The EU declares gas and nuclear energy "green"

Started by Jacob, February 02, 2022, 12:20:41 PM

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Habbaku

Quote from: Jacob on February 02, 2022, 01:54:02 PM
Quote from: Tamas on February 02, 2022, 01:28:55 PM
The way I see it if a politician is not trying to force nuclear power down the throats of the ignorant masses, they are not serious about fighting climate change. I don't think we have any other possible short term (in civilisational terms) solution that doesn't involve killing 6 billion people and going back to pre-industrial times. Which I know are the dreams of many European greens, but they should be ignored.

As per my other thread, depopulation looks like it's coming anyhow.

:yes:

We have many challenges, but foremost amongst them is climate change, de-carbonizing, and figuring out how we keep our societies functioning amidst an extreme amount of greying in some countries. Our (meaning, broadly, "The West") welfare systems simply aren't set up to easily fund the explosion in elderly population.
The medievals were only too right in taking nolo episcopari as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop. Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers.

Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people.

-J. R. R. Tolkien

HVC

Quote from: Jacob on February 02, 2022, 01:54:02 PM
Quote from: Tamas on February 02, 2022, 01:28:55 PM
The way I see it if a politician is not trying to force nuclear power down the throats of the ignorant masses, they are not serious about fighting climate change. I don't think we have any other possible short term (in civilisational terms) solution that doesn't involve killing 6 billion people and going back to pre-industrial times. Which I know are the dreams of many European greens, but they should be ignored.

As per my other thread, depopulation looks like it's coming anyhow.

You think the pillow fights are going to get that out of hand? :o
Being lazy is bad; unless you still get what you want, then it's called "patience".
Hubris must be punished. Severely.

Jacob

Quote from: Habbaku on February 02, 2022, 01:58:02 PM
:yes:

We have many challenges, but foremost amongst them is climate change, de-carbonizing, and figuring out how we keep our societies functioning amidst an extreme amount of greying in some countries. Our (meaning, broadly, "The West") welfare systems simply aren't set up to easily fund the explosion in elderly population.

It's not just us in the West. China and India will have similar issues, I think.

According to the modelling I posted in the other thread, the only regions that will have higher populations in 2100 compared to 2017 are Africa (North & Sub-Saharan) and the Middle East.

Jacob

Quote from: HVC on February 02, 2022, 01:58:04 PM
You think the pillow fights are going to get that out of hand? :o

Yes, obviously. People will be too busy practicing their pillow fights and forget to have sex! The implications are devastating :ph34r:

There's also this modelling of population growth that suggests we'll reach peak populations mid this century, with 23 countries seeing their populations shrink by 50+% by 2100: http://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,16509.0.html

The Larch

Just read the original article and it provides a pretty good context for the issue. Take a look at it if you can as I feel that it can frame the debate in much more realistic terms.

Jacob

Quote from: The Larch on February 02, 2022, 02:21:47 PM
Just read the original article and it provides a pretty good context for the issue. Take a look at it if you can as I feel that it can frame the debate in much more realistic terms.

Yeah definitely.

QuoteIn a proposal presented this Wednesday, the EU Commission stated that certain strings remained attached. For example, gas plants could only be considered green if the facility switched to low-carbon or renewable gases, such as biomass or hydrogen produced with renewable energy, by 2035.

Nuclear power plants would be deemed green if the sites can manage to safely dispose of radioactive waste. So far, worldwide, no permanent disposal site, has gone into operation though.

... seems pretty reasonable to me, to be honest.

Sheilbh

That makes me a bit more concerned actually at least on reading.

You can invest in burning gas for the next 15 years but nuclear is on condition of a type of disposal that, practically speaking, doesn't exist yet.
Let's bomb Russia!

Josquius

This sounds detrimental to building acceptance of nuclear, tying it to gas so stupidly
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Jacob

Well to be fair, hydrogen and biomass gas are pretty decent I think?

Sheilbh

Quote from: Jacob on February 02, 2022, 02:40:22 PM
Well to be fair, hydrogen and biomass gas are pretty decent I think?
Sure my point might just be how I read that to be honest. But I read those two paragraphs together as conditions and it doesn't seem to me to be the same thing. One is you can invest in gas and in 15 years time you need to transition. Similarly you can invest in nuclear but need to be able to dispose of the waste - in a way that currently doesn't operationally exist. That feels like gas is a far, far more plausible investment - and I'm not sure that's the right decision given that it's still reliant on extracting and burning fossil fuels.

It's a bit like hydrogen and capturing carbon from the atmosphere - I think they're really good and we absolutely need to invest in them - but from my understanding the technology isn't there for it to be used at scale to the extent countries are planning to rely on it. Which means at this point the key still needs to be reducing carbon consumption and fossil fuel usage.

But I think renewables has moved faster than anyone imagined technologically so I'm optimistic if we put the money into it.
Let's bomb Russia!

Jacob


grumbler

Quote from: Jacob on February 02, 2022, 12:53:51 PM
Quote from: Threviel on February 02, 2022, 12:37:28 PM
Braine can expand on this, but nuclear waste is not necessarily a problem. Swedish waste can be fed into a new generation reactor and there's enough energy in them for a few hundred years and then there's a lot of less dangerous waste.

That's excellent - and I didn't realize. That makes the pro-nuclear power proposition even stronger, IMO.

Reprocessing is very expensive (I seem to recall that the best estimates were that a kWh produced by reprocessing was twice the cost of one produced by single-use uranium, including the extraction and disposal costs).  The French do a lot of reprocessing, though, so it may be that it can be cost-effective in a very efficient nuclear power program such as the one the French have.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

The Brain

Quote from: Threviel on February 02, 2022, 12:37:28 PM
Braine can expand on this, but nuclear waste is not necessarily a problem. Swedish waste can be fed into a new generation reactor and there's enough energy in them for a few hundred years and then there's a lot of less dangerous waste.

Even if you just do one-use of uranium, one of the advantages of nuclear power is that it produces very little waste, and the waste is easily stored and contained. From an environmental or safety perspective there is no waste problem with nuclear power. The final deposit for spent nuclear fuel using the method of Sweden and Finland is much safer than a rational risk assessment would result in. The design requirements were drawn up by people on the intellectual level of a child, and are much stricter than necessary. Among other things they don't account for the difference between risks now and risks a thousand or ten thousands years from now.

If, which is unlikely, a leak would apppear after some thousands of years, the result would be higher levels of radioactivity in the local groundwater. There is no known mechanism by which the waste would explode and significantly contaminate an area. There is no risk of an environmental disaster.

The timescale of 100,000 years is MUCH shorter than many other final deposits, for instance for mercury, which "has to"* be safe on a timescale of a billion years or more (mercury doesn't decay).

*The same way spent nuclear fuel "has to" be safe for 100,000 years.

Reprocessing is always an option, but in addition to economical aspects it does mean accepting extra risks today in an effort to reduce risks 1,000 years from now. From a rational perspective this is often unsound for risks that don't scale with society.
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

Malthus

The main problem with nuclear has always been financial risk, and dealing with regulatory hurdles. Building gigantic infrastructure projects means that you have to guess correctly about the cost and supply needs of electricity for years into the future, which is very risky.

The new generation of small modular reactors looks to ameliorate some of the financial risk problems, by allowing smaller increments.

The waste issue has always been very overblown. The real problem there is that NIMBYism is taken to truly absurd extremes when it comes to nuclear waste ...
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

Zanza

#29
Quote from: Sheilbh on February 02, 2022, 12:51:35 PM
My understanding is this is relevant for what private sector investors can class as green for what qualifies as "ESG" so it will have a big impact on what the fund and asset managers sitting on trillions of dollars of wealth (like all the big pension funds) invest in. My view is there is a far stronger case for allowing investment in nuclear than new fossil fuels production or use.
Is there actually private sector investment into nuclear power anywhere? Most nuclear power plants seem to be direct state investment (see EdF) or heavily subsidized by the state (e.g. socializing insurance for nuclear power plants, fixed pricing for produced electricity above market rates).