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EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

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1041 points mpweiher | 3 comments | 12 Sep 25 18:18 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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yellowapple ◴[12 Sep 25 18:51 UTC] No.45225313[source]▶
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ben_w ◴[12 Sep 25 19:06 UTC] No.45225487[source]▶
Greenpeace is both halves of the name.

While I agree that nuclear is green, IMO Greenpeace are correct about it not being compatible with the "peace" half: the stuff that makes working reactors is the most difficult part of making a working weapons.

This also means that during the cold war they suspected of being soviet plants.

Those suspicions and yours could both be correct for all I know.

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exabrial ◴[12 Sep 25 19:10 UTC] No.45225541[source]▶
> the stuff that makes working reactors is the most difficult part of making a working weapons

I'm unaware of this to be true. Civilian reactors are hardly-at-all-enirched uranium reactors. Creating highly enriched uranium or plutonium are completely different processes.

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ajross ◴[12 Sep 25 19:25 UTC] No.45225682[source]▶
Enrichment requires feed stock, and active reactor fuel is much higher in fissionable isotopes than the uranium with which it was fed originally. The U238 naturally breeds up into stable-ish U/Th/Pu isotopes which you can totally turn into a bomb.

Obviously there are such things as "breeder reactors" that are deliberately designed for this. But there's really no such thing as a can't-be-used-for-bombs reactor.

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jabl ◴[12 Sep 25 20:09 UTC] No.45226182[source]▶
If you're going for the enriched uranium route to a bomb, nobody is going to start with used nuclear fuel, because dealing with the highly radioactive spent fuel is such a huge PITA.

If you're going for the U233 (from Th) or Pu route, yes then you need a reactor and spent fuel reprocessing. But not enrichment of spent fuel.

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ajross ◴[12 Sep 25 20:13 UTC] No.45226231{3}[source]▶
That "nobody" is misapplied. Certainly it applies to existing nuclear powers, but that's not the demographic in question.

Not everyone has a U mine or pre-existing bomb industry. The question is whether or not having a reactor makes producing bombs easier or not, and clearly the answer is "yes", bomb-making is easier (yet, sure, still a "PITA") if you have a reactor core handy to start with.

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1. jabl ◴[13 Sep 25 05:45 UTC] No.45229642{4}[source]▶
> That "nobody" is misapplied. Certainly it applies to existing nuclear powers, but that's not the demographic in question.

Oh, interesting! If so, can you provide an example of anyone producing HEU starting from spent fuel?

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2. ajross ◴[13 Sep 25 12:49 UTC] No.45231662[source]▶
That's... not the way the burden of proof works here. You don't do non-proliferation analysis by only worrying about it after someone has proliferated. I think if you want to announce that reactors are useless for building bombs you need to provide a cite. Certainly nuclear non-proliferation work by real professionals does include the existence of a domestic nuclear industry.
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3. jabl ◴[13 Sep 25 17:46 UTC] No.45233902[source]▶
> That's... not the way the burden of proof works here. You don't do non-proliferation analysis by only worrying about it after someone has proliferated.

Well, let's put it this way. If you want to create HEU you can either start from natural uranium, which is significantly easier to come by and isn't horribly radioactive. Or then you start from spent fuel, which is under IAEA safeguards (for other reasons), is very radioactive and thus very cumbersome, expensive and slow to deal with. Now which is more likely?

Not saying creating HEU from spent fuel is impossible, it's just a stupid way of going about it, and spent fuel already being covered by IAEA safeguards for other reasons so it's probably also going to be easier to detect such a hypothetical clandestine nuclear program.

> I think if you want to announce that reactors are useless for building bombs you need to provide a cite.

If you read my original response I explicitly mentioned that you need a reactor if you want to create a U233 or Pu based bomb. So I have no idea where you get such a notion from.

> Certainly nuclear non-proliferation work by real professionals does include the existence of a domestic nuclear industry.

True, but again not a point I have argued against.