6 ms·

The Private and External Costs of Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out

63 points by sampo 7y ago

oska 7y ago
This story has been run for a long time now. The best refutation I know of appeared in 2015 in an essay called The myth of the dark side of the Energiewende [1]. I'd recommend reading it for critical balance. [1] https://energypost.eu/energiewende-dark-side/ https://energypost.eu/energiewende-dark-side/
- sampo 7y ago
  I don't think an essay from 2015 can refute a research paper published in 2019.
  - yokaze 7y ago
    I could refute a 2030 study from the flat earth society with an essay from natural philosophers from ancient Greece, if the first doesn't address the established facts of the second. A more detailed rebuttal: https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/ehsekb/comment/fcldewm https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/ehsekb/comment/f...
    - Danieru 7y ago
      Those rebuttals assume a causal relation between shutting down nuclear and an increase in renewables. Aka: shutting nuclear does not mean one gets to credit renewables as the replacement. Instead as the research paper properly accounts for, if nuclear remained in use then Germany would have reduced coal much further. Instead germany is treading water, shutting one carbon free source as it brings online another carbon free source. The net effect is no actual improvement, only a theoretical reduction in risk. Realized outcomes are the same. Meanwhile japan which is restarting nuclear along with expanding renewables gets blocked at the climate change summits because they are not making meaningless promises. For as much as Japan is said to be a society of "saving face" they instead often focus on results over pr. The world would be better off if Germany followed suit.
      - fuckyah 7y ago
        It’s fine, because coal is more renewable than nuclear. Who is going to store the waste for millions of years? Does that cause emissions too? CO2 can be removed from the air. Nuclear will kill you and poison everything for millions of years.
      - lispm 7y ago
        The goal of the Energiewende was not just to replace Nuclear power with renewable, but to enable a new decentralized energy landscape. Is politically harder to replace coal in Germany, because it is a local form of energy - like fracked gas in the US or coal in the US. Germany does not have much oil, gas, hydro, ... resources compared to some other countries, Coal powered industry was what made the industrialization of Germany possible. In that sense the idea that coal kills people is seen in the context, where it actually ENABLED the industrialization and the big industrial areas (Ruhrgebiet, ...). In the same way nuclear before did not replace coal in Germany - instead the big four electricity giants monopolized both: nuclear and coal. Prior to the Energiewende, there was practically no renewable energy in Germany. Electricity production was in the hands of a few (four) big companies, having divided the country in four areas. A big goal was to break up this system and introduce markets for energy, where almost everyone can participate. Nuclear is a big state, top down, non-market industry. It works well with and creates those big authoritarian/centralized systems. It's also favorable in countries which either have nuclear weapons or want the option of nuclear weapons (like Japan, which has the technology, industry and could produce them within a few years, if they wanted -> Nuclear latency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_latency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_latency ). That Japan is restarting nuclear, means that the country struggles to restart them in meaningful numbers in the same environment as before with the same old-design reactors... Countries like France or Japan did very little for renewable energy - which is now fast growing and well suited for large regions of the world - Germany helped jump start it...
      - danans 7y ago
        > Meanwhile japan which is restarting nuclear along with expanding renewables gets blocked at the climate change summits because they are not making meaningless promises Japan's energy mix went from 81% fossil fuel in 2011 to 89% in 2016, with most of that coal and LNG [1]. Germany is at 40% of energy from renewables [2]. I'm not saying it's an easy problem for them to solve, but they are far from an example of renewable energy deployment. 1. https://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/en/category/brochures/pdf/japan_energy_2017.pdf https://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/en/category/brochures/pdf/japa... 2. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/renewables-beats-coal-in-germany-power-mix-for-first-time https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/renewable...
    - ikeboy 7y ago
      Funny ad hominem by assocation there on NBER. If I'm parsing that right, they claim the paper is wrong because the place it was published has funders that they don't like? https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/understanding-the-nber/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/understanding-t... Even Krugman, hardly someone that can be accused of conservative bias, agrees that NBER is basically neutral.
simlan 7y ago
> Over 70% of this cost comes from the increased mortality risk associated with exposure to the local air pollution emitted when burning fossil fuels. Sure thing... This disqualified itself really quickly.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  This really is the key point. The German people chose to shut down clear-air nuclear plants and leave their brown coal plants on. The coal plants kills lots of people per year via air pollution. Thus, this choice likely net killed lots of people. They have 45 GWe of coal capacity still, and they use it when the wind isn't blowing. Of course, the German people were concerned that a nuclear accident would potentially kill more. This is easy to understand emotionally, but not scientifically. Nuclear power plants have killed up to ~4000 total including latent cancers from Chernobyl. Fossil kills 4-8 million people every single year. When you divide by TWh produced, nuclear comes out crazy safe among our energy options. And it's low-carbon to boot (12 gCO2-eq/kWh).
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    It's the same mental mistake as when people are more afraid of flying than driving. The shock value of a few high profile accidents overpowers the dull constant killing of a few random people all the time. The total numbers play no part in this equation.
    - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
      I think the flying vs driving is mostly about control. "I'm not flying the plane, therefore I have no choice on whether my death could have been prevented" Coal vs Nuclear has to elicit the same response... "I didn't make a choice on the coal that will kill my children, but I have a choice on the nuclear plant that could fail in 0.00000000000001% of chances"
      - sheeshkebab 7y ago
        Except that it’s not 0.00000000x but more like 2 (really bad accidents so far)/450 (total nuclear power plants in the world).... and probably closer to 1 if you include nuclear waste that we have no idea what to do with. Not saying coal is better, but fission is kind of real iffy too.
fuckyah 7y ago
“Even the largest estimates of the reduction in the costs associated with nuclear accident risk and waste disposal due to the phase-out are far smaller than 12 billion dollars.“ I doubt this number is correct, as Germany’s per capita health care spending did not significantly increase in that period. (https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/DEU/germany/healthcare-spending https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/DEU/germany/healthcare...) Also Germany still has some of the highest life expectancy, although increase slowed/stagnated recently I would question a connection there as other countries are also experiencing that... Even if, does this account for storage in a secure place for millions of years? I doubt that cost will be higher then... No insurance company would ever insure nuclear, because it’s simply to expensive in a worst case scenario... I’m glad Germany is ending nuclear in 2022 for good!
spyckie2 7y ago
I would be really grateful if someone can summarize the details of how people project $12b in costs and explain the modeling. I know that a lot of work has been done into economic impacts of climate change / air quality, and I've been interested in knowing how people make, project and test these models for some time.
jupp0r 7y ago
> You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery. That's actually a pretty reasonable price compared to the usual publisher rent seeking (NBER is a fully private organization, so no tax payer money spent here afaik).
Zenst 7y ago
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... May help with debate.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

63 points by sampo 7y ago

oska 7y ago

This story has been run for a long time now. The best refutation I know of appeared in 2015 in an essay called The myth of the dark side of the Energiewende [1]. I'd recommend reading it for critical balance. [1] https://energypost.eu/energiewende-dark-side/ https://energypost.eu/energiewende-dark-side/

sampo 7y ago
I don't think an essay from 2015 can refute a research paper published in 2019.
- yokaze 7y ago
  I could refute a 2030 study from the flat earth society with an essay from natural philosophers from ancient Greece, if the first doesn't address the established facts of the second. A more detailed rebuttal: https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/ehsekb/comment/fcldewm https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/ehsekb/comment/f...
  - Danieru 7y ago
    Those rebuttals assume a causal relation between shutting down nuclear and an increase in renewables. Aka: shutting nuclear does not mean one gets to credit renewables as the replacement. Instead as the research paper properly accounts for, if nuclear remained in use then Germany would have reduced coal much further. Instead germany is treading water, shutting one carbon free source as it brings online another carbon free source. The net effect is no actual improvement, only a theoretical reduction in risk. Realized outcomes are the same. Meanwhile japan which is restarting nuclear along with expanding renewables gets blocked at the climate change summits because they are not making meaningless promises. For as much as Japan is said to be a society of "saving face" they instead often focus on results over pr. The world would be better off if Germany followed suit.
    - fuckyah 7y ago
      It’s fine, because coal is more renewable than nuclear. Who is going to store the waste for millions of years? Does that cause emissions too? CO2 can be removed from the air. Nuclear will kill you and poison everything for millions of years.
    - lispm 7y ago
      The goal of the Energiewende was not just to replace Nuclear power with renewable, but to enable a new decentralized energy landscape. Is politically harder to replace coal in Germany, because it is a local form of energy - like fracked gas in the US or coal in the US. Germany does not have much oil, gas, hydro, ... resources compared to some other countries, Coal powered industry was what made the industrialization of Germany possible. In that sense the idea that coal kills people is seen in the context, where it actually ENABLED the industrialization and the big industrial areas (Ruhrgebiet, ...). In the same way nuclear before did not replace coal in Germany - instead the big four electricity giants monopolized both: nuclear and coal. Prior to the Energiewende, there was practically no renewable energy in Germany. Electricity production was in the hands of a few (four) big companies, having divided the country in four areas. A big goal was to break up this system and introduce markets for energy, where almost everyone can participate. Nuclear is a big state, top down, non-market industry. It works well with and creates those big authoritarian/centralized systems. It's also favorable in countries which either have nuclear weapons or want the option of nuclear weapons (like Japan, which has the technology, industry and could produce them within a few years, if they wanted -> Nuclear latency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_latency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_latency ). That Japan is restarting nuclear, means that the country struggles to restart them in meaningful numbers in the same environment as before with the same old-design reactors... Countries like France or Japan did very little for renewable energy - which is now fast growing and well suited for large regions of the world - Germany helped jump start it...
    - danans 7y ago
      > Meanwhile japan which is restarting nuclear along with expanding renewables gets blocked at the climate change summits because they are not making meaningless promises Japan's energy mix went from 81% fossil fuel in 2011 to 89% in 2016, with most of that coal and LNG [1]. Germany is at 40% of energy from renewables [2]. I'm not saying it's an easy problem for them to solve, but they are far from an example of renewable energy deployment. 1. https://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/en/category/brochures/pdf/japan_energy_2017.pdf https://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/en/category/brochures/pdf/japa... 2. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/renewables-beats-coal-in-germany-power-mix-for-first-time https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/renewable...
  - ikeboy 7y ago
    Funny ad hominem by assocation there on NBER. If I'm parsing that right, they claim the paper is wrong because the place it was published has funders that they don't like? https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/understanding-the-nber/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/understanding-t... Even Krugman, hardly someone that can be accused of conservative bias, agrees that NBER is basically neutral.

simlan 7y ago

> Over 70% of this cost comes from the increased mortality risk associated with exposure to the local air pollution emitted when burning fossil fuels. Sure thing... This disqualified itself really quickly.

acidburnNSA 7y ago
This really is the key point. The German people chose to shut down clear-air nuclear plants and leave their brown coal plants on. The coal plants kills lots of people per year via air pollution. Thus, this choice likely net killed lots of people. They have 45 GWe of coal capacity still, and they use it when the wind isn't blowing. Of course, the German people were concerned that a nuclear accident would potentially kill more. This is easy to understand emotionally, but not scientifically. Nuclear power plants have killed up to ~4000 total including latent cancers from Chernobyl. Fossil kills 4-8 million people every single year. When you divide by TWh produced, nuclear comes out crazy safe among our energy options. And it's low-carbon to boot (12 gCO2-eq/kWh).
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  It's the same mental mistake as when people are more afraid of flying than driving. The shock value of a few high profile accidents overpowers the dull constant killing of a few random people all the time. The total numbers play no part in this equation.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
    I think the flying vs driving is mostly about control. "I'm not flying the plane, therefore I have no choice on whether my death could have been prevented" Coal vs Nuclear has to elicit the same response... "I didn't make a choice on the coal that will kill my children, but I have a choice on the nuclear plant that could fail in 0.00000000000001% of chances"
    - sheeshkebab 7y ago
      Except that it’s not 0.00000000x but more like 2 (really bad accidents so far)/450 (total nuclear power plants in the world).... and probably closer to 1 if you include nuclear waste that we have no idea what to do with. Not saying coal is better, but fission is kind of real iffy too.

fuckyah 7y ago

“Even the largest estimates of the reduction in the costs associated with nuclear accident risk and waste disposal due to the phase-out are far smaller than 12 billion dollars.“ I doubt this number is correct, as Germany’s per capita health care spending did not significantly increase in that period. (https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/DEU/germany/healthcare-spending https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/DEU/germany/healthcare...) Also Germany still has some of the highest life expectancy, although increase slowed/stagnated recently I would question a connection there as other countries are also experiencing that... Even if, does this account for storage in a secure place for millions of years? I doubt that cost will be higher then... No insurance company would ever insure nuclear, because it’s simply to expensive in a worst case scenario... I’m glad Germany is ending nuclear in 2022 for good!

spyckie2 7y ago

I would be really grateful if someone can summarize the details of how people project $12b in costs and explain the modeling. I know that a lot of work has been done into economic impacts of climate change / air quality, and I've been interested in knowing how people make, project and test these models for some time.

jupp0r 7y ago

> You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery. That's actually a pretty reasonable price compared to the usual publisher rent seeking (NBER is a fully private organization, so no tax payer money spent here afaik).

Zenst 7y ago

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... May help with debate.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]