Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants • Hacker News Board

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#201

Post by YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 8:38 PM UTC

bufferoverflow wrote: post #135

SimonSword91 wrote: post #7

I live in Germany and I wonder, what the consequences will be of shutting down both coal and nuclear in very short time. My guess is, we will pay for nuclear energy from France and coal energy from Poland when wind slows down. The new government tries to accelerate the construction of renewable energy but I think their plans will fail because of worker shortage and supply chain problems.

Germany's primary energy source is now coal, now way they can shut it down. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-elec... This is so stupid, what are they thinking?

Coal was the primary source for energy in Germany since the beginning of the industrial age. In the last decade we had some years were alternatives took over but since the emergence of nuclear power it was never the primary source for energy.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#202

Post by garaetjjte » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 8:39 PM UTC

Zigurd wrote: post #185

kortex wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have never had a significant disaster of any gen >=3 reactor. TMI, Fukushima, Chernobyl were all gen 2, and gen 1 is all prototypes. Anything built after 1972 has not had anywhere near this level of incidents. Also Chernobyl had severe safety flaws due to its origin as an early model breeder reactor (and my head canon is that the test that caused the disaster was in some way related to surreptitious fuel changing…

80%+ of nuclear power comes from gen 2 reactors. There are still 8 RBMK reactors in operation, all capable of failing the same way Chernobyl failed, with the same widespread contamination. IF new generation reactors can prove to be safe and not create waste and decommissioning problems, and if they can be built economically, then they are worthy of consideration. But power is fungible. If the cheapest next watt-hour…

>all capable of failing the same way Chernobyl failed

Not exactly, changes were made to RBMK design after the accident: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#203

Post by jhgb » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 8:40 PM UTC

whiteboardr wrote: post #98

praptak wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shutting down nuclear to buy coal sounds pretty countereffective. What was the justification for this decision?

Solely political for federal elections following the Fukushima incident. It’s sad, and almost infuriating, how an event that would never threaten safe nuclear plant operation in Germany set the stone rolling for “Energiewende”. Personally i think Germany is making a huge mistake and will regret this course down the road.

Germany finalized the plans for a nuclear shutdown somewhere around 2021 in a binding law in 2002 (apparently this was based on "remaining energy to be generated", which doesn't naturally allow to put a precise date on it because of annual variations of demand, but all estimates I've seen in the past basically amount to "by very early 2020s"). This was 9 years before the Fukushima disaster. So please explain to me how this was "solely political for federal elections following the Fukushima incident". They would have needed a working crystal ball for that.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#204

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #194

jacquesm wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand the strong position you take while at the same time admitting to not having read much on the subject, and then to regurgitate a bunch of debunked nonsense. This is not a good basis for a discussion.

“Citation please” “Everything I have read contradicts what you just stated.” Not sure how I could be clearer. Maybe I made a mistake by admitting my ignorance, but i would rather admit my ignorance than assume I know everything because I read 5 articles and watched a few YouTube videos.

For starters HVDC lines are being installed in many places and many are already operational, and the 'windmills kill too many birds' thing was a push by the fossil fuel industry and has been debunked.

I don't know which five articles you have read but I suggest you read a couple more and more recent ones.

As for 'citation please': that does presume that you have done your own homework, I really don't see why I should do it for you but as to those first two points of yours:

https://theconversation.com/wind-farms-are-hardly-the-bird-s...

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects

Some of those links are well over 1000 km long.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#205

Post by systemvoltage » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #186

systemvoltage wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I initially opposed the move but now it sort of makes sense. Previously I was influencing my own thoughts from the liberal media sphere but the more you dig into the reasons why UK left the EU, the more convinced I am. Just look at the vaccine fuck ups by the EU. UK has one of the best vaccination strategies in the world barring smaller nations like Israel, UAE and Qatar. And of course, China.

> UK has one of the best vaccination strategies in the world Yet one of the worst outcomes fighting the virus. "UK had one of Europe’s highest excess death rates in under 65s" in 2020.[a] In practice, what did the EU really get wrong with the vaccines, other than generating some unjustifiably smug headlines from the UK right-wing press? The UK can't even say it got a good deal on the vaccines, having paid 50% more pe…

I don't know where to even begin. I'll just leave you with this about the EU's vaccination fuck up. They were hamstrung with negotation of prices where the rest of the world including US moved on. There were several discussions on HN about this: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/03/31/why-the-eus-co...

> Yet one of the worst outcomes fighting the virus. "UK had one of Europe’s highest excess death rates in under 65s" in 2020

Very disingenious to quote pre-vaccination death rates and studies from 2020. I am specifically talking about post-vaccination phase of UK. They have 70% vaccination rate, much higher than EU which is at abysmal 54% (Data from Nov 2021). https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/24/only-54percent-of-europe-is-...

Quoting misleading data and then immediately jumping on to bashing right-wing UK media isn't helping your arugments.

Here is the WHO data on vaccination rates, UK sits at the very tippy top: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#206

Post by garaetjjte » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

Melting_Harps wrote: post #174

Ekaros wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from some localised hotspots, the actual worse case that is Chernobyl is doing amazingly from biosphere point of view. Not having humans around is actually great for biosphere. Fukushima on other hand is insignificant. Not really having much effect on anything.

> Fukushima on other hand is insignificant. Not really having much effect on anything. WTF?! Are you not aware of the constant amount of waste water being poured into the Pacific? [0] Or the absurdly high amount of Cesium being found in migrating Tuna? The amount of cancers and heart related issues is still unfolding to this day, particularly in the children from the surrounding areas. And the people who were forced…

>And the people who were forced to evacuate and then forced out of the shelters with nothing to go back

Perhaps evacuating unnecessarily large areas was the problem in the first place. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095758201...

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#207

Post by heurisko » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 8:51 PM UTC

angelzen wrote: post #170

wildmanxx wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Not a big fan of nuclear because of security and waste disposal issues, but quoting 3 accidents over a span of 60 years as a reason for a blanket ban on a whole class of energy production technologies is hyper safetyism.

I err on the side of hyper safetyism when it comes to nuclear, as when it goes wrong, it can make areas permanently uninhabitable.

Not to say that I advocate for a blanket ban.

But I am concerned that a Chernobyl could happen in China, if the same human failure occurs again, in a command economy, with people afraid to speak up regarding safety issues vs targets.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#208

Post by yakshaving_jgt » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

jhgb wrote: post #192

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not building more nuclear plants doesn't mean you'll be building more fossil fuel plants instead. Uhh… Yes it does. The data shows that. An increased reliance on renewables means a large increase in reliance on LNG.

> The data shows that. I just added a source that shows that data tells something completely different. In the past ten years, German renewable generation more than doubled (from annual ~100 TWh to ~250 TWh) while their natural gas consumption for electricity generation today is basically the same as back then (somewhere around 90 TWh annually from gas back then as well as today). Not sure how natural gas stagnation…

Because your sources show energy production in Germany.

The Germans import a significant amount (~64%) of their energy from other countries, including France (nuclear) and Poland (coal), but also countries further afield like Norway and Russia.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#209

Post by jules » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #191

jules wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's approximate the cost of that. The energy consumption of my country (the Netherlands) was 3157 PJ in 2017. This was 980 kwh per person per week. Solar batteries cost a bit more than $1000 per kwh. So at these prices this plan costs approximately $1 million per person. Solar batteries last 5-15 years. If we say that they last 20 years, then the energy storage costs are $130 per person per day per week's worth of…

How does it compare to the cost of a nuclear power plant? Storing a weeks worth of consumption on a 'per person' basis can be done for a fraction of $1m. But energy scarcity will lead to an increase in prices, which in turn will lead to a reduction in consumption. One big problem with energy is that it is still way too cheap. Another problem is that there are a lot of subsidies involved for large consumers as well as…

Generating that amount of energy using nuclear would cost approximately $13.4 per person per day (IIRC ~3x what we're currently paying for it). Note that I have not included the cost to generate the energy in the $130 storage costs, but that cost is negligible compared to the $130 anyway.

The environmental damage would probably also be much less with nuclear, versus a ton of solar + wind + batteries. But there would be disaster danger. It is unclear to me how the danger of nuclear disaster would compare to the danger of running out of stored energy in a winter month.

> Storing a weeks worth of consumption on a 'per person' basis can be done for a fraction of $1m.

How?

Since the costs of storage are currently so huge, it seems to me that if you want to go the solar + wind route, it makes sense to overprovision energy generation. That would reduce the amount of storage you need, and the extra energy during summer would be somewhat useful. Note however that you would need massive amounts of wind+solar.

For an average household to satisfy its electricity needs, it needs ~10 average size solar panels (assuming perfect storage). However, household electricity use is only 5% of our energy use. So to satisfy energy needs with solar, you need approximately 200 solar panels per household. Even if you round that down to 50 due to reduction in energy consumption and use of wind energy, it's still a lot. But the Netherlands is obviously not a very good country for solar. In countries like Australia, the numbers would look way better.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#210

Post by Zigurd » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 8:56 PM UTC

garaetjjte wrote: post #202

Zigurd wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80%+ of nuclear power comes from gen 2 reactors. There are still 8 RBMK reactors in operation, all capable of failing the same way Chernobyl failed, with the same widespread contamination. IF new generation reactors can prove to be safe and not create waste and decommissioning problems, and if they can be built economically, then they are worthy of consideration. But power is fungible. If the cheapest next watt-hour…

>all capable of failing the same way Chernobyl failed Not exactly, changes were made to RBMK design after the accident: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...

What they cannot change is the lack of a containment structure.