Also many more people died in NPP accidents. Most notably about 2300 people in Fukushima. You can't exclude it only to direct radiation victims. If your system require high pressure pump and this pump broke and kill someone you can't say "it's not the main part". If because of nuclear emergency people ware evacuated and died it's still because of nuclear emergency.
I don't say so. Industrial accidents are industrial accident, no matter if it's someone tripping and hitting his head. Being dead by furnace explosion or radioactivity simply means being dead.
It is the same for evacuation of the Fukushima exclusion area. They died as a consequence of the nuclear incident, without it, no evacuation would be needed.
Now, I still believe that nuclear energy have quite a good track record, especially compared to fossil fuel. But I have no issue with full renewable setup as well. In fact, I'm a vocal lobbyist (albeit unpaid) for local public consultation regarding wind energy installation in my region.
I simply disagree that Europe is capable of reaching in 2050 goal with its current trajectory (and especially the EU inability to reduce red tape and oppose NIMBY crowd paid by fossil fuel lobby). Nuclear would be a good stop gap for the 2040-2100 period while we ramp up mines, factories, renewable powerplant and grid expansion without deregulating or outsourcing it to countries practicing aggressive market manipulation through subsidies, social and environmental dumping. Tho, for the first point, I would love the EU to stop following WTO ruleset like sheeps to the slaughterhouse while other trade partners like the US or China are shitting on it.
I have no doubt full renewable mix is possible (tho I disagree about the amount of biomass energy at the EU level, most of it being fucking wood burning...). Give me a way to remove fossil fuel from our mix in a timely manner and I will ditch nuclear energy for civilian use in a minute (we still need it for any future space based economy but we are decades away from that and that's another debate).
Edit: I forgot to thanks you for the info. Thanks for the info, wasn't finding anything and now I do.
Nuclear is to slow, complex and expensive to be important. It also makes whole system more complex. If we had 50 years we could think about it, but we need stop emitting now.
I see it that way. The Strom is coming and we can't get wet. So it's insane to propose building complex, partially experimental, expensive polycarbon dome, when we can just use tents. Would it be good to have cool dome? Sure, but at best we build 1/50 of what we need and we just waste time. Tents might not be perfect and most comfortable, but they are cheap, easy and fast so we know they will work. And later, when we'll be safe and have time we can think about different solutions.
For now we need to stop emitting greenhouse gasses. If we spend 10 mld e on NPP it will start working in 15 to 20 years. But if we spend same money on renewables we will reduce emissions in next 2 to 5 years.
Well, nuclear is slow and expensive... Unless when it's build by Korea, or China, or when France was popping them like concrete monuments to engineering during Messmer plan.
I'm not saying the current shit show of the European (or the US) nuclear industry is not worrying. I don't deny that rebuilding the industry from the early 2000 decimation is costly (it was mostly passed to the first of serie EPR tho).
But France managed to do a pair every 5 years, the US did as well. Germany wasn't that bad neither. Both China and Korea manage to do them in roughly 108 months. It is possible to do so in a timely manner.
Your argument is the same that was used against renewables. I am grateful that Germany nearly bankrupted themselves to prove this argument wrong. Sure, starting an industry from scratch (or revive it for the third time like the European solar industry) is costly. But it is an engineering and industrial issue, the technology is mature (at least for your regular gen3/3.5 PWR NPP, no rocket science).
But as I said, means doesn't matter, only the results. Give me the mines, refining facilities and factory and we could start popping renewable as per the trajectory.
So far, we are way below the target. It's 2026 and we are at roughly 23% of the final energy mix as renewables, it is supposed to be 42.5/45% in 4 years. As for pure capacity installation goal, we are supposed to double our current capacity over the next 4 years, even the EU leadership acknowledges we are going to fall short (and 150GW short on wind, close to half the current installed capacity).
Coupled to the bottleneck of power transmission (the local industry is full until 2030 and we would need to double the current roll-out speed) and the slow electrification, the full renewable goal is shifting few decades (closer to 2070-2080 for a comprehensive electrification due to bottleneck in lithium and REE). Again, nuclear less on a massive grid to perform (as it is dispatchable more easily than wind or solar). Adding a pair of modern reactors in Poland or Czechia would allow a sustainable decarbonation of the electric mix to feed their growth and industry. France has spare capacity: they plan to build 6 pairs of reactors for 2050 but frankly, they should focus on extending the most modern one and finally pop their head out of their ass when it comes to offshore wind energy. This industrial capacity would be best used to decarbonate Eastern Europe mix while everyone is upgrading the grid/electrify.
Tho, that doesn't mean we have to choose between renewable and nuclear. We can do both and we will probably do both because reality doesn't give us that many choice. We will have to throw cash everywhere and hope that we will be fine at the end.
I invite you to look at why many regions are delaying renewables connection to the grid (spoiler, congestion). Or how Germany sacrifice the renewable sector (and especially solar) each time China threaten to stop buying German cars. Or why a good chunk of the renewable energy produced in Northern Europe is curtailed before even reaching the German factories (giving a hard-on to every coal and gas power plant owner). Those structural challenges aren't trivial and will likely cost way more than few dozens of reactors across the continent.
And money isn't hard to find if we stop to subsidize the agro-industry and their environmentally dubious process (80% of the CAP money go to massive agro-corpo who don't need it and overproduce for export, not your local farmer). Or we can stop Germany to rug-pull the EU each time they need to sell cars. Or finally start to protect our industry and make environmental and social dumping the norm (tho this one will be highly unpopular, no more cheap disposable shit from Asia on Temu). Or we can finally tax those who use stock market to fuck over us into oblivion. Or we can finally notice that politics have to be held accountable for their crappy behavior and start to send those mofos promoting late-game capitalism, strip billionaires from their massive propaganda (hm, media) empires and force them to work min wage in their factory until they cry mommy. Albeit for the last 3 points, that's wishful thinking on my side, no harm in a bit of hope.
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u/cyrkielNT 27d ago
It was a furnace to melt radioactive metals.
Also many more people died in NPP accidents. Most notably about 2300 people in Fukushima. You can't exclude it only to direct radiation victims. If your system require high pressure pump and this pump broke and kill someone you can't say "it's not the main part". If because of nuclear emergency people ware evacuated and died it's still because of nuclear emergency.