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Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

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Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#171

Post by mgfist »

varjag wrote: post #95
mgfist wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I distrust techno-optimist promises to manage ever-growing collections of spent nuclear fuel over millennia. We can hardly trust plant operators to manage it safely over decades. Nuclear power plants have been extremely safe for many decades! Fuck, even the worst disasters related to nuclear power plants have killed less people than coal or oil disasters, even including Chernobyl which was a fuck up beyond comparis…

Belarus had markedly increased general cancer rate post-1986. At the time most of that was fatal. None of that naturally is included in site personnel and firefighter fatalities that IAEA recognises as the only casualties. When I was a student I met a Chernobyl liquidator in his 30s on a local train. He said he was dying of leukaemia and looked like it. As a thought experiment, how would you argue to him that his dea…

Those numbers are still in the single digit thousands. Meanwhile how many deaths have been caused by fossil fuel emissions (both carbon, and local, and radiation). Very very hard to predict, but you see estimates going up to the many millions.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#172

Post by pfdietz »

rectang wrote: post #88
atoav wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew in the area most hit by Chernobyl fallout in Europe. The disfigured newborn kids who didn't make it would probably not share your view. My girlfriends first older brother was one of those babies, the second one survived but is disfigured and needs serious care to live. I had three such kids in my first class at school, four different ones in my second and a sizeable number of parents whose kids didn't survive…

There are a number of pro-nuclear advocates on this page who can’t just engage in good faith but instead dismiss and deride their interlocutors as “crazy”, “paranoid”, “fear mongers“. It’s infuriating because the origins of anti-nuclear sentiments are often plain and perfectly understandable, as your poignant anecdotes illustrate.

I'd get angry with them, but at this point the renewable wave is so overwhelming and unstoppable that they are just screaming into the void. I know they are set up for bitter disappointment, having constructed a false defensive narrative to prop up their world view, and I kind of pity them.

Ok, maybe not that very last part.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#173

Post by ZeroGravitas »

noosphr wrote: post #119
boshomi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power has been killed off by economic forces; there’s no turning back. Solar and wind power generate cheap electricity in abundance, and midday electricity prices in Europe regularly dip into negative territory (as low as minus €500 (sic!) on May 1!). Modern grids do not require high-risk investments in ultra-inert baseload power that ultimately fails to find a market; instead, they require low-risk investmen…

Nuclear power died 20 years ago for 40 years now. Meanwhile Chinas 2060 plan for a carbon zero grid with 25% nuclear and 100% over provisioning is right on track.

So their 2060 target is a lower percentage than the EU has today? Which is itself 50% lower than the EU had 20 years ago.

I think that's a pretty good support for the notion that nuclear is past its prime.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#174

Post by [deleted] »

khafra wrote: post #165
titanomachy wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do old people not have air conditioning because the law prohibits it? I thought it was more that air conditioners are expensive, old people in Europe are often somewhat poor and on fixed incomes, and a lot of historically temperate places in Europe have no tradition of AC. Certainly a lot of the young wealthy people I know in Europe have AC, even outside of the really hot places.

The death toll per heat wave can easily hit 5 figures in just france. A hybrid portable-minisplit that will cool a 100m^2 apartment is under a thousand euros, and draw just under a Mwh per year. A portable to cool one small bedroom is much less power-efficient, but can often be found between 200 and 300. That's not cheap , per se, but funerals aren't much less expensive in Europe than in America. Many EU countries al…

[deleted]

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#175

Post by pfdietz »

Ringz wrote: post #156
noosphr wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power died 20 years ago for 40 years now. Meanwhile Chinas 2060 plan for a carbon zero grid with 25% nuclear and 100% over provisioning is right on track.

They are not on track. From https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/World-Nuclear-Industry-St... > According to the China Nuclear Energy Association, despite higher output, nuclear’s share of China’s total electricity production slightly slipped from 4.9 percent in 2023 to 4.7 percent in 2024, (Energy Institute data indicate a 3.7-percent increase in net production and a drop from 4.7 percent to 4.5 percent of the nuclear…

Remember all those projections of solar adoption that, year after year, consistently underestimated future growth?

It turns out the same has been happening with nuclear, only in reverse: the agencies doing the projections have consistently, year after year, overestimated nuclear growth.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462962...

(in particular figure 3.)

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#176

Post by iSnow »

cluckindan wrote: post #143
Qdulf wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is historical revisionism. Anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany is rooted in the peace movement and environmentalism, with the majority of public discourse starting in the 1970s. The debate has always been about what to do with the waste. Our government misrepresented the "Asse" as a solved solution for a final repository, even though it was always only a test repository for low and intermediate-level radioactive w…

Revisionism it is not. It was Schröder’s administration that shut down Germany’s nuclear power plants. Where is the peace movement and so-called environmentalism rooted? Pro-nuclear is pro-environment. The alternatives are fossil fuels and renewables, which are both extremely anti-environment: water power require large artificial reservoirs and create flood risks, wind power kills/drives away wildlife and is almost u…

>It was Schröder’s administration that shut down Germany’s nuclear power plants.

That's not even true, it was Merkel's administration. Under Schröder, the plan for the phase-out was formulated and set in motion, only to be stopped and then restarted by Merkel.

The modern anti-nuclear movement in Germany got started in the 1970's by the TMI accident and a book named "Der Atom-Staat". Chornobyl of course put the nails into the coffin.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#177

Post by [deleted] »

usrusr wrote: post #116
pjmlp wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all, we look into Fukushima and Chernobyl as examples of what actual happens when things don't go as the advocates sell it. And naturally the radio waste is fine as long as we store it into other countries.

Fukushima hit hard in (West) Germany: Chernobyl was mostly explained away with "because Soviet", it wasn't that hard to convince people that much safer nuclear was possible. But Japan, of all countries, not being able to safely run a reactor? The country of trains running on time and of Toyotas making domestic cars look laughably unreliable in ADAC statistics?

[deleted]

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#178

Post by ecshafer »

khafra wrote: post #165
titanomachy wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do old people not have air conditioning because the law prohibits it? I thought it was more that air conditioners are expensive, old people in Europe are often somewhat poor and on fixed incomes, and a lot of historically temperate places in Europe have no tradition of AC. Certainly a lot of the young wealthy people I know in Europe have AC, even outside of the really hot places.

The death toll per heat wave can easily hit 5 figures in just france. A hybrid portable-minisplit that will cool a 100m^2 apartment is under a thousand euros, and draw just under a Mwh per year. A portable to cool one small bedroom is much less power-efficient, but can often be found between 200 and 300. That's not cheap , per se, but funerals aren't much less expensive in Europe than in America. Many EU countries al…

Why are ACs so expensive in Europe? A window AC can be had from Walmart for like $120.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#179

Post by AdamN »

cluckindan wrote: post #155
TitaRusell wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pro nuclear comes from American conservatives. The same people who claim climate change is a hoax. The same people who hate green energy solutions.

Pro-nuclear comes from scientifically informed progressives, definitely not conservatives. Nuclear IS a green energy solution.

There's a modern argument that nuclear is greener than oil, gas, and even hydro and everything else. That's pretty new though (and certainly not a no-brainer).

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#180

Post by AdamN »

Neil44 wrote: post #129
AdamN wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why subsidies are per se bad. But also almost all infrastructure is subsidized regardless: roads, trains (cargo as well), ports, nuclear, coal, etc...

I did not express an opinion on whether subsidies are good or bad :)

You expressed an opinion with how you framed it.
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