20 ms·
Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy
- hunglee2 4y agounfortunately, as energy strategy is a multi-decadal commitment, the decisions on what to do should not be left to mercurial changes in popular sentiment
- djohnston 4y agoThey were making the wrong decision for decades, moving away from nuclear while continuing to increase dependence on Russian gas (against the advice of 4-5 different US administrations). I agree that strategies shouldn't be made on knee jerk changes in public sentiment, but in this case the public is just starting to understand the correct answer that was always there.
- danhor 4y agoThe move away from nuclear and the move towards gas are more-or-less unconnected. After the (currently in place) decision to shut of nuclear from 2011, the gas part of the electricity first dipped a bit, then went a bit above 2010 levels after 2019. But it's not like our dependency on gas for electricity was radically different before the decision to exit nuclear (at least the current one) and right now. If you prioritized getting away from fossil fuels, instead of nuclear, the current situations might look differently but I don't think that would've been politically feasible. If nuclear were just left running and providing 22% of german electricity, I don't think we'd be in a much better situation right now. The major issue isn't electricity, but other forms of energy usage like heating. But that wasn't ever something done with electricity (at least on a large scale) in germany, even in the nuclear heyday (as opposed to france).
- hef19898 4y agoIn Germany we had one well thought out decision regarding nuclear power. That was over turned twice due to "sentiment", maybe a third time now. And everytime that hapened it turned out, well, not perfect.
- btilly 4y agoSo are you saying that Germany should continue its multi-decadal course towards being dependent on Russia for its energy needs? As Winston Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried." Yes, its shortcomings are obvious. But it is still worth accepting.
- machtfurden 4y ago
- osigurdson 4y agoHaving to “cuddle under blankets” is one thing, frozen pipes and water damage is another.
- rullelito 4y agoJust embarrasing that it had to go this far before Germans realized.
- _ph_ 4y agoWhy would you think, pipes would be freezing? Besides the fact that due to climate change really cold winters have been rare, the current szenario just is to reduce room temperature to like 19 degrees, not stop heating alltogether.
- cgb223 4y agoCan any Germans on HN explain why Germany finds it preferable to give up their energy independence in nuclear and instead buy it from their potential adversary in Russia? What possible advantages are there to buying the resource that literally keeps the lights on from a country that you have conflicts with?
- djohnston 4y agoThere are some good podcasts on this, you can find one on Guardian Long Reads: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/germany-dependence-russian-energy-gas-oil-nord-stream https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/germany-depend... The tldr; is it started with a stated goal of <10% dependence, thinking that by creating the first pipeline they would open up trade and normalize relations. This is a good goal especially since Germany was split in half at the time. Unfortunately through some combination of greed, complacency, and dumb nuclear strategy, dependency kept ratcheting up over the decades, slowly boiling the frog into the disaster soup we have today.
- DrBazza 4y agoCND in the Uk pretty much helped set the Uk on a similar path of “nuclear bad”.
- ren_engineer 4y agobecause their anti-nuclear environmental groups were actually being funded by Russia behind the scenes. And there are still fools who think that economic integration somehow prevents wars, which was shown to be false after WWI. These people said if Europe just paid a bunch of money for Russian energy they'd obviously never attack them. See what's happening with China and the US as more proof that handing over your economy doesn't placate anybody
- Ygg2 4y agoYou're going to need some citation on that Russia connection.
- WalterBright 4y ago> The results are astounding all around Faced with burning wood to keep warm in winter, the results are entirely predictable.
- cinntaile 4y agoMost households burn gas at home for heating. Sure if there is no gas, you can use an electrical heater but that won't be cheap.
- seydor 4y agoproblem is germany uses russian gas for electricity
- silon42 4y agoback to coal gas it is?
- seydor 4y agogermany also uses a lot of coal https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=stacked_absolute_area https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...
- cinntaile 4y agoMost is used for heating and industrial processes. Only 15% of Germany's electricity production uses gas, although the use is likely not evenly distributed (gas peakers).
- cypress66 4y agoHeat pumps aren't necessarily more expensive than gas, and they are cleaner than gas heaters if the electricity is clean (such as nuclear)
- cinntaile 4y ago
- tpmx 4y agoAnd still the current plan is for Germany to shut down its few remaining nuclear reactors by the end of the year, while the company/companies maintaining them are saying they can keep them running? Please stop the shutdown, ffs, are you insane? Let's try to stop Germany from harming itself further via international pressure. Blame and shame. Call them idiots to their faces. Point fingers. They need to shocked. The germans seem to need to need a healthy dose of sanity/science. Their politics have been hijacked by anti-nuclear anti-science activists for too long. Their celebrated "Mittelstand" industry is no good if they can't provide basic functions such as electric power in a clean way, but then again I'm not really sure they care.
- cloutchaser 4y ago
- looperhacks 4y agoIf you are referring to the latest discussion about a specific plant (Isar 2), the company running the plant (e.on) wants to shut it down. The discussion came up because the TÜV Süd (internationally mostly known for certifying that dam in Brazil one year before it killed 270 people because it was not safe and broke) certified that the plant is safe, but pretty much everyone involved claimed that the certificate is bogus (and the public image of the TÜV Süd is pretty bad anyway).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tpmx 4y ago
- koheripbal 4y agoThere are three remaining plants in Germany, all scheduled to shut down this year. The Government doubled-down on it's decision claiming that the plants didn't have the resources to continue operations. In a rare moment, the operators of the plants embarrassed the gov't by going public that they could indeed continue to run safely. One thing to note is that the prime minister appointed the head German head of Greenpeace to the cabinet this year - who is ideologically against any form of nuclear power, regardless of safety.
- cycomanic 4y agoIt is interesting to note how everyone talks about the dependency on gas in Germany, while nobody mentions France. If we look at the two graphs: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Energy_mix_in_France.svg/1280px-Energy_mix_in_France.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/En... https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/abm6r4/germanys_energy_mix_keeps_getting_cleaner_as_coal/ https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/abm6r4/germanys_en... We can see that both Germany and France use about the same percentage of gas in their energy mix. Making this discussion a reason to revive nuclear is quite dishonest.
- swsieber 4y agoConsidering that France has been increasing the amount of nuclear in their mix, I think it's worth discussing nuclear for Germany and renewable for France.
- dv_dt 4y agoFrance seems to be unintentionally decreasing nuclear in their mix because of unreliability. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/paris-faces-an-evencolder-darker-winter-than-berlin/2022/07/29/6d2fe282-0efb-11ed-88e8-c58dc3dbaee2_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/paris-faces-a...
- cycomanic 4y agoBut they haven't, did you look at the graph (here is another one for electricity only https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:France_Electricity_production_1981-2017_(EIA).png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:France_Electricity_prod...)? The portion of nuclear has remained constant since the late 90s. Also France at the moment has turned off between 40 and 100% (I read about 40%, but saw 100% on TV some weeks ago) of their nuclear power plants, due to heat and maintance. Guess who is picking up the shortfall at the moment, German renewables and coal.
- panick21_ 4y ago> The portion of nuclear has remained constant since the late 90s. That just reflects the failure of French state to continue to invest. The socialist and green party based on general anti-nuclear sentiment stopped much of the investment.
- LightG 4y agoDoesn't the very current issue of Ukraine and Russia using a nuclear plant as a war zone give anyone pause? It seems so obvious to at least think twice about this.
- 627467 4y agoCan't help but observe on how incapable are human societies to make long term critical rational decisions. It never really made sense to say "we are going to phase out nuclear entirely" instead of "we'll focus on how to build safer, cheaper and more efficient nuclear". The decision to go off nuclear was capricious and it seems that the speed with which sentiment is changing only proves this.
- LatteLazy 4y agoNuclear requires exactly the sort of long term rational decision making you decry the lack of. That's the nice thing about other energy sources, they don't require 1000 years of self discipline and self denial...
- galacticaactual 4y agoReally? Because self denial and lack of self discipline is how western society got to a point where the majority of its raw material supply chain and processing capability for green energy hardware (like solar panels) is dependent on an autocratic and genocidal communist country.
- mccorrinall 4y agoExactly. Why did holes into the earth to store toxic waste when you have literally infinite energy right above your head (sun and wind)?
- theshrike79 4y agoInfinite AND intermittent. Renewables don't work for base load yet.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- adrianN 4y agoThere is currently almost no financial incentive to build storage, because we haven't built enough generation capacity yet. Germany for example gets 40-50% of its electricity from renewables on average and only 1-2% are lost because we don't know what to do with it during times of overproduction. So any storage system would mostly be filled with fossil power right now.
- KingOfCoders 4y agoAs a German I don't care. I just want two things: 1. The energy company pays market rate insurance for their nuclear plants. Not "we take the profit, taxpayers pay for the disaster" 2. The energy company sets up a trust to pay for the safe storage of nuclear waste and cleaning up the plant should they go bust (again "we take ...")
- rullelito 4y agoIsn't this already how it works?
- LatteLazy 4y agoNo, nuclear gets free state insurance and free waste disposal (as well as a bunch of other subsidies). This is why everyone laughs when country claim their nuclear programs are "peaceful power generation projects".
- google234123 4y agoIt would be nice if environmental activists didn’t block us from burying the waste…
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- LatteLazy 4y agoEnvironmental activists and everyone else who is happy for it to be buried but not within 100miles of their house... Plus no operator is paying for disposal, even if there were a magic place willing to accept the stuff.
- ThrowawayTestr 4y agoYes. Unlike gas and coal, nuke plants have to pay to clean up their waste before it's created.
- whatever1 4y agoAnything except building the most straightforward infrastructure for their current distribution system. Regas stations so that they can get LNG from the sea.
- everyone 4y agoI'm worried Russia will cause an "accident" at a nuclear power plant in Ukraine in order to make nuclear less popular with the EU public, and keep the EU dependant on oil. I definitely wouldn't put it past them, considering all the war crimes they have committed so far.
- BonoboIO 4y agoBut nuclear is safe /s
- Jensson 4y agoThey could just load up tons of nuclear waste in planes and sprinkle it over Ukraine to cause the same kind of damage, having a nuclear powerplant lying around in no way makes it easier to cause those disasters. Terrorists doesn't target nuclear powerplants since bombing one doesn't do much, plenty of nuclear plants has been attacked to date and you didn't know since it doesn't cause any significant damage. Main damage from bombing a nuclear plant is that people die from the bombs and areas lose electricity.
- goodpoint 4y ago> Terrorists doesn't target nuclear powerplants since bombing one doesn't do much On the contrary. Even if there is no radiation leak it can cause a panic, which is exactly what terrorist want More importantly, nuclear is the most CENTRALIZED power generation. Destroying transformers or power lines around a plant is easy and leaves millions without electricity. Unlike distributed power generation, like solar and wind.
- _ph_ 4y agoThe thing is, Russia is trying to blame a possible blow up on the Ukrainians. That is their motivation to set it off instead of sprinkling nuclear waste or using nuclear war heads. Never mind all the damage they created around Chernobyl, though mostly contaminating their own troups by camping and digging in the highly contaminated forests around the former power plant. They also destroyed a lot of scientific labs which were controlling the power plant. By the way: Medvedjev made some pretty specific threads against German power plants.
- frasermarlow 4y agoIt's quite informative to see where new power plants are currently under construction, or otherwise being planned. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... India and China are ramping up.
- ernado 4y agoRussia is building 22 reactors (mostly VVER), China 16, Korea 5, India 4, France 3, US 2.
- LatteLazy 4y agoI don't mind nuclear, as long as people are prepared to pay the price at the meter and dispose of the waste. But people aren't prepared to do either...
- hocuspocus 4y agoRecent electricity prices in Europe have proven that intermittent renewables backed by gas are way more expensive than nuclear, if it wasn't obvious already. Nuclear waste disposal is a red herring. It's literally a rounding error compared to the environmental footprint of other means of energy production.
- panick21_ 4y agoActually people are very prepared for that. In the US for example, the US collected a waste fee for 50 years and had many, many billions on an account. Easily enough money to develop the technology for burning up the fuel. Literally many times the money then required. But rather then using rational technology solution politicians grid-locked themselves over an incredibly stupid Yucca Mountain project that makes no sense what so ever. So yes, nuclear 'waste' needs to be managed, but there are well known technology solution. Sadly because people were anti-nuclear politicians rather sold the 'put it into a deep hole' story rather then developing the necessary technology.
- BonoboIO 4y agoMeanwhile in France. Because the temperatures are so high and the continuing drought, the nuclear power plants have to decrease their power output. The cooling water comes from the rivers and the plants have limits how hot the water is allowed to get downstream. Everything would slowly cook in the rivers … Even with temporal exceptions of this environmental rules France became a NET IMPORTER of power. France is like 80% nuclear power electricity. https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/france-risks-winter-blackouts-as-nuclear-power-generation-stalls-11660315467 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/france-risks-winter-blackou...
- aaaaaaaaaaab 4y agoJust use cooling towers... Edit: I'm getting rate-limited, so my answer to the genius observation below, that cooling towers also need water, is the following: Cooling towers evaporate water. Thus the concerns of OP do not apply about overheating the river downstream: >The cooling water comes from the rivers and the plants have limits how hot the water is allowed to get downstream
- _Algernon_ 4y agoCooling towers require a coolant, which is normally water...
- londons_explore 4y agoCooling towers (evaporative chilling) use far less water than cooling directly with river water and returning hot water to the river. About 20x less for the same energy generation. And the water ends up in the atmosphere so usually will end up in additional rain elsewhere in France. You effectively get to use the same water twice, so instead of being 20x less water, it is infinity x less water.
- joecool1029 4y ago>Cooling towers (evaporative chilling) use far less water than cooling directly with river water and returning hot water to the river. Still uses a shitload. A coalition of states around me had the power generation companies install a reservoir so that in summer and drought they could keep the lower Delaware River navigable since so much was evaporated off in the cooling towers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill_Creek_Reservoir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill_Creek_Reservoir
- aagd 4y agoIn Europe, France is the country, which put most of their eggs in the nuclear basket. They have a massive problem with that setup these days, 28 of 56 of the plants are down. Many of the remaining have serious cooling problems because huge rivers like the Loire, have almost dried out. Despite plans to fill all gas storage for next winter, German gas plants still run on full throttle to support France with their current nuclear problems. https://www.google.com/search?q=loire+drought&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=loire+drought&tbm=isch https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/plusminus/teurer-strom-wieso-kraftwerksbetreiber-gerade-kein-gas-sparen/das-erste/Y3JpZDovL2Rhc2Vyc3RlLmRlL3BsdXNtaW51cy81ZWI1NGFlZi1mNTYwLTRhOTYtYTFhZC02ZmJjZjc3ZmY4MWE https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/plusminus/teurer-strom-wie...
- frozencell 4y ago> serious cooling problems because huge rivers like the Loire, have almost dried out. Mostly German lobbies right? Fancy isn’t it.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago"you might freeze in the winter and your gas prices are about to increase 10x" is a great motivator to consider new perspectives
- Cryptonic 4y agoWrong we want them to build modern Nuclear Plants. We want them work together with Bill Gates in it. But the government wants to re-open the plants with the technology of the 70s, these idiots.