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Sweden held a referendum in 1980 about nuclear power, and the only choice was about how fast our nuclear power plants should be shut down. It took twenty years
by henrikschroder 15y ago
Sweden held a referendum in 1980 about nuclear power, and the only choice was about how fast our nuclear power plants should be shut down.
It took twenty years until a reactor was closed, and five more years until one whole plant was closed.
During this time, Sweden's energy consumption has of course gone up, and although there's been some increase in wind and water power, the net result is that each time we close a nuclear reactor, we have to import a lot more electricty from Danish or German coal-powered plants.
So the net result for the environment is negative, but the environmentalist movement thinks it's a huge win.
I'm willing to wager that this German proposal will have the exact same end result. The only way to successfully switch to renewable energy is by making renewable energy cheaper than coal or nuclear.
- bluedanieru 15y agoWhat I suspect will happen is more power will be imported from nations that flagrantly pollute the environment. The Chinese might be on to something with putting the engineers in charge. Sometimes the public really doesn't know what the fuck they're doing, and should be completely ignored.
- nl 15y agoChina has stopped waterfront nuclear power station approvals: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-suspends-waterfront-nuclear-power-approvals-2011-04-06 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-suspends-waterfront-n... and suspended all other development: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/16/china.nuclear/?hpt=T2 http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/16/china.nuclea... Don't believe everything the nuclear power fans tell you. Sometimes the engineers really do know what they are doing.
- bluedanieru 15y agoThey're halting approvals until the safety standards have been revised. That's hardly the same thing.
- briandon 15y agoHave you spent any significant length of time in China?
- Xixi 15y agoI don't think Germany is surrounded by countries that flagrantly pollute the environment. What is more likely is that more power will be imported from France, which massively use nuclear energy (>75% of the national electricity production), and doesn't intend (so far) to move to something else.
- alexqgb 15y agoUm, have you SEEN what goes on in Eastern Europe?
- Xixi 15y agoIt's inefficient to carry electricity over long distances, so I don't see Germany buying energy from say Ukraine. That said it seems that Poland is big on coal and crude oil...
- alexqgb 15y agoMy point exactly. From what I understand, reliance on Poland's (exceedingly dirty) coal-burning capacity is a big part of Germany's plan to wean itself off nuclear power.
- MediaBehavior 15y ago> and should be completely ignored. How about: "and should be educated" (from ground up).
- Jach 15y agoIgnored until they're educated.
- ugh 15y agoLook at it from a different perspective: The engineers failed to convince society and have only themselves to blame.
- Andi 15y agoI cannot agree. You are stuck in a view that energy needs to be cheap and that energy must be available despite the costs of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations. This is the classical view of people who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take.
- berntb 15y agoWe are (probably) willing to set aside places for Luddites to live. For now, you can go to North Korea or some other nice place without much energy use... (Be careful when choosing, poor countries have lots of environmental destruction which they can't afford to clean -- it might be bad for your health.) :-) Edit: It is not a false dichotomy; I compared to the only known low-energy societies. My point is that there is no low energy using society, where anyone would want to live (except the local junta). (And the expensive alternative to nuclear is coal, which is arguably worse with its climate effects.)
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- raganwald 15y agoThis is a false dichotomy. You need not choose between cheap energy and no energy, you can also have expensive energy, and I do not see how expensive energy implies North Korea. (UPDATE: Although you can also have expensive energy that is unpleasant!)
- eliasmacpherson 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#cite_note-19 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#cite_n... Table for figure 54 World power use by region, 1990–2008, TWh Europe: 2857 US: 4533 pdf warning - albeit free of charge. By your logic - europe is for luddites because it approaches half the consumption of the US per captita.
- berntb 15y ago
- berntb 15y agoLook on the bright side! :-) German coal plants have better cleaning after DDR, so the extra German coal plants won't generate lots of environmental problems with acidic rain over Sweden...
- vukk 15y agoAlso, the swedes reversed their decision few years ago. Nowdays while they are not increasing nor decreasing nuclear power, they are OK with replacing the old reactors.
- erikb 15y agoThe funny thing is that some of the German nuclear power plants are owned by the Swedish Company Vattenfall.
- lispm 15y agoTwo actually. They are currently off the grid due to technical problems. They won't go online again. The Bundesregierung has just annouced that both Brunsbüttel and Krümmel will not go online again.
- lispm 15y agoGermany has increased the use of renewable energy in a decade from 6 to 16% for the generation of electrical energy. The laws and regulation have been put in place: the EEG. This law has been copied world-wide by dozens of countries. The goal is to be at 100% with renewable energy in 2050. The closing down of the nuclear power plants is only one milestone on that way. The fossil-based plants will be reduced over time, too. As a bridge technology gas power plants are seen which make it possible to use heat and electricity. Those have an extremely high degree of efficiency. The gas supply is there. New pipelines are being built currently. Closing down the nuclear power plants is one goal. They are extremely expensive and they need huge amounts of money which we need to invest in renewable energy technology. Also the nuclear industry favors the big corporations who prevent market mechanisms and try to undermine any new energy source. They are also not flexible enough to be used in a future energy mix. Given that the goal is to go fully to renewable energy in the next 40 years, the nuclear power plants have to go first. The acceptance for them in the German society is also at an all time low.
- ugh 15y agoKeeping old nuclear power plants running is not expensive, building them is expensive. Dismantling nuclear power plants is also expensive but there is no way around those costs, anyway.
- lispm 15y agoSee Fukushima for the cost of running nuclear power plants. The cost of the running power plant is deferred also to a future which then needs to deal with the waste from burned fuel. Germany has no solution how to deal with the fuel. The cost for that adds up every day.
- ugh 15y agoI don’t think the cost for dealing with waste adds up. It stays (pretty much) constant: High fixed costs and very low variable costs. Dismantling a nuclear power plant doesn’t get more expensive just because they are running longer. When it comes to waste, finding a site and building the infrastructure is expensive, the cost of dealing with additional waste from letting the plants run longer has to be negligible. Whether or not we have a solution to deal with the fuel is pretty much irrelevant. We have to find a solution anyway, there is no way around it. We might as well keep the plants running longer.
- holri 15y agoBecause of the ongoing massive costs savings it is expected that within 2015 or so it will be cheaper for house owner's to produce their own energy with photovoltaic than buying it. (Without governmental support) This will be a massive game changer: Decentralized, DIY, prosumer energy connected in a smart grid. The private rooth area and climate in for example Austria is enough to produce 1/3 of the electric energy used in Austria. The Germans are actually ahead in this area because of current governmental price guarantees for selling self produced electricity back to the grid. This is stimulating accelerated cost savings development in the German solar industry.
- lispm 15y agoA plus-energy house from a German university won the last competition in the US. http://www.solardecathlon.gov/past/2009/final_results.html http://www.solardecathlon.gov/past/2009/final_results.html
- jules 15y agoCitation needed. Is this with photo-voltaic cells built with dangerous and scarce materials?
- holri 15y agohttp://www.taz.de/1/zukunft/umwelt/artikel/1/solarstrom-wird-konkurrenzfaehig/ http://www.taz.de/1/zukunft/umwelt/artikel/1/solarstrom-wird...
- Daniel14 15y ago"The only way to successfully switch to renewable energy is by making renewable energy cheaper than coal or nuclear." I wouldn't be sure about that. Imho another way is to let the government offer incentives or just plain ban certain types of energy production. I live in Switzerland and our gov just did the same thing - Deciding not to let anyone build another nuclear plant in CH again. So we have Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and a lot of other countries reacting to Fukujima. But I think it will take quite some time until people realize nuclear power is potentially highly dangerous and that it might be a good idea to spend the extra money to produce renewable energy.