4 ms·

As a French person, I can't help but think that this is but temporary. The Germans are extremely smart when it comes to long-term vision, they've always been. I

As a French person, I can't help but think that this is but temporary. The Germans are extremely smart when it comes to long-term vision, they've always been. I don't doubt for a second that their transitioning away from nuclear will pay dividends on the long run and they'll be on the forefront of that green revolution eventually. The fact that they have a very strong industry to back up any effort to steer production to greener means of production and consumption is very encouraging for everyone. I hope they succeed.

xvilka 9y ago
The only energy dense alternative to nuclear fission is nuclear fusion. But it is nowhere near completion for upcoming decades. And nuclear energy plants are very complex things, require a lot of high-tech materials, skilled experts and so on... so if you stop it once, regaining everything domestically would be impossible - the only way would be to buy technology from other, smarter countries, who continued developing nuclear plants.
- lispm 9y ago
  Smarter countries like France, which struggle to build the EPR, which has been designed three decades ago? Currently France is busy dealing with the EPR problems AND coming up with money for their old reactors - extending their lifetime, getting rid of the oldest ones AND finding money for replacement reactors. The problem: this is all payed/run by the government -> the tax payer pays, but has little influence. We are not talking about 'free market' or anything similar. This is top down, monopolistic, corruption ridden. The current energy landscape in Germany already has been decentralized, is smaller, renewable, diverse and it opened up markets for energy competition - basically incompatible with a top-down, centralistic, monopolistic, government run nuclear landscape like in France. The new EPR is extremely expensive and difficult to built. The last generation is not running and it is already obsolete. Not so smart.
- hwillis 9y ago
  I actually did out the math, and per tonne of silica (quartz) vs tonne of uranium ore mined, silicon has about 5x as much energy as uranium in a breeder reactor. Compared to current reactors, the silicon metal in a solar panel will produce ~500x more energy per kg. Note that this doesn't count the silica used in the glass covering etc. Solar should be considered right up there next to nuclear in terms of energy density, at least as far as mining is concerned.
  - kaybe 9y ago
    I think you could publish this as a short paper if you did it rigorously enough. And feed it to the media to boot.
  - philipkglass 9y ago
    I've done this math too, and my results show that silicon is well short of uranium (though far above fossil fuels). Assumptions: - 20% capacity factor for solar - 25 year lifetime at nominal capacity factor (In practice, most panels work for more than 25 years, but also lose a bit of power output over time due to e.g. fogging of glass covers and cracks in cells from thermomechanical fatigue. I'm fudging the two factors together.) As of 2016 it takes 4.8 grams of silicon, on average, to manufacture one watt of silicon PV capacity: https://www.pv-tech.org/news/lower-silicon-consumption-due-to-wafer-innovations-to-hit-polysilicon-deman https://www.pv-tech.org/news/lower-silicon-consumption-due-t... That means that one kilogram of silicon made into PV can produce (1 / 4.8) * 24 * 365 * 25 * 0.2 = 9125 kWh of electricity over its lifetime. For comparison, one kilogram of natural gas will produce ~5.6 kWh of electricity when burned in a combined cycle gas turbine plant. One kilogram of uranium produces about 38300 kWh of electricity over its lifetime, using these numbers: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/facts-and-figures/world-nuclear-power-reactors-and-uranium-requireme.aspx http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/facts-and-f... The lifetime electricity yield from a kilogram of uranium is about 4.2 times as much as that from a kilogram of silicon. EDIT: oh, my mistake! You were comparing ore volumes. Medium grade uranium ore contains less than 1% uranium, while quartzite is super-abundant and contains more than 45% silicon. That accounts for your ratios.
    - 9y ago
nickik 9y ago
No it will not not 'pay dividends' in the long run because the coal they are burning now instead of perfectly fine nuclear plants will already be in the air. No amount of future renewable energy justify this policy move.
- matt4077 9y ago
  Coal power is about economics, not energy. Germany could easily cover its energy demands. In a wurst case scenario (german pun intended), France and Hungary are able and willing to sell nuclear power.
  - kaybe 9y ago
    I think a big thing is the demand of having 100% uptime of the grid for everyone. If there was a list where you could sign up and get paid for having something like an hour of notice until a power cut of one or two hours I think it would be doable to be less perfectionist about this requirement and actually save a lot of peak demand resources and dirty back-up plants.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      That would be impossible to get through. Currently we’re trying to get downtime to below 5 minutes per year for the average German (it’s at 17 minutes per year currently). That’s 4 nines of reliability, with a move to 5 nines. For every citizen. Many people will not even see any interruption for many years. This means that Google will be more often down for you than your power. Going from that standard to the constant failures you suggest would be impossible.
- VeejayRampay 9y ago
  But I think they know that, yet have chosen a path that is feasible both socially and economically. The end goal hasn't changed, I still think they're in the process of making a transition that (hopefully) will serve as a template for the rest of us Europeans on the long run. The approach is radically cynical and pragmatic, but I think the future will go to prove that it was the best way forward. I'm saying that as a citizen of a country that has deep involvement and investment in those "perfectly fine nuclear plants". I can tell you that the dramatic aging of some of the most ancient nuclear facilities in the country is worrying (to say the least) and the shady business we have to get into to get (and dispose of) the needed fissile material is a terrible burden on our ability to be a voice for good on the world scene. Is burning coal the perfect solution? Surely not. Yet, our neighbors beyond the Rhine are already world-class producers of solar panel, they've steered away from nuclear energy and their ability and willingness to explore energetic alternatives is an encouraging sign for our collective future. So again, I hope they succeed.
TearsInTheRain 9y ago
> I don't doubt for a second that their transitioning away from nuclear will pay dividends on the long run and they'll be on the forefront of that green revolution eventually. According to the article they are doing it to avoid pissing off voters in coal country
walshemj 9y ago
By Panicking over a tsunami in Japan when Germany can never have tsunamis - id call that silly
- tzs 9y ago
  Didn't Fujiyama fail because the tsunami took out power to the plant and took out their backup generators? Germany may not be able to get tsunamis, but are tsunamis they only thing that can take out power and take out the backups? There was an excellent episode of Nova fairly recently (within the last year, I think) on nuclear power. It covered Fujiyama and other conventional designs, and then spent a lot of time on upcoming safer and more economical designs, and the large number of nuclear power startup companies that are working on them. For example, one design involved a liquid fuel that has to be held in a container that has a high volume to surface area ratio in order to sustain a chain reaction. The design had such a container, connected via a pipe in the bottom to another container with a shape that cannot support a reaction. During normal operation the fuel is kept in the top container by a plug in the pipe. The clever part is what that plug is made of it. It is frozen fuel, kept frozen by cooling coils around the pipe. If the plant loses power the plug melts, and the fuel drains. This is inherently massively safer than conventional plants. Instead of always being on the verge of disaster, relying on active controls to keep that at bay, the newer designs require active controls to keep running. The failure modes are to stop running instead of to run out of control.
  - kaybe 9y ago
    Nitpick: Fujiyama is the beautiful volcano, you're talking about the province of Fukushima.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    > Germany may not be able to get tsunamis, but are tsunamis they only thing that can take out power and take out the backups? That’s exactly the issue. All the plants are at rivers. Most directly in the floodplains. With backup generators that end up covered by water during the floods. With floods every autumn.

xvilka 9y ago

The only energy dense alternative to nuclear fission is nuclear fusion. But it is nowhere near completion for upcoming decades. And nuclear energy plants are very complex things, require a lot of high-tech materials, skilled experts and so on... so if you stop it once, regaining everything domestically would be impossible - the only way would be to buy technology from other, smarter countries, who continued developing nuclear plants.

lispm 9y ago
Smarter countries like France, which struggle to build the EPR, which has been designed three decades ago? Currently France is busy dealing with the EPR problems AND coming up with money for their old reactors - extending their lifetime, getting rid of the oldest ones AND finding money for replacement reactors. The problem: this is all payed/run by the government -> the tax payer pays, but has little influence. We are not talking about 'free market' or anything similar. This is top down, monopolistic, corruption ridden. The current energy landscape in Germany already has been decentralized, is smaller, renewable, diverse and it opened up markets for energy competition - basically incompatible with a top-down, centralistic, monopolistic, government run nuclear landscape like in France. The new EPR is extremely expensive and difficult to built. The last generation is not running and it is already obsolete. Not so smart.
hwillis 9y ago
I actually did out the math, and per tonne of silica (quartz) vs tonne of uranium ore mined, silicon has about 5x as much energy as uranium in a breeder reactor. Compared to current reactors, the silicon metal in a solar panel will produce ~500x more energy per kg. Note that this doesn't count the silica used in the glass covering etc. Solar should be considered right up there next to nuclear in terms of energy density, at least as far as mining is concerned.
- kaybe 9y ago
  I think you could publish this as a short paper if you did it rigorously enough. And feed it to the media to boot.
- philipkglass 9y ago
  I've done this math too, and my results show that silicon is well short of uranium (though far above fossil fuels). Assumptions: - 20% capacity factor for solar - 25 year lifetime at nominal capacity factor (In practice, most panels work for more than 25 years, but also lose a bit of power output over time due to e.g. fogging of glass covers and cracks in cells from thermomechanical fatigue. I'm fudging the two factors together.) As of 2016 it takes 4.8 grams of silicon, on average, to manufacture one watt of silicon PV capacity: https://www.pv-tech.org/news/lower-silicon-consumption-due-to-wafer-innovations-to-hit-polysilicon-deman https://www.pv-tech.org/news/lower-silicon-consumption-due-t... That means that one kilogram of silicon made into PV can produce (1 / 4.8) * 24 * 365 * 25 * 0.2 = 9125 kWh of electricity over its lifetime. For comparison, one kilogram of natural gas will produce ~5.6 kWh of electricity when burned in a combined cycle gas turbine plant. One kilogram of uranium produces about 38300 kWh of electricity over its lifetime, using these numbers: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/facts-and-figures/world-nuclear-power-reactors-and-uranium-requireme.aspx http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/facts-and-f... The lifetime electricity yield from a kilogram of uranium is about 4.2 times as much as that from a kilogram of silicon. EDIT: oh, my mistake! You were comparing ore volumes. Medium grade uranium ore contains less than 1% uranium, while quartzite is super-abundant and contains more than 45% silicon. That accounts for your ratios.
  - 9y ago

nickik 9y ago

No it will not not 'pay dividends' in the long run because the coal they are burning now instead of perfectly fine nuclear plants will already be in the air. No amount of future renewable energy justify this policy move.

matt4077 9y ago
Coal power is about economics, not energy. Germany could easily cover its energy demands. In a wurst case scenario (german pun intended), France and Hungary are able and willing to sell nuclear power.
- kaybe 9y ago
  I think a big thing is the demand of having 100% uptime of the grid for everyone. If there was a list where you could sign up and get paid for having something like an hour of notice until a power cut of one or two hours I think it would be doable to be less perfectionist about this requirement and actually save a lot of peak demand resources and dirty back-up plants.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    That would be impossible to get through. Currently we’re trying to get downtime to below 5 minutes per year for the average German (it’s at 17 minutes per year currently). That’s 4 nines of reliability, with a move to 5 nines. For every citizen. Many people will not even see any interruption for many years. This means that Google will be more often down for you than your power. Going from that standard to the constant failures you suggest would be impossible.
VeejayRampay 9y ago
But I think they know that, yet have chosen a path that is feasible both socially and economically. The end goal hasn't changed, I still think they're in the process of making a transition that (hopefully) will serve as a template for the rest of us Europeans on the long run. The approach is radically cynical and pragmatic, but I think the future will go to prove that it was the best way forward. I'm saying that as a citizen of a country that has deep involvement and investment in those "perfectly fine nuclear plants". I can tell you that the dramatic aging of some of the most ancient nuclear facilities in the country is worrying (to say the least) and the shady business we have to get into to get (and dispose of) the needed fissile material is a terrible burden on our ability to be a voice for good on the world scene. Is burning coal the perfect solution? Surely not. Yet, our neighbors beyond the Rhine are already world-class producers of solar panel, they've steered away from nuclear energy and their ability and willingness to explore energetic alternatives is an encouraging sign for our collective future. So again, I hope they succeed.

TearsInTheRain 9y ago

> I don't doubt for a second that their transitioning away from nuclear will pay dividends on the long run and they'll be on the forefront of that green revolution eventually. According to the article they are doing it to avoid pissing off voters in coal country

walshemj 9y ago

By Panicking over a tsunami in Japan when Germany can never have tsunamis - id call that silly

tzs 9y ago
Didn't Fujiyama fail because the tsunami took out power to the plant and took out their backup generators? Germany may not be able to get tsunamis, but are tsunamis they only thing that can take out power and take out the backups? There was an excellent episode of Nova fairly recently (within the last year, I think) on nuclear power. It covered Fujiyama and other conventional designs, and then spent a lot of time on upcoming safer and more economical designs, and the large number of nuclear power startup companies that are working on them. For example, one design involved a liquid fuel that has to be held in a container that has a high volume to surface area ratio in order to sustain a chain reaction. The design had such a container, connected via a pipe in the bottom to another container with a shape that cannot support a reaction. During normal operation the fuel is kept in the top container by a plug in the pipe. The clever part is what that plug is made of it. It is frozen fuel, kept frozen by cooling coils around the pipe. If the plant loses power the plug melts, and the fuel drains. This is inherently massively safer than conventional plants. Instead of always being on the verge of disaster, relying on active controls to keep that at bay, the newer designs require active controls to keep running. The failure modes are to stop running instead of to run out of control.
- kaybe 9y ago
  Nitpick: Fujiyama is the beautiful volcano, you're talking about the province of Fukushima.
- kuschku 9y ago
  > Germany may not be able to get tsunamis, but are tsunamis they only thing that can take out power and take out the backups? That’s exactly the issue. All the plants are at rivers. Most directly in the floodplains. With backup generators that end up covered by water during the floods. With floods every autumn.