[HN Gopher] Germany Rejected Nuclear Power-and Deadly Emissions ...
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       Germany Rejected Nuclear Power-and Deadly Emissions Spiked
        
       Author : spamalot159
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2021-05-09 16:30 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
        
       | domano wrote:
       | Since the HN crowd is really pro-nuclear and in my bubble nobody
       | is maybe somebody could explain how to handle nuclear waste and
       | if modern reators are really as safe as it is often portraied in
       | the comments here.
       | 
       | Even modern reactors would produce radioactive waste, right? In
       | germany we don't have any place that is safe enough for long term
       | storage.
       | 
       | How can this be handled? Would really like to change my mind
       | regarding nuclear power, since it would solve the transitional
       | phase towards renewables.
       | 
       | Also: Quite regurarily cracks are found in the reactors in
       | germany and other countries. Other smaller things happen all the
       | time too. Are modern reactors failsafe? I
        
       | ZeroGravitas wrote:
       | Interesting to see what happened after the 2011 - 2017 timeframe
       | the study looked at:
       | 
       | https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electr...
       | 
       | Coal sucks, and they probably could have got rid of it faster,
       | but they still seem on a good path and the story is similar
       | worldwide.
       | 
       | edit: even in the 2011-2017 timeframe they added more renewables
       | than nuclear lost, so it seems odd that emissions would spike,
       | unless there was either a big shift in the coal/gas/import mix,
       | or just a general rise in demand.
        
       | LorenPechtel wrote:
       | And deaths also spiked, although they're so diffuse only the
       | statisticians will pay attention.
       | 
       | Nuke is clearly safer than any fossil fuel source by a *wide*
       | margin. By some arguments utility-scale solar is safer than nuke
       | --but only if by some miracle you can get virtually all your
       | power from solar. We don't have the storage technology for that
       | and if you have to run the natural gas plant when the sun doesn't
       | shine you put nuke way in the lead for safety.
        
         | redis_mlc wrote:
         | > Nuke is clearly safer than any fossil fuel source by a _wide_
         | margin.
         | 
         | Not financially.
         | 
         | > A nuclear power plant takes roughly 10 years and at least 2-3
         | billion dollars to build.
         | 
         | And probably even more time and money to decommission, which
         | shareholders have no intention of paying, and banks won't fund.
         | 
         | And when there's an accident, the US govt. limited compensation
         | to peanuts:
         | 
         | https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/n...
         | 
         | Remember that Chernobyl was partially responsible for
         | destabilizing an empire.
        
         | anoncake wrote:
         | > Nuke is clearly safer than any fossil fuel source by a _wide_
         | margin.
         | 
         | Only if you 1. only take deaths into account and 2. redefine
         | danger to include predictable damage.
        
       | anoncake wrote:
       | Another article that neglects to mention that we had already
       | decided to quit nuclear in 2002. But the corrupt government we
       | had in 2010 reverted that.
       | 
       | I'd also like to know what emissions spiked, considering our
       | nuclear policies ultimately didn't change in 2010/2011.
        
         | merb wrote:
         | not sure why you are downvoted. you basically said nothing
         | wrong the article is plain fud.
         | 
         | as if germanies' co2 emission alone did make our world wide
         | temperature rise so bad. the study/article also dismisses so
         | much things. like that we have basically no end storage, that
         | nuclear was already dead in germany and that the plants all
         | were mostly over their end of lifetime anyway (but the
         | governement raised it over and over), such a stupid
         | study/article.
        
           | tonyjstark wrote:
           | Additionally the government started to reduce subsidizing for
           | renewable energy which ruined a lot of very high tech and
           | innovative companies in the solar power field. Further the
           | government made it harder to install wind turbines in the
           | countryside. All while still pumping money in coal.
        
           | javagram wrote:
           | " as if germanies' co2 emission alone did make our world wide
           | temperature rise so bad"
           | 
           | This nicely demonstrates how CO2 emissions is a collective
           | action problem between all the world's countries.
           | 
           | Any one country, even the #1 emitter the USA, giving up on
           | fossil fuels isn't enough to stop changing the climate via
           | CO2 emission.
           | 
           | So each country can claim that its failure to build nuclear
           | or to replace all fossil fuels with renewable and battery
           | storage isn't a big deal.
        
             | LorenPechtel wrote:
             | The #1 emitter is China, not the US.
        
               | domano wrote:
               | Per head USA is first, in absolute terms china is.
        
       | drannex wrote:
       | Nuclear is the only way to reduce our carbon emissions in both
       | the short term and long term, and the best way to produce energy
       | per unit than any other energy source.
       | 
       | When you remove nuclear from existing supply, you increase your
       | dependence on fossil fuels. Renewables are not able to produce
       | enough energy to cover the absense of nuclear, perhaps in the
       | future, but not with our current engineering.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-09 23:02 UTC)