6 ms·

Germany Rejected Nuclear Power–and Deadly Emissions Spiked

40 points by spamalot159 5y ago

anoncake 5y ago
Another article that neglects to mention that we had already decided to quit nuclear in 2002. But the corrupt government we had in 2010 reverted that. I'd also like to know what emissions spiked, considering our nuclear policies ultimately didn't change in 2010/2011.
- merb 5y ago
  not sure why you are downvoted. you basically said nothing wrong the article is plain fud. as if germanies' co2 emission alone did make our world wide temperature rise so bad. the study/article also dismisses so much things. like that we have basically no end storage, that nuclear was already dead in germany and that the plants all were mostly over their end of lifetime anyway (but the governement raised it over and over), such a stupid study/article.
  - tonyjstark 5y ago
    Additionally the government started to reduce subsidizing for renewable energy which ruined a lot of very high tech and innovative companies in the solar power field. Further the government made it harder to install wind turbines in the countryside. All while still pumping money in coal.
  - javagram 5y ago
    “ as if germanies' co2 emission alone did make our world wide temperature rise so bad” This nicely demonstrates how CO2 emissions is a collective action problem between all the world’s countries. Any one country, even the #1 emitter the USA, giving up on fossil fuels isn’t enough to stop changing the climate via CO2 emission. So each country can claim that its failure to build nuclear or to replace all fossil fuels with renewable and battery storage isn’t a big deal.
    - LorenPechtel 5y ago
      The #1 emitter is China, not the US.
      - domano 5y ago
        Per head USA is first, in absolute terms china is.
drannex 5y ago
Nuclear is the only way to reduce our carbon emissions in both the short term and long term, and the best way to produce energy per unit than any other energy source. When you remove nuclear from existing supply, you increase your dependence on fossil fuels. Renewables are not able to produce enough energy to cover the absense of nuclear, perhaps in the future, but not with our current engineering.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jhayward 5y ago
  > Nuclear is the only way to reduce our carbon emissions in both the short term and long term, This is clearly untrue, to the point of being deliberate misinformation.
  - lostandbored 5y ago
    I am pro-Nuclear as the next guy, both from environmental and job creation perspective. But renewable can reduce emissions and has been proven to do so.
    - drannex 5y ago
      I wasn't arguing to the contrary, my second statement was tied to my first. Reducing or eliminating nuclear has the negative effect of increasing emissions and reliance on fossil fuels to fill the immediate and long term void that would be left. Renewables do a wonderful job, but they can not, at this point, take on the share that Nuclear has to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels should nuclear be elimated. As said, perhaps in the future. But not at this moment.
  - proc0 5y ago
    Is it now? I heard renewable is barely 5-10% of what would be needed to replace fossil. Nuclear would surpass fossil easily (nothing to say about cost or safety here, just output).
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Interesting to see what happened after the 2011 - 2017 timeframe the study looked at: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electricity?time=1985..2020&country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electr... Coal sucks, and they probably could have got rid of it faster, but they still seem on a good path and the story is similar worldwide. edit: even in the 2011-2017 timeframe they added more renewables than nuclear lost, so it seems odd that emissions would spike, unless there was either a big shift in the coal/gas/import mix, or just a general rise in demand.
- spfzero 5y ago
  It depends on how you measure renewables. Lets say solar, is the measurement made during the day? Because for most of the clock, they added zero solar. Or wind? Was it measured when the wind was blowing, or not? The lost nuclear was 24/7.
  - merb 5y ago
    > Lets say solar, is the measurement made during the day? Because for most of the clock, they added zero solar. should I tell you what most people do during the night?
    - hulitu 5y ago
      > > Lets say solar, is the measurement made during the day? Because for most of the clock, they added zero solar. > should I tell you what most people do during the night? In winter, night starts at 18:00. Some people are returning from work at this time of day. Others take dinner (which needs electricity to be prepared). Only chickens slerp the entire night doing nothing else in this time.
- rasz 5y ago
  Germany re-classified coal plants co-firing with freshly chopped Romanian forest trees to "renewable" status, Its clean biomas! https://www.fern.org/fileadmin/uploads/fern/Documents/Up%20in%20Flames.pdf https://www.fern.org/fileadmin/uploads/fern/Documents/Up%20i... https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/illegal-logging-in-romania-benefits-germany-a-1032253.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/illegal-logging-... https://www.courthousenews.com/eu-accused-of-standing-by-as-ancient-forests-are-clear-cut/ https://www.courthousenews.com/eu-accused-of-standing-by-as-...
LorenPechtel 5y ago
And deaths also spiked, although they're so diffuse only the statisticians will pay attention. Nuke is clearly safer than any fossil fuel source by a *wide* margin. By some arguments utility-scale solar is safer than nuke--but only if by some miracle you can get virtually all your power from solar. We don't have the storage technology for that and if you have to run the natural gas plant when the sun doesn't shine you put nuke way in the lead for safety.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  > Nuke is clearly safer than any fossil fuel source by a wide margin. Not financially. > A nuclear power plant takes roughly 10 years and at least 2-3 billion dollars to build. And probably even more time and money to decommission, which shareholders have no intention of paying, and banks won't fund. And when there's an accident, the US govt. limited compensation to peanuts: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/nuclear-insurance.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/n... Remember that Chernobyl was partially responsible for destabilizing an empire.
- anoncake 5y ago
  > Nuke is clearly safer than any fossil fuel source by a wide margin. Only if you 1. only take deaths into account and 2. redefine danger to include predictable damage.
domano 5y ago
Since the HN crowd is really pro-nuclear and in my bubble nobody is maybe somebody could explain how to handle nuclear waste and if modern reators are really as safe as it is often portraied in the comments here. Even modern reactors would produce radioactive waste, right? In germany we don't have any place that is safe enough for long term storage. How can this be handled? Would really like to change my mind regarding nuclear power, since it would solve the transitional phase towards renewables. Also: Quite regurarily cracks are found in the reactors in germany and other countries. Other smaller things happen all the time too. Are modern reactors failsafe? I
- whb07 5y ago
  Many of the newer reactors don’t need the level of radioactive material as compared to the older ones. AFAIK, some newer ones could even run on spent rods. As to the feasibility of storage of old material, assume that Germany literally had no excess land to place it on, what about other countries? You couldn’t imagine a country with excess worthless land willing to lease it? Wouldn’t that be a net positive for Germany, for the poor country, and less emissions globally? Lastly on the failsafes, there are improvements and so called “passive” implementations, but outside of the failed communist state and the tsunami incidents, what critical failures are there? Not talking about 3 mile island etc that were more fear porn than anything.
- credit_guy 5y ago
  By chemistry and alchemy. Chemistry: also known as reprocessing [1]. A lot of the nuclear waste is uranium and plutonium, that can be separated and made into nuclear fuel, and put back to work. The side-effect is that the amount of waste is reduced. In principle, chemical separation can be further used to separate the more dangerous isotopes (the ones with half-lives of more than 5 years) from the short-lived isotopes, which will decay naturally in a reasonable amount of time (<100 years). Alchemy: nuclear transmutation. This can be achieved via bombardment with neutrons. The most efficient way to do that is with a breeder-reactor [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reductio...
- 5y ago
viernullvier 5y ago
Here are the raw electricity production figures for the timeframe considered in the study: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&source=all&stacking=stacked_absolute&sum=0&partsum=1 https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE... When comparing the year-by-year differences, a few interesting things turn up. For the sake of simplicity, I've only counted wind and solar as renewables and natural gas + black coal + lignite as fossil fuels. - There have only been two years where a reduction in nuclear was not (over-)compensated by an increase in renewables: 2010/2011 (nuclear -30,8 TWh, renewables +19,3 TWh) and 2015/2016 (nuclear -6,8 TWh, renewables -1,3 TWh). - Even in 2010/2011, the increase in renewables overcompensated the reduction in fossil fuels (-2,8 TWh) - There have only been two years which actually saw an increase in fossil-fuelled electricity production: 2011/2012 (+7,2 TWh, still fully compensated by renewables) and 2015/2016 (+5,5 TWh). - In the entire timeframe (EoY 2010 to EoY 2017), renewable production increased by +94,9 TWh, which is more than the reduction in nuclear (-60,8 TWh) and fossil fuels (-28,5 TWh) combined. - There've been some internal shifts happening within the fossil cluster. In the first couple of years, natural gas consumption was dialled back in favour of solid fuels, which was then slightly reverted in the later years. This is also the reason why 2015/2016 did not see a catastrophic increase in CO2 emissions - parts of the worst offenders have just been replaced by natural gas. I'm still not sure how the study reached a conclusion that is kind of contradicting real-world data.
- foxyv 5y ago
  In addition, new grid battery storage has become cheaper than natural gas peaker plants. Now we just need the industrial capacity and natural resources to create that many batteries! https://www.energy-storage.news/news/battery-storage-30-cheaper-than-new-gas-peaker-plants-australian-study-find https://www.energy-storage.news/news/battery-storage-30-chea...

40 points by spamalot159 5y ago

Another article that neglects to mention that we had already decided to quit nuclear in 2002. But the corrupt government we had in 2010 reverted that. I'd also like to know what emissions spiked, considering our nuclear policies ultimately didn't change in 2010/2011.

merb 5y ago
not sure why you are downvoted. you basically said nothing wrong the article is plain fud. as if germanies' co2 emission alone did make our world wide temperature rise so bad. the study/article also dismisses so much things. like that we have basically no end storage, that nuclear was already dead in germany and that the plants all were mostly over their end of lifetime anyway (but the governement raised it over and over), such a stupid study/article.
- tonyjstark 5y ago
  Additionally the government started to reduce subsidizing for renewable energy which ruined a lot of very high tech and innovative companies in the solar power field. Further the government made it harder to install wind turbines in the countryside. All while still pumping money in coal.
- javagram 5y ago
  “ as if germanies' co2 emission alone did make our world wide temperature rise so bad” This nicely demonstrates how CO2 emissions is a collective action problem between all the world’s countries. Any one country, even the #1 emitter the USA, giving up on fossil fuels isn’t enough to stop changing the climate via CO2 emission. So each country can claim that its failure to build nuclear or to replace all fossil fuels with renewable and battery storage isn’t a big deal.
  - LorenPechtel 5y ago
    The #1 emitter is China, not the US.
    - domano 5y ago
      Per head USA is first, in absolute terms china is.

drannex 5y ago

Nuclear is the only way to reduce our carbon emissions in both the short term and long term, and the best way to produce energy per unit than any other energy source. When you remove nuclear from existing supply, you increase your dependence on fossil fuels. Renewables are not able to produce enough energy to cover the absense of nuclear, perhaps in the future, but not with our current engineering.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jhayward 5y ago
> Nuclear is the only way to reduce our carbon emissions in both the short term and long term, This is clearly untrue, to the point of being deliberate misinformation.
- lostandbored 5y ago
  I am pro-Nuclear as the next guy, both from environmental and job creation perspective. But renewable can reduce emissions and has been proven to do so.
  - drannex 5y ago
    I wasn't arguing to the contrary, my second statement was tied to my first. Reducing or eliminating nuclear has the negative effect of increasing emissions and reliance on fossil fuels to fill the immediate and long term void that would be left. Renewables do a wonderful job, but they can not, at this point, take on the share that Nuclear has to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels should nuclear be elimated. As said, perhaps in the future. But not at this moment.
- proc0 5y ago
  Is it now? I heard renewable is barely 5-10% of what would be needed to replace fossil. Nuclear would surpass fossil easily (nothing to say about cost or safety here, just output).

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

Interesting to see what happened after the 2011 - 2017 timeframe the study looked at: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electricity?time=1985..2020&country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electr... Coal sucks, and they probably could have got rid of it faster, but they still seem on a good path and the story is similar worldwide. edit: even in the 2011-2017 timeframe they added more renewables than nuclear lost, so it seems odd that emissions would spike, unless there was either a big shift in the coal/gas/import mix, or just a general rise in demand.

spfzero 5y ago
It depends on how you measure renewables. Lets say solar, is the measurement made during the day? Because for most of the clock, they added zero solar. Or wind? Was it measured when the wind was blowing, or not? The lost nuclear was 24/7.
- merb 5y ago
  > Lets say solar, is the measurement made during the day? Because for most of the clock, they added zero solar. should I tell you what most people do during the night?
  - hulitu 5y ago
    > > Lets say solar, is the measurement made during the day? Because for most of the clock, they added zero solar. > should I tell you what most people do during the night? In winter, night starts at 18:00. Some people are returning from work at this time of day. Others take dinner (which needs electricity to be prepared). Only chickens slerp the entire night doing nothing else in this time.
rasz 5y ago
Germany re-classified coal plants co-firing with freshly chopped Romanian forest trees to "renewable" status, Its clean biomas! https://www.fern.org/fileadmin/uploads/fern/Documents/Up%20in%20Flames.pdf https://www.fern.org/fileadmin/uploads/fern/Documents/Up%20i... https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/illegal-logging-in-romania-benefits-germany-a-1032253.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/illegal-logging-... https://www.courthousenews.com/eu-accused-of-standing-by-as-ancient-forests-are-clear-cut/ https://www.courthousenews.com/eu-accused-of-standing-by-as-...

LorenPechtel 5y ago

And deaths also spiked, although they're so diffuse only the statisticians will pay attention. Nuke is clearly safer than any fossil fuel source by a *wide* margin. By some arguments utility-scale solar is safer than nuke--but only if by some miracle you can get virtually all your power from solar. We don't have the storage technology for that and if you have to run the natural gas plant when the sun doesn't shine you put nuke way in the lead for safety.

redis_mlc 5y ago
> Nuke is clearly safer than any fossil fuel source by a wide margin. Not financially. > A nuclear power plant takes roughly 10 years and at least 2-3 billion dollars to build. And probably even more time and money to decommission, which shareholders have no intention of paying, and banks won't fund. And when there's an accident, the US govt. limited compensation to peanuts: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/nuclear-insurance.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/n... Remember that Chernobyl was partially responsible for destabilizing an empire.
anoncake 5y ago
> Nuke is clearly safer than any fossil fuel source by a wide margin. Only if you 1. only take deaths into account and 2. redefine danger to include predictable damage.

domano 5y ago

Since the HN crowd is really pro-nuclear and in my bubble nobody is maybe somebody could explain how to handle nuclear waste and if modern reators are really as safe as it is often portraied in the comments here. Even modern reactors would produce radioactive waste, right? In germany we don't have any place that is safe enough for long term storage. How can this be handled? Would really like to change my mind regarding nuclear power, since it would solve the transitional phase towards renewables. Also: Quite regurarily cracks are found in the reactors in germany and other countries. Other smaller things happen all the time too. Are modern reactors failsafe? I

whb07 5y ago
Many of the newer reactors don’t need the level of radioactive material as compared to the older ones. AFAIK, some newer ones could even run on spent rods. As to the feasibility of storage of old material, assume that Germany literally had no excess land to place it on, what about other countries? You couldn’t imagine a country with excess worthless land willing to lease it? Wouldn’t that be a net positive for Germany, for the poor country, and less emissions globally? Lastly on the failsafes, there are improvements and so called “passive” implementations, but outside of the failed communist state and the tsunami incidents, what critical failures are there? Not talking about 3 mile island etc that were more fear porn than anything.
credit_guy 5y ago
By chemistry and alchemy. Chemistry: also known as reprocessing [1]. A lot of the nuclear waste is uranium and plutonium, that can be separated and made into nuclear fuel, and put back to work. The side-effect is that the amount of waste is reduced. In principle, chemical separation can be further used to separate the more dangerous isotopes (the ones with half-lives of more than 5 years) from the short-lived isotopes, which will decay naturally in a reasonable amount of time (<100 years). Alchemy: nuclear transmutation. This can be achieved via bombardment with neutrons. The most efficient way to do that is with a breeder-reactor [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reductio...
5y ago

viernullvier 5y ago

Here are the raw electricity production figures for the timeframe considered in the study: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&source=all&stacking=stacked_absolute&sum=0&partsum=1 https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE... When comparing the year-by-year differences, a few interesting things turn up. For the sake of simplicity, I've only counted wind and solar as renewables and natural gas + black coal + lignite as fossil fuels. - There have only been two years where a reduction in nuclear was not (over-)compensated by an increase in renewables: 2010/2011 (nuclear -30,8 TWh, renewables +19,3 TWh) and 2015/2016 (nuclear -6,8 TWh, renewables -1,3 TWh). - Even in 2010/2011, the increase in renewables overcompensated the reduction in fossil fuels (-2,8 TWh) - There have only been two years which actually saw an increase in fossil-fuelled electricity production: 2011/2012 (+7,2 TWh, still fully compensated by renewables) and 2015/2016 (+5,5 TWh). - In the entire timeframe (EoY 2010 to EoY 2017), renewable production increased by +94,9 TWh, which is more than the reduction in nuclear (-60,8 TWh) and fossil fuels (-28,5 TWh) combined. - There've been some internal shifts happening within the fossil cluster. In the first couple of years, natural gas consumption was dialled back in favour of solid fuels, which was then slightly reverted in the later years. This is also the reason why 2015/2016 did not see a catastrophic increase in CO2 emissions - parts of the worst offenders have just been replaced by natural gas. I'm still not sure how the study reached a conclusion that is kind of contradicting real-world data.

foxyv 5y ago
In addition, new grid battery storage has become cheaper than natural gas peaker plants. Now we just need the industrial capacity and natural resources to create that many batteries! https://www.energy-storage.news/news/battery-storage-30-cheaper-than-new-gas-peaker-plants-australian-study-find https://www.energy-storage.news/news/battery-storage-30-chea...