3 ms·

First of all, the new German government adjusted the phase-out of coal power to be as close as possible to 2030. 2038 was more a bad compromise by the previous

by _ph_ 5y ago

First of all, the new German government adjusted the phase-out of coal power to be as close as possible to 2030. 2038 was more a bad compromise by the previous government. And yes, nuclear power can be dangerous as Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown. Those dangers could probably be addressed by new reactors, but those are very expensive. The big problem are the existing old reactors. They are not as safe and require a lot of maintenance. A few years ago, Germany only had 4 nuclear power plants running through the whole winter as 4 others were down for longer maintenance. Then there is the problem where to plut all the nuclear waste, Germany doesn't have a long-term storage facility (though search started in the 80ies).

Delk 5y ago
I don't really understand why the Chernobyl or Fukushima disasters should be considered evidence of nuclear power being dangerous. The Chernobyl plant had severe design deficiencies, and the operators were apparently not properly informed about the dangers of operating the plant the way they did at the moment. The Soviet Union was not exactly the epitome of environmental responsibility. Lots of things went wrong. The Fukushima disaster was precipitated by a magnitude 9 earthquake and a tsunami that pretty much leveled the entire area and stopped the emergency generators. The backup generators also failed. Pretty much everything that could go wrong went wrong. People were displaced, and the radiation leakage should be considered significant environmental damage. The number of people displaced was tens of thousands. Although few deaths have been confirmed, if you're pessimistic, you might be able to come up with a larger figure. However, the Fukushima disaster was a once-per-several-decades event. Coal causes hundreds of thousands to millions of deaths every year through direct air pollution, not to mention the indirect effects from climate change. That's not a rare accident. That's business as usual. Yes, nuclear power has risks, and sometimes something goes wrong. Lots of work has been done to minimize the risks, as should be. But it's entirely emotion-driven and intellectually untenable to consider nuclear to be a major risk, comparatively. The damage caused by accidents that apparently should happen at most once per several decades in well-managed (or even less well managed) plants is still a fraction of the damage that coal-fired or other fossil-fueled plants cause every year as part of their normal operation. If anything, the lesson to be learned from the Fukushima disaster should be: "consider carefully whether to build nuclear plants in an area where major earthquakes and tsunamis are statistically to be expected; design and manage plants responsibly; other than that, it's probably fine". Nuclear waste is still be a problem but it's hard to imagine it being anywhere near the magnitude of the problems that burning fossil fuels causes.
R0b0t1 5y ago
The old reactors were intentionally unfunded for years to make them so expensive that it looked better to decommission them.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > underfunded ... expensive You're at least going to have to provide some numbers if you want that conspiracy theory to be taken seriously.
wwtrv 5y ago
However even those old reactors are several magnitudes safer per MWh than coal, over 20 000 people die each in Europe due pollution emitted from burning coal that as much as several Chernobyl's each year (even if we use the most pessimistic estimates).

by _ph_ 5y ago

Delk 5y ago

I don't really understand why the Chernobyl or Fukushima disasters should be considered evidence of nuclear power being dangerous. The Chernobyl plant had severe design deficiencies, and the operators were apparently not properly informed about the dangers of operating the plant the way they did at the moment. The Soviet Union was not exactly the epitome of environmental responsibility. Lots of things went wrong. The Fukushima disaster was precipitated by a magnitude 9 earthquake and a tsunami that pretty much leveled the entire area and stopped the emergency generators. The backup generators also failed. Pretty much everything that could go wrong went wrong. People were displaced, and the radiation leakage should be considered significant environmental damage. The number of people displaced was tens of thousands. Although few deaths have been confirmed, if you're pessimistic, you might be able to come up with a larger figure. However, the Fukushima disaster was a once-per-several-decades event. Coal causes hundreds of thousands to millions of deaths every year through direct air pollution, not to mention the indirect effects from climate change. That's not a rare accident. That's business as usual. Yes, nuclear power has risks, and sometimes something goes wrong. Lots of work has been done to minimize the risks, as should be. But it's entirely emotion-driven and intellectually untenable to consider nuclear to be a major risk, comparatively. The damage caused by accidents that apparently should happen at most once per several decades in well-managed (or even less well managed) plants is still a fraction of the damage that coal-fired or other fossil-fueled plants cause every year as part of their normal operation. If anything, the lesson to be learned from the Fukushima disaster should be: "consider carefully whether to build nuclear plants in an area where major earthquakes and tsunamis are statistically to be expected; design and manage plants responsibly; other than that, it's probably fine". Nuclear waste is still be a problem but it's hard to imagine it being anywhere near the magnitude of the problems that burning fossil fuels causes.

R0b0t1 5y ago

The old reactors were intentionally unfunded for years to make them so expensive that it looked better to decommission them.

dane-pgp 5y ago
> underfunded ... expensive You're at least going to have to provide some numbers if you want that conspiracy theory to be taken seriously.

wwtrv 5y ago

However even those old reactors are several magnitudes safer per MWh than coal, over 20 000 people die each in Europe due pollution emitted from burning coal that as much as several Chernobyl's each year (even if we use the most pessimistic estimates).