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Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

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Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#201

Post by hiq »

svara wrote: post #152
izacus wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Germans have switched from nuclear to coal. Can you cut this "future generations are going to have to carry the cost" when the alternative is literally helping destroy the whole planet's ecosystems? Not to mention they spew up significantly more radioactivity in the air than nuclear powerplants. A 30x30m pool of radioactive fuel is nothing compared to what their powerplants are doing to the future of young genera…

I agree it would have been better to phase out coal before nuclear, but it's not correct to say that there was a switch from nuclear to coal. The switch was from nuclear to renewables. Coal was stable for a long time, and is now decreasing. Coal is currently scheduled to be phased out by 2038. Source: Quick Google image search for the power sources over time plots.

> Source: Quick Google image search for the power sources over time plots.

Which plot did you use exactly? Another comment written before yours seems to indicate it's not the case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28856599

> Coal was stable for a long time, and is now decreasing.

Over which time period?

The stats in the article they link indicate a switch from 21 to 27% for coal, from 52 to 44% for renewables, when comparing the first halves of 2020 and 2021. If there's a downward trend, it's less than obvious.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#202

Post by rob74 »

bananabreakfast wrote: post #136
step21 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"did not cause any harm" - for a very loose defintion of harm. Sure it could have been much worse. But enough ground and water was contaminated, and much more will be in the future when they run out of storage.

and who has actually been directly affected by this? I think it's your definition of harm that is too loose and overly inclusive. Your average oil spill does 100x more damage to the ecosystem and economy than fukushima

So Fukushima did no harm, because the 100 000 people who had to be evacuated were not harmed?

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#203

Post by wazoox »

aagd wrote: post #104

The view I share with a majority of Germans: Costs of nuclear energy are very much a burden that future generations will have to carry. A hundered thousand years of safe storage is not part of the calculation of the energy price. It is also clear now that the the companies running the plants will not pay for the deconstruction of the plants after they reached their end of life. Tax payers have to pay for this, and a…

Nuclear energy kills about zero person per annum. Coal itself kills at least 50000 Europeans every year. Even taking into account the worst case scenarios such as Chernobyl, coal (and fossil fuels generally) is several orders of magnitudes more dangerous than nuclear.

I just don't get this mindset. People prefer killing literaly millions of persons right now while there's a safer alternative. That's incredible, really.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#204

Post by Ericson2314 »

rks404 wrote: post #190
Ericson2314 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let us not submit to the vile doctrine of the nineteenth century that every enterprise must justify itself in pounds, shillings and pence of cash income … Why should we not add in every substantial city the dignity of an ancient university or a European capital … an ample theater, a concert hall, a dance hall, a gallery, cafes, and so forth. Assuredly we can afford this and so much more. Anything we can actually do…

holy hell that's a great quote

Thanks :)

It's a mission of mine to make (Post-)Keynesianism an essential part of Engineering from a holistic perspective.

The economy won't run at "full speed" left to its own devices, and new technology will have a harder time making it out of the research phase without full speed. VCs, being strictly supply-side, are not equipped to solve the problem. (Trying to do everything from the supply side is like trying to "push a string".)

And from a more personal angle, the "inventor distraught about being misunderstand by the world" is well-ingrained meme now. Better we have the science to understand what's really going on than not.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#205

Post by PaulHoule »

baq wrote: post #178
PaulHoule wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The expensive part about nuclear power is the initial construction. The cost to keep a reactor that's already been built going is low.

Time component can’t be disregarded, though. You can build, operate and decommission a wind farm or a solar plant in the time it takes to sell the first watt from a nuclear plant.

The policy in question is what Germany should do about its current fleet.

Building new reactors is another question.

There aren't going to be any LWRs started and finished outside of China.

The LWR is doomed by the same thing that stopped the construction of coal burning plants circa 1980. Even if the heat was free, the capital cost of the steam turbine, heat exchangers and other parts that accept large amounts of low quality heat is too high. (Consider that the steam generators in a PWR are much bigger than the reactor core and have to be inside the reactor vessel, be earthquake-proof, ...)

Reactors that operate at a higher temperature such as the liquid metal fast reactor, molten salt reactor and high-temperature gas cooled reactor could be coupled to something like

https://www.swri.org/supercritical-carbon-dioxide-power-syst...

which fits in the employee break room in the turbine house at a conventional nuclear power plant. So long as water is not involved you can make the heat exchangers small as well, see

https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/5167622

There are difficult challenges to building any "4th generation" nuclear reactor, but they have a chance of being economically competitive, even without subsidies.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#206

Post by jhgb »

nradov wrote: post #194
jhgb wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but wind power also tends to peak at night.

Wind speeds near the ground peak in the early afternoon. Higher altitude winds peak at night, but you need quite a large turbine to catch those. Sometimes there's no wind for days at a time. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/27/11/jcli-d...

Quoting from your link: "It is found that daily extreme wind speeds at 10 m are most likely in the early afternoon, whereas those at 200 m are most likely in between midnight and sunrise"

Ground is irrelevant; there's a reason why wind turbines are being put on top of tall towers.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#207

Post by thow-01187 »

tscherno wrote: post #30
junon wrote: post #3

I'm a US expat living in Germany, and boy is the anti-nuclear sentiment real here. There have even been fights - physical altercations - between Green Party members at rallies for having differing viewpoints about nuclear. Unfortunately, it seems those who are against are working with very outdated information and 'tropes' w.r.t. nuclear safety and whatnot. Quite unfortunate.

Nuclear was also promoted as save decades before Chernobyl and Fukushima by the lobbies. So is there a guarantee that it is safe this time around?

Controversial take, but even if we had a Fukushima-level disaster every 10 years, and just dump nuclear waste into the ocean (which sounds cavalier and hand-wavy, but we've been doing that for decades no discernible ill effect) - nuclear would still be a better option than coal for base load

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#208

Post by adrr »

eutectic wrote: post #170
Ericson2314 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let us not submit to the vile doctrine of the nineteenth century that every enterprise must justify itself in pounds, shillings and pence of cash income … Why should we not add in every substantial city the dignity of an ancient university or a European capital … an ample theater, a concert hall, a dance hall, a gallery, cafes, and so forth. Assuredly we can afford this and so much more. Anything we can actually do…

A nuclear power station is not exactly a university or an art gallery.

It does benefit society by creating a baseline energy source that is cleaner than coal or natural gas.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#209

Post by adventured »

schleck8 wrote: post #183
Ericson2314 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let us not submit to the vile doctrine of the nineteenth century that every enterprise must justify itself in pounds, shillings and pence of cash income … Why should we not add in every substantial city the dignity of an ancient university or a European capital … an ample theater, a concert hall, a dance hall, a gallery, cafes, and so forth. Assuredly we can afford this and so much more. Anything we can actually do…

Are you saying we should ignore the economic aspect of everything?

> Let us not submit to the vile doctrine of the nineteenth century that every enterprise must justify itself in pounds

The key word in that text above is "every" - as part of the whole statement it indicates they're suggesting there should be some exceptions, not that the economic aspect of everything should be ignored.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#210

Post by Mikeb85 »

Gwypaas wrote: post #90
thewarrior wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost is irrelevant if you can’t store the energy generated. Nuclear is predictable and carbon free. Look at France.

Solar + 4 hours of storage clocking in at $40/MWh in ideal conditions. Substitute for windpower and some worse conditions and nuclear energy still look awful from a cost perspective. https://www.energy-storage.news/developer-8minute-says-more-...

The problem is storing enough renewable energy for baseline power for a whole country.

Things that work at a small scale don't necessarily work at massive scale.

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