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What if Germany had invested in nuclear power?

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Re: What if Germany had invested in nuclear power?

#41

Post by lhndan »

jojobas wrote: post #38
wrKaxnc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Germany and everyone else trades with Saudi Arabia. Do you lose freedom because of that? It is a business decision, same as Ukraine's decision to still collect transit fees for Russian pipelines.

Last I checked Saudi Arabia minded their own business and didn't issue ultimatums to NATO to expel members or else.

That is debatable:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi-led_intervention_in_the_...

The Yemen war is/was pretty brutal, and SA happened to back the ousted president. The even called the war an "operation" (sound familiar?).

We could also go back further to Saudi Bin Laden support, which was conveniently ignored in all business deals.

Re: What if Germany had invested in nuclear power?

#42

Post by user_7832 »

baumgarn wrote: post #23
ardaoweo wrote: post #7

I've always wondered how big of a part Soviet Union / Russia psych ops played in stirring this completely irrational anti-nuclear mentality. The side-effect of getting Germany hooked on Russian gas was extremely convenient to them. Of course the Chernobyl disaster played some part, but it didn't result in such irrationality in most other surrounding countries. Perhaps the anti-war mentality and guilt from the horrors…

The argument agains nuclear is not irrational. The true cost of nuclear is not sufficiently priced in. Example from recent history here in Germany the nuclear interim storage mine Asse is leaking and the garbage has to be recovered. Cost estimated to be 3.7 billion tax payer money. There is no solution for safe nuclear garbage storage in sight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine

Perhaps a minor nit (or maybe not), but when you say

> The true cost of nuclear is not sufficiently priced in.

That's also the case in general for fossil fuels too. Pollution from burning fossils kills. (And this extends of course - be it lithium mining or recycling PV panels or composites in wind turbines.) There are very few, if any, truly priced-in mass-market commodities I can think of.

(Another not so minor nit is fortunately the EU-ETS exists, but it has its own issues/criticisms which might get too long for this comment.)

Re: What if Germany had invested in nuclear power?

#43

Post by polotics »

wrKaxnc wrote: post #12
KingOfCoders wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We won't settle this debate (and I'm not against nuclear), but it's a discussion around "Do I need fire insurance when my house has a low chance to burn down" and should I use the money for something else. If it doesn't burn down, you look great. If it burns down, you look like an idiot. I think people will not understand (some|most) Germans if you haven't lived through Chernobyl and Pershing-II days, dying forrests…

Germany is stationing nuclear capable missiles again, with the approval of the Green Party, which had been at the forefront of the anti Pershing-II protests but is now a war party: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-shrugs-off-putin-comments-on-u... If that is possible, why not pebble bed reactors?

A war party?

Si vis Pacem para Bellum!

Re: What if Germany had invested in nuclear power?

#45

Post by ponorin »

defensive7132 wrote: post #9
pdubouilh wrote: post #2

ABSTRACT: Germany has one of the most ambitious energy transition policies dubbed ‘Die Energiewende’ to replace nuclear- and fossil power with renewables such as wind-, solar- and biopower. The climate gas emissions are reduced by 25% in the study period of 2002 through 2022. By triangulating available information sources, the total nominal expenditures are estimated at EUR 387 bn, and the associated subsidies are so…

I always supported nuclear power. It's just the best we have right now. Renewable power is all good and all, but technology is not there yet. Plus, many people in support of green energy never think about all the mining done for this and how it impacts and often destroys environments. It's OK when it's not your environment being hurt. :-) Anyways, nuclear power is safer than people think. And most, if not all, nuclea…

In the winter of 2022, France had to restart permanently shut down coal plants[0] and pump gas to Germany[1] for electricity because of a pipe crack that made half of their nuclear plants go into maintenance. Note that this was on top of curtailing energy use (funny enough, because of gas, not nuclear[2]).

You could say "that was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of event!" (I'd love to have machine without flaws but nuclear fusion would be faster) but, if it wasn't for the European grid, this could have resulted in prolonged emergency saving measures or possibly a (partial) blackout. Nuclear power is often touted as the stable one, but ironically, solar and wind would not suffer from this kind of problem because they are inherently variable in output. If energy storage for renewables was already a headache, imagine an energy storage system for nuclear.

[0]: https://apnews.com/article/europe-business-france-climate-an...

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230114183054/https://www.nytim...

[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240709121249/https://www.nytim...

Re: What if Germany had invested in nuclear power?

#46

Post by AlphaGeekZulu »

defensive7132 wrote: post #9
pdubouilh wrote: post #2

ABSTRACT: Germany has one of the most ambitious energy transition policies dubbed ‘Die Energiewende’ to replace nuclear- and fossil power with renewables such as wind-, solar- and biopower. The climate gas emissions are reduced by 25% in the study period of 2002 through 2022. By triangulating available information sources, the total nominal expenditures are estimated at EUR 387 bn, and the associated subsidies are so…

I always supported nuclear power. It's just the best we have right now. Renewable power is all good and all, but technology is not there yet. Plus, many people in support of green energy never think about all the mining done for this and how it impacts and often destroys environments. It's OK when it's not your environment being hurt. :-) Anyways, nuclear power is safer than people think. And most, if not all, nuclea…

"[...]And most, if not all, nuclear power disasters were due to human error.[...]"

And the remaining nuclear power disasters were due to unpredictable natural disasters.

So at what time exactly did we eliminate human error and unpredictable natural disasters, so that we don't have to worry about the dangers of nuclear power anymore? It seems, I somehow missed this two super important historic events...

Re: What if Germany had invested in nuclear power?

#47

Post by aguaviva »

DarkNova6 wrote: post #34
wrKaxnc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia did nothing in that respect. The original anti nuclear protests were authentic.

I'm doubtful it can be ruled out with a handwavy gesture. Given just how much Russia has invested into Elite capture you know they will set everything in their power to make the west suck up their Gas deliveries. No dependency on Russian gas, no money.

I'm doubtful it can be ruled out with a handwavy gesture.

That's not how things work.

You need to have some actual evidence for your pet theory of what happened. You don't just get to believe it (or assign it high likelihood of being true) because it sounds like a nifty narrative, and seems to connect some dots for you.

Meanwhile while the commenter above you is saying, being far from "handwavy", is entirely obvious to anyone with knowledge with knowledge of that country at the time. Anti-nuclear sentiment was everywhere, and it wasn't irrational, just misinformed against the backdrop of what we know today.

Soviet influence operations were ridiculously ineffective at the time (the movement goes back to the 70s-80s) and there's scant evidence of them having been able to influence much of anything in the West (even on issues they were greatly interested in and put out tons of propaganda about, the set of which never included nuclear power as a topic).

Re: What if Germany had invested in nuclear power?

#48

Post by cjblomqvist »

thyristan wrote: post #32
cjblomqvist wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU, one of the most successful peace projects of human history, is based on the idea that tight economic integration leads to peace. Obviously not working out in full with Russia, and I think Germany could've put themselves in a far better situation energy wise. But, it still stands that the core purpose of EU has been fulfilled. And very easy to judge in hindsight.

Looking at the behaviour of e.g. Hungary as an EU member state and Russian puppet at the same time, I'd like to disagree here.

If the alternative is full on war (see Ukraine/Russia), I'd say it's an amazing win.

Re: What if Germany had invested in nuclear power?

#49

Post by kafgh »

ardaoweo wrote: post #7

I've always wondered how big of a part Soviet Union / Russia psych ops played in stirring this completely irrational anti-nuclear mentality. The side-effect of getting Germany hooked on Russian gas was extremely convenient to them. Of course the Chernobyl disaster played some part, but it didn't result in such irrationality in most other surrounding countries. Perhaps the anti-war mentality and guilt from the horrors…

The leading anti-nuclear force in the 1980s and 1990s was the Green Party, which wasn't pro natural gas at all.

Furthermore, it is now one of the most anti-Russian parties, so any conjectured FSB operation could be considered to have failed spectacularly.

The former East Germany supported left wing terrorism and some hard left student revolts, but the anti-nuclear sentiment goes through many parties and simply does not need any external stimulus.

Re: What if Germany had invested in nuclear power?

#50

Post by oezi »

wrKaxnc wrote: post #12
KingOfCoders wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We won't settle this debate (and I'm not against nuclear), but it's a discussion around "Do I need fire insurance when my house has a low chance to burn down" and should I use the money for something else. If it doesn't burn down, you look great. If it burns down, you look like an idiot. I think people will not understand (some|most) Germans if you haven't lived through Chernobyl and Pershing-II days, dying forrests…

Germany is stationing nuclear capable missiles again, with the approval of the Green Party, which had been at the forefront of the anti Pershing-II protests but is now a war party: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-shrugs-off-putin-comments-on-u... If that is possible, why not pebble bed reactors?

The age of Nuclear is over and won't be coming back. The technology trajectories are now just in favor of solar and batteries. Everything else has no chance.
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