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.
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.
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.
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".
The fate of this planet is going to based entirely on the artificial sun being completed, isn't it?
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
and then their radioactive dust ends up in france, the german truly are ruthless against my country
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.
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.
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:
https://de-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Energiewende?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
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
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDUvCLAp0uU
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.
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 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
https://www.fr.de/wirtschaft/78-prozent-der-deutschen-wollen-eine-schnellere-energiewende-zr-92219363.html
Google translate: https://www-fr-de.translate.goog/wirtschaft/78-prozent-der-deutschen-wollen-eine-schnellere-energiewende-zr-92219363.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."
https://www.britannica.com/topic/ad-hominem
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.
1:https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1002/ML100280691.pdf
2:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel
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.
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?
France and Japan just fire more reactors with the waste. Been doing it since at least the 70s
https://whatisnuclear.com/recycling.html
https://www.statista.com/statistics/463624/france-radioactive-waste-nuclear-industry-by-type/
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?
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
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.
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.
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:
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60613438
- https://taz.de/Ende-der-russischen-Gaslieferungen/!5953386/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/appendices/fukushima-radiation-exposure.aspx
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:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7pqwo8
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.
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.
But after that half life it turns into checks notes
Helium! How scandalous!
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.
It's making fun of Germany shutting down nuclear plants and then making up the difference with coal and other worse polluting options
Setting aside the usual discourse around STARTING to use a nuke plant: shutting one down to be replaced with coal or similar is objectively the bad environmental move
surly the solution is green energy sources and cutback on energy consumption and not nuclear.
Because
- it takes 10-20 years to build a nuclear powerplant, so it doesnt solve anything today.
- it cant be run profitable unless the taxpayer pays for the construction and the deconstruction and the disposal of the waste,
- it needs a huge amount of river water for cooling which is not safe for climate catastrophe, because the rivers dry up at least temporarily, e.g. france
Nuclear is hundreds of times safer, cleaner, and more efficient than coal. Coal kills around 350 times more people per terawatt hour.
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.
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/2024/public-electricity-generation-2023-renewable-energies-cover-the-majority-of-german-electricity-consumption-for-the-first-time.html
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
Also, coal production has been doing nothing than falling since we made the switch
Hahahaha... is it really this easy to dupe Germans?
I understand and support the idea. Even though nuclear power can significantly reduce carbon emissions, it might put lives of millions at risk
carbon emissions put lives of billions at risk
The cartoon is not really about building twice as many new nuclear power plants, but using and maintaining and upgrading the ones we already have.
You're right too. That's why it's a difficult question. But putting lives of millions at the risk of immediate death to save billions' long term health is ehh kinda bad too. It's my personal opinion though
Your personal opinion is wrong, I'm sorry I am being so brash but I don't know how else to say it. The fly ash from fossil fuel combustion contains radioactive material that's spread over an enormous area when it's burnt. The amount of radioactive exposure we receive everyday from burning fossil fuels is orders of magnitude more than all the nuclear accidents combined. As counter intuitive as it is, closing nuclear power plants exposes the general public to more radiation not less.
In my personal opinion, globally humanity should not be building very many new nuclear reactors. Admittedly there are certain applications that nuclear energy is the responsible choice. Renewable energy sources are the clear winner, safe, reliable. Closing the nuclear power plants we have will only accelerate climate change and in a roundabout way expose us to more radiation. I realize that nuclear energy is scary but the dangers we don't immediately see from fossil fuels are worse.
I will not argue. My personal opinion is not worth more than yours and vice versa
It's not a "personal opinion." And your "opinion" is NOT of equal worth to factual information. You're just trying to save face because you don't like admitting when you're wrong. Maybe find some factual information that backs up your perspective rather than just baselessly claim that nuclear reactors put "millions at risk of immediate death" and run away when you can't back it up. All it takes is a quick google search to disprove how it puts "millions at risk of immediate death."
https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-are-the-effects-of-nuclear-accidents.aspx
Happy cake day Hestia! Doing the good work in the posting trenches
I don't think this is a credible source. Have you checked who the members of this organisation are? https://www.world-nuclear.org/our-association/membership/our-members.aspx
This is s lobby organisation to support the nuclear power producers.
I have other things to do rather than "saving my face" on a random political forum. I commented using my own personal opinion and I didn't ask for a discussion. Of course most of the people are going to disagree and they do have the right to do so. Also, everyone has their own moral beliefs and value of facts. Mine are just not common
Look, if your personal opinion of the moon is that it's a hologram, it's definitely worth less than, say, Buzz Aldrin's opinion of the moon being made of rock.
I don't know who told you a personal opinion is worth exactly as much as someone else's, but they were wrong.
Giving value to bad opinions like "Oh Trump won we gotta storm the capitol" or "Vaccines cause autism" or "Nuclear is worse than coal" and refusing to engage with all evidence of the contrary and just leaving the conversation by saying "Mine are just not common" is an extremely unhealthy way to be a part of society. I live in Australia and the bush fires are getting worse. There's a noticeable cost of lives and livelihoods. You're not saving millions of lives from a nuclear meltdown by tearing down nuclear plants. You're putting millions of lives in danger from climate disasters by tearing down nuclear plants.
I hope you change for the better.
You're commenting on a political forum and you're NOT looking for a discussion?
No, their opinion is worth more than yours because it's better supported by material facts
You're wrong and because you're a deeply unserious person you're trying to exit the interaction without learning or growing as a person by pulling this false modesty bullshit.
It's not a question of either coal or nuclear. We have to get rid of both and that is exactly what's happening in Germany at the moment. 2023 was the end of nuclear power production. 2038 is scheduled to be the end of coal power production and 2045 is scheduled to be the year of climate neutrality. Germany is one of eleven countries to have made this a law.
That's an american vision. Let's see what you'd say if half of your relatives were victims of the Chernobyl
What does Chernobyl have to do with modern reactors. Not to mention that even Chernobyl was a result of a poorly thought out experiment as opposed to some inherent flaw in the reactor.
That's right but Chernobyl wasn't the only incident. There was one in Japan too...
Ah yes, I totally forgot about all those land tsunamis Germans have to worry about.
That's objectively untrue. The RBMK reactor type as it was used in Chernobyl has a design flaw. It's called the positive void effect:
This positive coefficient was another key aspect of the RBMK in reactor unit 4 of the Chernobyl power plant. In the events of the accident, the excess production of steam (meaning an increase of voids) caused the void coefficient to become unsafely large. When the power began to increase, even more steam was produced, which in turn led to an increase in power.[2] This led the reactor to produce over 100x its rated power output, causing extreme temperatures and pressures inside the core, and causing failure.
Source: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/RBMK
The positive void coefficient was directly responsible for the disaster: During low power operations the effect caused water vapour bubbles to be created in the reactor. Because of the lower density of the vapour the moderation of the reaction did no longer work and the reactor spiraled out of control. All the while there was no feedback to the control room about the increased reactivity, so the personal had no chance to assess the situation correctly. This lead to the uncontrolled chain reaction and the explosion of block 4.
After a while Nikolai Steinberg conducted an experiment in the other blocks of Chernobyl which showed that the positive void coefficient was causing the reactor to spiral out of control in low energy production scenarios.
Sources:
https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_28271/chernobyl-chapter-i-the-site-and-accident-sequence
There's a really good documentary about that, but alas it's in German: https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/zdfinfo-doku/tschernobyl-die-katastrophe-paradies-100.html
Nikolai Steinberg also coauthored a book about the accident: https://www.perlego.com/book/3418623/chernobyl-past-present-and-future-pdf
To sum up, there was an experiment conducted that caused the disaster, as opposed to it being a result of normal operation of the reactor.
The data include accidents. You might feel differently about wind if a loved one died doing a wind turbine installation. The logic goes both ways. I will reiterate: it's literally safer than wind. Look at the fucking numbers and not your feelings.
This is the list of the thirty worst accidents in civilian nuclear power plants. These have all been categorised as having caused substantial health damage. There is a definite risk in using nuclear energy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents
The above data include accidents. You are literally killing people by not going nuclear. Nuclear accidents are highly publicized but if (hypothetically) one person dies for every wind installation but they never make the news, it's a death by a thousand cuts, and nuclear comes out ahead. That is hyperbolic but it's emblematic of the situation, look at the fucking numbers. Nuclear is safer.
It's not a choice of either nuclear or coal power. We have to and we as a society decided to phase both of them out. Because of the concerns regarding nuclear energy production and the waste being produced, Germany opted for phasing out nuclear power production in 2023 and aims to phase out coal power production in 2038 in order to get climate neutral by 2045 by using renewables energy in conjunction with green hydrogen power plants, of which forty are planned to be build in the foreseeable future.
Nuclear power production is not risk free, and there have been massive contamination of ground water in Germany in the old storage facility "Asse". The situation in there is so horrific, that it has been decided to get all the nuclear waste out again and store it on the surface again.
https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/schauplaetze/Marodes-Atommuell-Endlager-Asse-Der-lange-Weg-zur-Raeumung,asse1410.html
Google translate: https://www-ndr-de.translate.goog/geschichte/schauplaetze/Marodes-Atommuell-Endlager-Asse-Der-lange-Weg-zur-Raeumung,asse1410.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
I don't think the effects of mistakes like these in handling nuclear waste are included in the before mentioned data. As are the possible horrific scenarios with high level nuclear waste stored on the surface.
"Massive contamination", "horrific", and yet the article points out most of the seepage is radiologically harmless. It is important to clear out the mine and it will be really expensive, I won't deny that, but let's not scaremonger and act like it's Chernobyl 2. As well, let's not pretend that new nuclear projects would suffer the same problems. A functioning country would see this mistake, regulate how waste can be stored, and that would be the end of it. As many other countries have done.
Let's be clear: nuclear waste is a solved issue. We know how to store it safely, we know how to reprocess fuel to make it safe within hundreds instead of thousands of years. Whether or not we do that is an entirely political question.
Regarding the safety of surface level waste: https://youtu.be/lhHHbgIy9jU
And what then is the alternative? Wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine. Battery storage would be prohibitively expensive and the amount of lithium required to be mined to supply an entire country's electricity storage needs would be horrendous for the environment. Hydroelectric storage is ecologically devastating to a scale the public is largely unaware of and geography-dependent.
I am very skeptical about green hydrogen because it is far too politically easy to sweep the source of your hydrogen under the rug under bureaucratic obfuscation and the most economically viable method to produce hydrogen is to use fossil fuels and emit CO2 in the process, making it not really green.
"Every day, 13,000 liters of water flow into the Asse II nuclear waste storage facility in Lower Saxony, which is in danger of collapsing"
"There are quite a few quantities. If you just think about it: these 102 tons of uranium, 87 tons of thorium, then these 28 kilograms of plutonium. And then we have a mix of many different chemotoxic agents and pesticides. We have about 500 kilograms of arsenic. And plutonium is not only radioactive, it is deadly even at the size of a grain of dust. You shouldn't even think about what would happen if this shaft were to flood, that would still be possible. And the mountain really pushes upwards due to its pressure. Into the groundwater. That's a catastrophe."
"These are waters that have direct contact with the radioactive waste, they run through a storage chamber and there we obviously have different pollution than with this water, which we collect up here..."
"We have pictures from the chamber where we see, among other things, a yellow metal barrel that was squeezed between a concrete barrel and a chamber wall, meaning it was completely destroyed by the rock mechanical pressure. And we have also seen damaged lost concrete shields."
Source: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/marodes-atommuelllager-die-wachsende-gefahr-von-asse-ii-100.html
There is no long term storage site for high level nuclear waste in Germany. So the issue of nuclear waste is clearly not solved.
Intermediate storage facilities for high level nuclear waste are a security concern:
https://www.bund.net/themen/atomkraft/atommuell/zwischenlager/
Google translation: https://www-bund-net.translate.goog/themen/atomkraft/atommuell/zwischenlager/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
As stated before the idea is to employ renewable energy to produce green hydrogen for use in gas power plants. If you have no more coal power plants which is the target for 2038, you can not use it for hydrogen production. Germany wants to be self sufficient with regard to energy production, so we will have no other way to produce the hydrogen.
You are right in being sceptical, but IMHO the strategy is viable and can be implemented. And producing zero nuclear waste and be climate neutral at the same time is something we will have to achieve in the near future.
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.
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
