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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

#301

Post by veddox »

newman555 wrote: post #185

not again. I can’t go through 641st “nuclear vs solar/wind” thread on HN about :) Isn’t this an objective data driven problem and we can decide what’s better for short / medium / long term?

> Isn’t this an objective data driven problem and we can decide what’s better for short / medium / long term?

No, such questions never are. Even if you could remove the prevailing strong emotional responses from the debate (humans aren‘t always rational), you would still find that at heart, the debate is not about technology but about values. What targets are we actually aiming for, and why? If you can‘t agree on what the problem is, you aren‘t going to find a common solution. And worse: often such issues pose multiple problems, the solutions for some of which may actually make the others worse. So how do you deal with these trade-offs? What do you prioritize?

Nuclear power is a hard problem not because we don‘t know the solutions, but because we can‘t agree on which problems are the most urgent. And again, that’s not a question about technology, but about values.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#302

Post by xg15 »

ars wrote: post #164
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 hundered thousand years of safe storage is not part of the calculation of the energy price. It's completely unnecessary to do that. So many people have this misconception. If you combine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor you burn up everything, leaving very little waste.

From your very own linked Wikipedia page:

> In 2010 the International Panel on Fissile Materials said "After six decades and the expenditure of the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars, the promise of breeder reactors remains largely unfulfilled and efforts to commercialize them have been steadily cut back in most countries".

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#303

Post by freemint »

ars wrote: post #164
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 hundered thousand years of safe storage is not part of the calculation of the energy price. It's completely unnecessary to do that. So many people have this misconception. If you combine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor you burn up everything, leaving very little waste.

But radiated concrete from the reactor housing doesn't burn that well.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#304

Post by jhgb »

gdavisson wrote: post #300
jhgb wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, if they hadn't reduced nuclear production, the relative changes between coal and renewables would have exactly been the same, only coal would have had the same uptick from a lower 2020 value. "The increase in coal usage" would have been exactly the same regardless of whether they shut down some nuclear power plants or not. That should be obvious to you. Since this inter-annual change would have happened regardles…

Why would that be the case? Shutting down nuclear plants doesn't increase the production capacity from renewables. For a given renewable production capacity, there's a fixed amount that has to be made up from non-renewable sources; since coal is pretty clearly the worst of those, you use things other than coal -- anything other than coal -- first, and kill off coal as fast as possible. If you have a way to increase t…

Yes, the situation is that whatever you don't source from renewables, you have to source from something else. Assuming that in both alternative scenarios (some nuclear plants shut down vs. all existing plants kept in operation), the nuclear generation levels are approximately constant, this means that any decrease from renewables has to be compensated by an equal increase from non-nuclear sources (since the nuclear contribution is constant from year to year in both scenarios, assuming no Chernobyl/Fukushima like situation where a nuclear source suddenly goes away permanently).

For sake of a simple example, let's say you have nuclear, renewable, and coal power plants, and you have 600 TWh of electricity consumption in a year and you have 200 TWh of nuclear power contribution and 200 TWh of renewable power contribution. You then need to burn coal worth 200 TWh to compensate for the rest. The next year the nuclear power contribution is the same at 200 TWh, since it's weather-independent, but weather variations allow you to generate only 150 TWh of renewable electricity. You now need to burn 250 TWh worth of coal; 50 TWh worth of coal more than the last year.

Let's assume that you shut down 100 TWh/y worth of nuclear plants a few years ago. Your energy needs today are the same. You have 600 TWh of electricity consumption in a year and you have only 100 TWh of nuclear power contribution in this scenario, and 200 TWh of renewable power contribution. You then need to burn coal worth 300 TWh to compensate for the rest. The next year the nuclear power contribution is the same at the decreased level of 100 TWh, since it's weather-independent, but weather variations allow you to generate only 150 TWh of renewable electricity. You now need to burn 350 TWh worth of coal; 50 TWh worth of coal more than the last year.

See how in both scenarios you need 50 TWh worth of coal more in the latter year because of weather variability? The argument was that the nuclear shutdowns changed the coal uptick. The shutdowns clearly didn't cause the uptick, or even affect its size, unless they happened inter-annually (which to my knowledge they didn't).

As for increasing RE contribution, that is happening in Germany regardless. In fact shutting down the most expensive-to-run old nuclear plants might liberate some money for extra renewables expansion, although I'd have to check on the exact numbers.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#305

Post by jhgb »

talolard wrote: post #299
jhgb wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, if they hadn't reduced nuclear production, the relative changes between coal and renewables would have exactly been the same, only coal would have had the same uptick from a lower 2020 value. "The increase in coal usage" would have been exactly the same regardless of whether they shut down some nuclear power plants or not. That should be obvious to you. Since this inter-annual change would have happened regardles…

Could you elaborate, im interested in understanding your perspective but couldn’t follow it. In my mind , uptick in coal usage was directly caused by a decrease in wind power production. I understand that if Germany had chosen nuclear over wind, that decline would not happen and thus the usage of coal would not increase. Is that not true ?

> I understand that if Germany had chosen nuclear over wind, that decline would not happen

This doesn't make sense unless nuclear power plants blow additional wind. See my other comment for a simple example. Keeping nuclear plants alive vs. not keeping them alive doesn't change the picture of inter-annual generation changes unless those shutdowns happened exactly between those two years.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#306

Post by ashtonkem »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #197
ashtonkem wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re being glib, but the issue is that you can’t guarantee the alignment of sun and wind to match demand. Sometimes the wind blows at night, yes, but sometimes it does not. On a pure renewable grid, no wind at night means rolling brownouts or blackouts. This is particularly problematic during the summer when people want to run AC in order to sleep, and will also be an issue when people move to electric heat…

> we’re not there yet. The UK power grid has pumped hydro storage for decades to handle a huge tick in power demand every time the BBC goes to commercial break during a very popular program, as everyone simultaneously goes to make a cup of tea with their several-kilowatt electric kettle. > Right now the choice is between a nuclear power plant during these moments, or a natural gas one. False dilemma. You left out ene…

> The UK power grid has pumped hydro storage for decades

Pumped hydro is a pretty good choice for grid level storage today, but it has some pretty severe terrain limitations. There’s lots of places that will never use it because the terrain won’t allow it.

Of course there’s the issue of the actual numbers. Pumped hydro can store a ton of power in terms of watt hours, but the peak output in watts is very low. UK pumped hydro can produce 2.8GW of power combined. Pretty impressive until you realize that that’s less than some single nuclear plants. Blayais produces 3.6GW, Cattenom produces 5.2GW, etc. etc. A typical modern reactor has a nameplate capacity of 1.3GW or higher; literally adding a single reactor to an existing power plant is equivalent to half of the UK’s pumped hydro capacity.

The big advantage of pumped hydro is that you can combine power production with water storage, which is good! But it is not capable of producing enough power to enable a 100% renewable grid, and probably never will.

> False dilemma. You left out energy storage, of which there are multiple proven technologies.

Huh? I “left out” energy storage? I literally said “grid level storage” in the full sentence, you just cut it out when you quoted me.

To reiterate: I didn’t “leave out” energy storage. I do not believe that we have enough energy storage yet to make fossil fuel plants unnecessary, especially as we push to electrify everything (transit, industry, etc.). One day we will be there, but currently we’re woefully short. It’s my assertion that nuclear power is a good way to bridge the gap while we keep building storage, because as of today we’re literally burning fossil fuels when renewables fall short of demand for whatever reason.

> Iron chemistry batteries are looking like the biggest win. Non-toxic, cheap, simple, easily scaled, easy to build and maintain, and the materials needed are bountiful...and there are working production systems right now.

Sounds great, how many gigawatt hours are installed, or are being installed now, and how much can/will they be able to produce?

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#307

Post by Ericson2314 »

sofixa wrote: post #255
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…

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

Thank you! Very glad to spread the word, as the I said in the other reply.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#308

Post by freemint »

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-…

Just a nitpick:

> Everything about nuclear is slow, difficult, expensive, dangerous.

While this might not be true for the latest generation of reactors in development (of which ofcourse no failures are know because they don't exist) it applies well to the current nuclear infrastructure Germany has.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#309

Post by freemint »

jollybean wrote: post #179
retrac wrote: post #125

One generally underappreciated aspect to nuclear energy opposition is the intrinsic link to nuclear weapons. Some of it is scientifically illiterate nonsense (a lot of people seem to think power reactors can have a nuclear explosion). And some of it is just historical association. But some of it is a lot harder to dismiss. A world without nuclear reactors or enrichment facilities is a world without nuclear weapons. A…

Nuclear Enrichment is kind of hard actually. Nobody's going to get away with it without others knowing. The risk if Nuclear Energy proliferation is the waste being used in a dirty bomb. Nuclear waste spread out in Manhtatten might not kill people, but it could make the city, or parts of it unlivable for a long time. At minimum a big disaster. So in order for the Nuclear future to work, we'd need to set standards that…

Can we be civil enough under capitalism? Under the soviet union we couldn't. What does Fukushima tell us about that question?

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#310

Post by Tostino »

arcticbull wrote: post #271
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 tel…

That first link was quite a read. Thanks for that.
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