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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

#231

Post by panick21_ »

RF_Savage wrote: post #42
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…

Onkalo in Finland is not 30km deep, which none have achieved anywhere. But Onkalo is one of the few actually built long term nuclear waste storage locations anywhere. It is for domestic nuclear waste only. There is no desire to become the international dumping ground for nuclear waste. Tbh I believe the waste should be reprosessed as fuel and burnt in reactors instead of burial. But non-proliferation things make that…

These geological repositories are such political bullshit theater. Its fucking sad.

The are actually more expensive then simply developing the reactors to burn up that fuel.

Its just crazy that we live in this world.

The US collected money from nuclear plants for 50 years for disposal, and had plenty of money to develop waste burning reactors. And yet that money is totally unused. While politicians dead-lock on this idiotic Yucca Mountain project.

Its beyond sad the state we are in.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#232

Post by panick21_ »

hash07e wrote: post #30
rowanG077 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really equating sanctions with full on war?

Yes Us providing guns and trainning is not war? Eu providing arms and guns is not war? Economic sanctions are not war? War is not a movie with bang. War is happening now. It started when they sunk the war ship russian..

> Us providing guns and trainning is not war?

No.

> Eu providing arms and guns is not war?

No.

> Economic sanctions are not war?

No.

> War is not a movie with bang.

No.

> War is happening now.

Yes between Ukraine and Russia.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#233

Post by panick21_ »

LatteLazy wrote: post #128

I don't mind nuclear, as long as people are prepared to pay the price at the meter and dispose of the waste. But people aren't prepared to do either...

Actually people are very prepared for that.

In the US for example, the US collected a waste fee for 50 years and had many, many billions on an account.

Easily enough money to develop the technology for burning up the fuel. Literally many times the money then required.

But rather then using rational technology solution politicians grid-locked themselves over an incredibly stupid Yucca Mountain project that makes no sense what so ever.

So yes, nuclear 'waste' needs to be managed, but there are well known technology solution. Sadly because people were anti-nuclear politicians rather sold the 'put it into a deep hole' story rather then developing the necessary technology.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#234

Post by xorcist »

hgomersall wrote: post #189
number6 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is in place via EU-ETS: https://ec.europa.eu/clima/eu-action/eu-emissions-trading-sy...

The price of co2 in the ETS is an order of magnitude too low to deal with it's removal, so no, this is not in place with the ETS.

I believe the idea is to adjust the price over time. The hard part is getting such a system in place, not ramping it up.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#235

Post by T-A »

cycomanic wrote: post #201
T-A wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You can't make an argument pro or contra nuclear from this

Sure you can: Germany and France are not in the same place, so the economics of getting gas from source X are not the same, so when weighing gas vs nuclear they were not looking at the same options. For Germany, cheap gas meant Russian gas. If that had been ruled out on security grounds, other energy sources, including nuclear, would have been more competitive vs more expensive gas from Norway etc.

> Note also, Germany gets about 32% of its gas from Russia

Now, after Russia cut deliveries. It was 55% before the war [1], and would have gone even higher with Nord Stream 2 about to come online.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/21/how-reliant-is...

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#236

Post by xorcist »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #219
Gwypaas wrote: post #196

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. 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.

Nuclear is also "gas-backed" in way. A stable energy grid is not something one can hand wave together.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#237

Post by danhor »

djohnston wrote: post #3
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

They were making the wrong decision for decades, moving away from nuclear while continuing to increase dependence on Russian gas (against the advice of 4-5 different US administrations). I agree that strategies shouldn't be made on knee jerk changes in public sentiment, but in this case the public is just starting to understand the correct answer that was always there.

The move away from nuclear and the move towards gas are more-or-less unconnected. After the (currently in place) decision to shut of nuclear from 2011, the gas part of the electricity first dipped a bit, then went a bit above 2010 levels after 2019. But it's not like our dependency on gas for electricity was radically different before the decision to exit nuclear (at least the current one) and right now.

If you prioritized getting away from fossil fuels, instead of nuclear, the current situations might look differently but I don't think that would've been politically feasible. If nuclear were just left running and providing 22% of german electricity, I don't think we'd be in a much better situation right now.

The major issue isn't electricity, but other forms of energy usage like heating. But that wasn't ever something done with electricity (at least on a large scale) in germany, even in the nuclear heyday (as opposed to france).

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#238

Post by slfnflctd »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #73
slfnflctd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Storage issues might be solved The problem as I see it as that any '100% renewable' solution which could be ramped up relatively quickly would necessitate technology that doesn't exist yet. Of course there will be some progress in tech, but we have no way to predict exactly what it will be. It will also be extremely expensive simply due to the massive scale required, and there are numerous powerful & well funded gr…

> that doesn't exist yet. Batteries exist, and estimates of how many would be needed are around 50TWh. We have over 500GWh of annual battery production, and the doubling period for that capacity is under 18 months.

The majority of that battery production is going into EVs. We will need much more to do both EVs and grid scale storage.

This is where different types of batteries that are too impractical for vehicle use might come into play, but we still don't have a clear idea which of those battery technologies will be appropriate and/or agreed upon for grid use, let alone who is going to pay for the mind boggling amount of them we will need.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#239

Post by cycomanic »

panick21_ wrote: post #223
cycomanic wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they haven't, did you look at the graph (here is another one for electricity only https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:France_Electricity_prod... )? The portion of nuclear has remained constant since the late 90s. Also France at the moment has turned off between 40 and 100% (I read about 40%, but saw 100% on TV some weeks ago) of their nuclear power plants, due to heat and maintance. Guess who is picking up the s…

> The portion of nuclear has remained constant since the late 90s. That just reflects the failure of French state to continue to invest. The socialist and green party based on general anti-nuclear sentiment stopped much of the investment.

Are you joking? In the last 24 years there was only 4 years with a socialist president. The greens had seats only 3 times of the last 6 six national assemblies since 1986 and that was 7,3 and 4 so they are not a very influential party in France. And saying that the the socialists in France are antinuclear is also quite off. While Hollande was quite critical (also due to massive cost overruns and shady security practices reading the Wikipedia article on nuclear power in France is quite eyeopening) they have traditionally been decidedly pro nuclear.

No, there hasn't been much change because nuclear is so expensive. Projects have been going massively over budget (e.g. The EPR at Flammanville $15 billion instead of planned $4, planned to start operating in 2013 still not online.) [1].

[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a33499619/fr...

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