Comment by WA | Hacker News Reader

Comment by WA | Hacker News Reader

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> Your points do not dispute doomberg's argument.[...] It is generally accepted that wood burning produces more co2 than coal and natural gas.

How about this number? Coal consumption in the EU in the last 30 years: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/de/web/products-eurostat-news/...

Still more than 10x the number of burnt wood. Should we replace all coal by wood? Heck no, that'd be insane, but Doomberg framed this whole thing in a sensationalist way. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what the whole thread is about:

- UK burned wood a hundred years ago, which was totally inefficient.

- Then they discovered coal, which is more energy efficient.

- Now the EU is back to burning wood, even though it is less efficient than coal and they call this green, which is dumb. (Ignoring many aspects of the whole thing)

- The EU is stupid and they should go full nuclear instead.

I'm simply pointing out that Doomberg's chain of arguments lack actual numbers and neglect a few things (stove efficiency, different goals, etc.), even though the gist of it at least somewhat true.

> The EU is stupid and they should go full nuclear instead.

Policies differ between EU countries. Finland just brought a reactor online. France is planning to build 14 reactors in the next decade. On the other hand Germany is going to shut down 3 reactors.

The last reactors France built all (including the one in Finland) have had more than 10 years delay compared to what was planned, so I doubt we are going to build 14 in the next decade :)

They could well do, if they’re working out how to optimise it, and the workers get the hang of it.

As I understand it a large problem has been with poor quality welds being caught too late in the process.

Quality isn’t an easy thing to change, but I trust they can remedy for future builds.

The last reactors France has built were also the first of their kind built in the country. The reactors built during the Messmer plan were mostly of 4 distinct types built repeatedly. The main to away from analysis of nuclear plant cost history is that plants become cheaper when the knowledge from previous builds is taken to subsequent builds. Problems that are encountered in earlier builds are avoided, lowering cost.

Plants built during the nuclear boom in the 1960s and early 70s often had inflation -adjusted costs of 1-2 billion USD per GW of capacity. And that's with no intermittency and a capacity factor of over 90%.

Also Poland [0].

[0] https://pl.usembassy.gov/civil_nuclear_cooperation/

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