4 ms·

In Germany there is still no consent on where to put the nuclear waste. Without that and no other country willing to take our waste, this is a problem. The proc

by riedel 4y ago

In Germany there is still no consent on where to put the nuclear waste. Without that and no other country willing to take our waste, this is a problem. The process e.g. in Switzerland worked much better. It may actually be the very critical thinking that made it impossible to run nuclear plants in Germany. Further the federal structure and the citizen engagement in many decision making processes makes it complicated. Btw, the same problem actually makes a lot of wind power plans stall..

sgu999 4y ago
But they all agree on where to put the leftovers of burning coal until 2038... It makes absolutely no sense to me.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  They're aiming for 2030 now. Their biggest power producer has already signed up for this. Think there's still some plants in Eastern Germany that don't have finalized plans but they'll probably get there. https://www.rwe.com/en/press/rwe-power/2023-01-11-five-villages-and-three-farmsteads-to-remain-former-settlement-of-luetzerath-to-be-demolished/ https://www.rwe.com/en/press/rwe-power/2023-01-11-five-villa...
  - belorn 4y ago
    In the mean time they intend to build fresh new natural gas power plants by 2030 in order to reach 50 GW, up from current capacity of 21 GW. That will be a doubling of natural gas power plants from today.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      That's a perfectly sensible thing to do as part of a decarbonization plan. You seem to be suggesting it's a bad thing, but you don't say why. Here's a 100% renewables plan for Germany that involves building gas capacity of 60% of peak demand and using it and synthetic gas made with renewables as "storage": https://static1.squarespace.com/static/585c3439be65942f022bbf9b/t/627d1bace6fae9594895b608/1652366252977/Germany+SWB+Primer.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/585c3439be65942f022bb... They also provide numbers for doing it just with batteries, and suggest it would only be 2x as expensive. The numbers are a few years old now, so prices and tech have moved on since. Other people now suggest massive oversupply of wind and solar combined with mass EV rollout will make it cheaper to just use batteries, which I generally lean towards: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/585c3439be65942f022bbf9b/t/627d1bace6fae9594895b608/1652366252977/Germany+SWB+Primer.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/585c3439be65942f022bb... But either way, it's not unexpected or weird to build gas capacity when trying to wean yourself of fossil fuels and energy imports. What's important is details like how much you use, whether you capture the carbon, and how you source the gas and whether you are rolling out renewables, heat pumps and EVs sufficiently fast.
      - belorn 4y ago
        Increasing burning of natural gas might have been sensible before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Today it makes the German energy grid one of Europe most expensive grid, and the amount of subsidizes the German government is spending makes practically everything else cheap in comparison. The German government are paying their citizens bills, lower taxes and subsidize most of the construction and operational cost of fossil fuel power plants. Just because the government is paying the bill does not make it cheap. How many more winters with government bailouts can people take before enough is enough? Germany is not going to reach the European climate goals if they continue with building new natural gas power plants. They will also not reach the Paris agreement. It is "a bad thing" to continue burning fossil fuels! There is a lot of technology that exists and future tech that they could be using. The German has instead chosen to use fossil fuels. If we are discussing what they could be doing, what they could make a political decision that when they ban production of new fossil fuel cars they also ban the construction of new fossil fuel power plants. This would be much more real than politician talking about solar and wind while at the same time building tons of natural gas power plants in the backyard.
        ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        You seem to be intentionally missing the point that 'gas plant' and 'burning fossil fuels' are two seperate, though related concepts. https://www.equinor.com/news/20230105-equinor-rwe-cooperation https://www.equinor.com/news/20230105-equinor-rwe-cooperatio... > Construction of new gas power plants (CCGTs), contributing to Germany’s phase-out roadmap for coal. Equinor and RWE will jointly own the CCGTs which initially will be fueled with natural gas and then gradually use hydrogen as fuel with the ambition of fully to be run on hydrogen when volumes and technology are available. > Building production facilities in Norway to produce low carbon hydrogen from natural gas with CCS. More than 95 percent of the CO2 will be captured and stored safely and permanently under the seabed offshore Norway. > Export of hydrogen by pipeline from Norway to Germany. > Joint development of offshore wind farms that will enable production of renewable hydrogen as fuel for power and other industrial customers in the future.
        4y ago
raffraffraff 4y ago
If you could convert the waste into co2 and put it into the sky, that would be better. Right?
api 4y ago
… but you can always build gas plants I’m sure. Same thing is true in parts of the US. Gas somehow doesn’t face the opposition of pretty much anything else.
elcritch 4y ago
Nuclear waste only requires a fraction of the space of what a single large coal mine? It’s still irrational to put you energy security at risk because it’s “nuclear”, especially while wanting green electricity. Also a bit darker thought, but you’d think the chance of nuclear fallout zones that’d keep humans out would be adored by more hardcore environmentalists. I think the sort of environmentalism on display there is more people rallying against what they don’t “comprehend”.
ekianjo 4y ago
> In Germany there is still no consent on where to put the nuclear waste Dig a deep hole, put waste there. This problem has been solved for decades. Germany has no seismic activity either, so that should not be a problem there.
- mdbug 4y ago
  We did that indeed for decades and then it turned out that the site was unsuitable, because of water inflows, and now we have been planning since 2013 how to recover the barrels again. The beginning of the recovery is planned to start in 2033 and is estimated to last for decades. It's not true that Germany has no seismic activity btw.
HyperSane 4y ago
This is a solved problem. You bury the waste deep underground, preferably after reprocessing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
- mdbug 4y ago
  We tried to bury the waste deep underground in the 60s and 70s already. Let's say it didn't work out so well and now we are still planning how to retrieve it since the decision was made in 2013. We have not yet found a geologically suitable site in Germany. In contrast to the less disturbed granites of Finland and Sweden, the formations occurring in Germany are more fractured and thus less suitable. Currently, several salt and clay blocks are being investigated for their suitability as repositories, but they have other problems. (Water solubility for salt and lower stability for clay). "According to the report of the Repository Commission, the final disposal of highly radioactive waste in Germany will drag on well into the 22nd century. The commission expects the end of emplacement to occur between the years 2075 and 2130, while the "state of a sealed repository mine should be reached between 2095 and 2170 or later." Accordingly, highly radioactive waste could be housed in interim storage facilities until after 2100. At the same time, final storage costs are projected to range from about 49 billion to 170 billion euros; significantly more than the 23 billion euros in payments transferred by nuclear power plant operators to the government for this purpose on July 3, 2017." https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endlager_(Kerntechnik)#Weltweite_Situation https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endlager_(Kerntechnik)#Weltwei...
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    Watching Germany do anything related to nuclear energy or waste is like the people in in infomercials failing to do very basic tasks. Get your act together.
    - riedel 4y ago
      I tend to agree. However, turning them off is partially exactly getting the act together. The very big problem is that at the same time particularly southern German states fail to support renewables and power distribution lines. So while there was a time line. One part of the time line was missed. So everyone decided to rather count on Russian gas as an intermediary solution with the known geopolitical consequences that followed. PS: Strange twist: There is a German company that now wants to produce fuel elements for Russian nuclear power plants...

by riedel 4y ago

sgu999 4y ago

But they all agree on where to put the leftovers of burning coal until 2038... It makes absolutely no sense to me.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
They're aiming for 2030 now. Their biggest power producer has already signed up for this. Think there's still some plants in Eastern Germany that don't have finalized plans but they'll probably get there. https://www.rwe.com/en/press/rwe-power/2023-01-11-five-villages-and-three-farmsteads-to-remain-former-settlement-of-luetzerath-to-be-demolished/ https://www.rwe.com/en/press/rwe-power/2023-01-11-five-villa...
- belorn 4y ago
  In the mean time they intend to build fresh new natural gas power plants by 2030 in order to reach 50 GW, up from current capacity of 21 GW. That will be a doubling of natural gas power plants from today.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    That's a perfectly sensible thing to do as part of a decarbonization plan. You seem to be suggesting it's a bad thing, but you don't say why. Here's a 100% renewables plan for Germany that involves building gas capacity of 60% of peak demand and using it and synthetic gas made with renewables as "storage": https://static1.squarespace.com/static/585c3439be65942f022bbf9b/t/627d1bace6fae9594895b608/1652366252977/Germany+SWB+Primer.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/585c3439be65942f022bb... They also provide numbers for doing it just with batteries, and suggest it would only be 2x as expensive. The numbers are a few years old now, so prices and tech have moved on since. Other people now suggest massive oversupply of wind and solar combined with mass EV rollout will make it cheaper to just use batteries, which I generally lean towards: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/585c3439be65942f022bbf9b/t/627d1bace6fae9594895b608/1652366252977/Germany+SWB+Primer.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/585c3439be65942f022bb... But either way, it's not unexpected or weird to build gas capacity when trying to wean yourself of fossil fuels and energy imports. What's important is details like how much you use, whether you capture the carbon, and how you source the gas and whether you are rolling out renewables, heat pumps and EVs sufficiently fast.
    - belorn 4y ago
      Increasing burning of natural gas might have been sensible before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Today it makes the German energy grid one of Europe most expensive grid, and the amount of subsidizes the German government is spending makes practically everything else cheap in comparison. The German government are paying their citizens bills, lower taxes and subsidize most of the construction and operational cost of fossil fuel power plants. Just because the government is paying the bill does not make it cheap. How many more winters with government bailouts can people take before enough is enough? Germany is not going to reach the European climate goals if they continue with building new natural gas power plants. They will also not reach the Paris agreement. It is "a bad thing" to continue burning fossil fuels! There is a lot of technology that exists and future tech that they could be using. The German has instead chosen to use fossil fuels. If we are discussing what they could be doing, what they could make a political decision that when they ban production of new fossil fuel cars they also ban the construction of new fossil fuel power plants. This would be much more real than politician talking about solar and wind while at the same time building tons of natural gas power plants in the backyard.
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        You seem to be intentionally missing the point that 'gas plant' and 'burning fossil fuels' are two seperate, though related concepts. https://www.equinor.com/news/20230105-equinor-rwe-cooperation https://www.equinor.com/news/20230105-equinor-rwe-cooperatio... > Construction of new gas power plants (CCGTs), contributing to Germany’s phase-out roadmap for coal. Equinor and RWE will jointly own the CCGTs which initially will be fueled with natural gas and then gradually use hydrogen as fuel with the ambition of fully to be run on hydrogen when volumes and technology are available. > Building production facilities in Norway to produce low carbon hydrogen from natural gas with CCS. More than 95 percent of the CO2 will be captured and stored safely and permanently under the seabed offshore Norway. > Export of hydrogen by pipeline from Norway to Germany. > Joint development of offshore wind farms that will enable production of renewable hydrogen as fuel for power and other industrial customers in the future.
        4y ago

raffraffraff 4y ago

If you could convert the waste into co2 and put it into the sky, that would be better. Right?

api 4y ago

… but you can always build gas plants I’m sure. Same thing is true in parts of the US. Gas somehow doesn’t face the opposition of pretty much anything else.

elcritch 4y ago

Nuclear waste only requires a fraction of the space of what a single large coal mine? It’s still irrational to put you energy security at risk because it’s “nuclear”, especially while wanting green electricity. Also a bit darker thought, but you’d think the chance of nuclear fallout zones that’d keep humans out would be adored by more hardcore environmentalists. I think the sort of environmentalism on display there is more people rallying against what they don’t “comprehend”.

ekianjo 4y ago

> In Germany there is still no consent on where to put the nuclear waste Dig a deep hole, put waste there. This problem has been solved for decades. Germany has no seismic activity either, so that should not be a problem there.

mdbug 4y ago
We did that indeed for decades and then it turned out that the site was unsuitable, because of water inflows, and now we have been planning since 2013 how to recover the barrels again. The beginning of the recovery is planned to start in 2033 and is estimated to last for decades. It's not true that Germany has no seismic activity btw.

HyperSane 4y ago

This is a solved problem. You bury the waste deep underground, preferably after reprocessing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

mdbug 4y ago
We tried to bury the waste deep underground in the 60s and 70s already. Let's say it didn't work out so well and now we are still planning how to retrieve it since the decision was made in 2013. We have not yet found a geologically suitable site in Germany. In contrast to the less disturbed granites of Finland and Sweden, the formations occurring in Germany are more fractured and thus less suitable. Currently, several salt and clay blocks are being investigated for their suitability as repositories, but they have other problems. (Water solubility for salt and lower stability for clay). "According to the report of the Repository Commission, the final disposal of highly radioactive waste in Germany will drag on well into the 22nd century. The commission expects the end of emplacement to occur between the years 2075 and 2130, while the "state of a sealed repository mine should be reached between 2095 and 2170 or later." Accordingly, highly radioactive waste could be housed in interim storage facilities until after 2100. At the same time, final storage costs are projected to range from about 49 billion to 170 billion euros; significantly more than the 23 billion euros in payments transferred by nuclear power plant operators to the government for this purpose on July 3, 2017." https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endlager_(Kerntechnik)#Weltweite_Situation https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endlager_(Kerntechnik)#Weltwei...
- HyperSane 4y ago
  Watching Germany do anything related to nuclear energy or waste is like the people in in infomercials failing to do very basic tasks. Get your act together.
  - riedel 4y ago
    I tend to agree. However, turning them off is partially exactly getting the act together. The very big problem is that at the same time particularly southern German states fail to support renewables and power distribution lines. So while there was a time line. One part of the time line was missed. So everyone decided to rather count on Russian gas as an intermediary solution with the known geopolitical consequences that followed. PS: Strange twist: There is a German company that now wants to produce fuel elements for Russian nuclear power plants...