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Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

nytimes.com

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Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#181

Post by manfredo »

merb wrote: post #174
renaudg wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is simply not true. Right this moment, coal is the single largest source of electricity production in Germany (33.66% of the total) They're emitting nearly 400gCO2eq/kWh, compared to nuclear-first France's 70. That is an abysmal result. https://www.electricitymap.org/

btw. this map is bullshit. french basically netted zero co2 emissions for their nuclear power plant. I mean 90% of their uranium ore comes from nigeria. it's not like that stuff gets teleported to the reactors. the uraniums needs to be mined, refined, transported. see: - https://www.newscientist.com/letter/mg23531450-700-7-generat... - https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... etc... of course i…

Yes, it does need to get mined refined and transported. But the fissile energy density of uranium is, literally, a million times greater than gasoline or coal. It doesn't take much uranium to generate a lot of power.

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#182

Post by ksec »

beloch wrote: post #71

"Nuclear energy, to start with, is ultimately not safe, and the Germans have always been particularly uneasy with it. After the nuclear accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in 2011, Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the “Atomausstieg,” the exit from nuclear energy once and for all. Why? Because, as Ms. Merkel put it back then: “The residual risk of nuclear energy can be accepted only if one is convinced th…

>Merkel's decision ignored the truly extraordinary circumstances of the Fukushima disaster, which was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that, each individually, exceeded the design parameters of the reactor, which was 40 years old at the time of the disaster. Updated studies indicated the reactor was vulnerable to tsunami, but were ignored.

And that wasn't the only case, there were evidence it was the maintenance wasn't done properly. But no one was willing to admit it. Better to let the public think Nuclear is not safe rather than admitting to our own mistakes.

I kept thinking, had that reactor withstand that tsunami, would the world have turn around and built newer, better Nuclear Reactor.

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#183

Post by Iwan-Zotow »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #128
vkou wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This focus is in direct contrast to nuclear's greatest weakness that no one talks about; it's maintenance and manpower costs. You say weakness - and I say that more people die from falls, from installing rooftop solar panels, than do in nuclear accidents. Power generation is inherentantly dangerous. Just because you distribute the danger around, instead of centralizing it, does not mean that you've reduced the dang…

Renewables aren't a rounding error, unless you consider multiple percentage points of growth in every power market in the 2010s as rounding errors. Yes LNG has accounted for 3 or 4X the coal closures, however renewables don't incur methane leakage. Overall, both renewables and LNG are greening the grid by killing coal.

> Overall, both renewables and LNG are greening the grid by killing coal.

in your dream

Coal production is growing last three years

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#184

Post by pnako »

rat9988 wrote: post #57
m4rtink wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, it at least so far it worked well, they avoided releasing a lot of emissions and are now in a much better position to decide what to do next.

Actually france doesn't know how much nuclear costs. The dismantling has been order of magnitude at least understimated.

I see a few people in this thread making the mistake of thinking France went nuclear for cost or environmental reasons.

The main motivation was geopolitical. You don't need a lot of uranium (less than 10,000 tonnes a year), you can stockpile it, and you can buy it from many countries around the world and indeed across the political spectrum.

Think about how much the US spends to secure its energy supply, which until recently mostly came from the Middle East...

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#185

Post by anoncake »

C14L wrote: post #48
AlphaGeekZulu wrote: post #20

Germans do not have to decide between Nuclear Energy or Climate Catastrophe. They have to decide between the potential risks of radioactive pollution or the impairment of landscape by wind turbines and power lines. There is not much tragedy in this decision.

Oh, we have decided. Germany has by far the dirtiest energy produciton in Western Europe. On average, every German citizen produces almost twice as much CO2 than the average French or Brit: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita And talking about risks: Brown coal ist BY FAR the most dangerous form of energy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

> And talking about risks: Brown coal ist BY FAR the most dangerous form of energy:

A predictable number of deaths is not a danger but damage.

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#186

Post by sesuximo »

RobLach wrote: post #177
beloch wrote: post #71

"Nuclear energy, to start with, is ultimately not safe, and the Germans have always been particularly uneasy with it. After the nuclear accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in 2011, Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the “Atomausstieg,” the exit from nuclear energy once and for all. Why? Because, as Ms. Merkel put it back then: “The residual risk of nuclear energy can be accepted only if one is convinced th…

To put things into perspective. The US Navy currently has 83 (known) active watercraft that are nuclear powered. Across all the reactors the Navy use and have used, they have amassed over 5300 “reactor years” without reactor incident. With adequate processes and training, Nuclear is incredibly safe and green.

This is a good data point, but arguably it is a point for small nuclear reactors that may (or may not) generalize to large ones.

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#187

Post by sesuximo »

skywhopper wrote: post #108
beloch wrote: post #71

"Nuclear energy, to start with, is ultimately not safe, and the Germans have always been particularly uneasy with it. After the nuclear accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in 2011, Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the “Atomausstieg,” the exit from nuclear energy once and for all. Why? Because, as Ms. Merkel put it back then: “The residual risk of nuclear energy can be accepted only if one is convinced th…

The lesson of Fukushima and Chernobyl is that an unexpected failure with nuclear power can become a massively damaging, insanely expensive, generational cleanup effort. Sure, you can say newer designs are safer, but you can't say that the underlying technology behind nuclear power is inherently safe. Even a well-run, accident-free nuclear plant uses dangerously radioactive material and generates dangerously radioacti…

do we really have better solution that can handle the magnitude of power more sustainably?

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#188

Post by solstice »

DuskStar wrote: post #110
looping__lui wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, well, the phasing out of coal has been decided long time even before that - and still nothing happened. So “was decided long time ago by the Green party” is more a “who cares - I believe it when I see it”. Merkel made it happen for real (unfortunately). The decision to end nuclear power has been one of the “Merkel just decides without really caring” decisions. Germans are not entirely stupid. We have lived thro…

> Electricity prices are now about 30 Ct/kWh in Germany. That's insane - I thought California was bad at ~$0.15/kWh residential, but that's on par with Hawaii . At least Hawaii has the excuse of being an island...

I'm not sure, but you might want to compare the median monthly electricity costs per household between Germany and California. I suspect that would give you a more accurate picture of the true electricity costs. My hunch stems from the fact that almost no one has air conditioning in Germany, which should be a significant factor in Californians' electrify bills...

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#189

Post by solstice »

renaudg wrote: post #136

Every time this topic comes up, I find it useful to share this fascinating real time map of electricity production and its carbon intensity around the world : https://www.electricitymap.org/ I think it helps frame the debate and put things in perspective. Needless to say that Germany's mediocre figures here are not worthy of the country's reputation for pragmatism and engineering excellence.

That reputation has suffered anyway quite significantly in the recent past: BER (Berlin's hilariously failed "new" airport) VW et al. cheating on emissions tests...

Re: Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

#190

Post by xxgreg »

renaudg wrote: post #166
trickstra wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is heavily investing in solar and wind. Why do you bring up coal? Also - even if the nuclear power plant is 100% safe, it still produces nuclear waste that nobody wants to keep anywhere near their city and will be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years, that's longer than humanity has been around - it's just the same trap as burning fossil fuels. Why would we want to make the same mistake again?

> Germany is heavily investing in solar and wind. Why do you bring up coal? Because coal is what Germany really relies on in practice, making it one the worst industrialised nations when it comes to CO2 emissions per kWh. Check for yourself, right this minute : http://electricitymap.org/ > it's just the same trap as burning fossil fuels. Why would we want to make the same mistake again? Because it's not the same mist…

Phasing out coal in Germany is a political battle against a large entrenched century old industry.

The phase-out looks to be gaining traction in recent years. Deals are being made to retrain coal miners and fund economic redevelopment of heavily coal dependent regions. All players including the power companies, network operators, miners unions, green NGOs, central and regional governments have been in discussion about how to manage the phase-out. A schedule for when plants will be turned off is being written into law.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/spelling-out-coal...

Coal powered electricity generation is dropping and renewable generation is increasing. See chart:

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

From:

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

Where Germany has a bad record on emissions reductions is in other sectors such as transport and heat. Germany has had a centre-right political party running the show for 15 years, progress has been slow. The next election will likely be a CDU-Green coalition which will likely increase ambitions on emissions reductions.

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