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Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

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Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#81

Post by jhgb »

vlovich123 wrote: post #71
oaiey wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is amazing. But two major incidents within 30 years time range are not so amazing. When we continue in that rate we will have a serious problem. And with aging reactors and instability everywhere it does not look good.

Mortality from existing fossil fuels is significantly worse (just from production and ignoring all the pollutants in the air and even ignoring that coal plants regularly emit more radiation into the air than have ever died from nuclear power generation). In fact, mortality from nuclear power generation is closer to solar and wind. Yes the incidents are scary and news grabbing but that’s it. The actual data is that it…

> Mortality from existing fossil fuels is significantly worse

That may very well be true but it's completely irrelevant for future choices. Not building more nuclear plants doesn't mean you'll be building more fossil fuel plants instead.

EDIT: For all the downvoters, see the fourth chart (Gross power production in Germany 1990-2021, by source (non-stacked)) on https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... and explain to me how they're building more fossil fuel power plants over the years while building zero nuclear power plants.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#82

Post by Jyaif »

cinntaile wrote: post #16
criley2 wrote: post #5

Sad to see Germany continue to shut down Nuclear while having to greatly expand coal usage because their wind farms significantly under produce due to unexpected weather patterns. (As much as +40% coal generation in the past two years, and -20% wind) https://www.ans.org/news/article-3274/germany-coal-tops-wind... https://energypost.eu/germany-2021-coal-generation-is-rising... And they're replacing it with... gas! Gre…

They're not replacing nuclear with gas. Nuclear has a steady output, gas will be variable output. It will run when deemed necessary.

...which will be 24/7 for a number of those gas power plants, to replace the steady output of nuclear.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#83

Post by jacquesm »

maxclark wrote: post #12

Nuclear power is an amazing energy source. It doesn’t look like we’ll ever get beyond the politics that would make small scale It’s really a shame.

Small plants, especially something on the order of 10MW, which is about 1% of a normal sized one would be extremely uneconomical. You need all of the security and process of a much larger plant for a piddly little bit of electricity. You're talking about the equivalent of a couple of windmills, that require a small fraction of the land, and will happily run unattended.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#84

Post by inter_netuser »

pydry wrote: post #64
maxclark wrote: post #12

Nuclear power is an amazing energy source. It doesn’t look like we’ll ever get beyond the politics that would make small scale It’s really a shame.

It's not politics preventing nuclear power it's the eye watering cost. Unless you count getting taxpayers to shoulder the cost as politics.

solar panels killed more people in their short history, than nuclear power plants in their much longer history.

if you count roof installers dying/getting injured on the job. do they count or we can just discount them?

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#85

Post by _dain_ »

cinntaile wrote: post #16
criley2 wrote: post #5

Sad to see Germany continue to shut down Nuclear while having to greatly expand coal usage because their wind farms significantly under produce due to unexpected weather patterns. (As much as +40% coal generation in the past two years, and -20% wind) https://www.ans.org/news/article-3274/germany-coal-tops-wind... https://energypost.eu/germany-2021-coal-generation-is-rising... And they're replacing it with... gas! Gre…

They're not replacing nuclear with gas. Nuclear has a steady output, gas will be variable output. It will run when deemed necessary.

this is sophistry. "necessary" means sufficient to cover the shortfall from the lack of nuclear baseload. the effect of shutting down nuke plants will be to burn more gas, there is no way to dispute this.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#88

Post by jacquesm »

fivre wrote: post #78
chess_buster wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's insanely costly.

it's insanely costly _to build bring a plant online initially_ once you're up and running, it's cheap as dirt, just takes decades to pay off the initial investment

10MW is insanely costly, regardless. That's so small that it isn't enough to justify even the overhead of running a plant. 1GW or so is the smallest size where it starts to make sense to design a nuclear plant that has a hope of delivering electricity at a price that matches the market (and even then: usually only by subtracting decommissioning and construction costs from the equation).

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#89

Post by johnisgood »

chess_buster wrote: post #44
johnisgood wrote: post #3

Yeah, this has been known for a long time now that Germany is planning to shut down their nuclear plants. I have no clue why. There is a country in Eastern Europe and >60% of their electricity is from their nuclear power plants, and they are extending it. Imagine this country exporting electricity to Germany. Anyways, I believe it was a pretty shitty idea to say no to nuclear.

Because our plants are extremely old.

Are there any plans on building newer ones?

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#90

Post by IiydAbITMvJkqKf »

jpxw wrote: post #25
oaiey wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is amazing. But two major incidents within 30 years time range are not so amazing. When we continue in that rate we will have a serious problem. And with aging reactors and instability everywhere it does not look good.

One incident caused by a natural disaster that would never happen in a European country like Germany, the other caused by mismanagement and frankly jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence which would also never happen in a country like Germany. Edit: in response to the large number of people bringing up BER and other infrastructure failures in Germany: yes, BER and others may have been bad, but a completely different k…

> mismanagement and frankly jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence which would also never happen in a country like Germany.

Are we talking about the same Germany?

Edit: I should probably give some examples: Suttgart 21 train station, BER airport

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