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Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

Climate change denial is large problem only in Anglosphere.

Germany did more than any other country to realize the modern renewable-energy industry and it's failed its climate goals. The lesson should be that you have to try every tool in the toolbox, including nuclear energy.

Fukushima accident revealed the irrationality of the public. Fukushima-scale accident every decade somewhere in the world would be low cost to pay for replacing coal. It's only the drama behind the accident that makes people to lose their minds.

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Nuclear isn't built because it isn't financially viable. I'd love to see more nuclear, but it just isn't going to happen anytime soon. Maybe if we added a carbon tax that was reasonable considering the climate emergency it might be.

Prematurely closing the existing plants is insane however.

It depends on the cost, honestly. If the cost is too high, no utility will continue to run those plants. I agree with you, but the reality is that finance runs everything these days.

Main cost of nuclear power plant is the capital cost of building it. Operating nuclear plant is extremely cheap, even cheaper than maintaining solar or wind power plants.

Yea, and capex is the hardest nut to crack since it requires investors that want to make a profit sooner rather than later. I love nuclear, but it's not a realistic resource at this time. All the downvotes in the world won't make this untrue.

A carbon tax would be nice, but I rather see in EU a complete ban on burning coal, oil and gas for electricity. From there people can do what ever they want to solve the energy shortage during production lows, be that nuclear or other solutions.

I doubt we will see any reasonable economics for nuclear as long coal, oil and gas is allowed to be burned.

>I doubt we will see any reasonable economics for nuclear as long coal, oil and gas is allowed to be burned.

True, and that's why the carbon tax would have to be super-high as to make oil and gas financially un-viable. Banning burning fossil fuels is a better step, though, I agree.

I would seriously like to hear from you folks why you disagree with my statement above, please comment. I have a feeling it's either rabid pro-nuke folks (I was a nuclear technician in the Navy, so I am also pro-nuke) or the pro-oil folks that disagreed with my carbon tax proposal. I have no idea right now why you think my position is wrong, so please enlighten me.

> Germany did more than any other country to realize the modern renewable-energy industry and it's failed its climate goals.

Didn't California try equally hard with renewables as Germany? And failed equally hard.

I think the problem of nuclear proliferation shouldn't be underestimated in this grand idea to replace fossil fuels.

A few extra nuclear bombs going off per year in cities would soon change the desire for this I suspect.

Nuclear proliferation has relatively little to do with nuclear power in developed countries.

I think that you underestimate how many people coal kills.

According to the world health organization, the number of premature deaths caused by coal and Particulate Matter is on the order of literally millions per year.

https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-...

This means that if we switch to nuclear and this caused us to have a chernobyl scale disaster every single year, that it would still be massively safer than coal.

And even if we use your ridiculous example of a nuke going off in a city every year, guess what, that's still safer than coal. (This is, of course, not how nuclear works)

So yes. Give me the bomb going off in a city every single single year. It would still kill less people than coal, according to the World Health Organization.

Yes, really. This is not an exaggeration.

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