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Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

reuters.com

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Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#171

Post by Andi »

Staydecent wrote: post #103
junklight wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's got bugger all to do with any gods or deities. I can't help noticing that the natural tendency of the human species is to expand and adapt - that is what we are. I also notice that the various movements that advocate more basic living patterns have never really caught on. So you are going to have two options: 1) Refuse to do anything about power, let it get more and more expensive until enough people die that yo…

"everyone chooses to live a more basic quieter life against our natural instincts." Serious? That's a huge claim. yet, so many people do live this "quieter" life. I am striving to live that life. There is quite a growing community (at least in British Columbia) of people concerned with things like food security and climate change. Ever since I was young, I was disgusted by the City. Yes, this is not a popular view, b…

I don't like cities either. Who tells us that we need to live there? We tell it to ourselves, and probably we fail. We are not coming from a world of traffic noise, air pollution, overproduction, overarousal by all kinds of sensual stimulus. And I am sure that this life can destroy the human species on the long run. HOW do we know if we are made for this life, for this artificial Lebenswelt that we create for ourselves? Evolution is running slowly. This is the problem of tech: that we can totally adapt the environment to us. But what are we? We are living creatures that needed to adapt to the environment in the past. Never the other way round! How will we look like after many generations of as we live today. We are NOT going to look as we look today, and one thing is sure: Living in a world where every ressource is just some steps away, we will not live healthier. The huge thirst for energy is corresponding to this lifestyle, that Stanley Kubrick wants to critizise in "A Clockwork Orange". So your view of disgusting cities - for me it's totally justified! And so your comment is less off-topic than one could think, because needing less energy to live will mean that we surround ourselves more with an environment that is healthy for us and the future generations. This goes hand in hand.

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#172

Post by Andi »

junklight wrote: post #41
Andi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot agree. You are stuck in a view that energy needs to be cheap and that energy must be available despite the costs of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations. This is the classical view of people who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take.

it's got bugger all to do with any gods or deities. I can't help noticing that the natural tendency of the human species is to expand and adapt - that is what we are. I also notice that the various movements that advocate more basic living patterns have never really caught on. So you are going to have two options: 1) Refuse to do anything about power, let it get more and more expensive until enough people die that yo…

This kind of technical view is religious but is usually not called religion. Of course it is OK and important - especially for the poorer countries - to make power cheaper. But NEVER at all costs. The problem with renewable energies is that they need itself rare materials that will not be available for all times. We need a circular flow of recycable materials. The way companies are looking for cheap energy is predisposed to come to a dead-end, because they exploit materials that can be exhausted and so will cause new - global - conflicts.

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#173

Post by Andi »

petercooper wrote: post #61
Andi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot agree. You are stuck in a view that energy needs to be cheap and that energy must be available despite the costs of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations. This is the classical view of people who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take.

This is the classical view of people who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take. It has seemed to be a pretty "natural direction" for humanity so far , at least, and technical progress continues to give humanity so much while costing us so little. To me it seems no more bizarre a view that technical progress is a good direction for humanity to take as believi…

Did you see Kubrick's "2001"? Probably no other film gives a better example of the fact that education will be more important than technical progress (especially how it is today: at all costs) at any time. No human being wants to live on a star after he/she has lived there for some generations. Wanna bet?

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#174

Post by Andi »

junklight wrote: post #116
Staydecent wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"everyone chooses to live a more basic quieter life against our natural instincts." Serious? That's a huge claim. yet, so many people do live this "quieter" life. I am striving to live that life. There is quite a growing community (at least in British Columbia) of people concerned with things like food security and climate change. Ever since I was young, I was disgusted by the City. Yes, this is not a popular view, b…

it's not a bold claim at all. Look around at the planet. Humans are everywhere it is possible to be. Something drove us to do that. And given it is quite unlikely that there was a meeting 100,000 years a go in Africa where we as a species decided - "let's give overrunning the whole planet a go" I think that "instinct" for want of a better word is what drives that. Living in a sustainable way does not come naturally t…

We CANNOT overcome our animal urges. NEVER. Don't try it. Which does not imply that we cannot be intelligent and civilized. But the animal in us wants to live and no technology can change that fact.

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#175

Post by john61 »

rmc wrote: post #159
john61 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are huge electr. pumped storage hydro power stations in use in Austria und Switzerland for decades... http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpspeicherkraftwerk#.C3.96ste... Also smart grids (trinding price due to current demand and consumption and intelligent consumer hardware automatically controlled by this price) are emerging. Also the weather forecast and therefore solar and wind energy producing forecast for the…

Also smart grids (trinding price due to current demand and consumption and intelligent consumer hardware automatically controlled by this price) are emerging. Sounds terrible. Can you imagine half the lights in your house automatically turning off due to price increases? If it's enforced on people then it's basically rolling brownouts. If it's optional people will leave the lights on, pay more and grumble, but you'll…

My washing machine or dish washer is programmable at the moment. They often wash in the night. I don't mind when they are washing given them a target finishing time. My 2 thermal heat pumps for hot water and heating could easily take the price into their on/off calculations without any nuisance. They just store the heat energy in the house / water bowl when electric is cheap. If I am going to buy an electric car or a plug hybrid, I don't mind when it is charging, I just want that the batteries are full at 7 am. There is a lot of room for intelligence in our energy consumption. Owning my own battery buffer could also become profitable.

The volatile wholesale price is there at the moment, what is missing is a volatile consumer price and an XML / JSON whatever webservice with the current price information and some WIFI chips and logic in my hardware. Not a big deal actually.

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#176

Post by bluedanieru »

nl wrote: post #21
bluedanieru wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I suspect will happen is more power will be imported from nations that flagrantly pollute the environment. The Chinese might be on to something with putting the engineers in charge. Sometimes the public really doesn't know what the fuck they're doing, and should be completely ignored.

China has stopped waterfront nuclear power station approvals: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-suspends-waterfront-n... and suspended all other development: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/16/china.nuclea... Don't believe everything the nuclear power fans tell you. Sometimes the engineers really do know what they are doing.

They're halting approvals until the safety standards have been revised. That's hardly the same thing.

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#177

Post by bluedanieru »

nextparadigms wrote: post #46
bluedanieru wrote: post #7

Meanwhile Japan itself, which has weathered the effects of several nuclear disasters (Fukushima being the mildest), is doing no such thing. And apparently Germany will continue to import power derived from nuclear plants.

Yes, they are actually. http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/29/inhabitats-week-in-green-... Speaking of solar power, Japan unveiled plans to construct 10 new solar power plants in the wake of the Fukushima Nuclear Crisis, while Switzerland announced that it will completely phase out the use of nuclear power.

What does that link have to do with anything? You claim Japan intends to follow Germany's lead in becoming nuclear-free? Anything to support that?

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#178

Post by bluedanieru »

sapper2 wrote: post #39
bluedanieru wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can apply this reasoning to anything, so what makes you think it necessarily applies to nuclear power? That is to say, by what reasoning do you argue that nuclear power itself isn't a 'better technology'? And better than what?

A technology that can - by the core physics behind it - make large parts of a country uninhabitable upon failure has no future. And is crazy for a small country like Japan. Maybe it is better than coal. But Germany plans to replace them with renewable energy.

German politicians want to replace them with renewable energy. They have no realistic plan to do so. Meanwhile they will continue to import power with no regard for how it was generated. It's pandering and hypocrisy.

As for physics, how about the physics of an oil spill?

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#179

Post by junklight »

Andi wrote: post #172
junklight wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's got bugger all to do with any gods or deities. I can't help noticing that the natural tendency of the human species is to expand and adapt - that is what we are. I also notice that the various movements that advocate more basic living patterns have never really caught on. So you are going to have two options: 1) Refuse to do anything about power, let it get more and more expensive until enough people die that yo…

This kind of technical view is religious but is usually not called religion. Of course it is OK and important - especially for the poorer countries - to make power cheaper. But NEVER at all costs. The problem with renewable energies is that they need itself rare materials that will not be available for all times. We need a circular flow of recycable materials. The way companies are looking for cheap energy is predisp…

So explain why it is a "religion".

I am looking at human nature and saying that you are not going to change it and therefore you are going to need to work around it.

"We need a circular flow of recycable materials" is a technical solution too. And perhaps is the right answer.

Then only thing I am saying is that this lovely green view of us all living in harmony with the planet is complete rubbish. Because it does not take into account human nature. Yes I agree that some people can live like that - some very well indeed. But you can not make all do so.

You also have a very fixed idea of what cheap energy involves: "because they exploit materials that can be exhausted". I had in mind things like photovoltaics, wind - I live surrounded in all directions by wind farms and there is an immense amount of investment going on, modern nuclear tech - have you seen Bill Gates talk on this?

This is not a dogmatic view. If you came to me and could show that you could genuinely do it in a different way without relying on mass education and changing the way people normally behave then cool - I'll be on board.

Your idea that my views are a religion is a dogma in itself

What is worse is that this is why we are likely to be more screwed than we should be this problem: for a lot of solutions they some how need to stop all of the other solutions because they don't match ideals. I am not advocating a single solution - I want as many people as possible trying. I am not even saying don't try to get everyone living in a sustainable way - I recycle, when I finally get round to buying a house I have every intention of having a crack at doing my own power generation. All I am saying is that any plan that involves changing the behaviour of every single human being on this planet is not going to work under any circumstances - and when the failure mode of that being your only plan is so serious then people need to be pointing this out.

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#180

Post by Typhon »

moe wrote: post #166
Typhon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not on a comparable scale. Besides, reactors are a small target that's mostly underground. That should limit the damage. In any case, may I remind you we're discussing a very hypothetical scenario ?

Not on a comparable scale. Excuse me? As far as I know the damage to the containment was very limited in Fukushima. And they were very worried about maintaining the cooling in the damaged buildings. In a plane crash scenario we might be talking about no containment and no cooling at all. Instead we might be left with a pile of radioactive rubble and a kerosine fire. After all you could be right that the scale would n…

As far as I know the damage to the containment was very limited in Fukushima

Right. Except water from the ocean was going in and out through the few tiny holes, and maybe that was the main problem.

See, uranium doesn't fly away when the reactor is open, but of course, if irradiated water goes right back in the ocean, there's dissemination on a bigger scale than Chernobyl.

« 9/11 did happen »

A huge scale terrorist attack like this is statistically less likely than an earthquake in Japan.

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