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Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

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Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#311

Post by varajelle »

Archelaos wrote: post #265
varajelle wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]…

But as it turned out, this was just more fear than harm. These radiation turned out to have almost no health consequences in the population. (And 500kBq is not much. The human body is already 5kBq naturally)

> What if the next accident happens not in the Soviet Union or Japan, but in one of the power plants next door?

That would be terrible. But how does it compare to other terrible events such as the flood of last year, arguably caused by global warming?

You were victim of the fear propaganda of the 80's, but people today are victim of the energy crisis in Germany, which is partly caused by the choice to discontinue nuclear.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#312

Post by Schroedingersat »

evilos wrote: post #259
Kon5ole wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are three arguments that I personally find both reasonable and convincing. 1) Nuclear fuel and waste are clearly dangerous. Your linked article makes a logical fallacy in that it claims a dangerous activity is safe because few people have died from it. But we know things are dangerous even when nobody dies from it. The level of security surrounding nuclear is beyond anything else, and it's required to keep it sa…

1) It is dangerous yes. That is the nature of the energy being so concentrated. But this concentration is a blessing because you don't need to mind nearly as much material, and it is far far easier to keep an eye on the waste. Where does the waste from coal/gas go? Into the air. It costs way more to try to contain the harms of those substances because they are the opposite of energy dense. Nuclear waste is such a tin…

> I quote this too much, but all the nuclear waste the US has ever generated would sit in a single football field, 10 yards high.

Well you couldn't because you'd have a stew of fissioning soup. But once you include all the concrete and steel and low level waste that needs decades of storage it's about the same size as a 4hr battery for the entire country.

> But this concentration is a blessing because you don't need to mind nearly as much material

> 3) The main issue with solar/wind though, is that we literally don't have enough material to build enough of it. Not to mention the battery storage. It's not a matter of we can't mine fast enough, we literally don't know of the mineral reserves needed. Here's a presentation going over a report that find this

False. If it's a problem for PV it's a much worse problem for existing nuclear plants.

Olympic dam is one of the world's largest uranium mines. It produces 7.5g of silver and 30kg of copper for every kg of Uranium.

You need 10kg of natural uranium for 1kg of PWR fuel.

PV is made of sand, copper, and silver.

70g of silver is enough for 3.5kW net of solar at 5mg/Watt (after needing 5g for the fuel and control rods which you have yet to supply indium, cadmium, and zirconium for).

The solar panels will produce ~1.8TJ in their lifetime and be recyclable. The nuclear fuel will produce 500GJ and require large quantities of steel and concrete for storage and transport.

You get triple the net energy from a uranium mine compared to nuclear.

The silicon, glass, frame, and power electronics take less resources than the rest of the plant.

The story for wind is not so hilariously one sided (for example it uses more concrete than nuclear), but it's still fine. The blades of a >3MW turbine have about the same energy density as packaged nuclear waste. There are also at least 3 storage technologies undergoing commercialisation that use abundant materials.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#313

Post by Schroedingersat »

fsh wrote: post #210
anton96 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Fukushima proved them right. Fukushima ended in no way like Tchernobyl did. The Soviet power plan released radioactivity in the air, make an entire area inhabitable and killed a few dozen a people. Fukushima did nothing of this, everything stayed inside the structure, no radioactivity went out. As Fukushima had no recovery generators available (no fuel in them), it is a great proof that a totally out of control m…

The Fukushima disaster cleanup cost a trillion dollars. Over a hundred thousand people were (at least temporarily) displaced. I would call this a pretty darn big failure.

The trillion dollar figure is a bit of a stretch and includes a lot of stuff that didn't need to happen or was double counted.

Less motivated reasoning gives about $300bn which would still be enough to easily replace every coal and oil plant in the country with renewables (as well as half of the gas).

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#314

Post by wander_homer »

felixfbecker wrote: post #147
wander_homer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people can switch to their cheap electric heaters to at least keep their living rooms warm The grid isn't build for such a load.

Germany also uses electric stoves for cooking more than gas. An electric stove uses 2000-5000W. The grid handles everyone turning on their stove around the same times fine. Maybe heaters will have to run on top of that, but likely most won't have their space heater running while also cooking.

What are you talking about? The reason why electric stoves don't bring the grid down is because it is designed with this load in mind. Adding electric heating to the grid is an additional load, because people won't stop cooking when it's cold, nor would they stop heating if they're hungry.

That's why experts are warning people to not suddenly switch from gas to electric heating this winter.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#315

Post by aldonius »

grecy wrote: post #308
philistine wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With how bad things are climate-wise, I feel like anything below a full-throat defence of nuclear power is in favour of global warming.

The time to start building tons of new nuclear plants was 20 years ago. Given how little time we have to react, and how long it takes to build a nuclear plant (and how expensive they are), putting our hopes on nuclear this late in the game is foolhardy and will never save us. We have no choice but to go with what will have a meaningful impact in the immediate future (5 year horizon) - wind, solar, hydro. Many countri…

Thing is I seem to remember people saying "If we were going to build nuclear, the time to start was 15 years ago"... about 15 years ago.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#316

Post by hedora »

jansan wrote: post #95
Rygian wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Germany using more natural gas now than in 2010? Did they replace coal by gas? Would it have been possible to replace coal with nuclear instead, and keep gas at 2015 levels?

It is needed in summer to replace solar energy during the night. Gas power plants can be switched on and off almost at will, unlike coal or nuclear plants that have long startup and shutdown times. So the gas power plants are switched on at night in summer when the sun doesn't shine. Also, the EU commission declared in February 2022 natural gas as a sustainable energy source, and the EU parliament confirmed this in J…

Some modern nuclear plants can be turned on and off at will.

The reactor itself takes a long time to ramp up and down, but it heats a molten salt battery. The battery can burst-power the turbines at well-above the reactor output; they can be sized to handle peak demand + overnight loads.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#317

Post by legulere »

asdff wrote: post #161
legulere wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That statistic is only about deaths. You still have to deal with nuclear accidents leading to evacuation of huge areas happening once around every 30 years (unknown unknowns and what not). Germany has a high population density. Such a catastrophe happening in Germany would lead to millions getting evacuated. Another issue is the safe disposal of nuclear waste. It might seem like a low risk, but over the huge timespan…

That's a good point, maybe we should also be evacuating huge areas around dirty power plants considering we are aware of the harm they cause to the nearby population? Nuclear waste is a non issue. If you want to make it perfectly safe and untouchable to most bad actors, you can always dump it into a trench in the ocean. The radioactivity will not penetrate far through ocean water and will be less than other sources o…

Particulate emissions are a solved problem nowadays For coal plants at least in Germany (see the purple bar in this graphic https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38...). Traffic, wood burning and dry goods like gravel are the biggest sources currently. The bigger issue is the CO2-emissions.

You’re not thinking far ahead enough for nuclear waste. Bad actors aren’t the only issue. It’s entirely possible that people don’t know what they have in front of them, as can be seen with the Goiânia accident. Places for storage can turn out to be unsafe, for instance in Asse, an old salt mine in Germany there was a water breach leading to the creation of a radioactive salt slurry.

We have to safeguard nuclear waste for thousands to millions of years. So far states have only existed for hundreds of years in a consistent form. 30000 years ago Neanthertals still roamed the earth. It’s not impossible that societal collapse somewhere hinders safekeeping leading to containment of large landscapes.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#318

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

grecy wrote: post #308
philistine wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With how bad things are climate-wise, I feel like anything below a full-throat defence of nuclear power is in favour of global warming.

The time to start building tons of new nuclear plants was 20 years ago. Given how little time we have to react, and how long it takes to build a nuclear plant (and how expensive they are), putting our hopes on nuclear this late in the game is foolhardy and will never save us. We have no choice but to go with what will have a meaningful impact in the immediate future (5 year horizon) - wind, solar, hydro. Many countri…

You are thinking too small. With enough 'nukes' we could suck the carbon out of the atmosphere, and use that to make syngas/synfuels for the applications where it would be impractical to replace them. That alone would be almost carbon neutral. Similar for hydrogen production by electrolysis and process heat for many industrial applications.

Oh, and mass production of carbon zeolithes to regenerate the sucked empty agricultural fields, to make them into something like 'terra preta' without having to use too much fertilizer, instead of uselessly sequestrating it somewhere underground.

Terraforming, so to speak. Like the 'atmospheric processors' from Alien II(Aliens).

edit: Instead of thinking all the raw materials for wind,solar&batteries grow on trees, without any externalities, sustainability problems, and no emissions at all. Which is a fucking cargo cult!

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#319

Post by grecy »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #318
grecy wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time to start building tons of new nuclear plants was 20 years ago. Given how little time we have to react, and how long it takes to build a nuclear plant (and how expensive they are), putting our hopes on nuclear this late in the game is foolhardy and will never save us. We have no choice but to go with what will have a meaningful impact in the immediate future (5 year horizon) - wind, solar, hydro. Many countri…

You are thinking too small. With enough 'nukes' we could suck the carbon out of the atmosphere, and use that to make syngas/synfuels for the applications where it would be impractical to replace them. That alone would be almost carbon neutral. Similar for hydrogen production by electrolysis and process heat for many industrial applications. Oh, and mass production of carbon zeolithes to regenerate the sucked empty ag…

> With enough 'nukes' we could

Uh huh. And when exactly will they be online and performing all this work for us?

As well as the time and cost to build the nukes, how much time and money will it take to build the machines to suck the carbon out of the air.

I'm all for solutions, but 30+ years isn't going to cut it. 10 years is a huge risk.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#320

Post by Salgat »

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 that nuclear plants only need to fail once to have global catastrophic consequences. Chernobyl was so catastrophic that Gorbachev blamed the Soviet Union's collapse on it. Solar and other renewable energy sources can never even remotely approach this level of environmental risk.
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