Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#421

Post by someguydave » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:13 PM UTC

DasIch wrote: post #418

hedora wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the beginning of a multi decade conflict. The end game is Russia becoming a North Korean style vassal state of China. Every world leader that is speaking about the conflict seems fine with this outcome. Also, it will take a while for Russia to build enough natural gas pipelines to China. In practice, those pipelines will be Putin's leash. (He will need China, but they have no need for him.) I hope Ukraine mai…

> This is the beginning of a multi decade conflict. Germany is currently removing the dependency on russian gas. There is a consensus on this within Germany. The discussion on this topic revolves entirely around the question of how quickly to do this. If this is or sure a multi decade conflict, what does it matter if this takes 1-2y instead of 1-2 weeks?

Agreed. Many folks in this thread seem to be saying things like “it will only help some” or “it will take a long time” which are not arguments against going back to nuclear power.

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#422

Post by natmaka » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:18 PM UTC

photochemsyn wrote: post #149

cycomanic wrote: post #123

Here [1] is an interview with the German president of the BASE (Bundesamts für die Sicherheit der nuklearen Entsorgung) essentially the nuclear safety administration. He essentially calls the arguments about extending the nuclear powerplants difficult to comprehend. He lays out quite clearly why it doesn't work, and while the article addresses some of those points it does not back up any of the assertions with eviden…

Ran that through Google Translate, here's a fundamental point: > "An extension of the service life would not make Germany less dependent on Russian natural gas, since gas is only used to a small extent for electricity production in Germany, adds König. In addition, Russia is an important supplier of uranium and fuel elements, which are absolutely necessary. In view of the fact that the six active nuclear power plants…

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-us-utiliti...

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#423

Post by Xylakant » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

someguydave wrote: post #419

Xylakant wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not how base load/peak load works. You can’t just increase the base power output - that would lead to too much more electricity in the network, you need to balance the energy provided with the energy used. That’s exactly why you need peak load plants that can follow the load curve quickly. Gas turbines and water turbines can do that, thermal power plants cannot. They’re too sluggish.

I find it quite likely that running higher base load will result in electricity exportable to other European nations who are also trying to quite gas. The general thrust of your argument seems to be “nuclear power will not help shed Russian gas even a little bit” which seems ludicrous.

If your argument would hold true, that load would already be taken by coal power plants which fill the same role. Gas peaker plants are substantially more expensive to operate per kWh of electricity produced than base load plants. They fill an important niche, but do not provide substantial continuous output. Nuclear replaces coal, coal replaces nuclear. Renewables plus gas (or storage) replace both.

There are other niches where gas is used to produce electricity, for example we have a gas micro power plant that produces both electricity and heat for the apartment complexes on the local compound. This too, cannot be replaced by a nuclear plant.

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#424

Post by formerkrogemp » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #199

cycomanic wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the actual quote is: > I studied nuclear energy generation in my two MSc in Industrial Engineering. which to me sounds not like he actually did a masters in nuclear power generation, but took some courses during his masters. But even if he did, that doesn't make him an expert, whom of the software developers here would let a grad student come to their company and say "I did a masters in CS I will tell all of you h…

> whom of the software developers here would let a grad student come to their company and say "I did a masters in CS I will tell all of you how to do your dev work"? Isn't this... how you hire people?

That's a fair point, but does a few courses make someone a subject matter expert? Probably not. Could they still have something constructive to say? Probably? Should that verified with other sources? Of course.

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#425

Post by freemint » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

vishnugupta wrote: post #332

jandrewrogers wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without disagreeing per se, some of the reasoning is dubious. Studying something in grad school likely makes you familiar, not an expert. I would be skeptical of anyone without at least a decade of industry experience. No one becomes an expert by going to grad school; you have to build real things under real constraints. I went through a selective hard sciences program (coincidentally including nuclear chemistry) and…

> I would put more value in the opinions of people that have built or worked on real systems. +100. It took me a while to internalise Nassim Taleb's point of skin in the game. Now that I exactly know what he means I've learned to more or less disregard opinions of non-practitioners.

Just be aware that you very easily talk yourself into believing that someone does or doesn't have skin in the game on accident or to maintain a certain opinion.

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#426

Post by freemint » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #146

barry-cotter wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This risk is hard to quantify, it can materialize in unexpected ways (just like nobody expected Chernobyl or Fukushima) and it will cost such rich and densely populated country as Germany trillions. You know everyone who died from Fukushima died from the evacuation not radiation, right? You know more people are killed in Germany every year from coal pollution than have died as a result of Chernobyl in total?

Also, Chernobyl was due to a completely incompetent plant manager. They intentionally disabled many fail safes in order to get the plant into a vulnerable state.

I've yet to see an insurance that would insure against human incompetence.

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#427

Post by hchz » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #56

ivan_gammel wrote: post #33

What I read in this article is that German government did a thorough analysis, but the author dismisses the conclusions of it because the tolerated risk level there is too low and because it’s done by a minister from the Greens party. If this was written by an expert, that could make some sense, but it is not. Nuclear plant is not a startup, where you can just skip the QA part to release faster or put a not working c…

You're repeating some of the excuses the article addresses. - The author says they studied nuclear in grad school, and are probably therefore an expert. - They quantify the additional risk of meltdown due to delaying new safety regulations. It's negligible compared to operating plants according to the new regulations. - Their proposal would increase Germany's stockpile of nuclear waste by 3%, which is surely within e…

The author only said they took classes in nuclear engineering.

I think it’s unreasonable to classify someone as an expert because they took a few courses in the curriculum for a related discipline.

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#428

Post by freemint » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:46 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #265

Toine wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I would gladly take 10 major Chernobyl-style accidents each year than what's coming with climate change. It's way, way worse.

Nuclear power is just not that scaleable when you think through the implications. To stop climate change, you'd need a huge multiplication of nuclear industry. You'd need plants everywhere. All major cities in the industrialized world. And in developing countries. All of them, including those you wouldn't trust to officiate a child's birthday party without corruption and mismanagement. All of that assumes none of tho…

Either this or you need all the nuclear power stations to be in safe countries (and that definition might change suddenly) with an almost globe spanning grid. If you had a globe spanning super grid you could probably just do it with solar anyway, no batteries needed for the sun shines 24/7.

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#429

Post by freemint » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

lispm wrote: post #70

Sure we wouldn't buy Uranium from Russia, wouldn't we? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/01/us/politics/russia-uraniu... https://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-buying-uranium-from-russia...

And buy it from Rosatom that company that sells uranium and builds nuclear weapons. Oh, wait there is no profit in building nuclear weapons so they finance it with selling uranium.

France payments enable Russia to stay a nuclear power.

Re: Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

#430

Post by spupe » Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

legulere wrote: post #379

spupe wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if there is no wind or sun for an extended period of time, I guess we just shut down our factories then? The fact that the Greens have been flexible in some elements of their politics doesn't mean they are committed to a realpolitik approach when it comes to energy generation. They absolutely are not. In fact their record when it comes to science is really spotty, as they also oppose transgenics and even animal e…

That’s what you have a grid for. It’s not cloudy and windstill at the same time all over Europe. Also you can have similar problems with nuclear too. In the last 4 months Germany has been exporting a lot of electricity to France because several nuclear reactors of the same type had to be shut down because they may have a common flaw.

Wind energy is currently responsible for about 15% of the energy produced in Europe. So relying on wind is absolutely impractical even if we invest 10x more than we do, and you would have to prepare for days with low wind availability in the whole continent as well, because they do occur.

The problem you describe is serious, but I would guess over 90% of nuclear power generation in the continent remains unaffected, if not more. So a grid here makes a lot of sense, and works as a reliable alternative. It is also pretty easy to design a grid that does not rely on the same types of reactors.