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Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

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Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#21

Post by YayamiOmate »

spython wrote: post #6
liminal wrote: post #4

It's crazy to move from Nuclear to coal for the sake of the environment. Renewables are great when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, but the rest of the time Nuclear is the better choice

There was a radioactive cloud over most of Europe after Chernobyl. It is much harder politically to defend nuclear energy once you lived through that disaster.

Im not sure if it's so hard. There already exist a strong narrative that it wasn't so bad,and severe misconduct and negligence must happen for a big disaster. And that in absolute terms it wasn't so bad.

I thinkits easy to politically argue for nukes. They are like planes, when they crash it's a big deal, still comparatively safest method.

I am not a fan of mass producing waste that renders some area or space inhabitable for most of life, for longer than our written history or even our species. Though, maybe it's better than burning fossils as a mean of getting to something cleaner and safer (and cheap). Tough choice.

I think i'd nuke waste and some disasters over greenhouse I guess, especially runaway.

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#22

Post by hef19898 »

realusername wrote: post #19
est31 wrote: post #9

It's very popular to criticize the Energiewende as a failure because it apparently failed to reduce CO2 emmissions of the whole country. And of course, it's true that Germany could have had greater reductions if nuclear was kept alive instead of coal. But the Energiewende actually changed Germany. Suddenly everywhere you go you have solar panel farms and many houses have them on their roofs and there are wind turbine…

> But the Energiewende actually changed Germany. Suddenly everywhere you go you have solar panel farms and many houses have them on their roofs and there are wind turbines. It was a cool time to live in germany to see these projects realized everywhere Does it really matter to see all those solar panel farms if the end result is they were not much helpful? The money which went into this is absolutely massive and coul…

At least you can say that Germany kickstarted mass manufacturing of PV modules. So even if Germany itself didn't benefit, everybody else did. Including Chinese manufacturers. So I'd argue that the money was well invested.

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#23

Post by geff82 »

The Energiewende is actually one of the reasons I still live in Germany: I want to see how it happens. It is stuff that our grandchildren will be proud of. And by the way, private energy consumption is heavily taxed (for a good reason), yet energy hungry industries are exempt from it. And they feel the effect: because of the growing effect of the renewable energies, they now pay one of the lowest electricity prices in the world.

There are actually good books that explain how all this works, why there are also short term "unsuccessful" years and how about everything will benefit in the end. And, most importantly: why the Energiewende actually enables a comfortable, good life.

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#24

Post by anoncake »

jseliger wrote: post #2

Germany and California could already have near-zero greenhouse gas emissions from power production: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/09/11... . The technology already exists. The problems are chiefly political.

Nuclear fission is a safe source of power that sane people support. Ukraine is LARPing the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for political reasons.

We should just build a lot of nuclear reactors somewhere in Germany that's hundreds of kilometers from anything we'd care to lose.

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#25

Post by anoncake »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #16
spython wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a radioactive cloud over most of Europe after Chernobyl. It is much harder politically to defend nuclear energy once you lived through that disaster.

Chernobyl was a Gen II reactor. Three Mile Island and Fukushima were also Gen II. [0] There has never been a meltdown of a Gen III reactor, which is the bulk of the fleet in France. Gen IV are being designed to be impossible to melt down, and, to use waste from other plants as a fuel source. They do not emit radioactive waste.[1] [0] "To date, there have been five serious accidents (core damage) in the world since 19…

> There has never been a meltdown of a Gen III reactor

yet.

> Gen IV are being designed to be impossible to melt down

Fukushima was designed to be tsunami-safe.

Using NPPs risks rendering large areas uninhabitable. Using fossils risks most of Earth. That does make NPPs a better solution in the short term, but relying on them permanently is still madness.

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#26

Post by Luc »

Bombthecat wrote: post #15
jseliger wrote: post #2

Germany and California could already have near-zero greenhouse gas emissions from power production: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/09/11... . The technology already exists. The problems are chiefly political.

Still waiting for an answer what to do with the waste. Beside A) dumping in the ground and hope for the best B) some magic tech will pop which will solve the issue.

It's pretty benign as waste goes. It just sits there and gets less dangerous as time goes on.

You could just keep it in a bunker and pay a crew to dust it off and repackage it when needed for the next 1000 years. But no, for some reason it needs to be taken out of the environment, like in the famous Australian sketch...

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#27

Post by pizza234 »

adrianN wrote: post #20
Bombthecat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still waiting for an answer what to do with the waste. Beside A) dumping in the ground and hope for the best B) some magic tech will pop which will solve the issue.

Breeder reactors reduce the waste by more than 95% and leave only isotopes that decay much faster.

  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"

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#28

Post by pgeorgi »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #8
spython wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a radioactive cloud over most of Europe after Chernobyl. It is much harder politically to defend nuclear energy once you lived through that disaster.

There's a cloud of particulants from burning coal and oil over most of Europe--- and it has killed orders of magnitude more people than contamination from Chernobyl.

Do you have to check mushrooms and boar for radioactivity due to coal like you have for Tchernobyl? (https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/umwelt/lebensmittel/pilze-w...)

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#29

Post by ivan_gammel »

anoncake wrote: post #24
jseliger wrote: post #2

Germany and California could already have near-zero greenhouse gas emissions from power production: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/09/11... . The technology already exists. The problems are chiefly political.

Nuclear fission is a safe source of power that sane people support. Ukraine is LARPing the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for political reasons. We should just build a lot of nuclear reactors somewhere in Germany that's hundreds of kilometers from anything we'd care to lose.

Somewhere in Germany, but hundreds of kilometers from anything worthy - that can happen only in alternative reality where Hitler won and Siberia is now in Germany.

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#30

Post by pizza234 »

Luc wrote: post #26
Bombthecat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still waiting for an answer what to do with the waste. Beside A) dumping in the ground and hope for the best B) some magic tech will pop which will solve the issue.

It's pretty benign as waste goes. It just sits there and gets less dangerous as time goes on. You could just keep it in a bunker and pay a crew to dust it off and repackage it when needed for the next 1000 years. But no, for some reason it needs to be taken out of the environment, like in the famous Australian sketch...

I'll be convinced when I'll start to see people campaigning for building storage facilities in their neighbourhoods, rather than generic claims that storage facilities are as safe as it can be.
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