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We have the technology for reliable energy production, it’s called nuclear. For political reasons, we sacrifice our stability, do I get this right? Germany is a
by neverrroot 3y ago
We have the technology for reliable energy production, it’s called nuclear. For political reasons, we sacrifice our stability, do I get this right? Germany is a great example of a country in distress due to such radical political decisions, while still putting out more carbon per unit of energy than all EU countries except one (Polen).
- hef19898 3y agoWhat distress is Germany exactly in that would have been avoided by nuclear power?
- ovi256 3y agoEnergy intensive industries are leaving Germany, and energy bills are more expensive that they'd have to be.
- hef19898 3y agoI hear that all the time, it doesn't show in actual industrial sites being diamantled. That would take much longer than we had this discussion. It worked so, industry will get electricity subsidies now, so that talking point worked great.
- ovi256 3y agoYou should google "Germany industrial site shutdown" and see the closing down announcements. "Chemicals producer BASF to axe jobs at energy intensive production sites in Germany" "Tyre maker Michelin announces closure of German sites" "Rust belt on the Rhine"
- hef19898 3y agoThese news predate renewable energies, read it started back in the 90s (propably eatlier, but that is when I cared enough to remember). You know something else? The majority of chemical sites in Germany is old, and environmental constraints became quite severe. Guess where new investment goes then.
- ovi256 3y agoThese are all closures from 2023
- KingOfCoders 3y agoEnergy intensive industries do not use electricity but gas.And Germany had some pretty below market deals with Russia for the German chem industry. Now it pays the same as everybody else.
- ovi256 3y agoAnd the gas supply bad new are not over. Ukraine's gas transit agreement with Russia, which allows RU to export nat gas through Ukraine to Poland, Germany and Austria, will expire in 2024 and Ukraine doesn't look in an easy mood to renew it.
- ZanyProgrammer 3y agoWell, it is in distress because of their extreme fetish for austerity over a growing economy that is enabling the rise of the far right and Wagenknecht's socially conservative GDR vanity project.
- hef19898 3y agoAnd how would nuclear power have avoided any of that?
- KingOfCoders 3y agowhat extreme fetish for austerity? Compared to what other countries? The rise of the fascists, left an right, is due to refugees and inflation - and Trump style conspiracy theroies. And vaccs. But mainly refugees. Just talk to some AfD voters.
- jen20 3y agoDependence on Russia.
- hef19898 3y agoNot a thing anymore, or am I mistaken?
- throwbadubadu 3y agoStrange that despite claims that this would have happened multiple times (and people freeze and whatsoever) it didn't even come close yet... not sure if your distress becomes real (it hasb already sometimes despite nuclear..) but in Germany it was always pointless wrong panicmakong so far (we are not talking expensive prices but failure)... TLDR: Don't claim the wrong counterexamples for your wrong cause.
- rightbyte 3y agoNuclear seems all but reliable given all the unplanned downtime. I guess it is unavoidable given those plants can poison a whole country and their neighbors if not maintained properly. Oh. And built by the lowest bidder near you where non team players are fired pre-emptivly. There is no way a trust modern corporate management philosophy to build nuclear power plants. The sudden shift in the nuclear power "public sentiment" is really strange and feels artificial.
- gustavus 3y agoI've been screaming it for years but my real guess is the shift to nuclear power is the result of the destabilization of the global geopolitical situation showing that having an energy dependency on foreign nations that you can't always trust to be friendly or behave is a major national security weakness. So nuclear starts to look very attractive because of the guarantee of continual high power output with few dependencies as long as you have the uranium, and isn't as unreliable as renewables.
- somenameforme 3y agoOverall mined uranium supplies are quite limited. Numbers back in 2013 [1] put the total uranium available (including estimated undiscovered resources) at enough to maintain current operations for 230 years. Bump up usage by an order of magnitude, and you're running out in 23 years. And Western countries (mostly Canada/Australia) only produce about 20% of that total. So if nuclear ever became a staple, you'd end up needing to resort to salt-water extraction, or developing breeder reactors. Both would send costs skyrocketing. Salt-water extraction is also going to run into environmental issues given you're talking about processing literally trillions of tons of water (uranium's about 3 parts per billion in saltwater). Breeders also substantially up the stakes in terms of complexity and risk. If you'd indulge my curiosity, what would be your opposition be to something like solar + artificial hydroelectric? It's relatively cheap, infinite (well subject to access to the materials necessary for construction of solar panels), completely safe in any scenario, and things like artificial hydroelectric take care of the biggest issue of day/night production. [1] - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo...
- Etheryte 3y agoThis misses nuance. Nuclear is brilliant in providing baseline power, but at the same time it's often extremely expensive when compared to the lifetime cost of other options, especially renewables. The ideal setup would be to strike a good balance between the two that covers demand without being prohibitively expensive. Where that balance lies is a topic of constant and loaded debate.
- MasterYoda900 3y agoSmall Modular Reactors (SMR) to the rescue: https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-are-small-modular-reactors-smrs https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-are-small-modular-...
- ViewTrick1002 3y agoWhich has been an idea the nuclear industry has continuously been pushing for the last 70 years whenever large scale reactors become too expensive. It has never panned out. Most recently the company furthest along the licensing process, NuScale, cancelled their project in Utah due to spiraling cost increases, before they even started to build. THE FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF SMALL NUCLEAR REACTORS https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuclear-reactors https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuc...
- hef19898 3y agoTrue small nuclear reactors have never been tried! /s
- The_Colonel 3y agoWind has been used for hundreds of years and only recently started being relevant on a system-wide scale, so I don't think it's good argument. In both cases, the underlying technology has worked for a while, and the challenges are only tangentially related (NIMBY, lack of production scale, scaremongering for nuclear), but solveable.
- 3y ago
- KingOfCoders 3y agoConflating primary energy usage and electricity and will not get us anywhere.
- neverrroot 3y agoElectricity, especially by the usage of microreactors could address much more than just “the classical view” on electricity. Still, electricity is a huge chunk of the problem to solve, and the main topic in this post.
- cool_dude85 3y agoUnfortunately in the US we've had our fair share of nuclear boondoggles and outright scams. Recently, Florida began allowing utilities to collect from ratepayers during planning/etc. for new nuclear and FPL got a billion bucks for a new reactor that will never exist.
- lokar 3y agoWhat do you mean by political? It is not a major issue for either party, candidates almost never bring it up. It’s not political, it’s unpopular broadly.
- NineStarPoint 3y agoNot all politcs problems are one side against the other, sometimes a political problem does mean “this is a good idea, but too generally unpopular to be implemented”. For nuclear it’s also a local politics problem, not national problem generally: people don’t have an issue with nuclear in general, but they do have strong opposition for it being built near where they live.
- LewisVerstappen 3y ago> It is not a major issue for either party, candidates almost never bring it up Uhh yeah? Because it's been dead since the 1990s? You can look at a graph of new nuclear power platnts and see it curtail off after a peak in the 90s. > It’s not political, it’s unpopular broadly. When it was a major political issue, the anti-nuclear advocates were almost entirely on the left. It was seen as part of the environmental movement (which has been left-leaning).
- ViewTrick1002 3y agoTrying to justify another attempt at nuclear in the face of Vogtle, Virgil C. Summer and NuScale is insane. But sure, this time it will certainly be different!
- 7e 3y agoHumans tried to fly for thousands of years before the Wright Brothers. Things get better over time. Humans are improvement machines. So yes, I think it will be different.
- ViewTrick1002 3y agoIf converting entire countries electricity grids to nuclear, while failing to lower costs, is not enough, what scale do you propose? How many trillions of dollars in subsidies to give nuclear "one more chance"? All while we have solutions, on the market, that are cheaper, faster and easier to deploy. The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... This study does not include their most recent attempt at Flamanville. > Construction on a new reactor, Flamanville 3, began on 4 December 2007. The new unit is an Areva European Pressurized Reactor type and is planned to have a nameplate capacity of 1,650 MWe. EDF estimated the cost at €3.3 billion and stated it would start commercial operations in 2012, after construction lasting 54 months. The latest cost estimate (July 2020) is at €19.1 billion, with commissioning planned tentatively at the end of 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
- happytoexplain 3y agoIt's petty/antagonistic to pretend you don't know that people even make honest arguments against nuclear at all (i.e. that it's purely political). You may certainly disagree with them - I do.
- neverrroot 3y agoI know exactly what the drawbacks of nuclear energy are. I still see it as the best reliable source we have, with the lowest fatality track out of all energy sources, once you factor in facts/everything. Especially the hidden costs of solar power and wind power on the environment (through e.g. dirty energy and chemicals used during their production, or lack of recycling) is overall something that is understated in the grand scheme of things. And on top of that, they are not reliable with regard to energy production, so they are not even in the same ballpark as nuclear.
- lokar 3y agoThe critique of your comment was not that you don’t know of the drawbacks, but that you imply opponents don’t. You say their opposition is “political “, commonly a way to deride an argument as lacking real substance.
- throwbadubadu 3y ago> e.g. dirty energy and chemicals used during their production, or lack of recycling) is overall something that is understated in the grand scheme of things And that is as far your knowledge goes.. just please put real valid numbers to it, and don't start shaming.
- Kon5ole 3y agoFinland recently had to offline 14% of it's national electricity production due to a single incident. Not only is that unreliable, the effects of the lack of reliability are much worse than with any other power source. Nuclear only exists in the first place due to political decisions. It's massively unprofitable if you actually include all costs even at current inflated electricity prices. Why not build gas and battery storage for renewables instead? It would be better by every measure, including cheaper, faster to build, safer, and more reliable (due to being distributed).