I am not a fan of nuclear energy. Anyway there are 2 important facts / factors. The research on nuclear energy has not come to its end yet. There still could be / are a lot more improvements. Thorium, DFRs (dual fluid reactors)..etc. Secondly. The EU has screwed the transition to renewable energies. You cannot dismantle 'dangerous' and / or fossil energies while you DO NOT replace them one by one. By replacing I do not only mean to replace I also mean to build a sufficient infrastructure. So we have now trouble because we are still utterly dependent on gas and oil. (Putin and the war). The right thing to do now is to extend the runtime of the nuclear plants...and to use new tech. Nuclear energy is a transition energy. 'We' are not yet there where we can refrain from it. Unfortunately.
That's a rational position @Yen - but it still doesn't tell us what to do with the spent radioactive material and why aren't we removing the subsidies from fossil fuel industry and putting it into (esp. R&D for) the renewables etc. These must go hand in hand, if we are serious about the swap. Else "transition" will never stop... Until we run out of fossil fuel and then...?!? Maybe Germany was too confident when planning the switch, didn't invest enough in renewables but the strategy is the right thing to do. Anyway, thanx to what they already invested in, plus the EU neighbours (Denmark, Norway etc.as the suppliers of renewable energy) DE already achieved a lot! Way more than most other major industrial nations... Norway used the proceeds of its fossil fuel industry to facilitate the transition, for instance... Moreover, I think we should also start talking about -non-violent, educational manner of reducing our numbers in a rational, planed, consensual manner via family planning, truly independent, de-objectified women, becoming proper Subjects, -reforesting our world, -changing our economic and societal paradigm, -getting away from continuous, infinite growth "economics" on a finite planet, -demolishing the "amassing" as a fundamental value, -teaching our kids and removing exploitation and domination as the very basis of our society and so on. We haven't even began with those essential strategic tasks...
That's the point. The plan / concept wasn't extensive enough. After Fukushima the govt. said we have to get rid of nuclear energy. So they released a switch-off plan. It actually should have been a switch-over plan, though. To develop an extensive concept, you have to consider a lot of factors BEFOREHAND. There is nuclear energy which is CO2 neutral, but produces long living radioactive waste. There is fossil fuel which raises CO2 levels. Both should be replaced by renewable energies. And there is electricity as a sort of universal energy. All 2 energies can be used to create electricity. Fossil fuels also are essential materials, besides of fuels, though. Renewable energies are dependant on nature's 'behaviour', if there is sun, there is energy. If there is wind, there is energy. In other words, if there is any form of kinetics (moving water also) or radiation there can be made electricity. Either directly or indirectly (growing organic materials which can be used to make fuels). But their energy produced require storage technologies to buffer 'low times' / night and infrastructure from 'high delivering' regions to lower. And finally the consideration from where do we get the fuels (nations) or have available nationally and WHICH one can we 'use' at all. (depending on infrastructure). DE for instance has no storage possibility to use LPG, no terminals. The dependency of DE on oil and gas is still that huge and involved in producing electricity that a lack would start a cascade of misery. The successes at transition which really are there are minor compared to that. So IMHO we have to extend the runtime of NPPs temporarily. The additional waste produced (we have huge of that waste already) is the lesser of two evils. Better than to ramp up coal power stations.(if there is a choice at all). Fact is we still need lots of them fuels to achieve that transition completely. If it's retarded even more, we probably need to install another nuclear tech as well to get to there... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_fluid_reactor
Either that or the rest of EU and DE renewable capacities ought to be expanded... We now have good storage capacity in a variety of ways, beside batteries...
Actually, my reply to your message was my first message on this thread. And my point was not to discuss about how stupid betting on nuclear power is (that's so obvious that a discussion about this very matter is just incredible) , but about how stupid the approach to any serious argument is nowadays: vax/novax, pro/Putin/anti Putin and so on. Two herds of black or white sheep, that follow blindly the other sheep of the same color, and incapable of any autonomous processing. Las Vegas is an hyperbole a symbol of the US habits, but being built because the Hoover dam, is way less dangerous for the planet than the average office in Texas or Arizona. When the temperature in the US, in the summer is lower than what is considered a comfortable level in the winter in Europe, any sane person should think twice to the whole thing.
All production produces waste. So-called "green" industries produce the most of all. Instead of containing it to a small concrete block, you have vast landfills of it where the heavy metals seep into the ground because almost none of it ever gets recycled. You can either choose the most efficient option in nuclear power, or the less efficient options.
You have no clue! That small concrete block isn't fit for purpose, which is only meant for up to 100 years, whilst that sh&t lasts in some cases over 50.000 years. Publicly embarrassing yourself so freely is pathetic!
Still the old argument that we should catch the AIDS because syphilis was worse. We need a cure, a vaccine, not an alternate way to get sick
What are you talking about? Again, all production causes waste. If you can name one without waste, I would like to hear about it.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Please go do research on nuclear rod waste storage and stop embarrassing yourself.
Worse is you being a transgender progressivist extreme leftist who procures to turn his children into delicate homosexual flowers colored in pink.
I'm talking about the idiotic idea that given we have already polluted the planet with chemicals, we should fight such pollution with another (worse) kind of pollution. Good morning! FYI I'm 55 yo and I know how a nuclear works since when I was 10 or so. I had the luck of growing near one of the first EU solar powerplants built in Sicily by IT/DE/FR, and I visited it when it was working full steam (literally, it was thermal, not photovoltaic), many of my co-workers and/or friends are nuclear engineers, and I have personally followed the automation of many hydro power plants. So Murphy, if you are seeking for an ignorant person to discuss with, you aimed the wrong one.
Are you sure you're not? Nuclear plants have nothing to do with solar power plants. Nuclear engineers have almost nothing to do with nuclear rod waste storage. Sure some thought of what to do with the waste product goes into the engineering, but they don't actually handle the process. They are very divorced for the reality of the work. Much like the people promoting solar or wind turbines are divorced from the reality of the decommissioning and waste that they provide around the planet when their life cycle is up in a few decades.
I'm sure I'm used to open my mouth when I have a clear idea of what I'm taking about. Facts and common sense. And for now I see what happen TODAY with spent rods and other nuclear waste (there are hospitals research centers and other industrial uses). In Germany is a mess (because the wrong site they chose few decades ago), in Italy (as proud as I'm of the decision to stop with nuclear we took after Chernobyl) we have yet to start to decide where put the decommissioned nuclear crap although we had a couple of Berlusconi (Trump is just a bad copy of him) governments, let alone starting with the decommissioning itself. From France you'll never get trustworthy data just like from any other country that has strong industries involved with nuclear plants. (and the same is valid for US, China and so on...). But I can say that France (that has about 60 power plants) imports more oil than Italy which has zero (active) power plants. With a comparable level of population and a globally weaker manufacturing infrastructure. Nuclear is stupid. Its stupid economically way before starting to being stupid environmentally.
nothing is free and clear of waste and pollution that produces energy so when i here the term clean energy i cringe . so far they all produce something bad for the environment !
That's a premade sentence that means nothing other than condoning any worst practice we are used to . Assuming that a PV panel pollutes during its operating life (say 20 years), the same level of waste of the petroleum or uranium or plutonium, is naive to say the best. Even taking in account a battery based storage (which isn't the only way to store energy), there is an huge difference between a fully recyclable battery and a nuclear waste that last centuries, or with the chemicals released in the atmosphere by fossil fuels, there is no way that we consider all energy sources at the same level.
Oh, dear... YOU have NO CLUE ABOUT A CLUE!!!! You're but a "fan"!!!! This is how rational people actually think: https://www.scientistswarning.org/2020/06/04/nuclear-power-a-risk-analysis/ -