Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by hedora » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 12:58 AM UTC

kitkat_new wrote: post #116

someguydave wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything in life is a tradeoff. To me, the risks of keeping the nuclear plants in Germany are much lower than the risks of continuing to fund Russia.

continuing the nuclear power will have almost no impact on the war or dependence to Russia. The biggest issue by far is gas

The article covers this. The electricity that would be produced by the plants is enough to offset 100% of Russian natural gas imports.

Gas and electricity are not entirely fungible, but Germany uses enough natural gas to produce electricity to cover the reduced imports.

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

#152

Post by Filligree » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 1:02 AM UTC

bozhark wrote: post #103

MauranKilom wrote: post #102

So the entire article, and also the discussion here skips over a very simple point: Nuclear power plants provide baseline loads because they can't be turned on and off at a whim, while gas power plants can scale up and down quickly to handle daily load peaks. Looking at yearly consumption graphs completely ignores the reality of the grid. Where do you get electricity from for the peaks in the morning and the evening,…

That’s not at all correct. You’re stating nuclear cannot handle load distributions. Why.

Commercial nuclear plants are designed to handle baseload, because the marginal cost to a nuclear power plant of producing power is near-zero, so this is where they have the biggest comparative advantage—or the smallest disadvantage, depending.

The technology certainly can be used for peaker plants. But at grid scale? That would be an entirely novel design. I don't think any such plants exist outside of warships.

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

#153

Post by raphaelj » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 1:02 AM UTC

> I’m lucky to understand the risks that they’re talking about

> since I studied them in grad school. They’re talking about

> a baseline risk of serious accident of around 0.001%, or

> one in 100,000 years

Why are people still referring to these numbers when talking about nuclear safety? They are obviously off by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude.

We build about 250 nuclear plants over the past 50y, and we had two disasters that displaced thousands of peoples and made huge area inhabitable for centuries.

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

#154

Post by fintechjock » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 1:08 AM UTC

MauranKilom wrote: post #102

So the entire article, and also the discussion here skips over a very simple point: Nuclear power plants provide baseline loads because they can't be turned on and off at a whim, while gas power plants can scale up and down quickly to handle daily load peaks. Looking at yearly consumption graphs completely ignores the reality of the grid. Where do you get electricity from for the peaks in the morning and the evening,…

> Where do you get electricity from for the peaks in the morning and the evening, when solar is still weak and wind may or may not be blowing? Not nuclear, for sure.

Stable supply is the answer to unstable demand. That means nuclear is the answer to this problem.

If that baseline isn’t high enough, then they need more nuclear - not less.

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

#155

Post by Pxtl » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 1:08 AM UTC

dathinab wrote: post #109

> Germany could replace gas boilers with heat pumps Given that burning gas in modern electricity gas plants (like Germany has) to power modern decent quality heat pumps is more efficient (and flexible, and future proof) then burning Gas for heating that would be the best solution. It's also completely unrealistic. Given how common gas powered house central heating is, and given that some houses have worse constructs…

AFAIK,IANAHVAC, but burning gas to power heat pumps is actually more efficient than directly hearing homes with gas heat. Heat pumps are unreasonably efficient.

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

#156

Post by hedora » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 1:09 AM UTC

ivan_gammel wrote: post #92

someguydave wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything in life is a tradeoff. To me, the risks of keeping the nuclear plants in Germany are much lower than the risks of continuing to fund Russia.

The economic effects of stopping gas consumption are not immediate for Russia due to large financial reserves and it will not stop the war. It will certainly harm Russian economy, but several months later and EU has no power to fully stop Russian exports - China is a big consumer too.

This is the beginning of a multi decade conflict. The end game is Russia becoming a North Korean style vassal state of China. Every world leader that is speaking about the conflict seems fine with this outcome.

Also, it will take a while for Russia to build enough natural gas pipelines to China.

In practice, those pipelines will be Putin's leash. (He will need China, but they have no need for him.)

I hope Ukraine maintains its independence, but it's just the first battle in a war Putin accidentally created, and will surely lose.

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

#157

Post by Retric » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 1:14 AM UTC

andbberger wrote: post #59

Retric wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not completely accurate. Nuclear is less safe than grid solar, it slightly beats rooftop solar because standing on roofs is dangerous and most solar installs are new. Hydroelectric vs nuclear is tricky because large dams save lives and by reducing flooding etc, and installing hydroelectric when building a dam is much safer than building the dam in the first place. Which makes calculating the deaths from hydroe…

the source I was looking at contradicts that, but w/e. a further consideration is that for solar/wind you have to consider energy storage associated mortality as well but I think that's besides the point. they're all on the order of 0.1 deaths/TwH. the public perception is that nuclear energy is dramatically more dangerous than other methods of energy generation. data says, it isn't. there are a lot of reasons why dr…

Yes the numbers are low, but here’s a source for comparison: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

The chart often used by pro nuclear sources comes from 2012, compares things to rooftop solar, etc. But more recent data is down as wind and solar deaths are extremely front loaded during construction.

PS: As to batteries etc. The fact nuclear power plants have hundreds of people drive to them every day is going to have associated traffic accidents over the lifetime of a power plant. Where you draw lines as associated deaths or not is somewhat subjective.

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

#158

Post by endominus » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 1:16 AM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #52

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…

> dollar spent on nuclear is a dollar that could have much more effect invested in renewables instead. The real world is made of atoms and people, not dollars. To illustrate: if starting tomorrow, every car produced was electric, it would take 20 years to replace all the cars. Given unlimited money, we could not convert all production of cars to electric in 5 years. The earliest possible switch to all electric cars i…

Even more pessimistically, stopping investment into further nuclear technology (i.e. de-emphasizing it in universities as a possible career path and indicating that demand will be falling in the open market) will accelerate its decline, and likely lead to countries becoming even more reliant on fossil fuels in the short term. The death of tooling, industry knowledge and parts manufacturing capacity specific to that industry will make nuclear plants even more unappealing. If battery tech or other energy storage takes longer than expected to come up to speed, we'll still be reliant on fossil fuels for baseload capacity. It's utopian thinking; devoting any resources to the second-best option is unacceptable, since pure renewables are just "better."

There's a saying about that line of logic, isn't there? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

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

#159

Post by PopePompus » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 1:17 AM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #14

Retric wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total war is less common than you might think. Ukraine for example isn’t a giant nuclear crater, yet they had a nuclear power plant being shelled. Meanwhile Ukraine isn’t shelling Russian civilians. So it’s quite possible for war between nuclear powers to avoid that level of escalation.

But Ukraine isn't a nuclear power. And there are no circumstances where you're better off fighting an adversary that supplies all of your energy than having your own nuclear reactors.

Yes, it doesn't have nukes anymore. I fear that one sad bit of fallout from Russia's invasion will be that no country will ever voluntarily give up nukes again.

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

#160

Post by Retric » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 1:22 AM UTC

_jal wrote: post #39

Retric wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming war will never happen is at best wishful thinking. At the point where people are attacking something in Germany that line becomes meaningless.

You seem to be replying to something I didn't say. > At the point where people are attacking something in Germany that line becomes meaningless. Exactly my point. I'm not saying desperation and ego won't drive him (along with everyone else) into the abyss, I'm saying he's savvy enough to know that right now, that line is protecting him.

Yes, it comes down to war.

Let’s assume he’s extremely unlikely to attack Germany. What about his successor, and his successor’s successor? It’s unfortunate but many “crazy” people have ended up running dictatorships.