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Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

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

#241

Post by kleene_op »

photochemsyn wrote: post #145
steve_taylor wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't battery storage the baseload solution for renewable power? And it doesn't have to be lithium batteries, there are cheaper alternatives if you don't need the batteries to be that small.

I keep hearing this battery argument but I have yet to see a single country backup its whole network with those.

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

#242

Post by bayesian_horse »

barry-cotter wrote: post #107
ivan_gammel wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. You know everyone who died from Fukushima died from the evacuation not radiation, right? You know more people are killed in Germany every year from coal pollution than have died as a result of Chernobyl in total?

If nobody provably died because of the Fukushima accident, it was because of expansive and costly evacuations. The Japanese minstry of trade estimates the cost of the cleanup to $187 billion, though I'm not sure if that really includes everything. And that number is certainly not the upper bound on what could happen when other plants have similar or worse accidents.

It's a very small risk with a huge downside. The fact that scientists have consistently underestimated the likelihood of these events - even though so far there has never been one caused by ill intent - is not reassuring.

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

#243

Post by encryptluks2 »

Toine wrote: post #239
bayesian_horse wrote: post #237

That reads like a nuclear-fan-boy article. No, we can't just waive security requirements to modernize the old plants and keep them save. No, I don't see where you could eliminate all the Russian gas just with those reactors already standing. The war in Ukraine remains us of one thing: You don't want unpredictable things to happen around a nuclear plant. Nuclear power can be relatively cheap. If you subsidize it heavi…

Honestly, I would gladly take 10 major Chernobyl-style accidents each year than what's coming with climate change. It's way, way worse.

I don't think that either is good, but what you think is coming could potentially be delayed or stopped still. Once there is a nuclear meltdown the long-term damage is basically irreversible, not to mention the people that could die or have their lives changed which has a very real impact

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

#244

Post by pigeonhole123 »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #240
jandrewrogers wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without disagreeing per se, some of the reasoning is dubious. Studying something in grad school likely makes you familiar, not an expert. I would be skeptical of anyone without at least a decade of industry experience. No one becomes an expert by going to grad school; you have to build real things under real constraints. I went through a selective hard sciences program (coincidentally including nuclear chemistry) and…

Ah yes, completely unscientific... Like the Russian soldiers who dug trenches in the "red forest" near Tschernobyl, got radiation poisoning and scattered the stuff all over the place where people still have to work to contain the impossible accident that happend decades ago. Yes, things like that and "Oh, from now on nothing will happen, science says so!"scares the shit out of people. Anti-scientific? There is just n…

I don’t think any nuclear supporter would call Chernobyl impossible. Rather inevitable. Same as what will happen if we don’t go nuclear.

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

#245

Post by Beldin »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #237

That reads like a nuclear-fan-boy article. No, we can't just waive security requirements to modernize the old plants and keep them save. No, I don't see where you could eliminate all the Russian gas just with those reactors already standing. The war in Ukraine remains us of one thing: You don't want unpredictable things to happen around a nuclear plant. Nuclear power can be relatively cheap. If you subsidize it heavi…

> Stopping the import of Russian gas now instead of allowing more time does absolutely nothing for Ukraine except for a little bit of moral support, while tanking the German economy. Russia is already in a downward spiral.

You truly believe that stopping to transfer multiple millions a day to Russia will not have any effect in how it spends money? Even though, in your words, they're in a downwards spiral?

Russia is financially teetering on the edge of bankruptcy (if they haven't gone over yet). Wars are expensive. The absolute best the EU could do right now to affect the war is to stop purchasing Russian gas for a week. Sure, that will have repercussions inside the EU. It'll also significantly cut into the resources available to Russia to spend on the war.

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

#246

Post by bayesian_horse »

barry-cotter wrote: post #207
croes wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depending on politicians - or anyone's - ability to completely eliminate that risk is completely naive.

And that's why scientists (and politicians listening to them) have consistently underestimated the risks. Scientists somehow think it is not their job to account for Human error, fallibility or even depravity (see Russians attacking nuclear plants in Ukraine).

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

#247

Post by jandrewrogers »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #240
jandrewrogers wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without disagreeing per se, some of the reasoning is dubious. Studying something in grad school likely makes you familiar, not an expert. I would be skeptical of anyone without at least a decade of industry experience. No one becomes an expert by going to grad school; you have to build real things under real constraints. I went through a selective hard sciences program (coincidentally including nuclear chemistry) and…

Ah yes, completely unscientific... Like the Russian soldiers who dug trenches in the "red forest" near Tschernobyl, got radiation poisoning and scattered the stuff all over the place where people still have to work to contain the impossible accident that happend decades ago. Yes, things like that and "Oh, from now on nothing will happen, science says so!"scares the shit out of people. Anti-scientific? There is just n…

You realize that this is not a coherent and rational response, yes? You don't address anything, you just throw out oddly random straw men. Maybe I am incorrect but nothing you wrote would contribute to that discussion.

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

#248

Post by sam_lowry_ »

godelski wrote: post #194
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.

It's important to note that Chernobyl and Fukushima have quite different (multiple!) causal factors leading to their meltdowns. Chernobyl was mostly do to highly secretive nature of nuclear (with information actively being suppressed by the Soviet Union), lack of safety equipment, poor staffing, poor response time, and a lack of knowledge of physics (xenon spiking). People mostly chalk it up to incompetence, but sayi…

2 people died in Chernobyl at explosion time, 28 in the coming months, 30 in the coming years.

None died in Fukushima.

As far as people's lives are concerned, the death toll of the war in Ukraine is already two orders of magnitude higher.

Economic costs are incomparable too.

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

#249

Post by bayesian_horse »

dkbrk wrote: post #84
fabian2k wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We have a responsibility to future generations. Which is a really long time, considering the half-life involved.

"Secure and easily monitored" doesn't account for: Natural disasters, human error or human depravity (sabotage, shooting, terrorism etc). And what if the government breaks down for some reason? If for any reason the "securely and safely monitoring" gets neglected...

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

#250

Post by diordiderot »

ajmurmann wrote: post #232
diordiderot wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a great answer and well thought out! Thanks for taking the time. My only rebuttal is heat pumps can heat the air directly. No need for a radiator or plumbing.

But German homes already have pipes to move hot water for heating. German homes also usually are made of concrete or stone, not wood sticks and sheet rock. It would be an enormous effort to put air ducts in that instead. If that's even possible. A quite frankly most Germans wouldn't want air to be blow around their rooms. All Germans who visit my home in the US are weirded out by the blown air and also complain about…

> also usually are made of concrete or stone, not wood sticks and sheet rock

Touché

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