[HN Gopher] Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants on...
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Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online
Author : ericdanielski
Score : 266 points
Date : 2021-10-13 18:11 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.euractiv.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.euractiv.com)
| reacharavindh wrote:
| I know that Germany already invested quite a bit in wind and
| solar energy. I wonder if Germany, being a rich, progressive,
| social country, simply side-step all the criticism like what is
| on this thread by issuing a moratorium on all the existing
| nuclear reactors - say 6 months, and invest completely in solar
| and wind over the 6 months to add capacity?
|
| Germany's geo location makes it possible to be part of the EU
| power grid sharing the renewable power across neighbours to make
| it all work. The political cost of such a drastic measure would
| actually be a nett positive in a country like Germany I hope.
|
| If only politicians stop thinking short term and be the leaders
| they are expected to be ...
| cure wrote:
| It may be pragmatic - but politically tough - to keep the nuclear
| plants open longer, if that can be done safely, and invest
| heavily in renewables + storage to take all that awful
| lignite/coal power generation offline. And phase out the nuclear
| plants once enough (storage) capacity has been built.
|
| I wonder if people have modeled for how fast that could be done,
| and how expensive it would be. We have the technology (cf. grid
| scale storage, there is a fascination array of options, several
| of which are tried and tested), it's "just" a matter of scaling
| it up.
|
| The current plan only phases out coal by 2038 which seems... way
| way way too late. Cf.
| https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/spelling-out-coal...
| poetaster wrote:
| China consumes over 4 billion tonnes of coal a year. Germany less
| than 300,000 million. Now, the best course of action is to get VW
| out of the chinese market to reduce emissions there! Win, win!!!
| mrich wrote:
| Too late, they blew up the Philippsburg power plant 30km from my
| home last year:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zsSswlxThqo
|
| One of the blocks was really old so I'm glad to see it go. I'm in
| favor of building new, safer reactors. Bill Gates is an investor
| in a startup that developed such a design, but it will probably
| be hard to get it tested.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower
|
| China apparently also has made advances.
| rob_c wrote:
| Wish it was invest and expand and not please don't decommission.
| It's a win, win, win when played right...
| legulere wrote:
| That would be unwise though, considering that building nuclear
| power plants is slower and more expensive than wind and solar
| in Europe.
| asdff wrote:
| Wind and solar in europe aren't going to get them off of
| fossil fuels anytime soon, while nuclear has had that
| capability since its inception.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Soon isn't a thing that happens with power grids in any
| normal sense. The big capex in creation means that you need
| big differences in cost to justify an early shutdown. You
| also have to the new working before turning off the old,
| contrary to political preferences to destroy the old and
| then try to make the new work. Plant modifications are
| smaller in cost usually - so swapping a coal plant to burn
| natural gas because fracking made it cheaper (not without
| its own costs) is a small step.
|
| If wind and solar remain cheapest per MW*hr they will grow
| to saturation.
| asdff wrote:
| What happens when the wind doesn't blow and the sun
| doesn't shine? Where does the energy come from? Today,
| when that happens, the energy comes from natural gas and
| coal during these times when European renewables are
| unable to generate much power. All this expectation that
| we will be on renewables by X date hinges upon
| developments in battery storage capabilities by X date
| that have yet to materialize. On the other hand, we have
| nuclear energy which could have solved this problem 70
| years ago.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Safe nuclear power needs German engineering.
| duped wrote:
| Like low emissions diesel engines did?
| freemint wrote:
| The motors were capable of hitting the spec as it did during
| testing, after flipping a few bits in the software the car
| just has a few PS fewer.
| topspin wrote:
| Seems as though French engineering has been sufficient for
| nearly half a century now.
| joconde wrote:
| On the contrary, our major nuclear R&D company messed up an
| extension of the Flamanville nuclear plant multiple times: ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
| meshenna wrote:
| Also see Olkiluoto 3 in Finland: https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...
|
| "The main contractor, Areva, is building the unit for a
| fixed price of EUR3 billion, so in principle, any
| construction costs above that price fall on Areva. In July
| 2012, those overruns were estimated at more than EUR2
| billion, and in December 2012, Areva estimated that the
| full cost of building the reactor would be about EUR8.5
| billion, well over the previous estimate of EUR6.4
| billion."
| chrisseaton wrote:
| What's not safe about the nuclear engineering in the UK or
| France?
| nmehner wrote:
| UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Radiological_rel
| eas... Between 1950 and 2000, there were 21 serious incidents
| or accidents involving off-site radiological releases that
| warranted a rating on the International Nuclear Event Scale,
| one at level 5, five at level 4 and fifteen at level 3.
| Additionally, during the 1950s and 1960s there were
| protracted periods of known, deliberate discharges to the
| atmosphere of plutonium and irradiated uranium oxide
| particulates. These frequent incidents, together with the
| large 2005 THORP plant leak which was not detected for nine
| months, have led some to doubt the effectiveness of the
| managerial processes and safety culture on the site over the
| years.
|
| https://ehss.energy.gov/SESA/Files/corporatesafety/safety_bu.
| .. On April 20, 2005, a camera inspection of a feed
| clarification cell at THORP revealed that 83,000 liters of
| dissolver solution had leaked from a broken pipe (Figure 1)
| into the cell sump. The highly radioactive dissolver
| solution, consisting of approximately 19 metric tons of
| uranium, plutonium and fission products dissolved in nitric
| acid, was entirely contained within the stainless steel-lined
| cell. No personnel were injured as a result of this incident.
| However, the cleanup costs for this event are expected to
| exceed $500 million, and the THORP facility faces a lengthy
| shutdown (possibly even permanent closure).
|
| France: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-
| reprocessing-t... Reprocessing also results in radioactive
| liquid waste: the French reprocessing plant in La Hague
| discharges 100 million liters of liquid waste (pdf) into the
| English Channel each year. "They have polluted the ocean all
| the way to the Arctic," Makhijani says. "Eleven western
| European countries have asked them to stop reprocessing."
|
| Germany: https://www.nwtrb.gov/docs/default-
| source/meetings/2018/marc... Since 1991* increasing inflow of
| brine from the Southern flank Since 1994* reports on
| contaminated brines (3H, 137Cs)
| open-source-ux wrote:
| " _Safe nuclear power needs German engineering_ "
|
| France and Germany jointly developed the European Pressurised
| Reactor (EBR). In France, development was led by Framatome and
| EDF, and in Germany by Siemens.
|
| There are currently 3 nuclear plants under construction (or
| almost ready for operation) using EBR in Europe - they are in
| France, Finland and the UK.
|
| Unfortunately, all three plants are over-budget and over-
| schedule.
|
| The UK plant (Hinkley Point C) is expected to provide 7% of the
| UK's electricity when it is operational in 2026. It is designed
| to run for at least 60 years. (Source:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-58724732)
| 988747 wrote:
| France has just made an offer to build 4-6 such reactors in
| Poland. I really hope our government takes the deal, cause we
| need nuclear power. Even if it also ends up over-budget and
| over-schedule that's still good thing to have such modern
| reactors.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| > Germany is in danger of missing its 2030 climate target,
| despite all its efforts
|
| Which efforts? Germany might look quite progressive when it comes
| to renewables but lacks a holistic strategy. Energy storage is
| not discussed at all.
|
| It's good that the Greens are part of the government again to put
| in larger restrictions but they'll be limited by the other 2
| parties. Real change is probably going to be provided by
| companies like Tesla which actually provide a solution to the
| storage problem.
|
| Also the article is behind a paywall and from Welt which is from
| the same publisher as the notorious yellow press publication
| Bild. Die Zeit ( _Former_ editor-in-chief of it is mentioned)
| hasn 't put it on its start page.
| qqtt wrote:
| The discussion and debate about nuclear energy needs to be a
| constant war of attrition against the long held and stubborn
| inertia of anti-nuclear sentiment.
|
| This letter signed by 25 "intellectuals" (oddly vague name for
| writers and journalists) is part of the puzzle insofar as it gets
| the discussion into the news. But unless there is a sustained
| conversation which carries the attention of the public and really
| drives and beats back the misinformation back to the shadows,
| nothing will change.
|
| The same tired anti-nuclear talking points need to be
| systemically deconstructed and refuted over and over again until
| it is pushed into being a fringe belief.
|
| Unfortunately humans are really not set up to have these
| conversations about "boring" things like global warming and
| nuclear energy. Unless there is a crisis front and center (like
| the pandemic) it is hard to reverberate change throughout
| society.
|
| I'm not sure what the answer is, but watching all this play out
| is like witnessing a devastating car crash happen in slow motion,
| and being helpless to do anything to prevent it.
| kazinator wrote:
| The Cold War takes a lot of the blame: everything from the
| Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, to the subsequent ugly arms
| race, to bomb testing and its environmental effects. Plus
| events like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima.
| Generation X kids were born into an era which felt the threat
| of global nuclear war, and those people are decision makers
| today.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Frankly, non-nuclear is austerity in disguise. "Too cheap to
| meter" electricity is like full employment, objectively
| better but a huge target politically. It's not a coincidence
| that US gave up on both at the same time.
|
| https://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf does justice to the
| full employment situation, and the same arguments apply. In
| the econ case it's kind of incredible we filled our minds
| with nonsense to convince ourselves the thing we had been
| doing is no longer possible. I suppose the nuclear hysteria
| served the same roll.
|
| To be clear, I am not trying to argue some sort of conspiracy
| here. I think it all happened organically, which is frankly
| even more fascinating. Shows that "truth is endogenous" and
| the post-modernists had a point long before people whined
| about Trump.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| I agree with you on both points of full employment and
| abundant energy.
|
| And IMO the same political forces are behind both -- it's a
| nasty mix of elites and high income professionals who
| genuinely believe people need to suffer. They love
| austerity, and micromanagement of the population. It's the
| same reason we have ugly architecture, because the
| architects think we deserve to be surrounded by ugly,
| inhuman buildings.
|
| And the econ-sadists are more than happy to punish the eco-
| masochists.
| freemint wrote:
| > "Too cheap to meter" electricity
|
| How about electricity that doesn't flow through a meter
| because it goes from the roof into the socket?
| proctrap wrote:
| Why invest into something that will only last 100 years in
| fuel, take 30k years to deconstruct and may blow into your
| face at every point in time. Sounds insane.
| zizee wrote:
| Can you provide more info around nuclear fuel running out
| in 100 years? I had been thinking we had an abundance of
| nuclear fuel available tIo us. I have not heard of a 100
| year limit before and am interested to learn more.
| adfrhgeaq5hy wrote:
| Nuclear reactors cannot explode. It is not physically
| possible. It isn't even close to physically possible.
| Reactor-grade uranium is about 5% U235 while you need >90%
| to make something that can explode.
|
| May as well ask why we use wind turbines when they might
| take off and start dropping napalm.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| No way with the Green Party part of gov. They've literately
| started out with "Atomkraft - Nein danke" stickers in late 1970s.
| Mostly seen on cars, then and today.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| And this is why Germany has increased its coal use - Germany
| hates nuclear more than coal.
|
| When that changes, and someone is adult enough to realize that
| tough trade offs have to be made rather than relying on finger-
| wagging austerity, then Germany will migrate out of coal.
|
| My bet is that we'll get more scolding, hand-wringing, and
| continued coal use well into the 2040s if not beyond.
| _Microft wrote:
| You have to understand the context that the anti-nuclear
| movement came from.
|
| First, nuclear _weapons_ had been demonstrated as devastating
| by killing tens of thousands in Japan. Then the superpowers
| engaged in a nuclear arms race. A small town in Germany 's
| Hesse was even assigned coordinates 0/0 in NATO maps because it
| was expected to be nuclear ground zero in case of a push of the
| Soviets through the Fulda Gap. Add Chernobyl to the mix that
| showed that even _civil use_ of nuclear power can be dangerous
| and you get a _universal, blanket rejection of all things
| nuclear_. It 's really not surprising. Rejection of nuclear
| power plants might not make a lot of sense nowadays in a stable
| and developed country like Germany but it is _understandable_
| once you look at the history.
| m0zg wrote:
| France, too:
| https://www.ft.com/content/d06500e2-7fd2-4753-a54b-bc16f1faa....
| Looks like cooler heads might actually prevail there.
| retrac wrote:
| One generally underappreciated aspect to nuclear energy
| opposition is the intrinsic link to nuclear weapons. Some of it
| is scientifically illiterate nonsense (a lot of people seem to
| think power reactors can have a nuclear explosion). And some of
| it is just historical association. But some of it is a lot harder
| to dismiss.
|
| A world without nuclear reactors or enrichment facilities is a
| world without nuclear weapons. Any medium or large industrialized
| country with power reactors could build nukes very quickly. It's
| bad enough half a dozen already have. This notion keeps some
| people up at night, I think. If you consider nuclear weapons to
| be an existential threat to the species -- perhaps worse than
| climate change -- then building infrastructure that would allow
| their more easy construction might seem like madness.
| Slade1 wrote:
| Would a world where we took initiative to reduce civilian air
| travel in preference of trains and boats also lead to the
| military no longer producing fighter jets?
| burnished wrote:
| It would do a lot, yeah. Boeing services military and
| commercial contracts. If instead of commercial airlines
| taking off (lol) they just.. didn't, then even with an
| interested military you would have fewer engineers, smaller &
| poorer companies, just generally less advancement and less
| production.
|
| Your question is good but it doesn't have the answer you seem
| to think it does! These things feed into each other, so while
| it might be unreasonable to say "no commercial airlines means
| no military air vehicles" (I hesitate to say fighter jet
| because I do think that would be a casualty), it would also
| be unreasonable to say that "no commercial airlines means no
| impact on military air technology".
|
| You might think, hey, the military has got some strong
| advancements the rest of us don't even know about, whos to
| say that wouldn't be the case? Well, the people working on
| that tech went to college and got educations in a field that
| had employment opportunities, and likely would not have if
| those opportunities didn't exist. Just think about all the
| supporting industries that are very specific. The aluminum
| alloys, the manufacturing methods for these high tolerance
| parts, the electrical systems, the fuel systems etc. You just
| aren't going to get very far without a civilian populace
| implicitly backing the effort.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Global warming is worse than proliferation --- it is certainly
| harder to undo.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Also, I would expect more positive feelings about existing
| fission to _increase_ R &D into thorium, fusion, etc., which
| do not have proliferation concerns.
| jrsdav wrote:
| I am calling out my ignorance here, but are there not reactor
| types that don't require enriched uranium? Sodium-cooled,
| Molten Salt, etc. I'm curious about the current state of
| reactor technology and if it addresses your concern.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| They all need some enrichment, but then apparently it's still
| very hard to go from a civilian reactor to weapons-grade
| uranium. Just, I guess, much easier than from a heap of coal.
|
| I understand that with adequate supervision from the IEA
| proliferation is generally a non-issue.
| jollybean wrote:
| Nuclear Enrichment is kind of hard actually. Nobody's going to
| get away with it without others knowing.
|
| The risk if Nuclear Energy proliferation is the waste being
| used in a dirty bomb.
|
| Nuclear waste spread out in Manhtatten might not kill people,
| but it could make the city, or parts of it unlivable for a long
| time. At minimum a big disaster.
|
| So in order for the Nuclear future to work, we'd need to set
| standards that have teeth.
|
| The issue is not Canada or Germany, it's Venezuela or Colombia
| where there is corruption, political instability, lack of
| oversight, and then a local antagonist can sneak in and grab
| materials. Cover ups, finger pointing, refusing to allow
| inspectors in lest they assess the level of corruption, it all
| falls down while the baddies take their stolen gear to other,
| more ideological bad actors.
|
| There are long term storage issues but I think those can be
| worked out.
|
| Nuclear Energy is basically free Energy to any group of people
| civil enough to manage it.
| freemint wrote:
| Cwn we be civil enough under capitalism? Under the soviet
| union we couldn't. What does Fukushima tell us about that
| question?
| asdff wrote:
| Then we will continue wringing our hands about the would be
| nuclear apocalypse while species continue to die, crops fail,
| seas rise, temperatures warm, and billions of humans starve to
| death in the mean time. There is justified fear and irrational
| fear, and this is irrational. It should probably be noted that
| the firebombing of Tokyo with conventional weapons was more
| deadly than the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| The he cat is out the bag I'm afraid, the only way nuclear
| weapons disappear is if they become obsolete, like mustard gas.
|
| It's an interesting though actually, that coming up with new,
| presumably more deadly weapons, can lead to a less horrendous
| world.
| CyanBird wrote:
| Biggest issue with older nuclear plants is the material
| degradation as a consequence of radiation, after a some decades
| of constant irradiation steel can become as brittle as glass,
| which is not only not reversible, but it also means that the
| actual rebar and concrete surrounding the core becomes damaged
| and the only way to replace that is to rebuild the whole core
|
| I am rather against setting up new reactors, given that they are
| so centralized on the matter of costs, management, overruns and
| of course safety, the more safe you try to make them, the slower
| to build and more expensive they will end up being which is far
| from an ideal situation, but I am of course fully in favor of
| refactoring old ones, but it is important to understand that even
| when there might be political will to redactor them, that might
| just be technically unfeasible
| outworlder wrote:
| > the more safe you try to make them, the slower to build and
| more expensive they will end up being
|
| That doesn't follow. We have countless examples across multiple
| industries on technologies that became cheaper and safer at the
| same time.
|
| If you try to make the old designs safe (created for weapons
| manufacturing first and energy production second), then sure.
| However, there are newer designs that are cheaper to build and
| safer to operate (can't 'meltdown', for one).
|
| "Refactoring" old designs is not aways feasible. You are very
| limited in what you can do. Maybe you can replace the core with
| a similarly sized one, but what about everything else? Any
| significant changes in (say) your cooling system and you are
| now looking at an entirely new plant.
| CyanBird wrote:
| > That doesn't follow. We have countless examples across
| multiple industries on technologies that became cheaper and
| safer at the same time.
|
| Well, that is because nuclear energy is unlike "multiple
| technologies and industries", it is a highly politiced
| industry which when it has failed, it has done so
| spectacularly and at high localized costs
|
| All the updates and changes after high profile accidents such
| as Fukushima are highly expensive same with review of being
| built and existing reactors which bloat budgets and
| schedules, this is precisely one of the big issues
| Westinghouse and Toshiba had post fukushima
|
| Currently on a bus, so I can only answer to the initial
| excerpt, when I get home I'll see if I can answer the rest
| petre wrote:
| I think you are making a cofusion between thermal fission
| reactors and fast reactors where neutron radiation is indeed a
| problem. Rebar and concrete in fission plants ages due to
| thermal stress plus the usual culprits (humidity, oxygen), not
| necessarily neutron radiation.
| CyanBird wrote:
| This is not entirely correct, alpha and beta radiation damage
| the crystaline and quasi-crystaline structures of metals and
| other materials
|
| Even when the reactors themselves, generally rest on light or
| heavy water, the steel, titanium and other metals and
| materials nearby the pellets or rods suffer greatly as a
| consequence of radiation, so it is not a matter of just
| neutron degradation, but a generalized problem of the
| physical interaction between radiation and the molecular
| structures of the materials
|
| Sadly for my case, my materials science course on University
| was very, very weak, but last year I found this MITOpenCourse
| which covers this topic on detail, I would highly recommend
| it to absolutely everyone interested on the topic
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjZjVUWMEz0
| lamp987 wrote:
| Safety concerns are moot when the coal alternative will kill
| orders of magnitude more people.
| topspin wrote:
| All of the above is politically moot as long as leaders and
| parties can get away with bandying around fantasy land
| policies of running major industrial economies exclusively on
| renewables.
|
| Perhaps this story is a tiny glimmer of hope that one day it
| won't be possible to get away with that cop out. We've wasted
| a lot of decades just to get this far though.
| CyanBird wrote:
| But your own point is itself moot, given that we are not
| comparing nuclear to the dirtiest most lethal of fossil
| fuels, but nuclear to composite solutions of
| renewables+batteries/electricity storage or
| renewables+natural gas
| armada651 wrote:
| When Germany closed nuclear power plants after Fukushima
| much of it was replaced with coal power plants.[1] So I
| don't think his point is moot at all, it's actually quite a
| reasonable argument to make here.
|
| [1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w26598
| CyanBird wrote:
| > it's actually quite a reasonable argument *to make
| here*.
|
| Yeah, but as you know Germany, and German discussions do
| not encompass the whole world, so you can certainly bring
| me points from specific countries, France or US could be
| other ones, but they also have their own idiosyncrasies
|
| But as I was saying, the core argument for Nuclear
| decommissioning is not to compare it to the absolute
| worst energy generation scheme that exists, by that
| metric then I could mention that using PeatBog for energy
| generation is "not that bad an idea" compared to Coal....
| Which is of course, an awful idea by itself....
| armada651 wrote:
| > Yeah, but as you know Germany, and German discussions
| do not encompass the whole world
|
| I never pretended to be arguing for the entire world, the
| article is about closing existing nuclear power plants in
| Germany and my argument is limited to that.
|
| > But as I was saying, the core argument for Nuclear
| decommissioning is not to compare it to the absolute
| worst energy generation scheme that exists, by that
| metric then I could mention that using PeatBog for energy
| generation is "not that bad an idea" compared to Coal....
| Which is of course, an awful idea by itself....
|
| But we're not simply comparing it to coal because it's
| the worst energy generation scheme. We're comparing it to
| coal because that is what replaced nuclear last time
| Germany decommissioned its plants.
| 2ion wrote:
| The money cost of 10 all-new nuclear reactors is minor when
| compared to the economic cost of electricity prices doubling
| and tripling again, gas and oil prices doubling again until EOY
| 2022. Rolling blackouts are not unreasonable to expect.
|
| Industries have moved east and west from Germany because energy
| is just too expensive (besides too expensive labour due to high
| state quota as well). In Brandenburg, Chemical plants are
| threating to shut down because gas prices are out of whack (50%
| of gas price is tax). This is an extremely high cost for a
| national economy to pay.
|
| Major consumer energy seller E.on has stopped selling household
| gas delivery contracts. Transportation cost in gas, diesel and
| electric car terms is skyrocketing as well. This makes all
| goods that are getting shipped more expensive. Germans are the
| poorest people of Western Europe. After tax, salaries are quite
| low. EUR500 to a EUR1000 more in yearly energy cost is a
| significant burden on many households, dampening spending in
| any other area including long retirement saving/investing.
|
| All of the above will deconstruct industries, ruin household
| finances of the already pressured middle and lower class, and
| set the expectations for years to come when it comes to
| regulatory politics --- which during the past 20 years were the
| equivalent of shitposting on 4chan, just dressed up in nice
| suits and sitting in ideologically blind party councils.
|
| 10 all new power plants are chump change compared to that.
| poetaster wrote:
| In Germany, Fusion and not Fission is the future (ducks and
| runs).
| rektide wrote:
| emblematic imo of an extremely & admittedly fairly deserved high
| level of distrust of our general ability to take care of/maintain
| things.
| petre wrote:
| Good luck with the Greens now as the #3 party. The authors of the
| letter are right, Germany will miss its 65% emissions target and
| politicians will try to fix this with carbon credits and other
| policy BS which of course doesn't quite work in practice, since
| clean electricity doesn't come out of thin air.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Yeah, and you see them dragging Europe backwards with trying to
| exclude Nuclear from being classed as renewable energy, but to
| include natural gas.
|
| Nevermind the hugely powerful car industry.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Facts < Feelings, unfortunately...
| andbberger wrote:
| All the nuclear threads here are the same, and they're all deeply
| frustrating. HN isn't exactly a bastion of liberal speech (here
| fucked up conservative hot takes reign supreme) - but ostensibly
| the populace is more technically literate than average. Yet it's
| the same stupid bullshit every time.
|
| It's dangerous!!11!! fukushima! chernobyl!1!!
|
| > nope look at some statistics it's very safe
|
| ok, the waste!11! scary spicy rocks!! glowing cats! landscape of
| thorns!!11
|
| > nope just bury it like finland, or leave it in the pool
|
| ok ok only finland is special enough to dig holes for spicy rocks
|
| > ...
|
| it's expensive!!!11! it's too expensive!! the future is wind
| turbines and solar panels and turning bolivia into a giant
| battery
|
| The water is lapping at our feet. We are doomed.
| f7ebc20c97 wrote:
| Does a hypereducated liberal democracy even work in the long
| run, or will a morally relativist people aloof from reality
| argue over lifeboats and bilge pumps forever until the ship
| sinks and they all drown?
| arcticbull wrote:
| This has been my experience too, speaking as someone who's
| usually the ">" line.
| k__ wrote:
| If I look how close to the German border France built their
| nuclear plants, we could just have kept ours...
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Neverminding the politics and legalities, is it technically
| possible to "un-decommision" the plants already closed? Or our
| too many blueprints lost, people retired, etc.?
|
| Forgive the optimism, just trying to think ahead.
| newman555 wrote:
| not again. I can't go through 641st "nuclear vs solar/wind"
| thread on HN about :)
|
| Isn't this an objective data driven problem and we can decide
| what's better for short / medium / long term?
| veddox wrote:
| > Isn't this an objective data driven problem and we can decide
| what's better for short / medium / long term?
|
| No, such questions never are. Even if you could remove the
| prevailing strong emotional responses from the debate (humans
| aren't always rational), you would still find that at heart,
| the debate is not about technology but about values. What
| targets are we actually aiming for, and why? If you can't agree
| on what the problem is, you aren't going to find a common
| solution. And worse: often such issues pose multiple problems,
| the solutions for some of which may actually make the others
| worse. So how do you deal with these trade-offs? What do you
| prioritize?
|
| Nuclear power is a hard problem not because we don't know the
| solutions, but because we can't agree on which problems are the
| most urgent. And again, that's not a question about technology,
| but about values.
| schleck8 wrote:
| It's worth noting that nuclear is really expensive when factoring
| in insurance and disposable, a lot more so than wind and solar.
|
| >The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per
| megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power
| comes in at $29-$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112
| and $189.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nucle...
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| > Let us not submit to the vile doctrine of the nineteenth
| century that every enterprise must justify itself in pounds,
| shillings and pence of cash income ... Why should we not add in
| every substantial city the dignity of an ancient university or
| a European capital ... an ample theater, a concert hall, a
| dance hall, a gallery, cafes, and so forth. Assuredly we can
| afford this and so much more. _Anything we can actually do, we
| can afford._ ... We are immeasurably richer than our
| predecessors. Is it not evident that some sophistry, some
| fallacy, governs our collective action if we are forced to be
| so much meaner than they in the embellishments of life? ...
|
| -- John Maynard Keynes
| archsurface wrote:
| _Assuredly we can afford this and so much more. Anything we
| can actually do, we can afford. ..._ Little did John know the
| future would bring such wonders as HS2, lockdowns, the
| Ethiopian spice girls, NHS, a fake property market, ... a
| very different world.
| sofixa wrote:
| Thank you for this quote, it's a great one, saving it.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Thank you! Very glad to spread the word, as the I said in
| the other reply.
| eutectic wrote:
| A nuclear power station is not exactly a university or an art
| gallery.
| adrr wrote:
| It does benefit society by creating a baseline energy
| source that is cleaner than coal or natural gas.
| eecc wrote:
| Which ignorants can - and will - proceed to piss away on
| terrace heaters to have drinks while having a smoke
| outside on the street
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| The larger point still stands.
|
| Investments look more bad than they should when:
|
| - We ignore externalities
|
| - We ignore that demand changes too, whether in response to
| monetary magic, or simply do to elasticity (it was always
| there, we just didn't know it).
|
| This applies to both Keynes's examples and nuclear.
| schleck8 wrote:
| Are you saying we should ignore the economic aspect of
| everything?
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Considering this came from an economist, obviously not.
| Just that we've been doing it wrong.
|
| (Consider this year's Nobel, awarded to people who
| demonstrated....we were doing it wrong.)
| adventured wrote:
| > Let us not submit to the vile doctrine of the nineteenth
| century that every enterprise must justify itself in pounds
|
| The key word in that text above is "every" - as part of the
| whole statement it indicates they're suggesting there
| should be _some_ exceptions, not that the economic aspect
| of everything should be ignored.
| rks404 wrote:
| holy hell that's a great quote
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Thanks :)
|
| It's a mission of mine to make (Post-)Keynesianism an
| essential part of Engineering from a holistic perspective.
|
| The economy won't run at "full speed" left to its own
| devices, and new technology will have a harder time making
| it out of the research phase without full speed. VCs, being
| strictly supply-side, are not equipped to solve the
| problem. (Trying to do everything from the supply side is
| like trying to "push a string".)
|
| And from a more personal angle, the "inventor distraught
| about being misunderstand by the world" is well-ingrained
| meme now. Better we have the science to understand what's
| really going on than not.
| xbar wrote:
| No. It is not worth noting any such thing.
|
| The need to keep nuclear in the short term is based solely on
| the urgency of the climate crisis.
|
| Cost is irrelevant in the face of extinction.
|
| We have a couple centuries to figure out wind and solar
| economics if we convert all coal and gas to nuclear
| immediately.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Does the cost include full lifecycle analysis?
|
| For instance, wind requires mining huge quantities of rare
| earth metals in open-air hellscapes in Mongolia, referred to as
| "the worst place on earth." [1] The two hundred meter tall
| towers and their giant blades are also built of fiberglass (an
| epoxy/glass mix) which cannot be recycled and are instead
| buried. [2]
|
| Similarly solar panels are often made with cadmium and
| tellurium, and various other toxic chemicals which leech out of
| the panels when placed into landfills. The US for instance has
| no solar panel recycling mandate except in Washington State.
| The world already has a massive e-waste problem.
|
| By 2050, there will be 78 million metric tons of solar panels
| to dispose of. [3]
|
| Solar panels then have to be supplemented with vast quantities
| of lithium for temporary storage.
|
| Solar and wind aren't "green" they're "less black."
|
| Nuclear produces 2000 metric tons of waste per year in the US
| while amounting to 20% of the entire grid, 0.85TWh per year.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-
| place-...
|
| [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-
| turb...
|
| [3] https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-
| die...
| Tostino wrote:
| That first link was quite a read. Thanks for that.
| himinlomax wrote:
| And wind/solar is also very expensive once you reach 20% and
| need storage.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The expensive part about nuclear power is the initial
| construction.
|
| The cost to keep a reactor that's already been built going is
| low.
| baq wrote:
| Time component can't be disregarded, though. You can build,
| operate and decommission a wind farm or a solar plant in the
| time it takes to sell the first watt from a nuclear plant.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The policy in question is what Germany should do about its
| current fleet.
|
| Building new reactors is another question.
|
| There aren't going to be any LWRs started and finished
| outside of China.
|
| The LWR is doomed by the same thing that stopped the
| construction of coal burning plants circa 1980. Even if the
| heat was free, the capital cost of the steam turbine, heat
| exchangers and other parts that accept large amounts of low
| quality heat is too high. (Consider that the steam
| generators in a PWR are much bigger than the reactor core
| and have to be inside the reactor vessel, be earthquake-
| proof, ...)
|
| Reactors that operate at a higher temperature such as the
| liquid metal fast reactor, molten salt reactor and high-
| temperature gas cooled reactor could be coupled to
| something like
|
| https://www.swri.org/supercritical-carbon-dioxide-power-
| syst...
|
| which fits in the employee break room in the turbine house
| at a conventional nuclear power plant. So long as water is
| not involved you can make the heat exchangers small as
| well, see
|
| https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/5167622
|
| There are difficult challenges to building any "4th
| generation" nuclear reactor, but they have a chance of
| being economically competitive, even without subsidies.
| neals wrote:
| But what if you put in the health en enviromental cost of
| nuclears direct competitor: coal.
|
| Because at the moment, wind isn't doing so well, there being a
| wind-drought for the last few months and all.
| wavefunction wrote:
| Why is nuclear considered in contrast to solar and wind?
| Nuclear energy will allow humanity to move off of petrochemical
| energy sources much more quickly and given the looming
| ecological catastrophe the costs of nuclear energy are very
| reasonable.
| cbmuser wrote:
| It's worth noting that you are confusing system costs and
| levelized costs of electricity.
|
| Cheap wind and solar electricity is absolutely useless if it
| cannot be produced on demand.
|
| Nuclear produces electricity 24/7, independent of weather with
| no backup required.
|
| The kWh costs 30 cents in Germany, but 15 cents in France.
| jhgb wrote:
| > with no backup required.
|
| Not true.
|
| > The kWh costs 30 cents in Germany, but 15 cents in France.
|
| International comparisons are useless without comparison of
| pricing structure. That includes for example the tax regime,
| fees mandated, etc.
| eecc wrote:
| > Nuclear produces electricity 24/7, independent of weather
| with no backup required.
|
| When the plant is not offline...
| martinflack wrote:
| Can't a nuclear energy plant run continuously? (Genuinely
| asking.)
| fulafel wrote:
| Forever? No. For the design life of the reactor?
| Possibly, for a purpouse designed reactor type.
|
| If you want it today, there's the nuclear radioisotope
| thermoelectric generator, in use since the 50s and used
| on many spacecraft.
| coryrc wrote:
| They must be shutdown to be refueled regularly, but it
| can be planned for.
| epistasis wrote:
| Refueling usually takes a long time, minimum three weeks,
| and a month is common:
|
| https://www.outagecalendar.com/
| gadrev wrote:
| When is it offline? A few days (or weeks) every 12-24
| months?
|
| I don't think it's a major problem with a network of
| nuclear plants, you can plan the fuel replacement and have
| a steady power supply (nationwide). You can control when
| the downtime happens, unlike in other power sources.
| fulafel wrote:
| Much more often on average for nuclear plants. Avg
| capacity factor is 83% according to https://www.world-
| nuclear.org/getmedia/3418bf4a-5891-4ba1-b6...
| nradov wrote:
| Obviously the grid needs to have a fleet of base load
| plants large enough that some can be periodically taken
| offline for maintenance. This is understood by everyone
| familiar with the issue and we shouldn't have to keep
| repeating it. Maintenance schedules also apply to every
| other type of power plant capable of handling base load.
| aagd wrote:
| The electricity that is produced at night is sold cheaper in
| Germany, as it's mostly not used anyway - mostly because
| storage is difficult. But since the world is currently being
| filled with an abundance of large batteries like in electric
| cars, this energy loss will decrease over time. These
| batteries could also compensate peaks in demand.
| thewarrior wrote:
| Cost is irrelevant if you can't store the energy generated.
| Nuclear is predictable and carbon free. Look at France.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Nuclear is massive-grid-scale base load only in a world that
| does not need more base load nor massive grid-scale
| generation. Everything about nuclear is slow, difficult,
| expensive, dangerous. They are increasingly not handling
| climate change well. They are decade-scale projects that take
| a long, long time to become carbon neutral; we cannot wait
| that long.
|
| * Solar and wind are here to stay and they mean we need fast-
| reacting spare capacity and storage. Nuclear power plants are
| very slow to react and because they are so monumentally
| expensive they have to run at as high capacity as possible,
| as much as possible. They are strictly base load.
|
| * Siting a nuclear power plant is very difficult just in
| terms of geology. Siting a nuclear power plant is very
| difficult grid-wise as well, because they are only cost-
| effective at massive scale. Super-high-voltage DC
| transmission systems can help, but they only tack on more to
| the project cost. You can't just inject gigawatts of power
| anywhere you want. And it isn't just _injection_ that is the
| problem. Nuclear power plants that are not producing power
| need massive amounts of electricity to get things like
| cooling pumps running or keep them running until everything
| is up to temperature and you can get the turbines up to
| temperature and speed. Then there 's the matter of needing
| sufficient cooling - usually done via river, ocean, or lake.
| Except climate change and other factors are making those
| sources of cooling increasingly unreliable (for example:
| invasive species like zebra mussels have made life hell for a
| lot of power plants)
|
| * Nuclear power plants require lots of highly trained people
| to design, operate, and maintain. More power plants means
| more of them. Training them up isn't a short term affair.
| Solar and wind require far less of all of this. And frankly,
| I have serious doubts about societal stability in 20-30
| years, and nuclear power plants are not even remotely
| friendly to any sort of societal instability. Not just in
| terms of security, but upkeep. They have very complex, deep
| supply chain needs.
|
| * Building nuclear power plants from the start of planning to
| grid synchronization takes a decade or two, and it then takes
| another decade or so for the plant to become carbon-neutral
| in part due to the massive amount of concrete they require.
| Right now, we need to be reducing carbon footprint as much as
| possible, as fast as possible. Not causing huge _increases_
| in carbon footprint that will only balance out well past
| catastrophic climate conditions.
|
| * Nuclear reactor containment vessels can only be constructed
| by a small handful of facilities and their capacity is very
| limited, and by and large already spoken for. We can't just
| wave a wand and start building more reactors tomorrow. Or
| even in the next several years.
|
| * Nuclear waste may be a "solved" problem tech-wise as
| nuclear power proponents are fond of saying, but reality is
| that nuclear waste is a huge problem. Even short-term storage
| is a problem, as demonstrated, again, by Fukashima where fuel
| cooling ponds _caught on fire_.
|
| Time and time again we demonstrate that we are not
| responsible enough to handle nuclear power; we've had
| numerous military nuclear power disasters; the commercial
| ones haven't stopped, either. A "1st world" country, arguably
| one of the most technologically advanced ones around,
| _repeatedly_ bumbled every aspect of Fukashima, starting with
| the plant 's design, its maintenance and procedures, and the
| response to the incident. What was Japan's excuse?
|
| How many Mulligans does nuclear power need?
|
| You know what happens when a solar or wind power plant is
| incompetently designed or run? A bunch of people lose lots of
| money. You don't end up with thousands of square miles of
| land uninhabitable. You don't need people with years of
| training supervising a bunch of solar panels. Maintenance on
| a wind turbine is a standard-industrial-equipment sort of
| job, no bunny suits required.
|
| You know what happens when a country with solar or wind power
| has a government that is full of incompetent suit-stuffing
| chair-warming morons, or gets taken over by a despot
| dictator, or has an economic collapse? _Nothing_.
|
| If you want to look to the future in power grids, look at the
| iron chemistry liquid batteries that are non-toxic and almost
| trivial to deploy at electrical substations. They can provide
| spare capacity at the neighborhood/regional level while
| helping balance distribution loads and allow those
| neighborhoods to continue to function in isolation in the
| event of transmission grid problems.
| freemint wrote:
| Just a nitpick:
|
| > Everything about nuclear is slow, difficult, expensive,
| dangerous.
|
| While this might not be true for the latest generation of
| reactors in development (of which ofcourse no failures are
| know because they don't exist) it applies well to the
| current nuclear infrastructure Germany has.
| himinlomax wrote:
| Nuclear is dangerous and needs to be treated as such.
|
| Flying is also dangerous and is treated as such.
|
| Just like the aviation industry has had an excellent track
| record in managing the danger, so has the nuclear industry.
| Just look at the number of victims of nuclear in the past
| 30 years. One (1) dead at Fukushima.
|
| Chernobyl killed thousands, but it's as relevant to the
| safety of the industry in 2021 as a 1950s Antonov is to an
| Airbus.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| We're not talking about building _new_ plants here. We're
| talking about maintaining the current fleet. Is this
| expensive? Yes. But what's the alternative? Burning coal
| and importing gas? This should simply be the cost of
| transitioning off fossil fuels. Once renewables are
| scalable and reliable, there will be no reason to build
| nuclear plants. Progress over perfection.
| ryeights wrote:
| Wow, I think this post has actually changed my outlook on
| nuclear power. Congrats (no irony)
| veddox wrote:
| Thank you for taking the time to go into the details on
| this! I'm still sitting on the fence on this issue, because
| it's obviously massively complex and one rarely hears a
| decently argued take on it (and I don't have time to study
| nuclear engineering and electricity economics). But I think
| your comment helped me to understand just a little bit more
| about what's involved...
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Solar + 4 hours of storage clocking in at $40/MWh in ideal
| conditions. Substitute for windpower and some worse
| conditions and nuclear energy still look awful from a cost
| perspective.
|
| https://www.energy-storage.news/developer-8minute-says-
| more-...
| criley2 wrote:
| Something about wind and solar isn't working to meet the
| increasing demands in Germany
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-
| elec...
|
| From 2020 to 2021, Coal is up 8%, Wind is down 7%, Solar is
| down 1%.
|
| Non-renewable in total is up 8% and renewable is down 8%.
|
| If they can find a battery solution that actually works,
| then that would be amazing, but existing solutions clearly
| aren't cutting it.
|
| While it might cost more, nuclear power is extremely
| reliable and offers energy independence, a form of national
| security that is vital with Russian pipelines strongly
| influencing the geopolitics of the region. I hope better
| batteries can offer them the same, because it's sad
| watching coal expand dramatically.
| cinntaile wrote:
| You should look at longer time periods instead of just
| looking at one year. Year to year variability could be
| big due to a variety of reasons.
| loeg wrote:
| Correct me if I'm mistaken, but does night time in Germany
| sometimes exceed four hours?
| Gwypaas wrote:
| The wind also ceases to exist at night right?
| [deleted]
| loeg wrote:
| Not every night, no. But electricity supply needs to be
| reliable, not "only on windy nights."
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I think you're being glib, but the issue is that you
| can't guarantee the alignment of sun and wind to match
| demand. Sometimes the wind blows at night, yes, but
| sometimes it does not. On a pure renewable grid, no wind
| at night means rolling brownouts or blackouts. This is
| particularly problematic during the summer when people
| want to run AC in order to sleep, and will also be an
| issue when people move to electric heat in the winter.
|
| Long term we'll use a mix of big grids, over provisioned
| renewables, and grid level storage to smooth this out,
| but we're not there yet. Right now the choice is between
| a nuclear power plant during these moments, or a natural
| gas one.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > we're not there yet.
|
| The UK power grid has pumped hydro storage for decades to
| handle a huge tick in power demand every time the BBC
| goes to commercial break during a very popular program,
| as everyone simultaneously goes to make a cup of tea with
| their several-kilowatt electric kettle.
|
| > Right now the choice is between a nuclear power plant
| during these moments, or a natural gas one.
|
| False dilemma. You left out energy storage, of which
| there are multiple proven technologies.
|
| Iron chemistry batteries are looking like the biggest
| win. Non-toxic, cheap, simple, easily scaled, easy to
| build and maintain, and the materials needed are
| bountiful...and there are working production systems
| right now.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > The UK power grid has pumped hydro storage for decades
|
| Pumped hydro is a pretty good choice for grid level
| storage today, but it has some pretty severe terrain
| limitations. There's lots of places that will never use
| it because the terrain won't allow it.
|
| Of course there's the issue of the actual numbers. Pumped
| hydro can store a ton of power in terms of watt hours,
| but the peak output in watts is very low. UK pumped hydro
| can produce 2.8GW of power _combined_. Pretty impressive
| until you realize that that's less than some single
| nuclear plants. Blayais produces 3.6GW, Cattenom produces
| 5.2GW, etc. etc. A typical modern reactor has a nameplate
| capacity of 1.3GW or higher; literally adding a single
| reactor to an existing power plant is equivalent to half
| of the UK's pumped hydro capacity.
|
| The big advantage of pumped hydro is that you can combine
| power production with water storage, which is good! But
| it is not capable of producing enough power to enable a
| 100% renewable grid, and probably never will.
|
| > False dilemma. You left out energy storage, of which
| there are multiple proven technologies.
|
| Huh? I "left out" energy storage? I literally said "grid
| level storage" in the full sentence, you just cut it out
| when you quoted me.
|
| To reiterate: I didn't "leave out" energy storage. I do
| not believe that we have enough energy storage yet to
| make fossil fuel plants unnecessary, especially as we
| push to electrify everything (transit, industry, etc.).
| One day we will be there, but currently we're woefully
| short. It's my assertion that nuclear power is a good way
| to bridge the gap while we keep building storage, because
| as of today we're literally burning fossil fuels when
| renewables fall short of demand for whatever reason.
|
| > Iron chemistry batteries are looking like the biggest
| win. Non-toxic, cheap, simple, easily scaled, easy to
| build and maintain, and the materials needed are
| bountiful...and there are working production systems
| right now.
|
| Sounds great, how many gigawatt hours are installed, or
| are being installed now, and how much can/will they be
| able to produce?
| fulafel wrote:
| We can also use real time price mechanism to match demand
| with supply intra day, energy intensive loads like
| water/home heating and ev charging can cheaply (vs cost
| of batteries connected to grid) buffer many hours without
| issue.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| In cold and hot places, you cannot easily buffer heating
| and AC for hours.
| fulafel wrote:
| You can if you have decent insulation (which at least
| cold climates do). In fact people historically have taken
| advantage of cheaper night time electricity prices to
| shift heating to night time. Better insulation will
| become a more attractive investment than in the past.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In fact people historically have taken advantage of
| cheaper night time electricity prices to shift heating to
| night time.
|
| Night time is usually when heating is most needed.
|
| Shifting AC to night time in hot regions would be more
| impressive.
| fulafel wrote:
| > Night time is usually when heating is most needed.
|
| If we are still talking about cold climates where houses
| are well insulated, it's a more convenient timing but not
| really needed. If you cut heating for half the night or
| even more, indoor temp won't drop too much even if
| outdoor temp is notably lower than day time. It might
| drop a few degrees as you are sleeping warmly tucked in,
| but that's not dangerous, and you can still heat your
| bedroom if you want to avoid even that slight adjustment.
| criley2 wrote:
| A well insulated modern construction can hold a
| temperature for a long time. Heating and cooling during
| energy availability and using your insulated building as
| a thermal battery of sorts is a real thing, and should be
| I think considered part of the solution here.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Yes, it should. But this drives up the cost of new
| housing when we're already struggling to produce enough
| housing of any quality. As always, these things come with
| trade offs.
|
| (For the record my house is very well insulated because I
| agree with you emphatically, but I also recognize that I
| have the material means to afford that
| insulation/construction cost that not everyone else is
| able to)
| ashtonkem wrote:
| An observation of Griddy during the Texas disaster shows
| that we should be _very_ careful in designing a real time
| price mechanism that's applied to consumers. In the worst
| case this can take the form of passing all the risk and
| cost onto consumers who cannot handle this. This is
| particularly pernicious for HVAC, because during outages
| this puts consumers in the un-enviable position of
| deciding between their savings and not freezing /boiling
| to death.
|
| Some loads can be moved, such as ev charging, but others
| cannot. The issue is that a lot of consumer load is less
| shiftable than you suppose. House heating (presumably
| we'd electrify this, because global warming) cannot be
| deferred for too long, and most households go through a
| hot water tank a day. These loads can be deferred for
| short periods of time, but proposing that people go
| without hot water or temperature control for even
| moderate periods of time is a political non starter. From
| an infrastructure standpoint it's also worth mentioning
| how many people die and how many buildings get ruined by
| even a few days without power during severe weather
| events, which is often exactly when prices would rise.
|
| A holistic view of the situation shows that while there
| is some smart grid stuff we can do, we still need to
| provide a guaranteed minimum worth of power generation no
| matter what. Ideally this would come from grid level
| storage so that we can run everything off renewables, but
| we're just not there yet. The reality is that until we
| get there, the choice is between nuclear power and some
| other form of fossil fuel, typically natural gas. I think
| on the whole we'd be well served to commission one last
| set of nuclear power plants to get us through this
| crisis, and plan on decommissioning them in 2050 or so
| once grid level storage makes them obsolete.
| fulafel wrote:
| The disaster scenario "no matter what" power can come
| from regulated backup turbines and emergency (fossil)
| fuel reserves I think. It's a separate/saparable
| subproblem. Just make the normal power companies pay a
| lot for tapping it, so there is disincentive to
| purpousefully use it.
| loeg wrote:
| > Right now the choice is between a nuclear power plant
| during these moments, or a natural gas one.
|
| Well, gas and coal. Germany is still ~26% coal in
| 2021[1].
|
| Edit: Maybe 50% coal if you look at consumption, not just
| generation, per 'incrudible[2].
|
| [1]: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/
| styles/g... (Lignite is a kind of coal)
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28857398
| incrudible wrote:
| Germany is closer to 50% coal if you look at actual
| demand being fulfilled instead of just production. In the
| linked image, the grey area is conventionals (mostly
| coal), the green area is exports of surplus.
|
| https://oneinabillionblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/hou
| rly...
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I would expect that in most places this will shift to
| natural gas, given that natural gas is more economically
| viable than coal for new plants. But still, both are
| fossil fuels, so neither option is great.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| It's all about the geographical decoupling with local
| storage and smart consumers to smooth the loads. For
| example tying the charging of your electric car while
| it's parked to the current price. Spatial and temporal
| arbitrage of energy, which nuclear is completely awful
| at.
|
| Or using Swedish, Norwegian hydro and wind together with
| German, British and Danish wind. These links are on the
| same scale as nuclear reactors.
|
| Germany <-> Norway (2021)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NordLink
|
| UK <-> Norway (2021)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Link
|
| UK (Scotland) <-> Norway (On hold by Norway, cleared on
| Scottish side) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorthConnect
|
| Denmark <-> Norway (1977) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S
| kagerrak_(power_transmission_...
| [deleted]
| xyzzyz wrote:
| No, gas is not more economical everywhere. It is in
| places which have gas, but most of Europe doesn't have it
| -- it has coal, though. For most of Europe, betting on
| gas means putting themselves under Kremlin control for
| its basic needs.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| At $40/MWh, you just triple it down and still come out
| ahead.
|
| I doubt that article is correct.
| criley2 wrote:
| "But what led to wind power's sudden fall? Statistics
| officials said the weather was partly to blame.
|
| A lack of wind from January to March this year sharply
| reduced the amount of electricity produced by Germany's
| wind turbines. In contrast, stormy weather in the first
| quarters of 2019 and 2020 sharply boosted the electricity
| produced."
|
| The wind might go at night, or it might not, or it might
| not for months.
| amarant wrote:
| Where I live, which is admittedly not Germany, nighttime
| sometimes exceeds 4 months..I don't think solar is gonna
| get me through the winter!
|
| Oh and with temperatures well below 0, I need to heat my
| house somehow!
| darkwater wrote:
| I would guess that the night usage is so low that with 4h
| daytime storage you can sustain all the night usage.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Gwypass, wind does die down during the night.
| jhgb wrote:
| Perhaps, but wind power also tends to peak at night.
| nradov wrote:
| Wind speeds near the ground peak in the early afternoon.
| Higher altitude winds peak at night, but you need quite a
| large turbine to catch those. Sometimes there's no wind
| for days at a time.
|
| https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/27/11/jcl
| i-d...
| jhgb wrote:
| Quoting from your link: "It is found that daily extreme
| wind speeds at 10 m are most likely in the early
| afternoon, whereas _those at 200 m are most likely in
| between midnight and sunrise_ "
|
| Ground is irrelevant; there's a reason why wind turbines
| are being put on top of tall towers.
| cperciva wrote:
| 200m tall towers?
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Almost, the hub is still a bit more than 50m below but
| the rotor points above. Modern off-shore ones are true
| monsters.
|
| For example this one, rotor diameter 220m, highest point
| 248m.
|
| https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-
| wind...
| jhgb wrote:
| As tall as technically possible. For example Vestas V164
| reaches up to 220 meters. Haliade-X reaches up to 260
| meters.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Yeah, people really underestimate the scale of the
| storage problem for solar. Energy usage peaks around
| 6pm[1], while the amount of energy solar can produce is
| trending towards zero. Without _significant_ storage
| capability (i.e. enough to supply ~a days electricity),
| solar energy has a pretty limited use case in a real-time
| electric grid.
|
| [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| The problem is storing enough renewable energy for baseline
| power for a whole country.
|
| Things that work at a small scale don't necessarily work at
| massive scale.
| incrudible wrote:
| There is no storage solution. The required amount of
| batteries would be enormous, well in excess of production
| capacity. The only feasible solution to even out throths is
| (natural) gas plants. Neither coal nor nuclear are quickly
| adjustable in output, when combined with wind/solar they
| lead to peaks of overproduction. This is the situation in
| Germany.
| Factorium wrote:
| Current wholesale electricity prices in Germany are $194/MWh:
|
| https://www.energylive.cloud/
|
| How much does Germany spend on the military? Cancel it, and
| spend the money on nuclear power. Otherwise Germany has a
| significant strategic weakness (gas imports) to Russia, its
| only realistic enemy.
| schleck8 wrote:
| I don't think canceling an already tight military budget in
| favor of a power source that could be devastating when hit by
| an airstrike is a good strategy
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| it wouldn't be devastating
| nradov wrote:
| Germany already spends so little on their military that they
| have been in breach of their NATO treaty obligations for
| years.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Wholesale energy is priced by the marginal cost, gas peaker
| plants come in at $150 - $200/MWh so not a surprising price
| to level out on.
|
| https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-
| energy-...
| [deleted]
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| We've literally _just_ been through an entire energy crisis in
| Europe that was exacerbated due to inconsistent wind.
|
| https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Europes-E...
| The UK is suffering the most from the drop in wind power
| output, caused by mild weather. The country, which prides
| itself on its wind capacity and whose Prime Minister last year
| said wind farms could power every home by 2030, produced less
| than 1 GW of wind power on several days. This compares with a
| generation capacity of 24 GW, according to ICIS senior energy
| economist Stefan Konstantinov.
|
| Cheap isn't as important as reliable. It's not like these
| countries have no money.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Just-in-type supply chains are "cheaper" too.
|
| :)
| rsj_hn wrote:
| There is this cycle where this is blamed on a combination of
| Brexit and global warming, so they want to shift to even more
| wind/solar, causing even more outages, and it's a positive
| feedback loop.
|
| One would think that if you seriously believed that the
| climate is going to rapidly change, then you would seek out
| climate-independent sources of energy. It's like predicting
| the world will be in drought but then advocating for more
| hydro power. But perhaps I don't understand the full nuances
| of European politics.
| tomp wrote:
| Reuters journalists also probably say that the markets are
| efficient.
|
| Out here in the real world, people are paying $200/MWh and
| hedge funds are making billions.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Michael Shellenberger's TED talk from 2017, "Why I changed my
| mind about nuclear power", is still relevant:
| https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shellenberger_why_i_change...
|
| He also has a great Substack where he writes on a variety of
| topics, including nuclear power. He just wrote an article titled
| "Nations Go Nuclear As Prices Spike & Renewables Fail" that is
| timely: https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/nations-go-
| nucle...
| coyotespike wrote:
| I like Shellenberger's nuclear advocacy, some of his writing is
| pungent and balanced.
|
| Regrettably he is unreliable in much of his other climate
| advocacy. He seems to have been radicalized by climate alarmism
| and has swung too far the other way, espousing poorly supported
| lukewarmist positions.
| leifg wrote:
| The original letter is in German and behind a paywall.
|
| Here is an English translation:
| https://cleanenergyrevolution.org/publications
| junon wrote:
| I'm a US expat living in Germany, and boy is the anti-nuclear
| sentiment real here. There have even been fights - physical
| altercations - between Green Party members at rallies for having
| differing viewpoints about nuclear.
|
| Unfortunately, it seems those who are against are working with
| very outdated information and 'tropes' w.r.t. nuclear safety and
| whatnot. Quite unfortunate.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _a US expat living in Germany, and boy is the anti-nuclear
| sentiment real here_
|
| Is it the usual talking points on both sides? Or is there a
| Teutonic shade to the debate that doesn't surface in _e.g._
| America?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Being the front line of the Cold War, while both the US and
| USSR developed battle plans for where nuclear weapons would
| be detonated in your country during a war, probably lends
| shades to the debate that aren't present in other countries.
|
| (Yes, nuclear power / nuclear weapons, but in the 70s that
| wasn't a clear distinction)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _both the US and USSR developed battle plans for where
| nuclear weapons would be detonated in your country during a
| war_
|
| Do we know if younger Germans are more open to nuclear
| power than Cold War era ones?
| junon wrote:
| Anecdotally, no. Young Germans (at least, mid-late
| twenties into the thirties) tend to have the same sort of
| sentiments.
| handrous wrote:
| They were close enough (and downwind-enough) to experience
| direct effects from Chernobyl, no? Destroying contaminated
| produce, taking iodine pills as a precaution, that sort of
| thing, and, I'd guess, worries, for a time, about much
| worse consequences before the emergency was contained.
| zsmi wrote:
| https://www.bfs.de/EN/topics/ion/accident-
| management/emergen...
|
| "To date, there is no evidence that the reactor accident
| has caused adverse health effects due to radiation in
| Germany."
| deepsun wrote:
| Well, I heard the same statement for Belarus, the most
| impacted country by Chernobyl (with still-in-effect
| Evacuation Zone). The key? How to calculate "health
| effects".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone#/m
| edi...
| Gwypaas wrote:
| _As a result of the Chernobyl reactor accident, certain
| species of mushrooms and wild game are still highly
| contaminated with caesium-137 in some areas of Germany._
|
| https://www.bfs.de/EN/topics/ion/environment/foodstuffs/m
| ush...
| nsonha wrote:
| Imagine them end up exported
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| A lot of the fallout on land in Western Europe was in
| Scandinavia and Austria due to the prevailing winds and
| the places where clouds happened to precipitate into
| rain.
|
| In some regions they are still today monitoring the
| cesium content of grass and moss, and bringing sheep and
| reindeer in for the weeks before slaughter to be fed hay
| from other regions to ensure the meat is within
| acceptable dose limits.
|
| Edit - link to map:
| https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Timothy-
| Mousseau/public...
| cure wrote:
| This. That map explains why so many people people are
| afraid of nuclear.
|
| In 1986 one plant had a major accident, and look at all
| that contamination across western and northern Europe,
| thousands of kilometers away. Hundreds of millions of
| people were affected, and the consequences are still
| quite real, 35 years later.
| thow-01187 wrote:
| Yet, Finland is ok with operating nuclear plants, and is
| building a new one (still). Sweden likewise. Belarus and
| Ukraine were the ground zero, and the most impacted
| regions, yet you don't see anywhere close to the militant
| anti-nuclear sentiment as in Germany
| Torwald wrote:
| And lockdowns. First lockdowns in my life. We weren't
| even allowed to play in the garden.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Plus parts of Germany were actually impacted by Chernobyl
| with measurable radiation in their food / water /
| livestock. Low levels to be sure, but in the context of the
| cold war I'm sure there's a long memory for a massive
| nuclear coverup by a antagonistic neighbor that pollutes
| your land.
| simorley wrote:
| Considering MAD existed and most nukes would have been
| dropped on the US and USSR, not Germany, I don't think
| that's the issue. We and the russians had far more to worry
| about than the germans. Of course MAD pretty much ensured a
| 0% chance of nuclear war so really nothing to worry about.
| Nations truly worried about nuclear weapons develop them,
| not fight against them. Think about it.
|
| Considering that Germany is an american vassal with
| significant russian influence, it's more likely political
| factions tied to US and Russia. US doesn't want Germany to
| develop nuclear energy because nuclear energy research is
| the same thing as a nuclear weapons research. A nuclear
| armed germany is pretty much an independent germany which
| is something no empire desires. Empire and
| freedom/independence/sovereignty don't mix. And russians
| don't want germany to develop nuclear energy because they
| want to sell more oil/gas to germany and gain more
| influence over germany/europe.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Russia will gladly sell/build nuclear plants to Germany
| or any other country. I can imagine that it's politically
| infeasible. But the capacity is there.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Considering MAD existed and most nukes would have been
| dropped on the US and USSR, not Germany, I don't think
| that's the issue. We and the russians had far more to
| worry about than the germans.
|
| Completely wrong. A NATO-Russia war could have been (and
| still could) be fought entirely in central Europe. This
| might include tactical nuclear weapons, delivered by
| short- and medium-range missiles and aircraft. This is
| why it was said that "In Germany, the towns are only two
| kilotons apart" (<https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/
| politics/1978/12/11/n...>).
|
| To put another way, it's possible to realistically
| imagine a war in which Germany is hit with nuclear
| weapons but the US and Russia aren't. It's not realistic
| to imagine a war in which the US and Russia are hit with
| nukes but Germany isn't.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _might include tactical nuclear weapons, delivered by
| short- and medium-range missiles and aircraft_
|
| Also, people.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Light_Teams
| wins32767 wrote:
| US/NATO doctrine was to use tactical nukes in the event
| of an invasion of West Germany. There were tactical
| nuclear mines, tactical nuclear bridge demolition
| charges, tactical nuclear artillery shells, etc. In the
| 50s the US reorganized around a Pentomic division [1],
| which was effectively highly mobile battlegroups too
| small to be worth nuking since the assumption was that
| any reasonable sized formation would get plastered.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentomic
| bernulli wrote:
| Maybe you missed the part in Cold War doctrine where
| Germany is the battlefield intended to be used up to stop
| the invasion before the Rhine.
| xg15 wrote:
| German here. I can't really compare the viewpoints, but
| historically, the anti-nuclear movement has been an integral
| part of the german civil rights movement in the 60s and 70s.
| [1] I believe there have been two key events which have
| influenced this:
|
| - Chernobyl. Being in close proximity, the event had a far
| stronger impact than in the US: There was widespread
| contamination from fallout drifting over from Ukraine and
| consequently restrictions in day-to-day life for many
| germans. As with covid: You tend to value a topic differently
| if it directly affects your life than when it just seems to
| happen on TV.
|
| - Gorleben. [2, 3] Since the late 70s there have been efforts
| by the government to construct a permanent disposal site for
| nuclear waste in the Gorleben mine - against the explicit
| wishes of the nearby residents. This led to a decades-long
| resistance movement which tied into a general progressive
| movement for civil rights and an embrace of green
| technologies.
|
| Those events mean that nuclear in Germany is both tied
| stronger to personal experiences and is much more aligned
| with political boundaries than it is likely in the US.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
| nuclear_movement_in_Germa...
|
| [2]
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomm%C3%BClllager_Gorleben
| (german only)
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Republic_of_Wendland
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Hi, what's the general population's stance on Belgian
| nuclear plants ?
| hackerkreise wrote:
| I remember some big protests in the Aachen region against
| Tihange and Doel in 2017/18. I would say there is some
| concern about these plants.
| xg15 wrote:
| I don't know much about it, but from what I know, not
| very positive. There are worries about the age and
| general state of the reactors, in particular Tihange [1].
| Apparently there had been various worrying incidents in
| the past, which eventually led to an ECJ lawsuit of
| neighboring german cities against the plant's operators
| [2].
|
| There is also a popular sentiment in eco/progressive
| circles that the german phase-out of nuclear is to an
| extent hypocritical - because germany will keep consuming
| nuclear energy through belgian and french reactors.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tihange_Nuclear_Power_S
| tation
|
| [2] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/german-city-aachen-sue-
| belgian-nuc...
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Belgium is sun setting its nuclear plants. Here's the
| schedule
| https://economie.fgov.be/fr/themes/energie/sources-
| denergie/...: Doel 1 : 15 fevrier 2025
| Doel 2 : 1er decembre 2025 Doel 3 : 1er
| octobre 2022 Doel 4 : 1er juillet 2025
| Tihange 1 : 1er octobre 2025 Tihange 2 : 1er
| fevrier 2023 Tihange 3 : 1er septembre 2025
|
| One of these got a 2 year extension, don't know if it's
| reflected in the list.
|
| But I doubt Belgium could move a lot of nuclear energy
| out of the national grid considering the gas power plants
| needed to replace nuclear aren't built yet.
|
| Belgium is also auctioning the building and operating of
| gas power plants:
| https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-
| news/167347/b... to replace nuclear plants. They aren't
| built yet but the first auction (for the building) takes
| place this week and the second one for operation some
| months later.
|
| There might be a last chance for nuclear if somehow
| participants to the auctions can't prove it can be done
| but the government is dead set on retiring nuclear plants
| so it would only be a small respite for nuclear.
|
| I am all for believing that renewables can keep on
| growing up but I read that our government is betting for
| some new tech in battery and power grid appliances to
| achieve 2050 objectives. Seems bold to me but I am not
| qualified to comment on that.
| xg15 wrote:
| Good to know. I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for the
| info!
| moooo99 wrote:
| The construction of (fairly) new nuclear power plants
| near the shared borders with Belgium and France is
| actually an argument I hear quite often.
|
| In many debates people argue about why Germany should go
| ahead and quit using nuclear if the neighboring countries
| keep building and running new plants, also posing a huge
| risk to Germany in the event of a catastrophic failure
| (actually the risk in case of a failure is probably
| higher for Germany than it is for France or Belgium).
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I don't think Belgium is going to build new nuclear
| plants any time soon. The retirement schedule is pretty
| tight and we may choose to keep 2 reactors running for 5
| or 10 years (unlikely) but the operator (Engie) is sun
| setting them whatever happens and has set no money for
| upgrading them.
|
| They already wrote the loss of revenues in their
| accounting books.
| junon wrote:
| Seems like the typical whataboutism regarding 1) waste and 2)
| Chernobyl.
|
| Perhaps more informed people are having more nuanced
| conversation but I sure haven't heard it.
| ulnarkressty wrote:
| It mostly revolves around storing waste (in other people's
| back yards), and the mess the government and companies made
| of it - storing it improperly in mines, and the barrels
| rusting after some years / leaking waste.
|
| Unfortunately from talking to some of my (really smart)
| colleagues, this issue is so deeply ingrained that they don't
| even want to look at other options, or don't really think
| about that this is a long term problem vs the urgency of
| climate collapse...
|
| One article that goes a bit about this -
| https://www.dw.com/en/germany-may-not-see-proper-nuclear-
| was...
| deepsun wrote:
| I wonder how much of that is supported by Russian govt, because
| Germany is one of the largest customer for their oil and gas.
| Factorium wrote:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41447603
|
| Former Chancellor Gerhard Schroder oversaw the shutdown of
| Germany's nukes.
|
| Now he's on the board of Rosneft, a giant fossil fuel company
| controlled by the Russian Government.
| yosamino wrote:
| > Former Chancellor Gerhard Schroder oversaw the shutdown
| of Germany's nukes.
|
| This is incorrect.
|
| Germany decided to phase out nuclear power after the
| Fukushima desaster. This was well into Merkels's
| chancellorship, and there are still nuclear power plants.
| fh973 wrote:
| No, parent is correct. The Atomausstieg was initiated
| under Schroeder's chancellorship. See for example
| Wikipedia if you doubt it.
| rob74 wrote:
| Both are correct actually: Schroder's Social
| Democrat/Green government first decided to phase out
| nuclear in 2002, then Merkel's Christian Democrat/Liberal
| coalition (partly) rolled that back in 2010, only to
| change their mind in 2011 after Fukushima...
| r3drock wrote:
| Not really incorrect. Both are in a way correct. In 2002
| the nuclear power phase-out was written into law. With
| Merkel in 2010 there was a decision to keep the power
| plants running for far longer. This extension was
| retreated because of the Fukushima desaster.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Ha, and people keep saying there's no corruption in
| Germany.
| moooo99 wrote:
| You'd be hard pressed to find anyone in Germany saying
| corruption does not exist here in Germany. In 2020 alone
| we saw corruption scandals worth millions, coincidentally
| all in the ruling conservative party CDU/CSU.
|
| Everyone knows that, and there are even more such
| scandals. Yet a lot of people vote for them (at least
| they got their worst ever election results in this years
| elections)
| daanlo wrote:
| It was pushed for mainly by his coalition partner (the
| green party) and none of them work for russian oil
| companies. Anti-nuclear is a very big movement in Germany
| and the majority of the population don't want to have
| them operated.
| odiroot wrote:
| There is. Just at very high level with very high stakes.
| It'd probably be impossible to bribe a random cop or
| government clerk though.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Russia also wants to build a lot of nuclear plants around
| Germany so it won't profit from scaring the one who will
| eventually foot the bill.
| tscherno wrote:
| Nuclear was also promoted as save decades before Chernobyl and
| Fukushima by the lobbies. So is there a guarantee that it is
| safe this time around?
| [deleted]
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| To a first approximation, Fukushima did not cause any harm. I
| view the plant iself as a success story, given ancient
| reactor design etc. etc.
|
| I think a lot of half-paying-attention people confused the
| reactor and the tsunami. Of course the news coverage and in-
| hindsight-unnecessary evacuation didn't help either.
| akamaka wrote:
| Fukushima's design was not a success, and exposed new
| failure modes which hadn't been fully understood. In
| response, nuclear operators around the world have spent
| billions to upgrade their safety systems.
|
| For example: https://www.cnsc-
| ccsn.gc.ca/eng/resources/fukushima/canada-i...
| aagd wrote:
| 'Not any harm' is quite a cynic formulation. Maybe a couple
| of hundred deaths seems relatively few, for such an
| enormous event. But the impact the event had on Japan,
| their economy and their mental state, was obviosly the
| worst since WW2.
|
| And Fukushima is still not under control.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/world-news-japan-
| tsunamis-5a5a70d...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-nuclear-
| idUSKCN11D0...
| step21 wrote:
| "did not cause any harm" - for a very loose defintion of
| harm. Sure it could have been much worse. But enough ground
| and water was contaminated, and much more will be in the
| future when they run out of storage.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| And how much ground water is contaminated with fossil
| fuel extraction?
| nsonha wrote:
| Radio contamination is at a different level
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| and who has actually been directly affected by this? I
| think it's your definition of harm that is too loose and
| overly inclusive.
|
| Your average oil spill does 100x more damage to the
| ecosystem and economy than fukushima
| rob74 wrote:
| So Fukushima did no harm, because the 100 000 people who
| had to be evacuated were not harmed?
| fsflover wrote:
| It is statistically safer than almost anything even if you
| take Chernobyl and Fukushima into account.
| tscherno wrote:
| Sure, I just wanted to point out the sentiment which I feel
| most have. Smoking was also scientifically safe in the 70s.
| Cybiote wrote:
| That's not accurate. By the 1960s and 70s, the scientific
| consensus [1] not only strongly believed smoking was a
| causal factor in lung cancer but also knew it contained
| radioactive isotopes of Polonium
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2509609/)
| and lead.
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/histo
| ry/inde...
| parineum wrote:
| The point is that there was never a time where Nuclear
| became unsafe. It was never a lie.
|
| The reverse of your analogy would be if cigarettes were
| actually good for you but we banned them because two
| people died of lung cancer.
| freemint wrote:
| The number of people displaced by coal is lower. Nuclear
| does well on deaths, yes.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Is that why it is impossible to insure a nuclear power
| plant on the private market?
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Being impossible to insure is related more to a high
| degree of synchronization of risk pools than overall
| danger of death. Death rates are averages - it is
| possible that one person dying per time period is rate-
| equivalent to the whole town dying at once in a once-in-
| a-tens-of-millenia event. But the risk exposure in that
| event is quite different.
|
| You can get life insurance/death benefits as a mercenary
| or even as a centarian. It will be expensive because of
| the high risk of payout but you can get it. Because while
| it is probable that you will cack it from being so damn
| old/being a combatant in unstable regions with lesser
| support it is extremely unlikely every mercenary or
| centarian they have insured will die at once.
| aagd wrote:
| A couple of years ago there was a study about what this
| kind of insurance would cost: about 72 billion Euro per
| year.
|
| > The study proves for the first time the years of market
| distortion in favor of nuclear energy and at the expense
| of the competition, said Uwe Leprich from the Saarbrucken
| University of Technology and Economics. "The study also
| shows that if you look at the economy from a regulatory
| perspective, nuclear energy is not competitive."
|
| https://www.manager-
| magazin.de/finanzen/versicherungen/a-761...
| initplus wrote:
| If fossil fuel power plants were legally responsible for
| harm caused by their carbon emissions, they would also be
| impossible to insure.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Who compares against fossil plants nowadays? Except
| wanting to put a carbon tax on them to account for that
| issue you mention.
|
| Truly, it's new built nuclear compared compared to
| renewables, storage and long-distance distance
| transmission. Spatial and temporal arbitrage of energy.
| loeg wrote:
| Germany is shutting down nuclear and replacing it with
| coal and gas. The comparison to fossil fuel is incredibly
| apt.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Going by the German energy usage there's no replacement
| using fossil plants being done. It's all displaced by
| cheaper renewables, especially coal and old nuclear
| plants.
|
| https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/style
| s/g...
| [deleted]
| red_trumpet wrote:
| What do you mean by "safer"? Less accidents compared to eg
| coal plants?
|
| No exploding coal plant will render a whole region
| unlivable for >30 years. Both happened at Tschernobyl and
| Fukushima.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Areas around coal power plants can exceed radioactivity
| limits for nuclear power plants, due to trace elements in
| the soot landing back down. Never mind all the other
| stuff.
|
| That's pretty nasty, I'd rather be close to a nuclear
| power plant.
| [deleted]
| Cybiote wrote:
| > No exploding coal plant will render a whole region
| unlivable for >30 years
|
| Unlivable for humans. The exclusion zone around Chernobyl
| became a de facto wild-life sanctuary. To the extent that
| some environmentalists now argue benefits of officially
| maintaining it as one indefinitely. Human supporting
| activities such as farming, mining and habitat expansion
| often come at a serious cost to local ecosystems. Nature
| ends up flourishing over time in humans excluded regions
| exactly because they are unlivable for > 30 years.
|
| As pointed out by others, one effect of burning coal is
| the concentration of its radioactive elements in fly ash.
| And since less care is taken, more radioactive material
| ends up released into the environment by coal plants than
| nuclear plants. It's worth pointing out however, when
| contrasted with background, risks from exposure to
| radioactivity is not significantly raised by living near
| coal plants. The real killer from coal is pollution.
| Having said that, accumulation of fly ash over time could
| be a concern, especially wherever it gathered under non-
| uniform dispersal. As far as I know, this is yet to be
| shown.
|
| Perhaps a stronger example of society's inconsistent
| reasoning about radioactivity exposure is inhalation of
| tobacco smoke. It's curious that information on the
| significant amounts of radioactive material in tobacco
| smoke did not percolate widely and probably would not
| have changed habits anyway, given its known carcinogenic
| nature was already not enough to do so.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| Coal plants might render the entire planet unlivable
| within the next century. When weighed against the
| theoretical worst case impact of climate collapse, the
| theoretical worst case impact for nuclear power (that is,
| every single plant exploding and contaminating a 30 mile
| radius) is still vanishing by comparison.
| itsangaris wrote:
| Checkout deaths per capita statistics
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-
| energy-p...
| mdavidn wrote:
| Coal plants release ash into the air and groundwater
| continuously, in the course of normal operation. This ash
| is around five times more radioactive than soil.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| Instead coal plants working normally slowly pump more
| radiation into atmosphere than occasionally exploding
| nuclear plants...
| mrighele wrote:
| I guess deaths per energy unit produced ?
|
| According to this [1], for every death caused by nuclear
| power, 350 people die because of coal power.
|
| Note that most of these people died as a consequence of
| Chernobyl accident (~4000 vs ~500), so by current
| standards Nuclear Power is probably even safer.
|
| The issue with nuclear is that deaths are concentrated in
| a few "big" accidents, that have much more visibility and
| leave a lasting impressions, thus scaring the population
| much more. (This is not unique to nuclear power though,
| something similar happens with plane vs car travel: the
| latter causes generally more deaths, but plan accidents
| are more newsworthy).
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-
| energy-p...
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| burning coal kills people and does a whole lot of damage
| just by running normally. it doesn't have to explode
| germandiago wrote:
| Nuclear energy fear reminds me of people that are afraid of
| planes.
|
| It is like if there is a crash it is going to be very bad.
| But it is also true that your chances to have a crash in a
| car is just higher.
| thow-01187 wrote:
| Controversial take, but even if we had a Fukushima-level
| disaster every 10 years, and just dump nuclear waste into the
| ocean (which sounds cavalier and hand-wavy, but we've been
| doing that for decades no discernible ill effect) - nuclear
| would still be a better option than coal for base load
| [deleted]
| himinlomax wrote:
| Fukushima killed one (1). In the context of a massive natural
| disaster that killed 10000.
|
| Three Miles Island happened years before Chernobyl and killed
| no one, because it wasn't a dodgy, duct-taped together soviet
| piece of junk.
|
| In the last 30 years, the only nuclear power accident was
| Fukushima and again, caused just one victim. Fossil fuel
| depot fires have killed thousands more in that time.
| freemint wrote:
| because 0.2 million people were displaced.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| > So is there a guarantee
|
| A guarantee doesn't mean that the thing being guaranteed
| won't happen. A guarantee is a promise to pay someone back -
| _when, not if_ - the thing you promised doesn 't work. Anyone
| who gives you a guarantee has already saved up enough money
| to pay you off when the thing fails. > that
| it is safe
|
| Safe compared to what?
|
| People go insane about airline safety whenever one plane
| crashes, even though commercial passenger airplanes are 1000x
| safer than any other form of transportation. You could have a
| plane bombed, hijacked, whatever, every single day, for 10
| years, and would still be 1000x safer than any other form of
| transport. People wouldn't _think_ it was safe, though,
| because when it does fail, it fails spectacularly.
|
| And that's the mentality of an anti-nuclear person. Who cares
| that the outcomes are almost always better? The one time it's
| not better is really scary, so I don't want it in my back
| yard.
| goodpoint wrote:
| It's not just a matter of safety of the plans themselves.
|
| You need safety against external threats e.g. a nuclear plant
| can be targeted during war or by terrorists
|
| You need safety around illegal dumping https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Illegal_dump...
|
| Also, extremely centralized energy production creates
| political risks (coups, corruption, hiding mismanagement)
|
| Nuclear proliferation risk.
|
| Investment risk: solar keeps getting cheaper and nuclear has
| very long ROI that might grow indefinitely
| armada651 wrote:
| At least two of those points don't hold when you're talking
| about existing plants though. Germany already hosts nuclear
| weapons courtesy of the US, so where's the proliferation
| risk from nuclear power? And there's nothing worse for ROI
| than shutting down the plant.
|
| For the other points I'd say that I'd rather build solar to
| replace coal plants first before replacing nuclear plants.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Germany already hosts nuclear weapons courtesy of the
| US, so where's the proliferation risk?
|
| Proliferation is not a binary 1 or 0.
|
| > For the other points I'd say that I'd rather build
| solar to replace coal plants first before replacing
| nuclear plants.
|
| That's a false dichotomy.
| armada651 wrote:
| > Proliferation is not a binary 1 or 0.
|
| I think climate change poses a bigger existential risk
| than the nuclear proliferation risk from Germany
| continuing the nuclear energy production they're already
| doing.
|
| > That's a false dichotomy.
|
| Sure we can do both, but the reality is we're not doing
| both. The last time Germany closed its nuclear plants
| they were replaced by coal plants.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| You have the same considerations with coal waste as well.
|
| >https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article248
| 74...
|
| Look at how many coal ash spills there have been...and
| those come with nice forever things like mercury.
| unchocked wrote:
| There are no guarantees. You need to compare vs. the safety
| of burning coal, for the climate and for human health. You
| need to compare it with how sure you are that renewables &
| storage will satisfy our energy needs tomorrow, or the safety
| of not having enough energy to go around.
|
| That said, nuclear is pretty safe. I would live next door to
| a nuclear power plant, and if I did I would be likelier to
| die slipping in the shower.
| [deleted]
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Everyone thinks the next gen of reactors will finally solve the
| issues the last 3/4 didn't. This is one of those generational
| issues because young people (I'm 37) hear promises and old ones
| have heard them before...
| themaninthedark wrote:
| What issues don't the new designs solve that you are worried
| about?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Nuclear has basically three issues: Cost, Waste and Safety.
|
| Cost is already a lost cause for the new reactors. No one
| making them expects to break even without subsidies.
|
| For waste and safety, we'll see. But given it will take 40
| years to tell and the last generations except the first
| were all sold as completely waste free and impervious to
| any incident...
|
| This is the big issue with nuclear: it will take 40 years
| and billions of dollars to find out (and maybe some
| additional meltdowns and tonnes and tonnes of waste) to
| find out.
| baq wrote:
| And the elephant in the room: we don't have 40 years. We
| need those reactors today, at most in 5 or so years.
| Afterwards, they are too late.
|
| I've yet to see a reactor selling power to the grid 5
| years after construction approval.
| proctrap wrote:
| How about
|
| - Germany trying to find a nuclear waste deposit since ages
| (that doesn't have to be evacuated due to ground water later
| on)*
|
| - Failed nuclear plants we're deconstructing since ages and are
| paying millions every year to do so
|
| - Nuclear fuel expected to be depleted in the next 100 years
|
| - State and taxpayers always having to pay for the disasters of
| nuclear plants, while the gains are going to the companies
|
| - French nuclear plants that had some interesting failures in
| the last years, while we can just watch and hope they're
| treated correctly. Meanwhile you're told "nono, everything is
| fine".
|
| Theoretically nuclear power can be effective. Practically we're
| using corporations that want to profit and have a human factor.
| So no wonder it's not safe to operate in reality. The next
| fukushima could be at your door, with your government then also
| claiming the radiation to be safe, because they can't afford to
| keep people out of their work and houses for so long.
|
| No nuclear company is insured for the real amount of money
| they'd have to pay for the next fukushima or Tschernobyl.
| Because there is no insurance for that amount of money.
|
| * And USA still pouring money into a final solution for a
| underground storage
|
| Also I don't give much about USA and their regulations. It's
| the country with stories like these:
| https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/oil-...
| And oh wonder: https://truthout.org/articles/evidence-of-
| fracking-chemicals...
|
| I could even suspect USA influence to prevent more solar money
| to china or gas/oil money to russia.
| junon wrote:
| > Germany trying to find a nuclear waste deposit since ages
| (that doesn't have to be evacuated due to ground water later
| on)
|
| Waste can be refined to safe levels these days. It's just not
| being done on a wide scale.
|
| > Failed nuclear plants we're deconstructing since ages and
| are paying millions every year to do so
|
| We're paying unfathomable amounts of money dealing with
| carbon emissions - way more than millions, which is a drop in
| the bucket of taxpayer revenue, anyway.
|
| > Nuclear fuel expected to be depleted in the next 100 years
|
| And? That's 100 years of clean energy and a more livable
| planet. 100 years for more research. 100 years for other
| forms of energy capture or generation.
|
| It's 100 years of bought time.
|
| > State and taxpayers always having to pay for the disasters
| of nuclear plants, while the gains are going to the companies
|
| "always" makes it sound like every week involves another
| nuclear "disaster". That's not accurate, at all.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident.
| ..
|
| There are a few other lists that are related but I imagine
| this is what you intended. Please study the amount of people
| affected, directly, by those incidents.
|
| By contrast, the heat wave this year killed at least 2,300
| people in India alone.
|
| https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/india-
| he...
|
| > French nuclear plants that had some interesting failures in
| the last years, while we can just watch and hope they're
| treated correctly. Meanwhile you're told "nono, everything is
| fine".
|
| Who is saying "everything is fine"? That's a seemingly
| extreme reduction of public outreach, especially since the
| IAEA has been trying to do good about being transparent with
| the world's nuclear operations.
|
| > No nuclear company is insured for the real amount of money
| they'd have to pay for the next fukushima or Tschernobyl.
|
| While I don't disagree things could be improved there, I'm so
| tired of Chernobyl being used as some "all nuclear is bad"
| example. Chernobyl was a cost-cutting endeavor, and the
| design was known to be faulty well before it failed. It was
| implemented in an incredibly corrupt system and poorly
| operated. The safety measures were not developed yet, and
| regulatory committees simply didn't exist at the time like
| they do now.
|
| Chernobyl ignored the science. It was, quite literally, a
| ticking time bomb. Yes, we could be doomed to repeat this if
| we so chose, but that's such a far reaching example that it's
| throwing the baby out with the bath water.
|
| > It's the country with stories like these:
|
| This is entirely unrelated and FUD from two clearly biased
| publications.
|
| > I could even suspect USA influence to prevent more solar
| money to china or gas/oil money to russia.
|
| This is speculation, fullstop.
| Tsarbomb wrote:
| Here I am in Canada, in a city powered by the largest nuclear
| facility in the world by output, in a province where 60% of
| the power is Nuclear.
|
| Please tell me more about how it is bad, or do you only
| cherry pick your arguments?
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| First you say that corporations can't be trusted, then also
| the government can't be trusted when they say everything is
| fine?
|
| Is sounds like you just have a problem with authority.
|
| Even with all nuclear disasters included it is still a far
| safer energy source (in deaths per kWh) than any other we
| have ever developed.
|
| And that figure about 100 years? Wildly misleading.
|
| The same fact is true about oil. Except we keep discovering
| more, and we would with uranium as well if demand was
| increasing enough.
|
| In addition, and most importantly, nuclear plants that
| reprocess fuel have enough supply to generate _all_ of
| humanity 's exponentially growing power needs for 10,000+
| years.
| jollybean wrote:
| "Germany trying to find a nuclear waste deposit since ages"
|
| That's politics.
|
| "Failed nuclear plants"
|
| That's not quite true and doesn't have to happen.
|
| "Nuclear fuel expected to be depleted in the next 100 years"
|
| This is just plain wrong. Maybe 1000 years even then, we are
| extracting a tiny fraction of the energy. As we get better,
| all that 'waste' is actually 'fuel'.
|
| Far from a bad example, France is a good example.
|
| If France were to have built 2x the capacity instead of
| stopping where they did, they might have already been Carbon
| Neutral.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > very outdated information
|
| no rush on that -- we have another 21,000 years of half-life to
| talk about it, right?
| imtringued wrote:
| Outdated information is quite relevant for nuclear power
| plants. Fukushima was older than Chernobyl.
|
| Every time someone tells me how safe modern power plants are
| I think "great, now get rid of all the old ones".
| anshumankmr wrote:
| Wouldn't that be better than the gigatonnes of CO2 we keep
| emitting into the atmosphere?
| outworlder wrote:
| Plus radiation. People seem to forget that coal plants
| actually spew radioactive material in the atmosphere.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| there are lots of ways to emit less CO2 right now without
| any nukes pro or con.. yet, stall...
| petre wrote:
| > great, now get rid of all the old ones
|
| And burn some more coal in the meantime.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Great, nuclear advocates agree! Let's build more, new
| nuclear plants so the old ones can be retired.
| outworlder wrote:
| Getting rid of the old ones is quite difficult to do due to
| all the misinformation and public perception. A lot of that
| shaped by outdated information.
|
| So instead of building new, safer power plants that will
| actually help us fight climate change, many places are
| still running old power plants as they can't afford to shut
| them down. There are _still_ RMBK (Chernobyl-like) plants
| running today!
|
| Mind you, Fukushima was not the only power plant that was
| subject to an earthquake and a tsunami. All others safely
| shutdown. Actually Fukushima shutdown too - and would have
| survived if not by the tsunami and some braindead
| decisions. Fukushima is like a Ford Model T that's thrown
| into a highway accident. It should have been replaced way
| before the accident.
|
| Germany should be leading the effort here. Maybe they could
| take a page from France.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Longer half-life = less radioactive. By definition.
|
| A half-life of _infinity_ would mean that the isotope is not
| radioactive at all.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| a pinhead emits less light than the sun, too
| freemint wrote:
| Only if dosage is not infinite either.
| schleck8 wrote:
| It's like a religion to some people. Has been this way for
| decades, certain folks never left the hippie ideology behind
| pelasaco wrote:
| its worse now. Because they are the majority in all media and
| are pretty aggressive too.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Wow this really puts the show "Dark" into a different context.
| It's like a propoganda piece about the dangers of nuclear
| power.
| aagd wrote:
| The view I share with a majority of Germans: Costs of nuclear
| energy are very much a burden that future generations will have
| to carry. A hundered thousand years of safe storage is not part
| of the calculation of the energy price. It is also clear now that
| the the companies running the plants will not pay for the
| deconstruction of the plants after they reached their end of
| life. Tax payers have to pay for this, and a large part of the
| remains will need to be stored safely for millenia as well. This
| is the opposite of sustainability and fairness towards future
| generations. Worldwide there still exists only a single final
| storage solution for nuclear waste - in Finland for the finish
| waste. In densly populated Germany the search for a storage site
| has been going on since the late 1950s, so far without success.
| All this on top of the risk of a system failure that would
| devastate huge territories. In a country where, as we've recently
| seen, simple emergency warning systems are basically non-existent
| and fax is still the main communication tool for the
| authorities...
| Ensorceled wrote:
| This is a like a preposterous version of the trolley problem
| ... "The trolley can continue down the nuclear track and maybe,
| perhaps, kill people far into the future or you can switch to
| the coal track and continue to kill thousands now and maybe
| destroy the planet"
|
| And people are choosing to switch.
| izacus wrote:
| The Germans have switched from nuclear to coal. Can you cut
| this "future generations are going to have to carry the cost"
| when the alternative is literally helping destroy the whole
| planet's ecosystems? Not to mention they spew up significantly
| more radioactivity in the air than nuclear powerplants.
|
| A 30x30m pool of radioactive fuel is nothing compared to what
| their powerplants are doing to the future of young generations.
| Is cancer caused by coal particulates really something you wish
| on people around you?
| svara wrote:
| I agree it would have been better to phase out coal before
| nuclear, but it's not correct to say that there was a switch
| from nuclear to coal.
|
| The switch was from nuclear to renewables. Coal was stable
| for a long time, and is now decreasing. Coal is currently
| scheduled to be phased out by 2038.
|
| Source: Quick Google image search for the power sources over
| time plots.
| hiq wrote:
| > Source: Quick Google image search for the power sources
| over time plots.
|
| Which plot did you use exactly? Another comment written
| before yours seems to indicate it's not the case:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28856599
|
| > Coal was stable for a long time, and is now decreasing.
|
| Over which time period?
|
| The stats in the article they link indicate a switch from
| 21 to 27% for coal, from 52 to 44% for renewables, when
| comparing the first halves of 2020 and 2021. If there's a
| downward trend, it's less than obvious.
| cinntaile wrote:
| A time period of one year is too short to draw trend
| conclusions, it really doesn't tell us anything about the
| (long term) trend. It's like using the weather from last
| year and comparing it to this year to say something about
| the climate. Look at 5 years or 10 years to spot energy
| trends.
| google234123 wrote:
| You shouldn't believe a plot the projects that far :P
| xg15 wrote:
| Coal is being phased out until 2038 if not earlier.
|
| The future is neither coal, nor nuclear.
| jhgb wrote:
| > The Germans have switched from nuclear to coal.
|
| No, they did not. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/defau
| lt/files/styles/p...
| melling wrote:
| There have been several recent stories about the increase
| in coal usage this year.
|
| https://amp.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-
| elec...
|
| Coal is the primary source of electricity this year
| cesarb wrote:
| > > > The Germans have switched from nuclear to coal.
|
| > > No, they did not.
|
| > There have been several recent stories about the
| increase in coal usage this year.
|
| But was there any closure of nuclear power plants in
| Germany this year? If not, you cannot say that this
| increase was because they have switched from _nuclear_ to
| coal; they must have switched from something else.
|
| > https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-
| primary-elec...
|
| That story implies that Germany this year switched from
| _wind_ to coal (due to weaker winds), not from nuclear.
| melling wrote:
| So they switched from nuclear to wind to coal?
|
| Coal in the primary source of electricity. If they hadn't
| reduced nuclear, coal could almost be gone?
|
| " Nuclear power in Germany accounted for 11.63% of
| electricity supply in 2017[3] compared to 22.4% in 2010"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany
| jhgb wrote:
| No, if they hadn't reduced nuclear production, the
| relative changes between coal and renewables would have
| exactly been the same, only coal would have had the same
| uptick from a lower 2020 value. "The increase in coal
| usage" would have been exactly the same regardless of
| whether they shut down some nuclear power plants or not.
| That should be obvious to you. Since this inter-annual
| change would have happened regardless of nuclear
| generation levels (unless you for some reason assume that
| the number of nuclear power plants operating in Germany
| affects German inter-annual weather changes), you can't
| use the nuclear generation levels to make this argument.
| talolard wrote:
| Could you elaborate, im interested in understanding your
| perspective but couldn't follow it. In my mind , uptick
| in coal usage was directly caused by a decrease in wind
| power production. I understand that if Germany had chosen
| nuclear over wind, that decline would not happen and thus
| the usage of coal would not increase. Is that not true ?
| jhgb wrote:
| > I understand that if Germany had chosen nuclear over
| wind, that decline would not happen
|
| This doesn't make sense unless nuclear power plants blow
| additional wind. See my other comment for a simple
| example. Keeping nuclear plants alive vs. not keeping
| them alive doesn't change the picture of inter-annual
| generation changes unless those shutdowns happened
| exactly between those two years.
| gdavisson wrote:
| Why would that be the case? Shutting down nuclear plants
| doesn't increase the production capacity from renewables.
| For a given renewable production capacity, there's a
| fixed amount that has to be made up from non-renewable
| sources; since coal is pretty clearly the worst of those,
| you use things other than coal -- _anything_ other than
| coal -- first, and kill off coal as fast as possible.
|
| If you have a way to increase the renewable capacity to
| make up for a decrease in nuclear production, why not do
| that anyway, and shut down _more_ coal production instead
| of nuclear?
| jhgb wrote:
| Yes, the situation is that whatever you don't source from
| renewables, you have to source from something else.
| Assuming that in both alternative scenarios (some nuclear
| plants shut down vs. all existing plants kept in
| operation), the nuclear generation levels are
| approximately constant, this means that any decrease from
| renewables has to be compensated by an equal increase
| from non-nuclear sources (since the nuclear contribution
| is constant from year to year in both scenarios, assuming
| no Chernobyl/Fukushima like situation where a nuclear
| source suddenly goes away permanently).
|
| For sake of a simple example, let's say you have nuclear,
| renewable, and coal power plants, and you have 600 TWh of
| electricity consumption in a year and you have 200 TWh of
| nuclear power contribution and 200 TWh of renewable power
| contribution. You then need to burn coal worth 200 TWh to
| compensate for the rest. The next year the nuclear power
| contribution is the same at 200 TWh, since it's weather-
| independent, but weather variations allow you to generate
| only 150 TWh of renewable electricity. You now need to
| burn 250 TWh worth of coal; 50 TWh worth of coal more
| than the last year.
|
| Let's assume that you shut down 100 TWh/y worth of
| nuclear plants a few years ago. Your energy needs today
| are the same. You have 600 TWh of electricity consumption
| in a year and you have only 100 TWh of nuclear power
| contribution in this scenario, and 200 TWh of renewable
| power contribution. You then need to burn coal worth 300
| TWh to compensate for the rest. The next year the nuclear
| power contribution is the same at the decreased level of
| 100 TWh, since it's weather-independent, but weather
| variations allow you to generate only 150 TWh of
| renewable electricity. You now need to burn 350 TWh worth
| of coal; 50 TWh worth of coal more than the last year.
|
| See how in both scenarios you need 50 TWh worth of coal
| more in the latter year because of weather variability?
| The argument was that the nuclear shutdowns changed the
| coal uptick. The shutdowns clearly didn't cause the
| uptick, or even affect its size, unless they happened
| inter-annually (which to my knowledge they didn't).
|
| As for increasing RE contribution, that is happening in
| Germany regardless. In fact shutting down the most
| expensive-to-run old nuclear plants might liberate some
| money for extra renewables expansion, although I'd have
| to check on the exact numbers.
| jhgb wrote:
| This is completely irrelevant. The inter-annual
| variability means _nothing_ in the long run since the
| climate only cares about long-term averages. You 're
| ignoring the long-term trend on purpose. This doesn't
| mean in any way that Germany is switching from nuclear to
| coal. They're switching from nuclear AND coal to
| renewables.
| izacus wrote:
| This graph does not show the failure of renewables to
| provide sufficient power this year (it ends at 2020).
|
| The renewable power production is down for up to 40% and
| french nuclear power being in maintenance mode has caused
| the coal consumption to rise significantly.
| jhgb wrote:
| It's completely irrelevant. The reason for the transition
| is climate protection and the climate cares about long
| term averages - the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is
| on the order of centuries. Pushing that average baseline
| lower is what matters, even in the presence of occasional
| spikes.
| aagd wrote:
| In Germany renewables are at over 42% in 2021, despite a
| 'conservative' government that for decades has blocked the
| development of windfarms and solar for the benefit of the
| coal and nuclear lobby. That kind of lobby-work is the actual
| problem here. The way forward is renewable energy. The huge
| difference is that the source of renewable energy is free and
| basically limitless.
| himinlomax wrote:
| You don't get points for using Nice Green power, you get
| points for not releasing more CO2 in the atmosphere. Right
| now, France's electricity is at 30g CO2 per kW.h (the
| figure includes the whole lifexyle), while Germany's is at
| over 400g.
|
| Sure, we have to deal with the waste ourselves, but you're
| just dumping yours in everyone's air.
| earthnail wrote:
| The problem is that only a fraction of power consumption is
| electric. The rest is burning fossil fuels.
|
| In order to get away from these, we have to increase
| electricity production significantly. And we have to build
| a better electricity grid.
|
| It is completely unclear how renewable energy should
| provide this in the short or medium term (i.e. until 2050).
| Without nuclear, we'll just continue burning fossil fuels.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| Renewables paired with batteries can improve grid
| resilience, actually. Distribution of generators means
| less loss in the wires travelling, batteries paired with
| renewables to provide overnight power and load-smoothing,
| these are good things. Renewables also are very
| predictable, so you can use a little natural gas to
| supplement at night while you build out batteries and
| more wind. Solar will take care of our day-time needs no
| problem, it's the overnight stretches and the wind-less
| winters where nuclear would really shine.
| izacus wrote:
| How much batteries and renewables do you need to provide
| baseline power on the level of a single 1000MW nuclear
| plant?
|
| And how will you construct all that sooner than
| constructing those plants?
| jhgb wrote:
| Batteries are a bit of a red herring. The combination of
| pumped storage plants, overgeneration, and demand
| response already has you covered for at least two decades
| even in Germany. The minimal cost solution calculated for
| Germany assumes 1.6 GWh of storage for your 1000 MW
| nuclear equivalent for a 60% RE penetration scenario,
| only some of which needs to be batteries (Germany is
| currently at ~45% or so, many other countries are
| considerably behind). At ehe expense of extra costs,
| lower storage could be compensated for by higher
| overgeneration (not consuming all the power you produce).
|
| _However_ , this was all calculated for current grid
| conditions. Spread of BEVs would likely put dedicated
| grid storage needs lower, since in Germany, for each of
| your 1000 MW nuclear equivalents, there's 700k cars which
| already have ~600 MWh of storage capacity even just in
| form of lead-acid batteries, and even replacing just 10%
| of these cars with 40 kWh BEVs would give you a whopping
| 2.8 GWh of capacity per your 1000 MW nuclear equivalent,
| necessitating higher overgeneration to provide the
| vehicles with motive energy and lowering grid storage
| capacity because of demand response ("smart charging").
| For reference, a 100% replacement of ICE cars with BEVs
| in Germany would require a ~25% increase in average power
| generation - by around 250 MW of average power per your
| 1000 MW nuclear equivalent.
|
| Electrolytic hydrogen production would do exactly the
| same thing to grid storage - require more generators, and
| with demand response, lower grid storage capacity. Just
| replacing German ammonia with "green" ammonia using
| electrolysis would necessitate another 60 MW of average
| power generation per your 1000 MW equivalent that could
| be subject to demand response.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I'm not sure there are (can be?) enough batteries in the
| world, to support the grid for any length of time.
| nmehner wrote:
| There was a project to try this:
| https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/german-
| utility-...
|
| Unfortunatly this project was cancelled since Germany
| taxes electricity from batteries two times: Once when
| charging the battery and once when discharging it (since
| it is then seen as "producing" electricity).
| [deleted]
| aagd wrote:
| Not completely unclear. Renewable energy can be even more
| local than nuclear plants. A good grid is a valueable
| tool, but not the only solution. The zero-energy-house is
| a working example for self-sufficient development. Large
| office buildings or small residential houses are already
| being build this way. It's a matter of where to put the
| subvention money - to the big old coal companies (and
| their lobbies) or the innovative smaller engineers.
| titzer wrote:
| A typical large nuclear plant will produce 3 cubic meters of
| solid waste in a year. That's a little bigger than a
| refrigerator.
|
| A lot of solid waste can be reprocessed, though doing so
| requires regulatory and logistical challenges to be solved that
| apparently only France has figured out.
|
| Nuclear waste, comparatively, is not the problem. The risk of
| accidents, proliferation, and the generally higher cost of
| engineering are. Every energy technology produces waste, too.
| As others have mentioned, coal-fired plants produce literally
| thousands of times the radiation of a nuclear plant, blasting
| that right into the atmosphere in the form of radioactive fly
| ash, as well as huge amounts of CO2 and particulates. The
| production of solar panels is not waste free. Nothing is waste
| free.
|
| The nuclear waste argument is a distraction. Nuclear power, of
| all the options, all things considered, leaves the smallest
| scar on the planet of all the options available to us. Solar
| panels, wind, hydro, they all require land use changes that are
| a big impact on the planet. Uranium mining is comparatively
| small in terms of its impact. So IMHO nuclear is the best
| option.
| drran wrote:
| Do you include atomic station itself after EOL into your
| calculation?
| titzer wrote:
| I think we should, and yes, it's a lot to be sure. This is
| why I think small modular reactors offer some hope for a
| smaller footprint future.
|
| We should do calculations that include all parts of the
| production pipeline for parts--factories, mines for raw
| materials, the trucks, the fuel, all of it, as well as the
| opportunity cost of not using that infrastructure for
| something else.
| michilehr wrote:
| Totally agree.
|
| "Der Graslutscher" has written 6 parts about "Energy transition
| in 10 years". Sorry it is in german but it is worth reading.
|
| https://graslutscher.de/how-to-energiewende-in-10-jahren-tei...
| wazoox wrote:
| Nuclear energy kills about zero person per annum. Coal itself
| kills at least 50000 Europeans every year. Even taking into
| account the worst case scenarios such as Chernobyl, coal (and
| fossil fuels generally) is several orders of magnitudes more
| dangerous than nuclear.
|
| I just don't get this mindset. People prefer killing literaly
| millions of persons right now while there's a safer
| alternative. That's incredible, really.
| suetoniusp wrote:
| There is a safer alternative in the short term. The two are
| comparable in the long term for safety. Also "Coal itself
| kills at least 50000 Europeans every year." is far from a
| truth. Coal may have increased the chance of death by some
| amount for at least 50000 Europeans every year is more
| correct.
| titzer wrote:
| I believe that statistic. Air pollution is a killer. That
| causality chain is more indirect and longer than dying of
| acute radiation poisoning, but that radioactive coal fly
| ash is a stochastic killer; roll 400 million dice (the
| population of Europe) and just bias them a tiny bit (.01%),
| and a number like 40,000 easily pops out.
| gjhh244 wrote:
| Nuclear is problematic, but it should not be phased out as long
| as there's fossil fuel used in energy generation. All efforts
| should go into replacing fossil fuels for now.
| asdff wrote:
| The costs of the status quo are also beared upon by us and
| future generations. Instead of the waste product being
| contained in a controlled environment, it is dispersed into the
| atmosphere and breathed in by millions of Germans, where it
| will continue to warm the world for future generations to
| attempt to right our wrongs before its too late. Even if
| emissions stopped globally today, temperatures would continue
| to rise due to greenhouse effect just from what is already
| present in the atmosphere. I fear for a world where climate
| change advances faster than our ability to adapt our foodstocks
| to it, that world is not as far away as you might think,
| especially with the left's resistance toward species saving
| technologies such as nuclear power and genetically modified
| organisms.
| ars wrote:
| > A hundered thousand years of safe storage is not part of the
| calculation of the energy price.
|
| It's completely unnecessary to do that. So many people have
| this misconception.
|
| If you combine
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing with
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor you burn up
| everything, leaving very little waste.
| xg15 wrote:
| From your very own linked Wikipedia page:
|
| > _In 2010 the International Panel on Fissile Materials said
| "After six decades and the expenditure of the equivalent of
| tens of billions of dollars, the promise of breeder reactors
| remains largely unfulfilled and efforts to commercialize them
| have been steadily cut back in most countries"._
| freemint wrote:
| But radiated concrete from the reactor housing doesn't burn
| that well.
| 627467 wrote:
| So, 100 thousand years is not long enough to find a use of
| disposing nuclear waste but it is enough to try to terraform
| earth to undo the changes enacted from NOT using nuclear?
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Aren't there newer nuclear technologies that use alternative
| fissionable materials that have much shorter half-lives?
| loeg wrote:
| To risk oversimplifying: the really harmful stuff has very
| short half-lives, and the stuff with long half-lives isn't
| especially harmful.
| eecc wrote:
| If you're referring to Thorium and pebble bed, they're both
| not proliferation safe and have their issues with ecological
| confinement of highly active waste.
|
| So unfortunately they never managed to overcome the initial
| "should we even seriously try it" cost/benefit analysis
| andbberger wrote:
| is the oil lobby performing the cost benefit analysis.
|
| because...
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| The background issue is that Germans, with their harmful
| surpluses, all this talk about costs, seem to completely
| misunderstand economics.
|
| ----
|
| I get that the Cold War hurt a lot in Germany. I've met my
| distant relatives stuck on both sides of the iron curtain, for
| example. That would have made issues of proliferation and
| whatnot extra salient.
|
| But the fact of the matter is that the environmental problems
| we face now completely dwarf whatever environmental problems
| were being chased after then.
|
| You have to realized that when you thought you were fighting
| the end-game boss, but you were actually fighting the mid-game
| boss which is the minion and now the big boss has shown up,
| everything changes.
|
| -----
|
| Please connect those necessary readjustments to thinking more
| critically about economics and whole-system things in general,
| to connect my two points, and we'll all be very happy.
| nipponese wrote:
| The "hundred thousand years" argument is one I hear a lot, but
| why do we all assume 1. our civilization will last more than
| 1,000 years. 2. there will be no new tech to address the issue
| in the future? The estimated time until catastrophic climate
| change are MUCH sooner than that.
| louissm_it wrote:
| I'm sorry but no. The future costs of nuclear are comparatively
| irrelevant if you consider the immediate doom our climate and
| thousands and thousands of species are facing because of
| burning fossil. If a 100 nuclear disasters happen in the next 5
| years it will still do less damage than coal.
|
| There is simply no more time, the only option is to stop
| burning at any and all costs.
| znd wrote:
| The marginal cost of storing a few years worth of spent nuclear
| fuel doesn't seem that high, as you have to find a place to
| store the waste already generated anyway. I for one would
| accept other countries spent fuel to be stored in Finnish
| bedrock. Might be hard politically, though.
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