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

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#291

Post by laurencerowe » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 1:46 AM 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…

> If we would put the same amount of engineering resources into nuclear as we put into chips I am sure the number of deaths would go down a few order of magnitudes.

Nuclear reactors probably have more in common with the fabs where chips are made. Both are enormously complex engineering challenges where each plant costs tens of billions of dollars and gets more expensive with each new generation of technology.

Whereas solar panels have followed the path of silicon chips and gotten cheaper as they are produced in ever greater numbers, to the point where the panels themselves make up less than half the build cost for utility scale solar.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#292

Post by hbgl » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 1:50 AM UTC

Isolus wrote: post #82

_dain_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The whole political position of this party rests on their fanatic opposition to Nuclear power. Btw if anyone thinks this is exaggeration, it's not. They are evil fanatics: https://twitter.com/giuliasaudelli/status/158097313099012505... >"Nuclear power and fossil fuels brought us here. They caused this crisis, they are not the solution." >Strong and at times emotional speech by Robert Habeck, after weeks under pressu…

> Reality: the Greens and their allies spent half a trillion USD on the "energy transition" and turned off perfectly good nuclear reactors. Result: energy shortages and diplomatic submission to Russia. Um no. Renewable energy is now actually cheaper than nuclear energy. You could build renewable energy + storage within the same range of cost. The problem is the former government shut down nuclear power plants and the…

I would really like to celebrate the affordability of renewable energy but Germany has one of the highest electricity prices in the world.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#293

Post by credit_guy » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 1:54 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…

> Fukushima gave the debate another spin „If Japan can’t control the technology nobody can“.

That's an understandable reaction.

But a better reaction would have been "what lessons did we learn?".

After the 2008 financial crisis, the financial regulators around the world gathered at the 2009 Pittsburgh Summit [1] to see what can be done to improve the resiliency of the global financial markets. They came up with a Statement [2]. Later on, the Basel Committee ironed out some details, and the national regulators other details, and the outcome was a long string of financial reforms known collectively as Basel III.

This was a monumental achievement (well, it's still work in progress, but it's about 80-90% done). Of course, for many professionals in the financial markets it felt more like a curse than a blessing. But we have been trough the March 2020 financial panic, and the financial system coped quite well.

In the nuclear regulatory space, there are so many regulators around the world. The NRC for sure, but also the nuclear regulators in Canada, the UK, France and Finland. One can add South Korea to the list and probably a few more countries. I'm sure they are exchanging notes. Overall, I think they have probably a huge amount of experience, and they have met 99.999% of the edge cases for classical (pressurized and boiling water) reactors.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_G20_Pittsburgh_summit

[2] http://www.g20.utoronto.ca/2009/2009communique0925.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_III

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#294

Post by hbgl » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 1:54 AM 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...

You cannot 1-for-1 replace a reliable energy source with an intermittent one.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#295

Post by wahern » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 2:01 AM UTC

hadlock wrote: post #290

panick21_ wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No its not actually highly toxic and not actually very dangerous at all. A false level of danger has been assigned to radiation and its risk, mostly because of bad science in the 1970s. This mushrooms are still unsafe stuff is mostly a myth. What's correct is that these mushrooms still measure over the arbitrary level set government regulation during the height of panic about nuclear. > We see low death and disease n…

I can read all the science about how nuclear material in the soil is safe, but also I can't in good conscience let my toddler roll around in it and put it in her mouth. You need 100% buy in from parents who will be raising their children there. Japan has removed the top ~8 inches of topsoil from the affected areas around fukashima, I think that is really impressive, but even then I would never allow my family to move…

> I just don't want my kid rolling around in contaminated soil.

Ignorance is bliss. Contaminated soils abound across the industrialized world, it's just that most people have no idea.

Moreover, there's legitimate pressure to keep it that way as people irrationally freak out when they learn something is "contaminated". It turns out that often times the best way to promote soil remediation is to turn a blind eye (at least to some extent) as once contamination is publicly identified costs soar as the public begins demanding ever more onerous mandates, causing people to stop voluntarily remediating, which is why lead thresholds are set considerably lower than for other similarly problematic but less common contaminants.

Just this past week we called up the city environmental health inspector to ask him to check out some painting work being done at a house whose yard abuts our own. We've done it before as we have two young children. The inspector is very nice and accommodating, and there's basically zero risk of anyone getting fined or handed any stop-work order. He simply nudges the painters to take the barest of safety measures, e.g. simple tarping (even if amateurish), to minimize leaded paint flake dispersal. And what more can you reasonably ask? Turning every house scraping job into a super fund site would just be ridiculous, yet if the law treated lead the same way it treated nuclear, that's exactly what would be demanded.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#296

Post by grecy » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 2:13 AM UTC

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #286

grecy wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh, really? https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdgasleck_in_der_Nordsee https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/technik/elgin-gasaustrit... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02648...

Absolutely those are horrifically bad.

Now imagine humans can't even go within a few hundred meters to clean anything up, and we have no robots that can either.

Also imagine that humans can't live within 500km ever again.

Nuclear is clearly the best option, right up until the point it's the worst possible thing for humans and planet earth, which seems to happen about every 30 years or so. As I said, we've been lucky with it so far.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#297

Post by MichaelCollins » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 2:16 AM UTC

wahern wrote: post #295

hadlock wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can read all the science about how nuclear material in the soil is safe, but also I can't in good conscience let my toddler roll around in it and put it in her mouth. You need 100% buy in from parents who will be raising their children there. Japan has removed the top ~8 inches of topsoil from the affected areas around fukashima, I think that is really impressive, but even then I would never allow my family to move…

> I just don't want my kid rolling around in contaminated soil. Ignorance is bliss. Contaminated soils abound across the industrialized world, it's just that most people have no idea. Moreover, there's legitimate pressure to keep it that way as people irrationally freak out when they learn something is "contaminated". It turns out that often times the best way to promote soil remediation is to turn a blind eye (at le…

> Ignorance is bliss. Contaminated soils abound across the industrialized world, it's just that most people have no idea.

Absolutely right. And most of the industrial contaminates are a lot harder to detect than radiation. Even utterly minuscule amounts of radioactive isotopes are almost trivial to detect.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#298

Post by ajmurmann » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 2:21 AM UTC

nawitus wrote: post #165

ajmurmann wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not that easy with German homes as they are heated with hot water pipes and walls are typically solid. You could maybe install a device that emits hot air in a single room, but to install a forced air system, you'd need to in essence remodel the entire home. In addition, you'd have worse outcomes because now the nice warm floors are gone.

In that case you need to install air/water heat pump, which not only heats the house but also the potable water. They're more costly than regular heat pumps, but are _better_ choice than individual heat pump units around the house. It's a more difficult situation if the house lacks water circulation (heated floors/radiators).

Why an air/water heat pump and not just a water heat pump? AFAIk heat pumps are becoming quite popular in Germany in recent years and are definitely a very viable option unlike "air conditioning".

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#299

Post by MichaelCollins » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 2:23 AM UTC

cedilla wrote: post #226

ohgodplsno wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gen III+ reactors are pretty fucking close to meltdown proof. Any reactor in use today will have a negative void coefficient. Which means, if you don't put power into it, the reaction naturally stops. Then you've got control rods and neutron moderators that will fall back upon the core if there's no power. Then Gen3+ includes a core catcher in which, should it breach its reactor, it just falls in there and cools down…

All five large reactor disasters occurred with reactors that also had fail-safes that rendered them theoretically safe. In the case of Three-Mile-Island, unlucky technicians had to work very hard against the reactor's system to sustain the failure.

TMI is a success story. Despite everything that went wrong, the impact to the surrounding population was virtually nil.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#300

Post by hbgl » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 2:27 AM UTC

Archelaos wrote: post #289

mabbo wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear waste is tiny and contained. It kills no one when handled correctly, which it is. Coal and gas plants produce pollution that kills thousands every year, and that's how it's supposed to work. Meltdowns are next to impossible at correctly designed and built plants, which the German ones are.

> It kills no one when handled correctly, which it is. This is not true. The German nuclear industry did not even manage to store low and intermediate level radioactive waste even remotely safely. Here is a report from July 2022 about the failure from German public television: https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/schauplaetze/Marodes-Atommuell... The report is only availablöe in German, but you may run the accompanying docu…

So since the 80s it is known that water enters the nuclear waste storage locations and how many people have died? None. Okay but how many people have faced any direct adverse consequences from it? Also none. And that isn't even a proper counter argument because the waste was not handled correctly in this instance.