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> The past week will have a lot of Germans revising many silly opinions they were originally able to afford but not anymore Honestly, as a German myself I'm ra

> The past week will have a lot of Germans revising many silly opinions they were originally able to afford but not anymore Honestly, as a German myself I'm rather doubtful of that unfortunately. Some? Maybe. Many? Probably not. I cannot even convince my parents (who grew up in Germany during the time when the anti nuclear sentiment really started) to rethink their anti nuclear stance (despite having a great relationship with them). I say that as a physicist that absolutely sees there are flaws with aging nuclear plants. But people who are not able to a) appreciate the energy density of nuclear and b) see that climate change is an urgent problem we face, whereas any issues from nuclear waste are long term problems (not even talking about future reactor technologies etc. etc.) is just... I don't know? It sounds insane, but indoctrinated? I just utterly fail to understand. I mean, what's the point of a "nuclear waste free Earth" if our civilization collapses due to climate change?

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
Why oppose nuclear and renewables? It's about getting rid off fossil fuels isn't it? It's like focusing on competition among EV manufacturers when they are tiny compared to ICE. Take a step back.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > Why oppose nuclear I'm not sure anyone here will have a good answer for you, but anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany is incredibly strong.
AnonCoward4 5y ago
Maybe the problem with the "green" nuclear energy is that we still do not have a final waste site for it. This stuff may not be much in terms of size, but it is bad for hundreds of thousands of years and can contaminate a lot of water. > I mean, what's the point of a "nuclear waste free Earth" if our civilization collapses due to climate change? That is a bit panic-fuelled and frankly even religious, while completely ignoring the immediate threat of radiation, which cannot be reversed for hundreds of thousands of years. PS.: Climate change is going to happen whatever we do. This happened even before we existed.
- cesarb 5y ago
  > while completely ignoring the immediate threat of radiation, which cannot be reversed for hundreds of thousands of years. Waiting hundreds of thousands of years is the simplest way to reverse the "threat of radiation". Each radioactive isotope has a half-life; if you wait ten half-lives, the "threat of radiation" is reduced by a thousand times, and the isotopes with very long half-lives aren't that radioactive to start with (roughly simplifying, the shorter the half-life, the more intense the radiation).
ChemSpider 5y ago
I fail to understand why people like nuclear so much. Risks aside, renewables are cheaper. So why use an outdated technology like nuclear? (Now, fission would be a different story. I am all for researching this intensively).
- AnonCoward4 5y ago
  I guess you mean fusion. Fission is what we currently have/use for power plants. Even there research might end up in a better solution, because nuclear energy is actually a good source of energy because it is so dense. But current implementations of fission are really hard to recommend over even coal power plants.
- RealityVoid 5y ago
  I can not see, technologically, how we could have a functioning 100% renewable world today. I can see this with nuclear. It's that simple. That is why I'm backing anything that brings more nuclear power online. Regardless, it's not either nuclear or renewables. It should be a combination that works.
- wolfhumble 5y ago
  You need to back up Sun and Wind with either some type of Battery or Nuclear/Carbon based solution. If not you have no energy reliability when sun/wind conditions are bad. More sun and wind renewables won't help in this case as they have this built-in problem. Apart from that, it is not like big windmills and sun farms have zero impact on the environment. In this case a nuclear factory might be big and ugly, but globally its immediate impact on nature might be a lot less than the aforementioned renewables. 1 kg of natural uranium gives 45,000 kWh of electricity; so the extraction of raw materials for nuclear has less impact on nature as well compared to many other solutions (e.g. for the same amount of electricity you would need nearly 10,000 kg of mineral oil or 14,000 kg of coal). [1] Of course with nuclear you have problems with storage of waste and possible accidents, but its positive impact on climate change, great capacity for producing electricity and lower impact on nature than many other solutions, might make it the best solution we have at the time being? [1] https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/fuel-comparison/ https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/fuel-comparison/
_ph_ 5y ago
There are quite a lot of valid concerns against nuclear power. As you wrote, the current generation was aging and would not have operated much longer anyway. There are valid concerns about nuclear waste (we just don't have a solution, but if that was the only thing, I would also argue, lets solve that problem another day). There are valid concerns about operational safety and due to recent events, even huge concerns about what happens when a nuclear reactor gets hit by a rocket. Lets hope we don't find out in Ukraine. But the argument which makes the discussion now mostly irrelevant is simply: all available and reasonable designs are vastly expensive and take at least a decade to build, if not two including planning. That makes the question just moot. Not even France, which is all-in on nuclear has an answer to that. Renewables are comparatively cheap and can be set up quickly. Germany already depends to a large part on renewable electricity. That is the cheap and efficient way forward. On top of that, nuclear power plants don't work well together with renewables, as they can't switch their output level enough. Gas is the ideal partner for renewables and eventually will also be produced from renewable energy. Just recent events messed up the plan a bit, but not too much. We have to push quicker for renewables and pay a bit more for gas.
- ars 5y ago
  > nuclear waste (we just don't have a solution Yes we do. I post this is almost every thread about nuclear power, and it seems I find new people each time. If you combine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor you have essentially zero nuclear waste, and you also need something like 98% less Uranium. This is a completely solved problem. > On top of that, nuclear power plants don't work well together with renewables, as they can't switch their output level enough. This isn't true either. It's like everyone's opinion of nuclear power is stuck in the past, and no one can ever update their info.
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    Please point me out to any operating breeding reactor and how much nuclear fuel it can process. The French shut down their breeding reactors long ago, the only existing ones I know of are Russian, right now they are an even worse reference. I don't doubt they could be built, but the question is, what would they cost? Please point me out to a nuclear reactor design that can be switched from 100% to 0% in the matter of hours and back again.
s_dev 5y ago
>Honestly, as a German myself I'm rather doubtful of that unfortunately. Some? Maybe. Many? Probably There has been a historic reversal in German foreign and security policy this week! Germans are already revising their opinions about Russia, climate, energy, defense and what the government and media espouse since they may have been the original impetus in forming their opinions.
Bombthecat 5y ago
And on top of that : I think its more likely that we find a technical solution to radioactive waste then find a technical solution to a destroyed world (aka 3 Celsius hotter)

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago

Why oppose nuclear and renewables? It's about getting rid off fossil fuels isn't it? It's like focusing on competition among EV manufacturers when they are tiny compared to ICE. Take a step back.

throwawaygh 5y ago
> Why oppose nuclear I'm not sure anyone here will have a good answer for you, but anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany is incredibly strong.

AnonCoward4 5y ago

Maybe the problem with the "green" nuclear energy is that we still do not have a final waste site for it. This stuff may not be much in terms of size, but it is bad for hundreds of thousands of years and can contaminate a lot of water. > I mean, what's the point of a "nuclear waste free Earth" if our civilization collapses due to climate change? That is a bit panic-fuelled and frankly even religious, while completely ignoring the immediate threat of radiation, which cannot be reversed for hundreds of thousands of years. PS.: Climate change is going to happen whatever we do. This happened even before we existed.

cesarb 5y ago
> while completely ignoring the immediate threat of radiation, which cannot be reversed for hundreds of thousands of years. Waiting hundreds of thousands of years is the simplest way to reverse the "threat of radiation". Each radioactive isotope has a half-life; if you wait ten half-lives, the "threat of radiation" is reduced by a thousand times, and the isotopes with very long half-lives aren't that radioactive to start with (roughly simplifying, the shorter the half-life, the more intense the radiation).

ChemSpider 5y ago

I fail to understand why people like nuclear so much. Risks aside, renewables are cheaper. So why use an outdated technology like nuclear? (Now, fission would be a different story. I am all for researching this intensively).

AnonCoward4 5y ago
I guess you mean fusion. Fission is what we currently have/use for power plants. Even there research might end up in a better solution, because nuclear energy is actually a good source of energy because it is so dense. But current implementations of fission are really hard to recommend over even coal power plants.
RealityVoid 5y ago
I can not see, technologically, how we could have a functioning 100% renewable world today. I can see this with nuclear. It's that simple. That is why I'm backing anything that brings more nuclear power online. Regardless, it's not either nuclear or renewables. It should be a combination that works.
wolfhumble 5y ago
You need to back up Sun and Wind with either some type of Battery or Nuclear/Carbon based solution. If not you have no energy reliability when sun/wind conditions are bad. More sun and wind renewables won't help in this case as they have this built-in problem. Apart from that, it is not like big windmills and sun farms have zero impact on the environment. In this case a nuclear factory might be big and ugly, but globally its immediate impact on nature might be a lot less than the aforementioned renewables. 1 kg of natural uranium gives 45,000 kWh of electricity; so the extraction of raw materials for nuclear has less impact on nature as well compared to many other solutions (e.g. for the same amount of electricity you would need nearly 10,000 kg of mineral oil or 14,000 kg of coal). [1] Of course with nuclear you have problems with storage of waste and possible accidents, but its positive impact on climate change, great capacity for producing electricity and lower impact on nature than many other solutions, might make it the best solution we have at the time being? [1] https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/fuel-comparison/ https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/fuel-comparison/

_ph_ 5y ago

There are quite a lot of valid concerns against nuclear power. As you wrote, the current generation was aging and would not have operated much longer anyway. There are valid concerns about nuclear waste (we just don't have a solution, but if that was the only thing, I would also argue, lets solve that problem another day). There are valid concerns about operational safety and due to recent events, even huge concerns about what happens when a nuclear reactor gets hit by a rocket. Lets hope we don't find out in Ukraine. But the argument which makes the discussion now mostly irrelevant is simply: all available and reasonable designs are vastly expensive and take at least a decade to build, if not two including planning. That makes the question just moot. Not even France, which is all-in on nuclear has an answer to that. Renewables are comparatively cheap and can be set up quickly. Germany already depends to a large part on renewable electricity. That is the cheap and efficient way forward. On top of that, nuclear power plants don't work well together with renewables, as they can't switch their output level enough. Gas is the ideal partner for renewables and eventually will also be produced from renewable energy. Just recent events messed up the plan a bit, but not too much. We have to push quicker for renewables and pay a bit more for gas.

ars 5y ago
> nuclear waste (we just don't have a solution Yes we do. I post this is almost every thread about nuclear power, and it seems I find new people each time. If you combine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor you have essentially zero nuclear waste, and you also need something like 98% less Uranium. This is a completely solved problem. > On top of that, nuclear power plants don't work well together with renewables, as they can't switch their output level enough. This isn't true either. It's like everyone's opinion of nuclear power is stuck in the past, and no one can ever update their info.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  Please point me out to any operating breeding reactor and how much nuclear fuel it can process. The French shut down their breeding reactors long ago, the only existing ones I know of are Russian, right now they are an even worse reference. I don't doubt they could be built, but the question is, what would they cost? Please point me out to a nuclear reactor design that can be switched from 100% to 0% in the matter of hours and back again.

s_dev 5y ago

>Honestly, as a German myself I'm rather doubtful of that unfortunately. Some? Maybe. Many? Probably There has been a historic reversal in German foreign and security policy this week! Germans are already revising their opinions about Russia, climate, energy, defense and what the government and media espouse since they may have been the original impetus in forming their opinions.

Bombthecat 5y ago

And on top of that : I think its more likely that we find a technical solution to radioactive waste then find a technical solution to a destroyed world (aka 3 Celsius hotter)