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

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#251

Post by neoromantique » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 12:02 AM UTC

pydry wrote: post #217

inter_netuser wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not provide non-dubious statistics then? Looking forward to you providing us with hard numbers.

~30,000 people died as a result of Chernobyl. Can you find 20 people who have died installing solar panels? I found about 7 examples on google globally (3 in the US). The rest of the pages were the dubious statistics calculating "deaths per TWh" that both downplay cancer deaths from nuclear power and extrapolate tens of thousands of falling-off-rooftop-deaths if we generated as much electricity from our residential r…

While Chernobyl was a disaster , “ ~30,000 people died as a result of Chernobyl.” is just ridiculous.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#252

Post by Jensson » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 12:10 AM UTC

pydry wrote: post #217

inter_netuser wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not provide non-dubious statistics then? Looking forward to you providing us with hard numbers.

~30,000 people died as a result of Chernobyl. Can you find 20 people who have died installing solar panels? I found about 7 examples on google globally (3 in the US). The rest of the pages were the dubious statistics calculating "deaths per TWh" that both downplay cancer deaths from nuclear power and extrapolate tens of thousands of falling-off-rooftop-deaths if we generated as much electricity from our residential r…

> ~30,000 people died as a result of Chernobyl.

According to what number? This WHO article says it is estimated to be about 4000 deaths:

https://www.who.int/news/item/05-09-2005-chernobyl-the-true-...

There were many much higher estimates made in 1986 when the disaster happened, but they turned out to be wrong. Apparently small amounts of radiation spread out over many people doesn't increase cancer rates. There were very noticeable increases in cancer near the disaster area, but most of those cancer patients survived.

> A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100 scientists has concluded.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#253

Post by Jensson » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 12:19 AM 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…

> Or the absurdly high amount of Cesium being found in migrating Tuna?

10 times higher levels than normal of a single radioactive element is still not dangerous, especially since this is temporary. The main dangers with eating tuna still comes from their high mercury content, which is mainly due to coal power plants.

> The levels of radioactive cesium were 10 times higher than the amount measured in tuna off the California coast in previous years. But even so, that's still far below safe-to-eat limits set by the U.S. and Japanese governments.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#254

Post by dijit » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 12:20 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #214

dijit wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the citations and I will read them. > I really don't see why I should do it for you Because the burden of proof rests with the person making the claim.

Only if the claim is an outrageous one, which it really isn't in this case.

To you.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#255

Post by belorn » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 12:29 AM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #230

belorn wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy subsidies in the EU says the opposit: https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/default/files/annex_to_the... Countries that need a lot of reserve energy is paying a lot of subsidies to fossil fuels. Year in, year out. First you need to pay them in order to keep the plants on standby when renewables are plenty, and then you need to pay them again when demand exceeds the productions of renewables. The outcome is very l…

Your document's graph shows that France, and a bunch of other countries with nuclear, are subsidizing fossil fuels more than Germany. That seems to be proving the oppposite of your point. It's also interesting that France has generic "electricity" subsidies that are bigger than their "nuclear" subsidies and yet 70% of their electricity is nuclear.

The generic "electricity" subsidies in France seems similar to other countries, so my read is that they are things like transmission lines and other costs that is independent of the technology that generated the power.

Could you explain the logic behind that idea that France subsidizes to fossil fuel is proof that nuclear is expensive? To me it is proof that the fossil fuel industry will extract its cut as long as the grid is dependent on it.

Also, a technical details. In actually billions, France is not subsidizing fossil fuels more than Germany. France total subsidize is about half of Germany, so the actually money that goes to fossil fuels are quite much smaller as a result.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#256

Post by dane-pgp » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 12:30 AM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #205

dane-pgp wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 unde…

Sorry if you think my figures are out of date. I'm happy to consider the current totals instead. According to Worldometer[0], for example, the UK is slightly worse in terms of "Deaths / 1M pop" than Greece and Spain, which is the median EU country for that statistic.

So it's not at all clear that the UK would have been in a worse position if it had been able to take advantage of the EU's lower vaccine price, and in any case, being an EU member wouldn't have prevented the UK from securing its own vaccine supply, as Hungary did.

[0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#257

Post by midasuni » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 12:32 AM UTC

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #249

midasuni wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world uses less energy than arrives from solar, so clearly it could be, if you had enough generation and storage. It’s not a great line, what is needed is how much generation and how much storage is needed.

> if you had enough generation and storage. If.

Goalpost moving

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#258

Post by entropy_ » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 7:39 AM UTC

jules wrote: post #179

jacquesm wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Continent sized landmasses can survive on wind and solar assuming HVDC interconnects. Some storage would be nice to have, preferably more than a weeks' worth.

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…

Where did you get 1,000$/KWH of storage? Even at small scales (household-sized batteries, ~10~15KWH) prices are currently around 300$/KWH for lithium batteries including shipping in a 3rd world country (I know, because I live in a country where there's no 24/7 grid power and I moved my house to solar+batteries 2 years ago).

I'm pretty sure at the kinds of scale you'd need for a country price per KWH would be significantly less.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#259

Post by thg » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 8:10 AM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #226

thg wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian gas makes up only 1/3rd of Germany's total amount of imported gas and only because it's cheap. If the Russians really were to turn off the valve, the amount could be made up for with other sources. By far not instantly, but nobody would freeze to death, either. Germany's alleged dependence on Russian gas is mostly a fairytale of US propaganda.

I'm open to the idea that this is overstated, but would love to see the numbers. Is it 1/3rd now or 10 years from now? Does the alternative supply and import infrastructure have the capacity to provide 30% more on short notice? Alternatively, how long and how well can Germany operate with only 60% imports.

It's been around the 35% mark for at least a decade. We also import from Norway (~30%) and the Netherlands (~20%), along with about 6-8% from domestic sources and some imports from the United Kingdom.

The middle east is another potential supplier and Italy, for example, get their gas from Africa. Germany also has the biggest gas storage capacity in Europe and the gas tanks are usually filled quite well before winter (>95%). Not this year though, because the MBAs took a gamble on Nord Stream 2 going operational and lost the wager, resulting in soaring gas prices all across Europe.

You also need to keep in mind that natural gas is not solely used for heating homes, but also industrial processes and generating electricity, among others, which could be reduced or stopped if it really came down to it.

In short: Russia turning off the valves would be more of an inconvenience than the life-threatening situation it is often claimed to be. But personally I don't see that happening, as the Russians have been a very reliable supplier for decades.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#260

Post by dsq » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 9:08 AM UTC

There may be an additional, geopolitical element to Germany buying France's nuclear energy. This is an implicit subsidy of the EU's only nuclear weapons state, post Brexit. To make sure the EU (not the same as NATO) continues to have a nuclear deterrent of its own, France must be recompensed.