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If you started building a nuclear plant ten years ago, it will be finished when the crisis is way over. Nuclear certainly is crucial in the mix. And used as su

• chitowneats 4y ago
  Famously, France does and Germany does not. This wasn't just some accident. Germany and their Green Party chose this.
  • hef19898 4y ago
    As others already pointed out, the nuclear exit strategy was decided upon under Merkel's conservative government. Some added information so: The Green party pushed for an exit of nuclear power as part of a social-docrat government. This exit eas actually pretty well worked out and planned. When Merkel took, one of the forst things was to throw that rather good plan out. Only to revert that decision, hastly at that, after Fukushima. That second nuclear exit, the one Germany is currrently going through, was hastly done, ill planned and rushed. And lastly, nuclear power does exactly nothing to compensate for reduced gas deliveries. Germany, as in deed a good portion of Europe, is heating with gas. And not nuclear power or electrical.
• fmajid 4y ago
  The Germans are shutting down perfectly serviceable and world-leading (in terms of safety) nuclear reactors purely out of doctrinaire ideology of the Green Party.
  • semigroupoid 4y ago
    The shutdown was essentially started when Angela Merkel, who is a member of the conservative CDU, was chancellor.
    • tawm 4y ago
      That's not true. The exit started in 2002, under a red/green government.
      • hef19898 4y ago
        True. And it was immediately reversed when Merkel's conservative government took over. And then again reversed by the same conservative led government after Fukushima.
  • markus_zhang 4y ago
    I think money, perk and power go a longer way than ideology. There were probably backroom stuffs we didn't know about. It takes a LOT of cash to feul any movement that huge.
    • MrMan 4y ago
      Right the evil greens trying to secure a future for our children.
      • katbyte 4y ago
        Buy pushing to close nuclear reactors and burn more fossil fuels?
        • hef19898 4y ago
          It is getting annoying, but nuclear does nothing against a gas shortage / higher gas prices. Electrical energy =|= thermal enegy...
          • pliny 4y ago
            when you pass an electrical current through a resistor you get heat. you can read about this concept here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heating_element https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heating_element
            • hef19898 4y ago
              Don't you say. Is there also a wikipedia article on how to replace all industrial, commercial and domestic heating infrastructure with those? Europe wide?
              • pliny 4y ago
                Electric radiators are quite cheap (they retail for less than $100), and homes in the cold parts of europe are typically well insulated, and if you bought a radiator for every person in the eu (0.5B * $100) it would cost .3% of europe's gdp ($18 trillion), or 5% of the eu's budget for 1 year. This helps reduce the reliance on gas for domestic heating.
  • nielsole 4y ago
    The nuclear reactors would have been due for a thorough 10-year check-up in 2019 which was omitted because of the approaching shutdown. So claiming this was "purely out of doctrinaire ideology" seems unreasonable.
  • dchnshA 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • 8note 4y ago
      We're low on uranium demand, more than uranium supply. There is no exploration going on to find new uranium deposits because there isn't much willingness to make new mines
    • elsjaako 4y ago
      I don't know about all your arguments, but I just want to respond to the ones I do know about. Nuclear power is about as safe as wind and solar if looked at per TW. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy A nuclear reactor can be built in three years, though admittedly this hasn't happened in Europe. They are mostly (85%) built in under ten years. Figure 3 shows we should expect around 5 years. https://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-plant/ https://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nucl...
    • beebmam 4y ago
      >- Large parts of the Uranium are coming from Russia Not immutable. There are other sources that are much friendlier >- Nuclear power is not competitive and nuclear power is very expensive (especially if you conside the costs the government will be left holding the bag on, becuase nuclear power plant companies will spin off their power plants to new companies to go bankrupt once the profiting is done and the cleaning up the nuclear remains starts), no matter how much the pro-nuclear people want to lie about it I doubt this hyperbolic assertion. Prove it. >- Nuclear power is statistically not dangerous compared to fossil fuels, but not compared to renewables. Again, prove it. This is unsupported, and in fact from what I've seen, false. So provide some evidence. >- The world's uranium supply is running out. Already since the late 1980s, uranium mines have been unable to meet the world's annual demand. The nuclear industry has so far filled the fuel gap with material from military and civilian stockpiles. This is again, an unsourced claim. In fact, a quick google shows: "There is not now, nor has there even been a shortage of uranium. Fear about reliability of the supply of uranium has been used in the past as an excuse to get something else done." Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/llewellynking/2020/06/08/uranium-supply-isnt-the-crisis-in-the-nuclear-industry/?sh=7eefc3c914f4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/llewellynking/2020/06/08/uraniu... >- Nuclear waste is a problem no country except Finnland is anywhere near solving. Germany has been trying to find a permanent nuclear waste storage location since 1999 and have not come closer to finding one since then, because every time the current favorites are revealed the "not in my backyard" screeching starts and local politicials force a restart of the search. I agree this is a problem, but it isn't one that is unsolvable. It's a cultural issue, not a physical one. >- Many of the world's nuclear power plants are old, because hardly any new ones have been built in ages, because ... >- The construction of nuclear power plants is unbelievably expensive and takes decades, and much of the know-how on how to build nuclear power plants has been lost in europe over the past decades because so few are being built, which drives up the costs even further. This isn't inherent, it can change, especially with political need. >- We still have 7 years of CO2 budget in Germany, so why do some politicians talk about building new ones, although they would only be finished in 20 years at the earliest (and we in DE can't even get the berlin airport built in anything close to the deadline, how long does a nuclear power plant take then ?) CO2 budgets are now irrelevant currently. China and Russia do not give a shit about CO2 emissions; their energy and GDP are heavily dependent on them. Globalization was the only mechanism that allowed the world to enforce these two countries to behave with emissions, and with the ongoing breakdown of the globalized system, there's no reason they'll reduce emissions. Why cripple Germany's economy to meet a target that the world's largest emitters aren't willing to get anywhere close to? >- Budgets for nuclear power plants take budget away from renewables Possible, but renewables have their own downsides, which are well articulated everywhere. >- We have to change from a centralised to a decentralised grid, nuclear power is a step in the wrong direction Why? >- Nuclear power plants make us dependent on dictators How? How does solar not do the same, in the case of China? 80% of the world's solar panels are made in China, in fact, that rely heavily on the consumption of Coal to produce. Source: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/14/us-chinese-solar-panels-green-tech-strategy/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/14/us-chinese-solar-panels... >- Climate change has an impact on reactor operations. With global warming, extreme weather events are on the rise. Unlike renewables, however, nuclear power plants are not adaptable. Rather, their danger increases in our changing climatic conditions. This makes sense, but I'd suggest that it's probably possible to take this into reactor design. >- Our neighbour france has heavily invested in nuclear power and is is a complete shtshow. Source on this, I don't know much about it. I've heard only good things about France's nuclear program.
  • xorcist 4y ago
    Probably not from Germany, are you? The greens were not part of this decision when it was actually made. Yes, there was some anti-nuclear sentiment after Fukushima which made for an opportunity. But it was long in the running. Both the SPD and CSU/CDU had interests here. Lots have been written on this in established media, should you wish to delve deeper.
    • coffeeblack 4y ago
      The original shut down decision was made by the first SPD/Greens coalition under Schröder. The Merkel government then stopped it, then resumed it again. And now Greens try to claim it wasn’t their fault, despite it being the foundation of their party since the mid-1980s.
      • bakuninsbart 4y ago
        Yes, but the original plan of the Greens seeked to use nuclear power as a transitional technology to first replace coal. While the build up of renewable energy in Germany during the last 2 decades is very impressive, adding more gas to the mix certainly looks idiotic in hindsight. This wasn't the Greens fault, as they haven't been in government since 2005. They are now the ones having to deal with it though.
      • monkeyshelli 4y ago
        I hope there would be some investigational journalism to dig out how much money flooded from Russia towards lobbying this to happen..
        • DocTomoe 4y ago
          There are plausible reports that money flew from Big Oil to anti-nuclear groups, so ... the Russians would have been in good company.
          • coffeeblack 4y ago
            “There are plausible reports” should probably be followed by a link or two.
• droffel 4y ago
  I've been hearing the same line about nuclear plants taking decades to be built for decades, as if its a valid dismissal. As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was a decade ago, the second best time is now. We should be scaling up our nuclear capacity.
  • JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
    The best time to plant a radioactive tree in your yard is never.
  • pydry 4y ago
    Solar farms take six months. Wind farms 2-3 years. Pumped storage takes ~5 years and theres no shortage of locations: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-spot-530-000-potential-pumped-hydro-sites-to-meet-all-our-renewable-energy-needs https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-spot-530-000-potenti... A non nuclear mix is also cheaper and isnt uninsurable without a catastrophe liability waiver. The best time to build a nuclear plant is 40 years ago.
    • cuteboy19 4y ago
      Pumped storage is cool but way more situational than you think
    • hokkos 4y ago
      I have read several of those studies with an automated workflow to find suitable pumped hydro/wind/solar and they consistently miss local awareness. They often use deeply inaccurate land cover classification when the simple usage of open street map could have helped, and for hydro they underestimate the recent local opposition to destroy a village to build a dam.
      • gonzo41 4y ago
        There's a lot of low hanging fruit in the hydro landscape that people miss. I have a rivulet that runs near my house. It has weir dams at a few locations on it's path down our mountain, IT wouldn't be that hard to extract energy from the constant flowing water there to feed into the grid. There are turbines that exist to extract energy from a meter high head of water. Everyone thinks about power like you need one big dam, or one big plant (coal or otherwise). There's a lot of small fast flowing streams that have potential to create extra energy. I think hydro needs to be reimagined. IT always need to flood valleys to be in the mix.
• FooBarWidget 4y ago
  Ten years ago was also when everybody was scared of nuclear, even more than today.
• baskethead 4y ago
  It's only slow because of ridiculous and unnescessary regulations around it. They can easily speed things up while still keeping it safe, but their (and our/US's) laws are kicking themselves in the butt.
• usr1106 4y ago
  In Western Europe (in a political meaning) only Finland has tried for several decades. It's now 12 years behind schedule and the official message is that it will be running in winter (colder in Finland than in many othe places) when the lack of Russian energy will become most visible. Direct import of electricity and gas from Russia have been already stopped. At the moment that's not a problem because it's summer and you can import from other European countries. I'd be very suprised if you can do that in winter. If the nuclear power plant is not ready people will sit in the cold in 6 months from now. Or they will compromise on safety and just run the plant anyway. It is already loaded. No idea what will happen, but I should stop discussing on HN and order firewood.
• coffeeblack 4y ago
  Build? In Germany, we had plenty nuclear power plants. Then we turned them off and destroyed them.