Why are green politicians opposed to clean nuclear energy?

[Tamas]

Biomass. Please don't mention that. Burning trees is not renewable energy.

[Valmy]

Well it's hardly crippling.  Germany's got one of the best economies in the world.

I see you ignored my qualifier.

I DO care about the environment and I am a huge proponent of finding clean renewables.  But Germany is not a good example for people to follow because they have poured TONS of money into this project for decades.  And thank goodness there is no way we would have advanced as far as we have in renewables without the Germans.  But they have the money and will to do it.  Most countries do not.

Also supposedly when countries start trying to get renewables going with incentives they have an annoying tendency to produce tons of innefficient boondoggles designed to take advantage of the incentives and not make energy...China and Spain are usually trotted out as examples of these.  That seems to not have been a big problem in Germany but I am not clear on the details.

[Barrister]

Biomass. Please don't mention that. Burning trees is not renewable energy.

Sure it is.  I recognize that Europe cut down all their forests centuries ago, but those of us in better forested parts of the world it's an option.

I knew several people in Yukon who heat their homes using wood.  It probably makes more sense to use wood than the fuel oil we used which was shipped from 1000s of kms away.

[The Larch]

Well it's hardly crippling.  Germany's got one of the best economies in the world.

I see you ignored my qualifier.

I DO care about the environment and I am a huge proponent of finding clean renewables.  But Germany is not a good example for people to follow because they have poured TONS of money into this project for decades.  And thank goodness there is no way we would have advanced as far as we have in renewables without the Germans.  But they have the money and will to do it.  Most countries do not.

Also supposedly when countries start trying to get renewables going with incentives they have an annoying tendency to produce tons of innefficient boondoggles designed to take advantage of the incentives and not make energy...China and Spain are usually trotted out as examples of these.  That seems to not have been a big problem in Germany but I am not clear on the details.

The thing is that there's not a single magical recipe on how to make a proper and balanced energy mix. Each country and region, depending on their conditions (resource availability, geography, population dispersion, etc), has to find the best fit amongst the different kinds of energy sources. Not every country has the same potential for, for instance, hydroelectrical power. AFAIK I think it was Sweden that got something like half their total energy from hydro, but of course this is not available to other countries who don't have the geography to support that kind of energy. For instance France's huge investment in nuclear comes from the 70s, when it was decided, for geostrategic reasons after the oil crisis, to be as self-reliant as possible from domestic energy sources.

[Tamas]

Biomass. Please don't mention that. Burning trees is not renewable energy.

Sure it is.  I recognize that Europe cut down all their forests centuries ago, but those of us in better forested parts of the world it's an option.

I knew several people in Yukon who heat their homes using wood.  It probably makes more sense to use wood than the fuel oil we used which was shipped from 1000s of kms away.

yes. we also heat the house using wood during winter.

But if you took a more sizeable part of the population and put them to fuel their homes, and keep their stuff with electricity via burning wood, a lot of forests would go away quickly.

[Iormlund]

Yeah, it's not really relevant outside sparsely populated places like Canada. It's like saying we should all be using hydroelectric because works wonders in Norway.

[Faeelin]

I DO care about the environment and I am a huge proponent of finding clean renewables.  But Germany is not a good example for people to follow because they have poured TONS of money into this project for decades.  And thank goodness there is no way we would have advanced as far as we have in renewables without the Germans.  But they have the money and will to do it.  Most countries do not.

I don't get why you're presuming that renewables are worse in terms of energy production; solar is rapidly approaching parity with fossil fuels, for instance. Meanwhile, China alone spent $52 billion on renewable energy last year; and India was one of the top five investors in it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/renewable-energy-sees-record-investment-in-2011-but-solar-price-drop-hurts-manufacturers/2012/06/11/gJQAVwzZUV_story.html.

I also don't get what "tons of money into this project for decades" means here. You don't think the US has spent tons of money on its grid?

[Iormlund]

It's not hard to 'rapidly approach parity' with something that's an order of magnitude cheaper.

[Valmy]

I don't get why you're presuming that renewables are worse in terms of energy production; solar is rapidly approaching parity with fossil fuels, for instance. Meanwhile, China alone spent $52 billion on renewable energy last year; and India was one of the top five investors in it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/renewable-energy-sees-record-investment-in-2011-but-solar-price-drop-hurts-manufacturers/2012/06/11/gJQAVwzZUV_story.html.

I also don't get what "tons of money into this project for decades" means here. You don't think the US has spent tons of money on its grid?

They have been subsidizing solar panels for decades and they started at a time when the disparaty between them and fossil fuels was far greater than it was now.  In the past the government would practically buy the panels for the end user and it was still not really a great deal compared to fossil fuels.  And, as I said, thank goodness for the German taxpayers investing all that cash at it because solar generation has come a long way and there are many applications where it makes tons of sense to use them and especially now that they are dramatically cheaper.  And I am not sure what the point was bringing up the grid.  The grid is used by every sort of electricity that is not generated on site.

I am not sure what you mean by 'worse in terms of energy production'.  They produce electricity nobody is denying that.  And yes lots of energy hungry economies are looking at all sorts of methods at generating power.  So nobody can say renewables will not or have not been given a fair shake.

[grumbler]

Needs to be brought down?  Well no effort needs to be taken, human birthrates are quickly shrinking to replacement levels.  Why not just let nature take its course instead of calling for possibly violent means?

Because idiots like to troll? 

[Zanza]

Yeah, you can't.  Those are the plans anyway.  I believe there's only been two successful bids so far, because it's a long process you need the construction and the site operator/licensees for however many years and the decommissioning plans all in place.  But the UK is open to many redeveloped nuclear sites and different power companies are bidding to build new plants or redevelop old ones.  But right now the UK's quite big and attractive in the nuclear market.

But they're not building now, but they're going to build.

I just remembered that I read that EON and RWE from Germany cancelled their plans in Britain. Mainly because a nuclear plant is a very long-term investment and while it pays off over the lifetime of the reactor, the huge upfront cost may be too much for private investors. Might be different for a state-owned enterprise like EdF. Is anybody but EdF seriously thinking about building a new nuclear reactor in the UK?

[Zanza]

Gas is fairly expensive to use as baseload. It works great as backup, though.

You are right. I think it is mostly used for peaks because you can apparently start a gas powerplant within minutes.

[Zanza]

Biomass. Please don't mention that. Burning trees is not renewable energy.

I think biomass here is mostly the leftovers of trees that are cut down anyway and of course other agricultural waste.

Anyway, trees are very much a renewable resource when you have good forest management. Germany has had growing forests for about 200 years apparently. Most forests are owned by former nobility or communal authorities, both of which take a very long-term view to their management.

EDIT: And there is currently quite a bit of research into biomass, e.g. liquified biomass or growing algae.

[Zanza]

Germany will invest lots of money into windpower in the North Sea and the power lines to transport it to Southern Germany where the industry needs it. We will also need more stuff like pumped storage hydroelectrics to cope with fluctuations in renewable output.

[The Minsky Moment]

Few rational US companies are interested in building a nuclear power plants in the present day as opposed to gas.  This has nothing to do with environmentalists and everything to do with economics.  The US government's official policy IIRC is still to provide subsidies to nuclear power plant construction in the form of loan guarantees.

If the question is properly phrased as should nuclear as opposed to other forms of power receive preferential subsidization, then one does not need to be a "green politician" to take a negative view to the question.