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Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

spiegel.de

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Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#31

Post by DrBazza »

schroeding wrote: post #23
cycomanic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well more of Europe's Uranium comes from Russia than Germanys gas. It is not like Germany has vast Uranium reserves. When the Green/Social Democrat coalition under Schröder decided on stopping nuclear the idea was to largely exchange that for renewables (and the German wind and solar industry was leading in the world at the time). This would have been a much bigger step toward energy independence. The coal, nuclear a…

> It is not like Germany has vast Uranium reserves. ... actually we do, around 130.000 tonnes of it[1,2]. Of course not as vast as some other countries, but still substantial. We just don't mine and refine it anymore. I don't know if this should be an actual argument pro nuclear, but we have it. The GDR / DDR even supplied the Soviet Union with Uranium via SDAG Wismut[2]. [1] https://infcis.iaea.org/UDEPO/Statistics/…

Best link I could find mentions Russia as well as all the other countries.

See the uranium mining section.

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#32

Post by Brigand »

cgb223 wrote: post #6

Can any Germans on HN explain why Germany finds it preferable to give up their energy independence in nuclear and instead buy it from their potential adversary in Russia? What possible advantages are there to buying the resource that literally keeps the lights on from a country that you have conflicts with?

Aren’t renewables already more cost effective than nuclear?

See for example here: https://energycentral.com/c/ec/comparing-costs-renewable-and...

Storage issues might be solved before new nuclear plants go online at the current pace of progress.

Perhaps a few years of gas until the renewable infrastructure is set up will suffice? At least the issue does not seem to be as clear cut as most people claim they are.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#33

Post by machtfurden »

btilly wrote: post #5
hunglee2 wrote: post #2

unfortunately, as energy strategy is a multi-decadal commitment, the decisions on what to do should not be left to mercurial changes in popular sentiment

So are you saying that Germany should continue its multi-decadal course towards being dependent on Russia for its energy needs? As Winston Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried." Yes, its shortcomings are obvious. But it is still worth accepting.

No post body was provided.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#34

Post by AnonCoward42 »

cgb223 wrote: post #6

Can any Germans on HN explain why Germany finds it preferable to give up their energy independence in nuclear and instead buy it from their potential adversary in Russia? What possible advantages are there to buying the resource that literally keeps the lights on from a country that you have conflicts with?

I am not sure anymore if we can agree on this, but current fission implementations are an added threat - and not a small one - to any climate change that occurs. In addition: To this day, we do not have a single final depot for nuclear waste.

Now, that is the anti-nuclear side of things, however CO2 is also a problem which we also don't want and this leads to the shutdown of the other potential sources of energy and we don't have a proper replacement for them either (wind and sun are not reliable sources).

In summary, we Germans want to swim, but don't want to get wet.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#35

Post by cycomanic »

It is interesting to note how everyone talks about the dependency on gas in Germany, while nobody mentions France. If we look at the two graphs: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/En...

https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/abm6r4/germanys_en...

We can see that both Germany and France use about the same percentage of gas in their energy mix. Making this discussion a reason to revive nuclear is quite dishonest.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#36

Post by dark-star »

cgb223 wrote: post #6

Can any Germans on HN explain why Germany finds it preferable to give up their energy independence in nuclear and instead buy it from their potential adversary in Russia? What possible advantages are there to buying the resource that literally keeps the lights on from a country that you have conflicts with?

Because the Green Party (which was founded as direct result of the Chernobyl desaster) has been pushing their irrational agenda against nuclear power. They deliberately ignored any scientific arguments that were even slightly in favor of nuclear.

The Greens have brought some very necessary ecological improvements that would otherwise not have happened (probably), but their continuous crusade against anything nuclear, ignoring scientific findings and statistics, is just annoying at this point

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#37

Post by Cwizard »

osigurdson wrote: post #20
ren_engineer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because their anti-nuclear environmental groups were actually being funded by Russia behind the scenes. And there are still fools who think that economic integration somehow prevents wars, which was shown to be false after WWI. These people said if Europe just paid a bunch of money for Russian energy they'd obviously never attack them. See what's happening with China and the US as more proof that handing over your ec…

Not German, but I suspect memories of Fukushima and Chernobyl could be weighing on the minds of some. Perhaps this is an irrational concern but people are not necessarily rational - particularly when randomly polled on topics they know little about.

What I don’t understand is how those two incidents are even relevant. Chernobyl happened because of a faulty design + mismanagement and Fukushima was located on a region prone to earthquakes/tsunami’s caused by earthquakes. The factors do not really apply to Germany. And even if it did, the deaths caused by those accidents were quite low. Meanwhile coal pollution is killing people by the thousands but this is somehow ok?

I think the sole reason the west moved away from Nuclear is because it sounds scary and because the oil countries had a strong interest in maintaining the non-nuclear status quo.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#38

Post by swsieber »

cycomanic wrote: post #35

It is interesting to note how everyone talks about the dependency on gas in Germany, while nobody mentions France. If we look at the two graphs: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/En... https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/abm6r4/germanys_en... We can see that both Germany and France use about the same percentage of gas in their energy mix. Making this discussion a reason to revive nuclear…

Considering that France has been increasing the amount of nuclear in their mix, I think it's worth discussing nuclear for Germany and renewable for France.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#39

Post by lispm »

cgb223 wrote: post #6

Can any Germans on HN explain why Germany finds it preferable to give up their energy independence in nuclear and instead buy it from their potential adversary in Russia? What possible advantages are there to buying the resource that literally keeps the lights on from a country that you have conflicts with?

Germany buys natural gas (and Oil, Coal) from Russia. That's mostly used in heating and industry production. There are some gas power plants, often also producing heat.

Nuclear power plants are mostly only used for electricity production.

The "light" is less of a problem, the real problem is "heating". Homes often use natural gas for heating, warm water and cooking.

Btw., there is a large dependence on Russia for Uranium: https://www.intellinews.com/radioactive-central-europe-remai...

Even the US buys from Russia.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#40

Post by [deleted] »

lispm wrote: post #39
cgb223 wrote: post #6

Can any Germans on HN explain why Germany finds it preferable to give up their energy independence in nuclear and instead buy it from their potential adversary in Russia? What possible advantages are there to buying the resource that literally keeps the lights on from a country that you have conflicts with?

Germany buys natural gas (and Oil, Coal) from Russia. That's mostly used in heating and industry production. There are some gas power plants, often also producing heat. Nuclear power plants are mostly only used for electricity production. The "light" is less of a problem, the real problem is "heating". Homes often use natural gas for heating, warm water and cooking. Btw., there is a large dependence on Russia for Ura…

[deleted]
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