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

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

#201

Post by hedora » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:46 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…

You just need to run compressor lines (or cold air exhaust) from the heat pump to outside. All gas powered heaters have chimneys to exhaust carbon monoxide. I suspect there's a solution there for worst-case scenarios.

Most of the time, you just punch a small hole in an exterior wall, and run the compressor lines through that.

Edit: regarding supply, millions of heat pump hot water heaters and millions of air to air heat pumps are sold each year:

https://www.iea.org/reports/heat-pumps

They generally cost under $10,000, so some military could jusy buy the world supply for $10-100B and ship them to Europe. The US military could find that in its couch cushions.

However, Germany usually only installs 10,000's per year; more installers would be needed.

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

#202

Post by Tomte » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:49 AM UTC

seoaeu wrote: post #188

munk-a wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest ask the article is making in an unreasonable way is to somehow find millions of contractors who can actually go home by home and refit the heating systems in a timescale that'd actually be relevant for the war in ukraine. If Germany wanted to switch everyone over to a different kind of lightbulb they'd need to ensure the production capacity to make the new bulb exists and set up logistics to actua…

In some buildings, installing a heat pump is "only" a matter of swapping out one large appliance with another (since you're able to reuse the ducts, etc.) but that's still widely expensive and logistically complicated to do on scale of a country.

In America. Heating/cooling ducts and "outdoor units" that could be swapped are very rare in Germany. We use mostly radiators, and in newer buildings in-floor heating.

Both are based on warm water pipes.

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

#203

Post by harha » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:51 AM UTC

riedel wrote: post #196

harha wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been to Germany? As a non-German who has lived there, I wouldn’t trust government to make good well-founded decisions in the interest of their voters.

It typically is sufficient if German voters trust their government's decision. Sure you can argue for another smart dictator, but the German majority IMHO is backing the anti nuclear course of their government. The question currently is not gas vs nuclear at the moment. Building new reactors does not make any sense, given the current risk/cost/value IMHO: https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/ Running the remaining reac…

Smart dictator isn't typically a sustainable strategy, there are democracies that do much better, the most typical example being Switzerland.

My impression is that this is a typical German reply to criticism, yes there are worse cases, but it's not helpful to find a worse comparison if you want to grow.

From my outsider view and having lived in a bunch of places, I don't have the impression that the German government is doing a good service to their citizens (and definitely not to expats in high earning jobs). The policy around nuclear power and coal is making Europe as a whole less stable and prosperous (again, my view).

Anyhow, not going to argue with a German, best decision I've made was to leave, worst was to move there in the first place.

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

#204

Post by godelski » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:56 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #129

dkbrk wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You say that with great confidence, can you give any examples where people have securely stored highly dangerous things for 100s or 1000s of years?

Most of the waste is inert after a decade. 58% is Very low level waste, 34% low level, 9% intermediate, and only 0.03% is high level[0]. Only the high level needs long term storage and deep geological repositories are well suited for this[1]. These big cask storage containers are mostly holding low and intermediate level waste. High level is often stored in the reactor or in another pool.

Mind you, in comparison the waste of gas is CO2, which is creating an existential crisis. (There's also other wastes like lead and heavy metals, from anything electronic, that need to be stored _forever_. Lead and heavy metals don't decay. They are dangerous forever.)

[0] https://nda.blog.gov.uk/2017/04/03/how-much-radioactive-wast...

[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html

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

#205

Post by Helmut10001 » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:57 AM UTC

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…

Correct. From a German perspective, it is also easier to support France in maintaining its Nuclear Power Plants (and focus on renewables at home), than to resurrect the few German ones.

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

#206

Post by dataflow » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:59 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #198

dataflow wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author says they studied nuclear in grad school, and are probably therefore an expert. That's not how it works. Just going to grad school (and it appears this is just for a Master's) doesn't imply you're suddenly an expert on an entire discipline . Even full professors don't generally claim to be experts in their entire fields; they become experts in their niches sub-fields/areas of research. You'd need to know…

> That's not how it works. Just going to grad school (and it appears this is just for a Master's) doesn't imply you're suddenly an expert on an entire discipline. I think it makes you pretty knowledgeable. Expert is a bit vague. Many would consider expertise in having extensive knowledge beyond that of the public. If he studied in undergrad he'd have this. He'd get more in grad school. But if we're talking expert as…

I don't think the line between "expert" and "knowledgeable" is in any way blurry enough for it to affect this discussion. For something as serious as nuclear power plants and their safety (not to mention political factors), I don't think "let's expect considerably more than a Master's degree in nuclear engineering... we need an expert" is a remotely controversial statement or a movement of any goalpost. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what the public sentiment/goalposts have been and will continue to be on this issue.

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

#207

Post by barry-cotter » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 3:01 AM UTC

croes wrote: post #193

hedora wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, Chernobyl was due to a completely incompetent plant manager. They intentionally disabled many fail safes in order to get the plant into a vulnerable state.

And how can we avoid incompetence in the future?

Don’t have the politicians in charge tell people to over ride multiple safety procedures. Actually pay attention to safety in some fashion.

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

#208

Post by danamit » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 3:04 AM UTC

hedora wrote: post #197

raphaelj wrote: post #153

> 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…

Accident one (Chernobyl): The plant manager disabled multiple safety overrides (including the one that would provide power to drop the rods if the turbines went into emergency shutdown), then ran above rated capacity to see how far he could push it. This caused the turbines to stop generating power. Without backup power, rod control shut down. I argue this is not the fault of the plant designer or technology. With en…

Judging by your numbers, is if we had 12,500 plants in the world we will have a disaster every year.

Also considering human error, I don't see more plants equaling less human errors, needing more workers my drop the quality of workers. No one wants Homer Simpson running their local plant.

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

#209

Post by oska » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 3:15 AM UTC

This is a highly biased article. It makes assertions that are unproven and have been highly propagandised.

> Since the Bucha massacre was made public

There is no proof that the people killed in Bucha were killed by departing Russian troops. The Russians are suggesting that the killings were of 'Russian friendly' Ukrainians, killed after the troops left. We won't know what actually happened until a proper inquiry has been done; not feverish reporting from a highly biased US/European press based on Ukrainian govt. claims.

> While Putin and his army destroy Ukraine and commit genocide

There has been no genocide committed in Ukraine. This is a clearly false claim.

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

#210

Post by danamit » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 3:15 AM UTC

zxspectrum1982 wrote: post #40

The best moment to start building a nuclear plant was 10 years ago. The next best moment is today.

There isn't enough nuclear fuel in the world, nuclear energy is at best experimental sandbox hobbyist sciency stuff. It will not scale in the world, the moment we start all building them it will be hella expensive.