7 ms·

The Germans are shutting down perfectly serviceable and world-leading (in terms of safety) nuclear reactors purely out of doctrinaire ideology of the Green Part

• 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.
              • hef19898 4y ago
                Those heaters heat one room, not a house or appartment complex. They consume a ton of electricity, are higly inefficient and don't heat your water supply. And while they maybe cheap (are those cheap ones rated for contonous usage or are they some cheap Wish knockoffs?) they are not available in sufficient numbers... Seriously, how comes that people fail to realize how complex things around them are, like infrastructure? These things are not like a consumer grade app or some ride share business...
                • 4y ago
    • DocTomoe 4y ago
      Just like their brown predecessors promised to do...
  • jcfrei 4y ago
    The German parties advocating a Nuclear exit did so because the Germans wanted them to do so. Nuclear power really wasn't (probably still isn't) popular in Germany.
    • DocTomoe 4y ago
      [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
• 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.