Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy • Hacker News Board

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#211

Post by inglor_cz » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

cinntaile wrote: post #13

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…

Russia and the EU aren't at war, neither is the US and China. You haven't really proven that economic integration doesn't prevent wars.

While not directly at war with Russia, many European nations are engaged in Ukraine by proxy.

Poland stands out as a massive military logistics hub without which the Ukrainian army would struggle to import any Western stuff.

If the Poles weren't under the protective umbrella of NATO, I suspect that the Russians would already have tried to destroy Rzeszow airport.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#212

Post by kergonath » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

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?

Not that I know of. I came across a more complete picture[1], with probably more accurate numbers than my recollection (Australia turns out to have much, much more uranium than I remembered, for example). They don’t really mention significant resources in Europe, but there might be a discrepancy between resources that can be mined, and just stuff that’s in the ground or something like that. Wikipedia mentions 119000 tonnes in Czechia, but I don’t know how reliable it is[2].

[1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium...

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#213

Post by panick21_ » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 8:49 PM UTC

BonoboIO wrote: post #138

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…

Yeah the main problem is France basically did amazing with nuclear for like 30 years and then in the last 20 they basically flat-lined in total production.

And the dropped all their advanced nuclear and is still planning expensive PWR style reactors until 2050.

France had developed a Sodium cooled reactor but because of anti-nuclear sentiment they only built one and killed it. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix

That we are still not using high temperature air cooled reactors is just an absolute shame.

France did a great thing for the world by investing into nuclear and saving lots of CO2 before it was cool. However unfortunately they didn't do as good a job with advancing the technology.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#214

Post by panick21_ » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 8:55 PM UTC

Jansemon wrote: post #156

BonoboIO wrote: post #138

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…

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…

In France the price of electricity is incredibly low so of course power was very subsidized.

However the investment in nuclear in France still payed of big time. Consider a alternative solution where you use coal power, the only realistic alternative at the time.

Coal is absolutely horrible for air quality and incredibly destructive to the environment.

Any rational person would say it a huge advantage for a country to have heavily invested in nuclear.

The real failure of France is not having continued the investment in nuclear, their failure is that they stopped investing and advancing technology in 1990s.

> And who talkes about the real environmental (even CO2) cost to even produce a fuel rod?

Every single end to end analysis shows that CO2 of nuclear is tiny.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#215

Post by panick21_ » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

Jansemon wrote: post #198

Jensson wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 respond…

Now put in your cost function all the cost effects of coal to the land, the people and atmosphere.

Nuclear has been an absolute bargin and had more countries acted like France we wouldn't have many of the problems we have now.

> not even regarding CO2.

That is 100% false.

Please show me the study that shows this. Every single study I have seen suggest the opposite.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#216

Post by aaaaaaaaaaab » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 9:08 PM UTC

_ph_ wrote: post #204

Jensson wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

>What makes you think, Germany doesn't have enough electricity?

@RemindMe_OfThis in January 2023

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#217

Post by panick21_ » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

627467 wrote: post #86

Can't help but observe on how incapable are human societies to make long term critical rational decisions. It never really made sense to say "we are going to phase out nuclear entirely" instead of "we'll focus on how to build safer, cheaper and more efficient nuclear". The decision to go off nuclear was capricious and it seems that the speed with which sentiment is changing only proves this.

By literally any rational calculation, starting in 1970s any strategy other then 100% nuclear is insane.

Nuclear wins in every first principle analysis, it requires the least amount of mining, the least amount of land, and produces the least amount of damage to the atmosphere and to local air quality.

That it did not happen is a failure in planning. Eisenhower over-promised when he said energy to cheap to meter, but the technology certainty has and had amazing potential.

In the 1960s they developed so many amazing reactors in such a short time, and then starting in the 1970 basically all progress stopped. The NASA Kilopower was the first new reactor in the US for like 40+ years.

Nuclear unfortunately was invented in WW2 and has been dominate by the military both in terms of access and in terms of usage. The only reason we have PWRs for civilian production is because PWR make sense for submarines and was commercialized based on that investment.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#218

Post by londons_explore » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

joecool1029 wrote: post #194

londons_explore wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_…

a typical old 1 Gigawatt power station (ie. a big one) will produce about 2 gigawatts of waste heat. More modern tech could ~halve that. In an evaporative cooler, thats 800 liters of water evaporated every second.

The Amazon river has 209,000,000 liters per second, so it wouldn't be an issue there.

But in smaller streams, I could totally imagine there not being enough water even for evaporative cooling.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#219

Post by zemvpferreira » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

Gwypaas wrote: post #196

zemvpferreira wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ga…

You can dream every solution you'd care to dream, but right now gas-backed solar is how it's done in europe.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#220

Post by panick21_ » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

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)?

You don't actually need a whole in the earth. With actual modern technology you only need to store it for 300 years and you can store it on a single football field in a desert or field without issue.

But we can't have nice apparently. We rather waste billions on some dumb geological storage rather then just use basic logic. Misinformation and politics are the only reason for these deep geological repositories.