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Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

economist.com

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Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#141

Post by stefan_ »

tjansen wrote: post #138
pydry wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Solar, wind and batteries are cheaper and money is limited. How can you even estimate the cost of batteries? Insane amounts of batteries would be needed, capable of storing all of Germany's energy needs (including transportation and residential heating) for 10 days or so. That would be at least 10 TWh, as Germany currently uses about 550 TWh per year. The global production of lithium ion batteries in 2018 was 290 G…

Do you really want to bet there will be no viable battery technology for another 50 years? It's kind of a high value research topic right now.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#143

Post by akvadrako »

Arnt wrote: post #97
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…

One of the relevant insurance... well, not companies. A company that acts for insurance agencies and others, doing actuary computations and such. Anyway, one of those was contracted to compute new insurance costs for nuclear power plants in Germany. If the state no longer limits their liability, but instead applies the same rules to nuclear power plants as it does to other industry, then the average German plants wou…

€2⁹, so 512 euro a year?

I assume you meant some large number and that's probably because you are assuming they need to cover all kinds of exaggerated costs like lawsuits from people who get cancer or keeping radiation levels below the background level in case of a leak.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#144

Post by emptyfile »

ekianjo wrote: post #39
emptyfile wrote: post #5

I can understand the logic that both natural gas and nuclear aren't green. I think its flawed but I understand it. However, if the new German government decides that nuclear is not green, but natural gas is green, then we have to seriously consider that vested natural gas interests are buried deep in German politics and have been for decades. The idea is completely perverse.

there is no such thing as green energy anyway. solar panels need dirty solar cells manufacturing to work. wind power need turbines which means metallurgy which means fossil fuels to make them.

I agree, that is why I think the logic is flawed.

Either green just means no CO2 or nothing is green.

Go ask the citizens of Serbia what they think of the new Rio Tinto lithium mine opening in their country, which is touted as helping the European green revolution and all these giga factories that are being built.

Easy to have green energy in the EU when the pollution of building batteries is in Serbia or China.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#145

Post by theshrike79 »

ekianjo wrote: post #39
emptyfile wrote: post #5

I can understand the logic that both natural gas and nuclear aren't green. I think its flawed but I understand it. However, if the new German government decides that nuclear is not green, but natural gas is green, then we have to seriously consider that vested natural gas interests are buried deep in German politics and have been for decades. The idea is completely perverse.

there is no such thing as green energy anyway. solar panels need dirty solar cells manufacturing to work. wind power need turbines which means metallurgy which means fossil fuels to make them.

"Green" doesn't mean completely pollution free. It means that the net product is positive: we get more energy out of it than we would just by burning the fuels used to make them.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#146

Post by akvadrako »

cracrecry wrote: post #137
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…

It is about geopolitics. Germany, like Japan is an occupied country since WWII. The US controls it. The US does not want Germany to have either rocket industry or nuclear industry, because that makes them capable of making nuclear bombs. Also France and UK are terrified of Germany having a strong rocket or nuclear energy, and with good reason. They invented rockets and could make them much better and economically tha…

Any evidence of this?

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#147

Post by asplake »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #111
marvinblum wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm German and I don't know what we're doing. Prices are insane right now. New electricity contracts cost 45 cents per kilowatt-hour. Heating my home (82 sqm) with electricity costs about 400 euros a month right now alone. This will obviously get better in spring, but I don't know how citizens with lower incomes handle it.

Heating a home with electricity is simply immoral. It's all the emissions of burning coal, multiplied by 3 due to generator and transmission losses. Besides, energy prices saw a steep rise in all of Europe, so it doesn't make much sense to blame the end of nuclear energy for it. Also, just a single reactor has shut down so far, 11 days ago. A single plant shutting down isn't enough to influence prices to such a degre…

> Heating a home with electricity is simply immoral.

That's trivialising something complex. If coal is the source, perhaps. It's its way out though, and there'll come a point in the easily foreseeable future where to burn fossil fuel – gas, say – will be the least moral option.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#148

Post by Arnt »

akvadrako wrote: post #143
Arnt wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the relevant insurance... well, not companies. A company that acts for insurance agencies and others, doing actuary computations and such. Anyway, one of those was contracted to compute new insurance costs for nuclear power plants in Germany. If the state no longer limits their liability, but instead applies the same rules to nuclear power plants as it does to other industry, then the average German plants wou…

€2⁹, so 512 euro a year? I assume you meant some large number and that's probably because you are assuming they need to cover all kinds of exaggerated costs like lawsuits from people who get cancer or keeping radiation levels below the background level in case of a leak.

Oh, crap. Mind thought 2e9, fingers typed 2⁹. Edited. Thanks.

IIRC the bulk is property. German power plants are located in densely populated areas with high property prices. If a plant renders a smallish area unlivable and BMW has to vacate and replace a factory there, BMW will not want to take a loss on that.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#149

Post by [deleted] »

hannob wrote: post #18
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…

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#150

Post by patrec »

hannob wrote: post #18
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…

> 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.

> 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.

Do you have a good source? I believe you are correct that the total share of fossils has decreased, but I also suspect that the OP might well be correct in that in the end a decent chunk of nuclear plant provided capacity will have to be replaced with fossil fuel plants, because Germany does not and will not have enough hydro (or storage) to compensate intermittency for other renewables. I'm also curious how legit the "biomass" share under renewables actually is, i.e. is it really net?

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