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Deciding to turn off all nuclear power plants within a few years as a response to the Fukushima accident was probably the biggest mistake the German government

• ec109685 7y ago
  Why couldn’t something like Fukushima or worse happen to Germany’s nuclear plants?
  • adrianN 7y ago
    There are no tsunamis in Germany.
    • lnsru 7y ago
      There are no “real” earthquakes too.
      • Griffinsauce 7y ago
        There are real earthquakes in the Netherlands. Are you sure?
        • dr_dshiv 7y ago
          Really? I would think they'd be incredibly destructive, if they ground liquified...
        • MagnumOpus 7y ago
          In the last 1000 years, there have been only three earthquakes in Germany that were magnitude 6 to 6.5. (1356, 1756 and 1911). That once-in-200-years magnitude 6.5 earthquake is 400x less intense than the 2011 Japan earthquake. And yes, without a sea there is no tsunami risk.
    • TomK32 7y ago
      Historians disagree https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/forscher-warnt-vor-tsunami-in-der-nordsee-a-826009.html https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/forscher-warnt-vor...
  • seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Fukushima was an extremely bad design in an extremely bad place, overseen by an incredibly mixed interest oversight agency. France, Germany, and probably even the USA have much better cards to play. Heck, even China doesn’t trust itself that much in its nuclear power ambitions because of the huge cost corruption would bring.
    • Tomte 7y ago
      France has Cattenom, a spectacularly bad nuclear reactor they conveniently built right at their eastern border (in a region with predominantly west winds).
      • elygre 7y ago
        That feels like the ethical thing to do. If you are to build nuclear reactors, at least own the fallout.
        • Tomte 7y ago
          West winds (Wikipedia tells me the English term is "Westerlies") blows towards the east.
      • seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        If you mean this one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattenom_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattenom_Nuclear_Power_Plant), under incidents, the only fatal accident has been a fall onto a hard floor.
  • read_if_gay_ 7y ago
    Because we don’t build nuclear power plants directly at the coast in a region prone to earthquakes and tsunamis.
  • lixtra 7y ago
    Why couldn’t something with an impact of Fukushima or worse happen in any other industrial plant? I.e. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
  • briandear 7y ago
    Geography.
  • ThePhysicist 7y ago
    Of course it could happen here in Germany as well, still I don't understand how an accident caused by two extreme environmental catastrophes (really strong earthquake + record-setting tsunami) changes the accident risk for nuclear power plants in Europe. Also, turning off our nuclear power plants didn't make us much safer, as our neighbors have plenty of them just near our border, some of which (Tihange, Cattenom), are much older and unsafer than the plants we turn off here. Not saying that it's a bad decision to turn off nuclear power plants, just saying the decision should be based on science not emotion.
    • PeterStuer 7y ago
      Tihange is the perfect demonstration that humanity can not handle the responsabilities that come with nuclear power generation. The chief of staff of the ministry responsible for extending the operations on this disaster plant just went through the revolving door for a plush 'job' at the plant's owner. The minister was not amused as he broke the unwritten rule to wait to cash out till after the General election.
    • TomK32 7y ago
      Don't blame the quake and tsunami. Its water did take out the generators needed for the coolants, the plant was wide open for such an accident. NAIIC found the accident to be forseeable and that TEPCO failed to meet basic safety requirements. TEPCO even had two internal studies on the risk of Tsunamis and how to defend against them but management ignored those warnings. If those warnings aren't enough. Japan's coast is full of physical markers from past Tsunamis, indicating the top of those waves and where the safe ground begins. https://99percentinvisible.org/article/tsunami-stones-ancient-japanese-markers-warn-builders-high-water/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/tsunami-stones-ancien...
      • episodeiv 7y ago
        That, however, needs to be part of the risk calculation as well, in my opinion. Even when there's enough technological solutions to make something like nuclear power sufficiently safe, you can still count on human greed or ineptitude to screw things up.
  • WalterBright 7y ago
    I don't know anything about the design of Germany's reactors, but the Fukushima disaster was caused by a "zipper" effect of one easily preventable failure leading to the next. For example, the ducts that vented hydrogen overpressure vented into the interior of the reactor building rather than outside. This lead to the explosions.
  • seabrookmx 7y ago
    Anything's possible. But statistically speaking, we're looking at a loss less total environmental damage from the few nuclear incidents that have happened vs. the damage caused by tons and tons of carbon and toxins being spewed by coal plants. I like to think of it like car crashes vs. plane crashes. Plane crashes are much more publicized, and definitely cause more death/damage per occurrence than a car crash. But because there's so few of them, planes are still much safer overall than cars.
• deaddodo 7y ago
  This is the same problem California faced. We shut down all of our nuclear plants (over a longer period of time) and we ended up relying more on dirty power. Luckily green initiatives have been on the rise with extended geothermal, wind and solar usage.
• TomK32 7y ago
  First of all, I'd like to point out that the whole nuclear energy was pushed a lot by politics in the 1950s. Without money from the public purse no sane company would have gone for this technology. Japan is just as technologically advanced as Germany, yet one of the nuclear plants, as predicted by Kraftwerk (the band), blew and fucked up the whole northern Pacific. Germany has had its technological disaster, for example Eschede, so don't think its powers plants to be 100% safe. We still don't have a long-term storage solution for the nuclear waste produced by the power plants, and don't forget about waste from decomissioning the actual buildings, that's not the stuff you want to recycle for a road. If a wind turbine is decomissioned, you simply strip it, melt it and make a better one. Building a new nuclear power plant now is betting against a huge leap in battery technology. If that leap happens it's bye-bye for fossil fuels.
  • Fej 7y ago
    > fucked up the whole northern Pacific What now? The death toll from the Fukushima Daiichi failure is: up to 1. > We still don't have a long-term storage solution for the nuclear waste produced by the power plants Yes, we do. Put it in the side of a mountain. Nuclear waste has always been a political problem, not a technical one. The US already has a site picked, Yucca Mountain, and only NIMBYism has gotten in the way.
    • adrianN 7y ago
      Don't forget the people who died because of the evacuation.
    • lispm 7y ago
      > Nuclear waste has always been a political problem, Actually all energy production has/creates 'political problems'. One has to deal with those, too. Otherwise claimed technical solutions will fail in the real world. > not a technical one. I don't believe that for a second. This is the overly optimistic view of technocrats or the industry.
  • outworlder 7y ago
    > First of all, I'd like to point out that the whole nuclear energy was pushed a lot by politics in the 1950s. No. If anything, that has set back nuclear tech for a century, as the designs funded were designed for weapons manufacturing first, energy second. Nuclear is very convenient (very infrequent fuel shipments) and powerful. Which is why well-funded navies use it extensively. The US Navy, for instance, has a perfect track record, under much harsher conditions. > We still don't have a long-term storage solution for the nuclear waste produced by the power plants We do, actually. Breeder reactors. If it is energetic enough to pose a serious threat, it's energetic enough for fuel. Once we have extracted most of the useful energy, the waste is much less dangerous and can be dealt the same way we deal with other hazardous materials. > If a wind turbine is decomissioned, you simply strip it, melt it and make a better one. I don't think it is as simple as that. Source for this claim? Re-purposing for other applications I can buy > and don't forget about waste from decomissioning the actual buildings It's basically the reactor vessel, which is not that big. The entire plant is not radioactive, after all. In fact, it is LESS radioactive than a comparable coal power plant, which can't even be built nearby, as it would trip all sorts of alarms in the nuclear power plant. > Japan is just as technologically advanced as Germany, yet one of the nuclear plants, as predicted by Kraftwerk (the band), blew and fucked up the whole northern Pacific. It was a decades old design that had a design flaw which was documented AND IGNORED. And yet, it survived a major Earthquake AND a Tsunami. If that's not safe I don't know what is. It would have been fine if not for more fuckups, like incompatible power so generator trucks couldn't be connected, even though they were dispatched. It's worth it to point out that Fukushima's reactor shut down as designed. As did other nuclear power plants, which experienced no issues at all. > Building a new nuclear power plant now is betting against a huge leap in battery technology. If that leap happens it's bye-bye for fossil fuels. Look, I'm all for renewables. But we are not there yet for baseline power, which a few (modern!) power plants could easily provide, supplemented by solar, wind, geothermal. Powering things like an aluminum power plant with renewables is going to be a tough task. > so don't think its powers plants to be 100% safe. Nothing is 100% safe. Solar panel installation kills more people per year than all nuclear accidents ever, combined. And most nuclear power plants running today are ancient designs, because it's difficult to get permits to build more, due to public perception. But you wouldn't use the safety record for a car built in 1960 to claim that cars nowadays are inherently unsafe, would you? Why use the same argument for nuclear power plants? We need to replace the old junk with modern power plants.
• IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
  Germany's coal and nuclear power generation never were as fungible as this perennial argument (at least on HN) makes it out to be. Coal power has been slow to phase out not because the power is needed, but because the coal industry is important, especially in some regions already suffering from the shifting economic fortune of heavy manufacturing. It being the initial core of german industrialisation, it also has an outsized social relevancy as a marker of identity among the labor class. But for these reasons, Germany would have replaced all coal with renewable energy, French nuclear power, or natural gas generation one or two decades ago. That's still an emission source, but far less so than coal.
  • ThePhysicist 7y ago
    The coal industry just employs 20.000 people in Germany according to their own statistics (https://www.braunkohle.de/4-0-Zahlen-und-Fakten.html https://www.braunkohle.de/4-0-Zahlen-und-Fakten.html), of which two third will retire soon anyway, so it's hardly a critical industry I'd say. Politicians had no problem shutting down the black coal production either and it seems that didn't affect much the "identity of the labor class" in the affected regions (at least not mine as I'm from such a region with both of my grandfathers working in coal mines). What we should have done is to really push renewable energy much sooner and in a more systematic way, then we could mostly be off nuclear and coal energy sources by now. The "Energiewende" politics of the Green party / SPD e.g. involving - among other things - large-scale subsidies on private photovoltaics plants wasn't really a viable strategy (IMHO) and more a way to hand good investment opportunities to upper middle-class / upper-class households (in the early days of solar subsidies people could earn more than 10 % interest rate, guaranteed over 10 years or longer).
• lispm 7y ago
  > Deciding to turn off all nuclear power plants within a few years as a response to the Fukushima accident The end of nuclear was decided and agreed long before that. Fukushima just made it clear to the remaining sceptic conservative party that that decision was right.