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

spiegel.de

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

#151

Post by [deleted] »

petre wrote: post #148
hef19898 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which again is written by humans. Boeing anyone? All you can do is reducing the risk not eliminate it. Chernobyl was clearly on the high risk side of things. Doesn't mean new reactor types are zero risk so.

Nothing is zero risk. It's just facts of life that we have to deal with. We can do risk mitigation so that the risks are minimized as much as possible. There is also the risk of smog deaths, heavy metal posioning and climate realted disasters if we continue to burn coal. Would you rather have the risk one nuclear accident per 3704 cumulative reactor-years of commercial nuclear power operation [1] or the guaranteed ri…

[deleted]

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

#152

Post by anoncake »

petre wrote: post #148
hef19898 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which again is written by humans. Boeing anyone? All you can do is reducing the risk not eliminate it. Chernobyl was clearly on the high risk side of things. Doesn't mean new reactor types are zero risk so.

Nothing is zero risk. It's just facts of life that we have to deal with. We can do risk mitigation so that the risks are minimized as much as possible. There is also the risk of smog deaths, heavy metal posioning and climate realted disasters if we continue to burn coal. Would you rather have the risk one nuclear accident per 3704 cumulative reactor-years of commercial nuclear power operation [1] or the guaranteed ri…

Risk implies uncertainty. A "guaranteed risk" is not a risk. And of course I prefer a small decrease in life expectancy to the risk of rendering millions of people homeless.

The equation does change when taking climate change in account. But that does not mean renewables are preferred to nuclear merely for "political reasons". Being better than coal does not remotely make it acceptable.

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

#153

Post by anoncake »

BiasRegularizer wrote: post #38

I believe nuclear power is inevitable. Human power consumption has been growing exponentially, at some point renewable energy will not be able to catch up without causing extensive damage to our ecological system. There are finite amount of renewable energy per sqkm on earth, at some point the area required will begin to erode local ecology. Right now nuclear power appears to be the densest form of energy generation.…

> Human power consumption has been growing exponentially

That has to stop. Power generation cannot grow exponentially forever

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

#155

Post by anoncake »

Nimitz14 wrote: post #111
jhayward wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you keep posting this lie? Chernobyl's unit 4 was destroyed by an explosion. Fukushima had multiple explosions that destroyed the upper levels of reactor buildings, and ruptured the containment of unit 2. During the three mile island accident there were several days where engineers were sweating bullets because there was a hydrogen gas bubble at the top of the pressure vessel, and they were afraid it would exp…

They do not blow up in the sense of a nuclear explosion. It's a normal explosion. With normal consequences.

They blow up in the sense of a dirty bomb. That's a lot worse. It would be great if NPPs just blew up in a nuclear explosion! We could safely use them by making the blast radius a forbidden zone.

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

#156

Post by anoncake »

jwr wrote: post #96
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 in Chernobyl was a soviet RBMK-type reactor. These haven't been built anywhere for many decades and I don't think even a single one was ever built anywhere in the West. Nuclear plants do not "blow up".

> Nuclear plants do not "blow up".

Chernobyl was a coal plant them I guess.

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

#157

Post by anoncake »

vidarh wrote: post #112
anoncake wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter-intuitively, one of the less bad places for an NPP might actually be Pripyat. Making the CEZ even more irradiated is better than creating another.

They kept operating the other reactors at Chernobyl for years, so sure. Most of the zone is no worse than a high altitude town by now.

But they didn't do it because they considered it a great idea, but because Ukraine couldn't afford not to.

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

#158

Post by anoncake »

netsharc wrote: post #43
realusername wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm pretty sure if the survival of human race is at stake, money is no object. If someone in a foreign country invented a machine that everyone can buy to make themselves carbon-positive, the logical move for any government would be subsidize the purchase, even if that means great debt: but as the planet continues surviving, the country will go on collecting tax revenue from productive citizens/businesses and will be…

> I'm pretty sure if the survival of human race is at stake, money is no object.

It shouldn't be, but unfortunately, it very much is.

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

#159

Post by Nimitz14 »

anoncake wrote: post #155
Nimitz14 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do not blow up in the sense of a nuclear explosion. It's a normal explosion. With normal consequences.

They blow up in the sense of a dirty bomb. That's a lot worse. It would be great if NPPs just blew up in a nuclear explosion! We could safely use them by making the blast radius a forbidden zone.

> They blow up in the sense of a dirty bomb. That's a lot worse. It would be great if NPPs just blew up in a nuclear explosion! We could safely use them by making the blast radius a forbidden zone.

I do not know how to respond politely to such a ridiculous statement.

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

#160

Post by anoncake »

petre wrote: post #124
sampo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is stuff that our grandchildren will be proud of. The French can be proud today, consuming electricity with 1/6 of the carbon footprint per kWh, compared to electricity in Germany. And paying half the price, too, compared to what electricity costs in Germany. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136192091...

Not only that but their move to renewables will be more hassle free as they have enough base load power to compensate for lack of wind and sun, more shoreline and sunnier areas south of Bordeaux.

No, it won't. To compensate for the fluctuating energy output of solar and wind, you need storage and plants that can be throttled quickly, not nuclear reactors that pretty much can't.
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