Europe
News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in !yurop@lemm.ee. (They're cool, you should subscribe there too!)
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: RT, news-pravda:com, GB News, Fox, Breitbart, Daily Caller, OAN, sociable:co, citjourno:com, brusselssignal:eu, europesays:com, geo-trends:eu, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media. Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the primary mod account @EuroMod@feddit.org
view the rest of the comments
The point is that no sane company touches nuclear with a ten-mile pole unless heavily subsidised, because it's economically very challenging (if not impossible) to get it to run at a profit. It's essentially a big money sink that also produces power.
Whereas alternatives, like renewables, cost a lot less and have a much more immediate return. It's why companies do like to invest in those.
Nuclear as an option is badly outclassed economically.
I understand that. What I don't understand is why economic considerations are on the table at all. My technical understanding is that the electric grid under current consumption habits simply cannot function without large-scale on-demand providers like coal, gas or nuclear plants. Wouldn't that imply that if one wanted to come off of coal and gas quickly, nuclear has no alternatives? Is there an option D?
No, this is not the case. The alternative for on-demand is batteries, not nuclear. Building sufficient battery capacity is often already cheaper than nuclear and by the time a nuclear reactor is finished building it's guaranteed to be much cheaper. Nuclear is also terrible at being on-demand: it's extremely expensive to shut off and restart, and pretty slow at it too. That means that it has to compete with cheap renewable energy at peak hours, which it easily loses. So you'd either have to subsidize it to keep it open, or force people to buy nuclear power which makes power more expensive (see France which has to subsidize the reactors, requires people to buy that power and as a result is constantly having to subsidize the people's electricity bills too, covering a part of it. It costs the French government billions every year).
Nuclear also doesn't help to get you off coal and gas quickly. It's extremely slow to adopt.
Economic considerations are important. If you get can 1MW of clean power for X money, or 2MW instead, which is best to use? Less money spent per green MW means more green MWs in total.
For the environment, it's likely best (eg lowest total emissions) to invest in renewables and storage, and to fill up the gaps during this adoption with gas. Gas is not great but it's much better than coal, it's great at on-demand scaling and it's pretty cheap. This frees up enough money to keep investing in renewables which accelerates adoption.
Despite their cost-intensive operation, steam engines prevailed over water and wind power (cottages, hammers, mills) during the industrial revolution because they made it possible to exploit workers more continuously and to "decouple" from nature. Against this background, this manoeuvre can also be interpreted as class warfare from above. We need a new system. #Solarpunk #Ecosocialism