HN Reader

I 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...

I 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.

France, 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)

I’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?

Nuclear 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.

You 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.

Ruling 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.

For 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

Nuclear power is clean but VERY EXPENSIVE.

Dispatble solar and wind are about 1/5 the price of new nuclear.

Funny 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.

Whatever. No one wants to invest into it anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

I 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?!

Article 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.

We 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.

Misleading title. The controversial part is that they ruled both nuclear energy AND natural gas plants as clean energy.

> 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.

The 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.

Finally, 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.

And 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.

Price 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.

The 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.

I personally believe that nuclear energy is clean energy

Why would a court decide this vs. an actual team of scientists?

Of course it is. Atomic energy is one of the cleanest energy sources we have. But not the cheapest.

$oklo $ura

I'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.

This 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-...

EU is not so bad at all, in fact, it's really cool.

All 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.

Russia 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.

well 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-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-als...

So 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.

It'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.

Clean, 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.

Oh 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.

Clean but not safe

Asking 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.

Whether 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

Clean, but not insurable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...

Phew, 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?

The fact that:

- the French won this

- the Germans won no chat control

Is the best of both worlds!

Does EU still buy fissile fuel from Russia?

> 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.

“EU court rules sky blue”

Well duh. Now we must wait and see what next feat of self-defeat Germany invents to prevent itself using it.

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Sudden outbreak of common sense.

Well, compared to carbon, it is.

Everything good Greenpeace may have ever done is probably overshadowed by the death and planetary destruction caused by their opposition to nuclear power.

It is. And that's great news!

This is the actual judgement: 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.

This is clean, until something goes catastrophically wrong.

(Which eventually it will. The more reactors, the more chances for it to happen.)

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Nuclear 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

Uranium mining isn't clean at all. Between Greenpeace (full of business school hacks) and lobby pressured EU courts, there's a middle ground.

Glad that the Russian funded Greens were finally defeated. In the end, the green party may have doomed us with this 50 year delay.