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

Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 281 posts

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#61

Post by dr_dshiv »

tokai wrote: post #36
hannob wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's absolutely insane they want to shut down Nuclear and replace it with fossil fueled plants. That's not what's happening... Nuclear has been mostly replaced with renewables, while fossil fuel generation has been in slow decline as well. You may disagree with that policy, but please get your facts right.

Please get your facts right. Coal is rising in Germany. https://www.dw.com/en/coal-and-fossil-fuel-share-of-german-e...

Nice source. What I dont understand is: How did nuclear power grow so much last year—and how was there so little growth in renewables?

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#62

Post by pydry »

s_dev wrote: post #4

This is something many people in the EU simply don't get -- I don't get it. Germans have a basically a positive stereotype of being a scientific nation and all around clever lads -- this has enormous soft power and gives leverage to things like "Made in Germany" as a brand. This anti-nuclear stance in Germany is absolutely caustic to that projected image. It's absolutely insane they want to shut down Nuclear and repl…

I don't get the positivity surrounding nuclear power and the claim that antipathy is akin to antivax idiocy.

* It's eye wateringly expensive both to build and to decommission. Solar, wind and batteries are cheaper. Hornsea 2 produces the same power as a nuclear plant at half the price and with surprisingly low intermittency.

* Even if it were the same price, nuclear takes decades to build rather than years.

* Despite constant claims of its safety you wont find an insurance company in the world that will insure one without 99% of the cleanup cost being borne by taxpayer. Nuclear plants simply dont get built without taxpayer insurance and the nuclear industry refuses to take that risk themselves.

* If current history is anything to go by the risk of disaster is about 1 in 4000 per reactor year and the cleanup cost in Japan is around the $600-800 billion mark.

* It is possible to supplant it with green energy and Germany has done exactly that, which is why emissions have gone down.

* The idea that spending more money on a more expensive and slower to build form of green energy will help speed up the green transition is dubious at best.

Why is it so popular in spite of this? It helps offset some of the costs of having a nuclear arsenal (or puts you on the road to having one). This is a large part of why the US, China, UK and France are happy to pay up and take the risks while Germany and Japan threw in the towel.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#63

Post by IAmEveryone »

emptyfile wrote: post #16
heckerhut wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. The numbers are such that Germany cannot go back on this. We are committed to the non nuclear path now. And that’s okay. We’re going to make up the lost technology leadership in nuclear with competency in renewables. It’s fine and not the end of world. I wouldn’t have done it the way Merkel did, I would’ve switched off coal first. But I understand why that wasn’t an option at the time. It’s what it is.

> But I understand why that wasn’t an option at the time. explain

The slower phaseout of coal is about employment and, to a lesser degree, regional "identity" issues far more than energy.

The coal industry was at some point the country's largest. It's also older than all other in the industrial sector, since coal was the raw material fueling the industrial revolution.

As such, it became the raison d'etre for whole regions. The Ruhr area in west Germany grew from Iowa-level population density to New York State levels on coal. Unions, as a concept, got started in the coal mines. I recently saw a bunch of news broadcasts from the late 80s/early 90s and among 10 of them, eight or so featured labor issues in the sector. Until reunification, it was the most salient issue in politics.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#64

Post by hn_throwaway_69 »

dagothur wrote: post #52
hn_throwaway_69 wrote: post #17

>An mp from the Social Democratic Party (spd), which leads the governing coalition, compared nuclear supporters (ludicrously) to anti-vaxxers. Edit: Oops, misread it.

I think you are confused? The quote is about nuclear supporters being ludicrously compared to anti-vaxxers. And from your comment it seems that you agree that nuclear power is safe.

Yes, I misread it. My bad.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#65

Post by selfhoster11 »

stewbrew wrote: post #34
emptyfile wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I understand why that wasn’t an option at the time. explain

Wind and solar are cheaper than nuclear. There is no solution yet to the final deposition of nuclear waste.

There may be a reduced need for final deposition, if the successive generations of reactors are good enough at recycling the fuel used by the earlier generations. I'm not sure what the limit for that is, but it might be possible to cut down on waste by a huge amount.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#66

Post by martin_a »

s_dev wrote: post #4

This is something many people in the EU simply don't get -- I don't get it. Germans have a basically a positive stereotype of being a scientific nation and all around clever lads -- this has enormous soft power and gives leverage to things like "Made in Germany" as a brand. This anti-nuclear stance in Germany is absolutely caustic to that projected image. It's absolutely insane they want to shut down Nuclear and repl…

The problem with nuclear energy in Germany is, that "the big four" (energy companies) have filled their pockets with sweet, sweet nuclear-power-money and have externalized all the other costs since the beginning.

Insuring a nuclear power plant would cost 72 billion Euro/year [0] which gives a hint about how costly (and impactful) nuclear energy really is.

Also there's not really a lot of Uranium on earth. Take [1] for example and this impressive quote: "Given these projections, the uranium resource base [...] is more than adequate to meet low and high case uranium demand through 2040 and beyond. Meeting high case demand requirements through 2040 would consume about 28% of the total 2019 identified resource base"

So, 2040 is not that far, and if we build more nuclear power plants we get into that "high demand" area where we'll use 28% of all found Uranium by 2040.

Ok, maybe we find more, but maybe we won't. Water, sunlight and wind on the other hand... Not sure if we can run out of those easily.

Renewable energies are the one and only way to go. What's missing is smart(er) grids and sustainable, efficient and powerful solutions to save power once we create more than we use.

Why are those missing? Because nobody (as in the "the big four") needed those, when you could just burn more coal or build another "money printer" aka nuclear power plant.

So, nuclear energy in Germany is also always a long story of corruption and lobbyism par excellence.

[0] https://www.manager-magazin.de/finanzen/versicherungen/a-761... [1] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/worlds-uranium...

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#67

Post by Mystlix »

fock wrote: post #20
eckesicle wrote: post #9

In my opinion Europe's decommissioning of nuclear plants, particularly in Germany, is the greatest geopolitical blunder in recent history. The EU is now completely dependent on Russian goodwill to power their infrastructure for the next few decades, and have given up all leverage they had to push back on Russian power plays. At the very least they should've kept the plants operational and operating at minimum capacit…

Could you tell me, where we get our oil from? And how we heat our homes with nuclear? We never had any leverage except for the mighty dollar (and nukes and the fact that socialism doesn't need to kill before) and the US is working steady on removing that lever.

Why do you need oil if you have electicity for dirt cheap? Expand the power lines and push for electic motors everywhere. Also I'm pretty sure running current through a big transistor dissipates plenty of heat, I mean, you know about electric stoves right?

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#68

Post by hannob »

tokai wrote: post #36
hannob wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's absolutely insane they want to shut down Nuclear and replace it with fossil fueled plants. That's not what's happening... Nuclear has been mostly replaced with renewables, while fossil fuel generation has been in slow decline as well. You may disagree with that policy, but please get your facts right.

Please get your facts right. Coal is rising in Germany. https://www.dw.com/en/coal-and-fossil-fuel-share-of-german-e...

This is a short-term development over a couple of months. You will always have ups and downs of all sources of energy and if you look into a short amount of time you can find any energy source growing or declining to support your argument. But the relevant question is what development is happening in the long run.

The third graph here gives you a good idea of the longterm developments of electricity generation in Germany: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#69

Post by Zardoz84 »

rizkeyz wrote: post #22
benjaminsuch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a german, can't agree more. From what I get talking to people is, that they have an irrational fear of a nuclear holocaust and nuclear waste.

We live at the dawn of cyberterrorism, I'm glad we are stepping out of nuclear now.

And why you need any electric central connected to internet ?

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#70

Post by Ygg2 »

stewbrew wrote: post #34
emptyfile wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I understand why that wasn’t an option at the time. explain

Wind and solar are cheaper than nuclear. There is no solution yet to the final deposition of nuclear waste.

Yeah, you just build peaker plants to help renewables. What are peaker plants? Fossil fuels (natural gas)
Post reply on HN