[HN Gopher] Germany begins powering down its last three nuclear ...
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Germany begins powering down its last three nuclear plants
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 17 points
Date : 2023-04-15 20:40 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| egberts1 wrote:
| Hopefully, the negative energy output will get displaced
| appropriated with RNG.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| As long as they have the renewable to offset generation capacity,
| it's all good.
|
| Nuclear is better than FF, but not without associated long-term
| burdens. (Trading nuclear for FFs would be dumb.)
|
| The goal has to be to get off FF as fast as possible, with an
| emphasis on reducing imports.
| blibble wrote:
| > As long as they have the renewable to offset generation
| capacity, it's all good.
|
| by keeping the nuclear for a few more years they could have
| phased out the coal instead
|
| and making it ever worse: that coal is lignite, the shittiest
| possible coal
|
| it's hard to understate quite how stupid Germany is here
| amin wrote:
| "Decades of anti-nuclear protests in Germany, stoked by disasters
| at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, put pressure on
| successive governments to end the use of a technology that
| critics argue is unsafe and unsustainable.
|
| Environmental groups planned to mark the day with celebrations
| outside the three reactors and rallies in major cities, including
| Berlin."
|
| It's crazy that a country made up of seemingly smart people favor
| this. How did Germany evolve to be so anti-nuclear? Given the
| alternatives nuclear seems the way to go.
| jamesdepp wrote:
| Right? Nuclear power is some of the cleanest energy we have.
| With research developments, strong safety regulations, and a
| plan for storing the waste it produces, nuclear is a much
| better option than continuing to rely on fossil fuels.
|
| What poor timing, too. With the war in Ukraine going on, now is
| not the time to be increasing your independence on fossil
| fuels, even if temporarily.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| > Environmental groups planned to mark the day with
| celebrations outside the three reactors and rallies in major
| cities, including Berlin."
|
| They should be celebrating right next ash heaps from coal power
| plants
| bgorman wrote:
| Propoganda for childen:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Wolke
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Lol. Die woke. Maybe.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Solar and wind are better alternatives today. They got
| developed to the point they are _because_ of those same smart,
| sensible Germans investing in them early on.
| clnq wrote:
| Solar and wind could be better alternatives _in the future_.
| _Today_ , Germany is among the European countries with least
| clean power thanks to coal and natural gas use --
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE.
|
| Principally nuclear countries like Finland, France, and
| Sweden produce a kWh of power with 5x-20x less carbon
| emissions. The figures are even better in countries relying
| more on hydro energy.
|
| The nuclear waste is a real problem, but a nearly
| inconsequential one compared to global warming and carbon
| emissions from coal and natural gas. We have geological
| storage and reprocessing methods for nuclear waste. Fast
| Breeder Reactors and Molten Salt Reactors can consume what's
| considered nuclear waste and the latter can produce short-
| lived waste (dangerous for 300 years instead of thousands),
| which we can definitely store.
|
| The biggest challenges for nuclear reactors are political,
| both because people are against the reactors as they were
| unsafe/used for WMD production in the past, and because
| having nuclear energy tips the energy and power balance
| (countries like Russia would rather see Europe depending on
| their energy). The engineering and safety challenges are
| irrelevant in comparison.
| leoh wrote:
| How?
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| By pretending that storage is not needed. That's how.
| retinaros wrote:
| you might want to google carbon emission of germany instead
| of reading fake news.
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/23/germany-
| coal...
| EntrePrescott wrote:
| The fact that the shutdown of nuclear energy in Germany is
| based on irrational ideological fearmongering and that it's
| doubly stupid to do so BEFORE having finished building up
| sufficient renewable energy generation and storage
| capacity, thus leading, at least temporarily, to a de-facto
| replacement of a sizeable proportion of the part previously
| held by nuclear energy with fossil energies like coal that
| are far more dirty (with CO2 and other pollutants)...
|
| ... doesn't in any way change the fact that Germany has
| indeed been massively investing in renewable energies and
| has built up enormous capacities in that domain that
| account for a much higher percentage of renewables in the
| energy mix than the overwhelming majority of developed
| countries... and that those early and continuous massive
| investments by Germany have played a major role in bringing
| these renewable energies to the much improved viability,
| maturity and price level they now have.
|
| There is no contradiction between those two facts.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Moral, or other panic is apparently a German pastime.
|
| Remember they still censor video games? Or are afraid of Google
| Street View?
| riedel wrote:
| In Germany there is still no consent on where to put the
| nuclear waste. Without that and no other country willing to
| take our waste, this is a problem. The process e.g. in
| Switzerland worked much better. It may actually be the very
| critical thinking that made it impossible to run nuclear plants
| in Germany. Further the federal structure and the citizen
| engagement in many decision making processes makes it
| complicated. Btw, the same problem actually makes a lot of wind
| power plans stall..
| sgu999 wrote:
| But they all agree on where to put the leftovers of burning
| coal until 2038... It makes absolutely no sense to me.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| If you could convert the waste into co2 and put it into the
| sky, that would be better. Right?
| elcritch wrote:
| Nuclear waste only requires a fraction of the space of what a
| single large coal mine? It's still irrational to put you
| energy security at risk because it's "nuclear", especially
| while wanting green electricity.
|
| Also a bit darker thought, but you'd think the chance of
| nuclear fallout zones that'd keep humans out would be adored
| by more hardcore environmentalists.
|
| I think the sort of environmentalism on display there is more
| people rallying against what they don't "comprehend".
| api wrote:
| ... but you can always build gas plants I'm sure. Same thing
| is true in parts of the US. Gas somehow doesn't face the
| opposition of pretty much anything else.
| dadjoker wrote:
| These are the same people that laughed at Trump when he raised
| the dangers of dependence on Russian oil. That worked out well.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Date and source for that claim?
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| This tells me that Germany, despite all their talk to the
| contrary, are really just deniers of the seriousness of Climate
| Change.
|
| If you really believed the science on the seriousness of Climate
| Change, you would see that powering down existing nuclear plants
| is one of the stupidest things you could do. Even a Chernobyl
| every decade would be preferable to the consequences of increased
| CO2 output.
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