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Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

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Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#41

Post by toasty228 »

Bigpet wrote: post #37
toasty228 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just follow the gas pipelines...

That's part of it, but if you lived through months of news about where milk is unsafe and how to wash your vegetables and how much iodine to take. You'd maybe think differently too. All the "oh, but it's different now, it's really safe" implies that the scientist at the time of the Chernobyl disaster didn't give assurance that it's totally safe either. I am in favor of nuclear power and think that closing the plants…

Sure, but meanwhile they've been using your lungs as a particulate filter for coal byproducts for decades, and these things will fuck you up even in the best case scenario.

Coal plants also produce radioactive material btw: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#42

Post by FinnKuhn »

IceHegel wrote: post #16

I have always wondered about the origins of the anti nuclear opinion of Germans. It has Cold War origins to be sure, but what kind? I suspect American intelligence has been supporting the anti nuclear movement for some time, for non-proliferation reasons - and not just in Germany. I certainly would be, if I ran the State Department.

Nowadays it is mostly two things.

The 1st reason is nuclear waste. Germany is more densely populated than the US so you can't store it far away from humans. The solution tried before was to just store it deep underground. Turns out that might even be worse than storing it on the surface as it turned out and it has been a total disaster (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine). There have been more cancer cases in this region compared to neighboring regions as well, which might be linked to it. It is now planed to retrieve the waste again and store it somewhere else. Where is currently not known afaik. The whole thing costs billions of Euros already and is going to cost even more and didn't even deliver on it's promises. So for that reason alone wanting to produce more nuclear waste when we can't even deal with what we already have is obviously unpopular.

The 2nd reason is cost. As shown above the storage of nuclear waste has been an expensive fail for Germany, but it doesn't end there. We don't have any nuclear reactors left, so we would need to either reactive existing ones (expensive as they haven't been maintained for continuance operations) or to build a new one. How well that works we can see in either Finland or the UK... both have huge cost overruns and aren't even on-time. I think we had enough of those projects (BER, Stuttgart21) that another one that would likely end up like this is nothing anyone wants. Building more renewables such as solar and wind together with energy storage and gas/hydrogen power plants as backup is just a lot cheaper as we don't need more base load power plants, but ones that are a lot more flexible and can be turned on/off quickly depending on solar/wind output. And any new gas power plant is planned to also work with hydrogen, which can be produced when we have too much solar/wind and then act as the storage medium. So basically a long term way to store energy that is more flexible than batteries (at least on this time and size scale).

In the past reasons were different, but those aren't really relevant now.

Another relevant note here is that Germany is heavily investing in nuclear fusion, which is probably a better use of funds. https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-fusion-germany-bets-billions-o...

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#43

Post by stkdump »

notTooFarGone wrote: post #30
sajithdilshan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once I had a discussion with a German that is a strong supporter of the green party and his argument against nuclear power was the nuclear waste and no proper was of disposing it and also building new nuclear power plants are expensive and take a long time. Then I did a deep research and created a PDF and pointed out that there has been many advances of re-using spent-nuclear fuel and minimize the environmental impac…

So we just have to build the first expensive 20 to get the experience and then we reap the rewards after 40 years when we need the knowledge again? If nuclear would be cheap in the western world I'd be all for it but we just can't do large projects in our ccurrent system. Solar + wind + battery is much less of an headache.

[dead]

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#44

Post by sajithdilshan »

notTooFarGone wrote: post #30
sajithdilshan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once I had a discussion with a German that is a strong supporter of the green party and his argument against nuclear power was the nuclear waste and no proper was of disposing it and also building new nuclear power plants are expensive and take a long time. Then I did a deep research and created a PDF and pointed out that there has been many advances of re-using spent-nuclear fuel and minimize the environmental impac…

So we just have to build the first expensive 20 to get the experience and then we reap the rewards after 40 years when we need the knowledge again? If nuclear would be cheap in the western world I'd be all for it but we just can't do large projects in our ccurrent system. Solar + wind + battery is much less of an headache.

> So we just have to build the first expensive 20 to get the experience and then we reap the rewards after 40 years when we need the knowledge again?

I think the knowledge doesn't has to start from zero. Germany can ask for foreign aid from China.

> If nuclear would be cheap in the western world I'd be all for it but we just can't do large projects in our ccurrent system.

I agree, given the fact that it took 15 years to build the BER airport and Stuttgart 21 is still on-going, i can totally imaging building a single new nuclear power plant in Germany would take 50 years minimum.

> Solar + wind + battery is much less of an headache.

I agree, it's a less headache, but at the same time you cannot support energy intensive industries like chemical, manufacturing etc. You would have to build battery farms which is not sustainable. That's why Germany is slowly on a path for de-industrialization

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#45

Post by Hackbraten »

xutopia wrote: post #13
mtoner23 wrote: post #5

Hopefully Germany doesn't ban geothermal like they did with nuclear and fracking

Please refrain from putting these 2 in the same bucket. Fracking does lots of localized and non-local pollution. Nuclear is contained and way safer for humans.

> Nuclear is contained

Except when it de-contains itself.

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#46

Post by Lev1a »

Kichererbsen wrote: post #8
skimmed wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting nuclear and fracking on the same level is wild.

Putting nuclear and fracking next to each other is also wild. Geographically.

Combining them is even more "fun", see also:

"Nuclear Fracking: Repeatedly Nuking Yourself for Commercial Reasons" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsu0lHkOIFg

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#47

Post by pydry »

maxdo wrote: post #22
yanko wrote: post #11

Opening survival north stream single pipe for Russian gas is no brain solution. Europe break records importing relabeled Russian gas last month anyway

No brain because there is lack of survival instincts in such phrase? Russia openly declares willingness to destroy europe, your lifestyle, way of thinking etc. They claim they are better. Sure , sponsoring this country is no brainer lol. Germany already financed biggest war in europe since WWII by flooding russia with oil money. Is that not enough? Amount of money EU spent to tame the fire of war could easily cover b…

>Russia openly declares willingness to destroy europe

There is not a scintilla of evidence for this.

They're trying to keep the same violent and aggressive American dominated military alliance that is currently and actively trying to destroy Iran far away from their most vulnerable border.

They also tried to pursue the diplomatic route multiple times before invading and after invading and were always rebuffed.

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#48

Post by rightbyte »

xutopia wrote: post #13
mtoner23 wrote: post #5

Hopefully Germany doesn't ban geothermal like they did with nuclear and fracking

Please refrain from putting these 2 in the same bucket. Fracking does lots of localized and non-local pollution. Nuclear is contained and way safer for humans.

> Nuclear is contained and way safer for humans.

One could argue it is nominally safe.

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#49

Post by formerly_proven »

IceHegel wrote: post #16

I have always wondered about the origins of the anti nuclear opinion of Germans. It has Cold War origins to be sure, but what kind? I suspect American intelligence has been supporting the anti nuclear movement for some time, for non-proliferation reasons - and not just in Germany. I certainly would be, if I ran the State Department.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement#Fossil_f...

cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint#History

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#50

Post by soramimo »

jcfrei wrote: post #35
IceHegel wrote: post #16

I have always wondered about the origins of the anti nuclear opinion of Germans. It has Cold War origins to be sure, but what kind? I suspect American intelligence has been supporting the anti nuclear movement for some time, for non-proliferation reasons - and not just in Germany. I certainly would be, if I ran the State Department.

Some good answers below already. I think the anti nuclear movement already started before Chernobyl. I believe it was one of the founding ideologies of the green parties (the danger of high CO2 emissions was not yet front of mind for a lot of people back then). So the opposition to nuclear energy kind of laid the foundation for the modern (European) green parties. But these were all young people back then (in the 70s…

> EU produces about the same amount of nuclear energy as the US - and that's despite Germany shutting down all reactors

Noting that France has one of the highest shares of nuclear in the world, offsetting some of Germany's shutdown.

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