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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

#251

Post by himinlomax »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #175
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.

Nuclear is massive-grid-scale base load only in a world that does not need more base load nor massive grid-scale generation. Everything about nuclear is slow, difficult, expensive, dangerous. They are increasingly not handling climate change well. They are decade-scale projects that take a long, long time to become carbon neutral; we cannot wait that long. * Solar and wind are here to stay and they mean we need fast-…

Nuclear is dangerous and needs to be treated as such.

Flying is also dangerous and is treated as such.

Just like the aviation industry has had an excellent track record in managing the danger, so has the nuclear industry. Just look at the number of victims of nuclear in the past 30 years. One (1) dead at Fukushima.

Chernobyl killed thousands, but it's as relevant to the safety of the industry in 2021 as a 1950s Antonov is to an Airbus.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#252

Post by Karrot_Kream »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #175
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.

Nuclear is massive-grid-scale base load only in a world that does not need more base load nor massive grid-scale generation. Everything about nuclear is slow, difficult, expensive, dangerous. They are increasingly not handling climate change well. They are decade-scale projects that take a long, long time to become carbon neutral; we cannot wait that long. * Solar and wind are here to stay and they mean we need fast-…

We're not talking about building _new_ plants here. We're talking about maintaining the current fleet. Is this expensive? Yes. But what's the alternative? Burning coal and importing gas? This should simply be the cost of transitioning off fossil fuels. Once renewables are scalable and reliable, there will be no reason to build nuclear plants. Progress over perfection.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#253

Post by cesarb »

melling wrote: post #244
jhgb wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Germans have switched from nuclear to coal. No, they did not. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/p...

There have been several recent stories about the increase in coal usage this year. https://amp.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-elec... Coal is the primary source of electricity this year

> > > The Germans have switched from nuclear to coal.

> > No, they did not.

> There have been several recent stories about the increase in coal usage this year.

But was there any closure of nuclear power plants in Germany this year? If not, you cannot say that this increase was because they have switched from nuclear to coal; they must have switched from something else.

> https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-elec...

That story implies that Germany this year switched from wind to coal (due to weaker winds), not from nuclear.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#254

Post by Ericson2314 »

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…

The background issue is that Germans, with their harmful surpluses, all this talk about costs, seem to completely misunderstand economics.

----

I get that the Cold War hurt a lot in Germany. I've met my distant relatives stuck on both sides of the iron curtain, for example. That would have made issues of proliferation and whatnot extra salient.

But the fact of the matter is that the environmental problems we face now completely dwarf whatever environmental problems were being chased after then.

You have to realized that when you thought you were fighting the end-game boss, but you were actually fighting the mid-game boss which is the minion and now the big boss has shown up, everything changes.

-----

Please connect those necessary readjustments to thinking more critically about economics and whole-system things in general, to connect my two points, and we'll all be very happy.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#255

Post by sofixa »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #149
schleck8 wrote: post #59

It's worth noting that nuclear is really expensive when factoring in insurance and disposable, a lot more so than wind and solar. >The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nucle...

> 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…

Thank you for this quote, it's a great one, saving it.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#256

Post by himinlomax »

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?

Fukushima killed one (1). In the context of a massive natural disaster that killed 10000.

Three Miles Island happened years before Chernobyl and killed no one, because it wasn't a dodgy, duct-taped together soviet piece of junk.

In the last 30 years, the only nuclear power accident was Fukushima and again, caused just one victim. Fossil fuel depot fires have killed thousands more in that time.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#258

Post by rsj_hn »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #77

No way with the Green Party part of gov. They've literately started out with "Atomkraft - Nein danke" stickers in late 1970s. Mostly seen on cars, then and today.

And this is why Germany has increased its coal use - Germany hates nuclear more than coal.

When that changes, and someone is adult enough to realize that tough trade offs have to be made rather than relying on finger-wagging austerity, then Germany will migrate out of coal.

My bet is that we'll get more scolding, hand-wringing, and continued coal use well into the 2040s if not beyond.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#259

Post by melling »

cesarb wrote: post #253
melling wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been several recent stories about the increase in coal usage this year. https://amp.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-elec... Coal is the primary source of electricity this year

> > > The Germans have switched from nuclear to coal. > > No, they did not. > There have been several recent stories about the increase in coal usage this year. But was there any closure of nuclear power plants in Germany this year? If not, you cannot say that this increase was because they have switched from nuclear to coal; they must have switched from something else. > https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-…

So they switched from nuclear to wind to coal?

Coal in the primary source of electricity. If they hadn’t reduced nuclear, coal could almost be gone?

“ Nuclear power in Germany accounted for 11.63% of electricity supply in 2017[3] compared to 22.4% in 2010”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#260

Post by mistrial9 »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #96
mistrial9 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very outdated information no rush on that -- we have another 21,000 years of half-life to talk about it, right?

Longer half-life = less radioactive. By definition. A half-life of infinity would mean that the isotope is not radioactive at all.

a pinhead emits less light than the sun, too
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