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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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