World Bank Lifts Ban on Funding Nuclear Energy in Boost To Industry 77
The World Bank is lifting its decades-long ban on financing nuclear energy, in a policy shift aimed at accelerating development of the low-emissions technology to meet surging electricity demand in the developing world. From a report: In an email to staff on Wednesday, Ajay Banga, the World Bank president, said it would "begin to re-enter the nuclear energy space" [non-paywalled source] in partnership with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog which works to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons.
"We will support efforts to extend the life ofÂexisting reactors in countries that already have them, and help support grid upgrades andÂrelated infrastructure," the email said. The shift follows advocacy from the pro-nuclear Trump administration and a change of government in Germany, which previously opposed financing atomic energy due to domestic political opposition to the technology. It is part of a wider strategy aimed at tackling an expected doubling of electricity demand in the developing world by 2035. Meeting this demand would require annual investment in generation, grids and storage to rise from $280 billion today to $630 billion, Banga said in the memo seen by the Financial Times.
"We will support efforts to extend the life ofÂexisting reactors in countries that already have them, and help support grid upgrades andÂrelated infrastructure," the email said. The shift follows advocacy from the pro-nuclear Trump administration and a change of government in Germany, which previously opposed financing atomic energy due to domestic political opposition to the technology. It is part of a wider strategy aimed at tackling an expected doubling of electricity demand in the developing world by 2035. Meeting this demand would require annual investment in generation, grids and storage to rise from $280 billion today to $630 billion, Banga said in the memo seen by the Financial Times.
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The just announced it is pissing more money away on a new one called Sizewell C, and there is some free money for development of dead-end SMR technology as well.
This seems to be a response to AI. Hopefully that bubble bursts soon, or at least people figure out how to make it efficient.
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SMR is a waste, it only generates more nuclear waste and more parts have to be decommissioned.
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For something to be radioactive enough to harm a human it has to have a short half-life like iodine 131 with a half life of 8 days. Anything with a half life in the thousands of years is not dangerous enough to harm a human being.
Sorry, not quite accurate.
"Not dangerous to harm a human in a short exposure" would be correct.
Note that the harm for low-dose exposure is an increased number of cancer deaths, rather than people dying immediately from radiation sickness. But it's still deaths.
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Fringe science [Re:Only China] (Score:3)
Nope. Linear no-threshold is bullshit science.
Yeah, indeed there is a fringe that asserts that. There are even people asserting that low levels of radiation are good for you.
The belief is, however, is dubious, and not supported by good data. A review of the science is here: https://nap.nationalacademies.... [nationalacademies.org] .
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It's not a fringe. All the evidence demonstrates the linear no threshold is wrong
All the evidence shows it's wrong... assuming that you dismiss all the evidence that shows it isn't wrong.
I gave a reference. I can give some more, if you need, but since you didn't read the National Academies of Sciences one, I doubt you'd read others.
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There is disagreement in the medical community for failing to distinguish the difference between and a low acute dose (less than 100 mSv but dosage accrued in a short time period, such as a single day), vs. a low gradual dose (e.g., less than 100 mSv but accrued over the course of a year)
The difference is that the bodies repair and disposal methods are thought to the be able to handle low-dose rates more comparable to high-level background radiation, than the unnatural effect of intense dosage rates that ar
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The authors of that study frequently say that they don't have evidence that LNT is not the correct model.
atomicalgebra's assertion was that the LNT is not the correct model.
The report says that there is no evidence that LNT is not the correct model.
The linked report says that there is no evidence for atomicalgebra's assertion.
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Depends what are you comparing the low dose exposure to? International flights? Eating bananas? Living in higher elevations?
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Used fuel (aka nuclear waste from a nuclear power plant) has never killed a single human being.
A) fuel is not waste.
B) waste is waste, and that is what happens to be created when fuel is used up, aka burned
C) plenty of workers died by misusing waste - especially in Japan in the 1980s
I have no problem with people being pro nuclear, and I actually have no problem with "SAFE NUCLEAR PLANTS" - however the German plants for example: were not safe.
And Germany has a waste problem, we have no idea what to do with
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Anything with a half life in the thousands of years is not dangerous enough to harm a human being. ... it is a glowing red ball of metal. Fucking idiot.
That is simply nonsense. A 10g pellet in a box is perhaps harmless, as long as it stays in the box.
Make it a 2kg ball
Even simpler: Make it Plutonium. Estimates are that one gram (!) is enough to cause lung-cancer in 1M people if finely distributed.
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Even simpler: Make it Plutonium. Estimates are that one gram (!) is enough to cause lung-cancer in 1M people if finely distributed.
That was a lie when Ralph Nader said it in the 70's.
People have eaten plutonium. Donald Mastick lived to 87 [wikipedia.org]
Why do you antinuclear people feel the need to constantly lie? It like taking to a MAGAT.
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A wrong estimation is not a lie.
It is a wrong estimation.
The 50:50 lethal dose is a few milligram per kg body weight.
As you are around 120kg, your dose with a 50% chance to die is roughly 240mg ... good luck idiot.
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Actually, that estimation is not wrong. It is just the other way round. With, say, 1ng per person, most will not develop lung cancer, but somewhere around 1 in 1000 will and that is 1M people. The LD has a completely different approach. Also, incidentally, _eating_ Plutonium is not an issue. It will pass normaly and be out of the body in days. Breating it as a fine dust (such as when it catches fire) is a completely different thing.
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All those things are dangerous if inhaled or digested. Not only because of its radioactivity, but the fact that basically everything is a heavy metal ... Uranium has something like 27 different oxydes, and reacts with everything that can not run away. Basically every Uranium compound is toxic.
I assumed our algobraic idiot keeps it in a save box ... and only refers to radiation ...
The danger of plutonium is leukemia. It accumulates in bone marrow. The 50/50 lethal dose is in a milligram range per kg body wei
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Anyway, not important. I just wonder how one can stay utterly stupid all his life.
Indeed. I just do not get it how you can understand nothing. I do recognize that many people are in that state, see the MAGA morons or other extremists of vraious types.
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Anything with a half life in the thousands of years is not dangerous enough to harm a human being
This is only true depending on the quantity of material. Yes, if you have only one atom of a fissionable isotope, it will fission into something else at some point in that half-life, creating whatever daughter-products that isotope creates when it fissions (a single-digit number of gamma rays, etc.).
If you have several tons of that fissioning isotope, there are an uncountable number of fission events happening during that half-life. Even an isotope with a half-life measured in a few hundred years becomes quite dangerous if you have a large quantity of it (like you suggest by putting all the waste in one building the size of a walmart), because you're increasing the probability of fission events with the increased quantity.
Why don't we let the experts deal with this problem, instead of you missing things that should be incredibly obvious.
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nuclear waste
Well that's the biggest non problem in the world. Used fuel (aka nuclear waste from a nuclear power plant) has never killed a single human being.
Nice lie you go there. Direct, immoral, despicable. Also by misdirection. The thing is, the people killed only show up statistically. And assholes like you use that to pretend the problem does not exist. Also by misdirection, because almost all nuclear waste is not in long-term storage at this time.
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Nice lie you go there. Direct, immoral, despicable. Also by misdirection.
Great projection! [wikipedia.org]
The thing is, the people killed only show up statistically.
You see the thing is I can't prove a negative. It's not possible. But all you have to do to prove me wrong is find one person, just one person, that died from used fuel to prove me wrong. Statistically, you haven't done that yet.
Here are all of the deaths from nuclear and radiation. List of nuclear and radiation accidents by death toll [wikipedia.org] There are zero examples of used fuel killing a single person on that page.
And assholes like you use that to pretend the problem does not exist. Also by misdirection, because almost all nuclear waste is not in long-term storage at this time.
It isn't a real problem. I just isn't. You can keep fearmongering bu
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SMR is a waste, it only generates more nuclear waste and more parts have to be decommissioned.
When Trump opens Yucca Mountain as the input buffer to a waste reprocessing plan t on the Nevada Test Site, this will no longer be a problem.
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Yucca is for high level waste. Low level waste is stuff like containment vessels and other things that surround the reactor that get irradiated, those go to other dumps.
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Other dumps like Hanford. For example, when the Trojan Nuclear Generating Station was decommissioned due to cracks in the steam generator piping that were cost-prohibitive to repair combined with a nice legal runaround between Westinghouse and the construction contractor about who's fault it was, Portland General Electric decided to just keep it closed and get rid of it. The reactor vessel was barged up the Columbia to Hanford, where it was buried alongside all the other radioactive shit from the legacy o
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SMR is a waste, it only generates more nuclear waste and more parts have to be decommissioned.
All nuclear plants produce nuclear waste and parts that have to be decommissioned.
Re: Only China (Score:2)
"more"
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How many countries have deep decarbonized their electric grids with just solar and wind energy? Do you know the number? Well it's zero. Yes 0. Z-E-R-O. Germany spent 500+ billion euros and failed. Failed! If they spent the same amount on new nuclear energy they would have succeeded.
Now look at France. They deep decarbonized their grid decades ago with nuclear. And they spent a fraction of what Germany already spent on solar and wind. Their energy is much cheaper than Germanies. It is much cleaner too. They
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They didn't fail because they're not done yet.
No, they still buy electricity from Germany every year, mostly in the winter months.
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They didn't fail because they're not done yet.
But I thought nuclear is too slow. \s How much longer do we have to wait for them to finish? Decades? Centuries?
And France is the leading exporter of electricty in europe.
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Germany did not fail.
It reduced its carbon footprint by roughly 50%.
Stupid idiot.
They deep decarbonized their grid decades ago with nuclear.
No they did not. They were low carbon already since decades. Stupid idiot.
And the nukes were/are in no way cheaper than Germanies renewables. How farking daft are you?
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Yes they did fail! You Arsch mit Ohren
No they did not. They were low carbon already since decades. Stupid idiot.
Can you even read? I said France deep decarbonized(low carbon) decades ago. Germany should have followed the French model.
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Germany is doing pretty well, considering where they started. There are countries that run entirely on renewables. Not just wind and solar, of course.
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I said with renewables. Not just solar and wind.
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The UK *is* expanding hydro. We have pumped storage being built up in Scotland, and it looks like they might finally do some sort of Severn tidal system.
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Because the nuclear part is stupid and expensive, won't be ready for at least 20 years (Hinkley Point C is delayed beyond the 20 year mark now), and will be redundant by the time it is finished. The contracts they had to offer to get it build guarantee we must pay for nuclear power no matter how expensive it is compared to the alternatives, so it locks us in for 50+ years.
The price of energy is way too high in the UK, because of our reliance of gas and nuclear.
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It won't be redundant since solar and wind are intermittent. Unless you are willing to provide an example of a country or state that has deep decarbonized with just solar and wind.
Not building nuclear guarantees methane.
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> How many countries have deep decarbonized their electric grids with just solar and wind energy?
China's carbon emissions have dropped 1.5% so far this year, versus last year, despite total energy demand growing by about 10TWh in the same period. Maybe not "deep" or whatever but they are investing heavily in decarbonizing, and succeeding, while still growing quite quickly.
None of that was new nuclear power by the way; All of the plants they said they were gonna built between 2020 and 2035 are either stil
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China has been building new nuclear plants. They have completed several of them and have plans to build 150 more. And unlike solar they work at night!
PS - We can do both solar and nuclear. Only antinuclear fucktards think we can't.
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Used fuel is not a real problem. I just isn't. You can keep fearmongering but what we are currently doing(cool in water for 10 years followed by cask storage) is working extremely well.
Used fuel (aka nuclear waste from a nuclear power plant) has never killed a single human being.
There isn't a lot of it. We could put all of it a building the size of a walmart.
It is a solid metal meaning it can never leak.
It decays exponentially meaning all of those dangerous for thousands of years claims are lies. For somet
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I'm shocked, shocked that the cult indoctrination let you skip over the "until the Sun goes nova" part.
I didn't skip over. It was just such a phenononly stupid statement that I choose not to resond to it. Your cult indoctrinated you into thinking that we have to wait until U238 completly decays. That's fucking dumb
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According to the link below 15 nations are building nuclear power plants.
https://world-nuclear.org/info... [world-nuclear.org]
China may be building the most nuclear power plants right now but they are hardly alone.
I was listening to the Scott Adam's podcast this morning and he pointed out that China plans to build 100 nuclear power reactors in the next 10 years. He then pointed to his theory of "slow moving disasters" that when faced with big problems that come to human civilization at slow speeds we tend to find solutions in
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He then pointed to his theory of "slow moving disasters" that when faced with big problems that come to human civilization at slow speeds we tend to find solutions in time.
What are the examples of this? I can't think of any.
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China plans to build 100 nuclear power reactors in the next 10 years
Where is this plan? China now has 102 nuclear reactors that are in operation, under construction or waiting approval. They have 52 operating reactors and 28 under construction. That does not sound anything like a pace of 10 new reactors going online every year for the next ten years. Sounds more like they may have 100 reactors total in operation in 10 years.
The larger problem is that they are not actually replacing existing emission producing sources, they are providing for growing power demands. That is tr
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is building nuclear plants now.
The World Bank's change of position means that China can also start funding nuclear development in the rest of the world. It will become a component of Belt & Road.
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Every euro not invested in climate protection will cause 10-100 euros more in debt in 10 years.
No, your time scale is off. Yes, climate change is real; and yes, climate change will have bad effects; but climate change is a slow catastrophe. Think 20, 30, 50, a hundred years down the road. The "climate protection" needed is primarily negative actions: stop investing money into assets that are in locations that will be vulnerable to climate change.
But the main mitigation is to stop putting carbon dioxide into the air now that will continue to be warming the climate in 20, 30, 50, and a hundred years fr
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I have to disagree with your characterization of climate change as a 'slow catastrophe.' We're already seeing severe impacts TODAY - not in 20 or 50 years. Record-breaking heatwaves, unprecedented wildfires, catastrophic flooding, and coral reef die-offs are happening right now.
More importantly, your timescale misses the crucial point: in geological terms, what we've done in the last 200 years IS like a meteorite impact. We've released carbon that took millions of years to sequester in just two centuries. T
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I have to disagree with your characterization of climate change as a 'slow catastrophe.' We're already seeing severe impacts TODAY -
All I can say here is, you ain't seen nothing yet.
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Waiting another 10 years for nuclear power while continuing to burn coal is a recipe for disaster. We don't have that luxury of time.
You should realize this bullshit has been repeated for as long as I've been alive, and I'm no spring chicken. This bullshit has certainly been repeated since An Inconvenient Truth was released nearly 20 years ago. Am I to believe now that we don't have time to build nuclear power plants to prevent "global heating", a new term I'm seeing because apparently "global warming" wasn't scary enough.
Had we started building nuclear power plant when An Inconvenient Truth came out then today we'd not have the proble
"We banned low emission to help low emission!" (Score:2)
Sounds exactly what people under the oil lobby would come up with.
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Yup, but now the AI lobby is stronger than the oil lobby.
I guess whichever the military needs more.
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The best description of it I have ever seen is AI exists to allow wealth to access skill without allowing skill to access wealth.
Maybe it won't work but if it does it's worth trillions.
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It wasn't actually the oil lobby. It was the public. Ignorance, combined with fear, combined with two high profile accidents, combined with the "It stays uninhabitable for 1000 years" did it. They didn't need help from the oil industry with that approach.
Orly? (Score:1, Insightful)
Btw, huge Copilot exploit found yesterday lol.
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Except no, the oil industry had virtually no stake in power generation at the time. Natgas was borderline unused by all but a few gas resource heavy nations (LNG/CNG mass transport wasn't a thing back then). Oil was already the most expensive energy form and was only used where no alternative was available.
This was fear tactics, general public ignorance, a couple of high profile accidents, and the greenies who killed nuclear.
Fund education, too. (Score:2)
We need NGOs to fund education about nuclear power. Much of the opposition to nuclear power is rooted in ignorance of how clean and safe it really is. If we can teach people the truth then there would be many more reactors built.
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Most opposition was actually formed around non-proliferation and concerns with waste. It is essentially a religion at this point and just adds arguments to support the case as new opportunities arise.
From an engineering perspective I like nuclear energy, but the logistics of new multi-GW scale plants is a losing proposition and the efficiency of SMRs (especially relative to waste) is disappointing. I will keep some hope going for NuScale and others in the SMR space, but so far their level of improvements
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If it's a religion then I suggest forming a non-governmental sovereign entity like the Nuclear Vatican. They can build and maintain all nuclear plants across the world to ensure non-proliferation is respected and waste is disposed of properly. Think of the Spacing Guild and its Navigators... you don't mess with them or they shut down your reactors.
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The case for nuclear is made with religious zealotry that ignores it's the most expensive, dangerous, and unreliable power source invented by man.
Do you have a citation on nuclear power being dangerous? I have a citation on it being quite safe: https://ourworldindata.org/saf... [ourworldindata.org]
The source shows solar to be safer than nuclear fission but that's been a few years. We've had years of safe nuclear power production since that could put nuclear power from #2 to #1.
The wind and sun don't stop working for months or even years at a time, but your radioactive water heaters do.
The "radioactive water heaters" don't all go offline at the same time like the wind and sun. When the sun sets that's no electricity production for thousands of miles around for hours at a time.
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Chernobyl. Fukushima.
So two failures of reactors built in the 1970s out of more than 400 operating safely is reason to end all future construction of nuclear power plants? This is somehow an argument against building new reactors based on new designs? That's like telling people not to buy a 2025 Tesla Roadster because a 1975 Ford Pinto was not safe. Maybe a 2025 Tesla Roadster is not safe, but it won't be for the same reasons as the 1975 Ford Pinto. You'll have to point to some new safety issue to be taken seriously.
Over 2,000 deaths between them.
You for