5 ms·

They could have instead replaced the fossil fuel electrical generation with those renewables, and kept the nuclear plants. That would have been a massive reduct

by mabbo 4y ago

They could have instead replaced the fossil fuel electrical generation with those renewables, and kept the nuclear plants. That would have been a massive reduction in carbon emissions by Germany. Odd choice.

legulere 4y ago
I would agree, especially from the standpoint of today, but I guess you have to see things historically. Issues with nuclear like fallout from Chernobyl still leading to contamination today in German or bad handling of nuclear waste at the Asse II mine have been a topic in German society for a very long time. The climate crisis picked up as a topic only really in the late 90s. That explains the first nuclear exit plan in 2000. The current exit from 2011 was a direct reaction to what happened in Fukushima. I mean even today you still have plenty of people and company that think that there is still a lot of time before more action must be taken against climate change.
- asdff 4y ago
  But isn't it scary that political decisions about energy are made on reactionary terms rather than engineering terms? An engineer would not have said "we have to stop nuclear power," because of accidents, they would have studied those accidents and developed methods to mitigate them. This is why airlines are safe, because of past accidents that were deeply tragic and catastrophic but often went on to stymie some shortcoming of aircraft that wasn't apparent in modelling and testing that had been done at that point. If we reacted to aircraft disasters how the German government reacted to nuclear energy disasters that didn't even happen within their own borders, we'd be back to using clipper ships to cross the Atlantic in three weeks. This is regressive thinking that hurts our species overall, not progressive thinking that leads to technological improvements and benefits for our species.
  - dorgo 4y ago
    > they would have studied those accidents and developed methods to mitigate them. So, eartchquakes and tsunamis were a new developement in japan. The engineers had never a chance to study them and develope methods to mitigate risks for nuclear plants? If plane crashes would endanger whole countries or continents we would ban air traffic all together.
    - asdff 4y ago
      Fukushima was actually preventable. There were other reactors in the Tsunami zone that were fine because they were designed for these magnitude events. The fact that Fukushima happened as it did was because engineers with knowledge on international standards were not let into the decision making process. If anything Fukushima is an argument about the dangers of allowing energy production to be controlled by a private company that will focus on its bottom line moreso than engineering best practices (this might ring familiar to people affected by PG&E wildfires). (1). That being said, fukushima still worked as intended and no radiation leaked out. And plane crashes can and did endanger entire countries in the past, such as 9/11 where hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afganistan civilians went on to die because of a plane crash in new york city. However, we responded to 9/11 by engineering better protocols, like installing a door lock to the pilots cabin and preventing the carrying on of certain blades. There were other times too when a plane crash threatened an entire country, such as when the soviet union shot down an airliner and caused a serious diplomatic incident as a result. 1. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2014.0379 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2014.037...
  - freeqaz 4y ago
    I really like the way that you have phrased this here. This analogy is succinct and helpful. Thank you!
  - cedilla 4y ago
    It is scary, but it's not quite what happened. The original nuclear exit was a plan over some decades and included a clear exit from coal power as well. It also included a multi billion dollar plan to accelerate renewable energy as well, one that still reaps dividends today. Unfortunately, the Merkel government stopped these subsidies and dragged its feet regarding renewables for sixteen years. The flip-flopping stance regarding nuclear didn't help either, of course.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
    - HyperSane 4y ago
      And now Germany has the most expensive electricity in the world.
      - legulere 4y ago
        Electricity in France is more expensive on the market. It’s just cheaper for households because of subsidies.
- qwytw 4y ago
  What about fallout from burning coal? Which is much worse than what reached Germany after Chernobyl .
- panick21_ 4y ago
  > Issues with nuclear like fallout from Chernobyl still leading to contamination today in German What you mean is that fraudulent anti-science organization use it to fear monger to get people to do what they tell them to. The actual contamination is a literal non issue. If nobody ever talked about it and nobody ever did anything about it exactly 0 people would get hurt. > Asse II mine have been a topic in German society for a very long time. More fear mongering for the most part. Had all the money they wasted on Asse II been spent on new nuclear plants, they would literally have saved 1000s of people instead.
Archelaos 4y ago
Yes. But they produces nuclear wast and a melt down could devastate wide regions. Glad that this will all be over soon. I was a victim of the Chernobyl fallout myself, and would not like to experience this again.
- varajelle 4y ago
  How were you a victim? if I may ask
  - Archelaos 4y ago
    I was a teenager at that time in southern Germany. Most disturbing was that news about the radioactive cloud trickled in only days after the disaster and then only very, very gradually. It were the first nice, sunny and warm days of spring, but people went outside only when absolutely necessary, because of this invisible threat. No one knew how much there was to come, where it might hit, and how long it might last[1] or how this might affect one's future health or that of unborn babies, etc., etc. After some very high concentrations were found in specific spots such as air filters month after the disaster,[2] people were afraid of using the ventilations of their cars. I remember that there were reports of some particularly high meassurements in sandpits on children's playgrounds, that unsettled people badly. It is easy to say that on average nuclear energy is not so terrible, when you were never personally confronted with what happens when you lose the bet. Then an abstract idea is becoming very real. You realise that one day someone else will have to pay the price, or you yourself again: What if the next accident happens not in the Soviet Union or Japan, but in one of the power plants next door? This experience, shared by millions of people, has done much to cast doubt on the claims that such risks are technically controllable. And the climate protection argument also appears to many to be nothing more than propaganda, because it comes from the same parties and companies that supported likewise nuclear, coal and gas, but downplayed climat change and other environmental issues for decades. Their actions and lobbying helped to create our current situation by slowing down the switch to renewable energies and postponing stricter regulations on energy saving. -- Shall we trust them now after so many failures? [1] Mushrooms in some areas of southern Germany are still highly contaminated. But that was one of the least of our concerns in those days. [2] I found an old article from Der Spiegel from 1986 reporting 500,000 Bq/m^2 filter: https://www.spiegel.de/politik/dicke-luft-um-verseuchte-filter-a-dc8d3a9d-0002-0001-0000-000013517954 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/dicke-luft-um-verseuchte-filt... (in German)
plextoria 4y ago
It would have made tens of thousands of coal industry workers jobless and CDU/SPD needed those votes. Yikes After the closure of the nuclear plants, the share of electricity generated from coal INCREASED

by mabbo 4y ago

legulere 4y ago

I would agree, especially from the standpoint of today, but I guess you have to see things historically. Issues with nuclear like fallout from Chernobyl still leading to contamination today in German or bad handling of nuclear waste at the Asse II mine have been a topic in German society for a very long time. The climate crisis picked up as a topic only really in the late 90s. That explains the first nuclear exit plan in 2000. The current exit from 2011 was a direct reaction to what happened in Fukushima. I mean even today you still have plenty of people and company that think that there is still a lot of time before more action must be taken against climate change.

asdff 4y ago
But isn't it scary that political decisions about energy are made on reactionary terms rather than engineering terms? An engineer would not have said "we have to stop nuclear power," because of accidents, they would have studied those accidents and developed methods to mitigate them. This is why airlines are safe, because of past accidents that were deeply tragic and catastrophic but often went on to stymie some shortcoming of aircraft that wasn't apparent in modelling and testing that had been done at that point. If we reacted to aircraft disasters how the German government reacted to nuclear energy disasters that didn't even happen within their own borders, we'd be back to using clipper ships to cross the Atlantic in three weeks. This is regressive thinking that hurts our species overall, not progressive thinking that leads to technological improvements and benefits for our species.
- dorgo 4y ago
  > they would have studied those accidents and developed methods to mitigate them. So, eartchquakes and tsunamis were a new developement in japan. The engineers had never a chance to study them and develope methods to mitigate risks for nuclear plants? If plane crashes would endanger whole countries or continents we would ban air traffic all together.
  - asdff 4y ago
    Fukushima was actually preventable. There were other reactors in the Tsunami zone that were fine because they were designed for these magnitude events. The fact that Fukushima happened as it did was because engineers with knowledge on international standards were not let into the decision making process. If anything Fukushima is an argument about the dangers of allowing energy production to be controlled by a private company that will focus on its bottom line moreso than engineering best practices (this might ring familiar to people affected by PG&E wildfires). (1). That being said, fukushima still worked as intended and no radiation leaked out. And plane crashes can and did endanger entire countries in the past, such as 9/11 where hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afganistan civilians went on to die because of a plane crash in new york city. However, we responded to 9/11 by engineering better protocols, like installing a door lock to the pilots cabin and preventing the carrying on of certain blades. There were other times too when a plane crash threatened an entire country, such as when the soviet union shot down an airliner and caused a serious diplomatic incident as a result. 1. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2014.0379 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2014.037...
- freeqaz 4y ago
  I really like the way that you have phrased this here. This analogy is succinct and helpful. Thank you!
- cedilla 4y ago
  It is scary, but it's not quite what happened. The original nuclear exit was a plan over some decades and included a clear exit from coal power as well. It also included a multi billion dollar plan to accelerate renewable energy as well, one that still reaps dividends today. Unfortunately, the Merkel government stopped these subsidies and dragged its feet regarding renewables for sixteen years. The flip-flopping stance regarding nuclear didn't help either, of course.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    And now Germany has the most expensive electricity in the world.
    - legulere 4y ago
      Electricity in France is more expensive on the market. It’s just cheaper for households because of subsidies.
qwytw 4y ago
What about fallout from burning coal? Which is much worse than what reached Germany after Chernobyl .
panick21_ 4y ago
> Issues with nuclear like fallout from Chernobyl still leading to contamination today in German What you mean is that fraudulent anti-science organization use it to fear monger to get people to do what they tell them to. The actual contamination is a literal non issue. If nobody ever talked about it and nobody ever did anything about it exactly 0 people would get hurt. > Asse II mine have been a topic in German society for a very long time. More fear mongering for the most part. Had all the money they wasted on Asse II been spent on new nuclear plants, they would literally have saved 1000s of people instead.

Archelaos 4y ago

Yes. But they produces nuclear wast and a melt down could devastate wide regions. Glad that this will all be over soon. I was a victim of the Chernobyl fallout myself, and would not like to experience this again.

varajelle 4y ago
How were you a victim? if I may ask
- Archelaos 4y ago
  I was a teenager at that time in southern Germany. Most disturbing was that news about the radioactive cloud trickled in only days after the disaster and then only very, very gradually. It were the first nice, sunny and warm days of spring, but people went outside only when absolutely necessary, because of this invisible threat. No one knew how much there was to come, where it might hit, and how long it might last[1] or how this might affect one's future health or that of unborn babies, etc., etc. After some very high concentrations were found in specific spots such as air filters month after the disaster,[2] people were afraid of using the ventilations of their cars. I remember that there were reports of some particularly high meassurements in sandpits on children's playgrounds, that unsettled people badly. It is easy to say that on average nuclear energy is not so terrible, when you were never personally confronted with what happens when you lose the bet. Then an abstract idea is becoming very real. You realise that one day someone else will have to pay the price, or you yourself again: What if the next accident happens not in the Soviet Union or Japan, but in one of the power plants next door? This experience, shared by millions of people, has done much to cast doubt on the claims that such risks are technically controllable. And the climate protection argument also appears to many to be nothing more than propaganda, because it comes from the same parties and companies that supported likewise nuclear, coal and gas, but downplayed climat change and other environmental issues for decades. Their actions and lobbying helped to create our current situation by slowing down the switch to renewable energies and postponing stricter regulations on energy saving. -- Shall we trust them now after so many failures? [1] Mushrooms in some areas of southern Germany are still highly contaminated. But that was one of the least of our concerns in those days. [2] I found an old article from Der Spiegel from 1986 reporting 500,000 Bq/m^2 filter: https://www.spiegel.de/politik/dicke-luft-um-verseuchte-filter-a-dc8d3a9d-0002-0001-0000-000013517954 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/dicke-luft-um-verseuchte-filt... (in German)

plextoria 4y ago

It would have made tens of thousands of coal industry workers jobless and CDU/SPD needed those votes. Yikes After the closure of the nuclear plants, the share of electricity generated from coal INCREASED