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

181–190 of 281 posts

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#181

Post by tjansen »

stefan_ wrote: post #141
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…

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.

50 years? I'd hope we have fusion power by then. But it doesn't look like there will be enough batteries for wind power in the next 20 years.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#182

Post by throw0101a »

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…

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

Climate change is a (existential?) threat to humanity. There is only so much renewable energy generation capacity that can be constructed in any given year. If you shutdown a nuclear power plant, the demand it was servicing does not magically go away. So you need to something to meet that demand: that may be renewable, but if not enough can be constructed, then it could also mean running fossil fuels more.

So if you want to actually treat climate change as an important problem, why would you shutdown non-emitting source of power that you already have?

Keep the existing nuclear plants, shutdown the fossil fuel-based generators, and use the renewable power you're building to offset the retirement of the latter.

Once all your carbon-emitting generators are retired then consider shutting down the non-emitting nuclear generators.

At no point in the above process are new nuclear plants built.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#183

Post by mateo1 »

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…

Although I've stopped replying to comments like yours 10 years ago, when the same sediment was prevalent at reddit and the nuclear-pushing thinktanks made their first steps in the new online world of consensus manipulation, I think it's a good time to remind you that nuclear power is still dangerous, Chernobyl happened right in Germany's back yard and the term "green energy" isn't some kind of take on Cherenkov radiation or fluorescence.

Luckily, a large part of Europe's population, mostly the older ones, vividly remember the horror or the nuclear clouds moving over their countries, the scarce and delayed information received about the accident, the ambiguous and conflicting information about the contamination of crops and food supplies.

Between global warming and cancer, I choose global warming. So did Germany and most of Europe. France and Britain need large nuclear reactors for breeding weapons materials, so there's no way around that.

All the bullshit justifications with safer new reactor technologies - keep them to yourself. If anything, besides more expensive, nuclear reactor designs have been getting bolder and bolder. Molten salts reactors are pushed as a safe alternative; a joke that would make any chemist shudder.

This is just a reminder that we still exist and our opinions haven't changed, our willingness to express them in an online world dominated by corporate indoctrination however, has.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#184

Post by akvadrako »

Arnt wrote: post #148
akvadrako wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

€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.

The risk of a nuclear accident affecting a large amount of land is very small - of the thousands of plants in the world, only a couple have affected more than a few square kilometers.

If you consider the affected area/MW to wind or solar it's clearly a net win. And there isn't a need to build nuclear plants in more densely populated areas than others.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#185

Post by rini17 »

mateo1 wrote: post #183
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…

Although I've stopped replying to comments like yours 10 years ago, when the same sediment was prevalent at reddit and the nuclear-pushing thinktanks made their first steps in the new online world of consensus manipulation, I think it's a good time to remind you that nuclear power is still dangerous, Chernobyl happened right in Germany's back yard and the term "green energy" isn't some kind of take on Cherenkov radia…

> Between global warming and cancer, I choose global warming. So did Germany and most of Europe. France and Britain need large nuclear reactors for breeding weapons materials, so there's no way around that.

Oh, you will get cancer either way. Every now and then highly carcinogenic crude is spilled into the environment. The ashes from fossil fuels contain heavy metals and radioactive elements, and are much harder to store or reprocess than nuclear waste.

But as you say it's now all sediment(sic). So let's hope we manage to produce enough bateries in time to carry through somehow. Or, more realistically, have enough natural gas.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#186

Post by fsflover »

locallost wrote: post #178
fsflover wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 G…

> First comes the shock that somebody would replace nuclear with coal, but when this is refuted

No, my original argument was about stronger reduction of coal by using nuclear, no matter that it's already decreasing. You just didn't understand me (or shifted the goalpost?).

Upd: I see that you avoid answering this question all the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29768086.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#187

Post by mateo1 »

Ygg2 wrote: post #75
dabber21 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my mother is still talking about Chernobyl today, it definitely left a mark especially when you had kids at the time

Chernobyl right now is biggest/safest wildlife preserve in Europe.

Except of all the cancer incidence in the wild animal population despite their short lifespans, the massively radioactive furs... Yes it's the biggest preserve because nobody can live there.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#188

Post by tjansen »

marmarama wrote: post #155

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…

> 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.

What will make it cheaper than nuclear power? Right now, it's more expensive than French nuclear power. And Germany doesn't even have storage technologies and has mostly concentrated on the low-hanging fruits. Off-shore wind and tiny solar installations on every residential root will be far more expensive that what has been done so far.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#189

Post by japanuspus »

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.

I think the correct formulation would be that most nuclear production over the year has been replaced by renewables, but on gray wind-less winter day like today I can see you are taking in all the Swedish nuclear power you can get [0].

[0]: https://energinet.dk/energisystem_fullscreen (Danish grid only, couldn't find any similar tools for the wider grid).

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#190

Post by fsflover »

mateo1 wrote: post #183
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…

Although I've stopped replying to comments like yours 10 years ago, when the same sediment was prevalent at reddit and the nuclear-pushing thinktanks made their first steps in the new online world of consensus manipulation, I think it's a good time to remind you that nuclear power is still dangerous, Chernobyl happened right in Germany's back yard and the term "green energy" isn't some kind of take on Cherenkov radia…

> think it's a good time to remind you that nuclear power is still dangerous

In comparison to what? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#/media/File:Deat...

> and the term "green energy"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464

> Between global warming and cancer, I choose global warming.

If you choose coal, you choose both: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_and_environmental_impac...

Post reply on HN