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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

#431

Post by freemint »

kdbeall_ wrote: post #130
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #121

Gas and nuclear have one very important difference: Gas is among the technologies that allow adjusting generation the fastest, nuclear is the slowest. To mix it with renewables, you need at least some reasonably fast capacity. How much of the gas generation capacity is baseload capacity that could be replaced with nuclear?

Nuclear is not suited for peaker plants. It probably never will be. The fuel is a small part of the cost of a nuclear plant. This is why battery tech is key to energy transition. If lithium-sulfur batteries can be produced at scale, we won't have as much of an issue with the intermittent nature of solar and wind.

Why Lithium Sulfur?

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

#432

Post by freemint »

akvadrako wrote: post #307
danamit wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is enough Uranium in the Earth's crust to power the whole planet for about 92 million years. - 65e15 kg = Uranium in Earth's crust - 709000 MJ/kg = energy density of natural U² - 500e12 MJ = 500 million TJ annual global energy usage - 92e6 = 65e15 × 709e3 / 500e12 It's actually very common and it's only a small cost component anyway. Including all processing, it accounts for less than one cent per kWh.

Let's keep it down there in case we need it if we are flung out of the solar system or something like that. The sun will not send us a bill.

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

#433

Post by fit2rule »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #271
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.

I’m German currently living in Berlin and I think government here isn’t that bad, compared to other countries :)

No post body was provided.

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

#434

Post by godelski »

7952 wrote: post #346
godelski wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Surely an expert actually does work to come to conclusions. They build a team, write papers, do research etc. Follow an objective process.

My main point here is that the gp said "op isn't an expert because they don't have xyz qualifications so can't criticize these experts (who also don't have xyz qualifications)". It's the inconsistency.

Also, the piece is at such a high level that it really doesn't take a lot of expertise to write. The summary of the article is "I'd rather take the risks of nuclear by restarting our existing nuclear infrastructure rather than to continue to fund the Russian war machine." That's really it. He gives more support and tries to sound scientific, but it's just an opinion and the guy is an actual expert in marketing. Seems fair enough.

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

#435

Post by JamesBarney »

Retric wrote: post #32
JamesBarney wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Moving the goalposts doesn’t actually solve this issue. If you can’t conceive of a situation that having a nuclear power plant inside your country is dangerous you simply don’t know enough about them. Sabotage of a spent fuel cooling pond could get really nasty. It’s not the kind of risk anyone is taking that seriously for reasons I agree with, but it’s definitely possible.

Having your adversary supply all of the fuel your factories, cities, tanks, trucks, and aircraft run on is also exceedingly dangerous, much more so than the threat of them sabotaging a nuclear reactor.

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

#436

Post by hef19898 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #413
hef19898 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you know that there is no reliable casualty count from Chernobyl? The Soviets didn't count and follow up, nobody else wanted to do that neither. And long term effects, e.g. highe cancer rates, are extremely hard to quabtify and correlate woth a singluar event.

> According to the official, internationally recognised death toll, just 31 people died as an immediate result of Chernobyl while the UN estimates that only 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the disaster. In 2005, it predicted a further 4,000 might eventually die as a result of the radiation exposure https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-kno...

Official =|= reliable

The USSR, and successor states, lost track of the liquidators, completely. It helped in not paying them. The West was fine with it, it made it easier to sell nuclear as save. It also meant that any Liquidator who died of conplications after Chernobyl was most likely not included in official figures, because nobody officially counted him as having been there in the first place.

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

#437

Post by kdbeall_ »

freemint wrote: post #431
kdbeall_ wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is not suited for peaker plants. It probably never will be. The fuel is a small part of the cost of a nuclear plant. This is why battery tech is key to energy transition. If lithium-sulfur batteries can be produced at scale, we won't have as much of an issue with the intermittent nature of solar and wind.

Why Lithium Sulfur?

Energy density and availability of materials. Li-S ballpark is 550 Wh/kg while conventional lithium-ion is around 200 Wh/kg. Using nickel, cobalt, and other expensive metals is not scalable.

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

#438

Post by mike_d »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #355
mike_d wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The baseload solution for renewables is nuclear. Most of the "concerns" people have are the result of propaganda and lobbying by the American Petroleum Institute. Most of the original flower power anti-nuclear groups were funded by oil.

> Most of the original flower power anti-nuclear groups were funded by oil. Where does that come from? I'm pretty sure I wasn't funded by anyone when I protested against the building of the Torness station on a site of special scientific interest (SSSI).

David Bower is the most notable example. He was the executive director of the Sierra Club in the late 60s early 70s and was a strong supporter of the clubs "Atoms Not Dams" initiative to protect natural waterways.

Suddenly he became staunchly anti-nuclear and tried to create enough chaos to destroy the club. After failing to do so, he left to start a competing organization called Friends of the Earth that was anti-nuclear first environmentalism second. They went on to fund and facilitate protests and anti-nuclear action around the world.

It was later discovered he received half a million dollars (about $7m today) from the CEO of ARCO around the time all the trouble started.

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

#439

Post by kdbeall_ »

akvadrako wrote: post #307
danamit wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is enough Uranium in the Earth's crust to power the whole planet for about 92 million years. - 65e15 kg = Uranium in Earth's crust - 709000 MJ/kg = energy density of natural U² - 500e12 MJ = 500 million TJ annual global energy usage - 92e6 = 65e15 × 709e3 / 500e12 It's actually very common and it's only a small cost component anyway. Including all processing, it accounts for less than one cent per kWh.

These are both pretty bad takes. We as a civilization do not mine the crust for uranium. We mine high-grade ore deposits. I think with our current resources and technologies we could sustain demand for about 100 years.

Nuclear energy is used at scale. Nuclear energy supplies ~70% of French electricity production.

What's more important is the development of nuclear technology. Not all uranium is used in current reactors. The majority of uranium is U238. If breeder reactors were developed, our existing resources could be utilized far more effectively.

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

#440

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

mdavis6890 wrote: post #54
omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been concerns about the risks of flooding to nuclear plants in Germany. https://energytransition.org/2013/06/german-nuclear-plants-f... Restarting nuclear isn't a bad idea, but it needs to be approached systematically and cautiously such that the risks from natural disasters and economic impacts are minimized, while also weighing the risks of continuing to support Russia. Unfortunately, many plants across…

Flawed logic. Closing the nuclear plants has very large, real, tangible and undeniable costs. One cannot discuss the cost of opening them while ignoring the costs of closing them.

>while also weighing the risks of continuing to support Russia.

There are many options. Specifically, Germany can...

1) Continue with BAU, which is Germany paying the costs of closing the reactors and relying on Russian gas.

2) Restart them as quickly as possible. This would minimize the costs of relying on Russia for gas, but would increase the risks of reactor problems from natural disasters.

3) Harden them for natural disasters while restarting them as quickly as possible, which costs more.

4) Use the money spent to harden them on other sources of generation/storage/load shifting/etc, which I suspect costs more.

5) Some of the above based on the specifics in each case.

In addition, Germany would still be reliant on Russian gas for other industrial uses even if nuclear/renewables/coal/storage/etc were able to completely replace gas in the grid.

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