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

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#321

Post by metta2uall » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 6:22 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…

I think the point is that indeed Japan is known for earthquakes & tsunamis, and yet they still failed to do the work of making their reactors tsunami-proof. Thus people think that if Japan, with a reputation valuing "high quality", takes such brazen shortcuts, can their own government be trusted to responsibly operate nuclear power? It's quite tragic since nuclear is a great technology in many cases, especially where there is high density populations but not much land for renewables.

Re. the low death toll, perhaps it's quite low because people were forced to evacuate. Evacuation and the marking of land as contaminated by radioactivity is considered a very high price to pay.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#322

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 6:38 AM UTC

grecy wrote: post #319

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did it ever occur to you that we actually could revert the atmospheric conditions we produced with those 'nukes' and attached 'atmospheric processors'?

Even after a few decades late into the game?

What is so hard to get about the idea that we actually could modulate the greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere, now that we know that and how they influence our living conditions?

It would even make sense to have something like this in case of the next supervolcano eruption. Call it 'weather control done right', if you like.

Retroactive.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#323

Post by atoav » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 6:40 AM UTC

metta2uall wrote: post #321

Cwizard wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> „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 think the point is that indeed Japan is known for earthquakes & tsunamis, and yet they still failed to do the work of making their reactors tsunami-proof. Thus people think that if Japan, with a reputation valuing "high quality", takes such brazen shortcuts, can their own government be trusted to responsibly operate nuclear power? It's quite tragic since nuclear is a great technology in many cases, especially where…

> Evacuation and the marking of land as contaminated by radioactivity is considered a very high price to pay.

Especially in dense Europe. In the US there is more space for surch things to happen and have it only affect a stretch of uninhabitated wildland.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#324

Post by atoav » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 6:51 AM UTC

panick21_ wrote: post #273

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. Not really. If you actually measure it, its not actually that bad. > We were extremely lucky with Chernobyl that young men sacrificed themselves, else a large chunk of Europe would be uninhabitable. Often claimed but, the scientific bases for this claim is beyond shake. Maybe at the very worse you could say that radiation that was slightly dangerous would have be…

Oh sure. The wave of deformed children that I grew up with in the shouthern German, southern Austrian area surely had nothing to do with this, pure coincidence. There are certain mushrooms that are still forbidden to eat.

It is easy to talk for someone who has not experienced the fallout of an nuclear powerplant burning a few countries over. Experiencing such a thing (hopefully understandably) changes how favourable people see the technology.

On top of that the question of safe nuclear waste storage is far from solved in dense Europe. From an ethical standpoint I think an approach of "Lol we need energy now, let's have later generations deal with this and pay for it" highly questionable.

If you produce one kW/h of nuclear energy today, my opinion is that the costs of the potential fallout in the weird rare cataatrophe scenario and the waste storage for the whole lifetime of the waste need to be paid ahead. That, however would make nuclear uneconmical.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#325

Post by JohnBooty » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 7:19 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #324

panick21_ wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is when they go bad, it gets really bad. Not really. If you actually measure it, its not actually that bad. > We were extremely lucky with Chernobyl that young men sacrificed themselves, else a large chunk of Europe would be uninhabitable. Often claimed but, the scientific bases for this claim is beyond shake. Maybe at the very worse you could say that radiation that was slightly dangerous would have be…

Oh sure. The wave of deformed children that I grew up with in the shouthern German, southern Austrian area surely had nothing to do with this, pure coincidence. There are certain mushrooms that are still forbidden to eat. It is easy to talk for someone who has not experienced the fallout of an nuclear powerplant burning a few countries over. Experiencing such a thing (hopefully understandably) changes how favourable…

    It is easy to talk for someone who has not 
    experienced the fallout of an nuclear 
    powerplant burning a few countries over.

First, I am very sorry. That must have been unimaginably scary.

While it it not the same as experiencing this terror firsthand, my grandparents lived not very far away from you during the Chernobyl incident. It was very frightening.

Also, I live not so far away from Three Mile Island here in the USA. As well as very several currently functioning nuclear plants.

So while it is "easy" for me to talk about nuclear power, it is not purely fantasy for me.

    If you produce one kW/h of nuclear energy today
    my opinion is that the costs of the potential 
    fallout in the weird rare cataatrophe scenario 
    and the waste storage for the whole lifetime of 
    the waste need to be paid ahead. That, however 
    would make nuclear uneconmical.

I mostly agree, but I would also say the same thing about fossil fuels.

I am looking at this from the perspective of global warming, which will have disastrous consequences for many billions of people.

Should we also add the costs of global warming to each kW/h of energy produced by coal or natural gas?

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#326

Post by solarkraft » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 7:27 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…

> isn't Japan known for its earthquakes?

Japan is known for being technologically advanced and safe, so the earthquake shouldn't have mattered.

> What should really put this into perspective is that air pollutions is estimated to kill millions every year.

This is certainly a great point, one I tend to find convincing, but it seems very hard to convince others on similar grounds: Radiation is just way more immediately scary.

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#327

Post by grecy » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 7:41 AM UTC

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #322

grecy wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Did it ever occur to you that we actually could revert the atmospheric conditions we produced with those 'nukes' and attached 'atmospheric processors'? Even after a few decades late into the game? What is so hard to get about the idea that we actually could modulate the greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere, now that we know that and how they influence our living conditions? It would even make sense to have something l…

> Did it ever occur to you that we actually could revert the atmospheric conditions we produced with those 'nukes' and attached 'atmospheric processors'?

Yes, of course that is a great hypothetical option for 30-50 years from now.

We and our children don't have time to wait for that.

Next you're going to tell me if I just wait till fusion works we'll all be saved and can power these "atmospheric processors" with those!

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#328

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 7:59 AM UTC

grecy wrote: post #327

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it ever occur to you that we actually could revert the atmospheric conditions we produced with those 'nukes' and attached 'atmospheric processors'? Even after a few decades late into the game? What is so hard to get about the idea that we actually could modulate the greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere, now that we know that and how they influence our living conditions? It would even make sense to have something l…

> Did it ever occur to you that we actually could revert the atmospheric conditions we produced with those 'nukes' and attached 'atmospheric processors'? Yes, of course that is a great hypothetical option for 30-50 years from now. We and our children don't have time to wait for that. Next you're going to tell me if I just wait till fusion works we'll all be saved and can power these "atmospheric processors" with thos…

> Next you're going to tell me...

Nope, I won't. Because anything except aneutronic fusion will be much dirtier than the 'nukes' we have now. Which is hypothetical right now, and maybe stays so forever.

Which can't be said about 'nukes', neither the ones we have, nor the ones we could have with a little bit of more investment into materials science. (Liquid salt, etc.)

We and our children won't make it with 'renewables' alone, because they emit at least as much greenhouse gasses, or more when you consider all the externalities going into their production. They are not the solution.

Edit: /me mumbling something like 'Look into fucking GESAMTSTOFFMENGENKREISLAUF'

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankey_diagram

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#329

Post by Jon_Lowtek » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 8:09 AM UTC

varajelle wrote: post #311

Archelaos wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

> These radiation turned out to have almost no health consequences in the population.

Thousands died of thyroid cancer but for the population that is easily described as "almost no consequences" due to scale.

https://unis.unvienna.org/unis/en/pressrels/2018/unisous395....

The death of a man is a catastrophe. A thousand deaths is a statistic!

Re: Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

#330

Post by yywwbbn » Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 8:14 AM UTC

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]…

What about the experience of (a much, much higher number than were affected by Chernobyl) people who die every year from cancer and other diseases caused by burning fossil fuels, especially coal?

Are their lives less valuable than the right of the so called environmental activists (mainly referring to the ones from the 80s and 90s) to impose their irrational views on the rest of the society? If nuclear expansion continued at the same pace it did in the 60s and 70s we’d probably have CO2 emissions under control by now. Instead we just wanted several decades waiting for renewables to become cost effective.

> This experience, shared by millions of people, has done much to cast doubt on the claims that such risks are technically controllable.

Yes, people are irrational. I mean nuclear isn’t 100% safe but it’s objectively safer than burning fossil fuels. So it seems absurd to me to be fine with burning diesel and coal but now with nuclear.