undeniable huge sums of money have been flung at nuclear. Both nuke, and solar and wind and batteries are dwarfed by the gross irresponsible subsidies which underpin coal, oil and gas. They launched the 20th century. They leave a trail of tears and ash behind, which will take centuries to remediate. Massive socialised losses as an externality. I like wind, and PV and batteries. We're going to do fine.
        3y ago
- pjmlp 3y ago
  One of the reasons Germany is behind countries like Portugal in Wind power, is exactly the legal ways that anyone can prevent wind farms to be deployed, because "they are ugly", or "break the landscape view", or other nonsense. Thankfully some states are finally voting on changing this.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mdekkers 3y ago
    Germany is _removing_ windfarms because they are in the way of their digging up lignite. https://euobserver.com/green-economy/157364 https://euobserver.com/green-economy/157364
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      That as well.
- numbers_guy 3y ago
  Why is the sourcing of nuclear fuel never talked about as a problem? France needs to maintain boots on the ground in Africa to protect their uranium mines. The German public, amongst others would be extremely against that level of direct imperialism.
  - spacebanana7 3y ago
    A non-sanctioned country can buy uranium on the open market relatively easily. Production happens in many places [1], including Canada and Australia. French power plants don't need to worry much about African politics, at worst they'll have pay Canada or Kazakstan a little extra for short notice delivery. And even then, Uranium is a small part of the overall cost of nuclear energy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - seszett 3y ago
    > France needs to maintain boots on the ground in Africa to protect their uranium mines It seems rather coincidental to me that one of the countries where France has military presence happens to be a minor uranium producer (we're talking about Niger here I assume). France has military presence in many more countries, and Niger is (or was, since there was a coup there recently) only a supplier for 1/5th of France's supply, and easy replaced with other sources. None of the other suppliers have French military bases. Uranium is also very easy to stockpile since it takes little space, which makes it much easier to switch suppliers if needed.
    - morsch 3y ago
      It's not easy to switch suppliers. Harder than natgas even: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-france-global-trade-only-on-ap-business-c521f2248c823f69f0a677735a78e89d https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-france-global-trad... Beyond the mere Uranium, power plants need specific fuel rods, and afaik only Russia is currently capable of manufacturing the fuel rods for the remaining old soviet bloc power plants in Eastern Europe.
- invalidname 3y ago
  Regulation also slows down green projects. There are reasons for these regulations and some of them will be around for thousands of years... Green energy is cheaper, less risky and regulation (while also painful) is easier in most cases. As a result a project can be built much faster. Land usage is bigger but mixed usage is OK (e.g. solar over crops, parking lots etc.). Wind can reside in the sea and geothermal can be in the middle of the city. I think the discussion over nuclear is based on data from a decade ago. The world changed. It isn't Greenpeace that should object, its the business interests. It just isn't viable anymore and the viability is declining, since solar/wind, storage etc. keep improving at an amazing rate.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    From both an engineering sense and an aesthetic sense, I would much rather have 2 nuclear plants serving as base load (not total load) for 10M people, supplemented by solar/wind, than relying solely on solar/wind/storage. (In part because that requires an incredible amount of storage to preserve the current uptime in my part of the US, but also because it's a much better match to the load profile [engineering] and a smaller footprint near people [aesthetics].)
  - pydry 3y ago
    It's ridiculously uneconomic of course but a limited number will continue to be built in spite of this because of the overpowering military imperative. If you have nuclear weapons/submarines/carriers/etc. like Russia or the United States or France it shares some of the gargantuan cost of building and maintaining them. I expect North Korea will get into it in the next few years too for precisely this reason. Countries like Iran, Sweden and Korea, on the other hand, want to be able to manufacture a weapon on a tight deadline because of extremely self evident geopolitical fears. Nobody else builds nuclear power plants. The vast power of the global hippy-industrial complex apparently prevented it :/ Of course, the western nuclear military industrial complex, who always HATED environmentalists with a seething passion, are aware of just how massively uneconomic it is but that doesn't stop them from trying to dress up as "young climate activists" to sell a form of power that is 5x more expensive as a green gamechanger. Consent for enormous subsidies needs to be manufactured somehow if nuclear power is to remain competitive with solar and wind.
- sampo 3y ago
  Long build times are more of a Western thing. China has reactors started in for example 2010 and 2015 that were finished in 5 or 6 years (and some others that took 10 years). India and Japan has reactors started in 2000 finished in 5-6 years. Pakistan has reactors stared in 2011 and 2016 finished in 6 years. Korea has reactors started in 2000, 2005, 2006, finished in 5 years.
- imtringued 3y ago
  There is no anti nuclear movement against NuScale. They simply managed to do cost overruns like every other nuclear project in history.
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    HN doesn't want to hear that.
smackeyacky 3y ago
There are good reasons to reject nuclear power on purely historic analyses of the projected vs actual costs of nuclear projects[0] It is very disheartening in Australia to listen to the Nimby objections to wind and solar farms in a country that is almost uniquely empty. I cannot imagine that objections to the location of nuclear power here would be any different. [0] https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/08/29/nuclear-power-small-modular-reactors-climate-change/ https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/08/29/nuclear-power-small-mod...
- sofixa 3y ago
  > There are good reasons to reject nuclear power on purely historic analyses of the projected vs actual costs of nuclear projects That is if you forget to factor in the lifespan of nuclear projects, which is easily 2-3 times longer than solar and wind, and doesn't require associated (not yet existing) massive storage. (Not saying this for Australia specifically, there is no nuclear industry there whatsoever so any new project will have significant human resource obstacles on top of all others; just as a general point which is so often forgotten).
  - invalidname 3y ago
    As far Storage has become very cheap at grid scale e.g. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-12/is-renewable-power-cheaper-than-coal-nuclear-malcolm-turnbull/11495558 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-12/is-renewable-power-ch... This is an older article. As far as I understand this is even more in favor of green energy now.
  - hathchip 3y ago
    > and doesn't require associated (not yet existing) massive storage. That's not quite true. Nuclear generation is more flexible than wind and solar but much less flexible than thermal fuels, particularly gas. Although you can choose when you turn a nuclear power station on and off, you can't do so quickly, and your choices are somewhat constrained (regular downtime is required). Nuclear worked well in the energy mix when it supplied base load (ie generate roughly the minimum daily load at all times) while coal supplied predictable peak load and gas could supply unexpected peaking. As this mix changes, availability patterns of nuclear start to be more of a burden. In a system without fossil fuels, you would have to have (some) energy storage, regardless of the split between nuclear, solar and wind. The exact number for how much storage, how much overcapacity, or how much natural gas generation you would need vary with the proportions of solar, wind and nuclear of course, but it's an oversimplification to suggest that they are trivial if you use mainly nuclear.
davotoula 3y ago
"How dare you!"
dpz 3y ago
Same reason I have issues with the Uk Green party, makes them look foolish when they push to stop fossils but the only current practical solution is nuclear(which they're against)
- hkt 3y ago
  Nuclear isn't the only practical solution, though. We have the technology today to make a real go of properly using solar, wind, tide, etc.
  - deathgripsss 3y ago
    But we will need baseload power for a long time to come. The UK is not investing in battery technology and on still winter days the UK needs to be able to spin up a lot of power generation quickly. That role is currently filled by natural gas. Nuclear should have taken its place.
    - hkt 3y ago
      Nuclear can't do peak load scaling and is less consistent than you might think for baseload. You might benefit from looking at systems like Compressed Air Energy Storage. Highly responsive, compatible with CHP, virtually no scarce materials involved, and pairs dramatically well with renewables. As an additional bonus, it also doesn't leave vast tracts of land uninhabitable if it goes wrong.
    - tcfhgj 3y ago
      > Nuclear should have taken its place. How about gas produced by electricity, e.g. through electrolysis.
  - atlantic 3y ago
    Solar, wind, and tide are very dispersed forms of energy, so harvesting them on a significant scale has a massive environmental impact. Also there are issues relating to extracting the input materials, and to waste disposal after the devices are retired. It's not clear to me that "green" energies are any better than fossil fuels.
sph 3y ago
We had nuclear power in Italy. From my house, I could see the cooling towers of the abandoned nuclear power plant in Trino [1] in the distance. There was a referendum in November 1987 asking whether to abolish any form of nuclear power. It won with 80% of yes votes. This was a year after the Chernobyl disaster. Over the next few decades, Italy started to import electricity at a premium, mostly from its French neighbour, which has never stopped investing on nuclear and is today Europe's largest electricity exporter. No politician dared touch this hot potato ever again for the following 24 years, until the June 2011 referendum, that asked whether to revive plans for nuclear power. It failed with 94% of No votes. This was 3 months after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. I do not trust politicians, nor anti-nuclear activists, to ever do the right thing and drop their outdated stance on the matter. -- 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi_Nuclear_Power_Plant_(Italy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi_Nuclear_Power_Pla...
- tcfhgj 3y ago
  They should have built renewables and they would have cheaper energy than ever. You can't remove energy sources without replacement.
  - KptMarchewa 3y ago
    Build renewables in 1987?
    - vidanay 3y ago
      A couple billion solar panels operating at ~1% efficiency sounds like the best plan ever.
  - purpleflame1257 3y ago
    Apart from the base load arguments, in the 1980s and 90s, solar was a total joke efficiency and cost-wise
  - jonkoops 3y ago
    In any real case they should have both built out renewable energy and maintain and even expand the existing fleet of nuclear reactors. Nuclear might be historically expensive and storage an issue, but it is carbon free, and for the moment that is the most important problem we need to solve.
andyjohnson0 3y ago
This is maybe the impatience of youth running up against the false certaintly of middle age. I think the reality is that both sides have good points. Nuclear looks like the only way to create enough energy density to power modern societies. On the other hand, build times for current mainstream nuclear plants are too long given the critical situation we're in, and we still dont have widely deployable solutions to the waste problem.
- leethargo 3y ago
  So, following your argument, we should at least continue to run existing infrastructure? I wonder why these debates only focus on problems such as waste, catastrophic risk or investment/financing, but not sourcing of uranium, which might not be available from "friendly countries".
  - andyjohnson0 3y ago
    > So, following your argument, we should at least continue to run existing infrastructure? Qualified yes. I personally don't see how we can make it through the critical coming decades without nuclear, but that implies we'll continue to create nuclear waste. The only solution we have is to deep burial. While I think thats fairly safe, the only operational facilitiy is Onkalo in Finland. We're going to need to build more, and deep excavation takes a lot of time and safe sites are limited. Not every country that will want to deploy nuclear power will have a way to dispose of the waste. The other alternatives are shoot it into the sun (too dangerous at scale) or shallow storage (dereliction of duty of future generations). So I dunno really. As for uranium resources, theres a lot in Australia.
    - leethargo 3y ago
      I later looked up the resources on Wikipedia which also listed Canada as having significant mining capacity. So maybe that argument is not strong either.
alphadelphi 3y ago
"[in Germany] in 2022, CO2 emission goals were exceeded by 40 million metric tons due to the increased use of coal-fired power plants resulting from the necessary cuts in natural gas consumption; estimates for 2023 assume 38 million metric tons. The Emsland, Isar II and Neckarwestheim II nuclear power plants supplied a total of 32.7 billion kilowatt hours of low-emission electricity in 2022. German private households most recently consumed an average of 3190 kWh of electrical energy per year. This means that these three power plants can supply more than 10 million, or a quarter, of German households with electricity. The resulting reduction in the amount of electricity required from coal-fired power plants could save up to 30 million tons of CO2 per year." https://www.replanet.ngo/post/open-letter-save-german-nuclear-power https://www.replanet.ngo/post/open-letter-save-german-nuclea...
abricq 3y ago
I consider myself very much an ecologist, and also struggle to understand anti-nuclear ecologists. However there is one anti argument that I think is worth sharing, one friend exposed to me and that I think it is very pertinent: "One should be against nuclear energy because their lobbies encourage a society where energy is not limited. Having clean and (relatively) cheap energy is not the best way to go toward sobriety. And it is easy to confuse having a carbon-free energy source with having a new way to produce more cars, planes, phones, content, etc... which will only help capitalism to grow stronger" I think there is a big part of truth here, and we (the pro-nuclear ecologist) must address an answer to this worry. My opinion is that we should separate this in two fights: (i) we must go for a more sustainable society by reducing our needs in energy and our general consumption; but it is irrational to think we will ever reduce our energy consumption level to a level sufficiently low that nuclear would not be the best option, hence (ii) we must keep learning how to build and maintain nuclear plants.
- vzqx 3y ago
  (1) When a resource is unlimited, it's easier to distribute that resource cheaply to everyone, which is exactly what communism strives for. Resource scarcity leads to power being concentrated in a small ownership class - e.g. capitalism. (2) Why think "more cars, planes, phones, content, etc" are unique to capitalism? People want to travel and to be entertained, regardless of the economic system they live in. Communism doesn't mean people will suddenly want fewer material goods.
- bjornsing 3y ago
  Let’s not entwine the solution to climate change with the communist revolution. Not everyone is in favor of the latter.
  - tcfhgj 3y ago
    Same holds true for a solution for climate change
- hathchip 3y ago
  This is a caricature of the anti-nuclear position. Renewables also offer the potential of a society where energy is not limited, why aren't communists also opposed to those?
Gwypaas 3y ago
I agree the stance is old-fashioned, but nuclear is not the solution in 2023. We correctly attempted it in the 2000s, it did not deliver, lets learn from that experience. Who would finance another Flamanville [1] or Vogtle [2] today? The research is clear, every cent invested in nuclear power prolongs the climate crisis. [3] > On both costs and speed, renewable energy sources beat nuclear. Every euro invested in new nuclear plants thus delays decarbonization compared to investments in renewable power. In a decarbonizing world, delays increase CO2 emissions. The recently nationalized debt laden French nuclear behemoth EDF can not even finance new nuclear plants without direct state aid. [4] > (Montel) French utility EDF is unable to self-finance the construction of new nuclear reactors due to its EUR 65bn debt and so needs state funding, CEO Luc Remont told a hearing of France’s lower house on Wednesday. Meanwhile Germany are raking in tens of billions by simply selling the right to build off-shore wind. [5] > Germany’s first dynamic bidding process, covering four offshore wind zones with a combined capacity of 7 GW, has generated EUR 12.6 billion in proceeds, according to the Federal Network Agency. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla... [3]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435123002817 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243512... [4]: https://www.montelnews.com/news/1511372/french-state-must-fund-new-nuclear-due-to-edf-debt--ceo https://www.montelnews.com/news/1511372/french-state-must-fu... [5]: https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/07/12/breaking-germany-rakes-in-eur-12-6-billion-through-dynamic-bidding-offshore-wind-auction/ https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/07/12/breaking-germany-rak...
- bjornsing 3y ago
  From 5: > With the award, the successful bidders are entitled to the implementation of a planning approval procedure for the construction and operation of wind turbines on the site as well as the right to connection and grid connection capacity, the agency said. So how much will that grid connection cost? It would be great if these auctions were “clean”, in the sense that no taxpayer money would be needed to build these offshore wind farms. But I doubt that is the case.
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
Is she employed by this "grassroots" nuclear advocacy group funded by the nuclear industry of France and the US? https://netzeroneedsnuclear.com/about-us/ https://netzeroneedsnuclear.com/about-us/ That's not a good look, but about what I'd expect from the nuclear industry.
- frafra 3y ago
  Do you have proof that she gain money or benefits because of its involvement in such group, and/or that that group is funded by the nuclear industry, as you said? I found no information about that, just a generic and vague "partners" page.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    > It was co-founded by the ENS, the French Nuclear Society (SFEN) and the American Nuclear Society (ANS) in 2015. They say that on that page. So at that point, it's on them to make clear if they've created a seperate and independent org that can actually live up to the obviously false from the start claim of being "grassroots". As far as I can tell this is just a project run by those nuclear industry orgs, not an independent charity so all funding is entirely opaque, and asking for donations is just a front. But someone is paying to get that team of about thirty to every global COP gathering so they can "flash mob" and paying to producing the multiple slightly too glossy websites and get them in all the papers. Just the time off from their employers in the nuclear industry must add up.
    - frafra 3y ago
      Thanks for pointing it out. The website is rather opaque with respect to funding. It looks that both associations are non-profits, with a lot of students, scientists, professors and professionals. This does not seem incompatible with their grassroots claims, but they really need to clarify funding and expenses of this new group. This does not invalidate IPCC or JRC reports on nuclear power, nor the scientific papers, or the fact that there are various pro-nuclear environmental movements and political parties that are transparent about their funding and relations. Nuclear is more popular between younger people that are more worried about climate change than the effects of Chernobyl nowadays.
dghughes 3y ago
I'm in Canada and we use CANDU reactors their technology is amazing it came about out of necessity due to a young nation with few resources. The fuel is natural uranium not plutonium. I think it's the best design, it can even use thorium which I think India uses (they're tripping over it there).
DaveFlater 3y ago
It's not really a competition. Ramping up nuclear will not make fossil fuel burning go away. You just have two sets of problems. Both industries have a track record of allowing "can't happen" events to happen. Oil & gas gave us climate change disasters, Deepwater Horizon, Exxon Valdez, and so on. Nuclear power gave us Chernobyl, Fukushima, and a bunch of other incidents that pale in comparison. Big oil took control of their political situation. Nuclear power never did. So we get political hyperfocus on the risks of transporting nuclear waste while tanker trucks are exploding on a daily basis. Hydropower has limited opportunities and known costs. The other shoe has not yet dropped on what happens with a massive scale-up of other energy sources like wind, solar, maybe fusion...

91 points by ericdanielski 3y ago

Gud 3y ago

Humans are guided by emotion. Public opinion will swing back in favor of nuclear power as more and more people grow up without having known the disasters that were Three Mile Island and Chernobyl first hand. Kids these days don't give a shit about Chernobyl - And Fukushima was already more than a decade ago. Most 30 somethings are most likely not even aware of the Harrisburg accident. What they do know is that their apartments are smaller than their parents were when they were their age. They can't afford to drive cars like their parents did and they can barely afford to pay the electric bills in the winter. At the same time they are well informed about the causes of climate change, an enormous release of green house gasses into the atmosphere, to power the economy. So what else is there to feed the economy with energy? Wind & Solar? Get real. The obvious solution is to run those electric generators using steam turbines fueled by uranium.

ggm 3y ago

Do please remember that amongst the reasons nuclear is expensive and slow is the weight of legal peril and delay intruded by .. the anti nuclear movement. Not all, by any means but in the "it takes too long" side of things, there's a reason.

pipo234 3y ago
Wind and solar have legal perils as well. Mostly NIMBYs, but some sincere concerns exist about impact on wildlife, loss of agricultural space, etc. I think the reason the effects of those concerns in monetary terms pale in contrast to nuclear, is that nuclear technology is much more complex and complicated and therefore many more issues need to be addressed. At this stage, it's still a pretty immature technology and it can't progress very fast because it's considered more hazardous than alternatives. As it is, I'm tempted to agree with the young climate activists if nuclear could short term buy us time to instantly shut down coal and gradually transition to renewable sources. Problem is, that even building "off the shelf" nuclear plants tends to take way longer than wind or solar.
- smackeyacky 3y ago
  Instant is not a word associated with the building of nuclear power plants.
  - Loic 3y ago
    They can pack a nuclear power plant on a boat/submarine. It means, they can build a system which is compact and reproducible. If the authorities would be ready to allow the use of such systems as stationary deployment and provide financial incentives to get them online fast for "base load", I expect Rolls Royce and cie. to quickly deliver.
    - smackeyacky 3y ago
      Even a reactor designed to power an aircraft carrier wouldn't do much more than power a few suburbs. We would need many, many boat powerplants to replace a single coal fired power station which looks impractical against batteries and wind/solar both on cost and deployment speed.
      - ggm 3y ago
        I'm not here to try and float the nuclear boat, 'that ship has sailed' -but I think your economics are true now, but somewhat shallow. There have been decades lost getting PV and wind viable to power a few suburbs and the LCOE of SMR would have been just fine if the industry had been allowed to achieve the same economies of scale of production. Now? It's two to three or more times expensive than solar/wind. (CSIRO) Instead we've got billions of overspend on giant Reactor complexes like Hinckley. It can't compete. But undeniable huge sums of money have been flung at nuclear. Both nuke, and solar and wind and batteries are dwarfed by the gross irresponsible subsidies which underpin coal, oil and gas. They launched the 20th century. They leave a trail of tears and ash behind, which will take centuries to remediate. Massive socialised losses as an externality. I like wind, and PV and batteries. We're going to do fine.
        3y ago
pjmlp 3y ago
One of the reasons Germany is behind countries like Portugal in Wind power, is exactly the legal ways that anyone can prevent wind farms to be deployed, because "they are ugly", or "break the landscape view", or other nonsense. Thankfully some states are finally voting on changing this.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mdekkers 3y ago
  Germany is _removing_ windfarms because they are in the way of their digging up lignite. https://euobserver.com/green-economy/157364 https://euobserver.com/green-economy/157364
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    That as well.
numbers_guy 3y ago
Why is the sourcing of nuclear fuel never talked about as a problem? France needs to maintain boots on the ground in Africa to protect their uranium mines. The German public, amongst others would be extremely against that level of direct imperialism.
- spacebanana7 3y ago
  A non-sanctioned country can buy uranium on the open market relatively easily. Production happens in many places [1], including Canada and Australia. French power plants don't need to worry much about African politics, at worst they'll have pay Canada or Kazakstan a little extra for short notice delivery. And even then, Uranium is a small part of the overall cost of nuclear energy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- seszett 3y ago
  > France needs to maintain boots on the ground in Africa to protect their uranium mines It seems rather coincidental to me that one of the countries where France has military presence happens to be a minor uranium producer (we're talking about Niger here I assume). France has military presence in many more countries, and Niger is (or was, since there was a coup there recently) only a supplier for 1/5th of France's supply, and easy replaced with other sources. None of the other suppliers have French military bases. Uranium is also very easy to stockpile since it takes little space, which makes it much easier to switch suppliers if needed.
  - morsch 3y ago
    It's not easy to switch suppliers. Harder than natgas even: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-france-global-trade-only-on-ap-business-c521f2248c823f69f0a677735a78e89d https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-france-global-trad... Beyond the mere Uranium, power plants need specific fuel rods, and afaik only Russia is currently capable of manufacturing the fuel rods for the remaining old soviet bloc power plants in Eastern Europe.
invalidname 3y ago
Regulation also slows down green projects. There are reasons for these regulations and some of them will be around for thousands of years... Green energy is cheaper, less risky and regulation (while also painful) is easier in most cases. As a result a project can be built much faster. Land usage is bigger but mixed usage is OK (e.g. solar over crops, parking lots etc.). Wind can reside in the sea and geothermal can be in the middle of the city. I think the discussion over nuclear is based on data from a decade ago. The world changed. It isn't Greenpeace that should object, its the business interests. It just isn't viable anymore and the viability is declining, since solar/wind, storage etc. keep improving at an amazing rate.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  From both an engineering sense and an aesthetic sense, I would much rather have 2 nuclear plants serving as base load (not total load) for 10M people, supplemented by solar/wind, than relying solely on solar/wind/storage. (In part because that requires an incredible amount of storage to preserve the current uptime in my part of the US, but also because it's a much better match to the load profile [engineering] and a smaller footprint near people [aesthetics].)
- pydry 3y ago
  It's ridiculously uneconomic of course but a limited number will continue to be built in spite of this because of the overpowering military imperative. If you have nuclear weapons/submarines/carriers/etc. like Russia or the United States or France it shares some of the gargantuan cost of building and maintaining them. I expect North Korea will get into it in the next few years too for precisely this reason. Countries like Iran, Sweden and Korea, on the other hand, want to be able to manufacture a weapon on a tight deadline because of extremely self evident geopolitical fears. Nobody else builds nuclear power plants. The vast power of the global hippy-industrial complex apparently prevented it :/ Of course, the western nuclear military industrial complex, who always HATED environmentalists with a seething passion, are aware of just how massively uneconomic it is but that doesn't stop them from trying to dress up as "young climate activists" to sell a form of power that is 5x more expensive as a green gamechanger. Consent for enormous subsidies needs to be manufactured somehow if nuclear power is to remain competitive with solar and wind.
sampo 3y ago
Long build times are more of a Western thing. China has reactors started in for example 2010 and 2015 that were finished in 5 or 6 years (and some others that took 10 years). India and Japan has reactors started in 2000 finished in 5-6 years. Pakistan has reactors stared in 2011 and 2016 finished in 6 years. Korea has reactors started in 2000, 2005, 2006, finished in 5 years.
imtringued 3y ago
There is no anti nuclear movement against NuScale. They simply managed to do cost overruns like every other nuclear project in history.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  HN doesn't want to hear that.

smackeyacky 3y ago

There are good reasons to reject nuclear power on purely historic analyses of the projected vs actual costs of nuclear projects[0] It is very disheartening in Australia to listen to the Nimby objections to wind and solar farms in a country that is almost uniquely empty. I cannot imagine that objections to the location of nuclear power here would be any different. [0] https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/08/29/nuclear-power-small-modular-reactors-climate-change/ https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/08/29/nuclear-power-small-mod...

sofixa 3y ago
> There are good reasons to reject nuclear power on purely historic analyses of the projected vs actual costs of nuclear projects That is if you forget to factor in the lifespan of nuclear projects, which is easily 2-3 times longer than solar and wind, and doesn't require associated (not yet existing) massive storage. (Not saying this for Australia specifically, there is no nuclear industry there whatsoever so any new project will have significant human resource obstacles on top of all others; just as a general point which is so often forgotten).
- invalidname 3y ago
  As far Storage has become very cheap at grid scale e.g. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-12/is-renewable-power-cheaper-than-coal-nuclear-malcolm-turnbull/11495558 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-12/is-renewable-power-ch... This is an older article. As far as I understand this is even more in favor of green energy now.
- hathchip 3y ago
  > and doesn't require associated (not yet existing) massive storage. That's not quite true. Nuclear generation is more flexible than wind and solar but much less flexible than thermal fuels, particularly gas. Although you can choose when you turn a nuclear power station on and off, you can't do so quickly, and your choices are somewhat constrained (regular downtime is required). Nuclear worked well in the energy mix when it supplied base load (ie generate roughly the minimum daily load at all times) while coal supplied predictable peak load and gas could supply unexpected peaking. As this mix changes, availability patterns of nuclear start to be more of a burden. In a system without fossil fuels, you would have to have (some) energy storage, regardless of the split between nuclear, solar and wind. The exact number for how much storage, how much overcapacity, or how much natural gas generation you would need vary with the proportions of solar, wind and nuclear of course, but it's an oversimplification to suggest that they are trivial if you use mainly nuclear.

davotoula 3y ago

"How dare you!"

dpz 3y ago

Same reason I have issues with the Uk Green party, makes them look foolish when they push to stop fossils but the only current practical solution is nuclear(which they're against)

hkt 3y ago
Nuclear isn't the only practical solution, though. We have the technology today to make a real go of properly using solar, wind, tide, etc.
- deathgripsss 3y ago
  But we will need baseload power for a long time to come. The UK is not investing in battery technology and on still winter days the UK needs to be able to spin up a lot of power generation quickly. That role is currently filled by natural gas. Nuclear should have taken its place.
  - hkt 3y ago
    Nuclear can't do peak load scaling and is less consistent than you might think for baseload. You might benefit from looking at systems like Compressed Air Energy Storage. Highly responsive, compatible with CHP, virtually no scarce materials involved, and pairs dramatically well with renewables. As an additional bonus, it also doesn't leave vast tracts of land uninhabitable if it goes wrong.
  - tcfhgj 3y ago
    > Nuclear should have taken its place. How about gas produced by electricity, e.g. through electrolysis.
- atlantic 3y ago
  Solar, wind, and tide are very dispersed forms of energy, so harvesting them on a significant scale has a massive environmental impact. Also there are issues relating to extracting the input materials, and to waste disposal after the devices are retired. It's not clear to me that "green" energies are any better than fossil fuels.

sph 3y ago

We had nuclear power in Italy. From my house, I could see the cooling towers of the abandoned nuclear power plant in Trino [1] in the distance. There was a referendum in November 1987 asking whether to abolish any form of nuclear power. It won with 80% of yes votes. This was a year after the Chernobyl disaster. Over the next few decades, Italy started to import electricity at a premium, mostly from its French neighbour, which has never stopped investing on nuclear and is today Europe's largest electricity exporter. No politician dared touch this hot potato ever again for the following 24 years, until the June 2011 referendum, that asked whether to revive plans for nuclear power. It failed with 94% of No votes. This was 3 months after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. I do not trust politicians, nor anti-nuclear activists, to ever do the right thing and drop their outdated stance on the matter. -- 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi_Nuclear_Power_Plant_(Italy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi_Nuclear_Power_Pla...

tcfhgj 3y ago
They should have built renewables and they would have cheaper energy than ever. You can't remove energy sources without replacement.
- KptMarchewa 3y ago
  Build renewables in 1987?
  - vidanay 3y ago
    A couple billion solar panels operating at ~1% efficiency sounds like the best plan ever.
- purpleflame1257 3y ago
  Apart from the base load arguments, in the 1980s and 90s, solar was a total joke efficiency and cost-wise
- jonkoops 3y ago
  In any real case they should have both built out renewable energy and maintain and even expand the existing fleet of nuclear reactors. Nuclear might be historically expensive and storage an issue, but it is carbon free, and for the moment that is the most important problem we need to solve.

andyjohnson0 3y ago

This is maybe the impatience of youth running up against the false certaintly of middle age. I think the reality is that both sides have good points. Nuclear looks like the only way to create enough energy density to power modern societies. On the other hand, build times for current mainstream nuclear plants are too long given the critical situation we're in, and we still dont have widely deployable solutions to the waste problem.

leethargo 3y ago
So, following your argument, we should at least continue to run existing infrastructure? I wonder why these debates only focus on problems such as waste, catastrophic risk or investment/financing, but not sourcing of uranium, which might not be available from "friendly countries".
- andyjohnson0 3y ago
  > So, following your argument, we should at least continue to run existing infrastructure? Qualified yes. I personally don't see how we can make it through the critical coming decades without nuclear, but that implies we'll continue to create nuclear waste. The only solution we have is to deep burial. While I think thats fairly safe, the only operational facilitiy is Onkalo in Finland. We're going to need to build more, and deep excavation takes a lot of time and safe sites are limited. Not every country that will want to deploy nuclear power will have a way to dispose of the waste. The other alternatives are shoot it into the sun (too dangerous at scale) or shallow storage (dereliction of duty of future generations). So I dunno really. As for uranium resources, theres a lot in Australia.
  - leethargo 3y ago
    I later looked up the resources on Wikipedia which also listed Canada as having significant mining capacity. So maybe that argument is not strong either.

alphadelphi 3y ago

"[in Germany] in 2022, CO2 emission goals were exceeded by 40 million metric tons due to the increased use of coal-fired power plants resulting from the necessary cuts in natural gas consumption; estimates for 2023 assume 38 million metric tons. The Emsland, Isar II and Neckarwestheim II nuclear power plants supplied a total of 32.7 billion kilowatt hours of low-emission electricity in 2022. German private households most recently consumed an average of 3190 kWh of electrical energy per year. This means that these three power plants can supply more than 10 million, or a quarter, of German households with electricity. The resulting reduction in the amount of electricity required from coal-fired power plants could save up to 30 million tons of CO2 per year." https://www.replanet.ngo/post/open-letter-save-german-nuclear-power https://www.replanet.ngo/post/open-letter-save-german-nuclea...

abricq 3y ago

I consider myself very much an ecologist, and also struggle to understand anti-nuclear ecologists. However there is one anti argument that I think is worth sharing, one friend exposed to me and that I think it is very pertinent: "One should be against nuclear energy because their lobbies encourage a society where energy is not limited. Having clean and (relatively) cheap energy is not the best way to go toward sobriety. And it is easy to confuse having a carbon-free energy source with having a new way to produce more cars, planes, phones, content, etc... which will only help capitalism to grow stronger" I think there is a big part of truth here, and we (the pro-nuclear ecologist) must address an answer to this worry. My opinion is that we should separate this in two fights: (i) we must go for a more sustainable society by reducing our needs in energy and our general consumption; but it is irrational to think we will ever reduce our energy consumption level to a level sufficiently low that nuclear would not be the best option, hence (ii) we must keep learning how to build and maintain nuclear plants.

vzqx 3y ago
(1) When a resource is unlimited, it's easier to distribute that resource cheaply to everyone, which is exactly what communism strives for. Resource scarcity leads to power being concentrated in a small ownership class - e.g. capitalism. (2) Why think "more cars, planes, phones, content, etc" are unique to capitalism? People want to travel and to be entertained, regardless of the economic system they live in. Communism doesn't mean people will suddenly want fewer material goods.
bjornsing 3y ago
Let’s not entwine the solution to climate change with the communist revolution. Not everyone is in favor of the latter.
- tcfhgj 3y ago
  Same holds true for a solution for climate change
hathchip 3y ago
This is a caricature of the anti-nuclear position. Renewables also offer the potential of a society where energy is not limited, why aren't communists also opposed to those?

Gwypaas 3y ago

I agree the stance is old-fashioned, but nuclear is not the solution in 2023. We correctly attempted it in the 2000s, it did not deliver, lets learn from that experience. Who would finance another Flamanville [1] or Vogtle [2] today? The research is clear, every cent invested in nuclear power prolongs the climate crisis. [3] > On both costs and speed, renewable energy sources beat nuclear. Every euro invested in new nuclear plants thus delays decarbonization compared to investments in renewable power. In a decarbonizing world, delays increase CO2 emissions. The recently nationalized debt laden French nuclear behemoth EDF can not even finance new nuclear plants without direct state aid. [4] > (Montel) French utility EDF is unable to self-finance the construction of new nuclear reactors due to its EUR 65bn debt and so needs state funding, CEO Luc Remont told a hearing of France’s lower house on Wednesday. Meanwhile Germany are raking in tens of billions by simply selling the right to build off-shore wind. [5] > Germany’s first dynamic bidding process, covering four offshore wind zones with a combined capacity of 7 GW, has generated EUR 12.6 billion in proceeds, according to the Federal Network Agency. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla... [3]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435123002817 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243512... [4]: https://www.montelnews.com/news/1511372/french-state-must-fund-new-nuclear-due-to-edf-debt--ceo https://www.montelnews.com/news/1511372/french-state-must-fu... [5]: https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/07/12/breaking-germany-rakes-in-eur-12-6-billion-through-dynamic-bidding-offshore-wind-auction/ https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/07/12/breaking-germany-rak...

bjornsing 3y ago
From 5: > With the award, the successful bidders are entitled to the implementation of a planning approval procedure for the construction and operation of wind turbines on the site as well as the right to connection and grid connection capacity, the agency said. So how much will that grid connection cost? It would be great if these auctions were “clean”, in the sense that no taxpayer money would be needed to build these offshore wind farms. But I doubt that is the case.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

Is she employed by this "grassroots" nuclear advocacy group funded by the nuclear industry of France and the US? https://netzeroneedsnuclear.com/about-us/ https://netzeroneedsnuclear.com/about-us/ That's not a good look, but about what I'd expect from the nuclear industry.

frafra 3y ago
Do you have proof that she gain money or benefits because of its involvement in such group, and/or that that group is funded by the nuclear industry, as you said? I found no information about that, just a generic and vague "partners" page.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  > It was co-founded by the ENS, the French Nuclear Society (SFEN) and the American Nuclear Society (ANS) in 2015. They say that on that page. So at that point, it's on them to make clear if they've created a seperate and independent org that can actually live up to the obviously false from the start claim of being "grassroots". As far as I can tell this is just a project run by those nuclear industry orgs, not an independent charity so all funding is entirely opaque, and asking for donations is just a front. But someone is paying to get that team of about thirty to every global COP gathering so they can "flash mob" and paying to producing the multiple slightly too glossy websites and get them in all the papers. Just the time off from their employers in the nuclear industry must add up.
  - frafra 3y ago
    Thanks for pointing it out. The website is rather opaque with respect to funding. It looks that both associations are non-profits, with a lot of students, scientists, professors and professionals. This does not seem incompatible with their grassroots claims, but they really need to clarify funding and expenses of this new group. This does not invalidate IPCC or JRC reports on nuclear power, nor the scientific papers, or the fact that there are various pro-nuclear environmental movements and political parties that are transparent about their funding and relations. Nuclear is more popular between younger people that are more worried about climate change than the effects of Chernobyl nowadays.

dghughes 3y ago

I'm in Canada and we use CANDU reactors their technology is amazing it came about out of necessity due to a young nation with few resources. The fuel is natural uranium not plutonium. I think it's the best design, it can even use thorium which I think India uses (they're tripping over it there).

DaveFlater 3y ago

It's not really a competition. Ramping up nuclear will not make fossil fuel burning go away. You just have two sets of problems. Both industries have a track record of allowing "can't happen" events to happen. Oil & gas gave us climate change disasters, Deepwater Horizon, Exxon Valdez, and so on. Nuclear power gave us Chernobyl, Fukushima, and a bunch of other incidents that pale in comparison. Big oil took control of their political situation. Nuclear power never did. So we get political hyperfocus on the risks of transporting nuclear waste while tanker trucks are exploding on a daily basis. Hydropower has limited opportunities and known costs. The other shoe has not yet dropped on what happens with a massive scale-up of other energy sources like wind, solar, maybe fusion...