The Great German Energy Experiment

Just because there hasn't been a Tsunami in Bavaria YET doesn't mean we should take the chance.

1) are the raw materials the same raw materials? (Iron is easier to get than tungsten for instance). Are the materials used in either type of generation actually hard to find or in danger of becoming scarce?

2) How much extra energy is spent on processing the raw materials to the finished product? The vast majority of weight in a turbine is the tower, which is relatively simple to build compared to the thousands of miles of piping welded together in a nuke plant. Even if weight of resources/watt of generation was a good measure, you are not factoring the weight of a) fuel to create energy consumed in manufacture, and b) weight of wasted resources in the refining and manufacture processes.

3) How reusable is the material base? How much of a nuke plant can be used to create the next plant? Presumably a wind down can have it's turbine or airfoils replaced independently of the tower structure itself, reducing tco. (and total resource consumption).

4) Your analysis is not including weight of energy production fuel put in, nor the weight of all resources needed for dealing with post energy production waste (not insignificant in nuclear waste storage).

Most of a nuclear plant is concrete (the containment building) and iron (the reactor body). And both those materials are easy to get. The pipes are minor in comparison (in terms of materials, not in terms of construction). There isn't much if any tungsten used in a reactor, it's all ordinary iron, copper, concrete, etc.

In contrast a wind turbine uses hard to get neodymium rare earth magnets.

Nuclear plants don't require exotic materials.

2:

It's about the same for nuclear plants and wind turbines - you make a mold and pour the concrete. You might have thousands of miles of pipe, but you also produce a thousand times as much energy.

Not much waste in either during manufacturing - any extra metals are reused, and the concrete is poured in place. So it's about the same for turbines/nuclear plants.

> weight of resources/watt of generation was a good measure

It's an approximation of how much resources are needed (mining, energy, etc). We are worried about CO2, but mining also causes pollution, and uses energy.

3:

In a turbine it's the tower and blades both that need to be replaced due to material fatigue. The generator can be reused. The tower is wasted (it's poured concrete). The blades can be melted down, but they are light, and it's not a lot of metal - making them is the hard part.

We've never reused a nuclear plant (that I know of), so it's hard to say what would happen there.

They last a lot longer than wind turbines though, in the range of a 100 years vs 20.

Most likely the nuclear core would be removed, and the building reused for the next power plant. The building itself doesn't wear out, but they might redo the control equipment (pipes, wires, all very recyclable stuff).

4:

The weight of the fuel is tiny - less than 100 tons of fuel for a 1GW reactor, and it lasts around 10 years. That's equivalent to a couple of bolts on a wind turbine (which produces 1/1000 of the energy).

Waste is troublesome, but doesn't use a lot of materials. It's about one semi trailer load - every 10 years, for a plant that produces 1000 times as much as a turbine (which also fits on a semi).

"A second problem is that even when it comes to alternative energy sources, Germany doesn't reward carbon dioxide reduction. Rather, its policy establishes well-defined subsidies for specific technologies: a kilowatt-hour of solar power is rewarded more than power from offshore wind, which in turn earns more than power from onshore wind. Even though solar subsidies have been reduced to rates far lower than the ones Leurs locked in, solar power still pays the highest rates. If reducing emissions were the focus, however, more money would be directed toward reducing energy use. 'If you could choose the optimal instruments, focusing on those areas first where you can achieve your goals most inexpensively, you would focus not so much on renewables but much more on efficiency,' says Pittel, the energy economist from Munich."

This ignores the advice of Amory Lovins

http://www.rmi.org/Amory+B.+Lovins

(Amory Lovins profile page at Rocky Mountain Institute website)

http://www.ted.com/speakers/amory_lovins.html

(TED profile)

http://www.ted.com/talks/amory_lovins_a_50_year_plan_for_ene...

(TED Talk video "A 40-year plan for energy")

and generally the advice of any thoughtful scholar on how to improve worldwide energy efficiency. The German Energiewende plan is a remarkable example of intentionally wrong policy choices that waste the money of German taxpayers and utility rate-payers and delay innovation. It's a good thing that other countries have differing policies that better encourage innovation, especially innovation to reduce energy consumption.

AFTER EDIT:

Another subthread here talks about the economics of importing energy versus producing it domestically. An astute HN participant mentioned the principle of comparative advantage. For onlookers who may not have seen a good reference on comparative advantage, I suggest "Ricardo's Difficult Idea,"

http://www.pkarchive.org/trade/ricardo.html

by an economist who has been awarded the Nobel memorial prize in economics, an essay that explains why trading for resources is generally much, much better than trying to produce all resources within national borders.

There are some other good explanations of the principle of comparative advantage easily found via an online search:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/comparativeadv...

http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/reser_e/cadv_e.htm

http://iang.org/free_banking/david.html

B) Still don't like your oversimplification in terms of CO2 - and we "send around CO2" all the time. I simply don't think it matters.

C) Again, solar power isn't far enough ahead right now, most of the money is in wind development. Oh, and then there are, you know, a lot of other renewable energy sources that you ignore as you're a little to taken with how well you think you can bash solar.

D) Well, that's certainly a reason to buy into the argument, then, I guess.

E) Oh look, solar again. I sure hope the person you were replying to was rather directly indicating that it's not the only thing to talk about or this would make you seem quite overzealous by now.

F) Again, it's an investment and a sound one at that, based on the history of how technology develops in that area. A walking where the ball will be, not where it is right now (coal and, indeed, nuclear) kind of situation.

I'm curious, though - what's your assessment on how much further nuclear energy has gotten in dealing with its toxic waste problem in the half a century it has been around?