3 ms·

Considering that you can't use raw uranium but need fuel assemblies, you'd need a replacement manufacturer of fuel assemblies, not just a uranium stockpile. But

by jhgb 4y ago

Considering that you can't use raw uranium but need fuel assemblies, you'd need a replacement manufacturer of fuel assemblies, not just a uranium stockpile. But of course Germany was scheduled to shut down its nuclear power plants in 2022-ish anyway so a stockpile would have been largely meaningless.

trashtester 4y ago
Pretty sure you can have your stockpiles pre-assebled, or close enough that the final step is trivial. Anyway, my argument i built on the premise that Germany should never have shut down their nuclear power plants (except when they truely are "spent") and instead built a large number of new ones. If their nuclear capacity was about the same as the French, it would make a lot of sense to have a strategic stockpile of ready-to-use fuel, both in case supply is restricted for political reasons and because it would serve as a hedge against price fluctuations.
- jhgb 4y ago
  Or, they could just shut down their nuclear plants and the problem with nuclear fuel stockpile goes away as well. And in fact, this is vastly easier to accomplish, and exactly the thing they're already doing.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    If you scroll up the thread a bit, the context was that someone claimed that Germany would be less dependent on Germany if they had kept more of their nuclear power plants. That is something they might have figured out in 2014. Going as heavy on natural gas as they have over the last generation, more or less ensures that they are in Russia's pocket. Shutting down nuclear plants does not make that better. In fact, I argue, it makes it worse.
    - jhgb 4y ago
      > the context was that someone claimed that Germany would be less dependent on Germany if they had kept more of their nuclear power plants Except I'd already refuted that claim, so it didn't make sense to labor under this misconception any further to begin with.
      - trashtester 4y ago
        It seems to me that your argument is circular. Your refutation of the possibility of to use Nuclear power to gain independence of Russian energy seems to depend on German inability to achieve indepencende of Russian fuel by setting up a stockpile(1). Which in turn is justified by claiming that the stockpile would not be needed, since they would shut down their nuclear plants(2). Which is justified by (1), which is justified by (2) and so on. My argument is that, had Germany decided in 2014 to increase, rather than decrease their use of nuclear power, with the aim to reduce dependence on Russia, it could be done. But given that, they would have to start looking for (possibly in cooperation with their allies) other sources of fuel to really become independent, in other words, set up agreements to buy fuel from countries like Australia and Canada, on top of whatever fuel was being bought from Russia before 2022. Basically, my argument requires BOTH of these steps to be taken: - Decide to keep or increase energy production from nuclear - Decide to work towards independence of Russia by funding alternative sources + by putting any extra fuel they purchase into a strategic stockpile. (Edit: formatting.) These are clearly decisions that were available to Germany (as a country, provided the public had been primed to support them). I don't find the spot in your argument that refutes any of them, without already assuming that the other is impossible. Also, I don't find where in your argument, in what way these decisions, if taken together, would NOT ensure that Germany would have more energy production capacity in 2022 than they have now.
        jhgb 4y ago
        > Your refutation of the possibility of to use Nuclear power to gain independence of Russian energy seems to depend on German inability to achieve indepencende of Russian fuel by setting up a stockpile(1). No, my refutation hinged on 1) the fact that German nuclear power is NOT a substitute for the vast majority of German uses of natural gas (chemical and other industry, residential heaters -- neither of which is near-term replaceable with nuclear power without massive investments in electrolysis), and 2) the fact that German nuclear power has the cheapest substitute in form of unused capacity of coal plants (which recently massively dropped in their capacity factor) and accelerated expansion of renewable generation. There is no circularity in this that I see. 1) means that keeping or expanding the nuclear fleet does not decrease dependency on Russian gas, and 2) means that ditching it does not increase dependency on anything else coming from Russia. So ditching the German nuclear fleet has no downside in terms of reducing dependency on Russia. In fact ditching the German nuclear fleet might somewhat reduce the dependency on Russia on part of the remaining global users of nuclear power, owing to the reduction of uranium fuel consumption in light of the fact that Russia possesses 46% of world's uranium enrichment capacity -- any enriched uranium on the global market that Germany would have to use in their reactors could be used by someone else at that poitnt, with less money paid for enriched uranium flowing into Russia. > My argument is that, had Germany decided in 2014 to increase, rather than decrease their use of nuclear power, with the aim to reduce dependence on Russia, it could be done. They could have certainly acted in that direction with such an aim, but since such actions would not have lead to achieving this aim (see above), it would have been a completely irrational course of action.

by jhgb 4y ago

trashtester 4y ago

Pretty sure you can have your stockpiles pre-assebled, or close enough that the final step is trivial. Anyway, my argument i built on the premise that Germany should never have shut down their nuclear power plants (except when they truely are "spent") and instead built a large number of new ones. If their nuclear capacity was about the same as the French, it would make a lot of sense to have a strategic stockpile of ready-to-use fuel, both in case supply is restricted for political reasons and because it would serve as a hedge against price fluctuations.

jhgb 4y ago
Or, they could just shut down their nuclear plants and the problem with nuclear fuel stockpile goes away as well. And in fact, this is vastly easier to accomplish, and exactly the thing they're already doing.
- trashtester 4y ago
  If you scroll up the thread a bit, the context was that someone claimed that Germany would be less dependent on Germany if they had kept more of their nuclear power plants. That is something they might have figured out in 2014. Going as heavy on natural gas as they have over the last generation, more or less ensures that they are in Russia's pocket. Shutting down nuclear plants does not make that better. In fact, I argue, it makes it worse.
  - jhgb 4y ago
    > the context was that someone claimed that Germany would be less dependent on Germany if they had kept more of their nuclear power plants Except I'd already refuted that claim, so it didn't make sense to labor under this misconception any further to begin with.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      It seems to me that your argument is circular. Your refutation of the possibility of to use Nuclear power to gain independence of Russian energy seems to depend on German inability to achieve indepencende of Russian fuel by setting up a stockpile(1). Which in turn is justified by claiming that the stockpile would not be needed, since they would shut down their nuclear plants(2). Which is justified by (1), which is justified by (2) and so on. My argument is that, had Germany decided in 2014 to increase, rather than decrease their use of nuclear power, with the aim to reduce dependence on Russia, it could be done. But given that, they would have to start looking for (possibly in cooperation with their allies) other sources of fuel to really become independent, in other words, set up agreements to buy fuel from countries like Australia and Canada, on top of whatever fuel was being bought from Russia before 2022. Basically, my argument requires BOTH of these steps to be taken: - Decide to keep or increase energy production from nuclear - Decide to work towards independence of Russia by funding alternative sources + by putting any extra fuel they purchase into a strategic stockpile. (Edit: formatting.) These are clearly decisions that were available to Germany (as a country, provided the public had been primed to support them). I don't find the spot in your argument that refutes any of them, without already assuming that the other is impossible. Also, I don't find where in your argument, in what way these decisions, if taken together, would NOT ensure that Germany would have more energy production capacity in 2022 than they have now.
      - jhgb 4y ago
        > Your refutation of the possibility of to use Nuclear power to gain independence of Russian energy seems to depend on German inability to achieve indepencende of Russian fuel by setting up a stockpile(1). No, my refutation hinged on 1) the fact that German nuclear power is NOT a substitute for the vast majority of German uses of natural gas (chemical and other industry, residential heaters -- neither of which is near-term replaceable with nuclear power without massive investments in electrolysis), and 2) the fact that German nuclear power has the cheapest substitute in form of unused capacity of coal plants (which recently massively dropped in their capacity factor) and accelerated expansion of renewable generation. There is no circularity in this that I see. 1) means that keeping or expanding the nuclear fleet does not decrease dependency on Russian gas, and 2) means that ditching it does not increase dependency on anything else coming from Russia. So ditching the German nuclear fleet has no downside in terms of reducing dependency on Russia. In fact ditching the German nuclear fleet might somewhat reduce the dependency on Russia on part of the remaining global users of nuclear power, owing to the reduction of uranium fuel consumption in light of the fact that Russia possesses 46% of world's uranium enrichment capacity -- any enriched uranium on the global market that Germany would have to use in their reactors could be used by someone else at that poitnt, with less money paid for enriched uranium flowing into Russia. > My argument is that, had Germany decided in 2014 to increase, rather than decrease their use of nuclear power, with the aim to reduce dependence on Russia, it could be done. They could have certainly acted in that direction with such an aim, but since such actions would not have lead to achieving this aim (see above), it would have been a completely irrational course of action.