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

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#301

Post by panick21_ » Tue, Aug 16, 2022, 12:38 AM UTC

urthor wrote: post #277

philipkglass wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France's newest operating reactor, Civaux 2, entered commercial operation in 2002: https://www.world-nuclear.org/reactor/default.aspx/CIVAUX-2 France started building its first unit of the next-generation EPR at Flamanville in 2007: https://www.world-nuclear.org/reactor/default.aspx/FLAMANVIL... There was a ~5 year gap where France stopped work on adding reactors. France would probably be building more EPRs now if th…

Exactly right. The core problem with nuclear isn't so much the safety record (although this has been a problem). The issue is building Flamanville and co have been so extraordinarily expensive. Any new nuclear plant will lose an incredible amount of money as solar energy becomes more and more cost efficient.

Well we are still building with 1960s technology because the industry has been so beaten down.

Are we just gone accept that nuclear is just inherently to expensive and that can never change. Are we just inherently unable to look at those project and ask, why did it happen that way. Why are we building inherently old technology and are doing it far worse then 20 years before.

When in the 1970s Jimmy Carter tried to push solar and wind, but the tech clearly wasn't ready. Did we just go 'well that's it then'. No people just pushed it, demanded it, forced politicians to have national labs finance it. When it became almost viable it was subsidized in million large and tiny ways all around the world. When there was negative news about solar and wind the Germans would just double down with their strategy.

And yet, a few nuclear reactors are to expensive to build, shut down the whole industry forever. Lets never try to improve or use reactor technology developed after 1960.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#302

Post by danhor » Tue, Aug 16, 2022, 8:54 PM UTC

panick21_ wrote: post #301

urthor wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly right. The core problem with nuclear isn't so much the safety record (although this has been a problem). The issue is building Flamanville and co have been so extraordinarily expensive. Any new nuclear plant will lose an incredible amount of money as solar energy becomes more and more cost efficient.

Well we are still building with 1960s technology because the industry has been so beaten down. Are we just gone accept that nuclear is just inherently to expensive and that can never change. Are we just inherently unable to look at those project and ask, why did it happen that way. Why are we building inherently old technology and are doing it far worse then 20 years before. When in the 1970s Jimmy Carter tried to pu…

The issue is that nuclear scales well with size, but that increases iteration time & costs for a single iteration. It also leads to much less efficiency possible compared to e.g. solar cells. So once they didn't improve and were still expensive (and getting more expensive, like all big construction projects) the potential seems limited. Same as start ups getting huge evaluations while running deficits, but no-one giving the benefit of the doubt at that scale to a failing 30-year old business with promising basic ideas.

Every (big honkin') nuclear power plant is more-or-less a giant project onto itself. The hope of nuclear advocates is that with small reactors, their reduced cost & increased scale (in terms of units) will more than make up for their small size (and resulting loss of scaling in that dimension). I think that's unlikely, but some startups are trying so we'll see if it's a winning formula.

My argument is: Why bother? Renewables are cheap, storage technologies[1] have a lot of viable ways of going forward and are getting better very quickly. Even if through a lot of investment nuclear energy gets (economically, build-time-wise) viable in 20 years like renewables are now, I doubt it would change much or solve pressing issues.

[1]: Starting from common chemical batteries, over to hydrogen/power-to-gas, molten-sand and a variety of concepts exploiting potential height energy. The limited commercial adoption yet can be attributed to the fact that they're not necessary yet, so the added price is too high. Germany, with a very high share of renewables and planned to be growing, is only starting to dip it's toes with some very basic "stabilizer" like in Australia and nothing big-scale in the near future. If this was a pressing issue, you'd think governments would do more (Especially in germany, the cost structure strongly disincentives storage right now, needing to pay certain costs twice, while sinking and sourcing the energy).

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#303

Post by Aeolos » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 6:28 AM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #267

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.

If the question is what energy production method should be used it is certainly not. The Green Party in particular did probably more harm to the environment and damaged or geo-strategic position by making us dependent on foreign Gas and by extending the economic viability of open-pit mines. We were leaders in nuclear technology and research and could be energy independent by now.

The green party who was not in government and could not actually enact any legislation?

No, it is not the green party who is at fault. This falls fully on the shoulders CDU who was in power for 16 years.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#304

Post by T-A » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 11:22 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #245

T-A wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 competit…

> 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. Nuclear was neve…

> Germany uses most of its gas for heating and industry

That's a choice, again based on economics. There's no fundamental reason preventing electricity from replacing gas as an energy source for heating and industrial processes.

> gas is for peakers, nuclear is baseload.

Again, that's a choice based on economics. Spare nuclear (or oil or other) capacity can serve the same purpose.

> That can be seen by looking at the fact that France is using the same percentage of gas in their electricity generation as Germany

Why are you fixating on France? Try Sweden:

https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subje...

2020 electricity production (2021 statistics are not out yet):

Gas turbines and others: 13 GWh. Nuclear: 47262 GWh.