Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#151

Post by fsflover » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 12:03 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #62

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…

> It's eye wateringly expensive both to build and to decommission.

If markets valued the low-CO2 nature of nuclear, they’d be doing better, https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html

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

We are talking about closing existing plants. Also, stopping coal in 2038 is no problem, right?

> 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.

Probably because of the stupid government regulations? See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#/media/File:Deat....

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#152

Post by captainmuon » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 12:03 PM UTC

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…

Germans are sceptical especially because they view themselves as a nation of thinkers and scientists. They (rightfully) pride themselves on having developed the state of renewables not just for themselves but for everybody - wind, and especially solar. It's just a pity they lost the lead and trashed their solar industry (in my opionion, because of neoliberal ideology they failed to implement protectionist policies and stopped supporting the domestic industry too suddenly).

Germany didn't decide to replace nuclear with fossil. As a fairly wealthy nation, they decided to replace nuclear with renewables and accepting higher energy prices and the need to use less energy. Because they decided the price (it is not a risk, but a certain price) of having nuclear waste is too high. When discussing the nuclear vs renewable vs fossil triangle, we tend to forget that there is a fourth screw to adjust: demand for energy.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#153

Post by RealityVoid » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 12:03 PM UTC

selfhoster11 wrote: post #83

rizkeyz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not impossible to purpose-build hardened, incompatible, read only systems that can submit telemetry to the outside world while only providing actual control on-site (or via restricted channels). Stuxnet wouldn't have happened (or would have been a very rare event) if they built their system this way.

Stuxnet happened despite being air gaped. Regardless, I am confident you can place physical safeguards that could not lead to nuclear emissions even in the event of loss of control over the computer systems.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#154

Post by ivan_gammel » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 12:04 PM UTC

theshrike79 wrote: post #126

ivan_gammel wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the victims of that catastrophe.

The "victims" were victims of Soviet policy, not of nuclear energy. A majority of the deaths due to fallout would've been prevented if The Party would've admitted they messed up and told everyone to eat canned food for a few weeks. Iodine-131 has a half-life of 8 days. Maybe even distributed more iodine pills for the population. But nope, The Party could do no wrong and was always right, so they did nothing and said…

This is a typical Western oversimplification of communist regimes. If there is a Party, it is to blame, of course. But you are wrong. The casualties of such incidents are coming not just from the poor immediate responses, but also from long term environmental, social and economic effects. Even if in Fukushima disaster people did not die from acute radiation syndrome, there are still several thousands of deaths attributed to the disaster. Same with Chernobyl, Mayak etc.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#155

Post by marmarama » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 12:04 PM UTC

Nuclear energy is expensive and unnecessary.

A mix of renewables, coupled with battery and hydrogen-from-seawater energy storage technologies, will be cheaper, less capital-intensive, easier to maintain, and far easier to sell politically. It also has no nuclear proliferation concerns.

There was concern that battery and hydrogen storage technologies would not be sufficient, or would not work practically, but as pilot projects are coming online, it's becoming clear that the engineering challenges involved are fairly straightforward.

Fission power has its uses - the energy density is unrivalled, so will continue to have military and spaceflight applications - but its moment as a major component of the energy mix is coming to a close. Current new reactor builds in some western countries - Hinkley Point C in the UK, for example - are insurance policies that may well never end up on the grid, or may eventually operate as the only reactor in that country's energy mix. The complete lack of urgency with these new builds demonstrates the 'wait-and-see' approach.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#156

Post by fsflover » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 12:05 PM UTC

locallost wrote: post #121

fsflover wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) coal use went way down since they decided to switch off the nuclear plants. people assume it was replaced by coal, but this is false How is this relevant? There is still a lot of coal used and it could be much less if the nuclear was in use. > 3) phase out of coal was started last year and is on schedule to last until 2038 It's definitely too late for the climate.

It's relevant because people are assuming otherwise and are stunned that someone would do such a thing that in reality exists only in their imagination. See current top comment: It's absolutely insane they want to shut down Nuclear and replace it with fossil fueled plants False. Simply false.

To me it's equivalent. The removed nuclear energy is replaced with coal. It doesn't matter even if overall it's decreasing. It could decrease much more. Actually, it's not even decreasing: https://www.dw.com/en/coal-and-fossil-fuel-share-of-german-e...

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#157

Post by pydry » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 12:06 PM UTC

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…

>We find that low-wind-power events are less frequent in winter than in summer, but the maximum duration is distributed more evenly between months. While short events are frequent, very long events are much rarer. Every year, a period of around five consecutive days with an average wind capacity factor below 10% occurs, and every ten years a respective period of nearly eight days. These durations decrease if only winter months are considered. The longest event in the data lasts nearly ten days.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab91e9

In your once in a lifetime event I'd be happy if we used a bit of gas. This is something, after all, that Japan also had to do for years after Fukushima went kaput.

Bear in mind also that demand for heating and transportation can be timeshifted. An Octopus tariff in the UK already allows for this. We've barely scratched the surface of whats possible here because electric grids are slow to evolve to this new reality.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#158

Post by ivan_gammel » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 12:08 PM UTC

fsflover wrote: post #142

ivan_gammel wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the victims of that catastrophe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#/media/File:Deat...

I’m well aware of the statistics, but your link is irrelevant to my comment. It is simply insensitive to picturing Chernobyl as something beneficial for the environment.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#159

Post by RealityVoid » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 12:08 PM UTC

fabian2k wrote: post #44

There's plenty of irrational fears about nuclear power, but there are also valid significant doubts about it. And this isn't really that much about the technology, but especially about everything around it. We haven't managed to decide on a place to store the nuclear waste, and all the plans decades in making have been thrown overboard entirely a few years ago. This is more of a political failure, but if we can't man…

I am going to call bullshit on the nuclear waste storage problem. Nuclear waste is incredibly dense, and we could simply dump low level solid nuclear waste in the ocean (gasp!) High radioactive waste is incredibly dense.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#160

Post by martin_a » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 12:09 PM UTC

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #109

martin_a wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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] fo…

"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." Presumably the government entered those contracts willingly, though. I don't understand this framing of "have filled their pockets". If you really believe the money was squandered, blame the politicians giving it away, not the energy companies. "So, 20…

Oh yes, they entered it willingly, so friends and they themselves could get a nice job in the steering board after their career. There's nothing "illegal" here, only immoral, but lots of that.