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EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

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1041 points mpweiher | 4 comments | 12 Sep 25 18:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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9dev ◴[12 Sep 25 19:29 UTC] No.45225742[source]▶
If you factor in all the cost usually externalised in nuclear power, it’s often a lot more expensive than people realise. Decommissioning nuclear waste and old reactors is a huge, time-consuming, and thus extremely expensive operation.
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mpweiher ◴[12 Sep 25 19:39 UTC] No.45225853[source]▶
This turns out not to be the case, and all these supposedly "externalized" costs are actually included in the price of electricity produced by nuclear reactors.

For example in Switzerland, all of that still allows full production costs of 4,34 Rappen (with a profit).

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tcfhgj ◴[13 Sep 25 06:41 UTC] No.45229870[source]▶
In France they aren't, Germany neither
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1. mpweiher ◴[13 Sep 25 07:42 UTC] No.45230125[source]▶
Wrong on both counts.

The only wrinkle is that when the German government made electricity production from nuclear power illegal, it had to take over some of those responsibilities, for obvious reasons.

It also took over the money that had been saved up thus far, which is almost certainly more than needed to cover the costs. Well unless those costs are driven up to infinity with ever more creative mechanisms by politicians.

But that's a political problem.

Finland just built a site for around €1 billion.

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2. throwaway2037 ◴[13 Sep 25 08:58 UTC] No.45230541[source]▶

    > Finland just built a site for around €1 billion.
I am confused. Are you talking about reactor #3 from Olkiluoto? Even the initial estimate from 2005 was 3B EUR.
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3. mpweiher ◴[13 Sep 25 10:01 UTC] No.45230819[source]▶
No, about the Onkalo nuclear storage facility.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230613-onkalo-has-finla...

4. tcfhgj ◴[13 Sep 25 18:07 UTC] No.45234070[source]▶
it is not wrong, both countries subsidized nuclear power