this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
161 points (95.5% liked)

Europe

10596 readers
1297 users here now

News and information from Europe πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί

(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)

Rules (2024-08-30)

  1. 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.
  2. 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 When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title.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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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).
  6. If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
  7. Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.)
  10. 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

Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). 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

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
federalreverse@feddit.org
poVoq@slrpnk.net
anzo@programming.dev
EuroMod@feddit.org
161
Decision to turn back on nuclear was a strategic mistake, EU's Von der Leyen says (www.reuters.com)
submitted 1 day ago by NomNom@feddit.uk to c/europe@feddit.org
73 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] JasSmith@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Most of the comments here do not understand how democracies work. The green transition has cost Europe hundreds of billions to date in just direct subsidies and investments. Hundreds of billions more in indirect costs. Voters were told it would result in lower energy bills, but bills continue to skyrocket all over Europe. So they feel lied to now. Unless politicians make energy prices considerably cheaper, fast, voters are going to vote for cheaper production methods: gas and nuclear. Nuclear is better for the environment so it would behoove us to get ahead of this. If activists somehow prevent nations from building nuclear, the victory will be entirely pyrrhic. Voters will kill any more green transition investment and go right back to what they know is cheaper.

For posterity, with more costs imputed (volatility, futures pricing, grid restructuring, storage, etc.), LNG is much cheaper than either solar or wind. Also no particulate pollution. In fact, if we were to go 100% renewables (solar and wind) or 100% nuclear, nuclear would be 4-5 times cheaper, and LNG would be up to 14 times cheaper.

[–] Ibuthyr@feddit.org 5 points 2 hours ago

I highly doubt that anything nuclear will ever be considered cheap. On paper maybe, but then reality kicks in and projects suddenly take a decade or two longer than planned. Then we have to import fissile material, likely from Kasachstan, who have Putin's shrivelled little dick so far down their throats. Nuclear will also never be insured. And these Microblocks everyone talks about as the next hot shit? None of those have been built yet. It's a concept on paper.

Nah. I'm not sold on this.

[–] SrMono@feddit.org 111 points 1 day ago (16 children)

Except that it wasn’t according to people actually invested in researching energy matters.

The strategic mistake was and still is, when her party throttles solar and wind in favor for fossils (on a national level) or when they hinder transitioning to EVs.

They’re sabotaging decentralization and renewables wherever possible and make up stories about sunsetted (nuclear) or future (fusion) technologies.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 46 points 1 day ago

And sleeping on battery technology.

load more comments (15 replies)
[–] kandoh@reddthat.com 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Nuclear has been tripping over it's own dick for 40 years. Solar is now the more viable option.

[–] Ice@lemmy.zip 5 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (4 children)

I disagree. Next to hydropower (which is limited by geography) it has been the champion of non-fossil electricity generation so far. Still, the fossil fuel lobby is a powerful foe.

Simply put, we should invest in all non-fossil options, and where solar is geographically viable, it is great. In other places however, where peak electricity demand coincides with the coldest, darkest parts of the year dispatchable production is strictly necessary, which is where nuclear shines.

[–] BennyTheExplorer@lemmy.world 5 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

There is also wind, which works really well in a lot of those darker / colder countries

[–] Ice@lemmy.zip 7 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

For sure, wind is an especially good complement for hydropower, since the latter can store the surplus when it's windy and release it when it's not. Still, wind generation can, like other variable renewables, slip to nigh 0 production from time to time, at which point there must be enough dispatchable capacity to cover the supply/demand gap. Otherwise you get rolling blackouts in the middle of a -20Β°C winter. Not great.

Here's a showcase of one such day in my country this winter. Average temps below -20Β°C (which means demand is very rigid due to heating needs) and the wind died down completely in the morning across all of Scandinavia & northern Germany, which meant there wasn't room to import either. Winter prices on electricity ranged between 10-60€/MWh back when our nuclear plants were in full operation. Half have been shut down in the past decade due to political pressure from the green party.

Expand Graph

[–] GarbadgeGoober@feddit.org 6 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Well but what to do with the waste?

I think in general it is a good source for energy, but unless we find a solution other than storing it somewhere in the earth, we should not use it.

[–] Undvik@fedia.io 8 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

You build breeder reactors or use any of the non-uranium designs that were ignored by countries because they didn't have weapons grade byproducts.

There are ways to deal with the waste, the problem is always politics/greed as it cuts into the profits. Same is true for other energy sources btw, with coal we happily shoot the waste into the atmosphere and pretend nothing's wrong with that.

[–] GarbadgeGoober@feddit.org 4 points 19 hours ago

Yeah 100% agree with you.

Unfortunately it is always the issue with greed and maximise the profits.

But that's why I don't really believe in the usefulness of Nuclear as a energy source. The idea behind it is brilliant, but the way we use it is not. I am no expert in this field, just my personal opinion.

[–] 87Six@lemmy.zip 2 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Isn't it basically a non-issue?

Afaik so little of it is generated that we can comfortably store it for thousands of years.

It can also be used in manufacturing later, like in making depleted uranium APFSDS penetrators (for your mom - sorry)

Also, I believe it's literally harmless, isn't it? If properly sealed of course. Afaik it just produces heat for a very, very long time...

[–] trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Depleted Uranium is not waste from nuclear reactors, it's waste from nuclear fuel production through uranium enrichment. It's very pure U~238~, the uranium isotope you end up with after you extract all the easily fissionable U~235~ from natural uranium, which is a mixture of different isotopes, with U~238~ being the most abundant.

A good part of the waste from reactors can't be used for manufacturing anything useful, if it could, it would be. Nuclear fuel reprocessing does extract the materials useful for further use from spent fuel, but that's small amounts, and creates a fair bit of extra waste itself, because the processes involve a whole lot of complicated and interesting physics and chemistry. The majority of the spent fuel assemblies (materials turned radioactive from Neutron flux, Fission products) are good for nothing (unless you want to make spicy paper weights which remotely* taste like metal) and will be anything from mildly to highly radioactive, some of them will be for tens of thousands of years.

* remotely as in "from a distance"

[–] GarbadgeGoober@feddit.org 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Might be, but I personally don't feel comfortable it being stored. What if it leaks. Not my problem, as I will be dead by then, but still we will leave it for future generations.

I have seen the chaos building the Hinkley reactor and the costs, so my personal opinion there are cheaper ways of producing energy.

[–] trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Might be, but I personally don’t feel comfortable it being stored. What if it leaks. Not my problem, as I will be dead by then, but still we will leave it for future generations.

The long term storage of the long lived highly radioactive components of spent reactor fuel is not solvable IMO, because the time needed to store until safe (tens of thousands of years) exceeds the life span of all known human civilisations and will take much longer than the age of the oldest known writing systems, so there is no known way of preserving the knowledge of a storage site and its associated dangers.

At the required time scale, even picking the medium to preserve the record on is a challenge, the only half way safe bet is carving it into granite or any similarly hard rock, but even that can erode significantly if exposed to the wrong conditions during that time frame.

Writing itself, as we know it, is only roughly 5500 years old.

One famous example of an early writing system that left extensive records are ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs. After the knowledge of this writing system had been lost in the aftermath of the christianisation of the Roman empire and the resulting closure of the remaining ancient Egyptian temples, it took humanity hundreds of years to decipher them again, despite great interest and effort, and was finally only possible thanks to sheer luck: The discovery of the proverbial Rosetta Stone, which carries inscriptions of the same text in Hieroglyphs, another ancient Egyptian writing system, and ancient Greek, of which only the ancient Greek could be understood at the time.

There are many other old writing systems we have records of, but are unable to read, because nobody knows how. This is how any record of a nuclear waste dump site and its dangers will most likely eventually end up. Millennia before the waste has become harmless.

[–] Drusas@fedia.io 4 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Hydropower has terrible environmental consequences. Emissions aren't all that matters in terms of the environment.

[–] Ice@lemmy.zip 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Perfect is the worst enemy of progress. Right now the highest priority must be to get rid of the fossil fuel plants, and logistically speaking hydropower is simply the best. Mostly because of the built in function of energy storage and ability to load follow, something that the other variable renewable options entirely lack.

[–] trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 hours ago

Another benefit of hydropower is its longevity, simplicity, and relatively low maintenance needs. There are installations still in operation which (including the generating machinery) are older than a century.

[–] Siegfried@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

I would love to say that local consecuences are better than global ones but the "local" part may actually hide a quasi continental impact.

I live in Buenos Aires, more than 1500 km away from the big hydro power plants that lay on the parana river. Sometimes Brazil has to open or close their water gates because of droughts and the consecuences are felt here pretty hard. Waves of dead fish, invasions of sub tropical species, -3 m of water almost for a complete season, camalotes (~~hyacinths~~? We apparently locally call camalotes to some sort of aglomeration of plants that floats down the river. They usually carry snakesunder it, or so i have been told).

Nevertheless, i personally prefer hydro than oil

[–] IratePirate@feddit.org 2 points 20 hours ago

which is where nuclear shines.

I see what you did there.

[–] portach@fedia.io 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Nuclear... what? Families? DNA? Chemistry? "Nuclear" isn't a noun, nor "digital" or "cyber".

We have decent universal education and literacy, let's not imitate the functionally illiterate.

[–] clean_anion@programming.dev 1 points 8 hours ago

The link mentions nuclear energy.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 6 points 23 hours ago

Thank you for not letting it slide.

Can we also work on mass nouns pluralized with an S (eg e-mail), missing delimiters after sub-clauses and lists (the "American Ghost comma"), and also "please bellow find following"?

[–] Ice@lemmy.zip 7 points 22 hours ago

As with everything, politicians are at least 15 years too late in their thinking.

[–] rakzcs@piefed.social 23 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Just google where nuclear fuel comes from and then think again, spoilers it's russia.

[–] redsand@infosec.pub 1 points 2 hours ago

Canada πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦

Stop googling shit badly.

[–] JasSmith@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Just google where nuclear fuel comes from and then think again, spoilers it’s russia.

Below are the 15 countries that exported the highest dollar value worth of natural uranium during 2024.

Kazakhstan: US$4.5 billion (48.8% of natural uranium exports)

Canada: $3.3 billion (35.6%)

United States: $963.2 million (10.4%)

Niger: $239.5 million (2.6%)

Ukraine: $78.3 million (0.8%)

South Africa: $58.6 million (0.63%)

France: $58.3 million (0.63%)

Russian Federation: $44.8 million (0.5%)

Germany: $4.4 million (0.05%)

Netherlands: $2.4 million (0.03%)

United Kingdom: $188,000 (0.002%)

Indonesia: $164,000 (0.002%)

Switzerland: $56,000 (0.0006%)

Israel: $44,000 (0.0005%)

Belgium: $5,000 (0.0001%)

Canada is a solid partner. Australia also produces a lot, but doesn't export much (right now). The EU is Kazakhstan's largest trading partner, and we have great trade relations with them.

Sourcing uranium is not now, nor will it ever be, a problem.

[–] rakzcs@piefed.social 0 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Dude, countries don't matter here when the actual companies are owned by rosatom.

[–] JasSmith@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 hours ago

Rosatom controls about 14 % of global uranium mining output and they don't hold any trade secrets on enrichment or fabrication. They are a non-issue, and if they ever became an issue, they could quickly be made a non-issue.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] tocano@piefed.social 20 points 1 day ago

Our main objective should be to lower barriers for people to generate their own power. When local communities manage their own grids they have faster response times to blackouts or climate events.

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (12 children)

No shit you monster.

  1. shutting down safe (in Germany) nuclear power plants before the end of their lifetime was a mistake
  2. not planning new nuclear plants was in the in-between lands, to be decided by experts (I am not one) whether they would be needed for a transition to green energy
  3. turning back on the "turning back" on nuclear fission(!) energy now would be an even bigger mistake

I despise this corrupt monster so much.

load more comments (12 replies)
[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If Germany hadn't shut down their nuclear power plants their energy mix would now be mostly coal, some nuclear and very little renewables. There was some political will to replace nuclear power with renewables, there still is not that much political will to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. Gas-Kathi wants more gas after all and is trying to sabotage renewables again.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next β€Ί