Macron says France will build new nuclear energy reactors

Re:Macron says France will build new nuclear energy reactors by manquer on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @01:45AM (#29171824)

The difference is storing nuclear waste is accepted practice today expected from every country having a plant, storing chemical emissions(CO2) is not.

A enforced storage/cleanup would be ideal yes, U.S. has never agreed to any standards, even know while Kerry talking about shutting down Coal by 2030 from nowhere, the U.S. government explicitly did not join the pledge to shutdown coal in 2030s like some countries did last week in COP26, and has always refused to get into any international binding agreement.

From a economic perspective what you are mandated to pay for [1] today is how you model costs of the project. Running a nuclear plant today means you have to keep spent in fuel on premise with no horizon for that status quo to change. Economic model for actual money going to be spent now ( not environmental or social costs models of indirect costs) has to factor that in the cost of ownership of a plant.

Is that unfair because fossil fuels has indirect costs ? yes it is, but that does not matter from an economic decision making point of view when financing a new power plant today. Carbon tax is not a solution either as currently being envisioned [1]

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[1] The carbon tax that is being discussed in the U.S. would be a disaster .

    a) The tax rate is quite low which will supposedly increase over the years. The political pendulum in the U.S. almost guarantees that when republicans come to power in 2024 or later they are going repeal/relax a carbon tax like with Paris Agreement. U.S. is not currently in position to make serious long term commitments on any policy.

    b) The polluters want limits *relaxed* as part of the tax deal. That means they want to be able to pollute as much as they want and just pay a small tax to do so ,which is why it is actually supported by some republicans I suppose. 

    c) Finally there is no plans on how to use the money to *remove* CO2 from the atmosphere, reducing emissions with that money with green investments is not good enough as polluters are in theory paying the government to take care of the problem and will pollute as they wish so government needs to clean the CO2 up. CCS is not viable economically today certainly not at the tax rate being proposed.

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Re:Macron says France will build new nuclear energy reactors by mlyle on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @11:22AM (#29176470)

> storing chemical emissions(CO2) is not.

My comment isn't talking about CO2. I'm talking about e.g. benzene.

Nuclear waste disposal is concerned/stymied by the possibility that the water table in remote areas where no one lives currently may be moderately contaminated in thousands of years if it fails, and this contamination may last thousands of years.

Whereas we have contaminated the water table in populated areas with benzene and aromatics -- where they will remain contaminated for thousands of tens of thousands of years.

That is, we're trying to prevent theoretical harms in the distant future, and in so doing, we're accepting much larger present harms.

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Re:Macron says France will build new nuclear energy reactors by manquer on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @12:06PM (#29177106)

The point remains the same for benzene or other containments as well, there is not much regulatory requirements in most countries for what you should do with these effluents, so today dumping it is acceptable, if safe handling/disposal is mandatory then it would factor in the actual financial costs analysis/model.

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Re:Macron says France will build new nuclear energy reactors by mlyle on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @12:53PM (#29177776)

We're talking about real costs of each alternative, though-- not just the viability of enterprises. After all, we're really talking about policymaking, and externalities like contaminating your groundwater like chemicals still "count" in overall outcomes.

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Re:Macron says France will build new nuclear energy reactors by manquer on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @04:05PM (#29180784)

There is a clear intrinsic value ( and critical need) to avoid fossil fuels, nobody is disputing that. However to imply nuclear is actually cheaper today fiscally is not accurate as original commenter was saying, given variances[1] in plant construction between estimates and actual cost incurred, also uncertainty over long term disposal method and poor understanding of those end of life costs makes it very poor choice for policy making on selecting between clean options.

If there are no other(clean) options having equivalent characteristics (consistent base load, scalability, location etc) to augment solar/wind etc ( whose costs are very well understood now including end of life costs) , then we are not choosing because it is cheaper, we are doing it because there is no choice.

[1] All plants will have some cost deviations, but nuclear has much higher both time and cost deviation from plan estimates.

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Re:Macron says France will build new nuclear energy reactors by mlyle on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @09:33PM (#29183777)

If we're arguing that axis, I'd say we're arguing about the costs of storage, including end of life costs. And I do not feel like they are well understood: especially the costs and problems of recycling lots of lithium batteries at scale.

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