Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

spiegel.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 166 posts

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

#131

Post by tdhoot »

derblitzmann wrote: post #90
anoncake wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear plants do not "blow up". The reactor of Chernobyl did blow up. Just not like a nuclear bomb, if that's what you meant. Which may be a bad thing, Hiroshima is actually inhabitable. >People are unreasonably scared of nuclear energy, and we might lose a planet because of this. People are quite reasonably scared of nuclear energy. What's unreasonable is that they are less scared of global warming. Your data is…

The reactor that blew up in Chernobyl was because of the design of the reactor itself. Even at the time it was built, the west never would have green lit the reactor design.

Good thing nuclear reactors are only being built in the West then.

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

#132

Post by anoncake »

petre wrote: post #120
anoncake wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear plants do not "blow up". The reactor of Chernobyl did blow up. Just not like a nuclear bomb, if that's what you meant. Which may be a bad thing, Hiroshima is actually inhabitable. >People are unreasonably scared of nuclear energy, and we might lose a planet because of this. People are quite reasonably scared of nuclear energy. What's unreasonable is that they are less scared of global warming. Your data is…

Chernobyl is the worst possible example. The RMBK reactor is an irresponsible politically motivated design without containment and a highly positive void coefficient, meaning that runaway nuclear reaction is possible. The reactor that blew up also had a design fault (which was fixed), it is quite unstable at low capacity and there was also human error that triggered the accident. http://www.world-nuclear.org/informat…

Chernobyl was caused by human error and irresponsibility. We have to assume that the design and operation of all reactors, present and future, will involve these factors. Everything humans do does.

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

#133

Post by anoncake »

core-questions wrote: post #108
anoncake wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Fukushima was designed to be tsunami-safe. If you look at the compromises made in the design, I don't think you can really say that this was the case. Even if so, all it proves is that maybe we should build such reactors in safer places, not on fault lines near the ocean.

The people who planned the Fukushima plant made some stupid mistakes. That proves that we shouldn't make stupid mistakes. But that's not possible.

Yes, we can mostly avoid past mistakes. Until there is no accident for a while, people become complacent and start cutting costs. We cannot avoid the mistakes we have neither made yet nor thought of.

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

#134

Post by wbl »

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…

What matters for climate change: CO2 emissions. What doesn't matter: solar panels on roofs.

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

#135

Post by wbl »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #104
ccffph wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have already solved the nuclear waste problem. The issue is that nobody wants to bury it in their backyard, so to speak. Waste containers are incredibly safe and secure, and modern fuel waste is much safer than gen 1 fuel waste. People like feel-good shiny solar panels and wind turbines over concrete near-zero emission solutions.

We haven't solved the 'waste problem'. 1) Long term storage has some existential risks. Over very long time horizons, these risks become real. 2) Transportation, processing and storage: all of this operational stuff is totally ripe for accidents.

It doesn't. The impact of radiation is a rise in cancer rates which even if they substantially shorten lifetimes aren't X risk.

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

#136

Post by redwall_hp »

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...

If coal emissions were a nice convenient solid that could be stashed in a box somewhere, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

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

#137

Post by 8bitsrule »

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…

never been a meltdown of a Gen III reactor

Gen IIIs seem to have a short and small operating history. That's helped their success rate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_III_reactor#Generat...

Gen IV are being designed...

What's the timeline for testing and commercialization of these better-sounding designs? We need tested, proven, and affordable large-scale solutions - now.

As for France, they've managed to keep their problems very quiet for a long time, so ... how could we be sure? http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/dudzinski2/

Putting safety concerns to one side, the many, many costs of nuclear are not getting lower.

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

#138

Post by imtringued »

vkou wrote: post #66
hef19898 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long term? Some kind of storage solution in combination with hydro power and, my preference, natural gas as it burns much cleaner than coal. Short to mid term? Same as above, only that storage will have to be replaced with something else. Since coal is clearly favoured by the system in Germany coal has to replaced by itself. Coal is just the worst alternative. Unfortunately nuclear is no option in Germany, until stor…

Natural gas is not a sustainable long-term solution. World emissions need to be brought to zero, in the next five years, in order for us to avoid a climate castrophe. If we are still positive at the five-year mark, that means zero at, say, the ten-year mark, and negative emissions for many decades. Natural gas has no place in this long-term.

It's actually very sustainable. Renewable energy production follows a normal distribution. The natural gas plants won't have to produce more than 60% of the electricy during the 10 worst days of the entire year. Therefore a 90%+ reduction in emissions is possible without any storage system at all. Add power2gas technology which will be available over the next decade and it suddenly we are not only carbon neutral, we can also capture it. How are you going to store energy without using gas? Oh and did I mention that 10GW worth of natural gas plants costs less than a 1 GW nuclear power plant? Therefore not running natural gas plants most of the year is cost effective.

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

#139

Post by ranbumo »

Gondolin wrote: post #123
geff82 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energiewende is no ponies and magical unicorns, it is a quite well thought out system to about zero CO2 ouput in 2050 (except some industries like steel production where fossils will be needed for some time to come until better chemical processes are found). 2050 is not the number that "Fridays for future" want to hear, but still ambitious enough to really make a difference. A lot of new infrastructure has to be buil…

No it is not zero CO2 output in 2050 but about 65% reduction only, or 80% if a 25% reduction of electricity consumption is achieved. This is 1) too late, 2) not even on par with France's electricity C02 production. And a nuclear accident would not involve closing the whole country, it would involve an exclusion zone of 10-20 km (Fukushima exclusion zone is 20km, but it include zones where the residue radioactivity is…

When you put it this way, you might as well say that a major accident that takes out half of Western Europe would be neglige in comparison.

German plants are old. There's issues with a few of them. Decommissioning them seems inevitable. The question is whether building new nuclear plants, at probably about 15+ years for the first plant to start operations, is really a better option than investing in renewables?

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

#140

Post by imtringued »

jwr wrote: post #57
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…

I also get a warm fuzzy feeling from solar panels and wind farms. But we are losing our planet to climate change, and warm fuzzy feelings do not help. Lowering CO2 emissions does. Germany could have had zero CO2 emissions by now, if money were invested into nuclear instead of the current efforts. The declaration to move away from nuclear power was misguided and will be regarded as a huge error in the future.

The renewable subsidies don't cover the cost of a modern nuclear power plant. The 25 billion € per year spent on renewables is just barely enough to construct a single nuclear plant. Other than warm fuzzy feelings that nuclear is superior it wouldn't actually solve the problems Germany is currently facing. Merkel doesn't want to threaten the jobs of coal workers and their communities. Therefore coal plants don't get turned off.
Post reply on HN