[The Beast1]

I'm confused, why don't the Europeans give a fat middle finger to the Russians by building more nuclear reactors?

Instead of relying on natural gas from other countries, Germany in particular could build f*ck all nuclear breeder reactors to massively push the cost of electrical energy down.

Obviously nuclear energy is politically not cool with the lefties, but this is quickly becoming a national security problem for the europeans. I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned as a solution in Brussels.

And another thing, why doesn't the US start diversifying its vehicle fleet with more natural gas powered cars? We have electric, diesel, and gasoline. Lets get a fourth in there.

You'd think with the geopolitical sphere starting to get messy there would be a push towards more energy independence. We have the technology to do so. I'm not surprised the only ones doing it are Russia and China.

[Darius]

Hiroshima and Chernobyl have been used to sour the public on Nuclear Energy.

There are safer alternatives to the reactors we used to use. Ones that minimize the risk and any radioactive waste. So it should be the future of energy. It's currently the most dense form of energy we know of.

Right now there is a push to phase out nuclear energy. Several countries are on there way to phasing it out completely. It seems when it comes to energy we are regressing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out

[Hank]

Finland is currently building one(that will come operational in few years) and has given permission for 1 or 2 more after that. (I think there is a debate currently about the second new license)

[rottenapple]

No matter how you spin it, they remain a threat. Sure they are the most cost effective and they decrease the dependance on other countries so you have to weigh that off. But besides an environmental risk (which will not decrease given the increase of natural disasters) there is also a terrorism risk. Nuclear reactors are favorable targets. I still believe we should go more green, although the cost is high, with more investments new technology will become available and make it more competitive, which is were you want to end up some day eventually. On a world scale, keeping up with nuclear energy on a long term is not the best plan, Fukushima made that clear. Then again, I am no expert.

[Foolsgo1d]

Ask this question to the Germans who got rid of their reactors in favour of natural resources from....Russia.

It is the powers that be who are confused over what route to take. They're not exactly squirming for funds to heat their homes or choose between food or heat. If they did then i guarantee we would have enough reactors being built to enable us to focus more on making gas cheaper.

When you can tie up energy plants in legal quagmires for years it does not bode well for a nuclear plant to be built. They have enough headaches over a new airport in London.

Rather than slapping in the Thames estuary on an island with a fast train to it they keep on banging on about how important it is to expand the existing airports.

Hippies and politicians are the problem.

[heavy]

"why doesn't the US start diversifying its vehicle fleet with more natural gas powered cars?"

When you say US, you mean Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, etc? Gasoline is a liquid. It can be transported easily (ship, truck, etc) and transferred easily (commercial or when you fill up). NG is a gas (unless super compressed). MUCH tougher to transport and transfer, plus I think it's more corrosive on engines.

It's more practical in public transportation. Gasoline is the simplest, cheapest, and overall most efficient way for consumers to get around (outside of public transportation in MAJOR cities).

[SteveMcMahon]

(09-23-2014 08:44 AM)frenchie Wrote:  

I'm confused, why don't the Europeans give a fat middle finger to the Russians by building more nuclear reactors?

In general, the answer is: because they've been scared off atomic power by decades of greenie propaganda.

Greenies hate nuclear power because it works. They don't want us using clean, efficient, non-carbon-emitting power. They want to shut down capitalism and have us live closer to the land like like medieval peasants. So the only energy sources the greens approve of are the ones that are hideously inefficient, unreliable, and expensive: wind and solar for the most part.

That's the case in Germany, which had a nervous breakdown after the Japanese eathquake and tsunami caused Fukushima to melt down.

Fukushima hasn't killed anybody from radiation poisoning, and Germany isn't at risk of earthquakes, but... NUKES! SCARY! BAD!

However, Europe isn't a homogenous mass. The French love nuclear power and have 50 or so atomic plants. Britain is building its first new nuclear plant since 1987. UK planning, environmental, and safety laws make it several orders of magnitude more expensive than it should be though.

[Glaucon]

Modern nuclear plants are very safe.

If you do not built it on the shore on an island where tsunamis are frequent.
Eh...

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

Because ecological activists are based on hatred of people, not love of nature.

[DJ-Matt]

(09-23-2014 09:18 AM)heavy Wrote:  

"why doesn't the US start diversifying its vehicle fleet with more natural gas powered cars?"

When you say US, you mean Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, etc? Gasoline is a liquid. It can be transported easily (ship, truck, etc) and transferred easily (commercial or when you fill up). NG is a gas (unless super compressed). MUCH tougher to transport and transfer, plus I think it's more corrosive on engines.

It's more practical in public transportation. Gasoline is the simplest, cheapest, and overall most efficient way for consumers to get around (outside of public transportation in MAJOR cities).

Ford makes many cars that run on CNG:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_natural_gas

[Sherman]

Germany is phasing out nuclear because it is dangerous. I don't assume that we are any more rational than they are.

Another option is shale gas production.

http://www.shale-gas-information-platfor...tatus.html

[The Beast1]

(09-23-2014 09:18 AM)heavy Wrote:  

"why doesn't the US start diversifying its vehicle fleet with more natural gas powered cars?"

When you say US, you mean Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, etc? Gasoline is a liquid. It can be transported easily (ship, truck, etc) and transferred easily (commercial or when you fill up). NG is a gas (unless super compressed). MUCH tougher to transport and transfer, plus I think it's more corrosive on engines.

It's more practical in public transportation. Gasoline is the simplest, cheapest, and overall most efficient way for consumers to get around (outside of public transportation in MAJOR cities).

Judging from this website, it looks like they solved the delivery system problem for natural gas. There are fast systems that can fill up cars similar to how quickly gasoline cars are filled up. There also appears to be a home fill up system that takes about 6 hours to fill up a car using a home natural gas source.

http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-natural-gas/faq.aspx
http://www.cngnow.com/vehicles/Pages/information.aspx

It sounds like the elites need to go cold before these solutions can take off.

As for safer nuclear power, the newer reactor designs are incredibly safer. The dangers of nuclear power are from running reactors that were designed 50-60 years ago. From what I've read and heard the reason these are kept around are for nuclear weapons productions. The newer reactor designs don't do this.

[bojangles]

It's the leftists, they use scare tactics. France have a lot of reactors though and seem to be doing fine.

[Sp5]

I blame Kraftwerk for killing nuclear power in Europe, especially in Germany. But Kraftwerk has a point about the waste.

I saw an interesting interview of an American woman, Leslie Dewan, MIT Ph.D, who is leading a startup of a company, Transatomic Power trying to revive liquid salt reactors. They can consume their own waste to low-level stuff, rather than plutonium and other highly radioactive and poisonous stuff.

Here's a TED talk she gave:

The technology is there, whether it's this or Thorium reactors.

[The Beast1]

(09-23-2014 10:41 AM)Sp5 Wrote:  

I blame Kraftwerk for killing nuclear power in Europe, especially in Germany. But Kraftwerk has a point about the waste.

I saw an interesting interview of an American woman, Leslie Dewan, MIT Ph.D, who is leading a startup of a company, Transatomic Power trying to revive liquid salt reactors. They can consume their own waste to low-level stuff, rather than plutonium and other highly radioactive and poisonous stuff.

Here's a TED talk she gave:

The technology is there, whether it's this or Thorium reactors.

If the waste is radioactive then that means that the fuel is still good and can be re-processed into useable fuel rods. It's supposedly cheaper to just take it out of the ground.

[Wreckingball]

Because we're a bunch of pussies, misinformed pussies.

Germans have the money, but lack the balls. So they pay the polish to build a central near the border and they get energy from France (who, despite their accent, still have some cojones) and some gas from Mother Russia.
Anti atomic energy is a very powerful lobby in Germany.

I would gladly have a nuke central on my backyard. Centrals are not dangerous if:1-Maintained properly, which Chernobil was not. 2-If an 8.9 Earthquake, a 15m Tsunami does not top the 10m wall and part of the ceiling doesn't fall on the reactor, which is quite difficult to happen in Continental Europe.

[DjembaDjemba]

A big part of the reason is NIMBYism and Chernobyl. Western Europe is densely populated enough to spook any community from having or wanting a nuclear power plant in its backyard. Nuclear power is one of the cleanest, safest, and most reliable methods of generating power. However on the other hand, when things go wrong they can go catastrophically wrong. Irregardless the risks don't outweigh the benefits in this situation.

In North America we have the land and remoteness to tuck our nuclear plants out of sight, out of mind. That includes the nuclear waste. Western Europe doesn't have the luxury.

Unfortunately for Europe, something has to give. If they want to drive in emissions free electric vehicles, the electricity grid will need an overhaul. Currently there's the option of the feared nuclear power, even dirtier than gas coal fired plants, or unreliable renewable sources.

[void]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine read up the google translation of the german wiki-article if you want to read how not to store radioactive waste. The story is awfully amateurish.
Germany is exporting energy (solar, wind) in peak times because the renewables generate too much. Energy consumption is the highest at noon, thus matches peak energy production with PV.
If the lakes run dry in France, they have to shut down their nuclear reactors because they lack cooling water and import energy from Germany and other countries. Thus NR aren't perfectly reliable either.

[tattiemasher]

Russia has built, and is contracted to build, several of the nuclear reactors in the EU. Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Lithuania...there are others but I can't list them all off the top of my head. They get something like 20% of uranium from Russia too. There's not much the EU can do to get away from reliance on Russian energy supplies no matter what they do, aside from wind/wave/solar/geothermal etc.

Russia also created floating nuclear power plants which are based at sea, which a number of countries have now shown interest in. They're sending one to operate in Kamchatka, though it might even be operational by now.

[Saweeep]

The funny thing is that all the hand wringing about potential dangers ignores the fact that the French love building the things.

France is pretty damned close in fall out terms to just about everyone (germany/uk) who allows lefty, greeny losers to influence the debate.

As an Englishman, many of my compatriots would put me in The Tower for saying this, but I fucking love the French. They pretty much always just do what they want.

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

(09-23-2014 03:42 PM)DjembaDjemba Wrote:  

In North America we have the land and remoteness to tuck our nuclear plants out of sight, out of mind. That includes the nuclear waste. Western Europe doesn't have the luxury.

But that's exactly the problem here. If you try to build any sort of power plant in Europe, even an ultra-clean one like hydro or wind, you get "ecological activists" clamoring about "displacing bat/frog/bird habitats" or whatever and the construction is stalled forever while "environmental advisers" rack up enormous environmental study fees for writing bullshit over and over.

Ok, the government says, we'll build a power plant in a sparsely populated area next to some city, where the land is already inhabited and not pristine nature.

"No no no," the activists clamor again, "this ruins quality of life, pollutes rural environment, spreads pollutants into people's houses, and power lines spread electromagnetic radiation (did you hear it? radiation!) and cause cancer". Absolutely any place close to humans is off-limits.

So take a map and pick any place that's both not untouched wilderness and is not inhabited by humans. For example, here is a map of Great Britain with all natural places marked black and all inhabited places marked white.


Source: http://www.withouthotair.com/

Wait, that includes the entire world?



To make the irony, hypocrisy and parasitism even greater, these same people then abundantly use the wonders of modern technology, from infinite electricity to cars to high-tech medicine and convenience. Their carbon footprints, even if they actually go living in green hippie communes, are still orders of magnitude higher than those of people living in the world's undeveloped places.

These people wield tremendous power in society, and are able to infinitely stall or prevent any construction they don't like.

As much as I like to blame governments for many things, I have to admit that in some regards the fault is on the people and people only. They are the rabble that makes me envy countries like Russia or China who don't let them have a say in important decisions.

[Bad Hussar]

Some European countries are largely successful in using "alternative" energy. Denmark, say. But they are not really an industrial country. What is made in Denmark? Some cheese, the odd piece of designer furniture and maybe some pieces of Lego. Though Lego production has probably been outsourced to China or Eastern Europe. Germany is in a much tougher position. They are a major industrial country and have very big power demands. I believe that the statistics used to claim X% of Germany's power production is from green/renewable sources is inaccurate and designed to generate a much higher number than is the case in reality. There are also claims that, certainly in the past, Germany simply imported "Nuclear" energy from France when they shut down their own plants.

But I can understand a countries reluctance to build more Nuclear Power stations. They are potentially really, really dangerous. The fact that the odds of something going wrong is small is barely any consolation because when they do go wrong the impact is absolutely massive. If Western Europe really wants to give Russia the middle finger I think they should bight the bullet and build more (relatively clean) coal powered plants. Any grand idea of carbon trading and reduction will the have to be thrown out the window, but nothing comes without costs...

[nomadicdude]

Fukashima killed the nuclear industry.

[freeuser]

The problem that Europe has, is that we don´t have any energetic resources of our own, a part from some Oil in the North Sea. Nuclear reactors need stuff like uranium-235 (235U) and plutonium-239 (239Pu) and guess what, we don´t have much of it in Europe. So we have the same problem as with Oil & Gas, we depend on the outside supply. As far as the countries that have uranium, some of them are friendly an stable like Canada, US or Australia. Others are well, Niger, Kazakhstan or Russia. I think France for example gets a lot of Uranium from Niger. That´s why they intervened in the Northern Mali conflict (Mali is a neighbour of Niger and the conflict might have spread).

Then you have to take into consideration that Uranium is a finite recourse. We are probably not going to have a 100 year supply of enriched Uranium, it´s going to end some day. So we need to find alternatives, the sooner the better.

[Orion]

The problem with nuclear safety risks is that there is no fix. Once it happens it's game over. Nuclear fallout is devastating.

Anyhow, there are much more efficient, safe, economical reactors designed. Reason why nobody invests in them is not so much because of greens as much as it is about corporations who cannot milk the state using that technology. If they would somehow be able to make nuclear plants in a way that state would need to supply gazillions to corporations annually, trust me, there would be reactors everywhere

However, Europe definitely leads the world when it comes to nuclear power share in electricity production

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country