Reducing Europe's Nuclear Energy Sector Was 'Strategic Mistake', EU Chief Says (reuters.com) 184
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was a "strategic mistake," European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday, as governments grapple with an energy crunch from the Iran war. Europe produced around a third of electricity from nuclear power in 1990 but that has fallen to 15%, she told an event in Paris, leaving it reliant on oil and gas imports whose prices have surged in recent days. Being "completely dependent on expensive and volatile imports" of fossil fuels puts Europe at a disadvantage to other regions, von der Leyen said in a speech. "This reduction in the share of nuclear was a choice. I believe that it was a strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on a reliable, affordable source of low-emissions power." The report notes that the EU does not directly fund nuclear energy projects because all 27 member states have not unanimously supported the technology. However, von der Leyen said the Commission plans to provide a 200-million-euro guarantee from the EU's carbon market to help attract private investment in innovative nuclear technologies.
renewables (Score:2)
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They did from about 9.6% in 2004 to about 25.2% in 2024. This if for European Union only. Eurostat data. I do not know what was the renewable percentage in 1990. Definitely lower than in 2004.
Of course, it does not help them much since renewable sources are not dispatch-able. The result is that electricity prices are about 10 times lower at noon when compared to early morning or late evening. Sometimes they may be negative at noon. This is true for spring/summer. The price difference is not so big in autum
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Nuclear is not dispatch-able.
OTOH wind and solar with batteries is the cheapest and most flexible energy source.
Yes, batteries are dispatch-able.
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It is dispatch-able if you overbuild cooling to 100% of thermal power.
Most reactors build cooling only to about 50% of thermal power. They do it since they assume they can always sell at least 50% of electrical power to grid. They assume this since they can lower price to zero (and out compete others) when needed. They can afford this since nuclear fuel is only about 2% of the overall costs. So there is no serious problem to waste fuel into heating the environment around the plant ... provided that they do
Displace the dirtiest first (Score:2)
Have they not also increased energy derived from wind/solar etc. over that time period ?
The problem is that they did not displace things based on their emissions. Displace the dirtiest first, coal first, then oil, etc. By displacing nuclear first, they increased the use of coal and oil. That was counterproductive. It was pure politics.
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None of which produces the "accidental" byproduct of weaponisable nuclear isotopes, which we're going to need to counter the American withdrawal into civil war.
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Switching to heat pumps and to EV's has increased efficiency, but also has put a higher strain on the transmission lines.
And enough countries did not upgrade them in time
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the lack of transport capacity
But that's part of the cost equation. Wind and solar spread all over the continent will take a much larger grid investment than a nuke with three wires running down the road.
That's a perennial problem with the renewables crowd. "Somebody will build it". Well, we're still waiting for a visit from the transmission line faerie.
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The transmission line faerie builds much faster than the solar farm and wind turbine faeries.
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(Unless of course you kneecap the transmission line faerie with a baseball bat)
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Locally generated wind & solar actually pulls strain away from that grid!
For years the grid operators were sounding the alarm, but they got ignored.
Long live 30 years of right-wing politics, NOT
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More installed capacity than energy. I will admit to having seen the occasional "we got everything from solar yesterday" article. They sound pretty hopeful, but today is a new day.
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they did, but slower than expected and many invested lot more in Gas powered centrals... because gas was cheaper and much better than coal
The Ursula von der Leyen is actually wrong, only 4 countries in Europe reduced the nuclear: UK, Belgium, Sweden and Germany ... As she is German, she have a skewed view of the problem
So UK reduced nuclear because they were OLD and expensive, they were using outdated tech and had little power compared with modern nuclear stations
Germany also had some older centrals, but de
Re:renewables (Score:4, Insightful)
The mistake was not investing more heavily in renewables. We well as putting Europe in this situation with gas and oil supplies, it allowed China to get ahead with some of the technology and all of the manufacturing.
Re:renewables (Score:4, Insightful)
I would say the issue was simply lack of common sense. They should have kept nuclear, increased renewable's so they could decrease their dependence on fossils.
Re:renewables (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, this is the tyranny of Jevon's Paradox: You make something more efficient, but end up using more of it because of those efficiency gains.
So as you point out, you can't expect to solve an energy crisis by (only) optimizing energy consumption.
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Well, "a" mistake. Prematurely closing nuclear was also a mistake. There have been lots of mistakes. NIMBYism with gas extraction Groningen was another. Polls showed that a majority if the local population supported more gas extraction after the Russian invasion of Ukraine even without a renegotiated settlement that would give them more royalties. Instead, Europe kept buying Russian gas.
It's always easier to continue consuming products that have externalities so long as it's someone else that has to suff
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If only there was some way to store and transmit electricity. If only there were places where it never stops blowing.
Re: renewables (Score:4, Insightful)
It wasn't a momentary, passing thing. Activism in the west against civil nuclear power, especially in Europe, has been heavily driven by Russian intelligence for decades precisely because - surprise! - kneecapping European energy independence serves Russian goals and makes the Russian petrol empire more money. European energy policy was under sustained attack, and once bad actors got into various drivers seats, the Euros were too proud and arrogant to listen to anybody trying to send up warnings. Now they're paying the price.
Oh, and the previous German prime minister who oversaw most of the major German nuclear energy drawfown (Schroeder) was probably either compromised by Russia or a full blown Russian asset; he went from the PM office to a board seat at Gazaprom. Merkel is heavily suspect as well at this point just based on the blatantly obvious results of her policies, including the ones she continued from Schroeder.
Whatever. They can eat the consequences of their own arrogance.
Re: renewables (Score:2)
"We're going to make ourselves absolutely dependent on a rabid dog for a thing we have to have and can never actually turn off so that if the rabid dog attacks our neighbor, the rabid dog might be slowed down by us turning off the thing we can't ever actually turn off" is logic that could only ever exist in European parliaments.
Idiots. Arrogant, cowardly idiots with the blood of millions on their hands, now.
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Admitting the obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about time they admitted to something that was obvious to almost everyone: nuclear power is the only effective path to carbon-free base load power generation. Wind and solar make good intermittent sources, but base load has to be utterly reliable regardless of whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. That's nuclear.
Getting rid of the nukes was a knee-jerk reaction, not a smart technological decision. The pivot to depending on oil and gas from a potential hostile neighbor just added to the madness.
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I think the mistake is imagining that the politicians are doing anything at all based on reason and science, rather than basing everything on politics and vested interests.
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Nuclear power, as we currently generate it, would result in nuclear power becoming unaffordable before the you'd even built enough power plants to satisfy demand.
If you're not building a fast breeder reactor, you're wasting 99% of uranium's energy potential. If you're not working hard on thorium technology, you're overlooking something that could supply us twice as long as uranium.
Even then, in less than 2000 years nuclear power is no longer viable... at current energy use rates. I'd expect the entire wor
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Nope. Only in your disconnected hallucinations. But obviously a habitual liar like you would try this approach.
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Dispatchable power is more important than baseload power, and neither nuclear nor renewables is dispatchable. The carbon-free upgrade for both is grid storage, and Europe's biggest mistake was not adding enough of it.
Re: Admitting the obvious (Score:2)
Overbuilding renewables is still cheaper than building nuclear, and makes it dispatchable
electricity only (in 10-15 years) (Score:2)
"fossil fuels still dominate energy consumption in sectors such as transport", you can build all the nuke plants you want but they still will not power ICE vehicles. Also note that the USA, the world's highest producer of fossil fuels, still imports more than 8 million barrels per day of petroleum from other countries.
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Actually Europe can't build all the nuclear plants it wants. The only supplier is EDF, assuming you don't want the Chinese to do it. EDF is quoting a minimum of 20 years after approval is given, and that's optimistic.
They can't even build very many because just the ones they have already started were enough for them to run out of money, requiring the French government to increase its stake in EDF.
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Actually Europe can't build all the nuclear plants it wants. The only supplier is EDF, assuming you don't want the Chinese to do it. EDF is quoting a minimum of 20 years after approval is given, and that's optimistic.
They can't even build very many because just the ones they have already started were enough for them to run out of money, requiring the French government to increase its stake in EDF.
The Chinese are smart. They have built supply chains for the heavy forgings that allow them to crank out 10 reactors per year, with a goal of 20 per year planned and fully achievable.
So yes, they will sell them to you. That is their plan all along, we are letting them corner the market for heavy forgings, and soon they will supply reactors to the rest of the world just like everything else. This just further illustrates western stupidity.
https://world-nuclear.org/info... [world-nuclear.org]
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Germany has closed its nuclear power plants and is unlikely to build any new ones. Austria and Ireland are unlikely to build any.
However, European countries have a very divided attitude towards nuclear power.
France, with 57 reactors, wants to build 14 new ones and has brought together a variety of EU countries for an alliance. The UK has 11 new reactors in the pipeline. Belgium has lifted its nuclear ban and w
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The UK has two plants on the go, and they are both insanely expensive and 25+ year projects.
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See https://www.bbc.com/news/artic... [bbc.com]
And currently UK gets 14% of electricity from nuclear and wants to get that up to 25% and even signed a pledge to triple that capacity.
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SMRs that are nowhere near prototype stage, decades away from commercial deployment.
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"fossil fuels still dominate energy consumption in sectors such as transport", you can build all the nuke plants you want but they still will not power ICE vehicles.
Totally, painfully wrong. One of the largest costs of creating alternate fuels that can be used as gasoline are hydrogen (for "hydrotreating") and power for the high temperatures required. Cheap ubiquitious base load power takes these types of alternate fuels from "expensive and experimental" to "commercially viable".
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"fossil fuels still dominate energy consumption in sectors such as transport", you can build all the nuke plants you want but they still will not power ICE vehicles.
Totally, painfully wrong.
Totally, painfully right. As of today, yes, fossil fuels still dominate energy consumption in sectors such as transport.
One of the largest costs of creating alternate fuels that can be used as gasoline are hydrogen (for "hydrotreating") and power for the high temperatures required. Cheap ubiquitious base load power takes these types of alternate fuels from "expensive and experimental" to "commercially viable".
Maybe. That's speculation about the future. The comment you're replying to is the present-day reality.
Manufacture of synfuels is an energy-intensive process (and typically the carbon source is from fossil-fuel sources such as coal...but, the good news is, coal is not sourced from Russia). Not clear if it will ever be commercially viable, or ever be carbon-neutral.
I'd place my money on el
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I'd place my money on electric vehicles to reduce oil requirements, not synfuels.
Not in my part of the world, what with the tribes trying to push everyone's hydroelectric plants off the rivers.
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EV cars, more trains and EV trucks.
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summary of the summary (Score:2)
Well then maybe you shouldn't have blocked new nuclear construction for the last 50 years dumbfuck.
That's the tl;dr summary of the summary, yes.
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>> you shouldn't have blocked new nuclear construction
Utter bullshit from you as usual.
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One lie after another as usual.
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Still whining about Germany?
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"you can build all the nuke plants you want but they still will not power ICE vehicles"
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You are correct, the US imports heavy crude and exports light crude and refined petroleum products with a healthy profit.
Nonetheless the US is dependent on that imported heavy crude, the refineries are specifically built for it. Retooling a refinery to optimally run much lighter crude can cost on the order of $100 million to $1 billion.
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Retooling a refinery
Which few refiners are willing to undertake due to the repeated flip-flop in politics. Light crude is cheaper (and less polluting) to refine into fuels and other high value products. So we'll just have to go on with our dirty old technology. And find someplace to dump all that asphalt. (I know! More roads!)
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EU BEV+PHEV sales are 1/4 of total vehicle sales at present. Should be the lion's share within a couple years. That doesn't make the preexisting fleet go away, but it does throw fuel demand growth into reverse, which makes it ever-easier to supply from friendly (if not outright domestic) sources.
Von der Leyen is an opportunistic idiot (Score:3)
This is an attempt to assuage the French, who are miffed because their aging nuclear power plants, for which they don't have a contingency plan, don't pass as "renewable". The french have bet the bank on nuclear, so they want money from the EU to help them with their problem. That's all this is about. Germany in particular, the only country which had a sizeable investment in nuclear and gave up on it, will not have future nuclear investments with or without von der Leyen's disregard of reality. Nuclear is too expensive, would take too long to even matter and would cause yet another dependency on foreign resources - for what? Wind and solar and batteries are so cheap already that they can't be killed by withholding subsidies. I predicted years ago that there will be at least two more rounds of handouts, once for getting back into nuclear (on paper) and once for finally getting out of it (for real).
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Yes. This is political maneuvering, not an actual opinion or fact change. Europe will not have a nuclear renaissance. Nobody is willing to pay for it, far, far too expensive. At the same time renewables are getting better and better and cheaper and cheaper.
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Who gives a shit about that? Not you, if you rely on EOL nuclear power plants for most of your electricity and can't get them replaced fast enough or economically or at all.
BTW, if you're thinking, how irresponsible of me to disregard CO2 emissions: USA 384 g CO2 per kWh, at more than twice the electricity consumption per capita compared to Germany. The future for all this is wind and solar at 0 g CO2 per kWh. We're never going to do it because it's the best, so it's a good thing that it's also the cheapest
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Please stuff your lies by misdirection up your behind.
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20% of the reactors in Europe are completely dependent on Russian nuclear fuel (because the reactors are Soviet designs in former Soviet countries). Russia and Russia-affiliated Kazakhstan supply 40% of the world's uranium. Gotta stop buying Russian gas and oil, go nuclear?
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Nope. Not at this time. But as usual, you just lie more when confronted with facts.
not renewable [Re:Von der Leyen is an opportun...] (Score:2)
This is an attempt to assuage the French, who are miffed because their aging nuclear power plants, for which they don't have a contingency plan, don't pass as "renewable".
That is, of course, accurate. Nuclear power is a low carbon-dioxide emission energy source, but it is literally not renewable (since it mines uranium for fuel, and uranium does not renew itself.)
In principle, it could be hundreds or even thousands of years before the supply of uranium is a problem, if we used the uranium efficiently, but with today's reactors, with no fuel reprocessing and no breeder reactors, if we used nuclear for all the electrical generation in the world, we would run out in a few deca
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This is an attempt to assuage the French, who are miffed because their aging nuclear power plants, for which they don't have a contingency plan, don't pass as "renewable".
That is, of course, accurate. Nuclear power is a low carbon-dioxide emission energy source, but it is literally not renewable (since it mines uranium for fuel, and uranium does not renew itself.)
In principle, it could be hundreds or even thousands of years before the supply of uranium is a problem, if we used the uranium efficiently, but with today's reactors, with no fuel reprocessing and no breeder reactors, if we used nuclear for all the electrical generation in the world, we would run out in a few decades.
Which is more of a political issue than technological; since if we wanted would could build the facilities.
Re: not renewable [Re:Von der Leyen is an opportun (Score:2)
It's not political, it's economic. Take a look at what reprocessing does to the cost of French nuclear power.
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So, more or less like wind power [okenergytoday.com].
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You forgot to add "and did not do any more exploration and any more qualifying of existing reserves, let alone entirely new types of uranium sources"
Your statement requires far too many caveat
Summer is coming (Score:2)
So the PV will actually start putting out useful amounts of power.
Until then it's wind turbines, assuming March in Europe is as windy as it is in North America.
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Should have posted this with the other post,
3000 MW installed wind and the last few days have been productive. Wind and solar together are the green line.
https://transmission.bpa.gov/b... [bpa.gov]
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https://app.electricitymaps.co... [electricitymaps.com]
https://app.electricitymaps.co... [electricitymaps.com]?
the renewable potential in USA is still mostly wasted, most south states have almost no PV installed and even wind, some places got it, the place next have any
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Using Spain as a example
PV generate already a good amount of power:
https://app.electricitymaps.co... [electricitymaps.com]
27% in summer, 9% in winter
and that is over 24h...as during night there is no sun... if you check during day only, you get almost 60% of energy from PV in the last few days
https://app.electricitymaps.co... [electricitymaps.com]
Wind, between 7% and 45%... this last few days were not windy, so 8%, one month ago it was 35-45% : https://app.electricitymaps.co... [electricitymaps.com]
Both wind and solar already produce a good amount of power... we now need
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yes and they even had nuclear and it didn't save it from happening
what happen in Spain can happen in any country with enough renewable... Coal, gas, nuclear have inertia and can compensate for small oops, renewable can also have, either directly (wind) or indirectly (special systems, battery), but all renewable (even wind) were build around that "others" will do the inertia part, they just need to keep in sync with the rest of the network and even wind that can have inertia, it was hidden behind a simple sy
Perhaps spared nuclear catastrophe (Score:2)
Another silly decision... (Score:2)
The Netherlands is planning on making natural gas wells near Groningen permanently unusable. They haven't actually been used in a long time because of environmental issues, but this seems to me like a dumb thing to do. Arjen Lubach has a great video [youtube.com] about this (in Dutch, but YouTube's auto-translate should be decent, I think...)
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Well, yeah, that's what I meant by environmental issues.
U-Turn Ursula (Score:2)
Impressive double-dipping! She's taking credit for bandaging her own shot foot.
Von der Leyen cheered nuclear shutdowns for a decade, and oh-so-bravely smeared her opponents as "threats to democracy".
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Energy experts too, which is probably more credible than a minimally-educated dementia patient.
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Who obviously understands this complex stuff better than EU leadership.
So you're saying that EU leadership is actually more demented and stupid than Trump?
Trusting and guidance (Score:3)
> European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen
If the EU and the tens of millions of Euros it has to spend plus its experts of all stripes couldn't see this, then why should anyone blindly accept any large politician / diplomatic class staffed agency's predictions, models, dire warnings, spending priorities, .....?
"What is the second best proposal?" is the question to ask of these agencies when they present a plan, idea, spending priority, budget or campaign to fight X.
If the agency cannot even articula
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It's not about nobody seeing it, it's about certain parties taking control in certain countries with some dumb policy ideas.
To be clear, I'm not at all supportive of some mass rollout of new nuclear (beyond it being far too expensive of a source of energy, it's worth mentioning that Europe also imports nuclear fuel from Russia). Solar + wind + batteries is much cheaper (not to mention harder to target in a conflict). But phasing out existing nuclear plants, that you've already paid for, which still have p
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Re: Well, no shit, Sherlock! (Score:2)
Hey, they use friction in generator turbines, right? ðY
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Wouldn't you?
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No, I don't have severe cognitive decline
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Given your user number you are definitely in the at-risk age group.
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So very strong evidence that this was the RIGHT decision then?
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We (as the industry) told them the same thing when trump was still a third-rate actor running his casinos into the ground.
And?
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And Obama told them this 12 years ago.
https://www.politico.eu/articl... [politico.eu]
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Thanks, Obama. :P
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Because how many were shut down in the past six years is the better point: 14. Germany shut down their last three back in 2023.
Six years would be a good amount of time to build a plant if we didn't have NIMBY fear-mongering and environmental lawfare. Heck, Hoover Dam was built in five (two years ahead of schedule).
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With nuclear power, trying to built plants quickly is not a good idea.
On some things, safety is paramount. Nuclear power is at the top of that list.
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Germany shut down their last three back in 2023.
Thankyou for proving my point. The last three in 2023. In fact Germany shut down 4 since Trump made that statement. 4. Four. The final 4 out of 19. I.e. Trump has fuck all to do with any of this, and even if Germany took full effort to correct course based on Trump's rant alone they'd still be no where near where they were with nuclear power generation in 2011.
Six years would be a good amount of time to build a plant if we didn't have NIMBY fear-mongering and environmental lawfare. /quote>
Sorry but even in countries where NIMBYism gets you disappeared by the government, and the environment is something no one gives a shit about the average time to build a power plant is > 15 years. 6 years is the full construction only period between shovel in the ground to telling the regulator you are potentially ready to start commissioning. You have at least 5+ years prior required to stage the project, get contracts in place, get contract resources assigned, equipment ordered, manufacture pre-fab started, and that's without even considering permitting or citing issues. After those 11 years you're still looking at several years of testing, and loading before final grid ready connection.
This isn't a fucking Amazon order. Typical Slashdotters haven't the slightest clue what actually goes into executing *any* project of *any* size, let alone building a nuclear power plant which is easily among the most complicated projects in terms of resource management and execution we do as a species, and that's with the knowledge that we're using an off the shelf design.
Blaming NIMBY and the environment just demonstrates that you probably shouldn't comment on this subject (or the subject of any major construction job).
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The real "strategic mistake" was in becoming dependent on foreign fossil fuels (especially Russia's) for so much of the EU's energy needs.
Nuclear is just one of many ways to avoid that strategic mistake.
And Obama told them they were on a strategically stupid trajectory 12 years ago:
https://www.politico.eu/articl... [politico.eu]
Re: Well, no shit, Sherlock! (Score:2)
Trump doesnâ(TM)t want Europe to lose its dependency on foreign fossil fuels because he wants American companies owned by his buddies to profit from this, not Russian and Middle Eastern ones. Why do you think heâ(TM)s so against renewable power? Itâ(TM)s not just about the view from his Scottish golf course.
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Except Europe became dependent on Russia for nuclear fuel. [ceenergynews.com] Arguably we're having more trouble quitting Russian (and CIS) nuclear fuel than we are their oil and gas.
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In fact a good friend of mine, EE, masters in project management, etc., has applied for a job with Westinghouse to build nuclear generating plants in Bulgaria.
Wrong. (Score:3)
Disclaimer: German here.
Even with current prices for electricity the cost effectiveness of fission is questionable at best. Germans are actually capable of math and engineering and the tree huggers weren't the reason replenishing plant Wackersdorff, the fast breeder at Kalkar and eventually renewal of fission in general was cancelled. It was boring back-room clercs repeatedly doing the math and coming up short that did this.
And if you don't believe this you can ask France how their all-out "fission only" pl
Re: Wrong. (Score:3)
France also does it because it benefits their military nuclear programme.
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And if you don't believe this you can ask France how their all-out "fission only" plan of past decades is panning out these days.
Wait, what? France has been the largest net exporter of electricity in the EU by a huge margin precisely because of their nuclear program.
Re:Wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. Yes, building new nuclear power plants has dubious economics. But the cost of a nuclear power plant is overwhelmingly a capital cost. Prematurely retiring an existing nuclear power plant is economical nonsense.
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Merkel was pro nuclear. It was her constituents and a coalition with the greens that ultimately caused the nuclear shutdown. In fact the government previous to Merkel is the one who introduced the idea of a phase out and ban on building. One of Merkel's early policies was to delay that plan by over a decade giving the entire nuclear industry a lifeline.
But politicians ultimately are the sum of their people. Calling Merkel a Russian agent because of her nuclear decisions is the equivalent of the vast majorit
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Merkel did.
To ignore that is kind of silly of you.
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WTF have religion have to do with all this?! was it a Islamic person that decided to close nuclear? was it a Immigrant?
you are mixing different topics just to follow your hate agenda.
Go spread your racism elsewhere, Trump for sure loves you