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It is fun to see that Germany abandoning its nuclear power due to "green" protests, but in fact increasing the coal burning rate. Problem of political populism

by xvilka 8y ago

It is fun to see that Germany abandoning its nuclear power due to "green" protests, but in fact increasing the coal burning rate. Problem of political populism - it is probably what will destroy humanity one day.

oh_sigh 8y ago
not just coal but gas also, while simultaneously becoming more reliant on Russia to supply that gas. So not just environmental but also political consequences.
shard972 8y ago
I'm starting to think that these green protesters in germany are just Russians pushing an energy agenda that benefits Russia.
- arduanika 8y ago
  Never attribute to malice...
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    Just generally don't talk behind the back of and about people you don't know the first thing about.
    - arduanika 8y ago
      Sorry if I was unclear. I mean to say, I don't want to jump to the conclusion that Die Grünen are some kind of astroturf for Gazprom. More likely they're expressing genuine opinions and care about saving the world, and I simply disagree with their assessment of tradeoffs. I'm also unclear on how I'm talking behind anyone's back on an open forum in a language readable by a majority of Germans.
      - PavlovsCat 8y ago
        Well, I added to what you responded to that other person, who talked about "these green protesters in germany". These sweeping explanations of what is going on in Germany by non-Germans are hilariously bad 99% of the time, I'm used to that, but here I just think "tell that to them, not to yourself by proxy of telling us". Look them in the eye and tell them that. And you know, screw Fukushima (which made even China, those crazy hippies, pause for a bit, but hey)... I remember Chernoybyl, and yeah nothing bad happened (to us), but it was real scary in those weeks, when it rained. I remember these stickers... "Unsere Kinder sollen lachen, nicht strahlen" ("our kids should laugh [have a beaming smile etc.], not emit radiation"). The nerve to throw all that, and all these people into one big bucket... I'm at a loss of words that are allowed on HN, to be quite frank. Oh, and when vaguely important things like human extinction come up on HN, most of the comments are along the lines of how it's all really depressing or best to not have kids, or "AI" this or that. But these ignorant people who don't have the full picture and don't get everything exactly right when they protest between barely getting by on two jobs, they're surely the problem. Jesus Christ. I know I'm ranting, and please don't take it too personally, but I totally stand by what I'm ranting about. I just don't have good place where to put it, it's off-topic in all of the hundreds of discussions it would apply to, and of course it's nothing to do with HN per se. > When once you were in the grip of the Party, what you felt or did not feel, what you did or refrained from doing, made literally no difference. Whatever happened you vanished, and neither you nor your actions were ever heard of again. You were lifted clean out of the stream of history. And yet to the people of only two generations ago this would not have seemed all-important, because they were not attempting to alter history. They were governed by private loyalties which they did not question. What mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself. The proles, it suddenly occurred to him, had remained in this condition. They were not loyal to a party or a country or an idea, they were loyal to one another. For the first time in his life he did not despise the proles or think of them merely as an inert force which would one day spring to life and regenerate the world. The proles had stayed human. They had not become hardened inside. They had held on to the primitive emotions which he himself had to re-learn by conscious effort. And in thinking this he remembered, without apparent relevance, how a few weeks ago he had seen a severed hand lying on the pavement and had kicked it into the gutter as though it had been a cabbage-stalk. -- George-Orwell, "Nineteen-Eightyfour" How many miles is everybody here flying per year on average? I mean, that's just for starters. What about those insanely cheap short holiday flights? How will nuclear energy help there? At some point, you will have to step on toes, maybe make sacrifices, nuclear energy or not. Even if you had perfectly clean, infinite energy, we would have to make uncomfortable changes either, and rethink some things, certainly consumerism as a way to compensate for being unfree. But that's hard stuff, that might require principles, courage, drawing lines and then holding your ground -- painting "green protesters" with a broad brush, that's easy. Solving problems is fun, being told to stop causing them, that's gross. > I simply disagree with their assessment of tradeoffs. And you attributed it to "stupidity", without even having the courtesy to fully type it out. The assessment of tradeoffs by whom, exactly? Who spoke, to whom is it a response? To nobody in particular, just a very vague cherry-picked aggregate, just like the initial comment by the other poster.
- AlfeG 8y ago
  Russia is pushing hard their nuclear projects. Dozens of reactors in build.
  - richardknop 8y ago
    Mostly around Eastern Europe though. When it comes to Germany, Russia is mainly pushing Nord Stream 2 so it can pump gas directly to Germany without reliance on Ukraine. It's beneficial for Russia to further increase Germany's reliance on natural gas from them. Shutting down nuclear reactors plays into their hands.
    - lispm 8y ago
      Russia would be more than happy to sell reactors to Germany. Even better would for them Germany investing into their nuclear industry and providing technology. Germany, can help and would gladly do so, dismantling the russian nuclear industry - but that's a very dangerous job, since their nuclear industry is in a really bad shape.
      - richardknop 8y ago
        I think it’s about priorities. Selling gas to Germany for $$$ without middleman taking a cut and being able to shut down pipes is priority 1. German investment in Russian nuclear industry is secondary. I think Russia has more domain knowledge in this area than Germany anyways (France would be a better country being able to offer expertise, Germany just doesn’t have the strong history in this area compared to Russia, France, US, Japan). The only thing Germans can provide is cash, Russians have very strong experience with nuclear energy and they can do the tech implementation part. It’s just they have trouble paying bills.
        lispm 8y ago
        Germany has provided lots of expertise to secure Russian nuclear reactors from submarines and power plants. > Germany just doesn’t have the strong history in this area compared to Russia, France, US, Japan Germany had provided lots of expertise to Russia over the years. Especially in dealing with old and dismantled reactors. Russia did just dump them... > It’s just they have trouble paying bills. Russia had lots of money and they invested it into modernizing their nuclear weapons and their nuclear-powered submarines. Safety of existing or closed nuclear installations was of no concern. OTOH Russia's Rosatom was interested to build nuclear powerplants together with Siemens in the early 2000s... https://www.siemens.com/press/en/pressrelease/?press=/en/pressrelease/2009/corporate_communication/axx20090338.htm https://www.siemens.com/press/en/pressrelease/?press=/en/pre... Siemens earlier built reactors together with Rosatom... in 2011 Siemens was quitting this business.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  Oh they have always been involved like wise with CND back in the 50's - the though CND did go off book and started demanding the USSR get rid of its nukes.
lysium 8y ago
Germany abandoned nuclear after we all could see the risks of nuclear in Fukushima. And I think it’s preferable to have a government that does what its people want or can convince them of alternatives.
- WillPostForFood 8y ago
  The risk of tsunamis in Germany is high?
  - kuschku 8y ago
    Rivers can spontaneously flood, too. And German nuclear plants happen to be located on such rivers. And many of them are first generation LWRs with significant safety issues. The town neighboring one of the reactors producing energy for Hamburg has for some unknown reason the world's highest rate of child leukemia.
    - nukemandan 8y ago
      got as source with statistics to back that claim?
      - kuschku 8y ago
        https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuk%C3%A4miecluster_Elbmarsch https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuk%C3%A4miecluster_Elbmarsch
        nukemandan 8y ago
        From that: >Euroclus study In contrast to the above-mentioned studies, which focus on the Elbmarsch geographical area, the EUROCLUS study attempted to find matches between the 240 leukemia clusters identified in the study. The evaluation of the study showed that environmental factors such as proximity to nuclear power plants, military airfields or other facilities often causing pollutants do not correlate with the occurrence of leukemia cases, but that demographic factors are the most significant characteristics in which they were studied Clusters match.
yongjik 8y ago
..and I see tons of progressives in Korea praising Germany for abandoning nuclear. They say, "See? It's not hard! Germany did it!" Groan.
foepys 8y ago
Germany is ending nuclear power because there is no consensus on how and where to store nuclear waste. People tend to forget that the waste is dangerous for thousands of years to come and Germany doesn't have deserts to put it in. Putting it in the ground is a bad idea, as you can see if you just search the internet for "Asse nuclear".
- woolvalley 8y ago
  Export to the sahara?
  - VyperCard 8y ago
    Where the wind blows the dust to europe every month? Sounds safe if anything should happen...
  - b1daly 8y ago
    Maybe nuclear waste should be deliberately stored near population centers, helpfully incentivizing the populace to maintain the safety and integrity of long term storage.
- sgt 8y ago
  There's actually not that much of it. In fact, over the past 4 decades, the entire industry has produced about 62 500 metric tons of waste. You could probably put all of that in the space of a football field.
  - VyperCard 8y ago
    Except that some of it has to be kept apart so it does not go critical, some has to be put in special containers...
    - sgt 8y ago
      I didn't mean dumping it all in a heap together, but putting it in e.g. high-density polyethylene should do the trick. It has the density of 930 to 970kg/m^3. Very good tensile strength and longevity. There's more than enough space and geologically stable locations to put this stuff. Politically speaking and in terms of getting nuclear back in the game, I wouldn't worry too much about waste with the modern solutions within storage.
floo 8y ago
Do you have any sources for the coal burning rate?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- philipkglass 8y ago
  Germany's rate of coal burning went up after Fukushima and the accelerated nuclear retirements, but it is now back below the rate of 2010. See chart "Gross power production in Germany 1990-2017, by source": https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... There will probably be another (hopefully temporary) increase in coal consumption following the shuttering of the remaining German reactors in 2022. It's fair to say that Germany has surrendered several years of progress on CO2 cuts with its move away from nuclear power. It's not accurate to say that Germany is burning more coal now than before Fukushima, or is currently increasing its rate of coal burning.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    The energy needs didn't magically reduced with nuclear reactors getting phased out. Whatever is not compensated by increase in domestic burning must be bought abroad, which means all Germany did is essentially export their emissions elsewhere.
    - philipkglass 8y ago
      Germany has continued to increase renewable generation. If you look at the "German power export balance" chart in the same source, net German exports in 2017 were the highest they've ever been despite less coal consumption. The growth has been mostly from renewables, and secondarily from gas. German renewable generation in 2017 was 100 TWh above 2010.
  - jillesvangurp 8y ago
    There is also a lot of pressure in Germany to end brown coal based production in the same way that nuclear was shut down. Brown coal is Germany's dirty little secret: it's the most polluting form of energy production. It also involves strip mining huge parts of landscape, which is not popular with the locals. Either way, a result has been that the electricity prices are currently quite high here. Many people are reacting by deploying solar on their roofs. However, the pressure on electricity producers to deliver clean power is yielding results. It is likely that
arduanika 8y ago
Yes. I've said this before and I'll say it again -- the environment is too important to be left to the environmentalists.
PavlovsCat 8y ago
> in fact increasing the coal burning rate Also despite green protests. https://hambacherforst.org/ https://hambacherforst.org/
ZeroGravitas 8y ago
Depending on how solar turns out in the future, it might be possible to argue that Germany saved humanity by supporting it. I guess we'll see.
lispm 8y ago
> increasing the coal burning rate it doesn't. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/lightbox_image/public/images/factsheet/fig1-installed-net-power-generation-capacity-germany-2002-2017.png https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/l... As you can see renewable energy has been massively expanded. 2018 was another record year. Solar had this year an increase of 20% in the first half year.

by xvilka 8y ago

oh_sigh 8y ago

not just coal but gas also, while simultaneously becoming more reliant on Russia to supply that gas. So not just environmental but also political consequences.

shard972 8y ago

I'm starting to think that these green protesters in germany are just Russians pushing an energy agenda that benefits Russia.

arduanika 8y ago
Never attribute to malice...
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  Just generally don't talk behind the back of and about people you don't know the first thing about.
  - arduanika 8y ago
    Sorry if I was unclear. I mean to say, I don't want to jump to the conclusion that Die Grünen are some kind of astroturf for Gazprom. More likely they're expressing genuine opinions and care about saving the world, and I simply disagree with their assessment of tradeoffs. I'm also unclear on how I'm talking behind anyone's back on an open forum in a language readable by a majority of Germans.
    - PavlovsCat 8y ago
      Well, I added to what you responded to that other person, who talked about "these green protesters in germany". These sweeping explanations of what is going on in Germany by non-Germans are hilariously bad 99% of the time, I'm used to that, but here I just think "tell that to them, not to yourself by proxy of telling us". Look them in the eye and tell them that. And you know, screw Fukushima (which made even China, those crazy hippies, pause for a bit, but hey)... I remember Chernoybyl, and yeah nothing bad happened (to us), but it was real scary in those weeks, when it rained. I remember these stickers... "Unsere Kinder sollen lachen, nicht strahlen" ("our kids should laugh [have a beaming smile etc.], not emit radiation"). The nerve to throw all that, and all these people into one big bucket... I'm at a loss of words that are allowed on HN, to be quite frank. Oh, and when vaguely important things like human extinction come up on HN, most of the comments are along the lines of how it's all really depressing or best to not have kids, or "AI" this or that. But these ignorant people who don't have the full picture and don't get everything exactly right when they protest between barely getting by on two jobs, they're surely the problem. Jesus Christ. I know I'm ranting, and please don't take it too personally, but I totally stand by what I'm ranting about. I just don't have good place where to put it, it's off-topic in all of the hundreds of discussions it would apply to, and of course it's nothing to do with HN per se. > When once you were in the grip of the Party, what you felt or did not feel, what you did or refrained from doing, made literally no difference. Whatever happened you vanished, and neither you nor your actions were ever heard of again. You were lifted clean out of the stream of history. And yet to the people of only two generations ago this would not have seemed all-important, because they were not attempting to alter history. They were governed by private loyalties which they did not question. What mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself. The proles, it suddenly occurred to him, had remained in this condition. They were not loyal to a party or a country or an idea, they were loyal to one another. For the first time in his life he did not despise the proles or think of them merely as an inert force which would one day spring to life and regenerate the world. The proles had stayed human. They had not become hardened inside. They had held on to the primitive emotions which he himself had to re-learn by conscious effort. And in thinking this he remembered, without apparent relevance, how a few weeks ago he had seen a severed hand lying on the pavement and had kicked it into the gutter as though it had been a cabbage-stalk. -- George-Orwell, "Nineteen-Eightyfour" How many miles is everybody here flying per year on average? I mean, that's just for starters. What about those insanely cheap short holiday flights? How will nuclear energy help there? At some point, you will have to step on toes, maybe make sacrifices, nuclear energy or not. Even if you had perfectly clean, infinite energy, we would have to make uncomfortable changes either, and rethink some things, certainly consumerism as a way to compensate for being unfree. But that's hard stuff, that might require principles, courage, drawing lines and then holding your ground -- painting "green protesters" with a broad brush, that's easy. Solving problems is fun, being told to stop causing them, that's gross. > I simply disagree with their assessment of tradeoffs. And you attributed it to "stupidity", without even having the courtesy to fully type it out. The assessment of tradeoffs by whom, exactly? Who spoke, to whom is it a response? To nobody in particular, just a very vague cherry-picked aggregate, just like the initial comment by the other poster.
AlfeG 8y ago
Russia is pushing hard their nuclear projects. Dozens of reactors in build.
- richardknop 8y ago
  Mostly around Eastern Europe though. When it comes to Germany, Russia is mainly pushing Nord Stream 2 so it can pump gas directly to Germany without reliance on Ukraine. It's beneficial for Russia to further increase Germany's reliance on natural gas from them. Shutting down nuclear reactors plays into their hands.
  - lispm 8y ago
    Russia would be more than happy to sell reactors to Germany. Even better would for them Germany investing into their nuclear industry and providing technology. Germany, can help and would gladly do so, dismantling the russian nuclear industry - but that's a very dangerous job, since their nuclear industry is in a really bad shape.
    - richardknop 8y ago
      I think it’s about priorities. Selling gas to Germany for $$$ without middleman taking a cut and being able to shut down pipes is priority 1. German investment in Russian nuclear industry is secondary. I think Russia has more domain knowledge in this area than Germany anyways (France would be a better country being able to offer expertise, Germany just doesn’t have the strong history in this area compared to Russia, France, US, Japan). The only thing Germans can provide is cash, Russians have very strong experience with nuclear energy and they can do the tech implementation part. It’s just they have trouble paying bills.
      - lispm 8y ago
        Germany has provided lots of expertise to secure Russian nuclear reactors from submarines and power plants. > Germany just doesn’t have the strong history in this area compared to Russia, France, US, Japan Germany had provided lots of expertise to Russia over the years. Especially in dealing with old and dismantled reactors. Russia did just dump them... > It’s just they have trouble paying bills. Russia had lots of money and they invested it into modernizing their nuclear weapons and their nuclear-powered submarines. Safety of existing or closed nuclear installations was of no concern. OTOH Russia's Rosatom was interested to build nuclear powerplants together with Siemens in the early 2000s... https://www.siemens.com/press/en/pressrelease/?press=/en/pressrelease/2009/corporate_communication/axx20090338.htm https://www.siemens.com/press/en/pressrelease/?press=/en/pre... Siemens earlier built reactors together with Rosatom... in 2011 Siemens was quitting this business.
C1sc0cat 8y ago
Oh they have always been involved like wise with CND back in the 50's - the though CND did go off book and started demanding the USSR get rid of its nukes.

lysium 8y ago

Germany abandoned nuclear after we all could see the risks of nuclear in Fukushima. And I think it’s preferable to have a government that does what its people want or can convince them of alternatives.

WillPostForFood 8y ago
The risk of tsunamis in Germany is high?
- kuschku 8y ago
  Rivers can spontaneously flood, too. And German nuclear plants happen to be located on such rivers. And many of them are first generation LWRs with significant safety issues. The town neighboring one of the reactors producing energy for Hamburg has for some unknown reason the world's highest rate of child leukemia.
  - nukemandan 8y ago
    got as source with statistics to back that claim?
    - kuschku 8y ago
      https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuk%C3%A4miecluster_Elbmarsch https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuk%C3%A4miecluster_Elbmarsch
      - nukemandan 8y ago
        From that: >Euroclus study In contrast to the above-mentioned studies, which focus on the Elbmarsch geographical area, the EUROCLUS study attempted to find matches between the 240 leukemia clusters identified in the study. The evaluation of the study showed that environmental factors such as proximity to nuclear power plants, military airfields or other facilities often causing pollutants do not correlate with the occurrence of leukemia cases, but that demographic factors are the most significant characteristics in which they were studied Clusters match.

yongjik 8y ago

..and I see tons of progressives in Korea praising Germany for abandoning nuclear. They say, "See? It's not hard! Germany did it!" Groan.

foepys 8y ago

Germany is ending nuclear power because there is no consensus on how and where to store nuclear waste. People tend to forget that the waste is dangerous for thousands of years to come and Germany doesn't have deserts to put it in. Putting it in the ground is a bad idea, as you can see if you just search the internet for "Asse nuclear".

woolvalley 8y ago
Export to the sahara?
- VyperCard 8y ago
  Where the wind blows the dust to europe every month? Sounds safe if anything should happen...
- b1daly 8y ago
  Maybe nuclear waste should be deliberately stored near population centers, helpfully incentivizing the populace to maintain the safety and integrity of long term storage.
sgt 8y ago
There's actually not that much of it. In fact, over the past 4 decades, the entire industry has produced about 62 500 metric tons of waste. You could probably put all of that in the space of a football field.
- VyperCard 8y ago
  Except that some of it has to be kept apart so it does not go critical, some has to be put in special containers...
  - sgt 8y ago
    I didn't mean dumping it all in a heap together, but putting it in e.g. high-density polyethylene should do the trick. It has the density of 930 to 970kg/m^3. Very good tensile strength and longevity. There's more than enough space and geologically stable locations to put this stuff. Politically speaking and in terms of getting nuclear back in the game, I wouldn't worry too much about waste with the modern solutions within storage.

floo 8y ago

Do you have any sources for the coal burning rate?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
philipkglass 8y ago
Germany's rate of coal burning went up after Fukushima and the accelerated nuclear retirements, but it is now back below the rate of 2010. See chart "Gross power production in Germany 1990-2017, by source": https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... There will probably be another (hopefully temporary) increase in coal consumption following the shuttering of the remaining German reactors in 2022. It's fair to say that Germany has surrendered several years of progress on CO2 cuts with its move away from nuclear power. It's not accurate to say that Germany is burning more coal now than before Fukushima, or is currently increasing its rate of coal burning.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  The energy needs didn't magically reduced with nuclear reactors getting phased out. Whatever is not compensated by increase in domestic burning must be bought abroad, which means all Germany did is essentially export their emissions elsewhere.
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    Germany has continued to increase renewable generation. If you look at the "German power export balance" chart in the same source, net German exports in 2017 were the highest they've ever been despite less coal consumption. The growth has been mostly from renewables, and secondarily from gas. German renewable generation in 2017 was 100 TWh above 2010.
- jillesvangurp 8y ago
  There is also a lot of pressure in Germany to end brown coal based production in the same way that nuclear was shut down. Brown coal is Germany's dirty little secret: it's the most polluting form of energy production. It also involves strip mining huge parts of landscape, which is not popular with the locals. Either way, a result has been that the electricity prices are currently quite high here. Many people are reacting by deploying solar on their roofs. However, the pressure on electricity producers to deliver clean power is yielding results. It is likely that

arduanika 8y ago

Yes. I've said this before and I'll say it again -- the environment is too important to be left to the environmentalists.

PavlovsCat 8y ago

> in fact increasing the coal burning rate Also despite green protests. https://hambacherforst.org/ https://hambacherforst.org/

ZeroGravitas 8y ago

Depending on how solar turns out in the future, it might be possible to argue that Germany saved humanity by supporting it. I guess we'll see.

lispm 8y ago

> increasing the coal burning rate it doesn't. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/lightbox_image/public/images/factsheet/fig1-installed-net-power-generation-capacity-germany-2002-2017.png https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/l... As you can see renewable energy has been massively expanded. 2018 was another record year. Solar had this year an increase of 20% in the first half year.