Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

spiegel.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 304 posts

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#201

Post by cycomanic »

T-A wrote: post #108
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…

But as of April, only 17% of France's gas imports came from Russia: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/04/27/h...

Yes, but that is unrelated to the argument that is being made; that Germany's dependence on Russian gas is because they are quitting nuclear. France who went largely "all-in" on nuclear is using the same percentage of gas, they just get it from somewhere else. You can't make an argument pro or contra nuclear from this, this is the politics of where to get the gas from (and I agree getting it from Russia was a mistake). Note also, Germany gets about 32% of its gas from Russia (Norway is second with 20%), so it's not _that_ different to France (essentially the two main suppliers are reversed between the two countries).

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#202

Post by _ph_ »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #165
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?

The way I remember this, after the Fukushima disaster there were some state level elections, the center-right parties that had until then supported nuclear lost one or two of these elections due to voter panic about Fukushima and then abandoned their support for nuclear. I really think that if the state level election calender had been different, germany would still use nuclear power today.

Not sure, Fukushima was pretty scary considering the high esteem Japanese engineering has in Germany. Not sure what the deciding factor was, but indeed their remaining run time was shortened, the 2001 decision was targetting for a shutdown between 2025 and 2027.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#203

Post by theshrike79 »

gsatic wrote: post #82
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?

Also if Russia stops the war tomorrow, is Germany not going to return to their old arrangements?

Even if the most rational Russian in the world assassinates Putin and all his cronies tomorrow and every Russian soldier is out of Ukraine and Crimea by next Friday, the damage is already done.

No-one will trust Russia (the country, not the people) for a good half century unless they make some really sweeping changes to... well, everything.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#204

Post by _ph_ »

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.

What makes you think, Germany doesn't have enough electricity? Actually quite the contrary, we produced an additonal 20 TWh to fill in for the gaps left by the French nuclear plants not delivering. (And a lot of other plants in Europe are not running on full power due to lack of cooling water)

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#205

Post by ed_balls »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #123
ed_balls wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the deck looks stacked against a Beijing-Moscow-Berlin As of this movement, yes, but in the future USA won't be able to keep the hegemony. Right now there is a leverage on energy (oil and gas from middle east) and the cheapest from of transportation (maritime). USA can block both via Ormuz and Malacca. In 20-30 years China and Europe will be energy and resource independent. If land transportation* will be more cost…

> 20-30 years China and Europe will be energy and resource independent. If land transportation will be more cost effective than ships, USA hegemony is gone This geopolitical model predates modern energy dynamics; in any case, Siberian minerals will flow to Chinese and European factories for a long time to come. This model also doesn’t require American dominance. (Again, it dates from the age of British and Austro/Rus…

> As for land transport becoming more efficient than ocean, that’s a pipe dream

I don't remember exact numbers from 2019, but it was something like:

Air: 1 metric tonne: $100, 24h

Rail: $40; 10 days

Ship: $8; 30 days

Let's say it's 2049 and we have 4 powers: new Europe, USA, China and India. China starts the full scale blockade of Taiwan to wait for the USA for the kinetic escalation. Only USA ships are blocked, so Japan, Korea, Europe do nothing. The situation last for years. The freight cost goes up massively due to risk, the fuel is 2x-3x more expensive - cheap oil is gone and the last big reserve is in Arctic. Magnetic rail China-Europe is finished and you stack up 3 containers which are delivered in 48h. Land transportation became better than ships.

> Rail is also less resilient in times of war

True, but the new Europe will be neutral is the USA-China conflict.

> Xi’s strategic fuckup has been in failing to see that China, too, could command a Leviathan

I don't think Xi made a mistake. I don't think we have a reliable data from China. China started shrinking due to Covid way sooner that the models predicted. The official number about 12 mln births, but that doesn't correlate well with mandatory tuberculosis vaccinations. The real number could be 9 mln. Xi perception might be he has 10 years not 30. What is more, I think China is like Japan in 1930. From China's perspective there is no option - we fight or we die.

The more optimistic scenario: Xi is gone. USA makes Kissinger 2.0 - a deal that must be secret. USA does nothing and China takes over Taiwan without the invasion. North and South Korea is demilitarised. China still uses USD.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#206

Post by parineum »

koonsolo wrote: post #176
KingOfCoders wrote: post #93

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 ...")

As a Belgian I only want 1 thing: no money going to Russia. I'm willing to pay the price for that.

One of the best things about nuclear is that it can really be put anywhere. It's hard to price in the benefit of energy independence/sovereignty but it's definitely should be a huge factor in it's favor.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#208

Post by inglor_cz »

pyuser583 wrote: post #175
kergonath wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well more of Europe's Uranium comes from Russia than Germanys gas. This is very misleading, comparing EU imports on one side and Germany on the other. The biggest uranium reserves are in Kazakhstan, Canada, and South Africa. At the moment, uranium used in Europe comes from Niger, Russia and Kazakhstan in about the same quantities (2500 tons each), followed by Canada (2300 tons) and Namibia (1600 tons). Overall, Rus…

I thought Germany and Czechia had large supplies of Uranium, is that not the case?

Czech uranium reserves were severely depleted in the 1950s in order to supply Soviet nuclear arms industry.

(Political dissenters were forced to work in those mines in horrible conditions.)

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#209

Post by inglor_cz »

gaius_baltar wrote: post #167
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 important to remember that Germany has still very strong manufacturing industries who hold a lot of sway over the government. Good for them to not get rid of their industrial base otherwise they will depend on China more than the USA (that was (still?) proud of becoming a service economy) does.

Germany has an enormous trade exchange with China and one of the Merkel policies was not to rock the boat too much.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#210

Post by mrm2m »

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'm German. I'm an electrical engineer. I'm not an expert. If you would ask me if I'm qualified to give advice if we should continue with nuclear power, I'd say no. But if you ask 1000 people on the street, than my opinion is as good as any other.

So why do I think that it's a good idea to quit with nuklear power? It's quite easy: We German like it to be on the safe side. If I get ill I've got an assurance for that. If my car burns down, I've got an assurance for that. If a railway train hits my house (there are no railway tracks even close to my house) but guess what: I've got an assurance for that. If a nuclear power plant blows up and makes the whole country within 20 miles radius a radioactive no-go area I've got... wait - there's no assurance for that. Tepco in Japan was not able to compensate the people who had to move. Not even close.

But there's good news: There is no nuclear power plant active anywhere in the radius of 20 miles around my home any more.

Now let's talk a completely different unrelated topic: Russian gas. Why unrelated? Because nearly nobody in Germany uses electricity to heat their homes (yet). We have gas lines in most cellars of our houses. Those who don't use oil. There's even hardly electric air conditioning anywhere in the private housing sector. The people fear that the heating will fail in winter due to the gas shortage. They now buy electric heating and we expect outages of the electrical power supply if they happen to use them, not because of missing power plant capacity, but because the grid is not strong enough to allow replacement of gas heating for the next winter.

But there are gas powere plants which are used to generate electricity from Russian gas. So it's all related, right? Yes and no. Yes we have gas power plants. We built them to help in situations of high demand because the Nuclear power plants are too slow to adopt on changing loads. Then over the last 20 years when wind power took over a major share of the power supply luckily we had those gas power plants to step in when a storm forces all wind mills to disconnect at the same time. But no. Gas power plants are not the solution as I stated. Even if we had enough power plant capacity to heat the houses we would never be able to distribute it. And more nuclear power does not help there either.

So nuclear power is not the solution if Russian gas is your problem.

But why do we use Russian gas at all? Why did we get into a situation like that at all? Well, that's not by accident. We fought and lost two world wars. Most people consider it a good idea for the German not to start another one. In the 1970s and 80s when the military presence of foreign forces in Germany declined it seemed a good idea to make Germany dependent on the mercy of the victorious countries. It worked quite well for nearly half a century. It's a good strategy as long as the German is the bad boy in town. It fails of course if the other bullys are even worse.

We could have emancipated from gas long time ago. Unfortunately our politicians especially from the CSU actively blocked regenerative energy.

So now the Germans have finally come to their minds and now want nuclear power back? No. The ARD (biggest German TV station) asked similar questions:

Q: Do you think we should do Fracking in Germany? A: Only 27% say yes.

Q: Do you think we should stick to nuclear power? A: 61% yes

Q: Should we extend wind energy and introduce a maximum speed limit? A: 81% yes.

That's my country and I'm OK with it.

Post reply on HN