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Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

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

#261

Post by ximm »

> Green is good, but it’s also more focused on the environment than on geopolitics. Maybe it’s biased more towards the environment than it should be in a geopolitical crisis?

I think the author has this backwards. Climate change will cause more and more crises. Those will distract us from fighting climate change and therefore accelerate it further.

Keeping a cool head and not forgetting about the environment during war is exactly what I expect from a serious politician. It is not about prioritizing one over the other, it is about seeing them in context.

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

#262

Post by bayesian_horse »

pigeonhole123 wrote: post #244
bayesian_horse wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've heard a lot of supporters who generally disregard the possibility of future such accidents happening. Certainly you wouldn't want it to happen anywhere near you?

And there is no clear, scientific reasoning that nuclear power is safer than the best mix of alternatives. First of all, any calculation to that regard is horrendously complicated on the nuclear side. Second of all, it always depends on the likelihoods observed in the past. There better be nobody sabotaging a nuclear plant, or stealing waste material for a dirty bomb and so on. Because that's impossible to calculate, so it is entirely reasonable to err on the side of caution.

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

#263

Post by bayesian_horse »

Beldin wrote: post #245
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 f…

You are lying. I did not say "it will not have any effect on Russia's spending".

Clearly, it would have. But not in the military, certainly not in the short term.

Russia can be completely bankrupt and still keep destroying all of Ukraine for years. A year to phase out all Russian imports? With most of it gone a lot sooner? Not that big a deal.

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

#264

Post by lispm »

99_00 wrote: post #216
lispm wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why wouldn't they? You were claiming that Germany is funding the Putin regime. The US does that too. It bought oil and are still buying uranium from Russia. > You seem to be suggesting that a direct pipeline is equivalent to buying from the global market. It isn't. For funding the Putin regime it is not interesting where the US was buying Russian energy. The US funded Putin, too. Trump did that, too.

And I said they were right to fund them because they are not a threat. What's your point?

What you say makes no sense. Russia has been and is a threat to the US.

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

#265

Post by bayesian_horse »

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.

Nuclear power is just not that scaleable when you think through the implications. To stop climate change, you'd need a huge multiplication of nuclear industry. You'd need plants everywhere. All major cities in the industrialized world. And in developing countries. All of them, including those you wouldn't trust to officiate a child's birthday party without corruption and mismanagement.

All of that assumes none of those countries start using their new nuclear industry to get nuclear weapons. The world is unsafe as it is with some rogue/rogue-ish states having them. And dirty bombs are even easier, especially with all the nuclear waste being produced and stored... somewhere.

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

#266

Post by dzikimarian »

kelnos wrote: post #165
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.

I think human error is one of the kinds of error it's really hard to work around. You are always going to have people who make mistakes or even intentionally cut corners or do unsafe things, depending on the circumstances. Would I expect a German plant to be run in a safer manner in the 2020s than a Soviet Ukrainian plant in the 1980s? Sure, absolutely. Both because of the design of the plants, and because of the dif…

Chernobyl was no error per se. It was conscious decision with political background, possible, because entire system of values in USSR was upside down. In normal country there would be no reason to do any of that.

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

#267

Post by troppl »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #257
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...

Opposition to nuclear power isn't a political ideology. You aren't for or against nuclear power because you don't generally like the people who are against nuclear power. I don't see the major arguments against nuclear power being negated by either climate change or the war in Ukraine. So no, there is no mistake. Nuclear power isn't the right way forward for Germany.

> Opposition to nuclear power isn't a political

Sorry, I don't get this. Of course your opposition on something can be based on ideology. That is the case if your opposition is more based on your history and tradition than on current facts.

I personally think that there are enough facts to say that nuclear is not really a great option, but I also think that the Green's opposition is based more on ideology (i.e. because they have been historically against it) than on facts. For me, that is evident when they talk more about nuclear risks in general than about financial considerations.

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

#269

Post by ivan_gammel »

hedora wrote: post #150
ivan_gammel wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being expert in this case means being familiar with the current situation in German nuclear industry and knowing it from the inside. Just knowing how nuclear plant works in theory is not enough.

He read the primary sources, including the German government's risk assessments for these plants.

In order to challenge these risk assessments he must know the specifics in detail. Just reading some public documents does not make him an expert.

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

#270

Post by dzikimarian »

Ma8ee wrote: post #228
barry-cotter wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So as long as we make sure that only competent and sane people get elected to political posts, we are safe. That will make me sleep well at nights.

If you're assuming that political situation will come anywhere near this known from communist block, then random nuclear plant failure is probably pretty low on the list of the issues they caused. Much more people died due to simply saying something against propaganda than as a result of Chernobyl.

I know that politicians suck, but if we do everything assuming that next Stalin and Lenin are inevitable, then even knfie production starts to look suspicious.

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