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EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

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1041 points mpweiher | 2 comments | 12 Sep 25 18:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.451s | source
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jama211 ◴[12 Sep 25 19:19 UTC] No.45225631[source]▶
I’m totally fine with nuclear honestly, but I feel like I don’t understand something. No one seems to be able to give me a straight answer with proper facts that explain why we couldn’t just make a whole load more renewable energy generators instead. Sure, it might cost more, but in theory any amount of power a nuclear plant would generate could also be achieved with large amounts of renewables no?
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alexey-salmin ◴[12 Sep 25 19:29 UTC] No.45225743[source]▶
If Germany invested all their renewable money into nuclear, they would be carbon-neutral today. Not by 2050 but today.

Instead the CO2 per capita in Germany is 2x the one in France. And France had built their reactors in the 70s for a modest price.

The "whole load more renewable energy" idea is peak wishful thinking and it's incredible people still buy it today.

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bryanlarsen ◴[12 Sep 25 20:16 UTC] No.45226265[source]▶
No they couldn't have. Germany has spent $700B on renewable energy and need 250GW of power. Not even China could have built 250GW of nuclear power for $700B although they could come close. Germany likely would have needed to spend $5T.

Much of that $700B was spent in the 2000's and 2010's when renewable was more expensive than nuclear. But renewables are far cheaper than nuclear in the 2020's.

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1. chickenbig ◴[13 Sep 25 06:07 UTC] No.45229717[source]▶
> Germany has spent $700B on renewable energy and need 250GW of power.

Germany has just over 250GW of installed capacity. [0] indicates peak power is 75GW. Replicating the Olkiluoto EPR build for 75GW of capacity would have cost perhaps 500B EUR.

[1] speculates about what would have happened if Germany had retained its nuclear power stations and performed a fleet build-out.

[0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-industry-has-lar...

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14786451.2024.2...

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2. ViewTrick1002 ◴[13 Sep 25 08:15 UTC] No.45230290[source]▶
Citing [1] means that you are only here to sow discord citing research you know is factually wrong.

That study is laughably bad. To the point that they double counted all renewable investment.

See: https://www.isi.fraunhofer.de/en/blog/2024/kritische-stellun...