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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

#271

Post by arcticbull »

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...

Does the cost include full lifecycle analysis?

For instance, wind requires mining huge quantities of rare earth metals in open-air hellscapes in Mongolia, referred to as "the worst place on earth." [1] The two hundred meter tall towers and their giant blades are also built of fiberglass (an epoxy/glass mix) which cannot be recycled and are instead buried. [2]

Similarly solar panels are often made with cadmium and tellurium, and various other toxic chemicals which leech out of the panels when placed into landfills. The US for instance has no solar panel recycling mandate except in Washington State. The world already has a massive e-waste problem.

By 2050, there will be 78 million metric tons of solar panels to dispose of. [3]

Solar panels then have to be supplemented with vast quantities of lithium for temporary storage.

Solar and wind aren't "green" they're "less black."

Nuclear produces 2000 metric tons of waste per year in the US while amounting to 20% of the entire grid, 0.85TWh per year.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb...

[3] https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die...

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#272

Post by drran »

titzer wrote: post #242
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…

A typical large nuclear plant will produce 3 cubic meters of solid waste in a year. That's a little bigger than a refrigerator. A lot of solid waste can be reprocessed, though doing so requires regulatory and logistical challenges to be solved that apparently only France has figured out. Nuclear waste, comparatively, is not the problem. The risk of accidents, proliferation, and the generally higher cost of engineerin…

Do you include atomic station itself after EOL into your calculation?

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#273

Post by rsj_hn »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #93
kazinator wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Cold War takes a lot of the blame: everything from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, to the subsequent ugly arms race, to bomb testing and its environmental effects. Plus events like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Generation X kids were born into an era which felt the threat of global nuclear war, and those people are decision makers today.

Frankly, non-nuclear is austerity in disguise. "Too cheap to meter" electricity is like full employment, objectively better but a huge target politically. It's not a coincidence that US gave up on both at the same time. https://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf does justice to the full employment situation, and the same arguments apply. In the econ case it's kind of incredible we filled our minds with nonsense to conv…

I agree with you on both points of full employment and abundant energy.

And IMO the same political forces are behind both -- it's a nasty mix of elites and high income professionals who genuinely believe people need to suffer. They love austerity, and micromanagement of the population. It's the same reason we have ugly architecture, because the architects think we deserve to be surrounded by ugly, inhuman buildings.

And the econ-sadists are more than happy to punish the eco-masochists.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#274

Post by armada651 »

CyanBird wrote: post #226
armada651 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Germany closed nuclear power plants after Fukushima much of it was replaced with coal power plants.[1] So I don't think his point is moot at all, it's actually quite a reasonable argument to make here. [1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w26598

> it's actually quite a reasonable argument *to make here*. Yeah, but as you know Germany, and German discussions do not encompass the whole world, so you can certainly bring me points from specific countries, France or US could be other ones, but they also have their own idiosyncrasies But as I was saying, the core argument for Nuclear decommissioning is not to compare it to the absolute worst energy generation sche…

> Yeah, but as you know Germany, and German discussions do not encompass the whole world

I never pretended to be arguing for the entire world, the article is about closing existing nuclear power plants in Germany and my argument is limited to that.

> But as I was saying, the core argument for Nuclear decommissioning is not to compare it to the absolute worst energy generation scheme that exists, by that metric then I could mention that using PeatBog for energy generation is "not that bad an idea" compared to Coal.... Which is of course, an awful idea by itself....

But we're not simply comparing it to coal because it's the worst energy generation scheme. We're comparing it to coal because that is what replaced nuclear last time Germany decommissioned its plants.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#275

Post by fulafel »

ashtonkem wrote: post #192
fulafel wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can also use real time price mechanism to match demand with supply intra day, energy intensive loads like water/home heating and ev charging can cheaply (vs cost of batteries connected to grid) buffer many hours without issue.

An observation of Griddy during the Texas disaster shows that we should be very careful in designing a real time price mechanism that’s applied to consumers. In the worst case this can take the form of passing all the risk and cost onto consumers who cannot handle this. This is particularly pernicious for HVAC, because during outages this puts consumers in the un-enviable position of deciding between their savings an…

The disaster scenario "no matter what" power can come from regulated backup turbines and emergency (fossil) fuel reserves I think. It's a separate/saparable subproblem. Just make the normal power companies pay a lot for tapping it, so there is disincentive to purpousefully use it.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#276

Post by f7ebc20c97 »

andbberger wrote: post #261

All the nuclear threads here are the same, and they're all deeply frustrating. HN isn't exactly a bastion of liberal speech (here fucked up conservative hot takes reign supreme) - but ostensibly the populace is more technically literate than average. Yet it's the same stupid bullshit every time. It's dangerous!!11!! fukushima! chernobyl!1!! > nope look at some statistics it's very safe ok, the waste!11! scary spicy r…

Does a hypereducated liberal democracy even work in the long run, or will a morally relativist people aloof from reality argue over lifeboats and bilge pumps forever until the ship sinks and they all drown?

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#277

Post by johnchristopher »

moooo99 wrote: post #187
johnchristopher wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, what's the general population's stance on Belgian nuclear plants ?

The construction of (fairly) new nuclear power plants near the shared borders with Belgium and France is actually an argument I hear quite often. In many debates people argue about why Germany should go ahead and quit using nuclear if the neighboring countries keep building and running new plants, also posing a huge risk to Germany in the event of a catastrophic failure (actually the risk in case of a failure is prob…

I don't think Belgium is going to build new nuclear plants any time soon. The retirement schedule is pretty tight and we may choose to keep 2 reactors running for 5 or 10 years (unlikely) but the operator (Engie) is sun setting them whatever happens and has set no money for upgrading them.

They already wrote the loss of revenues in their accounting books.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#279

Post by izacus »

jhgb wrote: post #240
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…

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

This graph does not show the failure of renewables to provide sufficient power this year (it ends at 2020).

The renewable power production is down for up to 40% and french nuclear power being in maintenance mode has caused the coal consumption to rise significantly.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#280

Post by izacus »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #248
earthnail wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that only a fraction of power consumption is electric. The rest is burning fossil fuels. In order to get away from these, we have to increase electricity production significantly. And we have to build a better electricity grid. It is completely unclear how renewable energy should provide this in the short or medium term (i.e. until 2050). Without nuclear, we’ll just continue burning fossil fuels.

Renewables paired with batteries can improve grid resilience, actually. Distribution of generators means less loss in the wires travelling, batteries paired with renewables to provide overnight power and load-smoothing, these are good things. Renewables also are very predictable, so you can use a little natural gas to supplement at night while you build out batteries and more wind. Solar will take care of our day-tim…

How much batteries and renewables do you need to provide baseline power on the level of a single 1000MW nuclear plant?

And how will you construct all that sooner than constructing those plants?

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