6 ms·

I'm delighted to see that at least somewhere people are sane enough not to phase out nuclear energy. (I'm looking at you, Germany)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
karlkloss 5y ago
That's because Angela Merkel is a physicist. Unlike other politicians around the world, she actually knows the risks.
- Fckd 5y ago
  how come she does'nt know the impact buring coal has on the environmnet?
  - dorinlazar 5y ago
    That's not for physicists to know, more for mechanical engineers :D
  - moooo99 5y ago
    She knows very well. However, there were protests against nuclear energy in Germany for quite some time. After the Fukushima incident they gained a lot more traction and pressure by the public and political opponents rose dramatically. When the decision was put in place it was around 2011/12 iirc, back then the climate crisis debate was not nearly as big as it is today. Also, burning coal is not the main target for the future of energy generation in Germany. The coal plants are just a side effect of the transition to a primarily renewable energy generation. Unfortunately due to coal energy companies having very close ties with the the ruling CDU Party, it's not surprising to see them get special treatment.
  - whizzter 5y ago
    She knows, heck even the Swedish PM back in 1975 knew it (there's a TV clip of him laying it out). Knowing what's best is way different from personal political goals though. North/northwest Europe got pretty damn scared by the Chernobyl fallout (in practice many kinds of wild game was banned for sale for many years afterwards in some countries and we measured everything that could possibly be contaminated) and that scare runs deep for many still today. (This is why you have the irony that the "green parties" in Europe are so damn anti-nuclear despite at least some of them realizing that you can't properly fight global warming without nuclear power)
    - toyg 5y ago
      > you can't properly fight global warming without nuclear power Well, that's technically incorrect - you can still fight it, you just have to renounce some energy use (at worst).
- yodelshady 5y ago
  Ukraine, the site of the probably the worst nuclear accident in history and a prime food producer, is suffering enormously from desertification due to burning fossil fuels. If that's her calculation, she needs to redo it.
- shapefrog 5y ago
  Which is why she is pro nuclear. The physicist in her reversed that position when it was a choice of being elected or being kicked out of office. Physicists like power as much if not more than politicians.
  - WithinReason 5y ago
    > Physicists like power as much if not more than politicians. An ambiguous statement in this context :)
  - rndgermandude 5y ago
    Yes, she changed her stance after Fukushima when public opinion - which wasn't very pro nuclear to begin with - shifted rapidly in Germany. I would agree is was a populist move and not a move based on science. However, she was hardly in a position where she would have lost office. The next federal election was 2 years away, and nuclear, while at the time an important topic that dominated the media of course, was hardly the only topic. Her party might have suffered a somewhat in the short term - in state elections for example - but it's rather unlikely her party would have "lost" the next federal election and she her office. She also never expressed a strong pro-nuclear stance while Chancellor (and as far as I know not before that either), and certainly did not justify such a stance with her scientific background. While in office as Chancellor, she called nuclear a "bridge technology" that should be kept around a while longer until Germany can switch over to renewables at its own pace. The decision to partly reverse the nuclear exit - and the exit was decided years before and was generally seen favorably by Germans - by delaying when nuclear power plants had to go offline - she never planned to build new plants, for example - was less of a declaration for nuclear and had more too do with appeasing the nuclear lobby, and the industry lobby which feared higher energy costs. And it wasn't a decision she was really making all by herself, there was a lot of pressure from within the elites of her own party (most of which do not hold any degrees in physics, just saying), aside from all the lobby pressure. She might have thought and/or still may think of nuclear as favorable, be it because she has a PhD in what was called theoretical chemistry - tho it is more physics than chemistry what she did and concerned nuclear decay reactions/processes - or be it because years before she became chancellor she was Federal Minister for the Environment which includes "nuclear security and oversight", or be it just because any everybody kinda has an opinion. But regardless, she didn't express a very pro nuclear opinion, as you suggest. Unless she declares herself now that she is not running for office anymore, we will not really know what she truly thinks about nuclear and why. Not that her opinion on the matter is particularly more important than the opinion of others...
shapefrog 5y ago
But they have that beautiful clean coal.
- vixen99 5y ago
  And that wonderful reliance on Russia.
  - shapefrog 5y ago
    very fine people
- rndgermandude 5y ago
  Before you continue to so giddily bash Germany, I would consider that the US in 2020 generated 60.3% of electrical energy from fossil fuels (19.3% of the total from "clean" coal, 40.3% was "clean" natural gas), 19.7% from nuclear, 19.8% from renewables[1]. Germany in 2020 had a mix of 36.0% from fossil fuels (24.3% of the total from "clean" coal, 11.7% from "clean" gas), 12.6% from nuclear, and 51.4% renewables[2]. Sure, I am not happy that Germany continues to burn so much fossil fuel either, but suggesting that Germany is particularly bad because it doesn't do as much nuclear is just not based in reality. PS: In absolute numbers, the US produced 774 TWh of electrical energy using coal in 2020, Germany produced 118 TWh. That's 2.35 TWh per million people for the US, 1.41 TWh per million people in Germany. Or expressed yet differently, the US produced 1.67x the energy from coal per capita than Germany. [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 [2] https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2020&stacking=sorted&interval=year&partsum=0&sum=1 https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...
  - cerved 5y ago
    People make a point about Germany because they made a populist political decision to close nuclear plants in 2015. At a point where it was evident that there future needs to be fossil free and with no real alternatives they decide to shut down their reactors. In contrast, the US seized civilian nuclear power plants after three mile island, fifty years ago.
joachim4 5y ago
The Green party in France is as divided on this question as in Germany. The current impulse is led by the current center-right government. Germany, with the same kind of government, decided to go all in for gaz (mainly from Russia).
- rndgermandude 5y ago
  Natural gas (from Russia mostly, as you point out) was "only" 11.7% of the electric energy production in Germany in 2020.
rswskg 5y ago
But they've got an interconnector! With..somewhere.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

karlkloss 5y ago

That's because Angela Merkel is a physicist. Unlike other politicians around the world, she actually knows the risks.

Fckd 5y ago
how come she does'nt know the impact buring coal has on the environmnet?
- dorinlazar 5y ago
  That's not for physicists to know, more for mechanical engineers :D
- moooo99 5y ago
  She knows very well. However, there were protests against nuclear energy in Germany for quite some time. After the Fukushima incident they gained a lot more traction and pressure by the public and political opponents rose dramatically. When the decision was put in place it was around 2011/12 iirc, back then the climate crisis debate was not nearly as big as it is today. Also, burning coal is not the main target for the future of energy generation in Germany. The coal plants are just a side effect of the transition to a primarily renewable energy generation. Unfortunately due to coal energy companies having very close ties with the the ruling CDU Party, it's not surprising to see them get special treatment.
- whizzter 5y ago
  She knows, heck even the Swedish PM back in 1975 knew it (there's a TV clip of him laying it out). Knowing what's best is way different from personal political goals though. North/northwest Europe got pretty damn scared by the Chernobyl fallout (in practice many kinds of wild game was banned for sale for many years afterwards in some countries and we measured everything that could possibly be contaminated) and that scare runs deep for many still today. (This is why you have the irony that the "green parties" in Europe are so damn anti-nuclear despite at least some of them realizing that you can't properly fight global warming without nuclear power)
  - toyg 5y ago
    > you can't properly fight global warming without nuclear power Well, that's technically incorrect - you can still fight it, you just have to renounce some energy use (at worst).
yodelshady 5y ago
Ukraine, the site of the probably the worst nuclear accident in history and a prime food producer, is suffering enormously from desertification due to burning fossil fuels. If that's her calculation, she needs to redo it.
shapefrog 5y ago
Which is why she is pro nuclear. The physicist in her reversed that position when it was a choice of being elected or being kicked out of office. Physicists like power as much if not more than politicians.
- WithinReason 5y ago
  > Physicists like power as much if not more than politicians. An ambiguous statement in this context :)
- rndgermandude 5y ago
  Yes, she changed her stance after Fukushima when public opinion - which wasn't very pro nuclear to begin with - shifted rapidly in Germany. I would agree is was a populist move and not a move based on science. However, she was hardly in a position where she would have lost office. The next federal election was 2 years away, and nuclear, while at the time an important topic that dominated the media of course, was hardly the only topic. Her party might have suffered a somewhat in the short term - in state elections for example - but it's rather unlikely her party would have "lost" the next federal election and she her office. She also never expressed a strong pro-nuclear stance while Chancellor (and as far as I know not before that either), and certainly did not justify such a stance with her scientific background. While in office as Chancellor, she called nuclear a "bridge technology" that should be kept around a while longer until Germany can switch over to renewables at its own pace. The decision to partly reverse the nuclear exit - and the exit was decided years before and was generally seen favorably by Germans - by delaying when nuclear power plants had to go offline - she never planned to build new plants, for example - was less of a declaration for nuclear and had more too do with appeasing the nuclear lobby, and the industry lobby which feared higher energy costs. And it wasn't a decision she was really making all by herself, there was a lot of pressure from within the elites of her own party (most of which do not hold any degrees in physics, just saying), aside from all the lobby pressure. She might have thought and/or still may think of nuclear as favorable, be it because she has a PhD in what was called theoretical chemistry - tho it is more physics than chemistry what she did and concerned nuclear decay reactions/processes - or be it because years before she became chancellor she was Federal Minister for the Environment which includes "nuclear security and oversight", or be it just because any everybody kinda has an opinion. But regardless, she didn't express a very pro nuclear opinion, as you suggest. Unless she declares herself now that she is not running for office anymore, we will not really know what she truly thinks about nuclear and why. Not that her opinion on the matter is particularly more important than the opinion of others...

shapefrog 5y ago

But they have that beautiful clean coal.

vixen99 5y ago
And that wonderful reliance on Russia.
- shapefrog 5y ago
  very fine people
rndgermandude 5y ago
Before you continue to so giddily bash Germany, I would consider that the US in 2020 generated 60.3% of electrical energy from fossil fuels (19.3% of the total from "clean" coal, 40.3% was "clean" natural gas), 19.7% from nuclear, 19.8% from renewables[1]. Germany in 2020 had a mix of 36.0% from fossil fuels (24.3% of the total from "clean" coal, 11.7% from "clean" gas), 12.6% from nuclear, and 51.4% renewables[2]. Sure, I am not happy that Germany continues to burn so much fossil fuel either, but suggesting that Germany is particularly bad because it doesn't do as much nuclear is just not based in reality. PS: In absolute numbers, the US produced 774 TWh of electrical energy using coal in 2020, Germany produced 118 TWh. That's 2.35 TWh per million people for the US, 1.41 TWh per million people in Germany. Or expressed yet differently, the US produced 1.67x the energy from coal per capita than Germany. [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 [2] https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2020&stacking=sorted&interval=year&partsum=0&sum=1 https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...
- cerved 5y ago
  People make a point about Germany because they made a populist political decision to close nuclear plants in 2015. At a point where it was evident that there future needs to be fossil free and with no real alternatives they decide to shut down their reactors. In contrast, the US seized civilian nuclear power plants after three mile island, fifty years ago.

joachim4 5y ago

The Green party in France is as divided on this question as in Germany. The current impulse is led by the current center-right government. Germany, with the same kind of government, decided to go all in for gaz (mainly from Russia).

rndgermandude 5y ago
Natural gas (from Russia mostly, as you point out) was "only" 11.7% of the electric energy production in Germany in 2020.

rswskg 5y ago

But they've got an interconnector! With..somewhere.