This “red-green” coalition banned new reactors, announced a shutdown of existing ones by 2022
The red-green coalition did not announce the 2022 date. They (Greens/SPD) announced a soft phase-out between 2015-2020 in conjunction with building renewables. This planned shift from nuclear to renewables was reverted by Merkel (CDU = conservatives) in 2010. They (CDU) changed their mind one year later in 2011 and announced the 2022 date; but without the emphasis on replacing it with renewables. This back and forth was also quite the expensive mistake by the CDU on multiple levels, because energy corporations were now entitled financial compensation for their old reactors.
IMO a lot of this had to do with Schroeder's and Merkel's connections with Russia and running the country's manufacturing base on cheap gas and oil.
It was also a geopolitical attempt to get some economic leverage on Russia iirc. Obviously massively backfired when it turns out tyrants are willing to sacrifice profit for power.
As I suspected. Conservatism is the reason we can't have nice things. Again.
What the fuck are you talking about? Did you even bother to read the article?
"The older activist generation deliberately rejected the mainstream expertise of the time, which then regarded centralised nuclear power as the future and mass deployment of distributed renewables as a pipe dream.
This earlier movement was instrumental in creating Germany’s Green Party—today the world’s most influential—which emerged in 1980 and first entered national government from 1998 to 2005 as junior partner to the Social Democrats. This “red-green” coalition banned new reactors, announced a shutdown of existing ones by 2022, and passed a raft of legislation supporting renewable energy.
That, in turn, turbocharged the national deployment of renewables, which ballooned from 6.3 percent of gross domestic electricity consumption in 2000 to 51.8 percent in 2023"
Ah yes, the arch-conservatives, the Greens and Social Democrats.
The activism of 1975 is the conservatism of 2015.
What do you mean? Don't you think transitioning to mostly renewables while coal and gas go down are good things?
Nuclear is affordable, efficient and proven. Abandoning it instead of promoting it was a dumb, conservative move that hurt everyone involved. Except Russian billionaires, of course.
Nuclear power is expensive and slow to build. Wind and solar are much, much cheaper and quicker.
They already had it and it was working just fine. They tore it down and went full coal and some gas. Now wind and solar are taking over slowly, but it's been years with more pollution and more radiation than any already working nuclear plant would have emmited.
That's true. The original plans for phasing out nuclear energy encompassed huge investments in renewable energy. The government Merkel II then decided to keep using nuclear and not invest in renewables, then decided a year later to leave nuclear again without investing in renewables. That little maneuver not only cost huge amounts of compensation for the big energy companies but also nuked (haha) the German wind and solar industry to the ground.
Or Germany could have just avoided the whole mess and kept the nuclear.
The old reactors could have been used until their end of life, yes. The effects are exaggerated though. Nobody was going to build new ones. Not even France who rely heavily on nuclear energy has new reactors.
this ignores the key issue that in Germany, there was already an extensive and perfectly functional nuclear industry. In other countries with no nuclear infrastructure, renewables are definitely the better, cheaper, more scalable choice - but countries which invested big many decades ago are in a different position, and Germany's deliberate destruction of their nuclear capabilities has left them dependant on fossil fuels from an adversarial state - easily a worse situation than small amounts of carefully managed nuclear waste while renewables were scaled up.
this ignores the key issue that in Germany, there was already an extensive and perfectly functional nuclear industry.
Shhh... anti-nuclear don't want to hear this. They'd rather project, even though people are talking about how stupid closing down the current nuclear infrastructure and not advocating to build new ones!
I don't support building new nuclear power plants, but it's ridiculous to close down already existing ones given the threat of climate change. NPP should act more like stop gap until renewable energy can take over more effectively.
I answered a very similar comment a little further down:
I'm not claiming it was smart to leave nuclear before coal. It wasn't. But it is what happened and it was decided two decades ago. Nuclear is done in Germany and there is no point discussing it further. New reactors were not going to happen either way.
Por que no los dos?
(en Alemans, por supuesto)
Nuclear is only expensive and slow if you're building reactors from 1960-s. Modern micro- and nano-reactors can be put in every yard in a matter of months if not weeks.
I don't understand, you think we can build miniature nuclear plants for every single house in weeks?
I wish you were right, but you are not. Those reactors don't exist.
Except they do exist. Almost. First SMRs were scheduled to be deployed right about, but the pandemic fucked it up. The project is back on track though.
MNR study was finished in 2019, right before the pandemic. Feasibility was also finished during the pandemic and the development grants were awarded.
Nano-reactors are still a future, sadly, but if the investments will keep up it won't be long.
It won't have been long for a long time now. It's not a feasible concept to rely on a maybe. We need massive amounts of clean energy now and the way to do that now is water, wind and solar. If these wonder reactors are one day reality that's great.
The problem is that instead of investing into dumb renewables, we should've invested in nuclear decades ago. Now we have to play catch up.
France is a good example. They invest billions in their nuclear power. Still, their infrastructure is old and they can't seem to build new reactors. It's a money sink while "dumb renewables" are the cheapest most spammable energy source we ever had.
That wasn't my question
The idiots on here firmly believe that nuclear creates zero waste. In their deranged head there is no nuclear waste that will last for longer than humanity existed.
The idiots on here apparently also think that burning coal somehow doesn’t create waste that will last for longer than humanity has existed.
Nobody brings up coal but nuclear stans and bots. You definitely put your favorite straw man to work.
Germany could have eliminated coal a decade or more ago. That's an important point to bring up.
I agree it's too late now for nuclear to make sense, but that was a lost decade of coal emissions.
It would be of the discussion was nuclear vs coal - which it isn’t.
You’re bringing up the straw man because you want turn away the discussion from renewables.
There’s good discussion to be had on the (complex) situation in Germany but it’s immediately flooded by the nuke-bots.
The discussion may not have been nuclear vs coal, but the reality was. That's the whole problem.
2 x No it isn’t. I know you love your precious precious nuclear to death and back and you really really need to discuss coal to better shill for it.
Nobody cares about your religion and your straw man.
"Nuh uh!"
Okay whatever lol. Deny reality all you want. More nuclear = less coal, it's very simple math. Anyone not blinded by "scary nuclear!" can see it.
Nuclear just means massive potential radioactive pollution as there is no secure storage for the radioactive waste. You are now going to claim there is proven safe storage, there just a couple of mishaps really.
Also, more importantly, there isn't even enough fission material to sustain demand for significant time if Germany and others were to switch. But sure lets's just skip and ignore renewables. Renewables pollute so much.
You know what word I didn't see at all in your response? Coal. Funny about that.
Compared to renewables, nuclear creates pretty much zero waste. The whole story of nuclear energy created less waste than one year of waste from solar panels alone.
What is the toxicity and half life / storage requirements for each waste type?
Toxicity I believe is about equal. Storage requirements are a bit stricter for nuclear in terms of storage container requirements, but much much much less in terms of storage space. Overall, it is much cheaper to safely dispose of the nuclear waste then waste from solar power.
Note: radiation is not toxicity.
Thanks for this picture-perfect post of a nuke-stan / nuke-bot
Toxicity I believe is about equal.
I generally try to respect other peoples religion but yours is a threat to the ecosphere. I believe you know your statement is bullshit.
Storage requirements are a bit stricter for nuclear in terms of storage container requirements
People opposed to nuclear know this already but why do you think that is?
Follow up: How long does it need to be safely stored? Please note the number of years.
Humanity is about 300.000 years old, the Pyramids of Gizeh were build about 4600 years ago, the Vandals sacked Rome 1569 years ago, WW2 ended about 80 years ago. Now compare the those times with the time radioactive waste needs to be safely stored (and it definitely isn't at the moment).
Note: radiation is not toxicity.
FYI: There are generally five types of toxicities: chemical, biological, physical, radioactive and behavioural.
To be fair radioactive toxicity stands a bit out because it is (in your wording) much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much more toxic than anything else possibly including 'forever chemicals'.
Nuclear energy is not cheaper nor safer, you're just kicking a toxic, radioactive can down the road.
FYI: There are generally five types of toxicities: chemical, biological, physical, radioactive and behavioural.
Toxicity at least in scientific literature only refers to chemical toxicity. What even would be "physical toxicity"?!
To be fair radioactive toxicity stands a bit out because it is (in your wording) much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much more toxic than anything else possibly including 'forever chemicals'.
If you went to eat unenriched uranium, you would die sooner (as in from smaller dose) from chemical poisoning than radiation damage (uranium is also chemically toxic). People not educated about the actual dangers of radiation tend to greatly over exaggerate its dangers.
Follow up: How long does it need to be safely stored? Please note the number of years.
For how long do you need to store toxic (by your weird definition I guess chemically toxic?) substances like lead?
Since they don't have a half-life, until the heat death of the universe. So why does storage time only suddenly matter for nuclear waste?
Nuclear energy is not cheaper nor safer, you're just kicking a toxic, radioactive can down the road.
Nuclear energy killed fewer people per kilowatt generated than hydro, wind, gas, and coal. Its just people like you spreading misinformation.
Here is a good video why nuclear waste is not the issue people like you make it out to be:
https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k
FYI: There are generally five types of toxicities: chemical, biological, physical, radioactive and behavioural.
Toxicity at least in scientific literature only refers to chemical toxicity. What even would be “physical toxicity”?!
Maybe, just maybe, you should have read the Wikipedia article you linked. Not only did I lift that sentence from there it also explains physical toxicity. Sometimes you should read past the headline.
( Skipping the rest of the BS and jumping to the grand finale.)
Here is a good video why nuclear waste is not the issue people like you make it out to be: https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k
Oh, so you got your PHD from Youtube University^tm^ - I didn't know that! My bad, you win!
JK, I like to get my info from different sources including but not limited to actual professors of physics (e.g. Harald Lesch) and they don't agree with mister Youtube dude.
Finally we reached the stage of you throwing shit on the wall in the hope something sticks.
arxiv.org 1810.02865
Published by team working for Bangladeshi Nuclear energy providers and reads a bit like a promotion piece. It is cited nowhere but I'm sure their employer/customer was happy.
Assuming you did some research on this (who am I kidding though) you should have found at per each article you find that claims storage is safe you'll find at least 2 incidents disproving that. If you'll look at the corresponding Wikipedia page you'll find these are mostly in developed countries or where they can be detected by developed countries. Surely this is just coincidence and not the tip of the proverbial iceberg...
I could drown you with links & articles of better scientific provenience but since that would be pointless I'd like to point out another fact to consider that doesn't get discussed enough:
At current (nuclear energy) consumption level the global stockpile of fissionable material is estimated to provide energy for another 230 years. That seems a lot and would buy us and a couple of future generations time. Until you factor in Germany and others stopping all efforts to implement renewables, emerging countries doing the same and also the rising demand for electricity which is estimated to drive up current nuclear energy consumption by 20. Suddenly that lengthy period of 230 years is gone..
Fission and fossile both rely on finite consumables. All energy providers have pollution associated with them. Out of these however only renewable get their energy from the sun which is good for another couple of billion years. So the only option is to go all in on renewables.
Yes, at the very least Germany should have started decades ago but Germans decided they'd like a conservative Government for most of the past 40 years.
Published by team working for Bangladeshi Nuclear energy providers and reads a bit like a promotion piece. It is cited nowhere but I'm sure their employer/customer was happy.
Ok, never mind that the people with most expertise and practical experience will inevitably work in the nuclear sector. Lets give this one to you, since I really have no way of knowing if it is honest.
Way better than your 1st article but still drives on assumed probabilities.
Ok sure, its not perfect, but it is pretty good evidence without trying it in practice.
Please explain the relevance pertaining to this discussion.
Since I expected you would scoff at the theoretical papers, here is a practical one. The reactors left behind waste that was buried since before humans existed, yet there are no signs of leakage or discernible signs of health issues caused by it. Now again, sure. We did not exactly have Geiger counters around it to know there were no issues, but it is good evidence there are no catastrophic ones.
Given both theoretical and practical evidence, I would asses the dangers of sealed underground storage to be low.
If you'll look at the corresponding Wikipedia page you'll find these are mostly in developed countries or where they can be detected by developed countries. Surely this is just coincidence and not the tip of the proverbial iceberg...
Excellent, you brought articles with causality numbers yourself. Never mind that not many developing countries operate nuclear powerplant, maybe some countries dump their fuel there. Go ahead and multiply the casualties 5 times over. Add to it the low risk that underground disposal will not be perfectly safe and a relatively small area of land may become uninhabitable in the future.
Now compare that to the yearly deaths cause by air pollution that the coal and gas plants Germany had to reactivate to replace nuclear produce. Then add to it the certain future damage from climate change and tell me that was a reasonable trade-off.
At current (nuclear energy) consumption level the global stockpile of fissionable material is estimated to provide energy for another 230 years.
I never claimed nuclear should be a permanent solution and I really don't want to start another long discussion.
PS: Oh right, almost forgot.
This article is by psychologists. Relevance?
This one might interest you if you intellectually understand nuclear is safer than fossil fuels yet you still feel afraid of it.
Because there was a massive coal lobby and Merkel was complete garbage. Next.
Try reading the article. Coal went down drastically.
Interesting. I read many articles about Germany doing the opposite and investing into coal mines the last years. Maybe I am misinformed. I recalled some big anti coal protests last year
Germany invested some cash in coal, but also invested a shitton more in renewable energy, thus making coal's share of the energy pie smaller than before they axed nuclear.
When I was a kid, Chernobyl happened. We weren't that far away and although I was very little I still remember the fear and uncertainty in my parent's faces. The following years were marked by research about what we can no longer eat, where our food comes from, etc
I also remember the fights about where to store nuclear waste.
I don't want to burn coal. I am pretty upset about what happened to our clean energy plans. But I will also never trust nuclear again. And I think, so do many in my generation.
which is funny because fossil fuels are everywhere poisoning the air and environment in general, not different from the nuclear radiation bogeyman
Especially when coal rejects a lot more radioactive materials in the air than nuclear power
There are still large areas in southern Germany where you’re not allowed to eat wild mushrooms and every boar that is hunted must be tested for radiation. That is because of the fallout from Chernobyl 38 years ago and 1400 km away.
For sure, but there are places in Germany and everywhere in Europe where you shouldn't be eating or drinking anything that comes out of the ground because of coal emissions, and places you can't do anything in because of the gigantic coal mines. And that's still currently happening and will keep happening for the foreseeable future.
Which is mostly due to fear(mongering) and not real residue.
And see another comment about coal emissions which are happening right now.
Please do note the official warnings of the BFS (Federal Office for Radiation Protection). Contamination of forests with Caesium-137 is a health risk in many southern Bavarian forests. It's half-life period is 30 years. The disaster was in 1986. That means it's still roughly half of it there and the layered forest grounds preserve radiation well.
If you're a mushroom forager on vacation in southern Bavaria - just don't do it. Or at least inform yourself which types of mushrooms you shouldn't eat in particular for radiation reasons.
The best thing to do when you fall off a horse, is climb straight back up on it. Rejecting almost limitless power because of an accident almost 40 years ago is foolish to me. Luckily research didn't completely stop and modern plants are a lot safer with a lot of medical applications for the waste.
But the horse still has a broken leg (End-Storage) and noone really knows how to fix that at the moment. Maybe give the horse some drugs to make the leg stronger (Transmutate the materials from long to moderately-long half-lifes), but we still need to support it in the end.
The move to coal was absolutely stupid, the CDU (which is currently gaining some traction.. again), dialed back on renewables which should have replaced some of the capacities lost to nucelar.. and then decided a new coal plant was a great idea too.
Probably some corruption.. sorry "Lobbying"-work behind that.. its not like the Experts (which were paid pretty well) told them that was a bad idea..
Maybe some more modern nucelar plants might work.. but its unprofitable (probably always was, considering the hidden costs on the tax payers already), so needs to be heavily state-funded, same with storage (plus getting all the stuff out of the butchered storage Asse, putting it somewhere else)
I am open to it, but dont see it happening. And storage.. no hopeful thoughts about that either, i dont think the current politic structures are well suited to oversee something like that from what we have seen from other storage-locations that are or were in use.
I'd also love some more plans for big energy storage aswell as new subsidies for the energy grid and renewables. The famous german bureaucracy is obviously also not helping any of this.
All of the nuclear waste produced by all of the nuclear power plants ever produced could fit on the area of about the size of a football pitch. Storing nuclear waste, isn’t the massive problem. People say it is. It could be easily disposed of by digging a very deep hole and sticking it in it.
It’s not ideal, sure, but it’s not exactly a huge problem either.
And that hole would of course not deform at all or release the products into the environment over some amount of time?
We already have that problem.. They tried more or less simply burying it in Asse, which spectacularly failed and now has to be brought back up.. paid by the government (so us) of course
Not if it’s deep enough and properly encased. And even in the extremely rare occasion there are mistakes made with improper storage or unforeseen environmental changes that require re-storage, the environmental impacts are still negligible.
The fear mongering around this is absurdly overblown.
Subsidizing reactors to run off waste would be fine. Better than burying it. I'm actually against building new nuclear for general power (for economic reasons), but support reactors for this purpose. The waste is sitting right there already, and we have to do something with it.
You forgot the latest one at Fukushima just 13 years ago. The costs of this catastrophe are estimated twice as high (~0.5T USD).
I forgot Germans get tsunami and earthquakes.
The Germans have Russians. :-/
Even the Russians aren't making nuclear disasters. They attacked and took control of the Zaporizhzhia plant, but there was no impact to nuclear safety.
Not saying it'll always be like this, and we might be less lucky next time, but at this point it looks like they're not trying to have Chernobyl 2.0.
There is some nuclear waste that Germany wasn't able to bury for over 30 years, because not a single site is safe. Maybe earthquakes and tsunamis aren't the only problems.
Cars are also not safe, especially at 200+ km/h but somehow it's OK to drive them this fast in Germany.
Edit: What I want to say is that there is no absolute safety.
If the car is safe (checked every year), you know the rules (that are in the law) and behave safely (keep the rules), not much can happen.
Also 300 km/h is quite rare. 200 km/h is not.
It's basically the same as with nuclear plants. They weren't safe to run, because the rods were old and they couldn't prove that storages are safe. And people voted for parties that support clean energy, especially doesn't produce harmful waste.
Sorry but this sounds like: A car crashed when I was young because the driver was drunk. I will never trust a car again.
...Which is a perfectly normal thing to feel. Car crash happended that affected them, now they try to avoid cars.
It's emotions, not logic. Especially to protest the existence of cars and trying to rid the world of them. In exchange for, say, horses which would kill even more people. All because of a drunk driver (better analogy would be a drunk driver that had a blow device but managed to bypass it).
Yeah, and? Are you discounting how powerful emotions can be versus logic? There’s an entire industry (psychology) around this and they still haven’t solved it.
That's the thing. When it comes to nuclear they think it's logic, when in reality it's emotion.
Which is a perfectly normal thing to feel
Dude, irrational fears are something to get therapy for.
Yeah, the point is when it comes to nuclear power it's irrational. Get therapy, and let the rest of us save the planet.
Surprisingly the title is not: Germany ditched coal and did went back to it.
did went
"did go", right?
Or just "went"
"did go went back"
Predictions that the nuclear exit would leave Germany forced to use more coal and facing rising prices and supply problems, meanwhile, have not transpired. In March 2023—the month before the phaseout—the distribution of German electricity generation was 53 percent renewable, 25 percent coal, 17 percent gas, and 5 percent nuclear. In March 2024, it was 60 percent renewable, 24 percent coal, and 16 percent gas.
Overall, the past year has seen record renewable power production nationwide, a 60-year low in coal use, sizeable emissions cuts, and decreasing energy prices.
This is my biggest take away from this article.
Yeah but if Germany hadn't been so anti-nuclear, by 2023 it could have been (for example) 53% renewable, 5% coal, 17% gas and 25% nuclear. Comparing the dying tail end of nuclear to just after it finally died is not useful.
Possible, but it isn't and it hasn't been since the 1970is. Given that reality I think it has been going into a sensible direction, because coal has been steadily falling since early 2000. The push for renewables has been a very direct result of the anti-nuclear movement, without it there might not have been any wish to transition towards them.
Without it there wouldn't have been much need to transition towards them. Nuclear is almost carbon neutral itself.
Missed opportunity to put solaire on the dinosaur.
ITT the church of nuclear energy strikes again.
Let's skip renewables, pretend there's enough fissionable material and start a straw man discussion about coal my brothers in nuclear. Atom.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Instead, activists championed what they regarded as safer, greener, and more accessible renewable alternatives like solar and wind, embracing their promise of greater self-sufficiency, community participation, and citizen empowerment (“energy democracy”).
This support for renewables was less about CO₂ and more aimed at resetting power relations (through decentralised, bottom-up generation rather than top-down production and distribution), protecting local ecosystems, and promoting peace in the context of the Cold War.
The older activist generation deliberately rejected the mainstream expertise of the time, which then regarded centralised nuclear power as the future and mass deployment of distributed renewables as a pipe dream.
This earlier movement was instrumental in creating Germany’s Green Party—today the world’s most influential—which emerged in 1980 and first entered national government from 1998 to 2005 as junior partner to the Social Democrats.
Indeed, the very book credited with coining the term Energiewende in 1980 was, significantly, titled Energie-Wende: Growth and Prosperity Without Oil and Uranium and published by a think tank founded by anti-nuclear activists.
That lasted until the 2011 Fukushima disaster, after which mass protests of 250,000 and a shock state election loss to the Greens forced that administration, too, to revert to the 2022 phaseout plan.
The original article contains 651 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
You see, it's so much safer for Germans that Germany has been slowly poisoning itself by burning coal for the last few decades breathing in radioactive nuclei from the combustion of ionized compounds in the coal. By slowly breathing in lethal doses of carcinogens, they've completely avoided a nuclear meltdown.
Obviously this was the safer route than a potential failure of a reactor. You know those things that are exceedingly governed or regulated and managed. Because Germany is such an active seismic zone with so many natural disasters that are constantly a present threat to its reactors.
Now tell me again about this oceanfront property in Colorado you have for sale.
The problem wasn't potential reactor failure but the non-existant space for nuclear waste
Nuclear waste isn't nearly as much of a problem as it has been made out to be. The danger from nuclear waste is due to its high energy levels. But, reactors exist that can be fueled with the waste products of older, less efficient reactors. They can "burn" high-level waste products, producing energy and low-level waste that is dangerous on the order of decades rather than millenia.
And meanwhile nobody talks about coal ash, what is toxic and needs a lot more space for storage.
And it's also radioactive, and its release is far less controlled than a nuclear plant.
There is no storage problem. You are just simply uninformed. . We can process about 95% of the fuel into usable energy. That remaining 5% would end up buried. We have the technology and materials to process it safely and entomb it in solid glass and then bury that glass a mile deep in the Earth. This is proven technology. We know for a fact that this would be a viable long-term storage solution as we have investigated naturally occurring reactors and found that their own fissile material that was encased in magma is still there multiple million years later while being in the middle of an active fault zone. The material naturally and safely decayed and did not spread or disperse through ground water contact in an unmanaged environment over millions of years. The only true obstacle is convincing luddites that. It can be done easily and with fully understood horizontal drilling technology pioneered in the 1950s for oil drilling.
But but but a different neighboring country with a completely different political and economic and oversight model had a problem because of wild corruption and utter ineptitude. Therefore we will have the exact same problem. There's no avoiding it! Shut down all the reactors! (/s)
That's the spirit. Next time someone tries to reason with you just scream in their face and panic. There is no need for logic when you're afraid.
Might I add a point on the cost from MMT perspective. So long as there's enough people and materials to build nuclear plants so that we aren't competing for them with other industries to any significant extent, we can print the money needed to build the plants without any significant effect on inflation. This of course is also true for any other plants or installations.
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.
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.
Ever heard of electrical energy storage?
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:
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
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.
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
The author is wrong. It is only a matter of time before Germany goes back to nuclear. Physics won't change regardless of short-term opinion.
I’m not going to pretend I know what Germans are thinking but I thought the author made a strong case about why they’d dislike nuclear. Doesn’t matter how great it is when it’s unpopular.
I'm from Germany and I'm pretty sure we won't go back. I do think that the decision was populistic and blindly actionistic in the light of Fukushima (like almost all political decisions in the last decades) and we'll reap the rewards of that in the coming years.
You sure gobbled up that Putin propaganda pre-war. But now it’s 2023 and Germany still stands. How much time will have to pass until you people realize the extend of Germany‘s energy dependency was vastly overestimated? France with their nuclear grid is now importing more energy from Germany than the other way around. And if you think that‘s only temporarily you should take a closer look.
Yes France imports cheep renewable energy from Germany when they have a glut of it they cant use, but that just means they sell on their nuclear power at a profit to places like Italy and the UK, and then when Germany doesnt have excess renewable production they sell to them at a profit too.
Spain is already phasing out nuclear energy currently and Sweden wants to do it after sufficient renewables are built. Among many other states.
Nuclear is just not profitable compared to renewables. France is exporting at a loss if one would consider all associated costs (privatization of profits and socialization of losses is creating bad incentives).
If you add a bunch of non-tangible costs on to one side of a comparison and not the other it makes that side look worse yes. You could make exactly the same argument saying if you considered generation reliability, land use and the need for grid updates and storage then renewables are far more expensive than nuclear, but that would be equally one sided.
Why is the EDF in so much debt if they can produce so mich cheap energy?
You got it mixed up. In a twist of irony France‘s nuclear power plants have been proven unreliable due to droughts in recent years. They are too water hungry to be used in dry summers without wrecking the environment completely and so they‘ve been forced to buy more reliable green energy in recent years. Solar and wind energy is cheaper and more reliable.
Did you even look at the linked article? France (and their majority nuclear generation) are the EU's top energy exporter. Yes they had an awkward year in 2022 when a combination of covid delayed maintenance and drought caused them to lose about 13% of generation for the year.
The article is badly researched.
The red-green coalition did not announce the 2022 date. They (Greens/SPD) announced a soft phase-out between 2015-2020 in conjunction with building renewables. This planned shift from nuclear to renewables was reverted by Merkel (CDU = conservatives) in 2010. They (CDU) changed their mind one year later in 2011 and announced the 2022 date; but without the emphasis on replacing it with renewables. This back and forth was also quite the expensive mistake by the CDU on multiple levels, because energy corporations were now entitled financial compensation for their old reactors.
IMO a lot of this had to do with Schroeder's and Merkel's connections with Russia and running the country's manufacturing base on cheap gas and oil.
It was also a geopolitical attempt to get some economic leverage on Russia iirc. Obviously massively backfired when it turns out tyrants are willing to sacrifice profit for power.
As I suspected. Conservatism is the reason we can't have nice things. Again.
What the fuck are you talking about? Did you even bother to read the article?
"The older activist generation deliberately rejected the mainstream expertise of the time, which then regarded centralised nuclear power as the future and mass deployment of distributed renewables as a pipe dream.
This earlier movement was instrumental in creating Germany’s Green Party—today the world’s most influential—which emerged in 1980 and first entered national government from 1998 to 2005 as junior partner to the Social Democrats. This “red-green” coalition banned new reactors, announced a shutdown of existing ones by 2022, and passed a raft of legislation supporting renewable energy.
That, in turn, turbocharged the national deployment of renewables, which ballooned from 6.3 percent of gross domestic electricity consumption in 2000 to 51.8 percent in 2023"
Ah yes, the arch-conservatives, the Greens and Social Democrats.
The activism of 1975 is the conservatism of 2015.
What do you mean? Don't you think transitioning to mostly renewables while coal and gas go down are good things?
Nuclear is affordable, efficient and proven. Abandoning it instead of promoting it was a dumb, conservative move that hurt everyone involved. Except Russian billionaires, of course.
Nuclear power is expensive and slow to build. Wind and solar are much, much cheaper and quicker.
They already had it and it was working just fine. They tore it down and went full coal and some gas. Now wind and solar are taking over slowly, but it's been years with more pollution and more radiation than any already working nuclear plant would have emmited.
That's true. The original plans for phasing out nuclear energy encompassed huge investments in renewable energy. The government Merkel II then decided to keep using nuclear and not invest in renewables, then decided a year later to leave nuclear again without investing in renewables. That little maneuver not only cost huge amounts of compensation for the big energy companies but also nuked (haha) the German wind and solar industry to the ground.
Or Germany could have just avoided the whole mess and kept the nuclear.
The old reactors could have been used until their end of life, yes. The effects are exaggerated though. Nobody was going to build new ones. Not even France who rely heavily on nuclear energy has new reactors.
this ignores the key issue that in Germany, there was already an extensive and perfectly functional nuclear industry. In other countries with no nuclear infrastructure, renewables are definitely the better, cheaper, more scalable choice - but countries which invested big many decades ago are in a different position, and Germany's deliberate destruction of their nuclear capabilities has left them dependant on fossil fuels from an adversarial state - easily a worse situation than small amounts of carefully managed nuclear waste while renewables were scaled up.
Shhh... anti-nuclear don't want to hear this. They'd rather project, even though people are talking about how stupid closing down the current nuclear infrastructure and not advocating to build new ones!
I don't support building new nuclear power plants, but it's ridiculous to close down already existing ones given the threat of climate change. NPP should act more like stop gap until renewable energy can take over more effectively.
I answered a very similar comment a little further down:
https://feddit.de/comment/9599367
I'm not claiming it was smart to leave nuclear before coal. It wasn't. But it is what happened and it was decided two decades ago. Nuclear is done in Germany and there is no point discussing it further. New reactors were not going to happen either way.
Por que no los dos?
(en Alemans, por supuesto)
Nuclear is only expensive and slow if you're building reactors from 1960-s. Modern micro- and nano-reactors can be put in every yard in a matter of months if not weeks.
I don't understand, you think we can build miniature nuclear plants for every single house in weeks?
My man probably played too much Fallout.
More details here, with proof links, etc https://lemmy.world/comment/9744519
Where have they been built?
https://lemmy.world/comment/9744519
I wish you were right, but you are not. Those reactors don't exist.
Except they do exist. Almost. First SMRs were scheduled to be deployed right about, but the pandemic fucked it up. The project is back on track though.
MNR study was finished in 2019, right before the pandemic. Feasibility was also finished during the pandemic and the development grants were awarded.
Nano-reactors are still a future, sadly, but if the investments will keep up it won't be long.
It won't have been long for a long time now. It's not a feasible concept to rely on a maybe. We need massive amounts of clean energy now and the way to do that now is water, wind and solar. If these wonder reactors are one day reality that's great.
The problem is that instead of investing into dumb renewables, we should've invested in nuclear decades ago. Now we have to play catch up.
France is a good example. They invest billions in their nuclear power. Still, their infrastructure is old and they can't seem to build new reactors. It's a money sink while "dumb renewables" are the cheapest most spammable energy source we ever had.
That wasn't my question
The idiots on here firmly believe that nuclear creates zero waste. In their deranged head there is no nuclear waste that will last for longer than humanity existed.
All coal from the Earth has a radioactive component to it. Burning coal releases more radiation into the atmosphere than a properly functioning nuclear reactor ever does. Fly ash from coal fired power plants contains 100 times more radiation than nuclear power plants emit.
The idiots on here apparently also think that burning coal somehow doesn’t create waste that will last for longer than humanity has existed.
Nobody brings up coal but nuclear stans and bots. You definitely put your favorite straw man to work.
Germany could have eliminated coal a decade or more ago. That's an important point to bring up.
I agree it's too late now for nuclear to make sense, but that was a lost decade of coal emissions.
It would be of the discussion was nuclear vs coal - which it isn’t.
You’re bringing up the straw man because you want turn away the discussion from renewables.
There’s good discussion to be had on the (complex) situation in Germany but it’s immediately flooded by the nuke-bots.
The discussion may not have been nuclear vs coal, but the reality was. That's the whole problem.
2 x No it isn’t. I know you love your precious precious nuclear to death and back and you really really need to discuss coal to better shill for it. Nobody cares about your religion and your straw man.
"Nuh uh!"
Okay whatever lol. Deny reality all you want. More nuclear = less coal, it's very simple math. Anyone not blinded by "scary nuclear!" can see it.
Nuclear just means massive
potentialradioactive pollution as there is no secure storage for the radioactive waste. You are now going to claim there is proven safe storage, there just a couple of mishaps really.Also, more importantly, there isn't even enough fission material to sustain demand for significant time if Germany and others were to switch. But sure lets's just skip and ignore renewables. Renewables pollute so much.
You know what word I didn't see at all in your response? Coal. Funny about that.
Compared to renewables, nuclear creates pretty much zero waste. The whole story of nuclear energy created less waste than one year of waste from solar panels alone.
What is the toxicity and half life / storage requirements for each waste type?
Toxicity I believe is about equal. Storage requirements are a bit stricter for nuclear in terms of storage container requirements, but much much much less in terms of storage space. Overall, it is much cheaper to safely dispose of the nuclear waste then waste from solar power.
Note: radiation is not toxicity.
Thanks for this picture-perfect post of a nuke-stan / nuke-bot
I generally try to respect other peoples religion but yours is a threat to the ecosphere. I believe you know your statement is bullshit.
People opposed to nuclear know this already but why do you think that is?
Follow up: How long does it need to be safely stored? Please note the number of years.
Humanity is about 300.000 years old, the Pyramids of Gizeh were build about 4600 years ago, the Vandals sacked Rome 1569 years ago, WW2 ended about 80 years ago. Now compare the those times with the time radioactive waste needs to be safely stored (and it definitely isn't at the moment).
FYI: There are generally five types of toxicities: chemical, biological, physical, radioactive and behavioural.
To be fair radioactive toxicity stands a bit out because it is (in your wording) much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much more toxic than anything else possibly including 'forever chemicals'.
Nuclear energy is not cheaper nor safer, you're just kicking a toxic, radioactive can down the road.
Toxicity at least in scientific literature only refers to chemical toxicity. What even would be "physical toxicity"?!
If you went to eat unenriched uranium, you would die sooner (as in from smaller dose) from chemical poisoning than radiation damage (uranium is also chemically toxic). People not educated about the actual dangers of radiation tend to greatly over exaggerate its dangers.
For how long do you need to store toxic (by your weird definition I guess chemically toxic?) substances like lead?
Since they don't have a half-life, until the heat death of the universe. So why does storage time only suddenly matter for nuclear waste?
Nuclear energy killed fewer people per kilowatt generated than hydro, wind, gas, and coal. Its just people like you spreading misinformation.
Here is a good video why nuclear waste is not the issue people like you make it out to be: https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k
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Maybe, just maybe, you should have read the Wikipedia article you linked. Not only did I lift that sentence from there it also explains physical toxicity. Sometimes you should read past the headline.
( Skipping the rest of the BS and jumping to the grand finale.)
Oh, so you got your PHD from Youtube University^tm^ - I didn't know that! My bad, you win!
JK, I like to get my info from different sources including but not limited to actual professors of physics (e.g. Harald Lesch) and they don't agree with mister Youtube dude.
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Oh no, a professor of astrophysics disagrees. Oh the humanity.
If YouTube is too peasant for you, you can read peer reviewed articles:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.02865
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/segweb/economicgeology/article-abstract/84/8/2286/20752/Natural-fission-reactors-of-Oklo
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/20/7804
https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.254.5038.1603
Finally we reached the stage of you throwing shit on the wall in the hope something sticks.
Published by team working for Bangladeshi Nuclear energy providers and reads a bit like a promotion piece. It is cited nowhere but I'm sure their employer/customer was happy.
Please explain the relevance pertaining to this discussion.
Way better than your 1st article but still drives on assumed probabilities.
Safe? No, it isn't.
This article is by psychologists. Relevance?
Assuming you did some research on this (who am I kidding though) you should have found at per each article you find that claims storage is safe you'll find at least 2 incidents disproving that. If you'll look at the corresponding Wikipedia page you'll find these are mostly in developed countries or where they can be detected by developed countries. Surely this is just coincidence and not the tip of the proverbial iceberg...
I could drown you with links & articles of better scientific provenience but since that would be pointless I'd like to point out another fact to consider that doesn't get discussed enough:
At current (nuclear energy) consumption level the global stockpile of fissionable material is estimated to provide energy for another 230 years. That seems a lot and would buy us and a couple of future generations time. Until you factor in Germany and others stopping all efforts to implement renewables, emerging countries doing the same and also the rising demand for electricity which is estimated to drive up current nuclear energy consumption by 20. Suddenly that lengthy period of 230 years is gone..
Fission and fossile both rely on finite consumables. All energy providers have pollution associated with them. Out of these however only renewable get their energy from the sun which is good for another couple of billion years. So the only option is to go all in on renewables.
Yes, at the very least Germany should have started decades ago but Germans decided they'd like a conservative Government for most of the past 40 years.
Ok, never mind that the people with most expertise and practical experience will inevitably work in the nuclear sector. Lets give this one to you, since I really have no way of knowing if it is honest.
Ok sure, its not perfect, but it is pretty good evidence without trying it in practice.
Since I expected you would scoff at the theoretical papers, here is a practical one. The reactors left behind waste that was buried since before humans existed, yet there are no signs of leakage or discernible signs of health issues caused by it. Now again, sure. We did not exactly have Geiger counters around it to know there were no issues, but it is good evidence there are no catastrophic ones.
Given both theoretical and practical evidence, I would asses the dangers of sealed underground storage to be low.
Excellent, you brought articles with causality numbers yourself. Never mind that not many developing countries operate nuclear powerplant, maybe some countries dump their fuel there. Go ahead and multiply the casualties 5 times over. Add to it the low risk that underground disposal will not be perfectly safe and a relatively small area of land may become uninhabitable in the future.
Now compare that to the yearly deaths cause by air pollution that the coal and gas plants Germany had to reactivate to replace nuclear produce. Then add to it the certain future damage from climate change and tell me that was a reasonable trade-off.
I never claimed nuclear should be a permanent solution and I really don't want to start another long discussion.
PS: Oh right, almost forgot.
This one might interest you if you intellectually understand nuclear is safer than fossil fuels yet you still feel afraid of it.
Because there was a massive coal lobby and Merkel was complete garbage. Next.
Try reading the article. Coal went down drastically.
Interesting. I read many articles about Germany doing the opposite and investing into coal mines the last years. Maybe I am misinformed. I recalled some big anti coal protests last year
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/26/german-windfarm-coalmine-keyenberg-turbines-climate
Germany invested some cash in coal, but also invested a shitton more in renewable energy, thus making coal's share of the energy pie smaller than before they axed nuclear.
When I was a kid, Chernobyl happened. We weren't that far away and although I was very little I still remember the fear and uncertainty in my parent's faces. The following years were marked by research about what we can no longer eat, where our food comes from, etc
I also remember the fights about where to store nuclear waste.
I don't want to burn coal. I am pretty upset about what happened to our clean energy plans. But I will also never trust nuclear again. And I think, so do many in my generation.
which is funny because fossil fuels are everywhere poisoning the air and environment in general, not different from the nuclear radiation bogeyman
Especially when coal rejects a lot more radioactive materials in the air than nuclear power
There are still large areas in southern Germany where you’re not allowed to eat wild mushrooms and every boar that is hunted must be tested for radiation. That is because of the fallout from Chernobyl 38 years ago and 1400 km away.
For sure, but there are places in Germany and everywhere in Europe where you shouldn't be eating or drinking anything that comes out of the ground because of coal emissions, and places you can't do anything in because of the gigantic coal mines. And that's still currently happening and will keep happening for the foreseeable future.
Which is mostly due to fear(mongering) and not real residue.
And see another comment about coal emissions which are happening right now.
Please do note the official warnings of the BFS (Federal Office for Radiation Protection). Contamination of forests with Caesium-137 is a health risk in many southern Bavarian forests. It's half-life period is 30 years. The disaster was in 1986. That means it's still roughly half of it there and the layered forest grounds preserve radiation well.
If you're a mushroom forager on vacation in southern Bavaria - just don't do it. Or at least inform yourself which types of mushrooms you shouldn't eat in particular for radiation reasons.
General information and warnings (2022):
https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/notfallschutz/notfall/tschornobyl/umweltfolgen.html#doc6055566bodyText3
Specifically regarding mushrooms (2019):
https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/BfS/DE/broschueren/ion/info-wildpilze.pdf?\_\_blob=publicationFile&v=7
OK, thanks. That ends the argument on South German forests, but doesn't end it on nuclear energy being more or less harmful than coal.
All coal does is guarantee it and dilute it (guaranteed ejecting more).
Actually coal plants which are in use, spew thousands of times of nuclear material into the air what any nuclear plant ever has.
Including Chernobyl and Fukushima?
Yes
The best thing to do when you fall off a horse, is climb straight back up on it. Rejecting almost limitless power because of an accident almost 40 years ago is foolish to me. Luckily research didn't completely stop and modern plants are a lot safer with a lot of medical applications for the waste.
But the horse still has a broken leg (End-Storage) and noone really knows how to fix that at the moment. Maybe give the horse some drugs to make the leg stronger (Transmutate the materials from long to moderately-long half-lifes), but we still need to support it in the end.
The move to coal was absolutely stupid, the CDU (which is currently gaining some traction.. again), dialed back on renewables which should have replaced some of the capacities lost to nucelar.. and then decided a new coal plant was a great idea too.
Probably some corruption.. sorry "Lobbying"-work behind that.. its not like the Experts (which were paid pretty well) told them that was a bad idea..
Maybe some more modern nucelar plants might work.. but its unprofitable (probably always was, considering the hidden costs on the tax payers already), so needs to be heavily state-funded, same with storage (plus getting all the stuff out of the butchered storage Asse, putting it somewhere else)
I am open to it, but dont see it happening. And storage.. no hopeful thoughts about that either, i dont think the current politic structures are well suited to oversee something like that from what we have seen from other storage-locations that are or were in use.
I'd also love some more plans for big energy storage aswell as new subsidies for the energy grid and renewables. The famous german bureaucracy is obviously also not helping any of this.
All of the nuclear waste produced by all of the nuclear power plants ever produced could fit on the area of about the size of a football pitch. Storing nuclear waste, isn’t the massive problem. People say it is. It could be easily disposed of by digging a very deep hole and sticking it in it.
It’s not ideal, sure, but it’s not exactly a huge problem either.
And that hole would of course not deform at all or release the products into the environment over some amount of time?
We already have that problem.. They tried more or less simply burying it in Asse, which spectacularly failed and now has to be brought back up.. paid by the government (so us) of course
Not if it’s deep enough and properly encased. And even in the extremely rare occasion there are mistakes made with improper storage or unforeseen environmental changes that require re-storage, the environmental impacts are still negligible.
The fear mongering around this is absurdly overblown.
Subsidizing reactors to run off waste would be fine. Better than burying it. I'm actually against building new nuclear for general power (for economic reasons), but support reactors for this purpose. The waste is sitting right there already, and we have to do something with it.
You forgot the latest one at Fukushima just 13 years ago. The costs of this catastrophe are estimated twice as high (~0.5T USD).
I forgot Germans get tsunami and earthquakes.
The Germans have Russians. :-/
Even the Russians aren't making nuclear disasters. They attacked and took control of the Zaporizhzhia plant, but there was no impact to nuclear safety.
Not saying it'll always be like this, and we might be less lucky next time, but at this point it looks like they're not trying to have Chernobyl 2.0.
There is some nuclear waste that Germany wasn't able to bury for over 30 years, because not a single site is safe. Maybe earthquakes and tsunamis aren't the only problems.
Cars are also not safe, especially at 200+ km/h but somehow it's OK to drive them this fast in Germany.
Edit: What I want to say is that there is no absolute safety.
If the car is safe (checked every year), you know the rules (that are in the law) and behave safely (keep the rules), not much can happen.
Also 300 km/h is quite rare. 200 km/h is not.
It's basically the same as with nuclear plants. They weren't safe to run, because the rods were old and they couldn't prove that storages are safe. And people voted for parties that support clean energy, especially doesn't produce harmful waste.
Sorry but this sounds like: A car crashed when I was young because the driver was drunk. I will never trust a car again.
...Which is a perfectly normal thing to feel. Car crash happended that affected them, now they try to avoid cars.
It's emotions, not logic. Especially to protest the existence of cars and trying to rid the world of them. In exchange for, say, horses which would kill even more people. All because of a drunk driver (better analogy would be a drunk driver that had a blow device but managed to bypass it).
Yeah, and? Are you discounting how powerful emotions can be versus logic? There’s an entire industry (psychology) around this and they still haven’t solved it.
That's the thing. When it comes to nuclear they think it's logic, when in reality it's emotion.
Dude, irrational fears are something to get therapy for.
Yeah, the point is when it comes to nuclear power it's irrational. Get therapy, and let the rest of us save the planet.
Nuclear power is the only feasible clean power
There is nothing clean about nuclear power:
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-nuclear-energy-good-for-the-climate/a-59853315
Surprisingly the title is not: Germany ditched coal and did went back to it.
"did go", right?
Or just "went"
"did go went back"
This is my biggest take away from this article.
Yeah but if Germany hadn't been so anti-nuclear, by 2023 it could have been (for example) 53% renewable, 5% coal, 17% gas and 25% nuclear. Comparing the dying tail end of nuclear to just after it finally died is not useful.
Possible, but it isn't and it hasn't been since the 1970is. Given that reality I think it has been going into a sensible direction, because coal has been steadily falling since early 2000. The push for renewables has been a very direct result of the anti-nuclear movement, without it there might not have been any wish to transition towards them.
Without it there wouldn't have been much need to transition towards them. Nuclear is almost carbon neutral itself.
Missed opportunity to put solaire on the dinosaur.
ITT the church of nuclear energy strikes again.
Let's skip renewables, pretend there's enough fissionable material and start a straw man discussion about coal my brothers in nuclear. Atom.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Instead, activists championed what they regarded as safer, greener, and more accessible renewable alternatives like solar and wind, embracing their promise of greater self-sufficiency, community participation, and citizen empowerment (“energy democracy”).
This support for renewables was less about CO₂ and more aimed at resetting power relations (through decentralised, bottom-up generation rather than top-down production and distribution), protecting local ecosystems, and promoting peace in the context of the Cold War.
The older activist generation deliberately rejected the mainstream expertise of the time, which then regarded centralised nuclear power as the future and mass deployment of distributed renewables as a pipe dream.
This earlier movement was instrumental in creating Germany’s Green Party—today the world’s most influential—which emerged in 1980 and first entered national government from 1998 to 2005 as junior partner to the Social Democrats.
Indeed, the very book credited with coining the term Energiewende in 1980 was, significantly, titled Energie-Wende: Growth and Prosperity Without Oil and Uranium and published by a think tank founded by anti-nuclear activists.
That lasted until the 2011 Fukushima disaster, after which mass protests of 250,000 and a shock state election loss to the Greens forced that administration, too, to revert to the 2022 phaseout plan.
The original article contains 651 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
You see, it's so much safer for Germans that Germany has been slowly poisoning itself by burning coal for the last few decades breathing in radioactive nuclei from the combustion of ionized compounds in the coal. By slowly breathing in lethal doses of carcinogens, they've completely avoided a nuclear meltdown.
Obviously this was the safer route than a potential failure of a reactor. You know those things that are exceedingly governed or regulated and managed. Because Germany is such an active seismic zone with so many natural disasters that are constantly a present threat to its reactors.
Now tell me again about this oceanfront property in Colorado you have for sale.
The problem wasn't potential reactor failure but the non-existant space for nuclear waste
Nuclear waste isn't nearly as much of a problem as it has been made out to be. The danger from nuclear waste is due to its high energy levels. But, reactors exist that can be fueled with the waste products of older, less efficient reactors. They can "burn" high-level waste products, producing energy and low-level waste that is dangerous on the order of decades rather than millenia.
And meanwhile nobody talks about coal ash, what is toxic and needs a lot more space for storage.
And it's also radioactive, and its release is far less controlled than a nuclear plant.
There is no storage problem. You are just simply uninformed. . We can process about 95% of the fuel into usable energy. That remaining 5% would end up buried. We have the technology and materials to process it safely and entomb it in solid glass and then bury that glass a mile deep in the Earth. This is proven technology. We know for a fact that this would be a viable long-term storage solution as we have investigated naturally occurring reactors and found that their own fissile material that was encased in magma is still there multiple million years later while being in the middle of an active fault zone. The material naturally and safely decayed and did not spread or disperse through ground water contact in an unmanaged environment over millions of years. The only true obstacle is convincing luddites that. It can be done easily and with fully understood horizontal drilling technology pioneered in the 1950s for oil drilling.
https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/disappearing-pod/the-worlds-only-natural-nuclear-reactor/#:~:text=In%20reality%2C%20the%20French%20had,French%20authorities'%20eyes%20was%20tiny.
But but but a different neighboring country with a completely different political and economic and oversight model had a problem because of wild corruption and utter ineptitude. Therefore we will have the exact same problem. There's no avoiding it! Shut down all the reactors! (/s)
That's the spirit. Next time someone tries to reason with you just scream in their face and panic. There is no need for logic when you're afraid.
The tldr bot summarized only page one of a two-page article. That summary is missing a lot of context.
Might I add a point on the cost from MMT perspective. So long as there's enough people and materials to build nuclear plants so that we aren't competing for them with other industries to any significant extent, we can print the money needed to build the plants without any significant effect on inflation. This of course is also true for any other plants or installations.
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.
You don't need batteries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage\_hydroelectricity
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.
Ever heard of electrical energy storage?
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
https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k
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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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
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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.
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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
Just block the bot if you don't like it
I have nothing wrong with it
The author is wrong. It is only a matter of time before Germany goes back to nuclear. Physics won't change regardless of short-term opinion.
I’m not going to pretend I know what Germans are thinking but I thought the author made a strong case about why they’d dislike nuclear. Doesn’t matter how great it is when it’s unpopular.
I'm from Germany and I'm pretty sure we won't go back. I do think that the decision was populistic and blindly actionistic in the light of Fukushima (like almost all political decisions in the last decades) and we'll reap the rewards of that in the coming years.
You sure gobbled up that Putin propaganda pre-war. But now it’s 2023 and Germany still stands. How much time will have to pass until you people realize the extend of Germany‘s energy dependency was vastly overestimated? France with their nuclear grid is now importing more energy from Germany than the other way around. And if you think that‘s only temporarily you should take a closer look.
Not only is Germany not exporting more power than France, but they have dropped down to fourth in the EU behand Spain and Sweden as well. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-07/france-is-europe-s-top-power-exporter-as-germany-turns-importer
Yes France imports cheep renewable energy from Germany when they have a glut of it they cant use, but that just means they sell on their nuclear power at a profit to places like Italy and the UK, and then when Germany doesnt have excess renewable production they sell to them at a profit too.
Spain is already phasing out nuclear energy currently and Sweden wants to do it after sufficient renewables are built. Among many other states.
Nuclear is just not profitable compared to renewables. France is exporting at a loss if one would consider all associated costs (privatization of profits and socialization of losses is creating bad incentives).
If you add a bunch of non-tangible costs on to one side of a comparison and not the other it makes that side look worse yes. You could make exactly the same argument saying if you considered generation reliability, land use and the need for grid updates and storage then renewables are far more expensive than nuclear, but that would be equally one sided.
Why is the EDF in so much debt if they can produce so mich cheap energy?
You got it mixed up. In a twist of irony France‘s nuclear power plants have been proven unreliable due to droughts in recent years. They are too water hungry to be used in dry summers without wrecking the environment completely and so they‘ve been forced to buy more reliable green energy in recent years. Solar and wind energy is cheaper and more reliable.
Did you even look at the linked article? France (and their majority nuclear generation) are the EU's top energy exporter. Yes they had an awkward year in 2022 when a combination of covid delayed maintenance and drought caused them to lose about 13% of generation for the year.
What does this have to do with their comment...?