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No doubt a hard decision, but IMHO it's correct. Accidents do happen and are extremely hard to deal with. Trying to increase safety has resulted in expences and
by so-and-so 3y ago
No doubt a hard decision, but IMHO it's correct. Accidents do happen and are extremely hard to deal with. Trying to increase safety has resulted in expences and construction time hugely increasing. The only countries that can deliver nuclear reactors mostly on time and on budget (China, Russia, SK) are the ones that are known to skip on safety.
- christkv 3y agoYou do realize that France right next door has tons of reactors and are building more.
- flask_manager 3y ago[flagged]
- skrause 3y ago> are building more Fun fact: In the last 20 years France has reduced its nuclear power output by just about the same total amount as Germany. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-energy-generation?tab=chart&country=FRA%7EDEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-energy-generation...
- _rrnv 3y agoPlus Czech Rep, Austria (and Switzerland) all have plenty of nuclear plants and energy, and will fight the EU to keep them. Germany stance is ideological at best and irrational at worst. Time will tell if it works well for German in the end. Unfortunately their recent track record with risky decisions is not great (I refer to the refugee crisis and the reliance on russian gas).
- bayesian_horse 3y agoBullshit. There was no "decision" in the refugee crisis, we had to take in the refugees because of our constitution and frankly because we (constitutionally and fortunately) don't have the means to get rid of them even if we wanted to. So far everything works well for Germany. Relying on Russian gas meant cheaper power for quite some time. Hard to tell if alternatives would have fared better. Hindsight is always 20/20. Putin's invasion of Ukraine is irrational from any standpoint and not expecting him and his country shooting themselves in their feet that way wasn't illogical.
- _ph_ 3y agoTo be honest, there were plenty of warnings. Putins wars in Chechenia, Georgia. And he actually invaded Ukraine in 2014. That was the last date after which the German government should have planned for a future without gas from Russia.
- bayesian_horse 3y agoWhich isn't what you and others said at the time, I'd guess. Hardly anyone was advocating for this. None of the major parties for certain. Nobody wanted more expensive energy.
- _ph_ 3y agoSorry, why would you say such a thing about me? I was actually quite concerned by the absence of a strong international and especially German reaction to the invasion of 2014. Especially it became obvious, that all the Nordstream pipelines were a weapon against the Ukraine.
- bayesian_horse 3y agoThose voices just weren't there and it is plenty easy and convenient to say "I was concerned way before everybody else knew of the problem."
- _ph_ 3y agoSure, but I wonder which basis you have to attack me personally. Especially since we mostly seem to agree on the topic of the discussion.
- bayesian_horse 3y agoI don't believe people are special.
- Hitton 3y ago>Austria You are completely wrong there, Austria is the biggest anti-nuclear zealot in EU, they are the reason why investments into nuclear are not considered green (effectively stifling development of it).
- mixermachine 3y agoFrance needs to buy electricity from Germany because reactors are down or can not function because the river used for cooling is to hot already. Water problems will get worse in the following years. The nuclear operating company is bankrupt and needed to be nationalized. Not really the best look for nuclear. In other countries it might work better.
- illiarian 3y ago> France needs to buy electricity from Germany because reactors are down or can not function because the river used for cooling is to hot already. Right now electricity maps shows that France produces 60% of electricity from nuclear, imports zero from Germany, and exports 6% of generated electricity to UK. Also right now Germany generates 26% from coal and 9% from gas.
- bayesian_horse 3y agoJust wait until the summer. Also exports from Germany to France did indeed decline due to the transition.
- mixermachine 3y agoHere is the historical data https://www.ceicdata.com/en/germany/electricity-imports-and-exports/electricity-imports-france#:~:text=Germany%20Electricity%20Imports%3A%20France%20data,Dec%202022%2C%20with%20396%20observations https://www.ceicdata.com/en/germany/electricity-imports-and-....
- illiarian 3y agoDoesn't this show how much Germany imports from France?
- mixermachine 3y agoI read it the other way but I can be wrong. Still Germany is reported as a net exporter: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-extends-power-exports-neighbours-2023-01-05/#:~:text=Germany%20is%20famous%20as%20a,an%20energy%20crisis%20at%20home.&text=France%2C%20Switzerland%20and%20Austria%20increased,Czech%20Republic%2C%20Belgium%20and%20Norway https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-....
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- illiarian 3y ago> China, Russia, SK) are the ones that are known to skip on safety And you have sources on this except opinions and FUD?
- bayesian_horse 3y ago[flagged]
- illiarian 3y ago[flagged]
- bayesian_horse 3y ago[flagged]
- illiarian 3y ago[flagged]
- bayesian_horse 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoFlamewar will get you banned on HN. You posted dozens(!) of comments in this thread and in several places broke the site guidelines extremely badly. If you do this again, we will have to ban you. No more of this whatsoever, please. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines badly and frequently—mostly on the nuclear topic, about which you've been perpetuating vast and dreadful flamewars—but also on other topics. This is seriously not cool. I've therefore banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
- rhn_mk1 3y agoThat position might have had some merit if the replacement wasn't lignite burning plants, which score way worse on safety.
- bayesian_horse 3y agoIt's not the replacement. The argument that "lignite" plants replaced nuclear power is mostly wrong. Especially not long term. But this argument is highly convenient for people who are delusional over the benefits of nuclear power.
- rhn_mk1 3y agoThere is a distinct increase of coal-burning plants in the article a couple years ago, suggesting that they are partially a replacement. But what I actually want to highlight is that every nuclear plant closed instead of a closed coal plant shows how much safety is valued by those making decisions. Because coal plants have been allowed to remain after forced closure of nuclear plants, safety is not the actual reason why nuclear plants are removed in Germany.
- bayesian_horse 3y agoThose coal plants aren't operating at peak capacity, or at all, in some case. The suggestion they are replacing nuclear power 1:1 is a highly convenient lie. The idea that coal power is less safe is bullshit. Nuclear power carries tail-heavy risk, coal plants have much more predictable risk. Nuclear power is only safer if you assume nothing happens that didn't happen in the past few decades and nobody actually deliberately blows up a nuclear power plant. Once you can't assume both, all risk calculations for nuclear power are meaningless.
- rhn_mk1 3y agoOperating at less than peak capacity doesn't make burning coal any more healthy, and doesn't make the decision to not retire them any more safety-oriented.
- lawn 3y agoSafety you say? How many people do you think have died from nuclear reactor accidents the last century? I ask because they're shockingly few. In fact more people have died from radiation from coal plants than from nuclear plants. The safety argument isn't based on numbers, but on fear.
- bayesian_horse 3y agoPast history is a bad indicator for future risk when the costs are so high. And the reason why there were so few fatalities was because huge chunks of land have been evacuated every time and costly cleanup operations have been undertaken. The risk is not just lives lost, but rather the impact on those countries' economy.
- brazzy 3y ago> I ask because they're shockingly few. Only if you believe the official numbers about Chernobyl, which are worthless. The Soviet Union and later Russia was not being transparent. > The safety argument isn't based on numbers, but on fear. Very well-founded fear, based on how bad nuclear accidents can be, how bad people suck at adhering to safety protocols when there haven't been accidents for a long time, and the possibility of such accidents even being caused intentionally.
- peterfirefly 3y ago> Only if you believe the official numbers about Chernobyl, which are worthless. The Soviet Union and later Russia was not being transparent. Take the worst number you can possibly imagine and then compare it with known numbers for hydropower. I'll take nuclear, thank you very much.
- faeriechangling 3y agoNuclear power plants continue to have a DRAMATICALLY better safety record than the lignite plants that Germany continues to operate, so your argument doesn't make sense to me. Dramatic as in we could have a yearly nuclear meltdown worldwide and the safety record would still be better. If anything you're more pointing out how hysterics over nuclear safety ended up endangering lives in practice by promoting the use of more dangerous forms of energy which don't arouse public fears as much since they kill people in an indirect and gradual way with unclear causation. Whereas nuclear kills people directly and suddenly with obvious causation.
- bayesian_horse 3y agoYou ignore fat-tail risks. The incident in Fukushima is already hugely expensive and the expense keeps growing. Relying on past frequencies for future risk assessment is dangerous, especially when there is this high of a cost. Especially on the organization level of the decision makers: Maybe on average the risk for the global population is acceptable, but if a country like Germany loses part of its territory to a nuclear accident, that would be huge tragedy for the country and its economy. Germany is NOT replacing nuclear with lignite 1:1, much less in the long term. Anyone who says so is lying. And even those plants MAY have more risk, but that risk is hugely more predictable!
- faeriechangling 3y agoI am accounting for fat tail risks, I'm literally accounting for a nuclear accident happening every year, how is that not a "Fat tail risk"? The plausible fat tail of nuclear accidents being the everyday of lignite is the problem, the death toll of lignite is in the ballpark of 1000x higher. Having CONSISTENTLY 1000x higher deaths is not really a merit. Sure nuclear meltdowns making territory unusuable sucks, but the mining does actually present a fair amount of ecological damage itself, and I think there's more metrics than potential territory loss. Notably lignites causes more radiation to enter the atmosphere, but unlike nuclear, this isn't neatly concentrated in one area people can just stay out of, which isn't conducive to people not dying. I could maybe humour the argument that nuclear waste storage (Even accounting for these being very little of it, there will be very little of it for a very long time) or especially nuclear power plants encouraging nuclear weapons development being fat tail risks, but accidents, no. We're never going to see dramatic nuclear meltdowns even get close to causing the death toll of lignite, it just is way too implausible.
- dghughes 3y agoThere are many types of nuclear reactors and fuel types used. They can be quite different in operation and risk.
- bayesian_horse 3y agoAnd most of them are not a commercial reality or viable option for at least a decade or so...
- igravious 3y agoThe Soviets had one accident: Chernobyl. The USA had one: Three Mile Island. The Japanese had one: Fukushima. To the best of my knowledge China has had none and South Korea have had none and the Russians (non-Soviets) have had none. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/safety-of-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec...
- bayesian_horse 3y agoThe Chinese ramp up in nuclear power is fairly decent. Give them time. Unfortunately I don't think they will have more luck in terms of safety, rather the opposite... The Fukushima incident was a result of regulations being too weak or ignored and the government not keeping good enough tabs on the operator. I really don't think the Chinese government does a better job. They suck at regulating and enforcing plenty of things they care about.