Honestly, I'm really critical towards EU, but this is one of the few things that EU does well. When the market is stagnating, it's better than nothing to propose an alternative or some kind of benefits in order to change the market a bit. Like the Roaming in EU.
Regarding the rest, the EU is mining competition with the obsession of regulating everything.
> Regarding the rest, the EU is mining competition with the obsession of regulating everything.
Like with DMA/DSA that force gatekeepers to open up? SEPA that mandates free immediate bank transfers? Caps on credit/debit card transaction fees? The million infrastructure projects? Ensuring that AI can't be used to make life or death decisions if it's decision making can't be explained (which the AI act boils down to)? Ensuring there is competition on e.g. railway operations?
It's such a common refrain that EU is just stifling competition with "regulating everything", but quite oftne EU regulations are actually forcing competition where none was possible before.
I stated quite clearly that not every regulation is bad. But it seems that you want to hear that every decision made by the EU is right. I'm sorry, but I'm not a religious person. And I think self-criticism is a great privilege of democratic (not dictatorial) countries, so let's use it.
> Ensuring that AI can't be used to make life or death decisions if its decision-making can't be explained (which the AI Act boils down to)? Ensuring there is competition on, for example, railway operations?
It's such a naive question that I can't understand how you can take it seriously.
Just because you can explain how you arrived at a specific decision does not mean that failure does not exist. Every machine is fallible. Every human is fallible. Moreover, you cannot determine decision-making made by humans. So how can you trust humans? Why should you trust them?
I would like to see the data, not the social or individual biases. It's only a matter of "when" AI will prove to be safer than humans at performing task X. I find it absurd to deprive ourselves of such an advantage, supported by data, just because our understanding isn't absolute.
Can we prove the safety or determinism of what we use or do on a daily basis? I doubt.
Shouldn't we experiment with physics because our understanding is limited, and we might accidentally create a black hole? I doubt.
Also, I find it such a generic definition... Google Maps implements AI, and accidentally sends you into a ditch. What do you do? Ban AI from Google Maps? What doesn't put people's lives at risk?
I totally understand the skepticism and fear. The risks, etc. But I'll leave it to the fortune tellers to pass judgment before it's even "a thing".
> It's such a common refrain that EU is just stifling competition with "regulating everything", but quite oftne EU regulations are actually forcing competition where none was possible before.
Is killing the car market "forcing the competition"? How?
> I stated quite clearly that not every regulation is bad. But it seems that you want to hear that every decision made by the EU is right. I'm sorry, but I'm not a religious person. And I think self-criticism is a great privilege of democratic (not dictatorial) countries, so let's use it.
But you still said that you think most of the EU's are bad, so I'm opening the discussion with multiple that I consider to be good.
> Just because you can explain how you arrived at a specific decision does not mean that failure does not exist. Every machine is fallible. Every human is fallible. Moreover, you cannot determine decision-making made by humans. So how can you trust humans? Why should you trust them?
Of course not, but being able to explain the decision, and thus prove that it is wrong, and have humans being able to correct it, is good. It means that stuff like United Healthcare Group using algorithms to decide if care can be paid for, with a terrible failure rate, and employees just shrugging "computer said no" cannot happen in the EU. The fact that this kind of things are considered as "EU is killing AI with too much regulation" is really concerning to me.
> Is killing the car market "forcing the competition"? How?
> But you still said that you think most of the EU's are bad, so I'm opening the discussion with multiple that I consider to be good.
I understand your point, but I see no reason to invest time defending the EU's positive aspects. What's the point?
> Of course not, but being able to explain the decision, and thus prove that it is wrong, and have humans being able to correct it, is good. It means that stuff like United Healthcare Group using algorithms to decide if care can be paid for, with a terrible failure rate, and employees just shrugging "computer said no" cannot happen in the EU. The fact that this kind of things are considered as "EU is killing AI with too much regulation" is really concerning to me.
I don't see why "asking for less regulation" concerns you. The EU seems to listen to people like you, not people like me. I should be the one who's concerned, haha. I'm worried because bureaucracy is a slow-acting cancer. It's a process that's easy to start but incredibly difficult to stop or reverse.
The problem with bureaucracy, regulation, and welfare is that they all come with a price. Increasing costs require a strong, cutting-edge economy to sustain them. Yet, no one seems to be concerned. In the US and China, new technologies are constantly being created, while in Europe, innovation is stagnating. No one seems to care that Europe's wealth is fragile, based mainly on "old" companies or banks.
Of course, no one is against welfare; my concern is its unsustainability. As an Italian (living elsewhere in Europe), I find the situation worrying. The demographic decline is dramatic, and pension and healthcare costs are skyrocketing. In Italy, a worker under 40 often earns less than a retiree. With such a sharp demographic decline, retirees have enormous political power.
Europe is aging, and so is its appetite for innovation and risk. Yet, we keep adding costs upon costs. Even if the goals of initiatives like GDPR, the AI Act, and the Green Deal are "right", we can't deny that they come with a price. This added cost inevitably makes companies less efficient in Europe. This is a simple consequence. Can we truly afford this?
How long can we keep going? The rope will break sooner or later. And why doesn't anyone seem to care?
> I don't see why "asking for less regulation" concerns you.
Because the "less regulation" is in response to the EU saying you can't have algorithms making life or death decisions if they can't be explained and can't be escalated to a human. People are literally asking for companies to be able to shrug behind "computer says no" with no recourse. We have the UK Post Office scandal for a closer to home example on why this is a terrible idea. "Less regulation" here would be plainly terrible for everyone.
> No one seems to care that Europe's wealth is fragile, based mainly on "old" companies or banks.
Along with migration, it's probably the two most discussed topics. Funnily for it too, everyone says "nobody cares", yet it's literally among the most discussed things.
> Even if the goals of initiatives like GDPR, the AI Act, and the Green Deal are "right", we can't deny that they come with a price. This added cost inevitably makes companies less efficient in Europe. This is a simple consequence. Can we truly afford this?
I get what you're saying, and there's a point at which I would agree; but I also fully consider that allowing companies to let people die and hide behind "The Algorithm" is something so fundamentally wrong, that we cannot (humanely) afford not to have regulations against it.
> In the US and China, new technologies are constantly being created, while in Europe, innovation is stagnating
Because you're comparing massive economies with lots of capital to burn, vs a loose collection of much smaller countries. There is tons of innovation in various European countries, it's just of different types, and doesn't scale nearly to the same extent. And that is a problem (because, as you said, a lot of the economy is reliant on big old players, which isn't necessarily bad, but is lacking in economic diversification).
> As an Italian (living elsewhere in Europe), I find the situation worrying. The demographic decline is dramatic, and pension and healthcare costs are skyrocketing. In Italy, a worker under 40 often earns less than a retiree. With such a sharp demographic decline, retirees have enormous political power
It's the same in France too, and it is indeed worrying. Public budgets are getting increasingly more complicated to balance.
But, allowing companies to deploy AI to make life or death decisions won't change anything around this. Allowing them to harvest personal data without even knowing what they have won't change anything around this either. Allowing gatekeepers to stifle any possible competition (not having DMA/DSA), same thing.
The biggest changes needed are capital investments to help the tons of startups all over Europe scale; and complex policies to help minimise the demographic collapse. Some of it is natural and nothing can be done about it (if a couple doesn't want kids, no amount of aid is going to change their mind), but for others it's a matter of being unable to afford (more) kids.
> Along with migration, it's probably the two most discussed topics. Funnily for it too, everyone says "nobody cares", yet it's literally among the most discussed things.
Its disscussed here, still nobody is acting. This is a bubble.
> I get what you're saying, and there's a point at which I would agree; but I also fully consider that allowing companies to let people die and hide behind "The Algorithm" is something so fundamentally wrong, that we cannot (humanely) afford not to have regulations against it.
This sentence is fundamentally wrong, no one is dying. And for me, it perfectly sums up the issues we're discussing.
We've reached the point where if there's a risk of something happening, no matter the probability neither the magnitude, something must be done. Even if the solution is totally destructive, inappropriate for the problem, etc. Or even worse, deciding when the problem does not yet exist. Or the technology is still in its early stages. Like AI. This is what you are proposing. This is what I criticize.
Slowing down or stopping everything because MAYBE it's the right thing to do, MAYBE something we don't like might happen. This comes at a cost, especially if you apply this principle to everything around you in small doses. It's poison for productivity and efficiency.
I don't know if you are for or against nuclear power. I am quite pro nuclear power. But everyone knows about the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) project, it is a failure in terms of costs and bureaucracy. China and South Korea are able to build reactors quickly and at low cost. The same EPR reactors built in China have low costs and short construction times (I am referring to the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant). The problem is exclusively European.
In the name of some ideology, we are destroying our productivity and efficency. Again. Why?
And I know very well that the answer is always the same. Safety. But it's just an excuse to sell you the services of yet another bureaucrat. There are very precise risk analyses that show nuclear reactors to be orders of magnitude safer than all other energy sources. So why this ideological obsession? Safety has nothing to do with it.
No one cares about risk analyses. Because the answer will always be “it's never enough.” But at what cost? Again, no one cares.
And thanks to this choices, in the name of safety, building reactors in Europe is difficult and expensive. But in the meantime, it is perfectly legitimate to build gas or coal-fired power plants.
No, it's discussed everywhere, at the EU and the local level. There has been plenty of action at various levels (like in France, under Macron first as minister of the economy and later president; and he's been decried and criticised a lot, but has also gotten a ton of reforms through).
> This sentence is fundamentally wrong, no one is dying. And for me, it perfectly sums up the issues we're discussing.
That's the point though. Literally the main thing the law does is that if the AI can make decision that can result in deaths, there should be a human escalation and its decision making should be explainable. That's it. If that's too much burden, something is wrong.
> Or even worse, deciding when the problem does not yet exist. Or the technology is still in its early stages. Like AI
But the problem already exists, again, cf. United Healthcare Group in the US. We know they're killing people and hiding behind a well known faulty "AI". We don't want that shit in the EU.
> I don't know if you are for or against nuclear power. I am quite pro nuclear power. But everyone knows about the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) project, it is a failure in terms of costs and bureaucracy
If you're pro nuclear, you should know what the real problems with EPR are. The main are failures at EDF with the quality of their work, due to lack of qualified personnel, like welders. This has been well documented for Flamanville and Hinkley Point, and EDF has even written extensively about all the lessons learned from those disasters that have been incorporated. They even flat out say that Flamanville has allowed them to build industrial capacity and human know how to be able to build the next ones.
Do you have anything to back your claim that somehow bureaucracy is to blame? EDF are a state owned company, but I'm pretty sure that the British wouldn't stop yapping around if EDF were bungling Hinkley Point because of French/EU bureaucracy. There should be at least as much material on it as there are about the quality control issues, right?
> The same EPR reactors built in China have low costs and short construction times (I am referring to the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant). The problem is exclusively European.
Yes, because we stopped building reactors for decades, and nobody is around that knows the intricacies of that. Hence the investment in EPR, to improve on the failures at Flamanville, Hinkley Point, Olkiluoto, and be able to reliably deliver EPR reactors with predictable costs.
I don't even think this is a problem of competition (although more is welcome).
This is just Visa+Mastercard abusing their market position and the EU should come down on them like a ton of bricks.
Incur heavy fines or break them up if necessary.
Go to Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Taiwan and see that there are 20-30 payment systems at every convenience store, electronics store, grocery store, etc... Then go to the US where there's effectively 2. The government claims this is because Visa and Mastercard have prevented competition.
I disagree. The need for regulation in this case stems from a lack of competition.
Regulations are empirical decisions, based on a very limited amount of data, whose implications can be endless. Regulations are a shortcut capable of poisoning the market and competition. Just look at what's been done with energy, automobiles, AI, GDPR, etc. Bureaucrats are not gods; they often make mistakes and don't predict the future. Regulations should be the last resort.
Furthermore, we're talking about a US monopoly here. The goal would be to grab a share of the pie through honest competition, not to enstablish golden collars.
Regulation should facilitate competition, not legitimize the status quo.
Your comments are coming across as lacking nuance ("nuclear is the worst possible...", for example).
Nuclear has a place depending on how you weigh specific factors in your grid design. It's zero carbon. It's hideously expensive, particularly in capex. It's generally quite reliable and its availability is mostly uncorrelated with that of solar and wind. it's modestly dispatchable - you can scale down to 60% or so in many designs. (A little lower but let's be conservative).
If you place high weight on zero carbon, nuclear is an (expensive) way to get through the night. It can work pretty well in a grid mix if your grid is large enough that the loss of one nuclear plant isn't a really big chunk of your power supply (since, obviously, you want enough redundancy to handle a certain fraction of generation failures at peak load).
Are solar+wind+batteries on a much better trajectory? Yes. But batteries are not there _yet_ for 24x7, though I think we all hope they will be in the reasonably near future.
He does not care about these arguments, what matters is that there is no room for nuclear power.
In a past discussion I talked to him about how one of the important things to do was to diversify, as China has a lot of influence on the whole renewable sector (solar, batteries, etc.)
Needless to say, that's not a problem for him. For him to hope that batteries are the future is already a sure thing, without the slightest doubt.
> Hideously expensive and any plant announced today will not be online in time to have any material effect on our fight against climate change
False, we have 26 years to decarbonize, all the time it takes to build any number of nuclear power plants in any country in the world.
> Which means funding diverted from renewables to nuclear will prolong our fight against climate change.
We can say the same thing about renewables. Then come and tell me you are not ideological... Where is the mathematical certainty that batteries at scale will be available everywhere and for everyone by 2050? If you come from the future, prove it to me and I will agree with you.
About 20 years from being announced. Compare with renewables taking 1-5 years depending on if it is solar or offshore wind.
Say 5 years for renewables.
This means that investing in nuclear will have 15 years of cumulative emissions before anything is curbed.
Meaning, even if the renewable options ends up solving only 80% of the problem it will take until somewhere 2080-90 for the “perfect” nuclear solution to have less cumulative emissions.
Even if renewables are completely unable to solve the entire problem we can invest in them and then in 2060 and still be ahead of nuclear power, and then choose it as the final solution.
Today it is simply lunacy proposed by the fossil fuel industry or people looking for the perfect solution rather than piecemeal solving the issue.
These are lies you tell yourself and how you want people to see you. In a past discussion, you concluded by saying that those who support nuclear energy also support fossil fuels.
These are your ideological premises; you don't care about creating a better world, nor are you interested in facts and problems. You only care about your vision of things and making it prevail over others.
There's no need to know anything else to make any of your comments irrelevant. It's no coincidence that you are in every nuclear discussion, asserting how much you are against it.
Given how the rightwing conservative politics have shifted from pure climate change denial to harping nuclear as the non-solution to prolong our reliance on fossil fuels the link is clear.
Nuclear power derives its energy from the binding energy of ultra-heavy atomic nuclei, not fossil fuels. This energy can then be used to power electric cars, avoiding fossil fuel consumption. Furthermore, unlike wind and solar energy, nuclear power generation is not tied to the vagaries of weather, meaning that it doesn’t require burning millions of cubic meters of natural gas every overcast, calm day. For this reason, Russia historically was the largest single benefactor of Germany’s green euphoria: it prolongs fossil fuel reliance.
So often, emotional thinking leads to conclusions that are opposed to reality. You really have to watch out for it, if you want good results.
The damage caused by these regulators and media terrorism is far greater than the benefits.
As another user wrote, a few meltdowns would have been much better than the total freeze of plant construction and its price increase.
This is one of those cases where fear blinds people to not accept reality.
First, we need to define what "safe" means. And a safety threshold that is a fair trade-off between public acceptance and the industrial feasibility of the sector.
One might think, sure, increasing safety is always necessary. But we must accept the fact that zero risk does not exist in any technology and will never be completely eliminated in any way. And we already accept the risks of dams and renewables, so it means that a threshold of what is accepted as safe exists, and we can define it.
It seems universally accepted that renewables are "safe." So why not take the deaths per GWh produced and use this value to define a nuclear power plant as safe?
On page 175 (chapter 3.5) of this report compiled by the European Union research center, it shows how third-generation EPRs (modern european reactors) are already several orders of magnitude safer than renewables, per GWh produced. Demonstrating how they are infinitely safer than any other energy source.
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC1...
Therefore, if we decide to define renewables as safe, we can deduce that modern nuclear power plants are very safe. Yet why is this not perceived?
Obviously, the answer is very simple, the death from installing a panel is an isolated case often limited to a single individual, and often does not make the news. Nuclear, however, even if it causes one death (like Fukushima), is discussed for decades. Besides, the dangers related to the dispersal of radioactive material often cause even more fear than the deaths from the plants themselves, despite rarely having caused tangible damage.
With this said, it's important to note that this fear does not find reflection in the numbers, which remain the reading closest to the reality of the facts.
Finally, from my point of view, even if nuclear were less safe than this, it would still help fight climate change, which should lead to millions of millions of deaths, if not billions. It would be a very logical intellectual step to accept the risks even of a less safe nuclear (and cheaper), because the long-term benefits would definitely be beneficial.
> Even their "target" for 2035 is 20% less nuclear than today.
I highly doubt it, French reactors have an average of 40 years of operation, and it is very credible to think it will be extended to 60 years, and I would aim for 80+.
That said, flamanville will go into operation this year and 6 reactors will be built, where each of these reactors realistically will have the power of 1.5 current reactor.
French nuclear power will generate the vast majority of French energy in the future as well, sorry to see you annoyed by that.
Probably a French mistake was to have invested everything in nuclear, not being able to vary easily with peaks. I expect the nuclear share to drop at 50-60 percent in the future to cover the rest with renewables.
But this possible scenario says little about your defeatism and pessimism toward nuclear power, but rather it's a pragmatic approach to the subject.
Regarding Hinkley Point, always the same thing, how boring. I'd like to point out, that the second reactor at Hinkley Point is begin build at a rate 20-30% faster than the first. I expect further efficiencies with the EPR2s.
I'm quoting the French governments target of 50% nuclear, down from about 70% today.
You yourself say:
> I expect the nuclear share to drop at 50-60 percent in the future to cover the rest with renewables.
So what bit are you actually disputing or disagreeing with?
The 6 reactors you mention are I assume the ones with a vague uncosted plan due for first delivery of electricity in 2035-40 (if they meet their timetable!)
> I'd like to point out, that the second reactor at Hinkley Point is begin build at a rate 20-30% faster than the first.
20-30% faster than a project that is (currently!) 50% over time estimated and the most recent delay was announced only months ago.
So they're slower than their promised delivery times even after building several and they celebrate that as a success in their press releases to distract from all the bad news.
> There seems to be little that can be done to fight the onslaught of bullshit that these evil (yep, evil) bastards use to corrupt discourse worldwide. Other than doing something that will send you to jail. It might be time to do just that.
I have never read a more fascist comment than this one on this site, congratulations on reaching such a low point.
I imagine you consider yourself a democrat, right?
In the context of this Australian source it's political and this particular article is casting shade on nuclear in China for local Australian reasons.
China still has plans for some 100 nuclear reactors (IIRC) with 10 or 15 under construction right now (again, ballpark as I recall) and a still standing long term goal of nuclear at 18% maybe 20% of total generation.
China already has nuclear reactors, has generations of skilled nuclear reactor technicians and a new generation in the pipeline being trained. It's also a large economy.
Australia is a great deal smaller in both population and wealth and utterly lacks any significant skill set in nuclear power generation and engineering, a handful of Australian nuclear scientists aside.
Of the two dominant Australian political parties one essentially denies AGW (climate change) is an issue and seek to do as little as possible, to this end they have proposed their "climate solution" as Nuclear!! (but much later than now, and only a few power stations, and we don't really have an actual plan like a blueprint or time table or permissions from proposed site owners, etc).
This isn't a nuclear plan, it's a plan to build more coal power station "in the meantime" and hope that one day it'll be economical in Australia to buy some "off the shelf" set and forget SMR magical thinking nuclear tech.
As a matter of pragmatic action, in the immediate short term, in an Austraian context, it makes better economic sense to put money now into rapid expansion of renewables and storage - there's even a solid government scientific body report on that.
This isn't a "let's hate nuclear" position, more a "what's the most economically feasible solution in Australia as it stands now" position.
The downplaying of China's nuclear portion of future planning here is entirely based (by my best guess) on not wanting to be seen to say "Hey, it's working in China" to an Australian readership.
It is working in China, but that has no real bearing on nuclear being a good fit in Australia at the present time.
> Australia is a great deal smaller in both population and wealth and utterly lacks any significant skill set in nuclear power generation and engineering, a handful of Australian nuclear scientists aside.
And so wouldn't it be better to put a patch on these lacks? China also had no nuclear competence, now it speaks for itself. Same stuff for the automobile market.
These shortcomings are not a problem, but an opportunity to build an industry. Otherwise with the same mentality there would be no progress.
> This isn't a nuclear plan, it's a plan to build more coal power station "in the meantime" and hope that one day it'll be economical in Australia to buy some "off the shelf" set and forget SMR magical thinking nuclear tech.
Which is equivalent to thinking you can install solar, wind and batteries all in one day. Germany has been investing for decades, hoping to remove coal-fired power plants. But so far, it hasn't succeeded.
At least, with nuclear power, you know that once you build the plant, you're sure you're going to have that energy, for now it's whishful think the rest.
> As a matter of pragmatic action, in the immediate short term, in an Austraian context, it makes better economic sense to put money now into rapid expansion of renewables and storage
And why wouldn't it be possible to do both? The most pragmatic solution would be to diversify.
> And so wouldn't it be better to put a patch on these lacks? China also had no nuclear competence, now it speaks for itself.
What's the pyramid of needs to support a sufficient number of nuclear engineers and how long is the lead up time?
China started during the Cold War and has a population and wealth of a billion+ people to draw on, Australia has considerably less.
> Which is equivalent to thinking you can install solar, wind and batteries all in one day.
We can, do, and already have been installing solar and solar batteries in Australia since the 1970s. Today we have massive solar farms going in and city scale battery parks in Adelaide, etc.
Check technical history .. nuclear power plants take a little longer and there are none at present in Australia (the existing facility is a research reactor, different kettle of neutrons).
> And why wouldn't it be possible to do both?
Australia has finite resources to invest in energy solutions, what we invest now gives better returns if put into renewables and we have a commitment to reduce emissions by 2050 that's based on a real problem.
Money we put towards nuclear delivers no power at all for decades and what would eventually result (given what we can afford) is less than we require (shortfall) and still requires money to be put to coal power now to carry us over until the time of not enough nuclear.
Have you read the CSIRO report on Australia's energy options?
In an address to the World Bank Group Executive Board, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi criticized the disproportionate financial support for fossil fuels over nuclear energy by multilateral development banks. He emphasized the need for increased funding for nuclear projects to achieve global decarbonization, aligning with COP28 commitments to triple nuclear capacity by 2050. Grossi highlighted the IAEA's readiness to support countries, particularly in the developing world, in integrating nuclear power to meet climate goals.
This is not an argument. Good investment in any sector requires diversification.
The IPCC 1.5°C report published late in 2018 presents 89 mitigation scenarios in which nuclear generation grows on average 2.5 times from today’s level by 2050.
Besides the fact that no one predicts how much more renewables can scale, where prices will go, and whether they will be enough. All it takes is one war or a few more tariffs with China to screw up renewable-only decarbonization.
That's why it's important to diversify and not assume anything. If a source is green, it must be used.
Then it's curious how all the anti-nuclear people I argue with are from Germany. You have chosen your own path, don't come and impose your ideologies on others :)
As long as it’s your fiat, spend it however you want. Don’t come to the public coffers for a boondoggle though. We are rapidly approaching 1TW/year deployment rates of solar, and every time manufacturing capacity doubles, cost drops 20%.
You could replace all of the world's nuclear generation capacity (~370GW) with battery firmed solar in less time than it will take to build a single nuclear reactor (~10 years from shovels in the dirt to first kwh to the grid). Components in both the solar and batteries are mostly human safe compared to fission, and can be recycled using existing processes today. Australia, for example, has 10,000x the solar potential of its current electrical usage.
But I digress; I assume nuclear proponents will continue to beat the drum until the last nuclear generator is sunset. Solar is the ultimate democratization of energy, and we don't need PR puff pieces; we need the solar manufacturing and deployment flywheel to keep spinning up. Enough sunlight falls on the Earth in under an hour to power humanity for a year.
Diversity in energy sources is a good point but not strictly an argumemt for nuclear power.
You claim some hypothetical event with china to cross the plans of global low tech solar/wind energy but ignore the impact on constructions of nuclear power plants, which, as previous comment noted, take much longer to build.
> If a source is green, it must be used.
"Green" is a perfect propaganda pitch btw. The actual problems we try to solve are energy source and waste products. Nuclear energy looses on both aspects, which is why its much more expensive (also including risk/complexity).
IMO nuclear power became just another alternative narrative, like ivermectin, because right wingers cant deny covid or climate change anymore and cant bow to the other side.
You have weak arguments against renewable energy and none for nuclear yet you smell propaganda and ideology and dismiss a well sourced comment.
I am using your own arguments against you.
> Besides the fact that no one predicts how much more renewables[/nuclear] can scale [or last], where prices will go, and whether they will be enough. All it takes is one war or a few more tariffs with China to screw up renewable[/nuclear]-only decarbonization.
> You claim some hypothetical event with china to cross the plans of global low tech solar/wind energy but ignore the impact on constructions of nuclear power plants, which, as previous comment noted, take much longer to build.
Why should I respond to someone who proposes to build renewable in parallel, while omitting in the same sentence the possibility of building multiple reactors in parallel?
It's a rhetorical game that says enough about the user's goals. I do not intend to stoop to such a level.
> You claim some hypothetical event with china to cross the plans of global low tech solar/wind energy but ignore the impact on constructions of nuclear power plants.
I am not ignoring anything, I repeat, going only renewable implies not diversifying.
That a geopolitical problem could destroy decarbonization goals is a real risk. Or do you want to deny China's total monopoly in the industry?
No energy source is perfect, including nuclear and solar, so stop adding arguments just to overshadow the problems we're talking about.
> "Green" is a perfect propaganda pitch btw.
Well, we can define and use the word that you prefer.
By green I mean a technology whose emissions are low enough to help in decarbonization. Is it better?
Decarbonization is the main issue here.
> The actual problems we try to solve are energy source and waste products. Nuclear energy looses on both aspects, which is why its much more expensive (also including risk/complexity).
As I wrote earlier, the main problem is decarbonization. Secondary problems exist in any kind of energy source.
That the IPCC predicts nuclear growth in most scenarios is quite indicative of its relevance to decarbonization.
So nuclear power is important for decarbonization. And it has been shown over the decades to be a viable option for providing electricity with low emissions. Do you deny this?
Once we accept that, we can discuss how slow and expensive it is, but before then I don't see it possible to engage in an intellectually honest discourse :)
Well, technologically, maybe, but not in terms of location. Previous commenter called it "democratized".
> do you want to deny China's total monopoly in the industry?
No, but that could change. As china did, we can orient towards an electrical future too and there are generator designs without rare earth elements. So chinese dominance is not a given.
> By green I mean a technology whose emissions are low enough to help in decarbonization. Is it better?
I prefer the term "sustainable" and by framing it with energy sources and waste products i am giving you the higher order problem at hand.
> Decarbonization is the main issue
I disagree because my scope is broader. I agree with your statement that NE is "cleaner" than fossil based power plants for now, because as with carbon, its just a matter of scale too.
In an inverted scenario where nuclear waste is the main concern, i could, like you, argue in favor of fossil power.
The path ahead is quite clear, our focus should heavily be on renewables and only tolerate finite energy source as temporary in our transition strategy ... which is something you would deny, i guess.
> No, but that could change. As china did, we can orient towards an electrical future too and there are generator designs without rare earth elements. So chinese dominance is not a given.
True. But looking at the problems we are experiencing in the silicon world, a transition could bring a generalized crisis and quite a long time to return to "current" production levels. We're already struggling now with decarbonization, and China's is just one possible problem that we can't afford on the roadmap. So the priority should be to diversify to minimize these problems
> I prefer the term "sustainable" and by framing it with energy sources and waste products i am giving you the higher order problem at hand.
That's fine, but "sustainable" is a very subjective term. What is the threshold of sustainable? And I bet we have different views and different priorities.
> I disagree because my scope is broader. I agree with your statement that NE is "cleaner" than fossil based power plants for now, because as with carbon, its just a matter of scale too. In an inverted scenario where nuclear waste is the main concern, i could, like you, argue in favor of fossil power.
But somehow it seems contradictory to me in some places.
The materials and rare earths from which panels, wind blades and batteries are made are finite. Recyclable, but finished.
Uranium is recyclable from spent fuel, and renewable from the sea.
Then in addition to uranium other types of elements can be used such as fuel, Thorium, Plutonium, etc. (CANDU reactors for example can go with Thorium)
Also this basic argument seems a bit lacking to me, all these energy sources have a finite life, a panel a few decades, a power plant 60-80 years. When new more efficient ways to generate clean energy are discovered they will be used and replaced, we have this now, and it would be better to use them.
Plus, regarding the term "sustainable," and its subjectivity, I find it a priority to minimize the materials required. Because having billions of tons of waste to recycle, it's much harder to control, do it effectively, and in a sustainable way in every corner of the earth.
So I much prefer very small amounts of hazardous material (highly controlled and localized) over endless amounts of inorganic material everywhere.
Plastic, even for noble uses, has already demonstrated the worst of man's carelessness. So nice democratization, but one must also recognize its problems and limitations.
Regarding the word "democratization," however, I see a lot of propaganda in it. Whenever it's used it almost seems like people are naming a divine entity. And all kinds of issues, accountability, feasibility, etc. are omitted. And conversely, any kind of "centrality," is intrensically a problem. I really have a hard time seeing past something of the rhetoric of the "mighty and evil."
Isn't climate change supposed to cause more extreme weather? Seeing how renewables are very much reliant on weather conditions it seems best to diversify and have a clean energy source that won't be negatively impacted from the extremes.
I guess it depends on what you mean by impacted. Wind and solar are dependent on the wind and sunshine for producing something. But nuclear is highly dependent on steady supply of cooling water to function, and the failure case for extreme events (for example a large wave hitting Japan) is much worse.
Wind relies on wind and can be damaged with increased tornadoes and hurricanes and other storms. They also have to have their blades locked into place during strong enough winds.
Solar requires sunlight so increased storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, hail, etc can damage them and cause them to be less effective.
Hydro requires water so increased draughts will cause them to be less effective.
Nuclear requires cooling water which can be harder to deal with.
My point is that if you are expecting extreme weather it is best to diversify. I am not saying that nuclear will be immune to everything, only that it provides an alternative which we shouldn't ignore.
The possibility of failure should be contextualized with data. Gen 3 reactors are statistically orders of magnitude safer than any other power source, per GWh produced. Demonstrating how they are extremely safer than any other energy source.
> (for example a large wave hitting Japan) is much worse.
Mmh, like the 0-1 victims of Fukushima?
Nuclear power plants, just with Fukushima have demonstrated their tremendous reliability. We're talking about a 60-year-old reactor, which in the face of extreme conditions managed to minimize any kind of harm to humans.
Renewables aren’t a silver bullet they are made out to be. They are particularly bad for grid stability something that goes unmentioned in discussions.
Nuclear excels at that, both are needed. But pound for pound nuclear is just a better resource on most counts: land use area, energy density, stable generation and cost too if you factor in all the storage and power filters[1] that renewable needs.
Nuclear waste is a manageable problem if not for the fear mongering.
120bn EUR would be more than Germany spends on electricity generation in total (considering that Germany generates a bit less than 600bn kwh p.a. in electricity and wholesale electricity prices were €95.18/MWh in 2023)
"A 2020 report by IRENA9 tracked some $634 billion in energy-sector subsidies in 2020, and found that around 70% went to fossil fuels. Only 20% went to renewable power generation, 6% to biofuels and just over 3% to nuclear. “This overwhelming imbalance of subsidies between fossil fuels and clean energy is a drag on us achieving the Paris climate goals,” says Taylor, who wrote the report. The balance of these numbers varies from year to year, because fossil-fuel subsidies swing around depending largely on the price of oil, he adds."
Honestly, I'm really critical towards EU, but this is one of the few things that EU does well. When the market is stagnating, it's better than nothing to propose an alternative or some kind of benefits in order to change the market a bit. Like the Roaming in EU.
Regarding the rest, the EU is mining competition with the obsession of regulating everything.