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Nuclear energy key to decarbonising Europe, says EESC

(www.eesc.europa.eu)
129 points mpweiher | 2 comments | 12 Dec 25 17:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.472s | source
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DarkNova6 ◴[12 Dec 25 19:40 UTC] No.46247903[source]▶
So you want to create a completely new industry. From the ground. With all existing experts having retired. Demanding high quality, no-fault tolerance production. Dependent on resources not found in Europe.

Look, I love nuclear technology. But time has moved on. The costs to rebuild this industry is astronomical and means we lose out on key-future technology like batteries.

Edit: But then there are bombs. And especially French love their nukes due national security. This is the only reason to keep pushing for nuclear, since Russia, the US and China are not gonna change direction on this either. But the very least we could do is be honest about it.

Edit 2: Changed from "World has moved on" to "time has moved on", since evidently China has invested for a good 2 decades to build their own fully functional nuclear-industry. Proving my point that it takes dedicated investment, network effects and scale to rebuild this industry. After all, they too want to mass produce nukes.

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nixass ◴[12 Dec 25 19:45 UTC] No.46247968[source]▶
> Look, I love nuclear technology. But the world has moved on.

Come again?

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iknowstuff ◴[12 Dec 25 19:54 UTC] No.46248065[source]▶
We deploy 10x the capacity in renewables and batteries than we do in nuclear and its only accelerating. We are trending towards 1/10th the cost of nuclear per GW. There is no going back just due to the sheer scale of mass manufacturing renewables.

We are below $1B/GW for solar. China just opened a $100/kWh ($100M/GWh) battery storage plant. All deployable within a year.

Contrast this to $16B/GW for recent nuclear plants, and you don’t benefit from starting a build for another 20 years

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goatlover ◴[12 Dec 25 19:57 UTC] No.46248107[source]▶
That's great, but what percentage of decarbonization will it stall at due to lack of energy density and relying on the wind/sun?
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1. iknowstuff ◴[12 Dec 25 20:09 UTC] No.46248257[source]▶
How is it stalling anything if it offers a cheaper and faster build than nuclear? If you need to build 1GW and want it anytime in the next 2 decades, you sure as hell don’t choose nuclear. You either do natural gas or renewables these days. Those are the only competitive sources of energy.
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2. mpweiher ◴[12 Dec 25 20:18 UTC] No.46248350[source]▶
You actually need energy even when the sun doesn't shine.

And you are incorrect: renewables are not competitive without heavy subsidies and preferential treatment, such as being allowed to shift the cost of their intermittency onto the reliable producers.