Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants • Hacker News Board

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#261

Post by belorn » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:01 PM UTC

nosianu wrote: post #206

metadat wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the remaining 95 potential uncontrollable problems beyond earthquake, fire, flood, war, human incompetence? Given appropriate attention and care, these can be accounted for through planning processes and protocols.

See France and its maintenance issues with not just one but many of their power plants, accumulated over decades and now greatly contributing to the European energy problems. ( https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/10/13/frances-nuclear-... ) Some issues I see are accountants, management, laziness, "somebody else's problem", etc. Those are businesses and they will try all the well-known ways to save money. Which the…

> Not to mention that Russia - Rosatom - will again play a big role in Western European energy when it comes to nuclear.

Good thing that 1), nuclear fuel storage in europe tend to have almost decade long stockpiles, 2), there are plenty of alternative to Rosatom to buy nuclear fuel from, 3), nuclear fuel is fairly easy to import compared to massive amount of natural gas.

Sweden is only a stone throw away and they have nuclear fuel production that they sell as exports. They also acquired the design and patents to produce nuclear fuel that fit power plants from Rosatom. Those 20% of fuel that Russia sell is a solvable problem, but as with anything it would cost money, investments and a bit of time to ramp up production.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#262

Post by asdff » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:06 PM UTC

dorgo wrote: post #215

asdff wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't it scary that political decisions about energy are made on reactionary terms rather than engineering terms? An engineer would not have said "we have to stop nuclear power," because of accidents, they would have studied those accidents and developed methods to mitigate them. This is why airlines are safe, because of past accidents that were deeply tragic and catastrophic but often went on to stymie some shor…

> they would have studied those accidents and developed methods to mitigate them. So, eartchquakes and tsunamis were a new developement in japan. The engineers had never a chance to study them and develope methods to mitigate risks for nuclear plants? If plane crashes would endanger whole countries or continents we would ban air traffic all together.

Fukushima was actually preventable. There were other reactors in the Tsunami zone that were fine because they were designed for these magnitude events. The fact that Fukushima happened as it did was because engineers with knowledge on international standards were not let into the decision making process. If anything Fukushima is an argument about the dangers of allowing energy production to be controlled by a private company that will focus on its bottom line moreso than engineering best practices (this might ring familiar to people affected by PG&E wildfires). (1). That being said, fukushima still worked as intended and no radiation leaked out.

And plane crashes can and did endanger entire countries in the past, such as 9/11 where hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afganistan civilians went on to die because of a plane crash in new york city. However, we responded to 9/11 by engineering better protocols, like installing a door lock to the pilots cabin and preventing the carrying on of certain blades. There were other times too when a plane crash threatened an entire country, such as when the soviet union shot down an airliner and caused a serious diplomatic incident as a result.

1. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2014.037...

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#263

Post by arcticbull » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:08 PM UTC

V__ wrote: post #213

timmg wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those nuclear plants won't have a dramatic impact on the price of gas or energy, so the cost of the federal programs will be there nonetheless. Even if it doesn’t change the price of gas, wouldn’t it mean buying/burning less gas than you would otherwise? That, in itself, would be a huge savings. Maybe I’m just missing some data, but this seems like a no-brainer to me on several levels. It’s hard for me to understan…

They estimate about 1-2% in gas savings, due to the fact that nuclear is base load and gas plants are used mostly for grid compensation. If the gas storages were empty, and the LNG-terminals weren't about to go online, I would like to see the nuclear plants be kept online. Right now, I'd rather they would invest that money in the future.

Nuclear energy is the future. It's the lowest-carbon and the safest form of energy we know of.

China knows this, which is why they're adding 150 new nuclear power plants in the next 15 years. [1]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli...

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#264

Post by grecy » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:11 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #220

karamanolev wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I'm a fan of nucear, but ... they don't have to counter that argument. It doesn't have to be earthquakes - it can be 1 of 100 problems. Japan knew they have to deal with earthquakes and didn't. What should make people more comfortable that Germany will be able to safeguard against their known risks?

What should make people more comfortable that Germany will be able to safeguard against their known risks? The safety of nuclear power plants isn't exactly some great unknown. There are ~450 plants currently operating in the world, with an average age of multiple decades. Plus all the ones that have been retired. That's a lot of data. You don't really have to take anybody's word for it. They're safe. They are not zer…

The problem is when they go bad, it gets really bad.

We were extremely lucky with Chernobyl that young men sacrificed themselves, else a large chunk of Europe would be uninhabitable.

We were extremely lucky with Fukushima all the radiated water just went into the ocean. When it was going down there was nothing we could do but stand back and watch how bad it got.

Of course on a regular day nuclear is safe, but every now and then things go extremely badly, and sooner or later we’re not going to get so lucky. We will simply have to watch and retreat from death.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#265

Post by Archelaos » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:14 PM UTC

varajelle wrote: post #166

Archelaos wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But they produces nuclear wast and a melt down could devastate wide regions. Glad that this will all be over soon. I was a victim of the Chernobyl fallout myself, and would not like to experience this again.

How were you a victim? if I may ask

I was a teenager at that time in southern Germany. Most disturbing was that news about the radioactive cloud trickled in only days after the disaster and then only very, very gradually. It were the first nice, sunny and warm days of spring, but people went outside only when absolutely necessary, because of this invisible threat. No one knew how much there was to come, where it might hit, and how long it might last[1] or how this might affect one's future health or that of unborn babies, etc., etc. After some very high concentrations were found in specific spots such as air filters month after the disaster,[2] people were afraid of using the ventilations of their cars. I remember that there were reports of some particularly high meassurements in sandpits on children's playgrounds, that unsettled people badly.

It is easy to say that on average nuclear energy is not so terrible, when you were never personally confronted with what happens when you lose the bet. Then an abstract idea is becoming very real. You realise that one day someone else will have to pay the price, or you yourself again: What if the next accident happens not in the Soviet Union or Japan, but in one of the power plants next door?

This experience, shared by millions of people, has done much to cast doubt on the claims that such risks are technically controllable. And the climate protection argument also appears to many to be nothing more than propaganda, because it comes from the same parties and companies that supported likewise nuclear, coal and gas, but downplayed climat change and other environmental issues for decades. Their actions and lobbying helped to create our current situation by slowing down the switch to renewable energies and postponing stricter regulations on energy saving. -- Shall we trust them now after so many failures?

[1] Mushrooms in some areas of southern Germany are still highly contaminated. But that was one of the least of our concerns in those days.

[2] I found an old article from Der Spiegel from 1986 reporting 500,000 Bq/m^2 filter: https://www.spiegel.de/politik/dicke-luft-um-verseuchte-filt... (in German)

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#266

Post by pyuser583 » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:24 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #264

JohnBooty wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should make people more comfortable that Germany will be able to safeguard against their known risks? The safety of nuclear power plants isn't exactly some great unknown. There are ~450 plants currently operating in the world, with an average age of multiple decades. Plus all the ones that have been retired. That's a lot of data. You don't really have to take anybody's word for it. They're safe. They are not zer…

The problem is when they go bad, it gets really bad. We were extremely lucky with Chernobyl that young men sacrificed themselves, else a large chunk of Europe would be uninhabitable. We were extremely lucky with Fukushima all the radiated water just went into the ocean. When it was going down there was nothing we could do but stand back and watch how bad it got. Of course on a regular day nuclear is safe, but every n…

> The problem is when they go bad, it gets really bad

Deepwater horizon was really bad. Plenty of coal accidents are real bad.

Not having energy is really bad.

Nuclear is the safest form of energy - and catastrophic failures are found in other forms of energy production.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#267

Post by grecy » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:37 PM UTC

pyuser583 wrote: post #266

grecy wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is when they go bad, it gets really bad. We were extremely lucky with Chernobyl that young men sacrificed themselves, else a large chunk of Europe would be uninhabitable. We were extremely lucky with Fukushima all the radiated water just went into the ocean. When it was going down there was nothing we could do but stand back and watch how bad it got. Of course on a regular day nuclear is safe, but every n…

> The problem is when they go bad, it gets really bad Deepwater horizon was really bad. Plenty of coal accidents are real bad. Not having energy is really bad. Nuclear is the safest form of energy - and catastrophic failures are found in other forms of energy production.

The difference is even when coal or oil goes “worst case scenario” bad, it’s still entirely manageable.

We have tools, equipment and people to put out oil rig fires, clean up oil spills and all that.

Obviously Exxon Valdez was very, very bad. So was deep water horizon. Now imagine they were nuclear plantS that went bad and we didn’t get lucky like in the past. It would be many orders of magnitudes worse, for tens of thousands of years.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#268

Post by baxtr » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:38 PM UTC

Cwizard wrote: post #123

dependsontheq wrote: post #87

While I agree that it would have been sensible to phase out coal and then nuclear, the german position is more complex. The fallout from Tschernobyl was measurable in Germany… measurable as in my science teacher measured it in his garden. Up to today boar and mushrooms have an elevated level of radiation in the forests around my home. So this is the emotional background, the risks are not far away. Fukushima gave the…

> „If Japan can’t control the technology nobody can“. I don't understand this argument, isn't Japan known for its earthquakes? Which are essentially non-existent in Germany? In my opinion Fukushima should be an argument _for_ nuclear power. The death toll was really low, roughly 2000, and many of those death were caused by the evacuation rather than radiation. The death toll of the tsunami/earthquake was 15000 accord…

I don’t want to argue your positions but you gotta realize that this argument you’re making is fact based one. OP is talking about triggered emotions which are much more complex to dissect and understand.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#269

Post by rasz » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 11:59 PM UTC

legulere wrote: post #42

maliker wrote: post #18

In case anyone was curious, Germany used to get 25% of its generation from nuclear (now more like 10%), and they had as many as 17 nuclear reactors as of 2010. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany

And all of it was replaced by renewables: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutschla...

Almost 1/4 (biomass) is a huge scam (cofiring freshly chopped trees in coal plants)

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#270

Post by panick21_ » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 12:10 AM UTC

dependsontheq wrote: post #87

While I agree that it would have been sensible to phase out coal and then nuclear, the german position is more complex. The fallout from Tschernobyl was measurable in Germany… measurable as in my science teacher measured it in his garden. Up to today boar and mushrooms have an elevated level of radiation in the forests around my home. So this is the emotional background, the risks are not far away. Fukushima gave the…

> While I agree that it would have been sensible to phase out coal and then nuclear

How about not phasing it out at all.

> The fallout from Tschernobyl was measurable in Germany… measurable as in my science teacher measured it in his garden

Yeah you can also measure the output form coal plants.

Tschernobyl killed either literally or basically nobody in German, and hardly hurt anybody.

It was basically nonsense, because of political reasons rules were adopted based on totally fraudulent science and then these rules were used in endless scare mongering campaigns and misinformation campaigns.

But at some point you have to stop with pure emotional responses and endless fear-mongering and actually look at things rationally.