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Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

reuters.com

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Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#51

Post by robertlagrant »

maxhille wrote: post #29
Traster wrote: post #12

I know this article isn't great, but is there anyone on HN who lives in Germany who could explain why there's such a scepticism of Nuclear power there? I'm from the UK and we have largely transitioned away from Nuclear for one clear reason - there was no political appetite to spend a tonne of money on an expensive form of energy that wasn't likely to pay off in the current parliamentary term. The german response to N…

German here, but I'll be a bit lazy and refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany . I quickly skimmed over it and I think it touches the history well. From my personal perspective, I can definitely relate being nuclear skeptic due to Chernobyl (I was 7 years old at the time) and basically constant demonstrations/problems with the end storage facility subject - for as long as I remember. Also, at…

> Also, at least in my memory around ~2000 it became clear that nuclear was not economically viable vs going green

That would be surprising. I would have said that renewables (without comparing massively subsidised and unproven renewables costs with unsubsidised and well understood practical nuclear costs) would only be relatively recently even in the same ballpark as nuclear. And even then, only when the sun's shining/wind's blowing.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#52

Post by turbinerneiter »

lm28469 wrote: post #46
turbinerneiter wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's associated with waste that no one wants and nuclear weapons that no one wants either. Germany had a SPD/Greens coalition. They decided to not renew the contracts with the nuclear power plants and phase them out (afaik they are allowed to run 25 years, then they need to renew that, sorry missing some vocubaulry here). The next government was CDU/FDP (Merkel 1), who decided to renew the contracts again and cancel…

Yeah, nothing to do with russian gas, dirty money and lobbyists.... https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-former-chancellor-gerhard-sch... https://www.politico.eu/article/outrage-germany-ex-chancello...

I retold the history, not the motivations.

Also, Schröder and Merkel are from different parties, so it's hard to see how Schröders corruption influenced Merkel.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#53

Post by MobiusHorizons »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #43
maxhille wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German here, but I'll be a bit lazy and refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany . I quickly skimmed over it and I think it touches the history well. From my personal perspective, I can definitely relate being nuclear skeptic due to Chernobyl (I was 7 years old at the time) and basically constant demonstrations/problems with the end storage facility subject - for as long as I remember. Also, at…

So how did plans to import natural gas via NS1/NS2 fit into these plans?

My understanding was that Natural gas in Europe is used for house heat, and industrial processes that have never been electrified. I was not aware of using it (at a wide scale) for electricity generation. (definitely not an expert though)

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#54

Post by wongarsu »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #26
raymond_goo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still have mushrooms that radiate more than normal due to Chernobyl. Then we witnessed the Fukushima catastrophe from afar but with great shock. And we have no state who wants to store the nuclear waste. We believe the future is renewables and we invest heavily into it.

The future is renewables but without storage (or fusion, which is realistically 40y out _if_ it works) then we're screwed and that's a couple of decades more development away. We need fission to bridge that gap or we're left relying on fossil fuels and missing our targets massively on GHG emissions (or we maintain Lockdown level restrictions .. and still have a short fall).

It's not like there are no options for storage, pumped hydrostorage works well in Germany, and building pumped storage plus solar makes more financial sense than fission. Nuclear plants just take too long to plan and build, and are extremely expensive to build and tear down.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#55

Post by fsflover »

BSVogler wrote: post #35
Traster wrote: post #12

I know this article isn't great, but is there anyone on HN who lives in Germany who could explain why there's such a scepticism of Nuclear power there? I'm from the UK and we have largely transitioned away from Nuclear for one clear reason - there was no political appetite to spend a tonne of money on an expensive form of energy that wasn't likely to pay off in the current parliamentary term. The german response to N…

We still have not found a place to store the waste. No one wants to live near a reactor so there are not really any place to build them (NIMBY). It also turns out that it is quite expensive when considering all costs like dismantling and insurance. Germany also does not mine uranium any more since 2021, so needs to buy them from other countries so you will have again dependencies on other countries. And then there is…

https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#57

Post by novok »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #28
Traster wrote: post #12

I know this article isn't great, but is there anyone on HN who lives in Germany who could explain why there's such a scepticism of Nuclear power there? I'm from the UK and we have largely transitioned away from Nuclear for one clear reason - there was no political appetite to spend a tonne of money on an expensive form of energy that wasn't likely to pay off in the current parliamentary term. The german response to N…

It's associated with waste that no one wants and nuclear weapons that no one wants either. Germany had a SPD/Greens coalition. They decided to not renew the contracts with the nuclear power plants and phase them out (afaik they are allowed to run 25 years, then they need to renew that, sorry missing some vocubaulry here). The next government was CDU/FDP (Merkel 1), who decided to renew the contracts again and cancel…

Why would germany worry about making nukes themselves although?

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#58

Post by Gravityloss »

It would be still worth doing even if it's only helping 2 years from now. One can't expect gas to flow smoothly maybe ever anymore. One can go with coal and LNG for a while.

Completely new nuclear plants take many years even for the permits and a decade to build.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#59

Post by novok »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #52
lm28469 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, nothing to do with russian gas, dirty money and lobbyists.... https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-former-chancellor-gerhard-sch... https://www.politico.eu/article/outrage-germany-ex-chancello...

I retold the history, not the motivations. Also, Schröder and Merkel are from different parties, so it's hard to see how Schröders corruption influenced Merkel.

Corruption that you know about...

Probably a lot on the Merkel side that the public doesn't know. The people or groups who you don't think would ever be corrupt are some of the best to be corrupt in the first place.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#60

Post by SEJeff »

BSVogler wrote: post #35
Traster wrote: post #12

I know this article isn't great, but is there anyone on HN who lives in Germany who could explain why there's such a scepticism of Nuclear power there? I'm from the UK and we have largely transitioned away from Nuclear for one clear reason - there was no political appetite to spend a tonne of money on an expensive form of energy that wasn't likely to pay off in the current parliamentary term. The german response to N…

We still have not found a place to store the waste. No one wants to live near a reactor so there are not really any place to build them (NIMBY). It also turns out that it is quite expensive when considering all costs like dismantling and insurance. Germany also does not mine uranium any more since 2021, so needs to buy them from other countries so you will have again dependencies on other countries. And then there is…

The historical experience of Chernobyl is not remotely relevant to modern reactors that are (by design) unable to melt down.

Look at the pebble bed reactors, or the smr reactors from nuscale, or the chinese molten salt reactor designs. These are all using new technology to make meltdown next to or completely impossible. Nuscale is calling their smr reactors "walk away safe" in that you could just abandon them and they're unable to melt down.

Saying we shouldn't consider nuclear energy due to Chernobyl is equivalent to saying we shouldn't use airplanes because of the hindenburg. It entirely ignores the massive amount of materials and nuclear science improvements since Chernobyl was built in 1970. I'm ALL FOR solar power (and have 48 x 440W bifacial solar panels aka 21.1kW on my barn), but it is not a holy grail. Safe modern nuclear energy could massively improve Europe's energy situation and end Russian energy dependence.

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