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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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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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.
So immediately snippy.
Yeah, this whole comment section annoys me. So many people who don’t get that likely all of us have been fed propaganda. And even if you believe that you’re the one person who knows only the truth, then still the absolute worst thing you can do, is to ridicule others who’ve been told a different story.
The only winning strategy is to share what you’ve been told and listen to what the others have been told. That’s what my initial comment tried to start off. And like, I agree that the guy’s comment wasn’t even bad, but it was just immediately back to “Here’s the absolute facts!”. Like, what the hell am I even supposed to do with that comment? There is no reason provided why I should believe it, so honestly, they could have just not written it.
Well we at Hexbear like to assume, rightly or wrongly, that shame is the best to convince some sorts of people to rethink. People have wasted much energy trying to nicely convince these types when it turned out they were entirely unwilling to consider that they are misinformed. Your comments have mirrored how those look with a very reddit-like demeanor. If you’re sincere, consider commenting as if you’re not on reddit and looking to figure out what’s true and people will engage happily. I’ve learned a lot by doing that.
Remember, the US have spent tens of times more money on propaganda around the world than any other country (remember, US propaganda is different in form than e.g. USSR, but mostly because their way is MORE effective). Europe+the US has spent more in 40 years than the rest of the world ever. Imagine the impact this has on your worldview before reading any news or positions taken in politics around the world.
I personally ridicule people on the Internet because it’s funny. I don’t think I’m going to change any minds and I don’t care. I do stuff in real life when I want to change people’s minds. I go online for catharsis.
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.
The lobbyist groups involved are very PRO-nuclear, hence why there’s so many nuclear posts on literally every single social media platform.
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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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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.
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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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
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 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.
Yeah but the aura coming from the nuclear reactor might turn everyone in the vicinity into tankies. Bet you didn’t think about that
that’s right, what Germans really fear is that GDR will make a comeback.
Idk why they’re worried though, seems like a great time to me
sure better than the shit show that’s currently unfolding in Germany if you ask me
I’m all for use of nuclear energy, and mining uranium from seawater, however, there are externalities that need to be addressed, at least in the USA, there are serious issues with on-site storage in pools, with no plans on what to do with the waste. This is a serious issue that needs considered.
I’m personally a fan of investing in thorium which is cheaper and safer. Thorium reactors also happen to use molten salt for cooling meaning that you don’t need to build them next to large bodies of water. The only reason uranium is used traditionally is because it doubles up as weapon material.
Yes, that’s a great point. 100% pro thorium. China is leading commercialization of thorium reactors. https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/thorium-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor-china
I’m really excited about this tech too.
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…
