Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#71

Post by samastur » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 11:40 AM UTC

fock wrote: post #20

eckesicle wrote: post #9

In my opinion Europe's decommissioning of nuclear plants, particularly in Germany, is the greatest geopolitical blunder in recent history. The EU is now completely dependent on Russian goodwill to power their infrastructure for the next few decades, and have given up all leverage they had to push back on Russian power plays. At the very least they should've kept the plants operational and operating at minimum capacit…

Could you tell me, where we get our oil from? And how we heat our homes with nuclear? We never had any leverage except for the mighty dollar (and nukes and the fact that socialism doesn't need to kill before) and the US is working steady on removing that lever.

Heating water with electricity and with it homes is a solved problem.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#72

Post by ketzu » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 11:40 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #23

fock wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could you tell me, how long Uranium reserves last? Climate change aside (which will kill us all), Uranium-based fission power plants are just not solving the problem at hand: We are using far too much energy and increasingly have depleted the cache earth history hid for us.

you have enough uranium to last for hundreds of years if not thousands.

Most sources I found on the topic seem to be as diverse as this one: [1]

The estimates range from 80 years to hundreds of thousands of years, depending on the assumptions made, including: Possible sources (land mining, sea refining), current consumption level, efficiency of reactors. Where it is approximately this:

Mining land uranium at current consumption (i.e., no new nuclear): 80-250 years.

Refining uranium from sea: 5000-500.000 years.

Overall, it seems to me that just assuring that we have resources for hundreds of thousands of years is a bit misleading or at least undisclosed strong optimism.

I'd be happy to have a more scientific source with reliable information.

[1] https://bettermeetsreality.com/how-much-uranium-is-left-in-t...

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#73

Post by arethuza » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 11:40 AM UTC

selfhoster11 wrote: post #46

croes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same was thought about japanese nuclear power plants

Except they built them in a place that's pretty known for earthquakes. An earthquake in Germany sounds like science fiction.

There have been fairly large (VEI 6) volcanic eruptions in Germany fairly recently (at least by geological standards):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laacher_See

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#74

Post by DocTomoe » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 11:41 AM UTC

rizkeyz wrote: post #22

benjaminsuch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a german, can't agree more. From what I get talking to people is, that they have an irrational fear of a nuclear holocaust and nuclear waste.

We live at the dawn of cyberterrorism, I'm glad we are stepping out of nuclear now.

Here's a radical idea: Maybe your potentially dangerous industrial machinery does not need to be directly connected to the internet?

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#75

Post by Ygg2 » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 11:41 AM UTC

dabber21 wrote: post #40

s_dev wrote: post #4

This is something many people in the EU simply don't get -- I don't get it. Germans have a basically a positive stereotype of being a scientific nation and all around clever lads -- this has enormous soft power and gives leverage to things like "Made in Germany" as a brand. This anti-nuclear stance in Germany is absolutely caustic to that projected image. It's absolutely insane they want to shut down Nuclear and repl…

my mother is still talking about Chernobyl today, it definitely left a mark especially when you had kids at the time

Chernobyl right now is biggest/safest wildlife preserve in Europe.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#76

Post by ivan_gammel » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 11:41 AM UTC

emptyfile wrote: post #16

heckerhut wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. The numbers are such that Germany cannot go back on this. We are committed to the non nuclear path now. And that’s okay. We’re going to make up the lost technology leadership in nuclear with competency in renewables. It’s fine and not the end of world. I wouldn’t have done it the way Merkel did, I would’ve switched off coal first. But I understand why that wasn’t an option at the time. It’s what it is.

> But I understand why that wasn’t an option at the time. explain

It was right after the Fukushima disaster which was a last straw. Press coverage of nuclear energy by then was mostly negative thanks to Greenpeace and their campaigns against disposal of nuclear waste, history of Chernobyl explosion was still fresh, so politically keeping nuclear afloat was a risk. And of course, when calculating the real costs (i.e. including long-term nuclear waste storage and monitoring) it appeared not so attractive option to keep it.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#77

Post by fock » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 11:41 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #23

fock wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could you tell me, how long Uranium reserves last? Climate change aside (which will kill us all), Uranium-based fission power plants are just not solving the problem at hand: We are using far too much energy and increasingly have depleted the cache earth history hid for us.

you have enough uranium to last for hundreds of years if not thousands.

Do we – if we build up Nuclear ten-fold? Looks like we've used ~3Mt up to now over 60 years. IAEA says there's 60Mt out when including 'unconventional' resources: https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/TE1843_web.pd....

Now, if we use 30Mt for the next 60 years, it doesn't look like enough Uranium for the next 1000 years... (even without considering the fact that those 50Mt of uncovential resources are probably not usable)

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#78

Post by fsflover » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 11:41 AM UTC

fabian2k wrote: post #44

There's plenty of irrational fears about nuclear power, but there are also valid significant doubts about it. And this isn't really that much about the technology, but especially about everything around it. We haven't managed to decide on a place to store the nuclear waste, and all the plans decades in making have been thrown overboard entirely a few years ago. This is more of a political failure, but if we can't man…

> We haven't managed to decide on a place to store the nuclear waste

https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#79

Post by locallost » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 11:41 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #50

locallost wrote: post #26

I'm used to seeing a lot of misinformation related to Germany and nuclear power, so here are some facts in advance: 1) coal use went way down since they decided to switch off the nuclear plants. people assume it was replaced by coal, but this is false 2) emissions are down 3) phase out of coal was started last year and is on schedule to last until 2038 4) renewable use is way way up 5) they are one of the largest exp…

> they are one of the largest exporters of electricity in Europe any source for that claim?

https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/153533/umfrag...

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#80

Post by stefan_ » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 11:42 AM UTC

What's the obsession of the Economist with nuclear power? At this point it's legacy technology; no one is building a nuclear plant with a 50 year lifecycle for many many billions if you have to expect that it is going to be entirely supplanted by regenerative power within half of that. To produce power at a price point that is already not viable today.