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Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

spiegel.de

141–150 of 304 posts

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, nuclear gets free state insurance and free waste disposal (as well as a bunch of other subsidies). This is why everyone laughs when country claim their nuclear programs are "peaceful power generation projects".

It would be nice if environmental activists didn’t block us from burying the waste…

[deleted]

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#142

I'm worried Russia will cause an "accident" at a nuclear power plant in Ukraine in order to make nuclear less popular with the EU public, and keep the EU dependant on oil. I definitely wouldn't put it past them, considering all the war crimes they have committed so far.

But nuclear is safe /s

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, nuclear gets free state insurance and free waste disposal (as well as a bunch of other subsidies). This is why everyone laughs when country claim their nuclear programs are "peaceful power generation projects".

It would be nice if environmental activists didn’t block us from burying the waste…

Environmental activists and everyone else who is happy for it to be buried but not within 100miles of their house...

Plus no operator is paying for disposal, even if there were a magic place willing to accept the stuff.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#144

As a German I don't care. I just want two things: 1. The energy company pays market rate insurance for their nuclear plants. Not "we take the profit, taxpayers pay for the disaster" 2. The energy company sets up a trust to pay for the safe storage of nuclear waste and cleaning up the plant should they go bust (again "we take ...")

Quoted post unavailable.

Please don't post ideological or nationalistic flamewar comments, or any flamewar comments, to HN. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#145
post #60
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?

> 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? Because the only method shown to prevent war in Europe is co-dependence. EU is founded on integrating the belligerents of WW2 close enough that it would be unthinkable to happen again. The same method, which at least has worked previously, was tri…

> Because the only method shown to prevent war in Europe is co-dependence.

What is this, 1910?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion

It was a theory. It was tested. It didn't work, not with Russia, not with the rest of Europe.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#146

As a German I don't care. I just want two things: 1. The energy company pays market rate insurance for their nuclear plants. Not "we take the profit, taxpayers pay for the disaster" 2. The energy company sets up a trust to pay for the safe storage of nuclear waste and cleaning up the plant should they go bust (again "we take ...")

Great but I want the same deal for the coal and gas companies that produce electricity, make them responsible for every ton of CO2 they emitted and make them responsible for removing it from the atmosphere.

Pitting nuclear against coal is fighting a straw man. The alternative is renewables. With a tiny fraction of the negative side-effects either nuclear or of fossil energy brings.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#147
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the only method shown to prevent war in Europe is co-dependence. It’s a bit unilateral. As long as Russia can save enough money or have other buyers for its gas and oil it can just shut the supply in the middle of winter. Germans can of course refuse to export their products to Russia but people freezing in the middle of winter is a bit more dire than not being able to buy the latest Mercedes. So, like othe…

Germany doesn’t allow separatism. Most other European nations don’t allow it too. Spain jailed Catalonia independence movement leaders for 9-13 years in 2017.

I'm not sure where that leads? Should the Austro-Hungarian Empire be reestablished?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria-Hungary

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#148

As a German I don't care. I just want two things: 1. The energy company pays market rate insurance for their nuclear plants. Not "we take the profit, taxpayers pay for the disaster" 2. The energy company sets up a trust to pay for the safe storage of nuclear waste and cleaning up the plant should they go bust (again "we take ...")

1. The high cost of insurance is a political problem, it has nothing to do with the actual damage that can occur. So making the response political is actually fair.

2. Waste storage is a solved problem, even for the current idiotic way we're doing it. Currently, the vast majority of the "waste" is actually unused fuel. Why? Because the fuel is too cheap to make extracting all of it worthwhile.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#149

Meanwhile in France. Because the temperatures are so high and the continuing drought, the nuclear power plants have to decrease their power output. The cooling water comes from the rivers and the plants have limits how hot the water is allowed to get downstream. Everything would slowly cook in the rivers … Even with temporal exceptions of this environmental rules France became a NET IMPORTER of power. France is like…

Just use cooling towers...

Edit: I'm getting rate-limited, so my answer to the genius observation below, that cooling towers also need water, is the following:

Cooling towers evaporate water. Thus the concerns of OP do not apply about overheating the river downstream:

>The cooling water comes from the rivers and the plants have limits how hot the water is allowed to get downstream

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#150
post #140
post #15

And still the current plan is for Germany to shut down its few remaining nuclear reactors by the end of the year, while the company/companies maintaining them are saying they can keep them running? Please stop the shutdown, ffs, are you insane? Let's try to stop Germany from harming itself further via international pressure. Blame and shame. Call them idiots to their faces. Point fingers. They need to shocked. The ge…

Please don't call names or fulminate or do online shaming or nationalistic flamewar on HN—regardless of how wrong other people or you feel they are. You may not owe opposing energy activists better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Sorry. I realize I may have gotten a bit carried away here. You're making some good points. I'll read through the guidelines.

(Fulminate is an interesting word, btw.)

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