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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

#141

Post by [deleted] »

adastra22 wrote: post #134
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…

> nuclear was not economically viable vs going green This is such a strange statement as nuclear is the greenest power source.

[deleted]

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#142

Post by ncmncm »

adastra22 wrote: post #134
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…

> nuclear was not economically viable vs going green This is such a strange statement as nuclear is the greenest power source.

It doesn't produce any power until 10 years after you secure the money, usually costs much more than budgeted, and then has very high operating cost.

Each euro earmarked for a nuke plant is a euro not spent building out solar, wind, and storage that would yield much more power than the nuke, almost immediately, and have extremely low operating cost. So, not green, because it competes with actually green for capital.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#143

Post by ncmncm »

fy20 wrote: post #122
zajio1am wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that was also when the Atomausstieg was sealed by the new Schröder government which had the Greens in the coalition And after that, Schröder got his deserved chair on Nordstream AG and later Rosneft and Gazprom.

This is what rubs me most about the decision. Thanks to Germany the whole of Europe is now dependant on Russian gas, but at least a few politicians got promotions out of it right? When my country joined the EU they were forced to decommission an old nuclear power plant. Before that we were a net exporter of electricity. There was talk about building a new plant to ensure energy security in the region and reduce depen…

Was this a nuke plant that resembled the one at Chernobyl?

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#144

Post by ncmncm »

rurban wrote: post #129
belorn wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing stops Germany from building pumped hydrostorage rather than gas pipelines. Every time nuclear get discussed people jump between either hydrostorage or green hydrogen, but when people start discussing turning off the gas from Russia, there seems to be very little interests to actually replace gas with storage. The few calculations I have read over hydrostorage is that the amount of damns and land needed to rep…

Germany is not Austria nor Switzerland. There are no mountains to pump up the water to. The heights are ridiculous here. 9-15m, compared to 200-800m

There are deep cavities that water could be pumped out of, and drained back into. You could even store hydrogen in them at the same time.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#145

Post by ncmncm »

aaronmdjones wrote: post #125
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reactors that are (by design) unable to melt down. I believe part of the problem is that nuclear power proponents were claiming that nuclear power is safe before Chernobyl. Then Chernobyl happened. Then proponents were claiming that that happened due to the way Chernobyl was designed, that the Western designs were entirely different, and that it couldn't happen. Then it did happen in Fukushima. People don't care ab…

It's worth pointing out (again) that Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is older than Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station. It's not at all surprising that they would both fail in much the same manner, even in the face of promises that newer reactors can't.

It did not, in fact, fail the same manner, except insofar as it melted down as every failed reactor did.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#146

Post by ncmncm »

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…

There is absolutely no need to devote land to exclusively solar or wind use.

Farm and pasture land shared with solar panels yield more than without. Wind turbines can also be placed in farm and pasture land, displacing very little production.

As I understand it, Germany already has a great deal of wind power installed.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#147

Post by ncmncm »

tempestn wrote: post #96
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?

Interesting question. I had thought batteries were still orders of magnitude more expensive than nuclear, but just looked up some numbers to try and get an idea. Caveat, these are just numbers I've looked up; they look reasonable to me, but I'm no expert, so could well be making a mistake here. Also I'm just looking at capital costs, not operation. From what I can find, the capital cost of a new nuclear plant is some…

Lithium batteries are the most expensive storage alternative, and would compete with automotive use anyway. There are many others, and the only real question is which will be cheapest to deploy. Hydrogen is attractive despite its currently abysmal round-trip efficiency because hydrogen is so massively useful otherwise; the capital equipment for hydrogen production will never be idle even when the underground cavities hydrogen is stored in are considered full. (They never really get full, as such; the pressure just increases.) Efficiency will only ever improve.

Practical alternatives to underground hydrogen include liquified air (also industrially useful after the tanks fill), anhydrous ammonia, underground compressed air (again, compressed hydrogen is even more useful), pumped underground hydro, pumped undersea hydro, iron-air batteries (which are extremely cheap, and safe) and even deep mine-shaft gravitational (again, also compatible with hydrogen, compressed air, and compressed hydrogen).

Underground hydro is even more attractive than the mountaintop variety because the head may be thousands of meters.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#148

Post by k__ »

urthor wrote: post #95
k__ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Germany pumps a disproportionate amount of money into renewables though. The Energiewende makes them one of a tiny handful of countries worldwide that is actively interested in alleviating greenhouse gases.

I hope it is enough.

And I hope the Ukraine issue will lead to more and not switching back to nuclear again.

But with the Greens in the government, chances are good.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#149

Post by k__ »

didericis wrote: post #74
k__ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ac…

"consequences of the cooling system failing were known"

So the problem isn't unknown unknowns, but people simply don't caring enough about potential consequences?

That just makes it worse and nuclear an even less of an option.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#150

Post by cinntaile »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #100
cinntaile wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. These plans have been in motion since way before that, as your link probably confirms. Merkel was going to delay the closing, but when Fukushima came along she couldn't do that anymore.

It is cemented by Fukushima. From wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany > Within days of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, large anti-nuclear protests occurred in Germany. Protests continued and, on 29 May 2011, Merkel's government announced that it would close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022.[7][8] Political writer David Frum characterized Merkel's decision as a…

Let me rephrase. They were supposed to close by 2022, Merkel delayed this by 12 years in 2010 but had to backpedal because of Fukushima. So the decision to close the plants was not a kneejerk reaction to Fukushima, it simply reverted back to the original decision.
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