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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

#401

Post by ivan_gammel »

belorn wrote: post #394
ivan_gammel wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disasters like flood or fire don’t usually render large areas uninhabitable - people can return home, rebuild and live as usual. Nuclear incidents on the contrary have long term economic effects and public health dangers. My Russian grandfather died from cancer after unknowingly spending some time in unrestricted area of radioactive fallout 15 years after the incident (see Mayak plant [1] and Techa river [2]). The lo…

The discussion around Fukushima is not about the loss of land that got rendered uninhabitable, it is exclusively focused on the loss of life. If you want to change the discussion into be about the loss of land we also need to consider how an hydro power dam changes the landscape, turning habitable land into uninhabitable lakes or turning arid land into deserts by changing water flows. For the amount of energy that nu…

>The discussion around Fukushima is not about the loss of land that got rendered uninhabitable, it is exclusively focused on the loss of life.

This conversation is happening in response to my mentioning of Fukushima (see the thread above). I did not focus exclusively on the loss of life and do not see why the discussion should be restricted to that topic.

Nevertheless, "uninhabitable" means people cannot live there so it's still within your frame. You cannot live in the area with significant radioactivity without risking your life. Loss of life can be prevented by quickly moving people from the dangerous area, but this is also undesirable. This is not comparable to environmental effects related to construction of dams or mining activities, because those can be estimated in advance and mitigations including resettling can be planned. This is also the reason why new mining projects in Germany are rarely happening and there's ongoing process to stop mining coal. If you want to account for possible radioactive fallout from a nuclear plant incident and plan mitigations in advance, there's simply no place in Germany where you could put a circle with 30-50 km radius and just remove all people from there. Practically all land in Germany is covered by urban areas, agricultural lands or natural reserves - increased risks associated with extension of timeline for existing reactors without major and time-consuming investment are unacceptable there.

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

#402

Post by someguydave »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #253
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.

To me the likelihood of even the remaining nuclear reactors having serious accidents is higher than Russia trying something successfully against Germany. You can say to Putin: "You and what army?" It looks like virtually any NATO member state would be able to defend itself alone against the conventional army of Russia, much less with allied help. Nuclear weapons is another topic, but those won't be affected by short…

Can you actually quantify these risks like the article does?

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

#403

Post by someguydave »

lispm wrote: post #169
someguydave wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that grid solar (not wind) is cheaper per kWh produced. But: 1) there are real problems with solar lacking nighttime production 2) the nuclear plants in question in Germany are mostly already functional and for the most part just need to be turned back on. That is much different than new construction of a nuclear plant

Nuclear power plants would only replace some gas power plants for electricity production. There aren't many able to be turned on again. More Russian gas and oil is used in transport and heating. Nuclear power plants play no role in providing energy for heating, transport, and similar in Germany.

So it would only do some good, therefore don’t do it?

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

#404

Post by fintechjock »

_ph_ wrote: post #295
fintechjock wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That is compeletely wrong. Producing too much electricity is equally destabilizing the grid as producing not enough. That is, why gas is needed as it can be switched very quickly. Of course, you could decide just to switch off renewable source (which is very easy, they are the quickest switchable sources) a lot of time, but that would make energy production really expensive.

Your premise is true, but you aren't looking at the context at all.

France gets 70% of their energy production from nuclear and they are not dealing with destabilization. Germany never crossed the 30% mark. They can drastically increase their nuclear to actually deal with the destabilization problem that they do have.

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

#405

Post by Xylakant »

someguydave wrote: post #400
Xylakant wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make the point a little clearer - natural gas is an important resource for the chemical industry, for example input to the Haber-Bosch synthesis of Ammonia. The Hydrogen used is mostly gained from methane, that is natural gas. Ammonia is fundamental in producing fertilizer - cutting of natural gas could severely reduce fertilizer production, at a time when two of the largest grain exporters are at war and unlikely…

Sure but the article says 30% of Russian gas is used for electricity which is fungible with other electric production - nobody denies that Germany needs gas for other things. Although if greens in Germany were actually committed to reducing energy use they would have subsidized converting buildings from gas heat to using heat pumps instead of subsidizing solar production in Germany.

Gas in electricity production is mostly not used for base load - it’s peaker plants that need to spin up and adjust load within minutes. Nuclear replaces coal, not gas in most use cases.

Heat pumps are subsidized in germany.

And if you want to blame the greens - they’ve been the most vocal party asking for energy independence, subsidizing energy efficient technologies and were very vocal against nord-stream 2. It’s just that they weren’t in power at all in the last decade.

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

#406

Post by fmajid »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #124
fmajid wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where in France?

Paris outskirts, halfway between Versailles and St Germain en Laye. They did have to install an external compressor/heat exchanger unit which would have been harder if they didn’t own a single-family detached home.

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

#407

Post by _ph_ »

fintechjock wrote: post #404
_ph_ wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is compeletely wrong. Producing too much electricity is equally destabilizing the grid as producing not enough. That is, why gas is needed as it can be switched very quickly. Of course, you could decide just to switch off renewable source (which is very easy, they are the quickest switchable sources) a lot of time, but that would make energy production really expensive.

Your premise is true, but you aren't looking at the context at all. France gets 70% of their energy production from nuclear and they are not dealing with destabilization. Germany never crossed the 30% mark. They can drastically increase their nuclear to actually deal with the destabilization problem that they do have.

Germany does nogt have a destabilization problem. I have not said, that it is impossible to have a stable grid based on nuclear power, I have pointed out the problems if you have mainly renewables and try to support them with nuclear power. France has only a little amount of renewables, so the grid is mostly tuned towards nuclear plus water and gas for short term fluctuations. France doesn't have any plans laid out what to do, when their aging fleet of nuclear powers would need to be replaced. For now, they are just prolonging the run times of their existing reactor - only one is currently in construction, but their total count is 58. They just had huge troubles when about 4 reactors had to be taken off grid due to emergency repairs.

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

#408

Post by someguydave »

Xylakant wrote: post #405
someguydave wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but the article says 30% of Russian gas is used for electricity which is fungible with other electric production - nobody denies that Germany needs gas for other things. Although if greens in Germany were actually committed to reducing energy use they would have subsidized converting buildings from gas heat to using heat pumps instead of subsidizing solar production in Germany.

Gas in electricity production is mostly not used for base load - it’s peaker plants that need to spin up and adjust load within minutes. Nuclear replaces coal, not gas in most use cases. Heat pumps are subsidized in germany. And if you want to blame the greens - they’ve been the most vocal party asking for energy independence, subsidizing energy efficient technologies and were very vocal against nord-stream 2. It’s j…

Nevertheless, more base load means less peak plant use.

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

#409

Post by dzikimarian »

nl wrote: post #386
dzikimarian wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it was present, like in any authoritarian system. But you can see that the scale of fuckups for these two is nowhere near of each other. Modern evidence is Ukrainian war, which Russians believed, can win in 48 hours.

I'm not sure what side of the argument you are on. My point is that authoritarian regimes are possible anywhere; they lead to information being surpressed; and this could be dangerous in the case of nuclear reactors. The example of Russia seems an excellent example of the same pattern.

Not sure if I have to pick a side. Usually there's some truth at both ends. :-)

My point is, that chance of USSR-like regime in western Europe are pretty low, and being afraid to do anything, because it might be used by this hypothetical regime will probably cause more harm than good.

For eg. right now we're feeding Russia with money, which is guaranteed to be bad for us in the long run. I assume we are doing that, because it will be easier to find single scapegoat for nuclear plant failure, than for years of bad foreign politics.

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

#410

Post by Xylakant »

someguydave wrote: post #408
Xylakant wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas in electricity production is mostly not used for base load - it’s peaker plants that need to spin up and adjust load within minutes. Nuclear replaces coal, not gas in most use cases. Heat pumps are subsidized in germany. And if you want to blame the greens - they’ve been the most vocal party asking for energy independence, subsidizing energy efficient technologies and were very vocal against nord-stream 2. It’s j…

Nevertheless, more base load means less peak plant use.

That’s not how base load/peak load works. You can’t just increase the base power output - that would lead to too much more electricity in the network, you need to balance the energy provided with the energy used. That’s exactly why you need peak load plants that can follow the load curve quickly. Gas turbines and water turbines can do that, thermal power plants cannot. They’re too sluggish.
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