The term "technology neutral" - also used in that chart by the nucleareurope lobby group - is an activist term for a particular energy-politics stance.
Specifically, it calls for subsidies for renewable energy - and other forms of energy production - to be rerouted towards nuclear energy.
This is not a new thing either, but this term has been used since the 60s for this purpose by nuclear lobby groups. Worldwide and translated across pretty much all languages.
So you are saying that to subsidize renewables (non programmable, non continuos, very low energy-generating, suffering from dunkelflaute) is ok but when you simply ask to look at all the co2 free source with the same conditions then thats an "activist term"?
To me the ridicolously high subsidies granted to renewables are a political stance.
Tech neutrality means you have to choose the best source, not the one NGOs like the most.
100% renewable is fisically not possible. The grid needs inertia, which means it needs turbines to continuosly run.
If you exclude nuclear by political choice (the same stupid choice Germany and Italy made, and, what a coincidence, look at who's got the highest co2 emissions and the highest electricity bills in EU) you will always need to burn coal or gas to grant the baseload and the inertia the grid needs.
Which is entirely irrelevant when nuclear waste products from power production result in a permanent storage problem which makes the entire process unsustainable for humanity as a whole.
Germany, over the heyday of its nuclear power production, simply dumped 126,000 barrels of radioactive waste into a former mine. Which was then discovered in the 90s to in the future leak that radioactive waste into the underground as salt water pressing into the mine is continuously corroding the barrels and washing out the concrete the waste is embedded in within those barrels. Cleanup is planned to start in 2033, spending 5 billion just to remove the barrels from the mine. Not that they really have any idea where to store them afterwards.
Nuclear waste is so little that it's basically irrelevant. Modern Gen3+ plants use so little fuel that you can easily store it in the same site of the plant itself.
If Germany was unable to manage its nuclear waste (which, btw, if you are talking about Asse, then you are completely misleading since none of the waste came from nuclear plants but all was generated from research reactors and medical nuclear facilities) it doesnt mean nuclear waste is dangerous.
Most european plants have inner storage sites, with absolutely no problems.
Nuclear fuel can also be recycled in metal-cooled fast reactors, a tech that is decades old and absolutely proven.
Geological repository sites or permanent storage sites are also an easy solution for those country that are unable to deal with their own waste.
You can build it pretty much anywhere underground and build offices on top of it. A permanent storage site has the same radioactive emission of some bananas.
Anyway, we are talking about nothing. Italy joined today the EU nuclear alliance (news came while I was writing this message) and nuclear power will be inevitably be the backbone of EU energy independence.
ec.europa.eu
