141–150 of 222 posts
If you like Kraftwerk and you're not aware of this book, I recommend it: "Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany", by Uwe Schütte. It's packed with details of albums, songs, tours, equipment, and people. The anti-nuclear message in "Radio-Activity" certainly came later and was repeatedly updated, right into the Fukushima era [2011], but this was not the original sentiment [1976]. From the book: "At the time, Billboard…
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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.
In the last 70 years, 600-700 nuclear reactors have been in operation worldwide, and three of them have had major accidents. You already mentioned two of them, the third is Three Mile Island. That’s a catastrophic failure rate under 0.5 percent. Sure, the effects of a failure spread widely and can be a hazard for a long time, but personally I would want to see the same risk-averse sentiment applied to production and…
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More like the robot thing to do. Anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany was entirely manufactured; it was the product of Gerhard Schröder and similar robots who enriched themselves on Russian oil and gas. Ironically, it is also where the so-called Green Party began.
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…
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 useless without efficient large—scale energy storage and other methods of power generation, while solar also requires storage and other power generation but also requires mining of rare earth metals.
Of course we could just stop all of our industries to save power. No more production, no more consumption, no more pollution.
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>> only to replace it with Russian oil with Russian gas.
s/Russian/American/ Either way, Germany has perfected the efficient foot bullet, at least. I could imagine Kraftwerk devising a stonkin’ “Fußkugel” track, actually ..
[0] https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung... [1] https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung...
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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.
In the last 70 years, 600-700 nuclear reactors have been in operation worldwide, and three of them have had major accidents. You already mentioned two of them, the third is Three Mile Island. That’s a catastrophic failure rate under 0.5 percent. Sure, the effects of a failure spread widely and can be a hazard for a long time, but personally I would want to see the same risk-averse sentiment applied to production and…
If we’re talking risk aversion, we can address both the major certain risk of climate change and the lesser but still valid risks of nuclear while saving a ton of money and probably getting results quickly. The reason so much fossil fuel money goes into pushing nuclear power is that it guarantees fossil fuel usage continues unchecked for decades before possibly going down, and we don’t have decades any more.
And stumbled upon a documentary (in German) on Conny Plank: https://youtu.be/YD29GzjiSvw
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Great story. Had no idea. Still love the name Uwe. One of those German names that doesn’t have an English equivalent unlike, say, Pieter.
I was told once Hugh is the nearest equivalent to Uwe, but i can't tell if thats correct.
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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…
Solar and wind are still heavily subsidized are they not? If they're so economically amazing why are they subsidized?
Because they require an upfront investment that many households cannot make.
Also, whether such investments make economical sense for companies hugely depends on interest rate, and that fluctuates.
Because of that, a country with a long term goal to decrease dependency on non-renewables may want to subsidize such investments.
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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…
If power is so cheap mid-day, why don't european buildings have sufficient air conditioning not to kill the elderly during heat waves? The laws restricting AC all have power conservation as their rationale.
Certainly a lot of the young wealthy people I know in Europe have AC, even outside of the really hot places.
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A hidden danger of coal is ironically the radioactivity of its waste, which gets put into concrete products and contribute to indoor air quality issues. The paranoia around nuclear power is tied to generational fear mongering of governments during the Cold War. The oddest part is why not use safer reactor designs; water reactors make sense for the US Navy and not on land.
Then again, if we hadn't had the Cold War and the associated nuclear arms race, we wouldn't have had civil nuclear power either, so...
When the Senate ratified some non-proliferation treaties, that also ended reprocessing spent fuel in the US which gets blamed on Carter.
Notes:
0 - https://www.amazon.com/Curve-Binding-Energy-Alarming-Theodor...
1 - The DOE owns all of the US nuclear weapons and leases them to the DOD.