News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy by barbazoo on Thursday July 07, 2022 @03:48PM (#32018466)
It's such a pain how certain groups are so hung up on specific energy sources. German greens will never consider nuclear energy, Albertans will never consider anything that didn't come out of the ground either as oil or oil derived. It's like belonging to a sports team, it's silly.

I used to be very much against nuclear energy because of the unsolved issue around dealing with it's waste. Two decades later after learning about climate change and understanding more about pros and cons of different fuels and ways to generate electricity, it's obvious that nuclear energy can play a useful role in the transition off fossil fuels.

Re:Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy by martin_a on Thursday July 07, 2022 @04:40PM (#32019065)
So, what changed in regards to dealing with its waste in the two decades? Or do you simply not care enough anymore?
Re:Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy by barbazoo on Thursday July 07, 2022 @05:08PM (#32019449)
I put too much weight on the waste storage problem. Looking at it now, in my opinion it might be preferable to have nuclear waste underground somewhere than keep polluting the atmosphere. It seems silly to still get hung up on that. Sure it's not great and I'd rather we don't, but we're at the eleventh hour and we've got to take more drastic, albeit suboptimal, steps.
Re:Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy by pfdietz on Saturday July 09, 2022 @06:32AM (#32033676)
Waste was never the big problem with fission, nor is it the blocking issue now. The world has gravitated toward dry cask storage of spent fuel, which is both simple, sensible, and cheap. It only contributes $0.001/kWh toward the cost of power from fission reactors, and precludes no future options to dealing with the spent fuel.

What has blocked fission is one thing: cost. For a while, fission advocates could stand pat, knowing that eventually fossil fuels would have to be moved away from, to fission, regardless of how expensive fission was. But now renewables have undercut fission, so that (somewhat lazy) expectation, that fission was almost entitled to be the post-fossil energy source, is no longer valid.

Re:Nuclear turn green as EU parliament approves new taxonomy by yetanother-1 on Thursday July 07, 2022 @03:58PM (#32018580)
When oil producing countries are racing to get nuclear energy, it remains no surprise that it is something that will only help in the transition, because burning the fule is not a enough!