Why Germany ditched nuclear before coal—and why it won’t go back

jeffw@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 227 points –
Why Germany ditched nuclear before coal—and why it won’t go back
arstechnica.com
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God dam people are fucking stupid nuclear is safer then coal wind and solar and better for the planet https://youtu.be/lhHHbgIy9jU here is my source and if you want his ask him

Yeah, it's safer than coal, on the same level as solar and wind. But it's fucking expensive to achieve that equality! You can build 5 times the solar or wind capacity for the same price!

Wind and solar need to be paired with batteries, so it's not as cheap as everyone wants to think.

Seriously? Jeez pedanticness, if you really me to change it: you need energy storage.

The point is that this type of energy storage is very cheap relative to the amount of power it can store.

I've heard some problems with it (pumped hydro) that I don't recall all the specifics that's why we see other things like batteries (or all the others jeez).

You need suitable locations. That's the main limitation.

The problem is the waste. Germany has radioactive waste and it couldn't find a suitable place to deposit it for over 30 years. I think it's still somewhere on rails or in temporary storages. It's horrible and they don't want to collect more of it.

Here is more about the problem that no one talks about: https://youtu.be/uU3kLBo_ruo

Nuclear waste is a potential issue. Fossil fuel waste is a major issue right now.

The fact that the waste for nuclear is entirely contained is very good. It allows us to place it in permanent storage location like the one in Finland from your video, and perhaps even launch it off the planet in one or two centuries. There is no containing co2, only reducing.

Putting highly radioactive waste on a rocket is a bad, bad idea.

And guess what: solar and wind have neither CO2 nor nuclear waste as a product, and are cheaper to build and operate as well. Nuclear is comically expensive, and only gets by with massive state subsidies

And guess what: solar and wind canot take care of base load. Only oil, gas, coal, or nuclear can be run 24-7 with varying output in response to demand. Choose one.

All of that is a solvable problem. We need to modernize the energy grid, because over large distances surplus and demand more easily equalize. Domestic energy consumption is fairly easy to cover with renewables and small to intermediate scale energy storage. The big consumers are heavy industry, and most of that can easily adapt by only running when there's a surplus. With how cheap renewables are, they'd likely even save money in such a scenario

Sir, this is an emotional argument. Begone with your facts and logic.

Two people who have never heard of things like these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage\_hydroelectricity

This is a solved issue. Absolutely nobody who knows what they are talking about would claim that you can't run a country on renewables alone.

Pumped hydro storage requires massive dams to be constructed and massive amounts of habitat to be turned into artificial lakes. Also, we literally don't have enough water for that to be viable anywhere but the coasts

You can't just drop a link and expect them to watch it. Although I will say it is a informative video on this entire subject matter.

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This safety comes at a cost, literally. It's fucking insanely expensive to keep it safe. Yet it can and has failed. Also, fissile material needs to come from somewhere. Guess where that is? Also, how much of it is still available? Nah, fuck nuclear power.

Yup. A significant amount of the fissile material in Europe used to come out of Russia. France, who is commonly held up as the arch-defender of nuclear power, is now fighting basically colonial wars in Africa for this stuff. There's a finite amount of it, it's costly to extract, costly to refine, costly to transport. Even before you've generated a single kilowatt of power, you've already done a lot of damage to the environment just for the fuel.

Gee whiz, I wonder what's worse for the environment open pit strip mining entire mountains for coal or a few smaller mines targeting uranium deposits. As for thorium, we don't even need to mine it. It's fucking everywhere.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/lhHHbgIy9jU

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

I don't really like new YouTube front ends I just use youtube revanced but I don't care if people use other stuff I'm just like a arch user telling you I use arch but I tell it to you nicely and dont force it on you Before people say hey this is a bot I know

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