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EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

(www.weplanet.org)
1041 points mpweiher | 24 comments | 12 Sep 25 18:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source | bottom
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reenorap ◴[12 Sep 25 18:54 UTC] No.45225348[source]▶
We need to drive down the costs of implementing nuclear energy. Most of it are fake costs due to regulation. I understand that regulation is needed but we also need nuclear energy, we have to find a streamlined way to get more plants up and running as soon as possible. I think they should all be government projects so that private companies can't complain that they're losing money and keep have to ratchet up the prices, like PG&E in California. My rates have doubled in a few years to over $0.40/kWh and up over $0.50/kWh after I go up a tier depending on usage.
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Retric ◴[12 Sep 25 20:54 UTC] No.45226646[source]▶
> Most of it are fake costs due to regulation.

It’s really not, nuclear inherently requires extreme costs to operate. Compare costs vs coal which isn’t cost competitive these days. Nuclear inherently need a lot more effort refining fuel as you can’t just dig a shovel full of ore and burn it. Even after refining you can’t just dump fuel in, you need fuel assemblies. Nuclear must have a more complicated boiler setup with an extra coolant loop. You need shielding and equipment to move spent fuel and a spent fuel cooling pond. Insurance isn’t cheap when mistakes can cost hundreds of billions. Decommissioning could be a little cheaper with laxer standards, but it’s never going to be cheap. Etc etc.

Worse, all those capital costs mean you’re selling most of your output 24/7 at generally low wholesale spot prices unlike hydro, natural gas, or battery backed solar which can benefit from peak pricing.

That’s not regulations that’s just inherent requirements for the underlying technology. People talk about small modular reactors, but small modular reactors are only making heat they don’t actually drive costs down meaningfully. Similarly the vast majority of regulations come from lessons learned so yea they spend a lot of effort avoiding foreign materials falling into the spent fuel pool, but failing to do so can mean months of downtime and tens of millions in costs so there isn’t some opportunity to save money by avoiding that regulation.

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AnthonyMouse ◴[12 Sep 25 23:28 UTC] No.45227890[source]▶
> Nuclear inherently need a lot more effort refining fuel as you can’t just dig a shovel full of ore and burn it. Even after refining you can’t just dump fuel in, you need fuel assemblies.

It's true that a pound of nuclear fuel costs more than a pound of coal. But it also has a million times more energy content, which is why fuel is only 15-20% of the operating costs compared to >60% for coal. And that's for legacy nuclear plants designed to use moderately high enrichment rates, not newer designs that can do without that.

> Nuclear must have a more complicated boiler setup with an extra coolant loop.

You're describing a heat exchanger and some pipes. If this is the thing that costs a billion dollars, you're making the argument that this is a regulatory cost problem.

> You need shielding and equipment to move spent fuel and a spent fuel cooling pond.

Shielding is concrete and lead and water. None of those are particularly expensive.

Equipment to move things is something you need at refueling intervals, i.e. more than a year apart. If this is both expensive and rarely used then why does each plant need its own instead of being something that comes on the truck with the new fuel and then goes back to be used at the next plant?

> Insurance isn’t cheap when mistakes can cost hundreds of billions.

This is the regulatory asymmetry again. When a hydroelectric dam messes up bad enough, the dam breaks and it can wipe out an entire city. When oil companies mess up, Deep Water Horizon and Exxon Valdez. When coal companies just operate in their ordinary manner as if this is fine, they leave behind a sea of environmental disaster sites that the government spends many billions of dollars in superfund money to clean up. That stuff costs as much in real life as nuclear disasters do in theory. And that's before we even consider climate change.

But then one of them is required to carry that amount of insurance when the others aren't. It should either be both or neither, right?

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virtue3 ◴[13 Sep 25 00:07 UTC] No.45228128[source]▶
The problem with nuclear mistakes is they aren't a few decades. They can be measured in centuries.

So yeah. Regulation.

Don't build a damn LWR on a fault line (Fukushima) 3mile Island - don't have so many damn errors printing out that everything is ignore Chernobyl - we all know I think. It's still being worked on to contain it fully. Goiânia accident (brazil) - caesium-137 - Time magazine has identified the accident as one of the world's "worst nuclear disasters" and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called it "one of the world's worst radiological incidents". (and this was just a radiation source, not a nuclear plant)

So yeah. Oil has bad disasters. Nuclear has EPIC disasters.

I think what is missing in your argument is not that these pieces are difficult. It's that combining all of them adds to a significant amount of complexity.

It's not JUST a heat exchanger. It's a heat exchanger that has to go through shielding. And it has to operate at much higher pressures than another type of power production facility would use. Which adds more complexity. And even greater need of safety.

I'm not arguing against Nuclear; I think it's incredibly worthwhile especially in the current age of AI eating up so much power in a constant use situation. But I do think it needs to be extremely regulated due to the risks of things going south.

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1. DennisP ◴[13 Sep 25 00:41 UTC] No.45228293[source]▶
And then there's coal. The difference between nuclear and coal is that when nuclear has a horrible accident, it kills fewer people than coal kills as part of its normal expected operation.
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2. immibis ◴[13 Sep 25 01:46 UTC] No.45228647[source]▶
The difference between nuclear and coal is that when nuclear has a horrible accident, it kills as many people right here and makes as much land uninhabitable right here as coal does in our enemy countries within its normal expected operation.
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3. AnthonyMouse ◴[13 Sep 25 02:02 UTC] No.45228715[source]▶
Our enemy countries are West Virginia and Pennsylvania?
4. tedk-42 ◴[13 Sep 25 03:02 UTC] No.45228968[source]▶
Except for Russia, where else have deaths + land issues happened?
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5. Natsu ◴[13 Sep 25 03:30 UTC] No.45229076[source]▶
Meltdowns aren't physically possible if we're building newer types of plants, so there can't be a new Chernobyl or even Fukushima if we're using modern types of passively cooled plants.
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6. Retric ◴[13 Sep 25 04:37 UTC] No.45229336{3}[source]▶
Not a commercial reactor but US lost 3 people trying to hand operate a small reactor with minimal safety: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1

“On Tuesday, January 3, 1961, SL-1 was being prepared for restart after a shutdown of 11 days over the holidays. Maintenance procedures required that rods be manually withdrawn a few inches to reconnect each one to its drive mechanism. At 9:01 pm MST, Rod 9 was suddenly withdrawn too far, causing SL-1 to go prompt critical instantly. In four milliseconds, the heat generated by the resulting enormous power excursion caused fuel inside the core to melt and to explosively vaporize.”

The industry didn’t just randomly get so risk averse there where a lot of meltdowns and other issues over time.

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7. Retric ◴[13 Sep 25 05:07 UTC] No.45229474{3}[source]▶
There’s generally significant costs and asterisks around such claims.

You’re much better off paying attention to site placement than trying to design something to safety handle getting covered in several meters of volcanic ash Pompeii style.

8. peterfirefly ◴[13 Sep 25 08:02 UTC] No.45230227{4}[source]▶
Do stupid things and stupid things will happen. There are plenty of similarly stupid accidents on stupidly run construction sites and chemical plants all the time. Also lots of accidents with trains, lots of accidents with temperamental chemicals.

Take this stupid accident, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic#2007_Scaled_Co...

> In July 2007, three Scaled Composites employees were killed and three critically injured at the Mojave spaceport while testing components of the rocket motor for SpaceShipTwo. An explosion occurred during a cold fire test, which involved nitrous oxide flowing through fuel injectors. The procedure had been expected to be safe.

N2O is very good oxidizer + it's a molecule that can fall apart (and turn into N2 and O2) in a very exothermic way if you look at it wrong.

Oops.

Back to SL-1. Nobody was killed by radiation. They were killed by things hitting them hard from the explosion.

> The effort to minimize the size of the core gave an abnormally-large reactivity worth to Rod 9, the center control rod.

> One of the required maintenance procedures called for Rod 9 to be manually withdrawn about four inches (10 cm) in order to attach it to the automated control mechanism from which it had been disconnected. Post-accident calculations, as well as examination of scratches on Rod 9, estimate that it had actually been withdrawn about twenty inches (51 cm), causing the reactor to go prompt critical and triggering the steam explosion.

and:

> At SL-1, control rods would sometimes get stuck in the control rod channel. Numerous procedures were conducted to evaluate control rods to ensure they were operating properly. There were rod drop tests and scram tests of each rod, in addition to periodic rod exercising and rod withdrawals for normal operation. From February 1959 to November 18, 1960, there were 40 cases of a stuck control rod for scram and rod drop tests and about a 2.5% failure rate. From November 18 to December 23, 1960, there was a dramatic increase in stuck rods, with 23 in that time period and a 13.0% failure rate. Besides these test failures, there were an additional 21 rod-sticking incidents from February 1959 to December 1960; four of these had occurred in the last month of operation during routine rod withdrawal. Rod 9 had the best operational performance record even though it was operated more frequently than any of the other rods.

That is insane.

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9. ViewTrick1002 ◴[13 Sep 25 08:27 UTC] No.45230353[source]▶
The great thing is that coal is not the alternative in 2025.

Renewables are forcing enormous amounts of coals and fossil gas off grids around the world as we speak.

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10. immibis ◴[13 Sep 25 09:26 UTC] No.45230665{5}[source]▶
> Back to SL-1. Nobody was killed by radiation. They were killed by things hitting them hard from the explosion.

What's the relevance of this?

11. tempodox ◴[13 Sep 25 10:22 UTC] No.45230893[source]▶
> coal is not the alternative in 2025.

Except in uncle Donald’s kingdom with “America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry” (yes, seriously):

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/rein...

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12. ViewTrick1002 ◴[13 Sep 25 11:15 UTC] No.45231167{3}[source]▶
Lets come back if that leads to an increase of coal usage instead of being posturing like most else they do.

Coal has been uncompetitive since the advent of the CCGT plant and was stagnating long before the fracking boom.

13. Retric ◴[13 Sep 25 13:50 UTC] No.45232079{5}[source]▶
> That is insane.

Hindsight plus other people doing the analysis always makes things seem more obvious.

The people designing this system were not trying to kill the operators. They made tradeoffs that seemed reasonable at the time and then things failed badly because something unexpected happened. The only way to avoid that is to be extremely cautious which then feeds back to nuclear being expensive.

Risk aversion gets expensive, but so does taking risks. That’s the nuclear dilemma. It seems reasonable to say just take more risks, but that’s how you get accidents that people look back on and think how could they be so dumb.

14. DennisP ◴[13 Sep 25 13:52 UTC] No.45232089[source]▶
Yes, and in terms of overall deaths per terawatt-hour, nuclear is similar to renewables.
15. opo ◴[13 Sep 25 19:55 UTC] No.45234826[source]▶
>The great thing is that coal is not the alternative in 2025.

Unfortunately, there is a country that shut down nuclear power plants while they still have operating coal plants. Over time, coal use is declining in Germany, but that isn't the story so far in 2025:

>…The share of electricity produced with fossil fuels in Germany increased by ten percent between January and the end of June 2025, compared to the same period one year before, while power production from renewables declined by almost six percent, the country’s statistical office

>… Coal-fired power production increased 9.3 percent, while electricity production from fossil gas increased by 11.6 percent.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/fossil-electricity-prod...

Shutting nuclear power plants down when you are still burning coal is almost unbelievable... I don’t think future generations will look kindly on countries who shut down a clean form of power while they still are running the most dangerous and dirty form of power generation ever created.

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16. ViewTrick1002 ◴[13 Sep 25 20:59 UTC] No.45235247{3}[source]▶
Personally I would of course prefer to phase out fossil fuels before nuclear power. But we are where we are in 2025 and there is no point crying over spilled milk.

We can only look forward and make sure we spend our money wisely. We also need to decarbonize aviation, shipping, agriculture, industry, construction etc. The grid is not the end, it is only the beginning of our decarbonization journey.

The fastest, cheapest and most efficient way of quickly displacing fossil based energy production today is building renewables and storage.

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17. opo ◴[13 Sep 25 21:25 UTC] No.45235452{4}[source]▶
>...But we are where we are in 2025 and there is no point crying over spilled milk.

It would be one thing if Germany's bad mistakes in this area only affected Germany. Unfortunately people downwind of Germany die because it is still burning coal. Unfortunately climate change will affect everyone.

>...We also need to decarbonize aviation, shipping, agriculture, industry, construction etc. The grid is not the end,

Many of the changes needed to decarbonize those industries will rely on using electricity, so the grid is critical.

>...The fastest, cheapest and most efficient way of quickly displacing fossil based energy production today is building renewables and storage.

We will see if Germany is still burning coal and natural gas when countries like Finland are not.

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18. ViewTrick1002 ◴[13 Sep 25 21:34 UTC] No.45235514{5}[source]▶
Is your suggestion that Germany instead of building renewables quickly displacing said coal instead invests their money in nuclear power?

That would mean they get a fraction of the capacity (in TWh) online and the people downwind of Germany would have to live with the emissions as they stand today without any abatement until the mid 2040s.

Does that sound reasonable?

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19. opo ◴[14 Sep 25 01:45 UTC] No.45236738{6}[source]▶
Unfortunately Germany dug itself into a big hole and the choices aren’t that great. (Yes, continue to build more solar and wind. Though that is what has been happening in 2025, and coal use has increased this year due to the variability of renewable sources.) To move away from coal in a more reasonable timeframe, other approaches could also be done. Like I mentioned in a previous comment, I am sure Germany will decarbonize before Poland, but that is kind of a low bar. Some ideas:

- Restart the nuclear power plants that are feasible to restart. The last 3 plants were only shut down in 2023 - it isn't like all the plants were shut down in 2011. It may very well be that Germany doesn’t feel it has the expertise to run nuclear power plants in the long term, so once the power isn’t needed or can be replaced by clean energy (either produced in Germany or imported), feel free to shut down the nuclear plants.

- Work with Denmark and France to import more of their power that is not coal based.

- Reward conservation more.

- Move the big industrial users of electricity out of Germany.

Some of these alternatives are likely not palatable, but like I said, Germany dug itself into a hole. Any of these alternatives sounds better than essentially deciding instead to murder people by burning coal when you have other options.

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20. ViewTrick1002 ◴[14 Sep 25 10:40 UTC] No.45238860{7}[source]▶
This comment shows that you don’t really grasp how the German grid works.

The German grid is currently constrained north-south due to limited transmission capacity. Over production of renewables in the north and over consumption in the south.

The reactors the pro-nuclear lobby in Germany identified as ”most easily restartable” are in the north.

Therefore restarting them is a pure waste of money. It does not solve any problems Germany has with its grid.

Then it comes down to the cost question. You can maintain a piece of infrastructure forever but at some point the costs does not justify the gain. Better spend the money on renewables and storage instead.

An example of such stupidity is Diablo Canyon in California requiring a $12B subsidy on top of regular income for selling electricity to run 5 extra years from 2025 to 2030.

You do know that France is on a downward trend of nuclear power as well? Reactors are entering end of life and the EPR2 program is in absolute shambles.

Currently they can’t even agree on how to fund the absolutely insanely bonkers subsidies.

Now targeting investment decision in H2 2026… And the French government just fell because they are underwater in debt and have a spending problem which they can’t agree on how to fix.

A massive handout to the dead end nuclear industry sounds like the perfect solution!

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21. opo ◴[14 Sep 25 18:25 UTC] No.45242091{8}[source]▶
>Over production of renewables in the north and over consumption in the south.

Well I guess it is impossible to upgrade the grid in any kind of reasonable timeframe in Germany. There are still other options that could be done to hasten the end of burning coal - I pointed out a few, there are likely others.

>Then it comes down to the cost question. You can maintain a piece of infrastructure forever but at some point the costs does not justify the gain. Better spend the money on renewables and storage instead.

Yes it is a question. Unfortunately you have given no evidence of the actual costs.

>...You do know that France is on a downward trend of nuclear power as well?

In 2014 France set a goal to reduce nuclear's share of electricity generation to 50% by 2025. This target was delayed in 2019 to 2035, before being abandoned in 2023. (I am sure France is also trying to increase renewables and storage.)

>An example of such stupidity is Diablo Canyon in California requiring a $12B subsidy on top of regular income for selling electricity to run 5 extra years from 2025 to 2030.

This comment shows you don't really grasp the issue of power in CA. The 12 billion dollar estimate included costs unrelated to Diablo Canyon according to PG&E. Their estimate is closer to 8B, of which the majority will be covered by selling the electricity. They have a 1.1 billion dollar grant to help with some of the rest, though unclear how much the state will have to subsidize things in the end. The issue is that Diablo Canyon provides about 1/4 of the clean power in CA and can provide it when renewables can't - like every other place, CA currently has a tiny amount of grid storage. Without Diablo Canyon, CA will likely have to buy power from coal plants in other states. So CA is willing to pay extra to avoid having to burn coal. That is different than Germany that decided it would rather burn coal than use nuclear.

We will see when Germany actually stops during fossil fuels. Unfortunately, there certainly do seem to be some advocates of solar/wind who would prefer to go decades (or maybe much longer) burning coal and killing people and destroying the environment when their country had the option to use a clean energy source.

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22. ViewTrick1002 ◴[14 Sep 25 21:25 UTC] No.45243371{9}[source]▶
Upgrades are on the way but you were trying to frame it as a desperate issue to solve immediately, without realizing your solution didn’t solve anything.

For evidence have a read:

https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2024/06/pge-quietly-s...

Just keep hiking the rates in a monopolized system. All good!

You do know that California in recent years has cut fossil gas usage by 40% due to storage? Many evenings batteries are the largest producer in the Californian grid for hours on end. Happened yesterday for example.

But batteries are of course insignificant. Just delivering the equivalent to 8 nuclear reactors pretty much removing the duck curve.

I suggest you update your worldview to 2025.

https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply

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23. opo ◴[17 Sep 25 07:21 UTC] No.45272844{10}[source]▶
>…Upgrades are on the way but you were trying to frame it as a desperate issue to solve immediately, without realizing your solution didn’t solve anything.

It is only non-urgent if a country wants to minimize the people it is killing by recklessly burning coal. Otherwise, no big deal.

>…For evidence have a read:

Yes I had seen that. Which is why I wrote:

>>…The 12 billion dollar estimate included costs unrelated to Diablo Canyon according to PG&E. Their estimate is closer to 8B, of which the majority will be covered by selling the electricity. They have a 1.1 billion dollar grant to help with some of the rest, though unclear how much the state will have to subsidize things in the end.

CA battery capacity has had better growth than I thought. Though there is obviously a difference between batteries to provide power for a few hours a day and a plant that would provide power 24/7. Diablo Canyon provides close to 18,000 GWh per year of clean power. If that goes away this year, it will obviously take a while to be able to replace the power with other clean power.

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24. Retric ◴[18 Sep 25 03:27 UTC] No.45284955{11}[source]▶
> minimize

Countries don’t actually minimize anything largely due to diminishing returns. Hell the US has lost many nuclear weapons, that’s the kind of thing that seems like it should be a much larger priority but all budgets end up being finite.

> a plant that would provide power 24/7

Solar + batteries provide more electricity in CA than nuclear for roughly 16 hours a day. Midnight to 5AM demand is so low they are actually charging grid batteries, something that could be cheaply time shifted to daytime solar if demand actually increased. New nuclear just doesn’t fit especially if it’s taking 4+ years to build.