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Nuclear energy key to decarbonising Europe, says EESC

(www.eesc.europa.eu)
129 points mpweiher | 1 comments | 12 Dec 25 17:32 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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1. derriz ◴[12 Dec 25 21:15 UTC] No.46249052[source]▶
The technology of electricity production has advanced since nuclear peaked in the mid 1980s.

We have better/cheaper ways of producing electricity than attaching a heat source to tank of water, boiling the water to produce steam, then forcing the steam through a turbine, capturing the kinetic energy in order to turn the rotor of an alternator. Whether that heat source is coal or nuclear, you're still looking at what is fundamentally a 19th century design - attach a steam engine to an alternator.

Gas turbines remove the boiling water/steam engine part. Wind turbines remove heat from the process completely and solar PV removes the mechanical part.

All 3 technologies are base on mass production - particularly solar PV. And so all have seem massive price decreases which is expected to continue. Meanwhile nuclear gets more and more expensive.

Globally, nuclear peaked about 2 decades in terms of energy production ago, 2.5 decades ago in terms of number of operating turbines, 3 decades ago in terms of share of electricity production and 4 or 5 decades ago in terms of plants under construction.