EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

I am against nuclear energy because my government is deeply corrupted and give contracts to their friends. They also appoint unqualified people to the highest positions to award them big salaries and the results are catastrophic tragedies with tens of casualties each time. I don’t trust them to operate the railroads, why would I trust them to operate a nuclear facility?

This is the main reason why I am, generally speaking, against nuclear as a universal solution.

A question for pro-nuclear folks: Would you be okay with having a highly corrupt low HDI country building nuclear facilities (conversion and deconversion, enrichment, power plants) next to your borders?

They are more likely to cause more damage, just less visibly, in building substandard fossil fuel plants.

Absolutely. Just stop using LWR as the blueprint.

This is similar to the reasoning of Austria vehemently opposing nuclear reactors to be built in neighbouring countries, even if downstream on the Danube, even if 200 km from their border.

The latest decision (although on the surface, not on an environmental issue like the article is about, but on state aid measures - but actually not the real reason for Austria's opposition): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62...

So, I believe, yes, low HDI countries with high corruption do have the right to build nuclear facilities. This is not like a combination of low HDI and high corruption index awarded by some international organization has the approval rights to such questions of sovereignity. There is a whole range of special regulation regarding who can build nuclear stations and under what conditions, with a special agency to ensure the safe use (IAEA) - that should be the only criteria for letting nations build nuclear stations, not corruption, HDI or how rich the countries are.

So you would oppose an entire, globe-spanning branch of deeply necessary technology (clean energy) with all its vast opportunities for improvement, innovation, and management under all kinds of more responsible means, because the government functionaries in your specific part of the world can't get their moral shit together (and given what you describe, wouldn't be able to do it well no matter what kid of large-scale energy is put into their hands)?

They're concerned about the safety of corrupt management. Several posters here reassure that Chernobyl etc. were poorly managed and that we've learned a lot since then. But ongoing corruption doesn't instill confidence that learnings will be incorporated safely.

Saying that catastrophes have been uncommon over decades is also not reassuring as one would expect catastrophes to increase if we go from not building and decommissioning to rapid building and recommissioning.

Maybe the upper limit of atomic power catastrophe is still a low casualty count. In that case we shouldn't reassure people that we've learned and improved and instead show that even rampantly corrupt administration cannot do much harm, if that's the case.

This is true regardless of how the electron potential is generated.

I was involved in the nuclear industry in the 90's.

Why impose externalities on others when solar and wind are so cheap and less risky? It seems like proponents fall for technological aspirationalism without considering pragmatic consequences and risks of shoveling enormous sums of money for unnecessary risks and inefficient allocations of capital because it's seems just barely unobtainable or blocked by "them" when it's simply economically unviable.

No. I only vote in my country. Other countries can do as they see fit.

Slovenia has been running a reactor for a good long while without any problems and it's extremely safe. So from our POV, it's much more likely that Austria would prefer everyone around them to import Austrian energy instead of producing their own.

Also, Austria makes no sense. It opposes a new reactor in Slo being built but that means that the current one will just keep getting its life extended. Clearly it's not about safety.

And it's selective technological aspirationalism. Why is unbounded optimism appropriate for nuclear but not for renewables? The engineering principle of KISS says renewables should be much more improvable, as indeed the data indicates they are.

It's the other way around.

Nuclear works now. We just have to build it.

Intermittent renewables supplying an industrial society does not. And there is no way to get from here to there except a lot of handwaving and "magic happens here".

https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20100608webcontentchicagosli...

PV has improved in cost/W by nearly three orders of magnitude since it was introduced, and by an order of magnitude since 2010.

Nuclear fans could only dream of this rate of improvement.

Nuclear doesn't work in the sense of being competitive. It's behind and falling farther behind with each passing day.

The best time to have given up on nuclear was decades ago. The second best time is now.

When you have to build Nuclear Reactors then this is not now. The avg. building time of Nuclear Reactors is 9-12 Years.

6.5 years.

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi...

> Nuclear fans could only dream of this rate of improvement.

Nuclear doesn't need this rate of improvement, because it was always cheap.

> Nuclear doesn't work in the sense of being competitive.

Empirically false.

Also: if it weren't competitive, Germany wouldn't have had to outlaw nuclear, it just would have disappeared on its own.

> The best time to have given up on nuclear was decades ago.

Your incorrect and unsubstantiated opinion is not shared by the rest of the world.

Even more reason to start now.

I am counting delays that are always occuring. There is only two reactor blocks that I know that didn't have delays in recent years.

These are build times for just single Reactor Blocks, in 2020 to 2022. https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/wnisr2023-v5.pdf#...

Real examples in the last years: Olkiluoto 3 - 17 Years SHIDAO BAY-1 - 9 Years Flammanvill-3 - 17 Years VOGTLE-4 - 11 Years FANGCHENGGANG-4 - 8 Years RAJASTHAN-7 - 14 Years

No you are cherry picking specific examples that fit your incorrect claim. 6.5 years is the current average.