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Nuclear energy has still some popularity in the US. Especially among technical people. But technology is only one thing. What are the effects on a society long

by lispm 12y ago

Nuclear energy has still some popularity in the US. Especially among technical people. But technology is only one thing. What are the effects on a society long term? Here in Germany it is mostly dead. For us you are discussing positions of twenty years ago. The US has a very different energy situation compared to us: large country, nuclear weapons, lots of nuclear technology, extremely high energy use (more than twice than the average German), much lower population density, lots of energy sources, ... Here in Germany we've seen a lot of the negative effects in a country with higher density in the middle of Europe: * no plan or place for the waste * nuclear power plants all over the country * widespread corruption between politicians and industry * protests were suppressed with military-like police, escalated almost into civil war * lots of transport of nuclear materials through the country * extremely costly research paid by the tax payer * lots of promises of the nuclear industry just did not materialize: for example our pebble-bed reactor was closed silently, while earlier it was promised to solve a lot of technical problems * centralization of electricity production in few monopoly-like companies with zero competition The effects on an democratic society of nuclear technology is at least as bad as its technological problems. This was seen decades ago in the book 'Der Atomstaat' and the effects had been shown in Japan, where the Atomstaat was more advanced than here in Germany. We were able to stop it. Now we have to build-up renewable decentralized energy during the next decades. That's the common goal here in Germany.

hackuser 12y ago
> Now we have to build-up renewable decentralized energy during the next decades. That's the common goal here in Germany. Can it be done quickly enough to prevent the damage from climate change? If not, the problems of nuclear may be much less than the alternative. > * protests were suppressed with military-like police, escalated almost into civil war I don't mind a little hyperbole, but many people reading this have no idea what actually happened. Could you describe it?
- lispm 12y ago
  Can you build enough nuclear power to prevent the damage from climate change? I don't think so.
  - ars 12y ago
    Why not? It would be extremely easy. The only reason they don't make more nuclear power plants is they are slightly more expensive on a KWh level than natural gas. Making them was never the problem.
    - graeme 12y ago
      I think that it was a mistake to shut down nuclear plants, rather than fossil fuel plants. That said, if we stopped using fossil energy, wouldn't we find nuclear plants become much more expensive to build? They're built using fossil energy. (Or significantly reduced fossil energy, thereby raising its price)
      - pdonis 12y ago
        > They're built using fossil energy Only because fossil energy is currently cheaper. If it were more expensive, you would see all kinds of construction starting to use electric-powered equipment that used non-fossil-fuel electricity.
        graeme 12y ago
        But isn't that non-fossil energy built with fossil energy? EROI is what's motivating my comments. Fossil energy has a higher EROI than other sources, currently.
        pdonis 12y ago
        > But isn't that non-fossil energy built with fossil energy? Not if you use non-fossil electricity to power all the steps in the build process. I should have clarified that that's what I was envisioning. > Fossil energy has a higher EROI than other sources, currently. Actually, I don't think that's currently true for nuclear; the EROEI figures for nuclear that I've seen seem way off, even if breeder reactors are left out of the equation. I don't think a lot of people realize just how much energy there is in a kilogram of uranium, compared to a kilogram of fossil fuel.
- ars 12y ago
  > Can it be done quickly enough to prevent the damage from climate change? Actually the renewable push in Germany is accelerating climate change, not preventing it. They don't get enough sun to make solar cells worth it, yet they do it anyway. What it means is they will never make EROEI for them. On paper everything is wonderful (as a country emissions are low), but actually all they are doing is shipping the emissions to China which is where the solar cells are made.
  - Retric 12y ago
    That's pure FUD. EROEI for solar in Germany vary's a lot but it's from a physics standpoint it's ~20x. However, EROEI has no set standard and it's easy to fudge the numbers. Yet, gasoline generally ends up as less than 1 using those metrics. PS: Though from an economic and EROEI standpoint Rooftop solar is significantly less appealing than solar farms.
    - ars 12y ago
      No it isn't. EROEI for solar barely reaches 5 in sunny areas, in Germany it would not surprise me if it was below 1. If the EROEI was so high they would not need massive government subsidies to encourage adoption - people would do it without encouragement.
      - throwaway5752 12y ago
        You don't understand the difference between EROEI or ROI if you believe this. This is a really fundamental problem with your point, and it's like not grasping big-O notation in algorithmic analysis. Edit: I take it back. Based on your comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8248722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8248722 you are either dense as a rock or spreading FUD like the preceding comment suggested. I suspect I am not engaging in a good faith discussion. Edit 2: Just something to leave you with. Nuclear disposal costs are externalized (deferred), educating the workforce is externalized (navy), risk is externalized (indemnified), fuel is currently underpriced (megatons to megawatts), construction (highest single input cost) is massively subsidized, and in the end it's still burning unrenewable fuel so even assuming it's cheap and we never have an accident we're just kicking the can down the road a couple of hundred years.
delucain 12y ago
I would hardly say it's dead. It's just dead domestically for Germany. Germany imports a large quantity of power from France (which relies almost entirely a nuclear for production).
- lispm 12y ago
  Germany actually has an export SURPLUS of electricity with France.
  - LBarret 12y ago
    mmm...that's not what I read/heard. Germany had a surplus sometimes during the year but on the average it's a consumer more than a producer. edit : what I just wrote is untrue, Germany is a net exporter (since 2012) but suffer from the important irregularity of solar/wind production (overproduction and underproduction happen regularly and may damage the network). And, 46% of the electricity is coming from coal...
    - lispm 12y ago
      > mmm...that's not what I read/heard. Germany had a surplus sometimes during the year but on the average it's a consumer more than a producer. But that's wrong. > Germany is a net exporter (since 2012) but suffer from the important irregularity of solar/wind production (overproduction and underproduction happen regularly and may damage the network). That's the same with nuclear. France has lots of surplus power on weekends, in the night and on holidays. On demand peaks in summer and winter they have not enough. > may damage the network Peak demands like in France can also damage the network. > And, 46% of the electricity is coming from coal... That will shrink a lot in the coming decades.
- cygx 12y ago
  Germany has been a net exporter of electricity since 2003. It exported more electricity than ever in 2013 and has a positive balance of trade with France. Granted, that's just economics at work as both countries are net exporters - but keep in mind that France periodically has troubles when it gets too hot to use river water for efficient cooling. The proportion of renewable energy sources in Germany has risen to 23.4%. Source: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen.de/index.php?article_id=29&fileName=20131220_brd_stromerzeugung1990-2013.pdf http://www.ag-energiebilanzen.de/index.php?article_id=29&fil... (PDF) edit: Germany has been a net exporter since 2003 - 2008 was a typo.
lolgas 12y ago
Nuclear energy contributes ~17% of the world's electricity, and has only killed 90 people. Solar (rooftop) contributes <1% of the worlds electricity and has killed 440 people. So I don't really see how nuclear is a 'social problem'. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-de...
- emsy 12y ago
  If you don't count the thousands of victims that died of contamination from Tchernobyl. Oh and don't forget the deformed babies.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Even if, when you tally everything up, nuclear still ends up as the least deadly solution per kWh. And it's not even about one-upping one another on safety statistics. Is that mainstream has it completely backwards. They think that nuclear is the most deadly and fossils are safe, whereas it's exactly the other way around. Nuclear is the safest, while fossils are probably the most lethal.
    - waps 12y ago
      Rooftop solar is pretty fucking bad as well [1]. It is only just shy of fossil fuels, and only if you count several kinds of deaths as fossil fuel deaths that are debatable whether they're part of fossil fuel energy generation. Car-related deaths being the obvious one. Most deaths for most energy generation methods come from disasters (all except solar, where most deaths happen during installations), for example, the tidal wave that caused fukushima raised the death tolls for nuclear, solar, wind and fossil. For nuclear, because 2 employees were having a smoke outside of the power plant, got picked up by the wave and smacked against the wall of the power plant. Nuclear death, right ? Solar, why ? Two reasons, first a number of installations were rudely interrupted by the wave, and for a few larger buildings solar panels came crashing down, a few of them right into people (that second part happens more often during earthquakes). Solar deaths ? Well, yes. Wind, well, if you were doing maintenance on a wind turbine while the wave washed it away ... And for fossil fuel the same : a number of employees of refineries and transporters (one oil train, for example), were killed. One particularly bad example : in one of the refineries a number of engineers were doing a quality inspection with management of the inside of several new gas tanks, and the wave filled it with water after knocking it over. My point here is that in many cases it's a bit of a stretch saying that the energy generation method is what killed people. Although it must be said that coal mine safety in China, yes, deaths come from disasters, but ... it takes a special kind of dishonesty to call these disasters accidental. I don't get people that defend rooftop's solar track record. Installing slippery, heavy pieces of glass on inclined surfaces a dozen meter up from the ground, that may have become slippery due to rain and frequently suffer structural failure (meaning a small piece cracks when you walk on it) ... Believe it or not this is NOT a particularly safe thing to do. (and of course, the US has many seismically active zones, and well, you may want to avoid being a roof worker in those zones) Wind power, incidentally, is also famous for killing or maiming maintenance technicians. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-de... (note that if you take China out of the statistics, coal becomes as safe as oil was, and oil becomes half as safe as solar)
einrealist 12y ago
* Building and maintaining a nuclear plant is NOT climate friendly. The emissions do happen just somewhere else. So, the article is BS and repeating a lie once again.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  No, that statement is BS if you compare it to climate-friendliness of all other solutions. PV arrays don't grow on tree, they involve a lot of carbon emissions and highly toxic processing, but if it's done in China, then apparently nobody cares.
  - einrealist 12y ago
    > PV arrays don't grow on tree, they involve a lot of carbon emissions and highly toxic processing, I did not claim that otherwise.
abelsson 12y ago
The problem is that Germany, with its focus on wind and solar, is paying twice as much as for electricity compared to France - also a country with higher density in the middle of Europe - while also emitting more carbon dioxide per capita (9.6 vs 6.1 tons per capita). The difference is that France made the right decision 30 years ago when they transitioned from oil and coal to nuclear power for power generation. Solar and Wind are a much more expensive way of accomplishing the same thing. Der Energiewende is both expensive and inefficient.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  Solar power is improving fast enough that by the time nuclear power plants are built, let alone pay themselves off, it may no longer matter. However it was arguably the correct decision years ago.
  - power_rated 12y ago
    Solar, Wind and Demand side management work in tandem, really.
- lispm 12y ago
  In reality you find that the German industry is in much better shape, even though we pay more for electricity - much of that is tax, btw.. France's electricity is all state-run and the price of electricity is a political one. No French president survives raising electricity prices, even though the companies would need that money... > Der Energiewende is both expensive and inefficient. Expensive is not a problem for us on that level. Nuclear is as expensive as renewable and more. We have a lot of money. Let's say the Energiewende will cost us around a trillion dollar over 50 years. Maybe more? So what? The positive effects will be much larger. We actually have the money. > inefficient If you look at nuclear power plants, they use around 30% of the energy for electricity. With the rest they heat the rivers in France. That's inefficient.
  - abelsson 12y ago
    German industry may indeed be in better shape, but that is inspite of German energy policies, not because of them. What you're really arguing for here is a poorer, less prosperous, Germany because of anti-nuclear-ideology. There's an opportunity cost of that trillion dollars, it could have been spent on health care, research, fighting climate change and thousands of hings other that actually improve people's lives instead. I mean, if you accept that - that's fine - there's no mandate that people must choose the most efficient solutions at all times. But the reality of technical merits doesn't change based on your ideology.
D_Alex 12y ago
>Now we have to build-up renewable decentralized energy during the next decades. That's the common goal here in Germany. Great. But Germany is also building new brown coal power plants, what's more Germany is backing a brown coal power plant just across the border with Poland. So it seems that there is a need for ongoing base load power generation... and effectively Germany is going for brown coal over nuclear. Brown coal is, I believe, the most polluting way to generate electricity. So... why not nuclear instead?
- lispm 12y ago
  > But Germany is also building new brown coal power plants Germany is also closing fossil fuel plants. > So... why not nuclear instead? There is no 'instead'. Coal will be phased out a lot during the next decades.
nextweek2 12y ago
I have never truly understood the German decision and I have been pro-nuclear due to its reliability and safety over wind. However you've really answered the major reason of why nuclear cannot work: >* centralization of electricity production in few monopoly-like companies with zero competition If history has taught us anything its that the concentration of power is not a good thing.

by lispm 12y ago

hackuser 12y ago

> Now we have to build-up renewable decentralized energy during the next decades. That's the common goal here in Germany. Can it be done quickly enough to prevent the damage from climate change? If not, the problems of nuclear may be much less than the alternative. > * protests were suppressed with military-like police, escalated almost into civil war I don't mind a little hyperbole, but many people reading this have no idea what actually happened. Could you describe it?

lispm 12y ago
Can you build enough nuclear power to prevent the damage from climate change? I don't think so.
- ars 12y ago
  Why not? It would be extremely easy. The only reason they don't make more nuclear power plants is they are slightly more expensive on a KWh level than natural gas. Making them was never the problem.
  - graeme 12y ago
    I think that it was a mistake to shut down nuclear plants, rather than fossil fuel plants. That said, if we stopped using fossil energy, wouldn't we find nuclear plants become much more expensive to build? They're built using fossil energy. (Or significantly reduced fossil energy, thereby raising its price)
    - pdonis 12y ago
      > They're built using fossil energy Only because fossil energy is currently cheaper. If it were more expensive, you would see all kinds of construction starting to use electric-powered equipment that used non-fossil-fuel electricity.
      - graeme 12y ago
        But isn't that non-fossil energy built with fossil energy? EROI is what's motivating my comments. Fossil energy has a higher EROI than other sources, currently.
        pdonis 12y ago
        > But isn't that non-fossil energy built with fossil energy? Not if you use non-fossil electricity to power all the steps in the build process. I should have clarified that that's what I was envisioning. > Fossil energy has a higher EROI than other sources, currently. Actually, I don't think that's currently true for nuclear; the EROEI figures for nuclear that I've seen seem way off, even if breeder reactors are left out of the equation. I don't think a lot of people realize just how much energy there is in a kilogram of uranium, compared to a kilogram of fossil fuel.
ars 12y ago
> Can it be done quickly enough to prevent the damage from climate change? Actually the renewable push in Germany is accelerating climate change, not preventing it. They don't get enough sun to make solar cells worth it, yet they do it anyway. What it means is they will never make EROEI for them. On paper everything is wonderful (as a country emissions are low), but actually all they are doing is shipping the emissions to China which is where the solar cells are made.
- Retric 12y ago
  That's pure FUD. EROEI for solar in Germany vary's a lot but it's from a physics standpoint it's ~20x. However, EROEI has no set standard and it's easy to fudge the numbers. Yet, gasoline generally ends up as less than 1 using those metrics. PS: Though from an economic and EROEI standpoint Rooftop solar is significantly less appealing than solar farms.
  - ars 12y ago
    No it isn't. EROEI for solar barely reaches 5 in sunny areas, in Germany it would not surprise me if it was below 1. If the EROEI was so high they would not need massive government subsidies to encourage adoption - people would do it without encouragement.
    - throwaway5752 12y ago
      You don't understand the difference between EROEI or ROI if you believe this. This is a really fundamental problem with your point, and it's like not grasping big-O notation in algorithmic analysis. Edit: I take it back. Based on your comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8248722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8248722 you are either dense as a rock or spreading FUD like the preceding comment suggested. I suspect I am not engaging in a good faith discussion. Edit 2: Just something to leave you with. Nuclear disposal costs are externalized (deferred), educating the workforce is externalized (navy), risk is externalized (indemnified), fuel is currently underpriced (megatons to megawatts), construction (highest single input cost) is massively subsidized, and in the end it's still burning unrenewable fuel so even assuming it's cheap and we never have an accident we're just kicking the can down the road a couple of hundred years.

delucain 12y ago

I would hardly say it's dead. It's just dead domestically for Germany. Germany imports a large quantity of power from France (which relies almost entirely a nuclear for production).

lispm 12y ago
Germany actually has an export SURPLUS of electricity with France.
- LBarret 12y ago
  mmm...that's not what I read/heard. Germany had a surplus sometimes during the year but on the average it's a consumer more than a producer. edit : what I just wrote is untrue, Germany is a net exporter (since 2012) but suffer from the important irregularity of solar/wind production (overproduction and underproduction happen regularly and may damage the network). And, 46% of the electricity is coming from coal...
  - lispm 12y ago
    > mmm...that's not what I read/heard. Germany had a surplus sometimes during the year but on the average it's a consumer more than a producer. But that's wrong. > Germany is a net exporter (since 2012) but suffer from the important irregularity of solar/wind production (overproduction and underproduction happen regularly and may damage the network). That's the same with nuclear. France has lots of surplus power on weekends, in the night and on holidays. On demand peaks in summer and winter they have not enough. > may damage the network Peak demands like in France can also damage the network. > And, 46% of the electricity is coming from coal... That will shrink a lot in the coming decades.
cygx 12y ago
Germany has been a net exporter of electricity since 2003. It exported more electricity than ever in 2013 and has a positive balance of trade with France. Granted, that's just economics at work as both countries are net exporters - but keep in mind that France periodically has troubles when it gets too hot to use river water for efficient cooling. The proportion of renewable energy sources in Germany has risen to 23.4%. Source: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen.de/index.php?article_id=29&fileName=20131220_brd_stromerzeugung1990-2013.pdf http://www.ag-energiebilanzen.de/index.php?article_id=29&fil... (PDF) edit: Germany has been a net exporter since 2003 - 2008 was a typo.

lolgas 12y ago

Nuclear energy contributes ~17% of the world's electricity, and has only killed 90 people. Solar (rooftop) contributes <1% of the worlds electricity and has killed 440 people. So I don't really see how nuclear is a 'social problem'. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-de...

emsy 12y ago
If you don't count the thousands of victims that died of contamination from Tchernobyl. Oh and don't forget the deformed babies.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Even if, when you tally everything up, nuclear still ends up as the least deadly solution per kWh. And it's not even about one-upping one another on safety statistics. Is that mainstream has it completely backwards. They think that nuclear is the most deadly and fossils are safe, whereas it's exactly the other way around. Nuclear is the safest, while fossils are probably the most lethal.
  - waps 12y ago
    Rooftop solar is pretty fucking bad as well [1]. It is only just shy of fossil fuels, and only if you count several kinds of deaths as fossil fuel deaths that are debatable whether they're part of fossil fuel energy generation. Car-related deaths being the obvious one. Most deaths for most energy generation methods come from disasters (all except solar, where most deaths happen during installations), for example, the tidal wave that caused fukushima raised the death tolls for nuclear, solar, wind and fossil. For nuclear, because 2 employees were having a smoke outside of the power plant, got picked up by the wave and smacked against the wall of the power plant. Nuclear death, right ? Solar, why ? Two reasons, first a number of installations were rudely interrupted by the wave, and for a few larger buildings solar panels came crashing down, a few of them right into people (that second part happens more often during earthquakes). Solar deaths ? Well, yes. Wind, well, if you were doing maintenance on a wind turbine while the wave washed it away ... And for fossil fuel the same : a number of employees of refineries and transporters (one oil train, for example), were killed. One particularly bad example : in one of the refineries a number of engineers were doing a quality inspection with management of the inside of several new gas tanks, and the wave filled it with water after knocking it over. My point here is that in many cases it's a bit of a stretch saying that the energy generation method is what killed people. Although it must be said that coal mine safety in China, yes, deaths come from disasters, but ... it takes a special kind of dishonesty to call these disasters accidental. I don't get people that defend rooftop's solar track record. Installing slippery, heavy pieces of glass on inclined surfaces a dozen meter up from the ground, that may have become slippery due to rain and frequently suffer structural failure (meaning a small piece cracks when you walk on it) ... Believe it or not this is NOT a particularly safe thing to do. (and of course, the US has many seismically active zones, and well, you may want to avoid being a roof worker in those zones) Wind power, incidentally, is also famous for killing or maiming maintenance technicians. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-de... (note that if you take China out of the statistics, coal becomes as safe as oil was, and oil becomes half as safe as solar)

einrealist 12y ago

* Building and maintaining a nuclear plant is NOT climate friendly. The emissions do happen just somewhere else. So, the article is BS and repeating a lie once again.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
No, that statement is BS if you compare it to climate-friendliness of all other solutions. PV arrays don't grow on tree, they involve a lot of carbon emissions and highly toxic processing, but if it's done in China, then apparently nobody cares.
- einrealist 12y ago
  > PV arrays don't grow on tree, they involve a lot of carbon emissions and highly toxic processing, I did not claim that otherwise.

abelsson 12y ago

The problem is that Germany, with its focus on wind and solar, is paying twice as much as for electricity compared to France - also a country with higher density in the middle of Europe - while also emitting more carbon dioxide per capita (9.6 vs 6.1 tons per capita). The difference is that France made the right decision 30 years ago when they transitioned from oil and coal to nuclear power for power generation. Solar and Wind are a much more expensive way of accomplishing the same thing. Der Energiewende is both expensive and inefficient.

Houshalter 12y ago
Solar power is improving fast enough that by the time nuclear power plants are built, let alone pay themselves off, it may no longer matter. However it was arguably the correct decision years ago.
- power_rated 12y ago
  Solar, Wind and Demand side management work in tandem, really.
lispm 12y ago
In reality you find that the German industry is in much better shape, even though we pay more for electricity - much of that is tax, btw.. France's electricity is all state-run and the price of electricity is a political one. No French president survives raising electricity prices, even though the companies would need that money... > Der Energiewende is both expensive and inefficient. Expensive is not a problem for us on that level. Nuclear is as expensive as renewable and more. We have a lot of money. Let's say the Energiewende will cost us around a trillion dollar over 50 years. Maybe more? So what? The positive effects will be much larger. We actually have the money. > inefficient If you look at nuclear power plants, they use around 30% of the energy for electricity. With the rest they heat the rivers in France. That's inefficient.
- abelsson 12y ago
  German industry may indeed be in better shape, but that is inspite of German energy policies, not because of them. What you're really arguing for here is a poorer, less prosperous, Germany because of anti-nuclear-ideology. There's an opportunity cost of that trillion dollars, it could have been spent on health care, research, fighting climate change and thousands of hings other that actually improve people's lives instead. I mean, if you accept that - that's fine - there's no mandate that people must choose the most efficient solutions at all times. But the reality of technical merits doesn't change based on your ideology.

D_Alex 12y ago

>Now we have to build-up renewable decentralized energy during the next decades. That's the common goal here in Germany. Great. But Germany is also building new brown coal power plants, what's more Germany is backing a brown coal power plant just across the border with Poland. So it seems that there is a need for ongoing base load power generation... and effectively Germany is going for brown coal over nuclear. Brown coal is, I believe, the most polluting way to generate electricity. So... why not nuclear instead?

lispm 12y ago
> But Germany is also building new brown coal power plants Germany is also closing fossil fuel plants. > So... why not nuclear instead? There is no 'instead'. Coal will be phased out a lot during the next decades.

nextweek2 12y ago

I have never truly understood the German decision and I have been pro-nuclear due to its reliability and safety over wind. However you've really answered the major reason of why nuclear cannot work: >* centralization of electricity production in few monopoly-like companies with zero competition If history has taught us anything its that the concentration of power is not a good thing.