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Is Nuclear Energy Green Energy? 10 EU Countries Call On Brussels To Add It To the List (euronews.com) 386

"A group of ten EU countries, led by France, have asked the European Commission to recognize nuclear power as a low-carbon energy source that should be part of the bloc's decades-long transition towards climate neutrality," reports EuroNews. While greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear plants are "comparable" to those released by hydropower and wind, critics argue that the resulting radioactive waste is harmful to human health and the environment. "Despite the urgency to combat climate change, member states are still unable to reach a consensus on whether nuclear constitutes a green or dirty energy source," adds EuroNews. From the report: Tapping into Europe's ongoing energy crunch, the countries make the case for nuclear energy as a "key affordable, stable and independent energy source" that could protect EU consumers from being "exposed to the volatility of prices." The letter, which was initiated by France, has been sent to the Commission with the signature of nine other EU countries, most of which already count nuclear as part of their national energy mix: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania. Nuclear plants generate over 26% of the electricity produced in the European Union.
[...]
Despite the urgency to combat climate change, member states are still unable to reach a consensus on whether nuclear constitutes a green or dirty energy source. The Commission has postponed the crucial decision to let countries conclude the debate. On the one side, Germany, which plans to shut down all its reactors by 2022, is leading the anti-nuclear cause, together with Austria, Denmark, Luxembourg and Spain. "We are concerned that including nuclear power in the taxonomy would permanently damage its integrity, credibility and therefore its usefulness," they wrote in July.

On the other side, France, which obtains over 70% of its electricity from nuclear stations, is fighting to label nuclear as sustainable under the taxonomy. As shown by the new letter, Paris has the backing of several Eastern states, which have already earmarked millions for nuclear projects. "While renewable energy sources play a key role for our energy transition, they cannot produce enough low-carbon electricity to meet our needs, at a sufficient and a constant level," the letter says, describing nuclear power as a "safe and innovative" sector with the potential of sustaining one million high-qualified jobs "in the near future".

A report (PDF) from the Commission's research unit released earlier this year indicates Brussels could eventually side with the pro-nuclear team. The paper says greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear plants are "comparable" to those released by hydropower and wind, an assessment shared by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the United States Department of Energy. Critics, however, argue the resulting radioactive waste is harmful to human health and the environment. "Nuclear power is incredibly expensive, hazardous and slow to build," says Greenpeace. Detractors are concerned about potentially disastrous nuclear accidents, similar to those of Chernobyl in 1986 or Fukushima in 2011, which are still deeply rooted in the collective imagination.

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Is Nuclear Energy Green Energy? 10 EU Countries Call On Brussels To Add It To the List

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  • duh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ahodgson ( 74077 ) on Monday October 11, 2021 @09:11PM (#61882331)

    I mean, if you think CO2 is the worst thing ever, then yes nuclear is one obvious part of the solution.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by stooo ( 2202012 )

      Nope.
      Nuclear is just posing a huge delay for renewables, because politics :
      https://cleantechnica.com/2020... [cleantechnica.com]
      And it's also very bad for environment. Long term bad.

      • Irrelevent (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @06:45AM (#61883365)

        Even if the article you linked to had a valid point (which I don't think it does, given how few nuclear reacrtors were actually put into service compared with those planned) it simply doesn't matter.

        That is all living in the past, pointing fingers at what was. But none of that matters NOW compared to CO2 emission, that is the only number that matters to the environmental movement.

        It simply doesn't matter that there may be some amount of nuclear waste, because that is not CO2. What does matter is that keeping all existing power plants open emits no extra CO2 at all, for a tremendous amount of power generated that would otherwise mostly come from fossil fuels.

        If you don't keep every nuclear plant alive and plan to start building more now, here's what will happen - people will start to see more and more power failures or outright power rationing where they don't have power for days at a time (California and China are already there). They will blame the green movement and undercut all further CO2 reduction efforts. You really do not want an angry populace...

        Lastly on a side note nuclear waste is dangerous but also heavily localized to a small area, where the emissions from any fossil fuel plant are much more vast - and with coal plants, still contain some radioactivity.

        • As I understand it, if we'd just get rid of outdated laws and allow reprocessing of initial spent nuclear fuel, we'd be able to wring MUCH more energy out of each fuel rod/cell used and significantly reduce the amount of leftover nuclear waste.
      • Reliability (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @10:14AM (#61883949) Journal

        Nuclear is just posing a huge delay for renewables, because politics

        No, nuclear is a carbon-free way to provide reliable power so that on a calm night in a drought you still have power. Future battery technology may eventually allow renewables to become as reliable on the scale we need but we have nuclear technology now. So do we sit on our hands for a decade or more creating more CO2 with coal and gas power stations, hoping that battery technology will one day get better or do we build nuclear power stations now and avoid polluting while we wait?

  • YES (Score:5, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday October 11, 2021 @09:24PM (#61882367)

    It is greener than solar or even wind, that's for sure. All the pollution that solar panel creation consumes. And wind power, huge areas of land, wasted. Not to mention all the manufacturing pollution making all those turbines. Yes building a nuclear power plant causes pollution too but, per gigawatt generated, it is less polluting than solar or wind.

    • Except for the 96000 years of guarding mid level wastes that no one is paying for.
      • by Chas ( 5144 )

        Recycle waste.

        Run multiple formats of reactor to cook down stuff into far more short-lived substances.

        • Recycle waste

          There is very little profit from recycling spent fuel. It would need to be a heavily subsidized industry. So, go for it, but you'll need to have Congressional backing for very long (multi-President) spans in order to make that a reality. Something to keep in mind for that idea.

          • Yes, yes, because the technology is in its infancy, and for political reasons not being developed.

            Like all technology it will mature and improve when used and developed, and the profit will increase.

          • The waste problem already exists, and it's not going to go away by doing nothing. Some government money to research a profitable recycling system is a one time cost that can be paid back many times over with jobs and taxable income. The other option is the government keeps paying for storing it. So, either way this costs the government money. Put some of that money into research and at some point the money pit turns into a revenue source.

            Maybe we never find a profitable way to recycle this waste, even s

      • by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Monday October 11, 2021 @09:56PM (#61882445)

        Except for the 96000 years of guarding mid level wastes that no one is paying for.

        Modern reactor designs have lower level waste, time scales of a few hundred years, and they can consume your "96K year" waste as fuel.

      • What isotopes are we supposed to be guarding for 96000 years? You don't even know, do you? That's an oddly specific number, I'd like to know where it came from.

        • It is a reference to plutonium, which even though not used in nuclear power plants, is a favorite to scare people with since it makes them think about nuclear weapons. I remember seeing those numbers on anti-nuclear t-shirts in the 70's and thinking they were imbeciles

          per google:
          A half life is the number of years it takes for a radioactive substance to decay to half its original mass or weight. In 12,000 years, it has only had time to decay 12 of its 12 life. ... 96,000 years is equal to 96000 624000 =6 hal

          • > It is a reference to plutonium

            It's a reference to Technetium-99 [wikipedia.org] because it poses a severe environmental threat. Being radioactive is just shit icing on the shit cake.

            Everyone focuses on the radioactive part of nuclear waste, and conveniently forget that they are also chemically toxic as well. Indeed much of the problem with handling nuclear materials is how easily the stuff gets around.
            =Smidge=

            • It's a reference to Technetium-99 because it poses a severe environmental threat. Being radioactive is just shit icing on the shit cake.

              The half-life of Tc-99 is 211,100 years, how do people get 96000 years from that? The Pu-239 argument makes more sense. It makes more sense but is still not logical. Elements with that long of a half-life pose very little radiation hazard. Also, Pu-239 is not waste, it is fuel. Burying this and allowing it to decay away makes no sense. It is far too valuable as fuel to just toss in a hole and walk away from it.

              Everyone focuses on the radioactive part of nuclear waste, and conveniently forget that they are also chemically toxic as well. Indeed much of the problem with handling nuclear materials is how easily the stuff gets around.

              How easily it gets around? It's in a fuel rod, not an ash heap. I don't believe people "co

      • Except for the 96000 years of guarding mid level wastes that no one is paying for.

        After about 500 years, the waste is collectively no more radioactive than the ore from which it was mined.

        Also, newer MSRs can burn much of the "waste".

      • Re: YES (Score:3, Informative)

        Except, we know how to reduce the quantity by 95%+ and reduce the danger to 300 years.

        And, we don't actually have to actively guard it even 20 years. We just bury it half a mile deep into bedrock and fill it in. It would cost tens of millions of dollars, a year of time, and the best mining equipment and engineers on earth. Security just stops by every few months and looks for hundreds of workers and massive equipment

    • Citations badly needed. Or even some back-of-the-envelope math.

      Because everything you said sounds suspect at best, if not completely backwards at worst.

      • Citations badly needed.

        That's a great idea, how about you go find some for us?

        I'm seeing a trend on Slashdot. Anything that is supportive of wind or solar power must not be questioned. Anything that is supportive of nuclear fission power must have sources. When anything supportive of nuclear power has a source cited then the source is to be called biased, not trustworthy, or too out of date to be reflective of today. But a source that gives data on wind and solar power shall not be given. Only "do your own research" and "Goo

        • Re:YES (Score:5, Informative)

          by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday October 11, 2021 @11:13PM (#61882629)

          I do have references that nuclear is less polluting that solar or wind:
          Solar requires 15x more materials than nuclear: https://thumbor.forbes.com/thu... [forbes.com]

          Here's another source:
          https://www.iaea.org/sites/def... [iaea.org]
          https://pittnews.com/article/1... [pittnews.com]

          Here is an article with numerous sources: https://wattsupwiththat.com/20... [wattsupwiththat.com]

      • Citations badly needed. Or even some back-of-the-envelope math.

        Because everything you said sounds suspect at best, if not completely backwards at worst.

        Here's a link to some information on the high level reactor waste https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm... [nrc.gov]

      • OK. Here are some:
        Solar requires 15x more materials than nuclear: https://thumbor.forbes.com/thu... [forbes.com]

        Here's another:
        https://www.iaea.org/sites/def... [iaea.org]
        https://pittnews.com/article/1... [pittnews.com]

        Here is an article with numerous sources: https://wattsupwiththat.com/20... [wattsupwiththat.com]

  • by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Monday October 11, 2021 @09:32PM (#61882393)

    I don't love nuclear power, but we're in a crisis here and we can't afford not to use it. In the first place we probably can't bring enough wind and solar capacity online to replace fossil fuels - and if we can do it, we can't make it happen soon enough. In the second place, we'll probably need a lot more power once we stop living in denial and realize that massive carbon capture is the only thing that will save our sorry asses. Sufficiently fast, large-scale carbon capture will likely require much more energy than wind and solar alone can provide.

    • by Chas ( 5144 )

      I posit that you don't like BADLY RUN or "least cost" nuclear power.

      If people aren't fiddling with reactor experiments, and don't cheap out on the geoengineering, reactors have an excellent safety rating.
      What's more, modern reactor designs are even more safe than that.

      The reason the costs in nuclear are so high is the punitive regulatory environment that has been created.

      • I have long observed the peculiar double-think of many nuclear power enthusiasts who boast about its safety while denouncing the safety standards that make it so.

        • Regulations are not the cause of the cost. Hysterical litigation and the risk of that litigation by nuke haters who oppose nuclear at any cost that drag the construction start out for decades drive up the cost. We need to follow the navy model and develop standard designs that can be built almost anywhere, permit them once, and bulldoze the litigation into the junkyard where it belongs.

          • Can we bulldoze the protesters that cost us money and lives for the last 50 years of holding up nuclear power into the junk heap too?

          • Therefore I propose we built nuclear power plant as a ship. If aircraft carriers can be nuclear-powered, why not expand on this idea and manufacture huge ships that are dedicated as nuclear power plant? Manufacture them in locations free of hysteria, then sail to countries / regions that want the power. Park it offshore and connect cable to the land. Fake environmentalists will not be able to drive up the cost of nuclear power plants anymore because the building process of these power ships can't be stalled
        • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @04:07AM (#61883063)

          I have long observed the peculiar double-think of many nuclear power enthusiasts who boast about its safety while denouncing the safety standards that make it so.

          That's not double think. The problem with nuclear power is how the safety standards are written and designed. The process industry has over 100 years of experience showing that prescriptive standards are worse for safety than performance based standards while also costing more to implement and being dangerously unsafe in some scenarios. This is a rut that nuclear is stuck in since the 70s as the industry failed to move on. In addition the standards themselves while prescriptive have an incredible overhead baked into them leading to insane cost of implementation. I can give you two examples of this:

          1) We had a project in Spain to upgrade an old obsolete relay based safety system to a Nuclear 1E certified PLC (the chemical industry had ripped out relay based safety systems decades earlier). We approached the vendor got the quote, couple of hundred K for the system. ... But wait the 1E certification was quoted. Back to the vendor, and suddenly an extra zero appeared on the quote. This was (and I can't stress this enough) 100% identical hardware in the quote, it just came with the world's most expensive piece of paper. That project took us 8 years. EIGHT YEARS. And hilariously just after we finished and commissioned this safety PLC I moved on to a Bayer plant where my immediate next project was to rip out the exact system I just installed in Spain because as the vendor put it "version 9 was obsolete".

          The overhead due to the safety standards literally resulted in a project taking so long that the equipment was obsolete on startup. That is not "safe".

          2) The other great example is from Lucas Heights in Australia. We got a lovely demonstration of how they met their standard required SIL4 performance criteria. It was amazing how they hooked these systems together spreading transmitters out to different chassis each interconnected with fibre to provide electrical isolation in case of a power fault, 3 transmitters, 3 systems, 3 power suppliers, 3 outputs, holding magnets energised that kept the control rods in place. Then came my question and the punchline: "What is your major accident scenario? What risk are you mitigating with this system?" And the answer: Nothing. It's a 20MW open pool reactor. If you loose all cooling you can potentially generate enough gamma radiation to make the building unsafe to be in, but the local fire department would simply douse the reactor down from outside with water and we'll be fine.

          Yep. Prescriptive standards. OPAL is a NUKULAR REACTOR and therefor needs to follow a prescriptive standard to install a safety system designed for a risk scenario so massive even the oil and gas industry wouldn't touch it, yet in this case the reactor is so small you can't kill anyone (and fun fact, Australia's prime minster dropped his pen into the reactor while it was running).

          Prescriptive standards are dangerous since the design of safety is decoupled from the risk.
          Standards which take too long to implement are dangerous since the breed a culture of keeping decrepit old shit running long pas its use by date.

          Now given how safety nuclear already is, imagine if they adopted modern safety standards as well.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            The process industry has over 100 years of experience showing that prescriptive standards are worse for safety than performance based standards while also costing more to implement and being dangerously unsafe in some scenarios.

            The aviation industry disagrees.

            The reason that extra zero appeared is because the potential consequences of a chemical plant accident vs a nuclear plant accident are also an order of magnitude bigger.

            Remember that the government is giving the nuclear industry free unlimited insurance and liability protection, so naturally it expects high standards.

            • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @10:27AM (#61883999)

              The aviation industry disagrees.

              No it doesn't. The aviation is a great example of performance based standards and not prescriptive based standards. The performance is given and the actual implementation is left up to the designers. It is why airbus and Boeing planes are fundamentally differently controlled. It's why some planes have 2 engines, some 3, some 4. It's why innovation is actually still a thing and we're not flying on planes using 1970s era hydraulic levers.

              The reason that extra zero appeared is because the potential consequences of a chemical plant accident vs a nuclear plant accident are also an order of magnitude bigger.

              Nope. As I said in the second part of my example the consequence is not at all considered and there are "nuclear" applications which require this expensive solution despite having effectively no ability to cause an issue for anyone (see basically all research or medical isotope reactors). The zero appeared due to the cost overhead generated by a piece of paper. The actual hardware was sold without any consideration at all to the consequence or any liability to the vendor.

              Remember that the government is giving the nuclear industry free unlimited insurance and liability protection, so naturally it expects high standards.

              No one is questioning the quality of the standards. What is being questioned is the prescriptive nature of them and the overhead of their application. I forgot to mention in my original post in the Spain example, the nuclear safety system involved only 6 safety loops. The project immediately after at Bayer involved over 130 spread across multiple units of the plant, and with the same sized team was completed in 9 months rather than 8 years. It was not in any way remotely "less safe" than what we did at the nuclear plant. It was however orders of magnitude cheaper and faster.

              You want high standards, look to the chemical industry (or the aviation sector). The nuclear industry is stuck in the 70s and not in a good way.

  • by oumuamua ( 6173784 ) on Monday October 11, 2021 @09:38PM (#61882405)
    anti-vaxers fear the vaccine more than the virus
    anti-nukers fear the localized radiation from nuke waste more than the globe-destroying consequences of global warming
    • The problem is the anti-nukers are actually damn good at marketing. We have iodine tablets at home. Some anti-nuke activists mailed them out to everyone who lived within 150km of a nuclear reactor with the warning on them saying you're living that close to a reactor and to take them if the reactor goes all Chernobyl on us.

      That's the kind of FUD that major companies could only dream of spreading. It's insanely effective at instilling fear.

  • by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Monday October 11, 2021 @09:43PM (#61882427) Journal

    If there's anything that shows the hypocrisy of the "Green" push, it's this nonsense.

    I mean, on one hand, climate change from us burning fossil fuels is supposedly SO bad, we're going to destroy the entire planet if we don't make drastic changes now (or to hear many of the people speak, it had to be done yesterday already). They're elated about manufacturing as many batteries as possible for electric vehicles and power storage to allow wind or solar farms to produce steady 24/7 electricity that they're otherwise incapable of doing. Never mind the human rights violations involved in obtaining materials like the cobalt in them, or the fact that very few plans are even solidly in place to recycle all of these battery packs down the road But nuclear? No! That has zero emissions, ability to produce 24/7 energy regardless of the weather situation (sunlight or wind present or absent), and can produce large enough amounts of power to make a single plant a meaningful contributor to the power needs of an entire city. BUT, because of fear of radiation -- it's a "dirty" option! (Face-Palm)

    • by drnb ( 2434720 )
      Climate change is an existential crisis requiring total commitment to non-fossil fuel solutions ... UNLESS a political sacred cow is threatened.
      • UNLESS a political sacred cow is threatened.

        Just wait, you'll have some morons with pickets demanding that "threatened sacred cows" be listed on the endangered species list. They will demand the land they graze be a nature preserve. I just hope to see this happen so I can correct the record... and tell them that sacred cows are marine mammals, they don't graze on land.

  • Since these articles are promoting operational nuclear they are referring to fission only. Fusion will make the green category easy.

    They need to stop using the general "nuclear" term because fission and fusion are so dramatically different from each other. Otherwise one might get the impression there is intentional sleight-of-hand being attempted.

  • If the problem is reducing carbon emissions, the answer is an unqualified YES. It's not perfect. It raises other issues. But if reducing carbon emissions really is the goal, nuclear must be part of the solution. It's available now. It generates reliable, industrial-scale power. It works. It buys us time.

    If nuclear isn't the answer maybe the goal is something other than reducing carbon emissions.

    ...laura

    • If nuclear isn't the answer maybe the goal is something other than reducing carbon emissions.

      It appears to me that the goal is to get credit for solving the problem. If the opposing political party wants nuclear power then they can't support nuclear power. The goals of a political party is to oppose the other party so people have a reason to choose one or the other. If both sides agree then that's an issue that just disappears. They can't let global warming disappear as a political issue because that gets people to vote.

      The problem is that evidence it building that without nuclear power global

  • But nobody wants nukes!

    At least some AC likes to post on how "nobody wants nukes!" France wants "nukes", as do other EU nations. Maybe not everyone wants nuclear power but I'm seeing enough people want it that we will see many more nuclear power reactors built. One complaint about nuclear power is the cost, but part of the cost is from rules and legislation that make it more expensive. Classify nuclear power as "green energy" and it gets a lot of little perks in law that will lower costs. Economy of sc

    • One complaint about nuclear power is the cost, but part of the cost is from rules and legislation that make it more expensive.

      One advantage people claim about nuclear power is safety, but part of the safety is from rules and legislation that make it more safe.

      How much safety are you willing to trade for reduced costs?

  • They are on the board of greenpeace energy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ), pretty hypocritical...

  • Is Nuclear a *clean* technology? Yes.
    Is it renewable? No.
    Is it sustainable? No, not in the long run.

    If your definition of Green energy is limited to "emissions-free" then yes Nuclear is awesome, however were we to triple the amount of Nuclear power plants in the world the fuel would only last 100 years or so. Nuclear is at best a stop-gap measure and at worst an already stranded technology.

    https://youtu.be/udJJ7n_Ryjg [youtu.be]

    • Yeah, cause that nuclear waste is sooo clean. --.--

      Jeez, there are people in North Korea that are less brainwashed than some Americans.

      • Nuclear waste isn't particularly healthy, no. But there is a process in place to contain and process the waste. So yes, it is clean, because the only waste it produce is contained. It's like saying that toilets aren't clean because they handle human waste. The waste is contained and disposed of in a non-harmful way (usually), which makes them clean.

        And the fact that failure to keep tabs on the waste allows terrorists to build dirty bombs, well... That is just a guarantee to make sure the waste is processed

  • Nuclear is not even freaking competitive anymore! Even with the massive subsidies they got when Germany switched their plants off and gave them a multiple of what those plants were still worth.

    There's a massive fusion reactor in the sky, sending down more energy for free, than we will ever need. To take directly or via wind. Literally nobody but a very specific always-backwards crowd of militant psychopath-retards wants fission plants for anything but deep space travel.
    Not even the most right-wing EU citize

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