What comes out of a coal power plant is unburnt coal, which will contain some amount of carbon 14 which is slightly radioactive.
What comes out of a nuclear power station is water vapor. Which is not even slightly radioactive.
Therefore coal power stations output more nuclear material than nuclear power stations, which output none. We live in a world of idiots.
I think we should include nuclear waste in the output calculation of nuclear power plants. Just the high level waste from nuclear power plants is hundreds of thousands times more radioactive and toxic than coal plant output.
But your are right, we should move away from both of these: coal and nuclear power. And this is actually exactly what the German people want and what the government has decided. Ending coal burning is scheduled for 2038 and complete switch to renewable energy production is scheduled for 2045. This is called the Energiewende (Energy Transition) and here is the government’s page on this topic: https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/schwerpunkte/klimaschutz/faq-energiewende-2067498
Google translate: https://www-bundesregierung-de.translate.goog/breg-de/schwerpunkte/klimaschutz/faq-energiewende-2067498?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Germans agree with this policy and we even want it faster: https://www.fr.de/wirtschaft/78-prozent-der-deutschen-wollen-eine-schnellere-energiewende-zr-92219363.html
Fission is still much less impactful in terms of environmental damage and hazard in the transitionary period.
I think this is only true if you have an adequate storage facility, since IMHO the hazards of storing high level nuclear waste for years on end on the surface level in sixteen different intermediate storage facilities all over Germany are greater for the people, animals, plants…the whole biosphere.
Fission waste is stored in pools and dry casks and never hurts anybody during normal operation.
Coal waste is belched into the atmosphere 24/7 and contains many bad substances aside from the radioactive ones.
Fission waste is stored in pools and dry casks and never hurts anybody during normal operation.
Right. During normal operation the risks are minute, but what about threat scenarios outside of normal operation? Starting on page 112 here’s a list of possible threat scenarios as compiled by the Fraunhofer institute: https://www.isi.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/isi/dokumente/ccv/2013/ETTIS_Deliverable_4_4_Catalogue of Threat Scenarios.pdf
Coal waste is belched into the atmosphere 24/7 and contains many bad substances aside from the radioactive ones.
That’s also true. But again, being in opposition of using nuclear power plants as long as there is no long term storage facility, does not mean I’m a coal proponent. Coal will be phased out in 2038 and the idea is to build 40 green hydrogen power plants, to enable the transition. There will be no new coal power plants build in Germany according to the current plan.
Coal will be phased out in 2038
More than 30 years too late… If, instead, these morons had phased out coal FIRST and relied on Nuclear for the transition, how much damage could we have avoided from the imesureable destruction climate change has caused?
I don’t know. I can also ask: How much damage could have been avoided if Chernobyl and Fukushima would have not been built. But IMHO this makes no sense since these hypothetical scenarios are not the topic of this discussion.
Nuclear waste is not even slightly as dangerous as you’ve been led to believe.
I don’t think that’s right. There is a real threat from e.g Plutonium 239 which is extremely carcinogenic and toxic in minute doses.
Here’s a collection of threats relating to nuclear power production and it’s waste starting on page 112: https://www.isi.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/isi/dokumente/ccv/2013/ETTIS_Deliverable_4_4_Catalogue of Threat Scenarios.pdf
You’ve links ETTIS’s risk assessment of nuclear accident likelihood and death count predictions. I would not say that ETTIS is exactly anti-nuclear, as they are pro-green. I could not find anywhere where they communicate their methodology to conclude that four nuclear accidents would occur over 50 years, but if its statistically-based I would say that would not be accurate for modern nuclear systems.
Bund is exactly the type of group the comic above is making fun of. They do not care about the actual chances of meltdown, or the overall safety of nuclear byproduct or nuclear plant operation. They only aim to decommision nuclear power production as much as possible.
I am not against hydrogen power. I do not view it as a feasible technology currently, though. It’s like fusion reactors - always 10 years away. Meanwhile, nuclear fission is here, we could be using it over coal and saving thousands of lives per year but we aren’t.
Renewables are good, but they still cause more fatalities to workers than nuclear plants, and the battery systems and solar systems currently make use nonrenewable rare earth minerals, so I question if renewables are actually as sustainable as advertised.
Chernobyl detonated due to an engineering oversight directly caused from government interference and cost cutting, and was only triggered when a test was rushed, being executed by a shift not trained to conduct the test.
Fukushima Daiichi had an engineering oversight in that they did not design it to withstand the largest earthquake in Japan’s history followed by a tsunami. Meanwhile, Fukushima Daiini was closer to the epicenter, and was able to avoid meltdown.
Even when considering the total number of deaths caused by nuclear plants from explosions, exposure, and health complications, nuclear has killed less than a percent of how many coal has killed. The insane level of opposition does not make sense, and seems to me to only be fueled by fearmongering and ignorance.
Maybe that’d be believable if the dumb fucks switched to something other than FUCKING COAL
But burning natural gas is still a-ok under this plan.
I don’t think that’s true. These are hydrogen power plants. The hydrogen will be produced in times of high yield from renewables and will be used during times of low yield from renewables in order to meet the energy demand
2038? My country stopped burning coal in 2020. This is a piss take by nuclear haters.
What’s your argument here? That this could have happened in Germany also? It’s true, but it didn’t happen here, so we have to deal with the situation at hand.
Yes that’s exactly my point. You’ve been burning coal and will keep burning coal for over a decade because you turned off the nuclear. You should have kept them.
Still it didn’t happen and we have to deal with the situation at hand. I don’t think there’s value in discussing a scenario that is not reality in Germany.
Is it not possible to start them again?
I would also point out that people claiming that stopping nuclear was a success story for the environment are rewriting reality and that everyone else in other countries sees this.
No it’s not possible at the moment because there’s a law in place called the “Atomgesetz” which would have to be changed first and there is no support in the populace for that. Five of the six power plants that have been shutdown in the past few years could technically be restarted in 1-2 years but the 2000 personnel required are not available anymore, and won’t come back if there’s no perspective for next couple of years. This perspective does not exist in Germany at the moment, since the plan is to move to renewables and green hydrogen power plants.
The value is in holding the absolute morons and oil/fossil bootlickers accountable. By the way, you’ve been quite profilic in defending hydrogen and dismissing the fact that it was a huge mistake to close down nuclear power plants. You don’t happen to be an astroturfer by chance, do you?
No argument offered here. Ad hominem fallacy again.
Sure, but the difference is unburnt coal is a negative externality, and nuclear waste is a negative internality (I don’t think this is a word, but it should be). Unburnt coal is not handled by the people producing it, and it’s forced on everyone else. Nuclear waste is easily controlled and managed, and paid for by the people producing it. That’s part of the reason nuclear costs what it costs. It doesn’t hurt anyone and takes up a very small amount of space. Contained in a concrete container, you can stand around it, lick it, or do whatever else you want with it with essentially zero risk. The biggest issue with nuclear is just the bureaucracy that makes them take so long to build that they can’t help with the current issue, and that’s also why micro-reactors are being looked into more seriously lately.
Being against nuclear power does not make me a fossil fuel proponent. We should aim for 100% renewables. Also nuclear power very much hurt tens of thousands of people by causing cancer in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident.
https://blog.ucsusa.org/lisbeth-gronlund/how-many-cancers-did-chernobyl-really-cause-updated/
Yeah, Chernobyl was a big mistake and a fluke. The odds of it happening were super low, and the issue has since been fixed so won’t happen again. Three Mile Island caused very little harm, and the second reactor kept operating for decades. (Chernobyl also had other reactors operating for decades.)
People die all the time. Solar kills more people than nuclear per kwh, believe it or not. No solution causes zero harm and/or damage, including renewable. We need to just utilize the best options available for any given situation and not ignore some because we’re emotionally swayed. Statistically, the nuclear power we have today is some of the safest, cleanest, cheapest energy sources available, but we’ve made it almost impossible to expand in a reasonable fashion, yet coal plants don’t have the same issue.
The half life of C14 is about 4500 years. Due to the age of coal, generally millions on years it tends to contain crazy small amounts of C14, just like petrol.
Crazy small amounts is still a larger amount than zero.
Not just Germans btw. Danes are the same. Being anti-nuclear is considered a standard leftist view here and the fight against nuclear power was considere one of the 1980’s environmental movement’s greatest wins. Being pro-nuclear is coded as a right-wing message around here that you mostly have to trigger the left.
Being anti-nuclear is one of the most bizarre positions the western left has internalized.
Nuclear power is literally more expensive at this point than renewables. No, you can’t keep using the shitty, cracking, deadly waste producing nuclear plants of the past, not even the power companies want that, and building new ones takes over 10 years, not counting all the planning and beaurocracy you have to go through. And to become CO2 neutral after all the excavation, construction and mining necessary takes another decade. Nuclear power plants are MASSIVE engineering undertakings.
Meanwhile modern windmills can be mass-produced right now and take like 5 years depending on their placement to be both cost and CO2 neutral. After that it’s LITERALLY free energy for a good 30 years. And they become cheaper and bigger and more efficient every single year. And btw if you ever pull out an article or a calculation that is older than a year for any comparison, you are dealing with OLD data. They have become far more efficient and flexible in their placement and will likely continue to do so.
The anti-nuclear protests were completely right. Stop playing the people who wanted a safer world without nuclear waste and incidents against the modern climate movement.
TL;DR: Wheels on windmill go brrrr, nuclear power is not a short term solution and never has been.
Nuclear and renewables are complementary technologies, renewables are a much more volatile source of energy. Also, when people say renewables are cheaper they’re not counting the total lifecycle of things like wndmills and solar panels.
Complimentary is irrelevant. Coal and solar are complimentary, you can have a grid using both of those technologies. Renewables aren’t really that volatile. Batteries exist.
Yes coal and solar are complementary. But nuclear pollutes less than coal so it’s a better choice.
Maybe spend more time educating yourself on the realities of the situation.
If reading wikipedia pages is the height your knowledge on the subject that explains a lot actually.
Maybe use arguments rather than succumb to ad hominem fallacies
Your username checks out
when people say renewables are cheaper they’re not counting the total lifecycle of things like… solar panels.
Yeah the LCOE of solar is likely ridiculously low because they still work decades after th started 25 year life used in levelised cost calculations
Nuclear in the west is so tremendously expensive we may as give up until China makes SMRs cheap
I mean China is already making all the solar panels at this point, so we might as well wait for them to role out nuclear globally.
Good news, the Chinese artificial sun has reached 403 seconds of stability. Up from 100 seconds 7 years ago. Once it reaches 1000 seconds at 50,000,000 Kelvin, it would mean it produces more energy than igniting the “sun” would cost.
I do think it’s very likely that we’ll see fusion working within our lifetimes. If China manages to get a fusion plant online then that really will solve all the energy problems for the foreseeable future.
Jesus Christ you’re so uneducated it’s ridiculous.
So you’ve got a point nuclear power is considerably more expensive than renewables but that was never the argument. It has always been more expensive than renewables, who possibly thought it wasn’t, that’s literally never not been the case, even 30 years ago.
The reason to use nuclear power is a base load. Renewables cannot generate the necessary level of energy demand in their entirety with the reliability that we need. It’s called base load Google it.
So you need something to provide constant reliable sources of energy, so you’ve got two options either we build a Dyson sphere and have solar panels all over it, or we have nuclear power stations. And I think you’ll agree that a dysons sphere might be a bit beyond us at this point.
If one thing is more expensive by some criteria guaranteeing something necessary and another thing cheaper by the same criteria not guaranteeing that, then the latter just doesn’t exist.
So nuclear energy is cheaper than alternatives for the same purpose.
Just like an active volcano may suddenly let out a lot of magma which is going to be quite warm, but one can’t just project as if that amount of heat is distributed over the average period between eruptions, while considering it for heating houses.
That’s clearly not true. Nuclear energy is quite expensive in comparison to other sources:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
Statistics and even graphs in general are not applicable in the “look, I’m right and you are wrong” way.
First, that LCOE likely doesn’t account for what I described. Because when wind turbines production is down (no wind), you don’t buy from the same source 10x the same price, you buy from another source, and because grids are centralized and have tariff agreements etc complex to just mix this way. It’s a bit like working with Soviet stats on Soviet economy - stats for centralized systems should be mixed carefully with what is intended to evaluate market mechanisms.
Second, in any case your picture shows cost of nuclear growing significantly. This might be because, say, of quite a few big sites in construction which will return the expenses like 10-15 years later at best, a nuclear site is a long-term investment, which is fact. This might also be because of a few sites being shut down in Europe due to ignorant idiots.
Statistics and even graphs in general are not applicable in the “look, I’m right and you are wrong” way. I don’t think that’s right. Statistics are a very important tool in assessing the current situations anddrawing conclusion. Here’s an article about that: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5037948/
Here’s an article by dbresearch about the cost of energy production from different sources which IMHO clearly shows that nuclear power is already among the most cost intensive forms of energy production. And as I stated before it still completely neglects the cost of storing the nuclear waste for thousands of years to come. https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/Costs_of_electricity_generation%3A_System_costs_matt/RPS_EN_DOC_VIEW.calias?rwnode=PROD0000000000435629&ProdCollection=PROD0000000000528292
Can you cite a source or present research data to support your second point?
Please keep the discussion civil and cite sources instead of succumbing to personal attacks. Calling the opposition ignored idiots does in no way contribute to proving your points.
Of course I’m literally looking at the same graph and as far as I can tell nuclear energy is equivalent in price to gas.
Can you also see the trend of the two graphs for nuclear and gas?
Did you see how much cheaper renewables are?
And do you think the cost for the long term storage of nuclear waste is included in the calculation?
Pump water to height when it’s windy , let it down when it’s not. Load balanced. Not so hard eh?
Sure that would work in theory but you would struggle to get any kind of capacity with that system, and of course reservoirs are actually quite damaging to the environment, since you have to flood large areas of land.
Compare the cost of a new water reservoir and dam that can output the same as nuclear, with enough storage in the reservoir to store energy during renewable blackout periods.
More not bigger. This is economically viable in contrast to nuclear that only are making bank since they are funded by tax money. One of the reason he former is constructed. And there are no blackout periods. There is always production of renewable energy just more or less. Nuclear on the other hand goes down all the time.
Nuclear has one of the highest capacity factors. Meaning it actually goes down less than fossil fuels and especially renewables.
A reservoir is only “economically viable” with government action. Nobody is going to be able to acquire all that land without using eminent domain to force people to sell.
No, you can’t keep using the shitty, cracking,
They can be safely renovated, just informing you.
deadly waste producing nuclear plants of the past,
Don’t think people are stupid. That deadly waste naturally becomes less deadly over time. There are procedures for nuclear waste processing and burial sites and when those can be reused. The cycle takes many years, but that’d be the same with keeping forests, for example.
I don’t think that’s true. We will have to store our nuclear waste safely for geological timescales: possibly millions of years. Currently only two working reprocessing plants exist in France and Russia and they can be employed to produce weapons-grade plutonium. In France currently only 10% is recycled.
Ah, I’ve just mixed up things a bit. I was thinking of fast-neutron reactors. Waste from these is less cumbersome, and the existing waste can be partially reused with them.
But they still do produce radiactive waste, which has to be taken care of. Its true that the amount and toxicity of long lived waste is reduced. But we still need to take care of the rest. And as there is no long-term storage facilty to safely deposit the waste, I do think the risk of storing nuclear waste on the surface is too high.
I’m no expert on this topic, but reading this, it also sounds like the currently running Fast-Neutron Reactors do not recycle their fuel at this point in time.
Fast-neutron reactors can potentially reduce the radiotoxicity of nuclear waste. Each commercial scale reactor would have an annual waste output of a little more than a ton of fission products, plus trace amounts of transuranics if the most highly radioactive components could be recycled.
And as there is no long-term storage facilty to safely deposit the waste,
Yes, we don’t have things until we purchase or make or in this case build them.
but reading this, it also sounds like the currently running Fast-Neutron Reactors do not recycle their fuel at this point in time.
I’m not an expert either, what I meant is that waste from dirtier kinds can partially be used as fuel for these, and I think I’ve heard they already do that.
After that it’s LITERALLY free energy for a good 30 years.
If you ignore the other environmental costs, you mean. Just like solar, which causes untold damages from the disposal of mining refuse, but that gets conveniently ignored by first world nations, because most of the mining doesn’t happen where you live.
The issue is battery storage. Our current battery technology is terrible both ecologically and in terms of what it does to the people mining it and living in those countries.
Eh. Fission is in fact a terrible power source. Eternally deadly leftovers, critical failures have the potential to devastate whole regions of the planet for decades or more.
Mining and refining the fuel is similarly harmful to the environment as processing coal. It is also not much cheaper than to go for the actually best solution called renewables. Wind and solar are both reasonably cheap at this point, and for example China was recently in my news feed for building an insane amount of solar in the last year (something like more than the U.S. in the last 10 years combined).
Obviously this is the correct choice for the future, likely paired with fusion power, which when it eventually works, comes with all the advantages of nuclear fission and none of its drawbacks or dangers.
China is indeed a great example of what actual transition from fossil fuels looks like. China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country right now because they realize that renewables like solar and wind are insufficient on their own.
Eternally deadly leftovers,
Somebody doesn’t know the bare basics of physics involved.
Im sure we can argue semantics here about reprocessing the stuff, eternal not actually being eternal and so forth, doesn’t really change much.
It does change everything, when people fear nuclear waste, they talk about literally eternal. Otherwise we could say that reforestation is not possible, because it takes 70 years (if you are not just growing wood for fuel, furniture and mulch, but restoring a system).
If it’s not literally eternal, then it’s a working cycle which can be used and be more efficient.
EDIT: I’ve realized that the thing I’m remembering was written about fast-neutron reactors, which most are not, so you are right usually. It’s actually funny that Russia makes more ecologically clean reactors than USA. Stupid, but funny.
I have that little suspicion that it was intentionally (efficiency) planted by USSR when it had connections to western leftists (all those “progressive youth summits” and so on), via emotional association with possible devastation of nuclear war etc.
Stop pretending that nuclear is squishy fat face spongebob meme.
It’s sadly perceived emotionally by many people as those enormous concrete things with death inside. While burning something is more normal.
The biggest factor these days isn’t the fear of the energy type, it’s the fear of admitting your political rivals were right.
In the UK the Green Party are dead against nuclear power. I have absolutely no idea what the problem with it is supposed to be but they don’t like it.
Same 9000 km (5600 mi) away, here in Taiwan. The left-leaning party here is also anti-nuclear.
Meanwhile fly ash from coal is MORE radioactive than being near a nuclear plant.
The fate of this planet is going to based entirely on the artificial sun being completed, isn’t it?
Yes that’s right. Your ability to succinctly summarize that down into a single sentence is incredible.
This is what happens when planning beyond the next financial reporting period is verboten and there are political points to be scored in the theatre of liberal “democracy”.
All the comments about the nuclear reactor disasters remind me of a Vsauce video called Risk. . Michael talks about a hypothetical world where “one cigarette pack out of every eighteen thousand seven hundred and fifty contains a single cigarette laced with dynamite that, when lit, violently explodes, blowing the user’s head off. People would be loudly and messily losing their heads every day all over the world but in that imaginary universe the same number of people would die every day because of smoking that already do”. Nuclear disasters are messy, but affect less people than coal plants operating normally.
Yeah, but the only choice isn’t between smoking cigarettes and smoking dynamite sticks. Coal being bad doesn’t make nuclear good. Meltdowns aren’t the only bad things that nuclear reactors can cause. Where I live, people are losing their heads talking about how we need more nuclear power so we can get bigger electric cars to replace bicycles and public transport (not to replace cars with internal combustion engines, of course, because how else would people get on board with building infrastructure for giant electric sports cars than to let pre-existing rustbuckets roam free and keep gas stations in operation).
Coal being bad doesn’t make nuclear good
Except it does, because every single second that you’re running fossil fuels is causing more irreversible damage to our biosphere at a scale we can’t possibly contain, and you must produce electricity somehow. When demand is completely inelastic, a bad option can become a good option as long as there are worse alternatives.
Also burning coal, especially Lignite which is what Germany is burning, has very bad heating value and ironically contains lots of heavy metals and naturally occurring radioactive materials (radon, thorium, uranium, potassium).
All of that goes out the smoke stack into the environment. Radiation levels and cancer rates around coal power plants are significantly increased. But that seems to be no big deal for some ideologues.
Don’t spoil the fun, people want to feel smart with no effort.
It’s not a question of either using coal or nuclear power in Germany. The idea is to phase out coal power production by 2038 and replaced them by building 40 green hydrogen plants in order to be climate neutral by 2045 with renewables, which already are 52% of the German mix and the before mentioned green hydrogen plants.
Here’s a Google translation of a source about the energy transition in Germany:
green hydrogen plants
lmao that is never going to happen. that technology doesn’t even exist on a efficient scale yet. It’s all polluting gray hydrogen. are all Germans this gullible? at least build something that actually works like solar. Green hydrogen is a fucking scam and a handout to fossil fuel industry to do “research”
Germany is already at 52% renewables. So there’s a lot of wind and solar power plants. Hydrogen plants already exist. You only have to switch their power supply from fossil fuels to renewables and you get green hydrogen. It’s entirely feasible.
Source: https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/home/products-services/product/hydrogen-power-plants.html
by building 40 green hydrogen plants
Where would they get hydrogen?
The hydrogen is produced by employing renewables during times of overproduction.
Nuclear disasters are messy, but affect less people than coal plants operating normally.
Not just that, but the disasters we do have with nuclear plants are with old ones. Fukushima was built in 1971, 40 years before the 2011 incident. The meltdown it experienced wouldn’t just be more difficult in modern reactors. It would be impossible by design. We should be building new nuclear partially to retire old dangerous plants.
Very glad that representatives from Exxon-Mobil could make it here to lemmy to let us know how bad nuclear power is.
I LOVE DEAD OCEANS I LOVE DEAD OCEANS
You get polluted water and ground with nuclear waste too. These barrels tend to leak
What barrels ? Nuclear waste is stored in massive concrete and steel cylinders and burried deep underground. It’s not the green goo inside barrels everyone seems to imagine
https://www.dw.com/en/radioactive-waste-leaking-at-german-storage-site-report/a-43399896
… there are hundreds of barrels of low-level nuclear waste at an interim storage facility in the town of Leese, in Lower Saxony, that have to be examined for leaks and possibly re-packed and resealed in new barrels.
Low-level nuclear waste is stuff like used golves.
It’s like saying “let’s close hospitals because they produce a lot pf hazardous waste” when in reality it is mostly used masks.
I’ll inform the state of Saxony that your backyard is avaible should they run out of space :-)
There is plenty of space in Oymyakon.
I understand that it’s supposed to be a shitty comic and not a balanced, reasonable take, but if you’d like to hear a German perspective anyways:
I’m not aware of any official representative lobbying other countries to end nuclear, except of course in nations that build their totally safe reactors near our border. I’m also not aware of us being awarded or recognized for our stance. Individual Germans, like me, will of course have been fed different propaganda than you and will argue accordingly.
No one here likes the coal generators. And with how much cheaper solar is these days, they’re definitely on the way out. But we don’t have a dictatorship anymore, luckily, so even obviously good paths will face pushback, like from entire regions whose jobs are in the coal industry.
We’ve just been able to get a consensus on abolishing nuclear much more quickly for multiple reasons:- Chernobyl directly affected us, including the people running our country. Russia also attacked nuclear reactors in the Ukraine, which certainly reminded people of Chernobyl.
- At the start of the Ukraine war, it was unclear whether Russia might also launch attacks on us, including our nuclear reactors.
- Russia also cut off our natural gas supply. We have practically no own Uranium deposits either, so reducing dependence on foreign nations was definitely in our interest, too.
At the start of the Ukraine war, it was unclear whether Russia might also launch attacks on us, including our nuclear reactors.
Russia hasn’t attacked any nuclear reactors in Ukraine for obvious reasons. The notions that Russia would attack nuclear reactors in Germany is pure absurdity that no sane person could believe.
Russia also cut off our natural gas supply. We have practically no own Uranium deposits either, so reducing dependence on foreign nations was definitely in our interest, too.
That’s a straight up lie. Russia never cut off gas supply to Germany, and in fact has repeatedly stated that one of Nord Stream pipelines is operational. German government is choosing to buy Russian LNG through third parties instead of buying pipeline gas directly.
Well, I don’t know what to tell you. These things have been broadly reported here in Germany. Whom of us was mislead, doesn’t matter for explaining why us Germans have a different stance on things.
Here’s two random articles, but I can send a whole list of links, if your search engine isn’t turning up anything:
Ah yes, “Ukrainian officials say”, very credible source. Weird how IEA never found any evidence of Russia shelling ZNPP though. And yeah, once you stop paying for a product the delivery stops. That’s how business works.
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Russia stopped delivering gas to 5 european countries in May 2022 because those countries refused to pay in rubels.
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Then they announced in June 2022 that they would only deliver half of the agreed-upon volumes to Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Czechia and Italy.
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In September 2022 Russia stopped gas transfers via Nord Stream 1 completely, “because of technical difficulties”.
Those are facts. Russia stopped these gas transfers. No one else.
Russia stopped transfers because Europe refused to pay in a currency Russia could use. Funny how you forgot to mention that the west froze Russian foreign assets there.
Now, Europe is still buying Russian gas, but via resellers while lying to the public.
Those are the actual facts.
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Just a couple of sidenotes
At the start of the Ukraine war, it was unclear whether Russia might also launch attacks on us, including our nuclear reactors.
RU attacking Germany is as unlikely as RU shelling London, NY, or Tokyo
Russia also attacked nuclear reactors in the Ukraine, which certainly reminded people of Chernobyl.
I think the news was that someone shelled Zaporizhzhia “Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for shelling the Russian-controlled plant.” Now, I’m not Hercule Poirot, but if RU controlled the plant at the time, wouldn’t that make UKR the most likely culprit?
Russia also cut off our natural gas supply.
Surely Russia turning a tap is less pertinent than USA literally bombing the pipeline?
We have practically no own Uranium deposits either,
So where are you buying from the rest of your resources? Surely nuclear is more feasible than coal from a purely geopolitical/economic point of view? I guess good luck with the solar panels.
You seem to be a bit confused about the situation.
It’s a bit more likely. Eastern part of Germany was USSR back in the days. Germans share common fears with Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, … for good reason. They’ve had this happen before.
A decentralised network with many different production sites for solar, wind, water etc is in many ways less vulnerable than a network with fewer very centralised production facilities.
The goal is moving away from coal and nuclear, clearly, it’s just taking too long. EU will start importing massive amounts of hydrogen overseas the next few decades, possibly also funding the green pduction itself in southern countries.
The only real german stupidity was investing in and relying on nordstream 2, because that was after Russia pulled the crimea and donbas.
Russia also cut off our natural gas supply.
I think you mean America cut off your natural gas supply when they blew up the Nordstream
No, Russia had already stopped delivering natural gas at the end of August 2022. The pipelines got blown up on the 26th September 2022.
Yeah… Suppliers tend to do that when you stop paying them.
That’s not the case though. Russia stopped supplying gas to 5 countries in May because those countries refused to pay in rubles.
The stop of supplying gas to Germany at the end of August/start of September was not at all related to that.
No one here likes the coal generators. […]so even obviously good paths will face pushback, like from entire regions whose jobs are in the coal industry.
This in itself is contradictory but even despite that, there’s 20.000 people left with jobs in the coal industry. You could give everyone over like the age of 50 their pension as if they worked till the regular pension age and then re-train everybody else with very generous benefits for the interrim time of like 5 years and it would be orders of magnitude cheaper than keeping that system rolling.
Well, if you’ve got a plan worked out for that, maybe you’d like to present it to our government. That sounds like something they would love to know about.
Plan’s right there mate. Early retirement at 0 loss after an age cutoff, 5 year former wages for the rest, have some of the boffins at the Wirtschaftsministerium calculate where the cut-off makes sense economically, done. Fuck just reuse the plans from when you dismantled any given organisation in the 90s - 2000s, I’m sure they’re still around, could be used for good for ones. This is not a hard thing to do, logistically.
It’s not cheaper for corrupt politicians who receive bribes from the coal industry, however
What does Chernobyl have to do with Germany deciding to appease a few billionaires and burn more coal?
I’m not aware of those billionaires caring whether they get paid to burn coal or paid to build solar farms.
Well they own and are currently profiting from coal mines, they don’t own solar farm construction companies.
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Foreign dependance is just false. In own country produced coal is clearly less foreign dependant than importing uranium.
All your other points are up for debate and by far not as black and white or right and wrong as you seem to believe.
We are yet to see these fancy schmancy super reactors online in Europe. Just about every new nuclear construction site in Europe in the past 15 years has become nothing short of a financial bottomless pit.
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British new reactors are by now more then a decade overdue and budget is spiralling out of control massively. So massively it’s causing the need for diplomacy between France (EDF) and Britain to get involved.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/cost-edfs-new-uk-nuclear-project-soars-40-bln-2023-02-20/
Same tendencies are in all European countries that tried nuclear project recently: way over budget and massive delays. Only France is somewhat better exception. Belarus is a dictatorship, if they say reactor go, reactor go. This is exactly what is meant with some fears surrounding nuclear energy. Chernobyl was real. It’s not a coincidence it happened in the USSR.
If I say ALL other points you made are not so black and white, I do not have the obligation to specify nor to elaborate. Things are rarely binary good vs evil in this world. Every energy source has advantages and disadvantages. Pro-nuclear voices are often blind for the risks, they are very tiny in possibility and very large in potential consequences at the same time.
Thorium, smr etc is still a pipedream at this point.
It is a valid strategy for a country to invest into proven technology like better insulating homes, optimising network, supporting more wind and solar and combining it with importing foreign hydrogen. This choice does not make Germany or other European countries retarded as is often portrayed. The mistakes are make in the timing, and in the reliance on 1 single foreign supplier (Russian gas), not in the fundamental choice itself to move away from nuclear. The move away from nuclear was very widely supported in German democracy. And it is valid to say this was an environmental choice: no, we don’t know what to do with the small fraction of very long lasting waste in the long term, a fact still ignored all the time by the pro-nuclear voice.
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I’ve heard that Germany today has problems with expertise to operate nuclear sites. Not sure how much of a problem that would be, though.
The lobbyist groups involved are very PRO-nuclear, hence why there’s so many nuclear posts on literally every single social media platform.
and then their radioactive dust ends up in france, the german truly are ruthless against my country
The dominant wind in Europe is very very clearly west to east. Few german dust lands in France.
Francia Orientalis vs Francia Occidentalis for a thousand years
We can not use nuclear energy as long as we do not know what to do with the waste. IMHO it’s as easy as that.
We’ve known what to do with the waste for a long time now. Also, when you use fossil fuels you’re just directly polluting the environment.
There is no current facility for storing nuclear waste in a safe manner in Germany. Most of the high level waste is stored on the surface near the waste production sites. Let’s take a look at the dangers of plutonium-239: If inhaled a minute dose will be enough to increase the cancer risk to 100%. If ingested a minute dose is almost as dangerous because of it’s heavy metal toxicity. It’s half life is about 24k years. “It has been estimated that a pound (454 grams) of plutonium inhaled as plutonium oxide dust could give cancer to two million people.” (1) So IMHO it’s very irresponsible to create more nuclear waste, as long as we as a society have no way to get rid of it in a safe manner. 100% renewable is achievable and I think we should concentrate on this path since it will be safer and also cheaper in the long run. (2)(3)
Sources:
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-239
2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
3: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
Ok, so instead digging up coal mines, Germany could’ve spent time making a facility for safely storing processed nuclear fuel like many other countries have done. The amount of fear mongering about nuclear power while it’s being widely used around the world and having been shown as one of the safest sources of energy is mind boggling. I guess in your opinion what we should do is keep destroying the environment by using fossils while ignoring practical alternatives.
No, my opinion is that we can not use nuclear energy as long as we do not have a long term solution for our nuclear waste. There is no such facility in Germany and a large portion of the waste is currently stored on the surface, partly in heavily populated areas like Philippsburg near Karlsruhe, a city with ~300k inhabitants.
https://www.base.bund.de/DE/themen/ne/zwischenlager/standorte/standorte_node.html
Again, such facilities can be built. It’s a choice not to do so. Also, Germany could use alternative fuels like thorium the way China is doing now with their molten salt reactors.
There is no such facility in Germany. As long as there is no facility for storing the radioactive waste, I don’t think we should produce more nuclear waste.
It’s true that liquid salt reactors are more fuel efficient than light water reactors and the waste is more short lived, but still it produces high level waste with even more radioactivity in the short term.
“All other issues aside, thorium is still nuclear energy, say environmentalists, its reactors disgorging the same toxic byproducts and fissile waste with the same millennial half-lives. Oliver Tickell, author of Kyoto2, says the fission materials produced from thorium are of a different spectrum to those from uranium-235, but ‘include many dangerous-to-health alpha and beta emitters’.”
What part of such a facility could be built are you still struggling with?
You’re not okay with creating waste that can be contained but you are okay with creating waste that can’t be contained.
You’re not okay with waste that will harm/kill someone improperly exposed to it, but you are okay with waste that will end civilization and kill billions of people and is currently doing so.
I don’t think I said that. I’m sure I did say that it’s a huge problem. We have to get rid of coal as well as waste producing fission plants. I think we should aim for 100% renewables, which is feasible according to current studies. Saying I’m against using nuclear power plants does not make me a coal proponent.
When you strip mine massive tracts of land for uranium, transport the uranium, refine the uranium, transport it again to the power plant, transport it a 3rd time to the waste management facility, and transport it a 4th time to the storage facility where it WILL invariably leak (they always do), you’re not doing the environment too many favors either.
It’s like why even bother trying to explore solar or wind or hydro power? The nuclear lobby has obviously been very successful in convincing people online that no such power sources exist.
Just wait until you find out where coal comes from, and what they do with the waste.
Uranium is so incredibly energy dense that the issues of mining and transport are absolutely minimal compared to coal. There are also reactors that are capable of burning up the majority of the waste, but we’re scared of them because they happen to also be good at making weapons-grade material.
We need base load power. Here on the Canadian prairies we have tons of renewables. Yet there was a recent power crisis on a cold, dark January night because in that situation, none of the renewables are any use. Nuclear is that solution, and the other is natural gas peaking that is only run in emergency situations. Shooting for true “zero emissions” is an example of the perfect being the enemy of the good.
Nobody is arguing against using other sources of energy complimentary to nuclear power. However, the reality is that nuclear is one of the best options available to us.
You can put nuclear waste in a box and decide what to do with it later. CO² is less helpful that way.
And unlike my bills, it becomes less dangerous the longer you ignore them.
We already have carbon storing technology. Also, you wanted subscript for the 2.
I didn’t say we didn’t have carbon storing technology, but if you aren’t aware that it’s more difficult to recapture carbon than to put spent fuel in a box, you probably should read past the first paragraph of whatever Wikipedia article you found.
No no no, they definitely meant “carbon monoxide squared”.
We also don’t know what to do with the waste from coal plants. The difference is that instead of having an easy to store, easy to track, completely harmless form of waste like that produced by nuclear plants, instead we just pump completely impossible to store, track, or mitigate pollutants straight into the atmosphere, ground, and water. Much better!
My view that we can not produce more nuclear waste as long as we have no long term storage facility does not make me a coal proponent. I oppose coal power production, as do ~80% of Germans. That’s why we decided as a society to transition to climate neutral energy production until 2045. Coal power is scheduled to be phased out in 2038. And the plan is to build 40 green hydrogen power plants to supplement the renewables.
https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Dossier/energiewende.html
Google translate: https://www-bmwk-de.translate.goog/Redaktion/DE/Dossier/energiewende.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Do you realize how ridiculous you seem bringing up promises to do shit “by 2038” and “until 2045?” We needed to put an end to this shit by the year 2000. Your government won’t even have any of the same people in it in 2038. You think they’re going to give a shit what people said in 2024?
You’re advocating for so little that it may as well be nothing. At least the full “i dont give a shit about the environment, let 'er rip” people are honest. You’re exactly the same, you just like to pretend you’re better.
I do think that these issues need long term viable solutions. You can’t change the energy production infrastructure in five years. This takes time and you need a plan. Germany is currently one of eleven countries that have made the move to zero emission energy production a law. This is in itself quite an achievement. Of course there is no guarantee that it will be implemented exactly as it is planned now. I think it will be a big win if we can achieve climate neutrality in the energy sector by 2045 and phase out coal in fourteen years.
https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-net-zero-target-evaluations/
Please refrain from using ad hominem attacks and support your views with arguments rather than personal insults.
Please refrain from using ad hominem attacks
Can you point out what part of my comment you mistook for an ad hominem attack so I can laugh at you even harder? I already know you don’t know what ad hominem is, but seeing the specific example will be particularly funny.
You’re advocating for so little that it may as well be nothing. At least the full “i dont give a shit about the environment, let 'er rip” people are honest. You’re exactly the same, you just like to pretend you’re better.
How is this not attacking my personality but continuing a discussion on a civil manner?
Hers the definition from Britannica: “ad hominem, (Latin: “against the man”) type of argument or attack that appeals to prejudice or feelings or irrelevantly impugns another person’s character instead of addressing the facts or claims made by the latter.”
How is this not attacking my personality but continuing a discussion on a civil manner?
It’s a direct criticism of the argument you made. You are dishonestly bringing up plans to do in 2045 what should be done yesterday. You pretend to care about these issues but if you truly did care about these issues you would be utterly embarrassed by the ineffectiveness of what you’re supporting. You like the image of caring about the environment, but you have no interest in the actual solutions.
appeals to prejudice ❌
or feelings ❌
irrelevantly impugns ❌
instead of addressing the facts or claims ❌I’m impugning your character for claiming inaccurately and dishonestly that it is acceptable to baby step our way to 2045 when the world is already on fire.
We have problems storing the waste from coal as well, especially given that it is also radioactive [0]. But, instead of nuclear waste which we keep safe in temporary storage, this radioactive material just gets to float free in the atmosphere.
[0] https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-power-plants
This is true and it’s a huge problem. But still the radiation from coal is ~ 0.001 Sievert (1). The radiation from high level nuclear waste after ten years of storage (!) is still ~ 200 Sievert (2). These are mostly spent fuel rods. This is 40 times the lethal dose for any given instant.
From your source 1:
“large quantities of uranium and thorium and other radioactive species in coal ash are not being treated as radioactive waste. These products emit low-level radiation, but because of regulatory differences, coal-fired power plants are allowed to release quantities of radioactive material that would provoke enormous public outcry if such amounts were released from nuclear facilities.”
“the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants”
“For the complete nuclear fuel cycle, from mining to reactor operation to waste disposal, the radiation dose is cited as 136 person-rem/year” while it “amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants”.
We at least have temporary storage for spent nuclear fuel, we have no such protection with coal plants.
Yes this is true. And again: Me being against nuclear power plants does not make me a coal proponent. I think we have to get rid of both and aim for 100% renewables, which is feasible according to current studies.
For me the most danger lies in storing high level radioactive waste on the surface where it’s prone to accidents and can easily contaminate air and ground water.
How do you think renewable energy can be stored?
I don’t really know of a storage system that is free of risk. The Three Gorges Dam is more potentially deadly than any reactor for instance as it has 400 million people at risk.
Static pumped hydro
I’m no proponent of these massive structures with unimaginable impact on their environment either. Also Germany will probably never have a structure of this size in the foreseeable future. In order to produce enough energy during times when wind and solar energy is scarce, Germany wants to build 40 climate neutral hydrogen power plants until the 2030s in order to phase out coal power production. As far as I understand it we will therefore not need more batteries.
Neutral hydrogen power plants? If it’s not green hydrogen it’s just fossil fuels with more steps and on top of that hydrogen is difficult to store causing it to lose upwards of 60% of the energy put into it.
Then what? Are they going to burn it or are they going to run it through fuel cells that use expensive catalysts?
Okay? What you’re describing is a lesser problem. Even if we couldn’t fuel more modern reactors with it, which we can.
neat! didn’t think there was such a discrepancy. are these sievert numbers normalized for energy yield?
No, these are absolute numbers
France and Japan just fire more reactors with the waste. Been doing it since at least the 70s
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This is an interesting documentary about the topic: Into eternity. The documentary has a depressing and ephemeral feeling, but I find it extremely amusing that we are taking steps to protect people that will live thousands of years from now.
Taking decisions like “nuclear or not nuclear”, “how to dispose the waste”, etc. is hard, but doing so ignoring the people that invest their whole life studying the topics is just dumb.
I do think we should protect coming generations from our nuclear waste and I do not think this is ridiculous at all. In the same way we should leave our children with a world with a livable climate we should not leave them with a heritage of tons of highly radioactive material stored on the surface because we have no long term storage facility.
How much nuclear waste do you think is being created?
There was a research out of the US that said the US could run entirely off nuclear for the next century using just nuclear waste that already exists.
If you read that and were like “EXACTLY. It’s so much waste” just know that waste is virtually all from nuclear weapons.
Sorry but I do not understand what you are trying to say there. Can you elaborate please?
The waste already exists. Might as well use it.
We currently have no real way to recycle spent fuel. Only a small percentage of nuclear waste can be recycled and it’s very expensive to do so, that’s why there are only two countries currently recycling fuel: France and Russia. Sellafield in the UK has been closed in the Fukushima aftermath. In France only 10% of nuclear fuel is recycled material using the purex process, which can also produce weapons-grade plutonium and therefore also raises different concerns.
https://www.goodenergycollective.org/policy/faq-recycling-nuclear-waste
Nuclear weapons are not spent fuel.
Completely agree with you on the first part. My point is that:
- Long term storage in a non-trivial thing to do, from a technical, social and ecological POV. However, it can be build, as shown in the linked documentary.
- Not going nuclear has disadvantages (that IMO out number the advantages).
- Going nuclear also has disadvantages. Thus, the view of experts on the field has a big importance of the topic. In this matter, the consensus I most commonly find in the physicists community is that nuclear is a energy source that should replace carbon/coal, but needs to be complemented with solar/wind/water/thermal, not just disregarded.
I would like to add that I did not try to call you dumb, I’m sorry if that’s the way it ended up sounding like. The dumb part was directed to the people in charge of the decisions, not you.
Yes I agree. It is possible to build long term storage facilities and there is one operating in Finland for example. And the finnish people in the region actually welcomed the facility. But the situation is very much different in Germany. Whenever plans for a such a facility became public massive protests ensued and the projects became politically unfeasable.
Of course we should listen to the experts in the field, but even they had no success in convincing the populace of a possible site. I’m convinced that we need such a facility and that it should be a scientific emotionless process. But this is currently not possible in Germany. And as long as there is no such consensus and we don’t have such a facility, I think it’s irresponsible to produce more nuclear waste and leave it on the surface for the coming generations to take care of.
The German plan for the “Energiewende” (Energy Transition) is to phase out coal until 2038 and become 100% climate neutral by 2045. The current plan is to do that using a mix of renewables and hydrogen power plants which will substitute the current coal power plants.
https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Dossier/energiewende.html
Google translate: https://www-bmwk-de.translate.goog/Redaktion/DE/Dossier/energiewende.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Why would you bury fuel that you’ve only harvested 1% of the energy from? If you’re not gonna build reprocessing facilities, sell it to France or Russia.
I don’t think exporting waste to different countries were only 10% of the fuel is recycled is a responsible way to manage nuclear waste.
Also there are nuclear proliferation concerns when reprocessing nuclear fuel. I for one would not want to supply Russia with possible raw materials for nuclear weapons.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
As for reprocessing, storage is in competition with newly mined fuel. As mining becomes more expensive or nuclear demand increases, there’s greater impetus to recycle more fuel. Conversely, if there’s fewer plants consuming the fuel or more mines opening, recycling projects die.
The more plants close, the less waste you’re gonna get reprocessed.
Russia already has 40,000 nukes, they’re not a proliferation risk.
We currently do not know what to do with the waste from coal and other fossil fuel plants either though. At least nuclear waste is local and manageable. Dumping all the fossil fuel waste into the atmosphere is not working well, and is almost impossible to clean up.
This is true and that’s why Germany decided to phase out fossil fuel and nuclear power production. Fossil fuel based power plants will be phased out 2038 and Germany aims to be climate neutral by 2045 using a mix of renewables and green hydrogen power plants.
Putting it in the ground is a viable solution. And it doesn’t damage the environment for it to be in there and it’s not like it’s going to escape.
At some point in time will develop the technology to do something else with it but for now putting it in big concrete containers underground is a viable solution.
Yes, but there is no such facility in Germany.
Because Germans choose not to built it being ideologically driven imbeciles that they are.
So now you’re attacking a whole people, without offering arguments.
I’ve literally explained the argument in my comment. Germans CHOOSE NOT TO BUILD such facilities. The fact that you feel attacked when people state basic facts about your people is frankly hilarious.
Basic facts like all Germans are imbeciles? These are opinions, not facts.
Yes we chose not to build such facilities and that’s why we should not produce more nuclear waste. This is exactly my argument you failed to respond to.
It’s a fact that investing in coal while dismantling nuclear power infrastructure is not a sign of intelligent behavior.
There’s also no such facility in France yet they have nuclear power stations. You see we have these things called trucks that can move things from one country to another so we have one facility in Denmark which is perfectly suitable for everyone’s needs it’s geologically stable and in an old salt mine. You don’t want lots of distributed locations you want one convenient location.
This happens when you move CASTOR containers which carry spent nuclear fuel in Germany, that’s why it is most of the time stored next to the production sites. https://www.google.com/search?q=castor+transporte+deutschland+proteste&client=firefox-b-m&sca_esv=cd5515df3b07dc25&sca_upv=1&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_xNWd1LWEAxUGgf0HHSk7DekQ_AUIBygC&biw=414&bih=790
Nuclear plants are uneconomical and produce nuclear trash we dont have the storage for. It was the best decision we could do shutting them down. Lemmy and reddit are so far into nuclear power propaganda they dont even see the actual mistake we made. It was not to shut down nuclear. It was stopping investing in our very successful solar tech.
produce nuclear trash
If by “trash” you mean “free energy”.
we dont have the storage for
Dig hole -> put stuff in hole -> cover hole -> wait a few years -> dig stuff out of hole and use in newer, more efficient reactors
in our very successful solar tech.
You mean the solar tech that requires rare earth minerals and causes untold damages in mining?
I don’t think german engieneers are worse than russian ones in terms of extracting good stuff from “trash”.
Yeah at a key moment. Why did they pull the plug? Germany was on track to be the world leading solar producer…
Meanwhile Germany has more than twice the renewables than the US (and still more than their renewables and nuclear combined), and is set to quit coal entirely by 2038. Still too slow, but how about instead of shilling the dangerous¹ technology that is nuclear, you start pointing fingers at those doing next to nothing to change for the better?
¹ not necessarily during regular operations to regular people. But since Germany doesn’t have uranium it would introduce foreign dependencies, nuclear power plants are high value targets both for terrorism and state warfare, as seen in Ukraine. There is no safe way to store nuclear waste long-term. Mining of uranium is furthermore massively harmful to workers and the environment.
Everything we do is harmful. Using more coal is even worse. The very dirty coal that Germany is using worse worse. Depending on the method of mining coal, it is massively harmful to the workers. I don’t think the method Germany is using is as bad as say the method the Appalachian miners used.
That’s why Germany wants to phase out coal next after nuclear energy production has been phased out in 2023. In 2038 coal is planned to be completed passed out and be replaced by climate neutral energy consisting of renewables and green hydrogen gas power plants until 2045.
BTW mining uranium is in no way better than mining coal: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/what-are-health-and-environmental-impacts-mining-and-enriching-uranium
The UK hit zero coal in 2020 without even trying. 2038 is actually a piss take. If you used nuclear like France and China you would be able to do it much sooner lol.
Oh, it’s bullshit, don’t get me wrong. But nuclear is not changing that, the UK has less than 10% as well.
Besides, nuclear power station take a minimum of 20 years to construct, so even if we reversed course, we wouldn’t have them running until the 40s. Contrast that with less than 5 for most renewables. Nuclear is also really expensive, so we could instead invest the money into a better and more flexible grid.
Nuclear is not the answer to climate change. Let existing plants run until coal is gone, then shut them off in favor of renewables.
But nuclear is not changing that, the UK has less than 10% as well.
What are you lying for? It’s around 16% as of 2020. They are building more as well
Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Kingdom
I was using the live data from today, no need to accuse me of lying. It has risen from 9.7% to 12.2% in the meantime, however: https://grid.iamkate.com/
You could have scrolled down and hit the year tab to get a more representative number, which is around 14%. Taking the daily value doesn’t make much sense now does it?
If that’s the level of pedantry you want to argue about, sure. It doesn’t change the fact that nuclear isn’t the backbone of the UK grid, and that it is not feasible to bring it back in Germany, and that it never was and likely never will be economically competitive, especially not with renewables getting cheaper every year.
That is to say nothing about security risks, political dependencies and environmental impacts.
It’s produced more power than coal, biomass, solar, and hydro combined this year and is the third largest behind wind and gas. There are plans to do more. This is in a country that isn’t that into nuclear. In France over 70% is nuclear.
Economically competitive doesn’t mean it’s the best option. Renewables are basically useless without significant investment in energy storage. They also need replacing more often. Add these two together and you have very significant environmental and economic issues with “green energy”. That’s why countries like France and China are invested in nuclear and why everyone wants fusion.
Yes, let’s reverse that and and make ourself dependent from Russia again…
Also, coal production has been doing nothing than falling since we made the switch. Renewables have been the major energy source 2023, for the first time, and are only prosepected to grow, while Germany is transitioning away from coal. One of the main reasons for the increase in coal in 2022 were the outages of frech nuclear plants…
After coal-fired power plants in Germany ramped up their production in 2022 due to outages of French nuclear power plants and distortions in the electricity market caused by the war in Ukraine, their share in electricity production fell significantly in 2023. Due to the drop in exports of coal-fired power and this years favorable wind conditions, electricity generation from coal-fired power plants in November 2023 was 27% below the generation in November 2022.
You can look at the graphs here to see how coal is already back to where it was pre-shutdown.
And as can be seen here, Germany has been able to cover their baseload only with renewables more and more. This is expected to increase, as renewables are growing and battery technology advances.
Germany is still entirely dependent on Russian LNG, so not sure what you’re talking about there. Also, seems like you conveniently forgot that Germany imports electricity from France where most electricity production is done using nuclear power
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/germany/electricity-imports-and-exports/electricity-imports-france
Germany imported Electric from France during summer 2023, due to lower energy costs in neighboring countrys and high Co2 certificate prices.
In total, Germany has been a net Exporter for Energy in 2023.
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/germany/electricity-imports-and-exports/electricity-balance-france
And while Germany has been an importer from France in general, this switched in 2022 when France nuclear reactors had to be shut down due to a record warm summer, showing how nuclear is not fit to withhold the stresses of the climate crisis upon us.
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/germany/electricity-imports-and-exports/electricity-balance-france
As too your other statement I’d like to ask for a source. I found nothing pointing towards this.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1332783/german-gas-imports-from-russia/
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-28/russian-oil-is-still-powering-europe-s-cars-with-help-of-india
- https://ieefa.org/resources/eu-turns-blind-eye-21-russian-lng-flowing-through-its-terminals
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-01-27/europe-s-energy-security-at-risk-due-to-reliance-on-us-natural-gas-exports
- https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-energy-secretary-claire-coutinho-eu-showdown-russia-gas/
- https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/lng-imports-russia-rise-despite-cuts-pipeline-gas-2023-08-30/
- https://euobserver.com/green-economy/157627
- https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/eu-countries-continue-import-1bn-russian-arctic-lng-every-month
While up to a dozen EU countries have received Russian LNG since February 2022, the key importers remain Belgium, Spain, and France, which together account for 88 percent of the EU’s Russian LNG imports during the last 10 months.
Not a single link even mentions Germany…
It’s like you believe Germany exists in a vacuum and can’t comprehend that LNG that EU purchases also goes to Germany. 😂
It like you are not able to provide a single source for that claim. I am happy to admit that it does (I honestly don’t know), but at the moment youre source is “Trust me bro” and given the quality of your replies in this thread to me and others I, very politly, choose not to do so.
If you’re gonna troll at least troll about something that people can’t google in like 2 seconds 😂 https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-dependence-imported-fossil-fuels
Last summer France imported large amounts of electricity from neighbours. Dry hot summer make rivers run dry which causes reactor shutdowns while demand is high because of airco. More solar in the french mix woild have filled the gap.
There is no 1 single magic bullet in the energy situation. It’s an energy mix and always will be a mix. Nuclear is not the one magic fix it all today solution.
Nobody is advocating for any silver bullet here. I think there needs to be an energy mix from different sources. Nuclear and renewables complement each other. It’s also worth noting that China is already experimenting with thorium reactors that use molten salt for coolant and don’t need water.
Also, coal production has been doing nothing than falling since we made the switch
Hahahaha… is it really this easy to dupe Germans?
You tell me.
Cool. Here’s a picture of me on the moon.
Ftfy
Yes, let’s reverse that and and make ourself dependent from Russia again…
You mean gas?
How so?
Big fat Miller’s pipe
Meanwhile Fukushima still uninhabitable and currently as we speak dumping tritium into the ocean
Fukashima is not uninhabitable, neither is Chernobyl/Pripyat, you won’t just die from entering the area without any protection.
Very few health issues have been detected as a cause of the Fukashima nuclear disaster:
It is the fear of radiation that makes us call it uninhabitable, this is an older documentary, but it is still valid and is still important:
Sure but fossil fuels about to make the whole planet uninhabitable… And massive oil spills in the ocean are much too common
But solar and wind don’t. Why must we use nuclear. We could weatherproof houses and paint rooftops white. There are a million solutions that don’t require me to get radiation poisoned
Because not all places are sunny or windy, and solar requires copious amounts of lithium which needs to be extracted from the earth, which has its own consequences. That said, Japan should look into developing their ability to harness the kinetic energy from tidal forces. It’s wise to diversify the power grid.
You’re not going to get radiation poisoning from a nuclear plant, unless you’re planning to personally planning to break in and turn off all the safeties to cause another Chernobyl (also there are more safeties now, since, y’know…). You don’t have concerns about nuclear, you have baseless fears. With current battery technology we can’t fulfill energy demands just off solar and wind, so it’s coal or nuclear. As much as it does have legitimate downsides, you are at about as much risk from radiation as you are from a windmill falling on you.
Love how I’m getting downvoted for promoting solar and wind lol
Hexbear doesn’t have downvotes, so there’s no point complaining to me about it, but you’re not being downvoted for promoting solar and wind, you’re being downvoted for fear mongering over nuclear. We all want more solar and wind, and hydroelectric and all the other renewable energy sources, but we don’t have the technology to run the world on them yet. Until we do, we have to use nonrenewables, and nuclear is by far the least damaging of the nonrenewables we have access to. The naturally occuring radioactive isotopes in coal result in coal plants release more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear plants, so screeching about how nuclear energy is going to give you radiation poisoning and we should just use renewables shows you to be deeply ignorant about both.
These things are certainly going to be part of the solution. We want multiple sources of power and we want to improve the efficiency of our energy usage. But we are still going to need ways of generating power when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. And here nuclear is one of the safest options.
Even when you consider that disasters like Fukushima or Chernobyl are going to happen once in a while, nuclear power still causes less death and disease per megawatt than coal does. And unlike coal that you really can’t make less lethal unless a wizard comes and conjures large-scale carbon capture into existence, nuclear power is still developing and becoming safer and less lethal.
dumping tritium into the ocean
Despite what Chinese propaganda keeps saying, it’s very safe amounts. Less than just safe… negligible. The IAEA has been monitoring levels in the area and tritium levels haven’t even gone up detectably. Tritium also has a fairly short half-life of 12.5 years.
Ahh yes, because being concerned that the idiots who keep leaking radioactive water into the environment might be less than competent is muh CPC propaganda.
You can be pro-nuclear power while still criticizing the company that keeps mishandling nuclear power.
I’m generally pro China but this whole spat is little more than a premise for protectionism of China’s fishing industry. If they really cared about tritium they would do something about their own runoff which far outweighs Japan’s.
Many Fukuahima residents and the Japanese national fishermen’s association opposing the release of contamination of contaminated water isn’t based on Chinese protectionism. English language news media has painted this as a China vs Japan issue when in fact many people inside Japan also oppose the release of contaminated water into the ocean. Especially since the plan was rushed through from announcement to implementation on the span of about a week, specifically so that domestic opposition couldn’t mount until it was already too late.
Why do I have to be pro nuclear
Because it is one of the absolute least environmentally harmful sources of energy available to us, because base load isn’t going away and by using nuclear energy we stop polluting fossil fuel plats, and hydro power that ruins eco systems in rivers.
You don’t.
But after that half life it turns into checks notes
Helium! How scandalous!
the fish are gonna talk in a squeaky voice
Piss decomposes into harmless elements in much less time but I’m still gonna be mad at the guy openly pissing in the pool.
Try ingesting it. Literally 4 members my family died from cancer and there are correlated numbers
I am sorry for your loss, but just because cancer cause their death, doesn’t mean that radioactivity caused the cancer
Imagine thinking a negligible amount of helium in the ocean would cause catastrophic health concerns.
They get many tsunamis in Germany?
The ocean water off Fukushima of sufficient concentration to be a health risk?
Lol
That’s because Tsunamis are the only risk to a nuclear reactor? I’m sure you have the capacity to think of other hazards as well.
Oh I thought we were bluntly applying everything to Fukushima, as the person I replied to did
