5 ms·

And interesting, this is in stark contract to France's biggest neighbor: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-shuts-down-its-last-nuclear-power-stations/a-65249019 htt

by kleiba 1y ago

And interesting, this is in stark contract to France's biggest neighbor: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-shuts-down-its-last-nuclear-power-stations/a-65249019 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-shuts-down-its-last-nuclear-po... However, the opposition to nuclear is currently being reevaluated by the German government.

huhkerrf 1y ago
I still get annoyed when I think of this tweet by French Green party Senator Melanie Vogel after Germany shut down its last reactor: https://x.com/Melanie_Vogel_/status/1647352302171308036 https://x.com/Melanie_Vogel_/status/1647352302171308036 > Sex is good but have you tried having your country shutting down its last nuclear power plants in 30 mn? It's so absolutely horribly short sighted.
- Iridescent_ 1y ago
  We have the ecologists we deserve... and boy do we not deserve anything nice... Afaik this is one of the least terrible of them we have...
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- blueflow 1y ago
  There is no reasonably safe solution for storing the active waste. Continuing with nuclear power will increase the size of the problem.
  - ohdeargodno 1y ago
    [dead]
  - achierius 1y ago
    What do you mean by that? Deep geological storage seems to work pretty well, and the 'size' of the problem is so small that even if we were to 100x it it would still be minuscule when compared to e.g. coal ash runoff, which includes fun things like arsenic and mercury and is currently 'disposed' of by stuffing it in landfills or even uncovered open-air pools.
    - stefantalpalaru 1y ago
      [dead]
    - blueflow 1y ago
      > Deep geological storage seems to work pretty well Not well enough - the crystalline parts of earth's crust are still too porous to reliably keep it contained. It would - in the long term - leak like radon gas.
  - southernplaces7 1y ago
    You're saying a flatly mistaken thing in absolutist terms from pure fucking igonrance, as if you knew what you were talking about, at that. There are many ways to store nuclear waste very safely, just as there are many ways to store all kinds of dangerous things safely and do all kinds of dangerous things we need to do as a civilization, safely. As for the size of the "problem" growing. Go look at how much space even all the world's known HL nuclear waste combined requires, and how slowly that space (hint: it's tiny, as in, fits-into-a-college-sports-auditorium with room to spare for a quick basketball game tiny) grows year over year, or would grow even if we exponentially increased our use of nuclear. People such as yourself, just blandly stating plain nonsense with certainty are cause for many problems in the world, and for nuclear energy, they're as common as fruit flies, buzzing around any serious debate.
    - kleiba 1y ago
      Just to give a little context: in Germany, which the OP was about, just the search for a suitable place to store nuclear waste started in 1999 with the formation of a working group of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety [1]. It is expected that the result of the search process will not be available until the year 2046 [2]. Maybe it's not quite as easy as the layman thinks, especially considering that Germany has a lot less space then, say, the US. -- [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150217045132/http://www.bfs.de/de/endlager/faq/langfassung_abschlussbericht_akend.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20150217045132/http://www.bfs.de... [2] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/endlager-atommuell-1.5694547?reduced=true https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/endlager-atommuell-1.569...
      - blueflow 1y ago
        ... and this research is done by people like my partner, who is currently writing their thesis about that. I could cite their previous publications here but that would dox me.
      - seec 1y ago
        So we are waiting for the bureaucrats to find a solution for something that doesn't even have a real pressure to be done (meanwhile the stuff is stored on facility and it doesn't cause much problem). The bureaucrats already take forever to do anything because they get paid regardless and they even have an incentive to make stuff look more complicated than they are (look how important the work is). Add to that your typical political nonsense, especially from a government that was readily hostile. Add to that the typical nonsensical German overengineering, where they find ways to make stuff in an absurdly complex manner for what are generally little benefits. They briefly mentioned that problem in the article: Flamanville was very late, in large part because it was a collaboration with Siemens, who forced the use of stupid German regulations. The result is that nobody wants to buy this stupid design, because why would they, when there are perfectly viable alternatives without the German overengineering bullshit. By the way, I have a strong feeling that this is industrial sabotage from Germany, using Siemens as pawn. Considering their reluctance for nuclear since basically forever, it makes no sense that they pretend to even be working on it. So, if there is one thing that should be absolutely clear to anyone not ideologically corrupted, is that nobody should give two shits about whatever Germany does/think around nuclear power. They have proved to be largely incompetent and politically corrupt in the matter.
  - throwayay5837 1y ago
    Storing all of the highly active radioactive waste that France produced over a year takes about 47 40-foot shipping containers. Small feeder shops can contain a few hundred containers. Actual container shops contain thousands. 47 does not seem like much?
    - cycomanic 1y ago
      And what about the mid to low radioactive waste? Also let's not forget France does not have any long term storage facility for their highly radioactive waste yet. Why if it is so easy have they not managed?
    - blueflow 1y ago
      Nuclear-level containment on geological timescales is potentially impossible. Its not like you can put it into a dump and its "gone" like household trash. Radioactivity is ionizing, so it corrodes all materials and cannot be physically contained. The earth's crust is to porous (i mentioned the radon problem in another post) to keep it underground.
  - ninalanyon 1y ago
    A partial solution is to build reactors that can use that waste. Thorium reactors can do that and have the advantage that you can't make a bomb from it and that it is easier to control.
Archelaos 1y ago
One of the best things Germany ever did. We already have produced enough poison for a million years. Renewables and perhaps nuclear fusion is the future.
- ninja3925 1y ago
  Can you expand? What is “poison” referring to? Surely, burning coal as Germany’s current pace can’t be seen as a success, can it?
  - Archelaos 1y ago
    Radiation poisoning. Fossil fuels fall into the same category. The alternative is not nuclear vs. fossil. We should focus entirely on renewable energies. Of course Germany is now in a transition period, and there are a lot of conservative politicians who have been shying away from the high investments required for a fast transition. I think the main problem here is that the fossil-nuclear advocates shift the main problems to future generations (climate change, long-term storage of nuclear waste), the general public (large subsidies, minimal security standards, no or unsufficient insurance of power plants against desasters) or other countries (placing nuclear plants or waste deposits at the border, relaying on other countries for long term storing of nuclear waste). Together with extremely optimistic estimates, this makes their energy costs appear low on paper, when in reality the overall costs are immense. In contrast, there do not appear to be many cost elements of renewable energy installations that can be concealed or embellished. The reserve funds for their demolition are perhaps the only exception. But these only account for a small part of the costs at any rate.
- ohdeargodno 1y ago
  [dead]
- southernplaces7 1y ago
  And nuclear could have drastically reduced that production of "poison" by the way. Arguments about how much we've contaminated with X are sort of immaterial to arguments in favor of a different thing with its own much more specific (and useful) dynamics. It's a bit absurd, what you say, like arguing that it's good to stop using a stove in your apartment and just eat food raw, because one of your neighbors already did enough bad because they burned their entire house down while trying to make a bonfire with piles of coal in their yard.
cladopa 1y ago
France biggest neighbour is Spain...
- kleiba 1y ago
  Not by head count which I would say is the more relevant metric than area when we're talking about a country's energy supply.
detaro 1y ago
Led by the same party who when not in power cried loudly about how important it is to keep nuclear running, but in the 16 years it was in power before, when there would've actually been time to change things, didn't actually do anything except a small flip-flop once that cost the state billions in damages to the energy companies. It's just deeply unserious. They'll talk about how we should be open to nuclear, cut funding for renewables, give some money to some startups or consultancy firms and nothing will actually be built.

by kleiba 1y ago

huhkerrf 1y ago

I still get annoyed when I think of this tweet by French Green party Senator Melanie Vogel after Germany shut down its last reactor: https://x.com/Melanie_Vogel_/status/1647352302171308036 https://x.com/Melanie_Vogel_/status/1647352302171308036 > Sex is good but have you tried having your country shutting down its last nuclear power plants in 30 mn? It's so absolutely horribly short sighted.

Iridescent_ 1y ago
We have the ecologists we deserve... and boy do we not deserve anything nice... Afaik this is one of the least terrible of them we have...
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
blueflow 1y ago
There is no reasonably safe solution for storing the active waste. Continuing with nuclear power will increase the size of the problem.
- ohdeargodno 1y ago
  [dead]
- achierius 1y ago
  What do you mean by that? Deep geological storage seems to work pretty well, and the 'size' of the problem is so small that even if we were to 100x it it would still be minuscule when compared to e.g. coal ash runoff, which includes fun things like arsenic and mercury and is currently 'disposed' of by stuffing it in landfills or even uncovered open-air pools.
  - stefantalpalaru 1y ago
    [dead]
  - blueflow 1y ago
    > Deep geological storage seems to work pretty well Not well enough - the crystalline parts of earth's crust are still too porous to reliably keep it contained. It would - in the long term - leak like radon gas.
- southernplaces7 1y ago
  You're saying a flatly mistaken thing in absolutist terms from pure fucking igonrance, as if you knew what you were talking about, at that. There are many ways to store nuclear waste very safely, just as there are many ways to store all kinds of dangerous things safely and do all kinds of dangerous things we need to do as a civilization, safely. As for the size of the "problem" growing. Go look at how much space even all the world's known HL nuclear waste combined requires, and how slowly that space (hint: it's tiny, as in, fits-into-a-college-sports-auditorium with room to spare for a quick basketball game tiny) grows year over year, or would grow even if we exponentially increased our use of nuclear. People such as yourself, just blandly stating plain nonsense with certainty are cause for many problems in the world, and for nuclear energy, they're as common as fruit flies, buzzing around any serious debate.
  - kleiba 1y ago
    Just to give a little context: in Germany, which the OP was about, just the search for a suitable place to store nuclear waste started in 1999 with the formation of a working group of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety [1]. It is expected that the result of the search process will not be available until the year 2046 [2]. Maybe it's not quite as easy as the layman thinks, especially considering that Germany has a lot less space then, say, the US. -- [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150217045132/http://www.bfs.de/de/endlager/faq/langfassung_abschlussbericht_akend.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20150217045132/http://www.bfs.de... [2] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/endlager-atommuell-1.5694547?reduced=true https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/endlager-atommuell-1.569...
    - blueflow 1y ago
      ... and this research is done by people like my partner, who is currently writing their thesis about that. I could cite their previous publications here but that would dox me.
    - seec 1y ago
      So we are waiting for the bureaucrats to find a solution for something that doesn't even have a real pressure to be done (meanwhile the stuff is stored on facility and it doesn't cause much problem). The bureaucrats already take forever to do anything because they get paid regardless and they even have an incentive to make stuff look more complicated than they are (look how important the work is). Add to that your typical political nonsense, especially from a government that was readily hostile. Add to that the typical nonsensical German overengineering, where they find ways to make stuff in an absurdly complex manner for what are generally little benefits. They briefly mentioned that problem in the article: Flamanville was very late, in large part because it was a collaboration with Siemens, who forced the use of stupid German regulations. The result is that nobody wants to buy this stupid design, because why would they, when there are perfectly viable alternatives without the German overengineering bullshit. By the way, I have a strong feeling that this is industrial sabotage from Germany, using Siemens as pawn. Considering their reluctance for nuclear since basically forever, it makes no sense that they pretend to even be working on it. So, if there is one thing that should be absolutely clear to anyone not ideologically corrupted, is that nobody should give two shits about whatever Germany does/think around nuclear power. They have proved to be largely incompetent and politically corrupt in the matter.
- throwayay5837 1y ago
  Storing all of the highly active radioactive waste that France produced over a year takes about 47 40-foot shipping containers. Small feeder shops can contain a few hundred containers. Actual container shops contain thousands. 47 does not seem like much?
  - cycomanic 1y ago
    And what about the mid to low radioactive waste? Also let's not forget France does not have any long term storage facility for their highly radioactive waste yet. Why if it is so easy have they not managed?
  - blueflow 1y ago
    Nuclear-level containment on geological timescales is potentially impossible. Its not like you can put it into a dump and its "gone" like household trash. Radioactivity is ionizing, so it corrodes all materials and cannot be physically contained. The earth's crust is to porous (i mentioned the radon problem in another post) to keep it underground.
- ninalanyon 1y ago
  A partial solution is to build reactors that can use that waste. Thorium reactors can do that and have the advantage that you can't make a bomb from it and that it is easier to control.

Archelaos 1y ago

One of the best things Germany ever did. We already have produced enough poison for a million years. Renewables and perhaps nuclear fusion is the future.

ninja3925 1y ago
Can you expand? What is “poison” referring to? Surely, burning coal as Germany’s current pace can’t be seen as a success, can it?
- Archelaos 1y ago
  Radiation poisoning. Fossil fuels fall into the same category. The alternative is not nuclear vs. fossil. We should focus entirely on renewable energies. Of course Germany is now in a transition period, and there are a lot of conservative politicians who have been shying away from the high investments required for a fast transition. I think the main problem here is that the fossil-nuclear advocates shift the main problems to future generations (climate change, long-term storage of nuclear waste), the general public (large subsidies, minimal security standards, no or unsufficient insurance of power plants against desasters) or other countries (placing nuclear plants or waste deposits at the border, relaying on other countries for long term storing of nuclear waste). Together with extremely optimistic estimates, this makes their energy costs appear low on paper, when in reality the overall costs are immense. In contrast, there do not appear to be many cost elements of renewable energy installations that can be concealed or embellished. The reserve funds for their demolition are perhaps the only exception. But these only account for a small part of the costs at any rate.
ohdeargodno 1y ago
[dead]
southernplaces7 1y ago
And nuclear could have drastically reduced that production of "poison" by the way. Arguments about how much we've contaminated with X are sort of immaterial to arguments in favor of a different thing with its own much more specific (and useful) dynamics. It's a bit absurd, what you say, like arguing that it's good to stop using a stove in your apartment and just eat food raw, because one of your neighbors already did enough bad because they burned their entire house down while trying to make a bonfire with piles of coal in their yard.

cladopa 1y ago

France biggest neighbour is Spain...

kleiba 1y ago
Not by head count which I would say is the more relevant metric than area when we're talking about a country's energy supply.

detaro 1y ago

Led by the same party who when not in power cried loudly about how important it is to keep nuclear running, but in the 16 years it was in power before, when there would've actually been time to change things, didn't actually do anything except a small flip-flop once that cost the state billions in damages to the energy companies. It's just deeply unserious. They'll talk about how we should be open to nuclear, cut funding for renewables, give some money to some startups or consultancy firms and nothing will actually be built.