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

Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 239 posts

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#61

Post by C14L »

looping__lui wrote: post #54
svara wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true, coal did not replace nuclear, renewables did [0]. What's true is that coal plants could have been shut down instead of nuclear ones, which sucks. But note that anthracite coal is decreasing since ~5 years ago (dark grey bar in [0]). [0] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38... "Kohle" is coal; "Kernenergie" is nuclear; "Erneuerbare" is renewables.

Yes. And not to mention that the coal plants emit 2x as much radioactivity into the environment at comparable power generation [0]. [0] https://www.bund-nrw.de/fileadmin/nrw/dokumente/braunkohle/2...

And are the deadliest form of energy:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#62

Post by vkou »

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #60
vkou wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This focus is in direct contrast to nuclear's greatest weakness that no one talks about; it's maintenance and manpower costs. You say weakness - and I say that more people die from falls, from installing rooftop solar panels, than do in nuclear accidents. Power generation is inherentantly dangerous. Just because you distribute the danger around, instead of centralizing it, does not mean that you've reduced the dang…

Manpower salary weakness, not literal life/death weakness. Paying the population of Rhode Island to use exercise bikes connected to generators all day would also be a way to generate pollution-free safe power (in fact considering the obesity rate it would probably end up saving lives), yet there's still an obvious economic reason why such an idea would be completely stupid.

Sure, the economics of nuclear aren't great.

The economics of non-nuclear are terrible, though. All roads that don't include it as a major generator of electricity rely on burning carbon, in the form of natural gas.

If you think I'm wrong - would you mind explaining why natural gas deployment last two years (~20% increase, so about ~5% of global energy generation) was as much as the deployment of renewables, for the last decade? (also ~5% of global generation)

If you are right - could you give me your best guess for when you expect gas plant deployment to go net negative? 2020? 2025? 2050? 20-never? What mechanism (political, economic, etc) do you expect to drive that inflection point?

[1] https://yearbook.enerdata.net/natural-gas/gas-consumption-da...

[2] https://yearbook.enerdata.net/renewables/wind-solar-share-el...

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#63

Post by Dagonfly »

I'm pro-nuclear, but I find these articles about Germany's anti-nuclear stance extremely frustrating.

Blaming the current situation on Fukushima is historically inaccurate. Imo, there are 2 major reasons for the current stance:

1. Chernobyl: After the disaster in 1986 the anti-nuclear movement gained massive traction. The radioactive cloud spread all the way to West Germany and warnings had to be issued (mushrooms, venison, crops, ...). It was a real turning point, since everyone was made aware of the concerns. [1]

2. "Endlager"-discussion: The search for a permanent nuclear waste deposit was/is a political shitshow. The trial run at Asse (in the 70s) failed: We are currently getting all canisters out of there, after they found contaminated sludge and flooded areas. [2] Further, the decision to select Gorleben as one possible locations was mostly political. The whole process is politically loaded, expensive and devoid of any scientific reasoning. [3]

The anti-nuclear decision has been made years before Fukushima for imo valid concerns. The "latest" reactor in Germany went online in 1989, and the decision to phase-out was made in 2002. So the reactors being phased out now are all 30+ years old. Nowadays, I don't think any energy provider in Germany would be willing to invest in NEW fission plants. By the time they will be online, renewables might be way cheaper per kWh.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germa... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine [3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endlager_(Kerntechnik)

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#64

Post by close04 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #37

I absolutely hate this narrative of the demise of nuclear energy largely being politically motivated because nuclear energy is not just falling in Germany, it's diminishing virtually across the entire world (with very few exceptions). It's true that Germany has a historical anti-nuclear and green sentiment but other countries are no different. Nuclear energy may be clean, but it is also exceedingly expensive and unab…

> this narrative of the demise of nuclear energy largely being politically motivated

It's politically motivated to the extent that people are scared of nuclear and any political move to support it or finance research could be career suicide. Without any attempt to research improvements we are stuck using old technology and anyone advocating against nuclear power has good reason to keep doing so. It's a bit of a vicious cycle where the only way to break it is to hope for some unexpected breakthrough.

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#66

Post by [deleted] »

dv_dt wrote: post #14
goatinaboat wrote: post #10

Nuclear energy, to start with, is ultimately not safe Solar kills more people than nuclear per watt, so that’s the reporter’s personal agenda talking https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

The killings that nuclear may make are difficult to pin down (did that cancer come from nuclear exposure, or a chemical, or just a chance cosmic ray?) and so may be unattributed.

[deleted]

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#67

Post by lispm »

melling wrote: post #47
Barrin92 wrote: post #37

I absolutely hate this narrative of the demise of nuclear energy largely being politically motivated because nuclear energy is not just falling in Germany, it's diminishing virtually across the entire world (with very few exceptions). It's true that Germany has a historical anti-nuclear and green sentiment but other countries are no different. Nuclear energy may be clean, but it is also exceedingly expensive and unab…

It was politically motivated to shut down the plants early and rely on coal. Using the existing nuclear that you have for an additional decade or longer is much better than switching to coal. A lot can happen in a decade.

It's just that Germany did not switch to coal.

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#68

Post by lispm »

close04 wrote: post #64
Barrin92 wrote: post #37

I absolutely hate this narrative of the demise of nuclear energy largely being politically motivated because nuclear energy is not just falling in Germany, it's diminishing virtually across the entire world (with very few exceptions). It's true that Germany has a historical anti-nuclear and green sentiment but other countries are no different. Nuclear energy may be clean, but it is also exceedingly expensive and unab…

> this narrative of the demise of nuclear energy largely being politically motivated It's politically motivated to the extent that people are scared of nuclear and any political move to support it or finance research could be career suicide. Without any attempt to research improvements we are stuck using old technology and anyone advocating against nuclear power has good reason to keep doing so. It's a bit of a vicio…

Germany has invested zillions in Nuclear. Breeder technology, Thorium pebble bed reactor, storage sites...

Failed costly experiments. Nuclear is simply not cost effective in a democratic society.

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#69

Post by lispm »

m4rtink wrote: post #15
dv_dt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think France made one of the few smart moves with nuclear in the day, but today even France is closely studying tradeoffs between reinvesting in the next gen of nuclear fission plans vs renewable. In publicised studies renewable is looking like the better option.

Still, it at least so far it worked well, they avoided releasing a lot of emissions and are now in a much better position to decide what to do next.

Given that they sit on a massive number of aging reactors, extremely costly new ones, very few renewables deployed and a state-owned centralized energy production I can't see how they are in a much better position.

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#70

Post by UncleEntity »

magduf wrote: post #41
AlphaGeekZulu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...and are now in a much better position to decide what to do next." ...if you deliberately ignore the small "issue" of accumulated nuclear waste, that somehow has to be handled for the next couple of hundred years. For many people, this seems to be neglectable compared to the ugly sights of wind turbines.

So you think it's better to have massive quantities of CO2 and various pollutants (including radioactive ones) pumped into the atmosphere? How exactly is that better than a few buckets of nuclear waste?

Well, presumably, you don't have to design signage that will be understandable in 10,000 years...
Post reply on HN