Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 480 posts

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#81

Post by pydry »

steve_taylor wrote: post #63
choeger wrote: post #3

Being anti-nuclear is deeply engrained in the DNA of Germany's green party. Even more so than climate change. In fact, when the anti-nuclear movement started, climate change wasn't even a topic. In other words, the only thing that needs to happen is the German green party to admit a mistake in fighting nuclear power harder than fossile fuels...

It’s not just the German greens. Australia’s greens are staunchly anti-nuclear despite it being the only viable solution to the baseload problem, which renewables haven’t yet solved.

...other than pumped storage, demand shaping and more grid interconnects.

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#82

Post by gigatexal »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #33

What I read in this article is that German government did a thorough analysis, but the author dismisses the conclusions of it because the tolerated risk level there is too low and because it’s done by a minister from the Greens party. If this was written by an expert, that could make some sense, but it is not. Nuclear plant is not a startup, where you can just skip the QA part to release faster or put a not working c…

Work is being done to make them much safer

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#83

Post by Krasnol »

gigatexal wrote: post #82
ivan_gammel wrote: post #33

What I read in this article is that German government did a thorough analysis, but the author dismisses the conclusions of it because the tolerated risk level there is too low and because it’s done by a minister from the Greens party. If this was written by an expert, that could make some sense, but it is not. Nuclear plant is not a startup, where you can just skip the QA part to release faster or put a not working c…

Work is being done to make them much safer

Not in Germany.

In Germany not even the operators what nuclear back because renewables are the way now: https://www.ft.com/content/9a3228bd-6927-4d46-aa20-4c693811e...

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#84

Post by dkbrk »

fabian2k wrote: post #67
hedora wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're repeating some of the excuses the article addresses. - The author says they studied nuclear in grad school, and are probably therefore an expert. - They quantify the additional risk of meltdown due to delaying new safety regulations. It's negligible compared to operating plants according to the new regulations. - Their proposal would increase Germany's stockpile of nuclear waste by 3%, which is surely within e…

The author is misrepresenting or misunderstanding the nuclear waste argument in the report. The report says that you have to consider the costs of storing the waste if you want to run the reactors longer than planned, that's it. And we have not solved the storage at all in Germany, there is no plan yet on where to put long-term storage for nuclear waste. This is certainly a solvable problem, but the fact that it has…

There's nothing really to solve. Dry-cask storage can be used long term. The waste is secure, easily monitored, and if at some point in the future reprocessing makes economic sense that can be done too.

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#85

Post by 99_00 »

I used to think that Germany was foolish to buy Russian natural gas and fund the Putin regime which is a threat to them. And that Trump was right to tell them so to their faces.

Now I see that the Germans were right. Russia is not a threat. Putin is a paper tiger. The Russian military is nothing compared to NATO. And Germany gets NATO protection less than cost.

They are acting in their own interest which they understand very clearly, and are succeeding.

Also, I used to think that allowing Germany to remilitarize was desirable. Now I think it would be a mistake. Germany knows what's in its own interest. It will act in its own interest without shame or regret even if it hurts its neighbors (buying energy from Russia helps Germany and Russia but hurts other countries like Ukraine). Allowing the to militarize increases geopolitical risk and doesn't with little reward.

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#86

Post by fmajid »

diordiderot wrote: post #69
fabian2k wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sentence about simply replacing gas with heat pumps is almost delusional. You can't just switch out the main heating system for an entire country. Heat pumps require quite a lot of conditions that simply are not met by many older buildings. And even if that weren't an issue, there is still the sheer scale of the problem.

> require quite a lot of conditions that simply are not met by many older buildings. Such as?

The technology is improving by leaps and bounds:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/07/new-heat...

My parents in France ditched their 40 year old gas furnace for a heat pump, more than 50% subsidized by the French government, and they couldn’t be happier.

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#87

Post by diordiderot »

Gwypaas wrote: post #28

As long as you rely on the fallacy that nuclear is cheap to operate any initial costs can be handwaved away. Today renewables are cheaper than the marginal cost of nuclear, steam turbines and all machinery around them is simply that complex. They are a relic of an bygone era which tech enthusiasts for some reason continue clinging to as the magical solution to all our energy needs. Even in the face of reality. A doll…

Okay so what are all these renewables and batteries made of?

For each item.

Where are you going to get it?

Where does it need to go?

Who's going to make it?

How many do you need?

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#88

Post by daniel-cussen »

mantenpanther wrote: post #37

I went to school in Austria in the 80s/90s. The anti-nuclear stance was a big part of education (I assume similar to Germany). We had to read stories like Die Wolke (The Cloud) and were terrified and somehow traumatized in a young age. We discussed this stuff for hours. Also a final deposit site was planned in the mountains in my area, so after Chernobyl there was a big activism against it - thousands of people conne…

Reading about you reading about nuclear and finding it disturbing, I find disturbing. Not blaming you, but yes well the thing is in fact the nuclear bomb was designed by Leo Szilard to bomb Germany, I think specifically Berlin, but at any rate the axis. The Reich. The Nazis, same thing, it was a weapon for fighting antisemitism. The bomb was for the Reich. The bomb was originally intended for bombing Central Europe, and then as a side-thing to generate power (same thing, bombs release energy, power plants release energy). And the two are linked, American power plants were designed to get energy out of uranium, so good energy, but in the process make plutonium for nukes. I'm not sure if the first power plant (I think 200 watts) turned the uranium into plutonium.

I started writing this comment with just about the opposite point of view I finished writing it with. Oh well, it happens. But energy is power, it can be used for good or evil, it's not strictly evil, and in fact if you want to do good you'll need power to do it.

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#89

Post by ivan_gammel »

hedora wrote: post #56
ivan_gammel wrote: post #33

What I read in this article is that German government did a thorough analysis, but the author dismisses the conclusions of it because the tolerated risk level there is too low and because it’s done by a minister from the Greens party. If this was written by an expert, that could make some sense, but it is not. Nuclear plant is not a startup, where you can just skip the QA part to release faster or put a not working c…

You're repeating some of the excuses the article addresses. - The author says they studied nuclear in grad school, and are probably therefore an expert. - They quantify the additional risk of meltdown due to delaying new safety regulations. It's negligible compared to operating plants according to the new regulations. - Their proposal would increase Germany's stockpile of nuclear waste by 3%, which is surely within e…

> They quantify the additional risk of meltdown due to delaying new safety regulations. It's negligible compared to operating plants according to the new regulations.

First of all, that estimate was not made by an expert, as other commenters pointed out. Second, the additional risk is created not because of new safety standards, but also from all other factors where deviation from standard procedures could accelerate the process. This risk is hard to quantify, it can materialize in unexpected ways (just like nobody expected Chernobyl or Fukushima) and it will cost such rich and densely populated country as Germany trillions. The choice between „you may loose everything but Russia will suffer next year“ and „let’s try something else to actually stop the war“ has pretty obvious outcome.

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#90

Post by dathinab »

gostirig wrote: post #53
andbberger wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not to feed the troll but... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

Nuclear waste is, from my perspective, one of the most discussed aspects of turning off nuclear power in germany. It's a complicated matter, that sparked a lot of controversy between german states. For example Bavaria doesn't want it in their back yard, despite being geologically suited. This is an active research field with many aspects. Unfortunately this wikipedia-link-thing won't do.

It's also as far as I can tell a mostly solved question from a purely technical point of view.

Honestly the main reason it ever became that big topic in Germany this because of some catastrophically bad decisions about nuclear storage done in both east and west Germany. Worse at least in West Germany it was _known_ (by the people involved in making it) to be a idiotic decision and seem to have been done mainly to spite eastern Germany...

Post reply on HN