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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

#191

Post by tpmx »

_ph_ wrote: post #181
tpmx wrote: 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…

First of all, please don't call people names and please stay to the truth. I will take a deep breath and try to answer some of your claims calmly. Yes, one can debate whether it was a clever idea to decide in 2001 to get rid of nuclear power while there was no end date set for coal. However the plans allowed for 25 years of further run time, enough time for buildup of renewables. And Germany was quite successfull, re…

Based on you previous comments in this submission:

I think this is a novel re-interpretation of reality, from the angle that the German Green party was somehow not responsible for the nuclear power shutdown in Germany, and the effects that had on the European power grid.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#192

Post by _ph_ »

tpmx wrote: post #191
_ph_ wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, please don't call people names and please stay to the truth. I will take a deep breath and try to answer some of your claims calmly. Yes, one can debate whether it was a clever idea to decide in 2001 to get rid of nuclear power while there was no end date set for coal. However the plans allowed for 25 years of further run time, enough time for buildup of renewables. And Germany was quite successfull, re…

Based on you previous comments in this submission: I think this is a novel re-interpretation of reality, from the angle that the German Green party was somehow not responsible for the nuclear power shutdown in Germany, and the effects that had on the European power grid.

Haven't you read what I wrote? The 2001 decision was made to run the plants for 25 years. That was the decisions the Greens took part in. Every other decision was taken by governments without Greeen participation. You should carefully distinguish between those.

And what exactly are the effects on the European power grid you are talking about, especially any negative one? (Feel free to also list the beneficial ones)

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#193

Post by goodpoint »

Jensson wrote: post #173
BonoboIO wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But nuclear is safe /s

They could just load up tons of nuclear waste in planes and sprinkle it over Ukraine to cause the same kind of damage, having a nuclear powerplant lying around in no way makes it easier to cause those disasters. Terrorists doesn't target nuclear powerplants since bombing one doesn't do much, plenty of nuclear plants has been attacked to date and you didn't know since it doesn't cause any significant damage. Main dama…

> Terrorists doesn't target nuclear powerplants since bombing one doesn't do much

On the contrary. Even if there is no radiation leak it can cause a panic, which is exactly what terrorist want

More importantly, nuclear is the most CENTRALIZED power generation. Destroying transformers or power lines around a plant is easy and leaves millions without electricity.

Unlike distributed power generation, like solar and wind.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#194

Post by joecool1029 »

londons_explore wrote: post #166
_Algernon_ wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cooling towers require a coolant, which is normally water...

Cooling towers (evaporative chilling) use far less water than cooling directly with river water and returning hot water to the river. About 20x less for the same energy generation. And the water ends up in the atmosphere so usually will end up in additional rain elsewhere in France. You effectively get to use the same water twice, so instead of being 20x less water, it is infinity x less water.

>Cooling towers (evaporative chilling) use far less water than cooling directly with river water and returning hot water to the river.

Still uses a shitload. A coalition of states around me had the power generation companies install a reservoir so that in summer and drought they could keep the lower Delaware River navigable since so much was evaporated off in the cooling towers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill_Creek_Reservoir

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#195

Post by _ph_ »

Jensson wrote: post #173
BonoboIO wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But nuclear is safe /s

They could just load up tons of nuclear waste in planes and sprinkle it over Ukraine to cause the same kind of damage, having a nuclear powerplant lying around in no way makes it easier to cause those disasters. Terrorists doesn't target nuclear powerplants since bombing one doesn't do much, plenty of nuclear plants has been attacked to date and you didn't know since it doesn't cause any significant damage. Main dama…

The thing is, Russia is trying to blame a possible blow up on the Ukrainians. That is their motivation to set it off instead of sprinkling nuclear waste or using nuclear war heads. Never mind all the damage they created around Chernobyl, though mostly contaminating their own troups by camping and digging in the highly contaminated forests around the former power plant. They also destroyed a lot of scientific labs which were controlling the power plant.

By the way: Medvedjev made some pretty specific threads against German power plants.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#196

Post by Gwypaas »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #185
Gwypaas wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's most certainly not, since for every kW of installed renewables another kW of gas capacity must be installed to compensate for intermittency. That said, no reason why the original deal can't be extended to renewables, seems perfectly fair. It's to everyone's benefit that all methods of power generation be held accountable for all their costs.

> It's most certainly not, since for every kW of installed renewables another kW of gas capacity must be installed to compensate for intermittency.

Why? Built geographically decoupled production, look at past weather data and pick how many 9's up-time you want.

Then use storage and smart consumers to lower the requirements.

For national emergencies keep a fossil reserve or whatever, with that kind of usage power 2 gas should not even matter.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#197

Post by theshrike79 »

mccorrinall wrote: post #158
LatteLazy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear requires exactly the sort of long term rational decision making you decry the lack of. That's the nice thing about other energy sources, they don't require 1000 years of self discipline and self denial...

Exactly. Why did holes into the earth to store toxic waste when you have literally infinite energy right above your head (sun and wind)?

Infinite AND intermittent.

Renewables don't work for base load yet.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#198

Post by Jansemon »

Jensson wrote: post #183
Jansemon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and aren't like have the plants currently not working, either because it's to hot or they're in maintenance or it's too expensive to repair them? And EDF, the biggest company behind nuclear power generation has huge amounts of debt and needs (is?) to be nationalized? From what I can gather, nuclear power was never cheap. It seems no country calculates the real cost - everything's subsidized to be even competiti…

Germany will pay hundreds of billions in electricity this year since they don't have enough. Nuclear would have been a bargain.

No, this seems to be false. France is importing electricity for years from Germany - at least since 2015.

I'm not sure why you're saying that France only has an issue because of Germany? Where do you get that from? Even a french power grid operator is saying that they import more power from Germany, than they're exporting (https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electrici...).

But you're not even responding to my main concern - that nuclear power is so expensive, that it is never competitive. Only when subsidized. And that is for power plants that are already built - not new ones (which seem to be an even greater money pit). Why is the biggest nuclear power company unable to make money in France and needs to be rescued by the government?

I'd say if it makes sense and helps us in our current situation, just subsidize the heck out of it, even if it costs us as a country lots of money. But it absolutely doesn't seem environmentally friendly, not even regarding CO2. And it doesn't seem to be feasible to quickly build nuclear power.

But yes, Germany fucked up regarding its dependency on gas (from one source and then it's even from a country like Russia).

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#199

Post by _ph_ »

vimy wrote: post #72
FourthProtocol wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed so. I've been following nuclear in Germany ever since those railroad protests when they tried to transport nuclear waste from somewhere to somewhere else which I thought was crazy (the protests). The part I felt had merit is that none of Europe's lofty solutions to safely storing/disposing of the waste output ever came to anything. I believe until this day that industry is still trying to work out how to dig 3…

After more than 50 years of nuclear power plants in use we can say that there is no nuclear waste problem. The ‘waste’ has been stored above ground for decades and nothing has happened. It’s clearly safe. We should just keep doing what we’re doing. No need to dig expensive holes.

While I believe this is the most safe option right now - some candidate dumping grounds have failed spectacularly (the Asse), this of course only works as long we are vigilant and also pay the upkeep for storage locations for many millenia. Both from environmental and safety concerns.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#200

Post by theshrike79 »

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…

Germany still has gas STREET LIGHTS.

They pay millions of euros every year just for the gas in those :D

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