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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

#171

Post by croes »

yourusername wrote: post #47
croes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same was thought about japanese nuclear power plants

9.0 earthquakes and tsunami's are not that common in Germany.

I doubt that german power plants are even built for that occasion.

Power plants are built according to the requirements of their location and history shows we fail in getting all the risk

Not to mention corruption and botching.

Which company would you trust to built and operate these power plants?

Vattenfall, Shell, Siemens, Facebook, Apple?

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#172

Post by chromanoid »

Germans fear nuclear power because of actual events. All people in their 30s have parents that were confronted with a situation similar to what we have now during the pandemic. They had to keep their children indoors and fear for their health. There were regular reports on radiation in the news, playgrounds were closed etc. "No milk, no mushrooms, no playing outside" https://www.gettyimages.de/detail/nachrichtenfoto/closed-off...

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#173

Post by caskstrength »

jwr wrote: post #58
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…

> 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 An important datapoint here is that ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder moved on to the board of Nord Stream AG and of Rosneft, after pushing for building the Nord Stream pipelines. How this didn't get Germans out into the streets, I h…

Not only that, but it was also his government that took the decision to phaseout all nuclear power.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#174

Post by pydry »

inglor_cz wrote: post #168
pydry wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 win…

"I'd be happy if we used a bit of gas." Gas alone does not produce electricity. Gas power stations do. This means building enough gas power stations to cover power requirements of the entire country, then having them sitting most of the time idle there, "just in case". This is the core of the problem: wind and solar need to be massively backed up. You cannot rely on them supplying even 5 per cent of their nominal cap…

>This means building enough gas power stations to cover power requirements of the entire country, then having them sitting most of the time idle

If you assume:

* We dont already have the infrastructure.

* Power cant be imported.

* Power usage cant be timeshifted.

* Power cant be stored in batteries.

* 10 day periods without wind and sun are routine.

Then yes, it might get expensive.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#175

Post by einpoklum »

s/Germans/people everywhere/.

> A disaster, say critics.

Not a disaster, say others.

> Nuclear power entails hardly any carbon emissions and offers consistent baseload supply, unlike intermittent renewables.

The opposition to nuclear power generation was not based on carbon emissions, so this is a Red Herring.

> bureaucracy and bottlenecks are slowing the rollout of renewables

So, that seems to be the main problem. The German government knew it was facing the deadline but neglected to prepare for it.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#176

Post by akvadrako »

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…

Nuclear waste is a non-issue; I wish we could have one article about nuclear power without someone bringing it up since there is really nothing left to discuss about it.

The reason it's a non-issue is there is so little of it. All the nuclear waste ever produced could fit in one Amazon warehouse. In the worst case it could be stored onsite with 10 layers of protection and it still wouldn't be a significant expense.

Also, because the most reactive waste will decay the fastest, it quickly gets less dangerous with time.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#177

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

yourusername wrote: post #47
croes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same was thought about japanese nuclear power plants

9.0 earthquakes and tsunami's are not that common in Germany.

But they could happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide

Besides that something like this https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdgasleck_in_der_Nordsee could also lead to a tsunami if it caves in.

Considering how many we have there it's not that unlikely:

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

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#178

Post by locallost »

fsflover wrote: post #169
locallost wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, coal as a percentage of their electricity production went down from 45% to 25% in 10 years. They removed nuclear and coal and replaced both with renewables (coal is the bottom two). Data: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/styles/80...

> coal as a percentage of their electricity production went down from 45% to 25% in 10 years. Couldn't it go to 5% by using nuclear?

See, so as usual we land in goalpost shifting land. First comes the shock that somebody would replace nuclear with coal, but when this is refuted, instead of relief comes further criticism why it's still wrong. I won't bother anymore, since there were other things to consider in the nuclear phase out, and the goalpost shifting will continue until judgement day. I will leave you with a thought: If you wonder how bad Germany is doing, imagine that the US was at 60% fossil fuels 2010, and stayed there 2020. Germany is doing way more for the climate.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#179

Post by tjansen »

pydry wrote: post #157
tjansen wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 win…

Well, then make it 5 days. That still needs more capacity than the global battery production per year.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#180

Post by RandomLensman »

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…

For one thing, nuclear gives you contingencies in the long run that other forms of energy don't provide, up to and including nukes. But nukes aside, if for any reason, we get some drastically different climate path (say, a big volcano erupts) than nuclear does not stop working like PV could.

Solar and wind are predicated on certain things staying one way, while nuclear is predicated on other things staying in a certain way.

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