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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

#251

Post by eckesicle »

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?

It looks like the all time death toll of nuclear power so far is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiatio...

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/air-pollut...

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#252

Post by daniel-cussen »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #248
daniel-cussen wrote: post #13

I blame the Simpsons. Nonstop slander against nuclear science in every single episode, for almost thirty years. Literally every single episode, it's in the opening sequence. How can you watch the Simpsons, if you think they're funny, and you trust them, and not think nuclear science is shit?

I feel like the simpsons make nuclear look great. You have homer, the lovable idiot, who is a Nuclear safety inspector for the plant, and, even though he is completely underqualified for the job, the plant still has never had a meltdown.

Yeah it did, he impedes it by blocking the pipe with his ass I think, and Mr. Burns congratulates him on turning a "[potential] Chernobyl into a media Three-Mile Island." Then there's all the three-eyed fish, Mr. Burns irradiated into looking like an alien, all sorts of stupid gags. Maybe some of them were funny.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#253

Post by fsflover »

locallost wrote: post #244
fsflover wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 This is whataboutism. The fact that someone else is doing worse, doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for the better. There is no reason to switch off nuclear in Germany before switching off coal, except propaganda and irrational fear.

It would be whataboutism if Germany hadn't done squat, or even worse replaced nuclear with coal which is what you and a lot of people mistakenly think because you never look at data before having an opinion. But they started switching off both. That's why coal % is way down which is a success. In absolute numbers they used to produce almost 300TWh from coal and are now down to less than 150TWh. Again, tremendous prog…

You repeat the data but don't understand its implications. Reducing coal to 25% while reducing nuclear to 0% goes against the environment, even though it's better than other countries. It should've been vice versa, 0% coal, 25% nuclear.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#254

Post by rasz »

martin_a wrote: post #66
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…

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…

>Insuring a nuclear power plant would cost 72 billion Euro/year [0]

Half the cleaning cost of Fukushima, every year, per every power plant, sounds legit.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#255

Post by RealityVoid »

drran wrote: post #232
RealityVoid wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yes, and if you read the article carefully, it's not really an issue. Sure they say "A single becquerel that gets into our body is enough to damage a cell that will eventually become a cancer cell," but that's like saying the only acceptable risk is zero, so at odds with reality. The fixation on nuclear waste is amazing, considering we get more radioactivity in the atmosphere from coal and loads of people die because of coal every day. People seem awfully chill about that.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#256

Post by hagbard_c »

fock wrote: post #133
hagbard_c wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uranium will last long enough by itself (around 90 years given current reserves) and far longer (thousands of years) once enough fast breeder reactors have been built to rework spent fuel into new fuel. This also takes care of the problem of storing spent fuel since the remaining waste is both far less in volume (less than 10%) as well as well as has a far shorter half-life. This means the remaining waste needs to be…

>That is a religious viewpoint, not based in fact. Either show the proof or retract it, statements like that add nothing to the discourse. It also makes it hard to take the rest of your question seriously. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/9/5/187/htm - this looks very much like it can kill a lot of us and I wonder how many will survive the following chaos. I also still don't get how you are pro-nuclear and think climat…

Climate change is not an existential threat because climate change is something which the human race has been subject to since forever. Sometimes the change was radical, sometimes subtle. Radical as in glaciation, subtle as in the "Little Ice Age" or the warmer periods which saw the flourishing of the Roman and Viking civilisations - which, incidentally, both declined once the climate turned cooler. Humans are adaptable animals and will make it through the effects of whatever turn the climate makes this time as well. Thinking otherwise is just silly doomsday prophetising.

This is, by the way, also why I am pro-nuclear. It is clear that there are better ways of generating electricity than burning fossil fuels (which lead to environmental pollution/destruction as well as often subsidising less savoury regimes (and companies)). I'm also for putting PV panels on top of roofs an other "unused" surfaces while I see "solar farms" as a waste of space unless established in deserts or similar areas.

I'd suggest to read [1] some [2] books [3] and think this whole "we're all going to die" thing over. Yes, die we will, all of us, but not for the reason or in the way many people seem to think.

[1] https://www.unsettledsciencebook.com/

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56643992-false-alarm

[3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50173134-apocalypse-neve...

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#257

Post by hokkos »

cookiengineer wrote: post #130
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…

History: 1986 - Chernobyl happened. Wasn't our fault, but we got the fallout for it. Poisoned drinking water, people in quarantine and everything. And we were the lucky ones, the map for the East doesn't look any good. [4] 1991 - The "Schnelle Brueter" (SNR-300 / Kalkar) almost went up during a test. Political debate around investing additional 105 Mio DM was happening, but due to Chernobyl was leading against it. [5…

You've got French nuclear reactor positions and major winds wrong, they are evenly localised depending on major rivers and near the sea [1], and the winds are way more complex than you suggest [2], this is not the jet stream. Also deep geological buring is a solved issue. Also germany is making France with the pollution from coal [3].

[1] https://www.irsn.fr/FR/connaissances/Installations_nucleaire...

[2] https://p4.storage.canalblog.com/42/20/127041/23073496.jpg

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZB0KuGdvjg

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#258

Post by drran »

theshrike79 wrote: post #249
drran wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 1) known reasons for known catastrophes, so we can protect against them, 2) unknown reasons for known catastrophes, so we need to make a guess, and 3) unknown reasons for unknown catastrophes, which are not happened yet, including state sponsored attack on a nuclear plant. We cannot be prepared for unknown unknowns, so we need to plan for the worst case scenario. The worst-case scenario for nuclear plant is…

We know how to build safer nuclear now than we did 60 years ago when the current gen were mostly built. Current generation nuclear plants default to off, they need active operation to stay on. If something goes wrong, they automatically, without any intervention by anyone, go offline. They are also designed to withstand collisions from aircraft and multiple other attack vectors: https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publicat…

> We know how to build safer nuclear now than we did 60 years ago when the current gen were mostly built.

I will reword my question: How we can make nuclear safer by 10x in next 10 years? We need them to be 10x safer if we want to have 10x more nuclear plants.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#259

Post by drran »

eckesicle wrote: post #251
drran wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It looks like the all time death toll of nuclear power so far is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiatio... https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/air-pollut...

It's because we ran away from contaminated sites.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#260

Post by locallost »

fsflover wrote: post #253
locallost wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be whataboutism if Germany hadn't done squat, or even worse replaced nuclear with coal which is what you and a lot of people mistakenly think because you never look at data before having an opinion. But they started switching off both. That's why coal % is way down which is a success. In absolute numbers they used to produce almost 300TWh from coal and are now down to less than 150TWh. Again, tremendous prog…

You repeat the data but don't understand its implications. Reducing coal to 25% while reducing nuclear to 0% goes against the environment, even though it's better than other countries. It should've been vice versa, 0% coal, 25% nuclear.

Less coal is good for the environment, as is less nuclear. Or was Fukushima good for the environment? Of course you realize this for both, you wouldn't otherwise make up that they replaced nuclear with coal, and ignore mentioning Fukushima even once.
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