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

Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

euractiv.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 399 posts

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#361

Post by himinlomax »

freemint wrote: post #318
himinlomax wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

because 0.2 million people were displaced.

... unnecessarily, because the government freaked out.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#362

Post by red_trumpet »

Cybiote wrote: post #269
red_trumpet wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "safer"? Less accidents compared to eg coal plants? No exploding coal plant will render a whole region unlivable for >30 years. Both happened at Tschernobyl and Fukushima.

> No exploding coal plant will render a whole region unlivable for >30 years Unlivable for humans. The exclusion zone around Chernobyl became a de facto wild-life sanctuary. To the extent that some environmentalists now argue benefits of officially maintaining it as one indefinitely. Human supporting activities such as farming, mining and habitat expansion often come at a serious cost to local ecosystems. Nature ends…

I mean, the radioactive material in tobacco smoke is already included in the carcinogenic nature of smoking, right? So knowing about radioactive smoke might enable us to explain the dangers more precisely, but it doesn't change risks, which were previously known.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#363

Post by inter_netuser »

izacus wrote: post #105
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 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…

There is no "waste".

Waste is just partially burned fuel. There is only ONE reason why it exists.

We made a political choice that storing partially burned fuel instead of reprocessing is safer than allow people have technology that can also create nuclear weapons.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#364

Post by baq »

mistrial9 wrote: post #348
baq wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the elephant in the room: we don’t have 40 years. We need those reactors today, at most in 5 or so years. Afterwards, they are too late. I’ve yet to see a reactor selling power to the grid 5 years after construction approval.

> We need those reactors today conservation and efficiency are huge opportunities being squandered right now. "We need McDonalds right now" is almost similar -- superficial and demanding. Spend your own money on nukes then, tell everyone about how great they are

i'm not pro-nuclear, i'm not anti-nuclear either. the current large scale designs are completely impractical and pointless, unless you also want to build nuclear weapons.

there are maintenance-less designs which generate power for 30 years perhaps, after which they can be dug out of their pits and shipped to the factory for refueling/reprocessing - or glassed and buried. smaller, closer to power recipients, 100% passively cooled in case of scram, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S. i'm afraid that ship has sailed, though, and the coal/natgas/large scale battery storage have their own non-trivial challenges.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#365

Post by KennyBlanken »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #252
KennyBlanken wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But what's the alternative? Burning coal and importing gas?

Energy storage. See my last paragraph.

It's where a considerable amount of research and capital investment has been going and there are already numerous systems in use. Tesla's grid-scale batteries, pumped hydro around the world in numerous locations including the US, UK, Australia, and Europe.

Iron chemistry liquid batteries are in private commercial and grid use right now, likely to see widespread adoption in the coming years. It's cheap to manufacture, nontoxic, easily serviced, easily scaled.

Also, you can phone up your local solar installer today and get a battery storage system for your house or business. Some require a grid, others have transfer switches and will happily run off-grid. This has been the case for a number of years now.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#366

Post by Tade0 »

cbmuser wrote: post #121
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...

It’s worth noting that you are confusing system costs and levelized costs of electricity. Cheap wind and solar electricity is absolutely useless if it cannot be produced on demand. Nuclear produces electricity 24/7, independent of weather with no backup required. The kWh costs 30 cents in Germany, but 15 cents in France.

> Nuclear produces electricity 24/7, independent of weather with no backup required.

Actually, no. Heatwaves can and did disable thermal plants in the past:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-electricity-heatwa...

This is an problem that will only be intensified by climate change.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#367

Post by littlestymaar »

jhgb wrote: post #297
izacus wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Batteries are a bit of a red herring. The combination of pumped storage plants, overgeneration, and demand response already has you covered for at least two decades even in Germany. The minimal cost solution calculated for Germany assumes 1.6 GWh of storage for your 1000 MW nuclear equivalent for a 60% RE penetration scenario, only some of which needs to be batteries (Germany is currently at ~45% or so, many other co…

> (= by not consuming all the power you produce).

This is a bit of a nitpick, but this is a physical impossibility. On a AC electric network, if the power input is higher than the power output, the frequency of the current goes up quite quickly, until the grid collapses (because there are security to avoid frequency deviation). You cannot “not consume all the power you produce”, all you can do is not producing as much as you could.

Btw, I'm interested by the sources of your “1.6 GWh of storage for your 1000 MW nuclear” because it sounds really low to me. I did a simulation[1] a while ago based on French data, for a 100% RE scenario and my calculation arrived at around 250GWh per GW of installed capacity. For sure it's not the same country, and a 60% vs 100% RE is a huge step, but the differences between those two results is a lot more than what I would expect.

A mistake I've frequently seen with people discussing wind power storage, is taking the average capacity factor and calling it a day. The storage need for wind-based power generation is enormous because (at least in France, but given the geography of Germany I'd expect it to be even worse there) you can have severe wind deficit which can last for weeks!!

[1]: https://bourrasque.info/images/20180116-moulins-%C3%A0-vent/...

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#368

Post by andbberger »

beeboop wrote: post #355
ilyich wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could upvote your comment a hundred times. I am astonished to see such technically literate populace just repeating mainstream bullshit propaganda instead of having their own thoughts. And it's not only regarding the nuclear but also about many other topics, especially politically charged.

HN is surprisingly conservative sometimes. I see plenty of anti vaxxer takes, subtle and less than subtle transphobia, and general empathy lacking libertarian attitudes

not that surprising imo

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#369

Post by tim333 »

andbberger wrote: post #346
tim333 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've had nuclear power for 70 years and it hasn't exactly stopped CO2 emissions or made electricity too cheap to meter, and is much the same deal as it was 20 years ago. Solar etc. on the other hand is growing rapidly and exponentially.

what are you talking about the nuclear power plants of the world have prevented gigatons of CO2 emissions and could have gone a lot further if the decision makers weren't a bunch of nincompoops who share a bed with the oil lobby.

Check out global co2 emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

Up from 5 bn tons a year when nuclear power started around 1950 to 35 bn tons now. I think the Elon Musk type strategies have more promise. Not to say we shouldn't have nuclear but it still has the same problems it always had - slow to build, expensive, unpopular.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#370

Post by raxxorrax »

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 only advantage is the reduced CO2 emission, economically nuclear energy isn't viable. Sure, safety regulations play a huge part here, but they aren't optional.

Every form of energy production has disadvantages, but I cannot really say that ending nuclear was a mistake if it isn't just exchanged for coal and I don't believe this is the case. Maybe we could have opted to let remaining plants run for longer, but Germany actually never had that many of them anyway.

Uranium isn't available anywhere and some say it may deplete at some point. I think this problem is not in focus because nuclear is still a small part of overall energy production. But it could very well be a problem, especially if countries increase nuclear.

edit: A bit disappointed in Theo Sommer here. I think he got swept up by wrong information about costs and benefits here. Otherwise a great writer.

edit 2: They just argue to keep plants running, that might be a sensible decision, depends on the numbers.

Post reply on HN