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EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy
- tietjens 1y agoArticle claims Germany is beginning to shift. I wouldn’t count on that. Despite having to import all of their energy aside from renewables, there is a wide-spread suspicion of nuclear here. The CDU made a lot of noise about it while they were in the opposition, but turning those closed plants back on is highly unlikely. Very costly and I’m not certain the expertise can be hired.
- m101 1y agoGerman people mostly just listen to what their leaders tell them. If their leaders change their mind then the German people will step in line and believe they changed their mind out of their own free will too.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kulahan 1y agoWith AI on the horizon and each server farm using as much energy as a medium-sized city, I have no idea how they hope to meet demand otherwise, unless the plan is just some equivalent to "drill baby drill".
- RandomLensman 1y agoIt would take a long time to build new reactors, so not sure that would help. Germany could also do more wind, solar, tidal, geothermal (fossil fuels aside).
- bluefirebrand 1y agoIt is going to take a long time and a lot of resources no matter what so maybe we should be building effective longterm solutions like nuclear instead of stopgap solar and batteries
- RandomLensman 1y agoWhy would, e.g., solar and chemical or physical storage be a stopgap? Why spend 20 years of building a fission reactor these days (other than for research, medical, or defense purposes) which also make awful targets in a conflict? Maybe just wait till fusion reactors are there.
- bluefirebrand 1y agoBecause the reactor will still run 20 years after that while the solar and storage will need to be replaced by then
- RandomLensman 1y agoReactors need ongoing maintenance, repairs, replacement.
- kulahan 1y agoWhy would fusion reactors magically appear when the entire field of nuclear energy production is, in this scenario, essentially dead??
- RandomLensman 1y agoNot sure why pursuing fusion needs building fission reactors for energy production.
- kulahan 1y agoBecause nuclear engineers, plant operators, radioactive mining facilities, and other types of workers that will be needed across both, need to be employed from today until fusion reactors are made.
- yellowapple 1y agoNot even “instead”. We need all of the above: nuclear for base loads, solar for peak loads, batteries for surplus capture.
- raverbashing 1y agoI'm not sure how tidal and geothermal fare in Germany It seems that some geothermal works have caused mini-earthquakes and soil shifts in Germany and the Netherlands
- RandomLensman 1y agoMy baseline expectation is some opposition to any new energy infrastructure.
- kulahan 1y agoI was under the impression tidal was mostly tapped out because any half-decent location has already been turned into a power plant.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoYou limit data center power demand until the AI bubble pops. Peak Bubble - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45218790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45218790 - September 2025 US Data center projects blocked or delayed amid local opposition - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44097350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44097350 - May 2025
- kulahan 1y agoCool, your country fell way behind every other developed nation in this and you've missed out on a huge industry. In the end, your citizens will still use the products, they'll just probably end up having to pay more for the same functionality.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoOther countries can shoulder the cost of the hand waving grift. If it turns out they succeed, lift their models and weights. Eat some potential IP liability for not incurring economic damage ("inefficient capital allocation") chasing magic. Be first, be smarter, or cheat ("you can just do things"). DeepSeek showed a bit of this (model training efficiency), as Apple does slow walking their gen AI. Why incur material economic risk to be first? There will be no moat. https://hbr.org/2001/10/first-mover-disadvantage https://hbr.org/2001/10/first-mover-disadvantage
- toomuchtodo 1y ago> Wall Street Journal columnist Christopher Mims shared another chart, saying: “The 'magnificent 7' spent more than $100 billion on data centers and the like in the past three months alone.” Man, are they optimistic. Mims linked to an article by Paul Kedrosky, who offers another perspective [1] on the AI bubble, as a percentage of GDP. Kedrosky, in turn, quoted Chinese President Xi Jinping, who warned of overinvesting in AI-focused datacenters. When Xi Jinping and Wall Street traders are on the same page, you know it’s bad. [2] [1] https://paulkedrosky.com/honey-ai-capex-ate-the-economy/ https://paulkedrosky.com/honey-ai-capex-ate-the-economy/ [2] https://open.substack.com/pub/thealgorithmicbridge/p/im-an-ai-enthusiast-the-bubble-scares https://open.substack.com/pub/thealgorithmicbridge/p/im-an-a...
- oceanplexian 1y agoIt’s simple, Germany isn’t going to be participating in the next industrial revolution. It will be the US vs. China. You can already see it happening with their car industry as they struggle to keep up with new technology.
- bluGill 1y agoGermany doesn't need to participate in the next. They need to participate in something though. They are too small to do everything alone. Even the US depends on a lot of other countries to make things work.
- standeven 1y agoIf we’re looking at the car and energy industries, I think China has already won.
- kulahan 1y agoCould you expand more on your car point? I thought BMW and Benz were doing great at the moment. I dunno much about Audi or VW, but Mini also seems to be doing well (which I thought was British, but one of their models has literally the same engine as my last bimmer, so I guess they were sold at some point?).
- simonklitj 1y agoHeh, it was bought by BMW in ‘94.
- tietjens 1y agoThe German car companies are struggling intensely against Chinese competition, everywhere outside of the US, and especially in China. The Chinese electric cars sell for 3 times less than the German ones in EU. The Chinese also invested heavily in e tech. The Germans? Not so much.
- kulahan 1y agoAh yeah, now that you mention it I’ve heard BYD is doing well in most markets (plus others, I assume). Even ignoring current tariffs, I’m not sure an overtly Chinese car would catch on in the US, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been wrong before.
- pstuart 1y agoThere's a new kind of "drill baby drill" which we should be embracing: geothermal energy. There's a lot of advancements in that space and it is a perfect base load generation source.
- kulahan 1y agoGeothermal is, imo, the only true competitor to nuclear. It's great at providing cheap, consistent, clean energy. Nuclear is really only needed for baseload generation, like when demand massively spikes.
- croes 1y agoIf demand spikes nuclear power plants aren’t fast enough
- kulahan 1y agoThey are when the power spikes for the day, in a typically predictable fashion. I’m not sure of anything more available that isn’t really dirty.
- rootusrootus 1y ago> baseload generation, like when demand massively spikes That is unlike any definition of baseload generation I have ever heard.
- edbaskerville 1y agoYeah, advanced geothermal is very interesting. They're taking fracking techniques and using them to get to hot rocks, which opens up geothermal to a much, much wider set of locations. Interested parties say it could provide everything we need beyond wind/solar, and seems much simpler than building out nuclear plants. Check out: https://www.volts.wtf/p/catching-up-with-enhanced-geothermal https://www.volts.wtf/p/catching-up-with-enhanced-geothermal
- pstuart 1y ago
- fuzzy2 1y agoIf AI server farm operators conclude that nuclear is the way to go, they should be free to do so, yes. If they manage to fulfill all regulatory requirements. (Which means it'll be at least $2 per kWh, yay.)
- V__ 1y agoI willing to wager that the AI bubble will burst before you could even begin to build power plants for them.
- bluGill 1y agoI'm sure the bubble will burst. However we have already found a few uses for AI and those uses will continue after the burst (if they are economical)
- i5heu 1y agoNot with a tech that needs 15 years to be build
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ThinkBeat 1y agoA country is not forced to have AI farms running in it. Building giant powerplant for the AI tech (possible) bubble not seems wise. The plant will take 5 - 10 years to build, who knows what demands AI will have at that point. SO let some countries that want to spent enormous amounts of their energy on AI do so, adn the rest can connect to those.
- parhamn 1y ago> who knows what demands AI will have at that point This is true for any investment pretty much.
- LinXitoW 1y agoWell, not really. Investing in heating homes or powering light bulbs is, outside of extremely extreme situations, always a good investment, because people will always want to do that. AI is also just super young, has apparently zero mote, requires insane amounts of hardware that basically becomes useless after a couple of years, and has promised, over and over, the AI revolution is just around the corner multiple times without ever delivering.
- kccqzy 1y agoThis is shortsighted. China routinely experiences large overcapacity in their electricity grid just to deal with the unknown unknowns of outages and other new demands. Suppose that the AI bubble burst and AI energy use is negligible, the extra capacity could be used for something else: retire your traditional coal fired furnaces for steel making and replacing them with electric arc furnaces; produce more aluminum; build more EV chargers.
- croes 1y agoThe wait until after the AI bubble and buy the cheap surplus of energy. AI is useful but nit as useful as the AI companied claim it to be and the ROI isn’t as great neither.
- gsibble 1y agoThat's a shame.
- cyberax 1y agoGermany will come around when their Green ship comes aground. Probably within the next ~5 years. The coal phaseout will happen, but only by replacing it with natural gas. It will result in the last easily achievable reduction in CO2, but it will also increase the already sky-high energy prices in Germany. After that? There's nothing. There are no credible plans that will result in further CO2 reductions. The noises about "hydrogen" or "power to gas" will quiet rapidly once it becomes clear that they are financially not feasible.
- _aavaa_ 1y agoThe data does not back up this narrative: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun... The share of electricity production that coal lost is primarily take up by wind and solar, not gas.
- cyberax 1y agoThe devil is in the details. The easy part is now done, and further significant increases in solar/wind in Germany are not going to happen. Renewables now dominate generation during the optimal periods, but there's nothing on the horizon for other times. Your graph also ignores energy used for heating and for industrial processes. Their electrification is now stalled by high energy prices.
- _aavaa_ 1y ago> not going to happen … nothing on the horizon for other times Batteries and storage. > heating and for industrial That’s moving to goal posts. The discussion is about electricity.
- cyberax 1y ago> Batteries and storage. Nearly useless for Germany. Some intraday storage will be helpful, but it will not strongly affect the wintertime fossil fuel consumption and the overall CO2 emissions. > That’s moving to goal posts. The discussion is about electricity. No. It's not moving goalposts. Switching from gas to electric heat pumps for heating is absolutely relevant here. It's now inhibited by the high _electricity_ prices ( https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-transition-clean-heating-risk-heat-pump-sales-collapse-industry-warns https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-transition-cle... ). Ditto for the ICE to EV transition. The German government is now directly planning to pay around $20B in direct subsidies ( https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-pushes-17-billion-euro-gas-power-plan-despite-election-uncertainty-2024-11-22/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-pushes-17-billi... ) to build _gas_ power plants to alleviate some of that. I expect the final bill will be around $50B just for the new natural gas generation. Germany is also quietly reassuring investors that it's safe to build natural gas by extending the subsidies: https://www.energyconnects.com/news/renewables/2025/january/germany-opens-way-for-gas-beyond-2035-with-subsidy-extension/ https://www.energyconnects.com/news/renewables/2025/january/... As usual, actions speak louder than words. If you're willing, we can place long-term bets on that. I'd be delighted to lose, but I don't expect it.
- StopDisinfo910 1y agoGermany has stopped actively trying to sabotage France on nuclear energy at every occasion in the EU. That’s a start. Give you hope that at some point, they might even move on the brain dead competition policies in the energy market and we might end up with a sensible energy policy.
- darkamaul 1y agoI’d guess Germany’s opposition to French nuclear power wasn’t just about the technology itself, but tied up with political and economic strategy. There must have been stronger political reasons behind it than simply « not liking nuclear ». I’d be curious to read something deeper on the subject and understand the reasoning behind those strategies since the Fukushima accident.
- StopDisinfo910 1y agoNuclear is really unpopular with a significant part of the German electorate especially on the left. So, yes, it’s entirely political. I guess sabotaging France by preventing it for exploiting the advantage its great strategy in energy should have afforded it is just cherry on the cake.
- pfdietz 1y agoGermany doesn't need to sabotage France on nuclear energy; France has done a fine job of sabotaging themselves.
- viktorcode 1y agoThe historical data shows that France didn't have upwards trend in nuclear generation since early 2000s.[1] I wouldn't bet on it to change regardless of political climate. 1: https://analysesetdonnees.rte-france.com/en/generation/nuclear https://analysesetdonnees.rte-france.com/en/generation/nucle...
- ViewTrick1002 1y agoFrance is sabotaging France on nuclear. Flamanville 3 is a complete joke and the EPR2 program is in absolute shambles. Currently they can’t even agree on how to fund the absolutely insanely bonkers subsidies. Now targeting investment decision in 2026… And the French government just fell because they are underwater in debt and have a spending problem which they can’t agree on how to fix. A massive handout to the dead end nuclear industry sounds like the perfect solution!
- croes 1y agoStill no storage for nuclear waste, long construction times and expensive as hell. Die you hear about the Söder-Challenge? The head of the bavarian CSU want to go back to nuclear energy and comedian Marc-Uwe Kling promised to praise him if he finds and operator who is willing to build a nuclear power plant in Germany without any government subsidies.
- froh 1y agoand a municipality willing to have the German finale nuclear waste storage in their backyard. the Söder Challenge is Legend:-)
- pyrale 1y ago> if he finds and operator who is willing to build a nuclear power plant in Germany without any government subsidies. So basically, be the only energy source not subsidized? There are plenty of decent reasons to be against nuclear, and there's a discussion to be had on its price, but pointing out subsidies in the energy sector is like casting stones from your glass house.
- LinXitoW 1y agoLet's not pretend that the companies running those plants are being hindered by the government. They themselves have said turning them back on is a stupid idea.
- cramcgrab 1y ago[flagged]
- kulahan 1y agoIt's not. Not only is it a completely negligible amount (~one 50-gallon barrel per reactor per year), it's easy to store (literally kitty litter) and can be re-enriched (renewable).
- chrisweekly 1y agoCiting sources would be helpful.
- stahorn 1y agoHere's one. A great read: https://www.amazon.com/Plentiful-Energy-technology-scientific-non-specialists/dp/1466384603 https://www.amazon.com/Plentiful-Energy-technology-scientifi... It's available online also: https://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/PlentifulEnergy.pdf https://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/PlentifulEnergy.pdf I read it 14 years ago or so, after the Fukushima accident. I don't think the science has changed since then, or since the 90s when this project was shut down. There continue to be so much money in coal, gas, and oil and it's from there I think most of the opposition to nuclear stems from. Apart from fast reactors, there's also the traditional reactors and storage of spent fuel. Finland's close to opening their process facility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
- blueflow 1y ago> it's easy to store (literally kitty litter) I showed your comment to someone who is currently writing their PhD on how to store nuclear waste safely. I barely understood half of what they said in the following rant, but they referenced the situation of the Sellafield site several times.
- qwe----3 1y ago
- gsibble 1y agoIt is. And that's great news!
- binaryturtle 1y agoThis is clean, until something goes catastrophically wrong. (Which eventually it will. The more reactors, the more chances for it to happen.)
- pelagicAustral 1y agoI'd say a reactor in inland Europe is far from the craziest place to put one. God forbid someone were to put one in the Pacific ring of fire... oh, wait...
- IAmBroom 1y agoWhy? Are you concerned that, like Lex Luthor in that worst-of-all Superman movies, someone will use nuclear reactors to somehow cause damage to continental plates? Actually, that's more of a stretch than the movie took.
- mgaunard 1y agoMeanwhile lignite mines (which Germany are re-opening) actively affect the health of everyone nearby, even when everything goes perfectly alright.
- pydry 1y agoThe nuclear industry did say that this would happen but the reality was the exact opposite: >According to research institute Fraunhofer’s Energy Charts, the plant had a utilisation ratio of only 24% in 2024, half as much as ten years before, BR said. Also, the decommissioning of the nearby Isar 2 nuclear plant did not change the shrinking need for the coal plant, even though Bavaria’s government had repeatedly warned that implementing the nuclear phase-out as planned could make the use of more fossil power production capacity necessary. https://theprogressplaybook.com/2025/02/19/german-state-of-bavaria-retires-its-last-major-coal-plant/ https://theprogressplaybook.com/2025/02/19/german-state-of-b...
- yellowapple 1y agoEven accounting for the times things have gone “catastrophically wrong”, nuclear is many orders of magnitude safer per unit of energy than every other energy source except solar. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
- yellowapple 1y ago[flagged]
- me_me_me 1y ago[dead]
- robotnikman 1y ago>and the more strongly I suspect them to be fossil fuel industry plants. I feel the same way as well. It would make sense for an oil rich country that feels threatened by people not buying oil (or gas) to subvert a movement like greenpeace.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pydry 1y agoPoland is the dirtiest coal producer in Europe but a point in its favor (for some) was that it didnt prove conclusively that you could decarbonize your electric grid without any help at all from nuclear power. So, it didnt attract any hate or shaming from the nuclear industry's faux - environmentalist public relations arm. Unlike Germany, whom they really hate and for whom the FUD and lies was nearly constant. (E.g. https://www.reuters.com/article/business/energy/german-nuclear-exit-may-lead-to-winter-blackouts-idUSLDE74L0CB/ https://www.reuters.com/article/business/energy/german-nucle... remember when the nuclear industry-promised blackouts finally materialized? I dont).
- opo 1y agoWhy are you implying that Germany has decarbonized their grid? Germany has a long term goal of decarbonizing the grid, but it isn’t there yet. They made the decision to keep coal plants burning and shut down their nuclear power plants. And even years later in 2025 they continue to burn coal - the most dangerous and dirty source of power ever invented. >…The share of electricity produced with fossil fuels in Germany increased by ten percent between January and the end of June 2025, compared to the same period one year before, while power production from renewables declined by almost six percent, the country’s statistical office >… Coal-fired power production increased 9.3 percent, while electricity production from fossil gas increased by 11.6 percent. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/fossil-electricity-production-germany-increased-10-first-half-2025 https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/fossil-electricity-prod... The direct deaths caused by burning coal are significant. I didn’t see any current estimates for those being killed downwind from Germany's reckless burning of coal, but overall the EU has a high death rate: >…Europe, coal kills around 23,300 people per year and the estimated economic costs of the health consequences from coal burning is about US $70 billion per year, with 250,600 life years lost. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479725027914 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030147972... Never mind that all those coal plants are also contributing to climate change and are poisoning the oceans enough that many species of fish are not safe to eat. The waste problem from coal will also be a problem for future generations to deal with - not all the ash from burning coal is being deposited in people's lungs. In 2023, I saw a stat that in 2023 about 17.0% of Germany electrical production was from burning coal. As a comparison, I believe that before the phase out of nuclear power, it generated about 25% of the electricity. If Germany wanted to shut down nuclear power plants after they had decarbonized their grid, that would be their choice - shutting them down when you are still burning coal is almost unbelievable. I don’t think future generations will look kindly on countries who shut down a clean form of power while they still are running the most dangerous and dirty form of power generation ever created.
- pkoiralap 1y agoAsking because I don't know. How is enrichment governed? Say for instance if a country is only using it for energy vs defense/offense. And are there elements that can be specifically used for energy vs otherwise? Last I remember, having access to enriched uranium was grounds for a country to bomb another one.
- msk-lywenn 1y agoEnergy needs like 5% enrichment while weaponizing needs much higher and much more difficult to obtain 85% enrichment
- nradov 1y agoYou should read the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as it addresses several of those issues. Possession of highly enriched uranium isn't necessarily an act of war by itself. https://disarmament.unoda.org/en/our-work/weapons-mass-destruction/nuclear-weapons/treaty-non-proliferation-nuclear-weapons-npt https://disarmament.unoda.org/en/our-work/weapons-mass-destr...
- philipkglass 1y agoThe only way to ensure that a civil uranium enrichment program remains strictly civil is via transparency and monitoring. A country that has mastered uranium enrichment technology for fueling civil power reactors could use the same technology to produce bomb-grade uranium. It actually takes more work to enrich natural uranium into fuel for power reactors than it takes to further enrich power reactor fuel into bomb material: https://scipython.com/blog/uranium-enrichment-and-the-separative-work-unit-swu/ https://scipython.com/blog/uranium-enrichment-and-the-separa...
- pkoiralap 1y agoThis is scary. so the extra effort to move from, say, 20% to 85% is relatively small compared with the effort to get up to 20% in the first place. Might as well build a feature into the reactor so that it only works with <=20%
- anthk 1y agoWell, compared to carbon, it is.
- reenorap 1y agoWe need to drive down the costs of implementing nuclear energy. Most of it are fake costs due to regulation. I understand that regulation is needed but we also need nuclear energy, we have to find a streamlined way to get more plants up and running as soon as possible. I think they should all be government projects so that private companies can't complain that they're losing money and keep have to ratchet up the prices, like PG&E in California. My rates have doubled in a few years to over $0.40/kWh and up over $0.50/kWh after I go up a tier depending on usage.
- epistasis 1y agoWhich are the fake costs from regulation? We have new builds in Europe of the EPR, in France and Finland, and it has had disastrous costs. China has built some too, presumably cheaper, since they keep on building more. What is the regulatory difference there? I have yet to find any concrete defense of the idea that costs are coming from regulation, rather than the costs of construction in advanced economies. If regulations are the cost, name them and a solution. Otherwise it seems like we are wasting efforts in optimizing the wrong thing for nuclear.
- reenorap 1y agoIt takes 15 years to build a nuclear power plant. It shouldn't take this long at all and it's strictly because of regulations. If we cut down the time it takes to build a plant the cost plummets.
- kachnuv_ocasek 1y agoBut what are the specific regulations you would cut, dude?
- avidiax 1y agoI have heard it claimed, at least for US construction, that a nuclear plant under construction has to implement new safety measures even if those measures were adopted after the design approval or construction start date. This means that the design can change multiple times during construction, which both slows construction and exposes the project to even more safety design changes. Ironically, the creaky old plants that were built long ago don't need to adopt such new safety requirements. They are grandfathered in, but can't be economically replaced because the costs of a replacement are artificially inflated. A car analogy would be that we continue driving 1955 Chevy Bel-Airs with no seat belts since an up-to-date car is too expensive to develop, since we can't start production until the latest LIDAR and AI has been added. Once the LIDAR is in, pray that there's no new self-driving hardware released before full production, or we'll have to include that too.
- dmitrygr 1y ago[flagged]
- thw_9a83c 1y agoI see your point but it's not really that simple in this particular case. Nuclear energy production is clean under assumption: 1. You can operate the facility with a zero critical accident over the whole lifespan of the power plant. 2. You know what to do with a nuclear waste (like keep it safely deeply buried for 10'000 years). However, point 2) is almost irrelevant now because we already have enough depleted nuclear fuel to deal with it.
- sealeck 1y agoBoth of these assumptions are true. Obviously these are not trivial problems, and take a lot of work, but they are extremely tractable.
- diordiderot 1y ago1. Only six reactors have had meltdowns, partial meltdowns, serious core damage, or fatalities. Gen 4 reactors have gravity driven control rods, passive cooling systems, core catchers, safer fuel, and moderators. If humans were raptured, they couldn't melt down. 2. The entire planets worth of spent nuclear fuel would fit into 15 Olympic swimming pools. Fast breeder reactors can use almost all of the existing waste and on top of that reduce it's lifespan from 100k+ years to a few hundred. You'd get more radiation exposure from living in Denver than you would sleeping on a cask in Miami
- thw_9a83c 1y agoI'm not arguing about whether we should or shouldn't use nuclear energy. We should. > 1. Only six reactors have had meltdowns, partial meltdowns, serious core damage, or fatalities. If we assume that everything above INES[0] level 4 is already serious enough, then there were 11 accidents [1] and around 4484 fatalities (mostly 4000 indirect from Chernobyl but still). > Gen 4 reactors have gravity driven control rods, passive cooling systems, core catchers, safer fuel, and moderators. And yet, 100% safety is not achievable. But the risk is probably quite acceptable now. [0]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_and_Radiological_Event_Scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_and_Radi...> [1]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...>
- medlazik 1y agoUranium mining isn't clean at all. Between Greenpeace (full of business school hacks) and lobby pressured EU courts, there's a middle ground.
- sealeck 1y ago> Uranium mining isn't clean at all. Nor is mining for coal!
- acidburnNSA 1y agoWhat do you mean? Modern in situ uranium mining is one of the lowest impact mining of resources we have. It's not perfectly clean, but it's pretty darn good.
- medlazik 1y ago>What do you mean? I mean it's not clean >one of the lowest impact mining of resources we have Not the point. It's not clean, it shouldn't be called clean end of the story.
- alexey-salmin 1y agoDo you think rare earth minerals for batteries and photovoltaics grow on trees?
- medlazik 1y agoWho talked about those? Not the fucking point. Nuclear isn't clean.
- alexey-salmin 1y agoWhat source of energy is clean then?
- KaseKun 1y ago
- ta1243 1y agoNuclear was a great option 20 years ago. Today though it's too late. The cost and time to generation (especially in the west) is too high, you'll get far better returns far more quickly from renewables and storage
- kbelder 1y agoWe need to do what we can right now to avoid people saying this exact same thing 20 years from now.
- jama211 1y agoI’m totally fine with nuclear honestly, but I feel like I don’t understand something. No one seems to be able to give me a straight answer with proper facts that explain why we couldn’t just make a whole load more renewable energy generators instead. Sure, it might cost more, but in theory any amount of power a nuclear plant would generate could also be achieved with large amounts of renewables no?
- cosmic_cheese 1y agoCan’t speak to other localities, but in the US, every additional project multiplies headaches with red tape, bureaucracy, cronyism, ideologically opposed politicians, sham environmental groups puppeted by incumbents, nearby residents taking issue with the project for whatever reason, etc. getting one project off the ground and landed safely is a monumental effort, let alone multiple.
- throwaway2037 1y agoSomeone pointed out in another comment that Iowa, USA has installed an incredible amount of wind turbines in the last 25 years. There is a whole Wiki page on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Iowa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Iowa Also, Texas has done very similar.
- tomComb 1y agoI don’t think it would cost more. The real problem with nuclear energy is, and always has been the cost. It always seems to turn into a boondoggle.
- 9dev 1y agoIf you factor in all the cost usually externalised in nuclear power, it’s often a lot more expensive than people realise. Decommissioning nuclear waste and old reactors is a huge, time-consuming, and thus extremely expensive operation.
- mpweiher 1y ago
- a3w 1y agoClean, mostly. With future? No, it creates primary heat. Wind and solar do not. Water power also does not, but power from damns is not clean if you want an eco-friendly power source. Wind currently also has a bigger environment impact than solar, but is of course a source available more frequently at night [citation needed, just kidding]. And waste we need to dispose of, which no countries has long term experience in storing. Except for costly disasters in how not to intermediately store it, here in Germany. If the very finite amount of nuclear fuel is so useful, why not make future generations happy by preserving it for them, and for now, limiting its use until we learned how to add to the initial price the full cost of long term storage, with further disasters as a learning experience for that? Saving lives and being cost-effective in the short run might work, but every energy expert says in 50 years, nuclear will have to be phased out anyway. And fusion could provide clean, but also primary heat inducing energy. So even that will not save us.
- beeflet 1y agoPrimary heat on this scale isn't nessisarially a bad thing. It has a very small impact on the global power balance with respect to the effect global warming. There are also lots of uses for waste heat. Nuclear plants tend to be paired with some sort of massive hydraulic engineering project, it turns out that a lot of animals like warm water. I am pretty sure we can figure out how to store nuclear waste if given the opportunity. >If the very finite amount of nuclear fuel is so useful It's not very finite. There is a ton of it. Even the vast majority of the "waste" we produce could be recycled to produce more fuel.
- preisschild 1y ago> No, it creates primary heat. Wind and solar do not Luckily we do need lots of heat. District heating, process heat, thermochemical H2 production, ...
- LinXitoW 1y agoWell, good thing that we have no reason to build these reactors as far away from population centers as possible, right? We already have enough heat for that, from industries. Distribution is the biggest factor, and in that, distance. It's really cool, but it's stupidly expensive up front. Not to mention, you need to require EVERYONE in the area to buy in and stay in to have any hopes of being worth it in the long run. NIMBYism strikes again.
- cynicalsecurity 1y agoEU is not so bad at all, in fact, it's really cool.
- p0w3n3d 1y agoThey had been pushing back the nuclear energy for quite a few years before they came out with this
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoI'm totally fine with people attempting to build new fission plants. More power to them! I just don't see it happening. They cost too much and take too long. Not holding my breath here.
- kgabis 1y agoBy some weird accident they stop being that expensive and long to build when you cross the border into China.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoMaybe Western nations will allow Chinese companies to come build their nuclear plants. That would be something.
- peterfirefly 1y agoOr South Korea. Or just take a short trip to the recent past in your time machine.
- more_corn 1y agoClean but not safe
- rallyforthesun 1y agoI read a lot of comments talking about „getting down the operational costs“ but i am missing someone talking about the costs of depositing the nuclear waste until it has no more risks. Am i missing something?!
- throwawayffffas 1y agoYes the cost of depositing nuclear waste is trivial, it takes a small number of large concrete structures underground in well picked locations. The US produces about 1250 cubic meters of waste per year. For comparison the empire state building has a floor area of 208000 square meters, assuming a 3 meter floor height you could fit about 500 years worth of spent fuel inside it.
- m101 1y agoYes. This. Nuclear waste storage is extremely cheap. Also, we only "use" 3% of the fuel in current nuclear power station designs so we could just reprocess the fuel and vastly reduce the volume of waste too.
- Zenst 1y agoFinally, France will be happy after years of being pushed back on this with the drive for solar and wind turbines, which sadly all got supplemented via gas on the back that nuclear was bad. Sadly, with electricity becoming more reliant on gas and other fossil fuels when it is not so sunny in winter, or on those cloudy days with no wind, means fossil fuel usage ends up higher than if they had stayed and expanded nuclear - instead they closed many plants(Germany a prime example, in favour of....gas). Then the whole over-dependence on Russian gas and oil really did whammy the energy price market, not just for Europe, but with a knock-on effect across the world. One we still pay for today.
- nilslindemann 1y agoWhatever. No one wants to invest into it anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
- preisschild 1y agoLCOE does not account for the full (system) costs. Nuclear power plants have capacity factors over 90%, while PV/Wind have less than 25%. LCOE does not account for the added costs, such as increased transmission and storage/backup costs.
- nilslindemann 1y agoIt does not account for a lot of things, for example insurance. Quote from https://www.manager-magazin.de/finanzen/versicherungen/a-761954.html https://www.manager-magazin.de/finanzen/versicherungen/a-761... (Google translated): Berlin – According to a study, comprehensive insurance against the risks of nuclear power would cause electricity prices to explode. According to calculations by actuaries, the premiums to be paid could cause electricity prices to rise more than forty-fold. "Nuclear energy is ultimately uninsurable," said insurance expert Markus Rosenbaum on Wednesday in Berlin. If an insurance company wanted to build up sufficient premiums for a nuclear power plant within 50 years, for example, the remaining operating life of a reactor, it would have to charge 72 billion euros per year for liability insurance. The German Renewable Energy Association (BEE) commissioned the "Leipzig Insurance Forums" to conduct the calculations even before the Fukushima reactor disaster. "The true costs of nuclear power are ignored and, in the event of a serious accident, are passed on to the public," said BEE Managing Director Björn Klusmann.
- nilslindemann 1y agoNow you know the true reason why we Germans abandoned Nuclear energy :-D
- locallost 1y agoLCOE refers to the price in MWh (produced electricity), so it takes capacity factor into account. Whatever electricity you produce and sell depends on your installed capacity multiplied with the capacity factor. Similarly, you pay for the electricity you receive and this is priced as say 40$ per MWh. Obviously when you receive nothing the price is 0, you don't pay them to idle, they either produce or not. Thus when storage costs kick in you don't add the costs of both together. You either pay one or the other, not both. You might average them out taking into consideration what their output is, but you don't stack the costs on top of each other which I often see people do.
- froh 1y ago> Germany, long a symbol of anti-nuclear politics, is beginning to shift. err, no. it's not. industry lobby tries again and again, yes, and party officials parrot that lobbying, yes. but no: there is no Endlager (permanent spent nuclear fuel waste site) in sight, the costs of dismantling used plants are outrageous and if it were not for nimbyism, we'd be essentially self sustaining on wind and solar within a decade. matter of fact fossil and nuclear sponsored fud on wind and solar is the single biggest issue we face in Germany. Atomkraft? nein, danke.
- preisschild 1y ago> but no: there is no Endlager (permanent nuclear waste site) in sight The Problem in Germany is that by law the state has to build a repository, while the operators have to pay for it. The operators did pay (~24 bln EUR), but politically either NIMBY parties (such as CDU/CSU/SPD) block it, or the Greens (under Habeck) block progress so they can continue to shout "what about the waste???" In Finland the operators can build their own repository and they did it cheap and relatively fast. Also from an even more anti-nuclear country (austria): Kernenergie? Ja bitte!
- froh 1y agoFinland is the world's first and only such facility so far. the law to build it is pretty universal, the world has essentially agreed to not export nuclear waste. associating the progressive innovative green party with blocking progress is an interesting turn, there was no progress in the topic for decades, and the reason is rather that nuclear waste is like toddler art: first no one wants to take it, trying to toss it is met with loud and hefty protest, and at the end nobody knows where to take it. don't the alps have lovely granite areas for the Finnish model?
- locallost 1y agoI propose we store it in your basement. It's really not a flame war, but people that consider themselves rational argue it's no big deal, so they should be prepared to store it in their immediate vicinity. I support renewables and don't have a problem with solar panels on my roof or even a windmill in my backyard.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoGlad that the Russian funded Greens were finally defeated. In the end, the green party may have doomed us with this 50 year delay.
- Bost 1y agoI think the Russians probably realized, "We don't even need to fund them - they will glue themselves to the roads for free."
- roody15 1y agoThe EU may have a geopolitical interest in taking another look at nuclear. The dependance on Russian natural gas and expensive imported US natural gas is not good for their economic outlook long term. Honestly I am surprised Germany has not fired back up a couple of its plants considering its difficulties with Industrial output and competing in a world market.
- derhuerst 1y agoIn case you are in (or IP-geolocated to) the EU: https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/115068-000-A/nuclear-putin-s-deal-with-the-west/ https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/115068-000-A/nuclear-putin-s-d...
- peterfirefly 1y agoWe have plenty of uranium in Europe. Australia also has plenty. Lots of countries have plenty, both friendly and not so friendly (that we still buy lots of stuff from anyway). We absolutely don't need Russian uranium. Uranium is also easy to store long-term (years). There is zero risk of a new stupid energy dependence on Russia.
- Lightkey 1y agoTrue, there is uranium everywhere. Yet Russia still has a 40% marketshare on enriched uranium because enrichment is the difficult part, just ask the Iranians.
- m101 1y agoThe cheapest form of energy is firing up a recently closed nuclear power plant. What they are doing is beyond reason.
- LinXitoW 1y agoThis is just utterly and completely wrong. EVEN THE COMPANIES THEMSELVES say it would be stupid to reopen those plants. And, of course, the idea that "dependence" on Russia is bad, but replacing it with dependence on other states AND with building a bunch of nuclear bombs in my backyard that are PRIME targets to literally take out my entire grid, is laughably bad.
- stefantalpalaru 1y ago[dead]
- Lightkey 1y agoMisleading title. The controversial part is that they ruled both nuclear energy AND natural gas plants as clean energy.
- aussiegreenie 1y agoNuclear power is clean but VERY EXPENSIVE. Dispatble solar and wind are about 1/5 the price of new nuclear.
- casey2 1y agoYour comment is just disinformation at this point. If nuclear was very expensive China wouldn't have built 30 in the last 10 years despite massive opposition. In reality when you take all the costs into account there is no cheaper form of energy generation and there likely never will be, outside of cost decreases in Fission based nuclear itself.
- oezi 1y agoIt is hard for humans to work with exponential curves. Solar went from 15 cents per kwh to 5 cents per kwh over the last 10 years. Anticipating such a rapid decline is hard and a lot of people still are stuck on outdated data. Sure China commissioned these plants in the past and will plan more, but it won't be due to cost.
- pzo 1y agoBut you don't need to work with exponential curves to know that you can use solar only for like half a day and even less during winter. Those solar installation now are big part of overall cost. And with majority of EU population living in flats where you gonna install them?
- oezi 1y agoSolar installations are already so cheap that they are cheaper than the fuel being burned in existing power plants. So it makes sense to have them replace this kind of fuel burning. They are still getting cheaper so there is no stopping solar. I have seen statistics showing that solar parks currently cover less area than there are Golf courses (at least in Europe).
- dvrj101 1y ago
- locallost 1y agoThis page and organization, WePlanet, is a rebrand of RePlanet. They advertise as a grassroots movement, but are funded by a hedge fund with a significant investment in fossil fuels [1]. I think their whole schtick is prolonging the current situation and betting on slow and expensive nuclear is a good strategy to prevent real change. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/30/climate-groups-accept-millions-from-charity-linked-to-fossil-fuel-investments-quadrature-climate-foundation https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/30/climate-...
- khalic 1y agoFunny how all the nuclear chills forget the plethora of issues that come with that tech. - who has access to nuclear power? - what happens to nuclear reactors during war? - where does the Uranium come from? - how long does it take to build a reactor? - how many long term solutions have been developed in the more than 60 years of this technology’s existence? Not saying nuclear doesn’t have a place, but let’s not be blind to the long list of complications that come with it.
- m101 1y agoYou suggest people forget that without considering that perhaps you don't know: - We killed nuclear power in countries that can be trusted so that is not relevant. - Nuclear accidents are not as harmful as people imagine. - We have plenty of access to uranium resources in the west. - the time to build a reactor is often in large parts regulatory burdens. France built out 10% of its electricity generation needs in a year, for a number of years. That is what is possible. - Part of the reason there is no innovation in this sector is because regulation has strangled it. There are many innovative ideas in nuclear.
- LinXitoW 1y agoYou mean western sources like the USA, that suddenly starts waving it's dick around when the wrong dipshit is elected? The USA that made a nuclear deal with Iran and then scrapped it for no fucking reason?
- hereme888 1y agoIs that a joke? You are conflating US meddling in international politics vs. protecting themselves and the world from Nuclear catastrophe by not fighting the likes of Iran, who openly admits wanting to nuke other countries, namely Israel (and by extension radiate Gaza, Jordan, Egypt, the nearby oceans, etc, as well) and the US. Iran who hid their nuclear enrichment facilities underground, which were known to enrich Uranium beyond what's needed for energy production.
- 1y ago
- nickpsecurity 1y agoIt's so clean that you can swim in the reactor water. You can even drink it after running it through a water filter. No waste disposal required. It's that clean.
- knorker 1y agoEverything good Greenpeace may have ever done is probably overshadowed by the death and planetary destruction caused by their opposition to nuclear power.
- gcanyon 1y ago> We still need to overturn national nuclear bans, unlock more funding, and push democratic countries to support clean energy development abroad: especially where it is most needed to compete with Russia’s growing influence. We also need to figure out how to build reactors in months to years instead of years to decades to failure. And to build reactors at a cost less than $10 to $20 million per megawatt capacity.
- zenmac 1y agowell would being good if they specifically say thorium nuclear energy is clean energy! Seems like the Chinese are picking up where US left off: https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/thorium-molten-salt-reactor-china-nuclear/ https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/thorium-molten-salt-r... Maybe the EU can pick that up too. In context of that really makes one think if Nazis was on to something other than toothpaste? https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/thorium-toothpaste-alsos-world-war-wwii-manhattan-project https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/thorium-toothpaste-als...
- nextworddev 1y ago$oklo $ura
- panny 1y agoAll the smart people of my generation have spent their time working on burning energy. For AI, crypto, etc. Imagine if they worked as hard on making energy instead.
- eimrine 1y agoRotating some cranks?
- lofaszvanitt 1y agoLike Conan.
- DoctorOetker 1y agoDoes EU still buy fissile fuel from Russia?
- eimrine 1y agoYes it does, even trans-Ukrainian Druzhba still works.
- maxlin 1y agoThe problem with all kinds of "green" movements and such is that they only _demand_ solutions without being involved. That also means they might have very little idea if their premise is even valid, they just put all their energy towards organization, making signs n stuff and are very emotion-driven. People thinking fission reactors might randomly explode like nuclear bombs Simpsons-style and so many green parties in Europe being anti-nuclear has held progress back too much. Minimal climate activism isn't bad, but they really bit hard in to the fork on this one.
- herewulf 1y agoSudden outbreak of common sense.
- BrtByte 1y agoWhether you're pro-nuclear or not, this ruling feels like a turning point. For decades, nuclear has been stuck in a weird limbo. Fascinating how youth climate activists are now some of the strongest voices for nuclear. That would've been unthinkable 10 years ago
- Kon5ole 1y agoIt makes perfect sense, they are mostly uninformed about the risks and consequences of nuclear but have heard about global warming all their lives.
- wenchu 1y agoOh well then the Oligarchs have spoken,let the world be green, glowing green. I'm not anti nuclear but the technologies used to date have been seriously flawed. But It is the Idea that people who really have no technical knowledge of this technology its supply chain issues or its real impact on long term health are so arrogant that they believe they alone can dictate to the world, that I find offensive. We look at immediate effect but a study by a Japanese researcher after Fukushima shows the effect of irradiation may not show for multiple generations after exposure.
- cakealert 1y agoNuclear power capital costs should be cheap too. The incentives of the regulators are not aligned with the public. Regulators don't care about cheap electricity, they aren't going to get anything for that. They only care about reducing the risk of an accident however minor happening on their watch while not appearing to completely annihilate the technology because that would open them to political attacks. So the balance is struck at a point where nuclear power capital costs are absurdly high. I suspect that trying to make nuclear reactors accident proof has always been the wrong approach. Instead they should have made it so an accident could always be managed - something along the lines of if something happens drown it in concrete and forget about it, because there are 100,000 more reactors. The only safety cost would come from making a meltdown slow enough or happen in a place no one cares about for it to become a balance sheet problem.
- Joel_Mckay 1y ago"An American Nuclear Energy Debacle" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kkgg494Ifc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kkgg494Ifc It had problems well beyond the unsolved 34000 year waste stewardship costs. =3
- good_vs_great 1y ago> Regulators don't care about cheap electricity, they aren't going to get anything for that. Of course they do. It's going to feed directly into economic growth in a way that is about as visible as a major accident multiplied by its probability
- Luker88 1y agoI am not sure people understand the implications of this. First, it's not just nuclear, it's also Natural gas. Second, lots of nations have incentives for "clean" energy. And now magically, all those incentives apply to nuclear and gas. It's a money grab from nuclear and gas manufacturers. It's not that the courts were involved for nothing. Still, we should use more nuclear. If only it was less expensive to build...
- m101 1y agoNuclear + gas is the climate friendly solution.
- kpmcc 1y agoWhat is climate friendly about natural gas?
- m101 1y agoIs it less climate unfriendly than the alternatives. Every form of energy generation releases CO2. Gas also has the benefit that it doesn't need all sorts of extras to make it dispatachable when needed (which also require CO2). I forgot to say hydro is also great where possible.
- vintagedave 1y ago> Every form of energy generation releases CO2 …except nuclear, hydro, solar… They are stable once built. “Natural gas” is a fossil fuel and adds CO2 that was locked away.
- m101 1y agoSo manufacturing hydro and solar releases no CO2? How long until those panels need to be replaced and recycled?
- tedk-42 1y ago
- m101 1y agoI think a good exercise for the reader is to reflect on why they were ever against nuclear power in the first place. Nuclear power was always the greenest, most climate friendly, safest, cheapest (save for what we do to ourselves), most energy dense, most long lasting, option.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoI'm not convinced that's true about nuclear power when you look at the full lifecycle costs of uranium mining, maintenance and decommissioning. Also, solar is currently a lot cheaper than nuclear power when you exclude all the various subsidies (which applies to both energy sources). I'm not even convinced that nuclear power is that energy dense when you look at the raw uranium mining - most figures cherry-pick the processed uranium fuel which is indeed a very dense energy source.
- davidjytang 1y agoI take it you mean well built and well run nuclear plant you. Also is it most prone to human error?
- mastermage 1y agoWell, its wrong though. Its not the cheapest. Thats solar and by a long shot. Nuclear is literally the most expensive energy source. Also take into account the timeframe to build nuclear powerplants. 9 to 12 Years on average built time and delays often happen.
- flohofwoe 1y ago> most long lasting ...which also applies to nuclear waste unfortunately, and that answers part of your question - e.g. as irrational as it may be, but at least in Germany nobody wants to have a nuclear waste storage in their backyard (the other part of the answer is Chornobyl - and for the same 'not in my backyard' reason). Also when looking at recent years, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to have a few large nuclear power stations in the middle of Europe, see the 'hostage situation' around the Zaporizhzhia NPP.
- 1y ago
- amai 1y agoClean, but not insurable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...
- m101 1y agoIt is not beyond insurance. https://gordianknotbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/nuke_ucert_vG.pdf https://gordianknotbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/nuke_... Insurance already insures extremely complicated industries.
- amai 1y agoThe person who wrote that has a conflict of interest, because he developed a nuclear reactor: "In 2011, Devanney shifted his attention to nuclear power. He formed a small team to develop a design that combined a high temperature, low pressure, liquid fuel reactor with his background in ship production. This became known as the ThorCon project. Devanney continues to serve as ThorCon's Chairman although the day to day operations of ThorCon have been turned over to younger, more capable hands." https://gordianknotbook.com/author/ https://gordianknotbook.com/author/
- m101 1y agoOr he knows what he's talking about. Could be either but you've chosen the reason that supports your perspective. I appreciate that he may be conflicted.
- lloydatkinson 1y agoWell duh. Now we must wait and see what next feat of self-defeat Germany invents to prevent itself using it.
- andrewgleave 1y agoFor anyone interested in the history of Sellafield and its role in reprocessing, "Britain's Nuclear Secrets: Inside Sellafield" on BBC 4 at the moment is worth a watch. Presented by Jim Al-Khalili. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b065x080 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b065x080
- hereme888 1y agoWhy would a court decide this vs. an actual team of scientists?
- Krasnol 1y agoThis is the actual judgement: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62022TJ0625 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62... One of the reasons they judged this way is the lack of feasible low-carbon alternatives. Which is hilarious because we're talking about EU taxpayer money here. Money that can be spend only once. If you spend it on a nuclear reactor which may or may not be build within 10 years, you can't spend it on those "feasible low-carbon alternatives" which we already have and which would have produced a lot of energy in that construction time. The court however said also, that the strict regulations, which are often the main argument of nuclear fans, are not to be lowered. Therefore there is no outcome for nuclear where it will get cheaper. The French, which have never stopped building nuclear all over the world, still didn't manage to get it cheaper. There are always cost explosions which cause the energy price to rise over time. Which brings us back to why we're even talking about this: France has a fleet which needs more and more maintenance. It is costly and the state already supports every Watt of nuclear energy through their tarif bleu. They desperately need this EU money to support this show. Without it, they'd be forced to innovate and expand on renewables, like the rest of the planet. ...but just like the Germans with their fossil fuel cars, they'll try to keep it alive as long as possible, even though the market comes apart around them.
- tsoukase 1y agoPrice per Wh plays no role in the coming decades. Solid fuels can become x10 or x100 more expensive as they deplete. So the now extensive nuclear can become relatively cheap. The globe must change its behavior NOW: electricity prices at night, under shade or without wind must become very extensive because they need extensive tech (batteries, nuclear, fuels). If I were a regulator for a day I would strive making fossil fuels and night elecricity x10 more expensive and leave the market regulate by itself. In ten years I would make them x10 once more.
- xkbarkar 1y agoYou know what, let’s turn popular city parks to windmill and solarparks. NY central park for example. Copenhagen has a few beloved open green places we could clean out and replace with solarcells, so does Berlin. Im unscientifically guessing support for nc energy would rise very quickly and wed have a whole bunch of them within a decade. Source, I live near a windmill, they are loud as f*k. I drive by solaparks nearly every day. They remind me of those horrible deforested areas in Sweden called kalhygge. Nothing green about those atrocities.
- whatevaa 1y agoOil is so green. Oil spills are so beautiful. Yes, its sarcasm.
- luckystarr 1y agoNewer wind turbines don't have a gearbox and are almost completely silent. When standing next to one, the loudest components are the electrical inverters/transformers.
- wolvesechoes 1y agoWings are loud
- wolvesechoes 1y agoYou are sarcastic, but seriously I sometimes have an impression that people are so invested in the slogan of green energy that they would be fine with cutting down last tree on this planet to put a solar panel in its place, while believing they save the planet and environment.
- spookie 1y agoYeah have seen them. Down south of EU, in Portugal, they are buying land used for agriculture for these huge solar farms. And it is as sad as it is here. Surely, food is more important no? If they were placed in some deserts like in Spain... maybe they make sense, but these are very arable lands. Wind is yeah... a whole other beast, although I do like what they have done in the Baltic and North seas.
- geldedus 1y agoOf course it is. Atomic energy is one of the cleanest energy sources we have. But not the cheapest.
- mentalgear 1y agoFrance, heavily invested in nuclear, now has to shut down their reactors each summer as, due to climate change, the cooling water from rivers cant be used any more to cool the reactors. So much about being future proof. And let's not even get into the argument why no private company ever financed a nuclear reactor, but only build them with huge subsidies from states. Hint: it is because they are completely uneconomically. (and dont come with the argument of experimental small scale reactors, they are all just experimental and none proven)
- wolvesechoes 1y ago> the cooling water from rivers cant be used any more to cool the reactors. So much about being future proof. There are more reactor types than water-cooled reactors, and modern energy plants should use cooling towers even if some water reservoir is available, nuclear or not. > it is because they are completely uneconomically This is why private sector cannot provide infrastructure. State is not a company.
- goobatrooba 1y agoNot all need a river to cool but every single nuclear power plant needs a consistent water source 1) to actually generate the energy (steam!), 2) to cool, 3) as emergency safeguard when things go wrong. If you followed the news about Russia's attack on Ukraine and the risks to Zaporizia much of it was about fear of an incident, among others due to water sources or the energy to bring water to the plant being at risk
- wolvesechoes 1y ago> 1) to actually generate the energy (steam!) Secondary loop can be made closed system. This reduces efficiency, but this could be acceptable considering water scarcity. Of course there would be some leaks etc. so water needs to be resupplied, but in much lesser amounts. > 2) to cool Not necessarily true, because primary loop doesn't need to have water (HTG, MSR, LMR reactors). HTG reactor actually doesn't need water at all and can power gas turbine directly. LMR, depending on chosen coolant, can do this as well, though it requires heat exchanger.
- keepamovin 1y agoAnd the EU are correct. Stop crying about it. Nuclear is the future of human energy on Earth. No other source provides energy as dense safe and reliable. Hacker news people believe it’s not the cheapest. But with accounting for environmental and human impact and freeing from unnecessary restrictive regulations it can and will be.
- wukongfine 1y agoI personally believe that nuclear energy is clean energy
- Ericson2314 1y agoThe fact that: - the French won this - the Germans won no chat control Is the best of both worlds!
- johnisgood 1y agoPhew, thankfully I did not need the EU court to know nuclear is clean energy. In any case, any pros of it being considered clean in an official capacity?
- ripped_britches 1y ago“EU court rules sky blue”
- gusfoo 1y agoRussia is running out of money to pay anti-nuclear activists in Europe, it seems. "Atomkraft? Nein Danke!" should be viewed as what it really is.
- isaacremuant 1y agoSo funny. After the whole bullshit and hysteria post Fukushima and the German bullshit. But now it's the good narrative because of the war with Russia. It's so funny to see the shifts of peace or war with eastasia. So obviously propagandistic and so obviously supported by all the psychophants... Today we're on the right side until it's inconvenient again and then we'll burn the witch of anyone who dares go against the narrative.
- mcv 1y agoRuling nuclear as green is something I can understand (though I still vastly prefer solar), but I've read elsewhere that natural gas has also been ruled green, and that just makes no sense. Personally I see gas and nuclear as transition technologies until we can go fully renewable, and I can tolerate gas staying around for a bit longer as long as we phase our coal and oil as soon as possible, but that doesn't make it green. Gas is still a CO2 producing fossil fuel.