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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

#71

Post by winkeltripel »

jliptzin wrote: post #64
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…

I’m not against nuclear power but can anyone explain why a similar sized investment in solar+wind+geothermal+battery storage would not work?

Because the land needed for equivalent solar and wind would be massive. There would be no room for NIMBY. Imagine someone you love would lose their home so that a windmill could be constructed. Every city park would need to have a huge windmill, and every roof would need solar panels. That is assuming that we can even locate the material and manpower needed to build so much. This would be at least 2 orders of magnitude more than equivalent power from nuclear.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#73

Post by croes »

tsimionescu wrote: post #50
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…

> Also, at least in my memory around ~2000 it became clear that nuclear was not economically viable vs going green and that was also when the Atomausstieg was sealed by the new Schröder government which had the Greens in the coalition. And yet, Germany has twice the emissions of France because it relies heavily on gas and coal. Very sad to see that global warming is considered more economically viable than nuclear en…

That's because politicians like Altmaier sabotaged the expansion of wind and solar energy.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#74

Post by didericis »

k__ wrote: post #22
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…

After the Fukushima catastrophe, it was clear that the unknown unknows are worse than anticipated. Sad thing is, Germany should have pumped a whole lotta more money into renewables and their research.

Fukushima was not a case of unknown unknowns. That style of reactor requires active cooling to prevent meltdown, and the cooling failed. The consequences of the cooling system failing were known, as were the vulnerabilities of the cooling system. They just didn’t add enough safeguards/didn’t account for the backup failing. There’s an argument that you can’t add enough safeguards to account for all possible ways an active cooling system could fail, which is perfectly reasonable/a good argument. Thats’s why next gen nuclear reactor designs don’t require active cooling.

People citing Chernobyl and Fukushima strikes me as rhe equivalent to people citing the Hindenburg when talking about flying; I’m pretty sure both reactor designs could be thought of as the design equivalent to the hydrogen blimp. People’s minds are stuck on an image of a blimp on fire when thinking about flying even though modern passenger jets exist.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#75

Post by croes »

SEJeff wrote: post #60
BSVogler wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

What about Fukushima?

And modern reactors have to be built first. How long does it take if we look how long the berlin airport took or Stuttgart 21 will take.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#76

Post by belorn »

knbknb wrote: post #27
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…

Off the top of my head : German multinationals (in the energy sector such as Siemens, Wintershall) have removed it from their strategies because Nuclear technologies inefficient and bear a lot of risks. New reactor types don't work as promised. Government does not want Nuclear Energy because it needs enormous amounts of subsidies, and still there are regular cost overruns just as enormous. And Consortias still demand…

Germany spends already around 1.5% of their GDP on energy subsidies, and is the 8th largest in term of subsidies per GDP, and in absolute numbers, the highest one by 200% to the nearest country. €50 billions is spent each year, with a bit over 50% going to renewables and around 30% going to fossil fuels.

I can understand in some ways that they do not want to spend more than €50 billions a year on subsidies. It is already a lot of tax money. The question however is what they are getting for those €50 billions they are already spending, and if the result is a desirable one. Being dependent on Russian gas and oil is a pretty high price to pay, especially when it help fund invasion forces into EU.

(Source: https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/default/files/annex_to_the...)

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#77

Post by croes »

fsflover wrote: post #55
BSVogler wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-waste-in-disused-german-mine-l...

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#78

Post by Dma54rhs »

wongarsu wrote: post #54
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pumped hydro has very specific geological restrictions and take because of ecological snd safety risks even longer to build than nuclear. Both way too long.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#79

Post by aaronmdjones »

croes wrote: post #75
SEJeff wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

What about Fukushima? And modern reactors have to be built first. How long does it take if we look how long the berlin airport took or Stuttgart 21 will take.

Fukushima is older than Chernobyl; it was commissioned and running before Chernobyl's construction began. Both were managed incompetently.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#80

Post by onli »

winkeltripel wrote: post #71
jliptzin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not against nuclear power but can anyone explain why a similar sized investment in solar+wind+geothermal+battery storage would not work?

Because the land needed for equivalent solar and wind would be massive. There would be no room for NIMBY. Imagine someone you love would lose their home so that a windmill could be constructed. Every city park would need to have a huge windmill, and every roof would need solar panels. That is assuming that we can even locate the material and manpower needed to build so much. This would be at least 2 orders of magnitu…

> and every roof would need solar panels

That's already coming to Germany, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solare_Baupflicht. Not legislated in the whole country yet, but that's just a matter of time now.

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