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Be careful when someone speaks about ideology if they were free of it. "In the wake of Fukushima, Germany acquiesced to demands from lobby groups to shut down
by tehabe 11y ago
Be careful when someone speaks about ideology if they were free of it.
"In the wake of Fukushima, Germany acquiesced to demands from lobby groups to shut down its nuclear sector, building heavily polluting fossil-fuel plants in their stead."
This is probably the worst part in this article, because coal is also decreasing in Germany. Not as fast as nuclear but nuclear was always the smaller than coal.
My main issue is, that again, someone believes that nuclear power is a way of solving the climate change crisis. It isn't for that nuclear power never had a big enough market share to begin with. Even the current plants which are being build won't change that.
Also nuclear power is extremely expensive. The ones currently being build in Finland and France are 3x over budget and are lagging behind years. Those two plants will supply 1600 Watts for the grid.
You can get that from renewable energies in less than a year.
And yesterday I read that Chinese researchers developed a solar panel which can even use also rain.
Why do people want a an energy source, which comes with so many unsolved issues and only promises to solve them later. In the last 50 years none of the issues could be solved. None! (I'm not talking about safety!)
- pjc50 11y agoThe UK's Hinkley Point C seems to be overbudget and delayed despite construction not even having started.
- tehabe 11y agoAnd they get feed in prices for 35 years and even inflation will be priced in.
- TorKlingberg 11y ago> Those two plants will supply 1600 Watts for the grid. You definitely have the wrong unit there. 1600 W is less than one electric kettle.
- tehabe 11y agoTrue, it is 1600 MW. Sorry. But the rest is still true.
- oska 11y ago> Be careful when someone speaks about ideology if they were free of it. Indeed. It's a very disappointing article. I clicked on the writer's name and browsed his other articles published on The Guardian and they seemed good, so again, it's disappointing that he has such a blind spot on this issue and writes about it in an obviously one-sided and flawed way.
- adrianN 11y agoIf you can read German, here [1] is a study that says shutting off nuclear in Germany causes 63 million tons of additional CO2 emission per year. It's from BDI, an industry group, so take it with a grain of salt, but as the power we used to produce in nuclear plants has to come from somewhere, it makes sense that we produce a lot more CO2 to replace them. You can't just crank up wind and solar to account for the difference, you have to burn more fossil fuels. [1] http://www.r2b-energy.com/uploads/media/Kurzfassung_Ausstieg2017.pdf http://www.r2b-energy.com/uploads/media/Kurzfassung_Ausstieg...
- patall 11y agoWell, but we should also not forget that one of the reasons we have not left coal yet are the many jobs that depend on it. Just this weekend, there were massive protest again from the coal and steel workers union against european environment legislation.
- tehabe 11y agoI know German and I know the BDI, they are not really objective about it. Also the study is from 2011. We have 2016! The reality looks different. The amount of electricity from coal fired plants increased since 2011 but if you look from 2003 it decreased. This is true for stone coal and lignite. For the latter there is finally a phase out too.