4 ms·

>Germany’s rate of adding clean energy relative to gross domestic product, it would take the world more than a century to decarbonize, even if the country wasn’

>Germany’s rate of adding clean energy relative to gross domestic product, it would take the world more than a century to decarbonize, even if the country wasn’t also retiring nuclear plants early. Why doesn't the article explain why the Germans are retiring their plants? I think these articles should go more in-depth regarding the pro's and con's. From what I read and hear Nuclear power is a great source of energy but I feel when convincing other people of this you need to portray the good and the bad.

mpweiher 7y ago
> why the Germans are retiring their plants Politicians bowing to the wishes of an ill-informed public.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
  Nobody really believes science that goes against their deep settled beliefs.
- lispm 7y ago
  There was a decades long discussion about nuclear energy in Germany. You can bet that the public was much better informed about nuclear, than the politicians and the nuclear industry liked. There were a bunch of failed nuclear projects like the pebble bed reactor, the fast breeder or the storage sites. Watching them made the decision to get out of that type of industry much easier. Germany had the same level of corrupt nuclear industry, which is known from Japan and which has been exposed there.
loeg 7y ago
> Why doesn't the article explain why the Germans are retiring their plants? It does, although it doesn't draw the connection directly. > I think these articles should go more in-depth regarding the pro's and con's. The con's (both for Germany, and the US) are (quotes below from the article): > irrational dread among the public and many activists > ... > people estimate risk according to how readily anecdotes like well-publicized nuclear accidents pop into mind. For Germany in particular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out#German... Tl;dr, Germany politic interest in nuclear phase-out began around 2000 as misdirected "green" activism and was escalated by irrational public fears in response to Fukushima in 2011.
cm2187 7y ago
Pretty much because Merkel decided so in the days following Fukushima. Not exactly the result of long term strategy.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  Pretty much just going by feels. Not exactly good governance.
  - aurelwu 7y ago
    nuclear was being phased out before fukushima anyways in germany, it was just accelerated a few years. New nuclear power plants are just way too expensive - take a look at Flamanville, Hinkley point C, Olkiluoto 3, Wylfa Newydd and Hanhikivi and you'll see that they are just too expensive. You can argue for having the old ones run a bit longer but the older the plants become the more maintenance issues arise.
    - acidburnNSA 7y ago
      It's well established that the West has forgotten how to build nukes. But Hitachi, KEPCO, and the Russians have not forgotten, and can build them effectively today. Perhaps with some effort the West can re-learn how its done from these modern success stories.
      - aurelwu 7y ago
        Wylfa Newydd was a project by Hitachi before it got cancelled despite being guaranteed a higher-than-market compensation of £75 per MWh[0], yet despite those heavy subsidies it apparently is not worht it. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/17/hitachi-set-to-scrap-16bn-nuclear-project-anglesey-wales https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/17/hitachi-set...
  - detaro 7y ago
    Not exactly good governance was what she did before too, going back on existing long-term exit plans that the majority supported. Fukushima just moved that from somewhat unpopular to entirely politically untenable.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
catdog 7y ago
Also the beginning of this statement is not really true: > Germany, which went all-in for renewables… This might have been the case more than a decade ago with the green party being part of the government but the political climate changed. Angela Merkel talks a lot about saving the climate but actual policy is the opposite slowing down the switch to renewable energy as much as possible. > From what I read and hear Nuclear power is a great source of energy Not really, * It's expensive as hell, it just might seem cheap because a lot of the cost is offloaded to the tax payer in the long run * Even western first world countries operate nuclear power plants which have known safety issues (look at e.g. France or Belgium) so even if we could technically do it safely, our societies are not politically mature enough to implement it. * Uranium mining is an often overlooked environmental disaster so it's not even as clean as often advertised
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  > Uranium mining is an often overlooked environmental disaster [citation needed]. It was in the 1950s, for sure, before we knew that you should ventilate the radon. Today a lot of it is done in ways that's much cleaner than mining for resources for coal, fracking, or heavy metals for millions upon millions of battery banks, wind turbines, and solar panels. Remember E=MC2 is the key excitement about nuclear energy. There are 2 million times more Joules in a kg of uranium than in a kg of coal/gas/diesel/lithium. Thus you don't have to mine all that much of it to power the planet. In fact, with breeder reactors and reprocessing (super expensive, but that's another story), you could power the entire US for a few hundred years off the depleted uranium sitting in the yard of an enrichment plant in Kentucky.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jabl 7y ago
    > with breeder reactors and reprocessing (super expensive, but that's another story) Till and Chang argue in their book about the IFR that if we start building IFR style plants for production usage it's entirely possible that costs drop to about LWR levels. So far fast breeders have been expensive, but that's largely because they've all been one-off designs largely for R&D purposes without much effort to reduce costs. For reprocessing, their argument is that electrorefining (pyroprocessing) would be much cheaper than PUREX. To the point that the lower fuel acquisition cost and cheaper waste disposal could make it roughly comparable to once-through LWR costs, even with relatively cheap uranium. Such a shame IFR was shut down.. sigh
bjourne 7y ago
Most of Germany's plants were built in the 1970s and were reaching end of life dates anyway. They probably would have been decommissioned in the early 2020s but Merkel accelerated the process due to the Fukushima disaster.

mpweiher 7y ago

> why the Germans are retiring their plants Politicians bowing to the wishes of an ill-informed public.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
Nobody really believes science that goes against their deep settled beliefs.
lispm 7y ago
There was a decades long discussion about nuclear energy in Germany. You can bet that the public was much better informed about nuclear, than the politicians and the nuclear industry liked. There were a bunch of failed nuclear projects like the pebble bed reactor, the fast breeder or the storage sites. Watching them made the decision to get out of that type of industry much easier. Germany had the same level of corrupt nuclear industry, which is known from Japan and which has been exposed there.

loeg 7y ago

> Why doesn't the article explain why the Germans are retiring their plants? It does, although it doesn't draw the connection directly. > I think these articles should go more in-depth regarding the pro's and con's. The con's (both for Germany, and the US) are (quotes below from the article): > irrational dread among the public and many activists > ... > people estimate risk according to how readily anecdotes like well-publicized nuclear accidents pop into mind. For Germany in particular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out#German... Tl;dr, Germany politic interest in nuclear phase-out began around 2000 as misdirected "green" activism and was escalated by irrational public fears in response to Fukushima in 2011.

cm2187 7y ago

Pretty much because Merkel decided so in the days following Fukushima. Not exactly the result of long term strategy.

stcredzero 7y ago
Pretty much just going by feels. Not exactly good governance.
- aurelwu 7y ago
  nuclear was being phased out before fukushima anyways in germany, it was just accelerated a few years. New nuclear power plants are just way too expensive - take a look at Flamanville, Hinkley point C, Olkiluoto 3, Wylfa Newydd and Hanhikivi and you'll see that they are just too expensive. You can argue for having the old ones run a bit longer but the older the plants become the more maintenance issues arise.
  - acidburnNSA 7y ago
    It's well established that the West has forgotten how to build nukes. But Hitachi, KEPCO, and the Russians have not forgotten, and can build them effectively today. Perhaps with some effort the West can re-learn how its done from these modern success stories.
    - aurelwu 7y ago
      Wylfa Newydd was a project by Hitachi before it got cancelled despite being guaranteed a higher-than-market compensation of £75 per MWh[0], yet despite those heavy subsidies it apparently is not worht it. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/17/hitachi-set-to-scrap-16bn-nuclear-project-anglesey-wales https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/17/hitachi-set...
- detaro 7y ago
  Not exactly good governance was what she did before too, going back on existing long-term exit plans that the majority supported. Fukushima just moved that from somewhat unpopular to entirely politically untenable.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

catdog 7y ago

Also the beginning of this statement is not really true: > Germany, which went all-in for renewables… This might have been the case more than a decade ago with the green party being part of the government but the political climate changed. Angela Merkel talks a lot about saving the climate but actual policy is the opposite slowing down the switch to renewable energy as much as possible. > From what I read and hear Nuclear power is a great source of energy Not really, * It's expensive as hell, it just might seem cheap because a lot of the cost is offloaded to the tax payer in the long run * Even western first world countries operate nuclear power plants which have known safety issues (look at e.g. France or Belgium) so even if we could technically do it safely, our societies are not politically mature enough to implement it. * Uranium mining is an often overlooked environmental disaster so it's not even as clean as often advertised

acidburnNSA 7y ago
> Uranium mining is an often overlooked environmental disaster [citation needed]. It was in the 1950s, for sure, before we knew that you should ventilate the radon. Today a lot of it is done in ways that's much cleaner than mining for resources for coal, fracking, or heavy metals for millions upon millions of battery banks, wind turbines, and solar panels. Remember E=MC2 is the key excitement about nuclear energy. There are 2 million times more Joules in a kg of uranium than in a kg of coal/gas/diesel/lithium. Thus you don't have to mine all that much of it to power the planet. In fact, with breeder reactors and reprocessing (super expensive, but that's another story), you could power the entire US for a few hundred years off the depleted uranium sitting in the yard of an enrichment plant in Kentucky.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jabl 7y ago
  > with breeder reactors and reprocessing (super expensive, but that's another story) Till and Chang argue in their book about the IFR that if we start building IFR style plants for production usage it's entirely possible that costs drop to about LWR levels. So far fast breeders have been expensive, but that's largely because they've all been one-off designs largely for R&D purposes without much effort to reduce costs. For reprocessing, their argument is that electrorefining (pyroprocessing) would be much cheaper than PUREX. To the point that the lower fuel acquisition cost and cheaper waste disposal could make it roughly comparable to once-through LWR costs, even with relatively cheap uranium. Such a shame IFR was shut down.. sigh

bjourne 7y ago

Most of Germany's plants were built in the 1970s and were reaching end of life dates anyway. They probably would have been decommissioned in the early 2020s but Merkel accelerated the process due to the Fukushima disaster.