7 ms·

Greta is not pro-nukes. Most of the environment activists are not.

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
To the surprise of no one that has looked behind the curtain to see “the only solution” is always you need to pay us more taxes and keep us in power.
- cycomanic 3y ago
  That comment is hilarious considering that nuclear has recent several multiples of the subsidies that renewables received and is still much more expensive. And we are not even counting the military (the nuclear industry would likely be in a much worse state if it wasn't for the militaries demand for nuclear engineers and scientists and financing much of the R&D).
  - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    Ok, so the argument is that we know we went nuts regulating it to oblivion, and this is a fault in the technology and not ourselves - then you go to admit that it is a massive tactical and technological advantage we need? Ok, strange flex but this about what I have come to expect from this “debate”.
    - cycomanic 3y ago
      Nuclear is not so expensive because of regulation that's another myth. Considering the scale and possible impact wind and solar often have much more regulations (just look at Bavaria where the ruling party essentially blocked all new wind installations by creating requirements that reduced potential sites to nearly 0). A nuclear power plant is essentially a thermal plant plus the nuclear part so how would it be cheaper than a coal plant?
      - ben_w 3y ago
        I'm not disputing your claims, but as a suggestion: > A nuclear power plant is essentially a thermal plant plus the nuclear part so how would it be cheaper than a coal plant? Fuel costs?
        cycomanic 3y ago
        I was talking capital costs, not operational costs. My point is, to build a nuclear power plant you essentially need to build a thermal power plant first and then add things for the nuclear part (which is arguably more complicated/safety critical than for e.g. a coal plant). So the whole argument for economics of scale doesn't work, thermal power plants have not reduced dramatically in price over the last decades despite lots of them being build. Half of your plant not really reducing much in price, will limit the benefits you can get even if the other half sees massive cost reductions.
        ben_w 3y ago
        > I was talking capital costs, not operational costs. Ok, but surely the only cost that matters is the lifetime cost? (Including whatever cleanup is needed for both nuclear and whichever fossil and/or renewable+storage combination it is compared against). > Half of your plant not really reducing much in price, will limit the benefits you can get even if the other half sees massive cost reductions. Sure, absolutely. But coal is pretty expensive over the course of a year, so it can look like a good opportunity (if only for the reality hadn't turned out so fragile and, when it goes wrong, severe).
    - audunw 3y ago
      Nuclear is arguably only safe due to those regulations. The case of falsified certificates in Korea shows that you need plenty of margins to account for some of the regulations not being followed properly, even in a first world country. Maybe there is 20% too many regulations. That could be the case. But having 20% too many regulations is far preferable than 20% too few. Even if you are staunchly pro-nuclear you should want regulations that reduces the chance for even a minor accident to almost exactly 0%, because even a minor accident will cause fear that’ll set nuclear back by two decades. Maybe that fear is irrational. Tough luck. Humans are irrational. Most of them would rather be slowly poisoned by coal and die a couple years early, than living with the thought of maybe having to suddenly have to abandon their home and established life like in Fukushima.
      - nickpp 3y ago
        > But having 20% too many regulations is far preferable than 20% too few. The problem is when that extra 20% regulation makes the technology so expensive the world chooses to keep burning coal, oil and gas thus poisoning and killing millions through pollution and endangering life on the entire planet through Climate Change. Right now nuclear is so frozen and so useful that I'd take the change of a (PR) disaster and (slowly, carefully, partially) deregulate: it can't get much worse than already is.
  - thedrbrian 3y ago
    seems that wind isn't profitable without massive subsidies either https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/14/wind-farm-orsted-government-cash-viability-offshore-britain/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/14/wind-farm-or...
    - ViewTrick1002 3y ago
      Do you want to know a fun fact? Nuclear is even more sensitive to material prices, inflation and interest rates than off-shore wind. If off-shore wind companies are struggling then nuclear projects are deep deep in the red.
  - belorn 3y ago
    Energy subsidizes in Europe looks different. Wind/Solar are the single biggest recipient of subsidies and receive about as much as the combined total of all other subsidies in the energy sector. They get far more per watt produced than anything else, mostly going to grid connections, building, deconstruction, and price guaranties. (The yearly report is produced and published by the European commission at ec.europa.eu) Nuclear get subsidies in term of research, building, deconstruction, waste storage and price guaranties. Around 70% goes to the single fusion research project called ITER (international research, non-military). Hydro receives an increasing amount of subsidies for repair and modernization. Dam repair and flooding protection is expensive and with climate change there is even bigger need for fixing Europe old hydro power dams. They are also in general non-compliant with the European environmental regulations (several species are going extinct), but that is not a subsidies issues directly. Fixing the dams so they allow for fish to pass is however a subsidies issue, but as far the budget to fix that has yet to be allocated and the costs are estimated to be exceedingly high. And last we have fossil fuel subsidies. A large portion of the "reserve energy" plan in eu in order to address increased gird variability is based on keeping a large number of fossil fuel plants on stand-by, paid through subsidies. Then there is subsidies on extracting the fuel itself, subsidies on trading fuel, and subsidies on storage of the fuel, and transportation of the fuel. This is not accounting for the environmental cost from burning fossil fuels, which some see as a form of subsidies. Subsidies-like part not included are insurance against nuclear accidents, insurance against floods from dam failures, and insurance against forest fires. It is also not accounting for land usage nor damage to wildlife.
    - ViewTrick1002 3y ago
      > Energy subsidizes in Europe looks different. Wind/Solar are the single biggest recipient of subsidies and receive about as much as the combined total of all other subsidies in the energy sector. They get far more per watt produced than anything else, mostly going to grid connections, building, deconstruction, and price guaranties. (The yearly report is produced and published by the European commission at ec.europa.eu) So we should cut off subsidies agreed on 10 years ago during renewables learning curve to make it even? The renewable subsidies for new builds today are miniscule in Europe, which is what we are making the decisions based on. How many Hinkley Point Cs costing ~€0.15/kWh to the consumers, very similar to energy crisis prices, should we fund just so you can stop complaining about past history for renewables? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...
iso8859-1 3y ago
She said the Atomausstieg was a mistake: https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Closing-nuclear-in-Germany-while-increasing-coal https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Closing-nuclear-in-G...
mrweasel 3y ago
Danish TV had a documentary about the nuclear opposition in the country in the 60s and 70s. One of the most interesting lines is pretty much a throwaway line by one of the former activists. The interviewer remarks that it's a little strange to be anti-nuclear, when the alternative is burning fossil fuel and the activist interjects with "But we didn't believe/understand that the alternative was coal and oil, we thought it would be solar and wind". That was never going to work, nuclear power was available as an option, wind turbines and solar cells where never going to be able to fulfill the energy requirement at the time, certainly not at a price the country could afford. To me that really highlighted the naivety of many environmental activists. They mean well and we need them, but they so often fail to look at the problems holistically and zooms in on single issues.
- davedx 3y ago
  That's very fair. I think it extends to people who care about energy in general though, not just environmentalists. For example on the Internet, there is always a highly vocal pro-nuclear camp to be found. Some of them -- but not all by all means -- will often claim that nuclear is the "One True Solution" to clean energy. I think at the end of the day it comes down to tribalism, sadly. People choose their "side" and pitch in to defend its merits and attack the other "side"'s deficiencies. As with many things, there isn't a whole lot of room left for holistic approaches. I'm personally not a huge fan of nuclear because I'm a pragmatist, and I think most people are pragmatists at the end of the day, being human. And pragmatists don't make good operators of nuclear power plants. But I definitely don't think any existing nuclear plants should be closed. They should be (safely) continued to run as long as possible to provide the clean energy we desperately need while other safer (and often cheaper) renewables+storages ramp up.
  - mrweasel 3y ago
    Keeping existing plants running is the sensible approach in my mind. We can't build new nuclear power to reduce CO2 emission, it's much to late for that. We want drastic reductions in 5 - 6 years, the first nuclear power plant won't be ready for another 10, 15, 20 years. If we wanted to go nuclear we should have started in 2000. Right now we start reducing consumption, build wind turbines like crazy and close the coal and oil fired power plants first, then gas and nuclear last.
DrBazza 3y ago
> Greta is not pro-nukes. Most of the environment activists are not. And we're reaping the "benefits" of the same people in the 70s campaigning against all forms of nuclear back then. So we built oil, gas, and coal power stations to meet our energy needs instead. slow applause for the activists The road to hell and all that...

To the surprise of no one that has looked behind the curtain to see “the only solution” is always you need to pay us more taxes and keep us in power.

cycomanic 3y ago
That comment is hilarious considering that nuclear has recent several multiples of the subsidies that renewables received and is still much more expensive. And we are not even counting the military (the nuclear industry would likely be in a much worse state if it wasn't for the militaries demand for nuclear engineers and scientists and financing much of the R&D).
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  Ok, so the argument is that we know we went nuts regulating it to oblivion, and this is a fault in the technology and not ourselves - then you go to admit that it is a massive tactical and technological advantage we need? Ok, strange flex but this about what I have come to expect from this “debate”.
  - cycomanic 3y ago
    Nuclear is not so expensive because of regulation that's another myth. Considering the scale and possible impact wind and solar often have much more regulations (just look at Bavaria where the ruling party essentially blocked all new wind installations by creating requirements that reduced potential sites to nearly 0). A nuclear power plant is essentially a thermal plant plus the nuclear part so how would it be cheaper than a coal plant?
    - ben_w 3y ago
      I'm not disputing your claims, but as a suggestion: > A nuclear power plant is essentially a thermal plant plus the nuclear part so how would it be cheaper than a coal plant? Fuel costs?
      - cycomanic 3y ago
        I was talking capital costs, not operational costs. My point is, to build a nuclear power plant you essentially need to build a thermal power plant first and then add things for the nuclear part (which is arguably more complicated/safety critical than for e.g. a coal plant). So the whole argument for economics of scale doesn't work, thermal power plants have not reduced dramatically in price over the last decades despite lots of them being build. Half of your plant not really reducing much in price, will limit the benefits you can get even if the other half sees massive cost reductions.
        ben_w 3y ago
        > I was talking capital costs, not operational costs. Ok, but surely the only cost that matters is the lifetime cost? (Including whatever cleanup is needed for both nuclear and whichever fossil and/or renewable+storage combination it is compared against). > Half of your plant not really reducing much in price, will limit the benefits you can get even if the other half sees massive cost reductions. Sure, absolutely. But coal is pretty expensive over the course of a year, so it can look like a good opportunity (if only for the reality hadn't turned out so fragile and, when it goes wrong, severe).
  - audunw 3y ago
    Nuclear is arguably only safe due to those regulations. The case of falsified certificates in Korea shows that you need plenty of margins to account for some of the regulations not being followed properly, even in a first world country. Maybe there is 20% too many regulations. That could be the case. But having 20% too many regulations is far preferable than 20% too few. Even if you are staunchly pro-nuclear you should want regulations that reduces the chance for even a minor accident to almost exactly 0%, because even a minor accident will cause fear that’ll set nuclear back by two decades. Maybe that fear is irrational. Tough luck. Humans are irrational. Most of them would rather be slowly poisoned by coal and die a couple years early, than living with the thought of maybe having to suddenly have to abandon their home and established life like in Fukushima.
    - nickpp 3y ago
      > But having 20% too many regulations is far preferable than 20% too few. The problem is when that extra 20% regulation makes the technology so expensive the world chooses to keep burning coal, oil and gas thus poisoning and killing millions through pollution and endangering life on the entire planet through Climate Change. Right now nuclear is so frozen and so useful that I'd take the change of a (PR) disaster and (slowly, carefully, partially) deregulate: it can't get much worse than already is.
- thedrbrian 3y ago
  seems that wind isn't profitable without massive subsidies either https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/14/wind-farm-orsted-government-cash-viability-offshore-britain/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/14/wind-farm-or...
  - ViewTrick1002 3y ago
    Do you want to know a fun fact? Nuclear is even more sensitive to material prices, inflation and interest rates than off-shore wind. If off-shore wind companies are struggling then nuclear projects are deep deep in the red.
- belorn 3y ago
  Energy subsidizes in Europe looks different. Wind/Solar are the single biggest recipient of subsidies and receive about as much as the combined total of all other subsidies in the energy sector. They get far more per watt produced than anything else, mostly going to grid connections, building, deconstruction, and price guaranties. (The yearly report is produced and published by the European commission at ec.europa.eu) Nuclear get subsidies in term of research, building, deconstruction, waste storage and price guaranties. Around 70% goes to the single fusion research project called ITER (international research, non-military). Hydro receives an increasing amount of subsidies for repair and modernization. Dam repair and flooding protection is expensive and with climate change there is even bigger need for fixing Europe old hydro power dams. They are also in general non-compliant with the European environmental regulations (several species are going extinct), but that is not a subsidies issues directly. Fixing the dams so they allow for fish to pass is however a subsidies issue, but as far the budget to fix that has yet to be allocated and the costs are estimated to be exceedingly high. And last we have fossil fuel subsidies. A large portion of the "reserve energy" plan in eu in order to address increased gird variability is based on keeping a large number of fossil fuel plants on stand-by, paid through subsidies. Then there is subsidies on extracting the fuel itself, subsidies on trading fuel, and subsidies on storage of the fuel, and transportation of the fuel. This is not accounting for the environmental cost from burning fossil fuels, which some see as a form of subsidies. Subsidies-like part not included are insurance against nuclear accidents, insurance against floods from dam failures, and insurance against forest fires. It is also not accounting for land usage nor damage to wildlife.
  - ViewTrick1002 3y ago
    > Energy subsidizes in Europe looks different. Wind/Solar are the single biggest recipient of subsidies and receive about as much as the combined total of all other subsidies in the energy sector. They get far more per watt produced than anything else, mostly going to grid connections, building, deconstruction, and price guaranties. (The yearly report is produced and published by the European commission at ec.europa.eu) So we should cut off subsidies agreed on 10 years ago during renewables learning curve to make it even? The renewable subsidies for new builds today are miniscule in Europe, which is what we are making the decisions based on. How many Hinkley Point Cs costing ~€0.15/kWh to the consumers, very similar to energy crisis prices, should we fund just so you can stop complaining about past history for renewables? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...

iso8859-1 3y ago

She said the Atomausstieg was a mistake: https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Closing-nuclear-in-Germany-while-increasing-coal https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Closing-nuclear-in-G...

mrweasel 3y ago

Danish TV had a documentary about the nuclear opposition in the country in the 60s and 70s. One of the most interesting lines is pretty much a throwaway line by one of the former activists. The interviewer remarks that it's a little strange to be anti-nuclear, when the alternative is burning fossil fuel and the activist interjects with "But we didn't believe/understand that the alternative was coal and oil, we thought it would be solar and wind". That was never going to work, nuclear power was available as an option, wind turbines and solar cells where never going to be able to fulfill the energy requirement at the time, certainly not at a price the country could afford. To me that really highlighted the naivety of many environmental activists. They mean well and we need them, but they so often fail to look at the problems holistically and zooms in on single issues.

davedx 3y ago
That's very fair. I think it extends to people who care about energy in general though, not just environmentalists. For example on the Internet, there is always a highly vocal pro-nuclear camp to be found. Some of them -- but not all by all means -- will often claim that nuclear is the "One True Solution" to clean energy. I think at the end of the day it comes down to tribalism, sadly. People choose their "side" and pitch in to defend its merits and attack the other "side"'s deficiencies. As with many things, there isn't a whole lot of room left for holistic approaches. I'm personally not a huge fan of nuclear because I'm a pragmatist, and I think most people are pragmatists at the end of the day, being human. And pragmatists don't make good operators of nuclear power plants. But I definitely don't think any existing nuclear plants should be closed. They should be (safely) continued to run as long as possible to provide the clean energy we desperately need while other safer (and often cheaper) renewables+storages ramp up.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  Keeping existing plants running is the sensible approach in my mind. We can't build new nuclear power to reduce CO2 emission, it's much to late for that. We want drastic reductions in 5 - 6 years, the first nuclear power plant won't be ready for another 10, 15, 20 years. If we wanted to go nuclear we should have started in 2000. Right now we start reducing consumption, build wind turbines like crazy and close the coal and oil fired power plants first, then gas and nuclear last.

DrBazza 3y ago

> Greta is not pro-nukes. Most of the environment activists are not. And we're reaping the "benefits" of the same people in the 70s campaigning against all forms of nuclear back then. So we built oil, gas, and coal power stations to meet our energy needs instead. slow applause for the activists The road to hell and all that...