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

231–240 of 281 posts

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#231

Post by fsflover »

locallost wrote: post #227
fsflover wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 .

You asked why does it matter that coal use is drastically down, when it could be even less. I answered that it's because people don't get that this actually happened, and repeat the opposite of what is true. As proof for this, check the top comment in this thread that makes the false claim nuclear power was replaced by coal. So obviously it is important. Apparently there are enough people to not only write that Germa…

> If the removed nuclear was replaced by coal, coal % of the produced electricity would go up.

False. Coal went from 45% to 25%. The remaining 25% are needed to cover closing nuclear. This is what people mean when they say about coal replacing nuclear. We could remove coal completely (or significantly more) if not stopping nuclear. Total coal percentage doesn't matter.

Compare two possibilities:

1. Coal 45% to 25%, nuclear 10% to 0%.

2. Coal 45% to 0%, nuclear 10% to 55%.

In both cases coal usage is decreasing, but in the first case, nuclear is (partially) replaced with coal. In the second case, coal is replaced with nuclear.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#232

Post by drran »

RealityVoid wrote: post #159
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.

Nuclear waste is dumped into the ocean already, contaminating fish: Fukushima, La Hague, nuclear bomb testing, etc. etc. We need a second ocean.

https://www.dw.com/en/fukushima-how-the-ocean-became-a-dumpi...

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#233

Post by drran »

medstrom wrote: post #102
addicted wrote: post #27

“Why areGermans so jittery about an extremely expensive source of power, that continuously gets more expensive with time, that has long term effects the likes of which another strong engineering country is still dealing with 10 years after their disaster, that even if it does solve their immediate power solutions will never be a global solution because Germany along with the handful of existing nuclear nations will,…

Blow up the planet? This was never a possibility.

Continent-wide Red Forest can be achieved with just one nuclear plant.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#234

Post by locallost »

fsflover wrote: post #231
locallost wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You asked why does it matter that coal use is drastically down, when it could be even less. I answered that it's because people don't get that this actually happened, and repeat the opposite of what is true. As proof for this, check the top comment in this thread that makes the false claim nuclear power was replaced by coal. So obviously it is important. Apparently there are enough people to not only write that Germa…

> If the removed nuclear was replaced by coal, coal % of the produced electricity would go up. False. Coal went from 45% to 25%. The remaining 25% are needed to cover closing nuclear. This is what people mean when they say about coal replacing nuclear. We could remove coal completely (or significantly more) if not stopping nuclear. Total coal percentage doesn't matter. Compare two possibilities: 1. Coal 45% to 25%, n…

There is less coal produced electricity and less nuclear. How on earth is coal replacing nuclear? What is replacing the missing coal? Wishful thinking?

By that logic you could also make the case that nuclear replaced coal.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#235

Post by drran »

tjansen wrote: post #224
drran wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smart grid can solve this problem, when appliances will report of their needs and abilities to the grid, and then the grid will schedule power delivery to meet the demand.

What kind of appliances can wait for several hours? The only example I can think of are cars that are being charged over night.

Water heaters, cars, washing/drying machines, power walls, battery powered devices. Electric teapot, microwave, cooking stove can operate at half of power when demand is very high. They can report to and receive instructions from a smart power meter.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#236

Post by fsflover »

locallost wrote: post #234
fsflover wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the removed nuclear was replaced by coal, coal % of the produced electricity would go up. False. Coal went from 45% to 25%. The remaining 25% are needed to cover closing nuclear. This is what people mean when they say about coal replacing nuclear. We could remove coal completely (or significantly more) if not stopping nuclear. Total coal percentage doesn't matter. Compare two possibilities: 1. Coal 45% to 25%, n…

There is less coal produced electricity and less nuclear. How on earth is coal replacing nuclear? What is replacing the missing coal? Wishful thinking? By that logic you could also make the case that nuclear replaced coal.

Yes, there is less coal and less nuclear: 45% to 25% and 10% to 0%, respectively. The missing coal is probably replaced by the renewables. How does it matter?

The 25% value is too high, and it could be much lower if not decreasing the nuclear. That's all I want to tell you. If you don't like the wording, you can change it as you wish. It's wrong to let coal go to 25% and not lower while removing nuclear. Nuclear should not have been removed before coal.

Same thing is said here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29890760.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#238

Post by croes »

theshrike79 wrote: post #225
croes wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many deaths per wind turbine, and how long is the location of a turbine accident to uninhabitable?

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-safest-source-energy... Nuclear deaths is 90 per TWh Wind death toll is 150 per TWh Solar 440/TWh and leading the pack is Coal at 100000/1Twh produced The question is, as always with nuclear: Do you want constant, verified, 100% certain deaths every day or do you risk a larger death toll that may or may not happen some time in the future?

I asked for death per turbine not per TWh. Nuclear energy provides lots of TWh so it skews the statistics in their favor.

That's like comparing death by train accident or plane accident. Planes are better per kilometer but worse per hour.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#239

Post by fsflover »

drran wrote: post #229
theshrike79 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are bad at statistics. The probability of a catastrophic event in a modern nuclear plant is vanishingly low. Even the overworked ancient plants from the 60's and 70's we are currently running are exceedingly safe. People will rather take constant death from coal power than risk a low-probability event.

Yeah, but we have multiple catastrophes already, despite the vanishingly small number of nuclear plants. If we want to increase the number of nuclear stations by 10x, we need to make them 10x safer just to keep the number of catastrophes at the same 1/30y level. Do you have an idea how to make a nuclear plant 10x safer comparing to today?

> Do you have an idea how to make a nuclear plant 10x safer comparing to today?

Yes. All the reasons for the catastrophes are well known.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#240

Post by locallost »

fsflover wrote: post #236
locallost wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is less coal produced electricity and less nuclear. How on earth is coal replacing nuclear? What is replacing the missing coal? Wishful thinking? By that logic you could also make the case that nuclear replaced coal.

Yes, there is less coal and less nuclear: 45% to 25% and 10% to 0%, respectively. The missing coal is probably replaced by the renewables. How does it matter? The 25% value is too high, and it could be much lower if not decreasing the nuclear. That's all I want to tell you. If you don't like the wording, you can change it as you wish. It's wrong to let coal go to 25% and not lower while removing nuclear. Nuclear shou…

Now we've made full circle because this question of yours is how we started the discussion. To this I can only repeat my answer: it matters because the exact opposite is being told, even in this thread in the top comment. If it didn't matter, this lie wouldn't be repeated ad nauseam.

I think it matters that Germany's fossil fuel use for electricity went from 60% in 2010 to 40% in 2020. I also think it matters the US went from 60% in 2010 to 60% in 2020 (although I didn't check the US numbers in detail, so I might be slightly off). So in this regard, what Germany is doing is an obvious success, but reality does not fit to agendas. If everybody was doing this, the world would be in much better shape. Instead those that do well, are criticized for not doing better, mostly on wrong assumptions and bad data. That's just weird.

Post reply on HN