It's a common problem with decisions made by one administration affecting some point in the future when a different administration would be in charge. I don't think they ever thought it was a good idea --- it was, however, the politically opportune thing to announce at the time. You'd think that an administration that decides to phase out nuclear power would have alternatives in place, but it's much easier to kick the can down the road to make it a problem that will be dealt with in the future.
It still is a very good idea. How we implemented it however, is the problem.
Nuclear energy is more expensive than any other mean of energy production. That is, when subsidies and disposal of nuclear waste (for a long, long time) are part of the equation instead of privatizing earnings and collectivizing costs. Moreover, nuclear energy produces waste for generations and generations to deal with. In all those decades of nuclear energy production we haven‘t been able to find a good solution for a secure disposal of nuclear waste. Because nobody wants it nearby. Similar to the ExxonMobil CEO quickly becoming a NIMBY regarding fracking when it was supposed to take place near where he lived.
The shift to renewables was slowed down because of cheap gas from Russia and „alternatives“ such as nuclear energy production. Both massive mistakes.
What we had needed was massive investments and partnerships within the EU and with nearby countries such as Norway and Switzerland e.g. for pumped hydro storage, green hydrogen and massive European energy networks (e.g. for solar energy from southern Europe).
That will be our tasks for the next years and statistics show that we have massive investments into solar energy and heat pumps to tackle future challenges.
The cost of nuclear is in planning and construction.
There only scenario in which shutting down a nuclear plant within the next, say, 50 years makes sense is if it has physically deteriorated to the point of it's stability being unknown.
Once there is a surplus of entirely green energy, you can consider removing nuclear idle capacity, but even then you'd have to ask "why?".
Yes, nuclear produces (manageable) waste. But coal throws its waste into the air, actively killing people of lung cancer and harming cognitive ability, while slowly boiling the planet. And that's before we look at mining.
Solar and wind would be nicer, but there's no discussion to be had about removing nuclear while coal and oil power is still out there killing us and the planet.
Heck, if you're looking at lives saved, nuclear wins - the total direct and indirect deaths per power unit of nuclear is lower than wind, as the large number of windmills needed to be constructed bump the worksite accident numbers.
The gas shortage is for heating and industrial use, not electric generation. Their industry is ramping up to production levels higher than pre-war which isn't helping.
Also, they delayed shutdown of some nuclear plants due to the energy crisis.
But guess where the fuel for their nuclear power plants was coming from? Hint: starts with an R.
Vestas claims their turbines are carbon-neutral within 4-6 months. Even if you double that (present day claim and for offshore turbines; these turbines are older and land based), that means that for 7 years those turbines have been reducing our carbon footprint.
They're almost certainly be sold and reinstalled somewhere else.
HN's obsession with trying to "GOTCHA!" non-nuclear green power is so tiresome.
Like, even if you could make the case that these have paid themselves off carbon wise, the implicit conclusion is that the wind farm was wasting space that they could use for mining coal, something they were getting rid of not long ago when they had nuclear instead. Any way you chop this, the german energy and environmental policies are strangling the economy there and represent a net regression in actual environmental conservation.
Nope. The wind farm wasn't wasting space. However, the coal companies had gotten mining rights for that area long ago and now exercise them for profit. Coal power generation is on an all-time low in Germany. There is also no energy shortage in Germany.
When Russia started the war and cut off gas deliveries, of course the energy markets spiked, but prices are down again to pre-war levels. They are - beyond that spike - not strangling the economy. But it certainly wouldn't have hurt, if the previous government had not slowed down the ramping up of renewables.
1. Its easy to look up the data, compared to the "spike" prices have come down, they remain far higher than 2020.
https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/electricity-price
2. Its called revealed preference, they were wasting space that could be used for a more profitable endevor, coal mining.
The reason we stop coal mining isn't that we "need the space" for wind generators, it is, that we don't want to destroy our countryside even more for company profits and of course climate concerns. Of course, both parts of the environmental damages are no concern to the companies profitting.
Im having trouble understanding how that's relevant. Nuclear is green, they had nuclear, they decided to shut it down, energy prices go up, now they are taking down a wind farm to get more coal. Is there something you just fundamentally miss here? You think thats just a-ok because at least we are talking about how much we care about the environment? The policies have failed.
No, you are mixing things up. The mining rights are old. It is not that someone suddenly decided to mine more coal. Quite contrary, all plans for coal usage are being cut down considerably, as it is replaced with renewables. That the wind generators had to be taken down for mining coal is just sad but the result of older mining rights.
As how much nuclear is clean is disputable, but there are multiple reasons to shut it down. That the energy prices went up has nothing to do with the nuclear shutdown but for other reasons which have been named.
Fact is, renewable energy is strongly up and that is going to continue. Because we care about the environment.
The company never had to exercise those mining rights, they chose to take down the wind farm and mine coal. I am not mixing things up, you are very clearly missing the point; they decided mining for coal would be more profitable, it was never your decision in the first place, no one cares about anyones feelings here, its economics.
If you take cheap nuclear energy out of the equation then of course energy prices rise. You are taking off supply, that pushes cost up to meet demand.
You clearly dont care enough about the environment to question the strategy used in protecting it; if you want people to tolerate green energy it has to be cost effective.
If you had read my answers you would have spottet, that I wrote that the company continuned the mining due to profits. Not because it benefits the community or the envorionmen.
That nuclear is cheap is a lie. It is that simple. And if more people understand that they are told lies about cheap nuclear, they will ask for green energy.
I operated nuclear reactors for 6 years, I am well aware of what is required. Their being nearly regulated out of existence has nothing to do with reactor safety nor environmental protection, youve been had by the fossile fuel industry.
> Germany no longer depends on Russian imports for its energy supply, the country's finance minister has told the BBC. Christian Lindner said Germany had completely diversified its energy infrastructure since Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year.
The need for coal is temporary. They're dropping their estimate for when they'll be coal-free from 2038 to 2030 because of the record pace of solar installation. They've been adding around 1GW a month of solar. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/08/21/germany-records-1-2-g...
The only "anti-nuke" movement the Soviet Union was interested in and funded was the one against nuclear weapons being stationed in Europe, which had little to do with the Greens.
Protests against nuclear power were almost always local NIMB kind of things, not bound to an ideology. Case in point: The party in Germany that now wants nuclear energy back is the party that rules out a permanent disposal site in their home state.
The Greens were a tiny fringe movement that had no influence on public opinion at all. It was Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima that turned the public against nuclear energy.
Russia has a much tighter grip on nuclear energy than on gas. Germany stopped using Russian gas within a year, countries are still figuring out where to get their enriched uranium from. Not to mention that many uranium suppliers are closer to the Russian sphere of influence than to the Western one, e.g. see the Nigerien coup d'état.
Coal is the only fossil fuel source Germany has. Therefore, the two big parties in Germany that won every federal election in German post-war history have been friends of coal. Germany's coal addiction, just like China's, has never had anything to do with the Greens.
The Greens are the most anti-Russian party in Germany, so far that Russia turned hippies into war hawks. Before the war, they were the only party opposing Nord Stream 2 and they were the only party that wanted to stop the import of Russian fossil fuels altogether, which was not a popular position to have. Conservatives painted them as hypocrites for wanting "dirty" LNG.
Somebody please build an AI app that tracks the mentioning of countries in HN stories, and maps them to sentiments. I would be so interested in learning which country will rank number one in being laughable.
Certainly a singular instance Germany in 2023 installed 1GW (correction: this figure was for solar, not wind) of wind power per month. Coincidentally that is roughly the yield a single nuclear powerplant would give, only that the construction of these typically take a decade, not a month. And they cost more to build and operate.
And before someone says: "But what about storage, they won't give you power when you need it!" — this is a problem that can be solved with engineering, unlike the peoblem of the 10.000 year storage of decaying nuclear waste, which becomes a problem of epochal societal scale. When was the last time you had one society last for that long? How would you even calculate the cost of that? Proponents of nuclear power never price this into the energy production (somehow this is something the state has to pay for some reason? But who knows whether a state exists in 5000 years?) and always handwave away the practical problems involved with storing this in densely populated areas for a time span so long it would put us back to the dawn of humankind. Reprocessing exists, sure, but that is only a fraction of the waste.
So, france is able to store it all in a single warehouse despite being a majority nuclear grid, so volume isnt a concern. Environmentalist policy effectively shut down a plan for long term storage where its stored underground with signs designed to be understood by future civilizations. No, instead we will do this the hard way, where we have to build out 1000x++ the worlds battery capacity because there are no environmental concerns there, makes total sense.
If society doesn’t exist in 5000 years, who cares who finds it?
That’s like asking us now if we care there were human sacrifices 5000 years ago. Yeah, ok that’s awful but I don’t really care.
Similarly if all society collapses, I do not give a shit if somebody digs hundreds of meters into a cave clearly labeled “do not go here” in pictograms that can be understood by the most rudimentary thinkers, and dies of radiation poisoning.
We used to have GAMES where we watched people get ripped apart by lions, FOR SPORT. When did this BS “we must never potentially maybe damage some random human 5000 years into the future” stuff come from?
While nuclear power plants do indeed take more time and money to build they do have the significant advantage of reliably producing their target output come rain or shine. They also tend to last about three times as long as wind turbines (nuclear ~60 years lifetime, wind turbines ~20 years) - that is, they can last that long if no "green" politicos are around to switch them off due to ideological reasons. Nuclear power plants also take up far less space per produced TWh.
The "10.000 year storage of nuclear waste" problem can be solved by using a fast neutron/breeder reactor with which spent fuel can be reworked into new reactor fuel. This has two big advantages in that it makes it possible to use up to 90% of the fissile material as fuel as opposed to less than 10% in conventional reactors) as well as the fact that fast reactors can "burn" the long-lived actinides which are responsible for the long-time storage requirements for conventional spent nuclear fuel. The remaining spent fuel is not only much smaller in volume (~10% of the original spent fuel mass) but also much shorter storage times of around 300 years instead of thousands of years.
Well, the question is, how much does a nuclear powered grid cost vs. a renewable powered one. Price isn't irrelevant. Newest numbers for Hinkeley Point C don't look good. Also, while the weather isn't directly limiting the power output, the plands do require cooling which can be limited by the weather. France already had to limit nuclear production quite severely due to this.
The life time of a wind generator isn't limited to 20 years - it is more practical reasons it isn't prolonged further. While with nuclear plants there is a lot of pressure to keep it working, even if the safety isn't quite up to modern standards.
Interestingly, while breeding reactors can be built, none is operating in the west. France had two of them and stopped using them. It certainly is a delicate technology. Would be interesting to do a more detailled analysis why no one is operating any more. Perhaps it is just the typical stance of ignoring the problem of nuclear waste as long as possible. As it has been done so far.
EPA: The typical life span of a windturbine is 20 years, with routine maintenance required every six months [1]
Renewable Energy Foundation: a new study, The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark [2] shows that the economic life of onshore wind turbines is between 10 and 15 years, not the 20 to 25 years projected by the wind industry itself and used for government projections
Russia, China and India are operating breeder reactors, India and China are in the process of starting more. The French SuperPhenix commercial prototype was shut down on political grounds. The completed FBR in Kalkar (Germany) was never fueled, again on political grounds. From what I can see the reason for the limited deployment of FNR/FBR types is mostly based on political and ideological grounds. The fact that these reactor types can be used to create Plutonium which can be used to create nuclear weapons plays a large role as does the irrational fear of anything 'nuclear' in 'green' circles. The latter is becoming less relevant now that many 'green' politicos have seen the problems their anti-nuclear stance create in their own 'battle' against CO₂. The German 'greens' have not changed their ways yet which has led to the expansion of lignite use and with that lignite mining as well as a further deindustrialisation of Germany for lack of affordable electrical power.
Yes, if typical operations license is valid for 20 years, the typical life span is obviously 20 years. Because after that time it is cheaper to build a newer and improved generator than to try to renew the license. That doesn't imply a technical limitation.
You pointing to the maintenance interval is just bad faith argumenting. On that ground, nuclear energy is even more irresponsible, as the power plants get daily maintenance and supervision.
And your claim about the expansion of the lignite usage is another lie. It is on a historical low. It could be lower still, if the previous government hadn't curbed the rollout of renewable energy while accellarating the shutdown of nuclear. Blame them, not the greens.
> Yes, if typical operations license is valid for 20 years, the typical life span is obviously 20 years
You're moving the goal posts. I merely state the facts as published by manufacturers and those from experience in the field (which show the manufacturer data to be highly optimistic).
> You pointing to the maintenance interval is just bad faith argumenting
It is not me pointing out the maintenance interval but the EPA. Is the EPA acting in bad faith?
> And your claim about the expansion of the lignite usage is another lie. It is on a historical low
Germany is re-opening lignite power plants. Tell us how this rhymes with your claim. Also, please, stop using hyperbolic language like 'argumenting in bad faith' and 'another lie', here we deal in facts not feelings. You are clearly ideologically aligned with those who closed the nuclear power plants but do not let ideology cloud your reasoning. Had 'Die Grune' not insisted on closing those nuclear power plants the lignite plants could have remained closed, the wind farm would not need to make place for a lignite mine and power prices in my part of the world (Sweden) would be markedly lower instead of being pushed up due to the fact that the interconnected grid causes prices to be affected by those on the other side of the border.
But you are not telling the truth. Yes, some coal power plants have been reacted, but they are on standby in case we run out of gas or some other major energy shortages. Which hasn't happened. We managed to replace the Russian gas and there was no extremely hard winter. And those plants are slowly getting mothballed again.
Why would you build wind turbines that last fifty years while the technology improves rapidly? The turbines from ten years ago are no longer cost competitive with current models.
Can you tell me what is the building cost of something extremely reasonable like 720 GWh of battery storage? That is full output just for single month. As I think shouldering these plants with that level of storage requirement is extremely reasonable.
I don't see the problem. You run nuclear as baseload, and use the excess renewables to do energy intensive tasks, store what you can or sell them to the areas where there is no excess. This problem exists even when nuclear is not in the picture. Having nuclear will hedge you against the occasional underproduction you will experience with renewables, so to me it all sounds completely reasonable.
Nuclear is already a challenging investment, as the plants are very expensive and only start producing after several years. I think it's reasonable to assume that the state would cover majority of the costs, and consider nuclear as an infrastructure investment, rather than get-rich-quick scheme.
Nuclear is even worse than that: The only nuclear plants in Europe that have been built in 10 years or less in recent times are Russian ones, the singular EPR took 18 years. It's not a timescale that is well suited for addressing the immediate climate catastrophe.
(But we need to keep battling on the longer timescale as well of course, so nuclear is still good to build)
It is quite possible to build save nuclear plants in a short time. Swedish Barsebäck and Oskarshamn took 5 years each, finnish Olkiluoto 1 started already after 4 years. In the heavy bureaucratized Germany Unterweser took 6 years from first dig in the ground.
All these are from the 1970's, and now roughly 50 years later, our evolved technology and knowledge of nuclear technology and safety, should make it even faster and safer.
But funny enough it doesn't get faster. I have my suspicions why, but have not formulated my thoughts enough to blog about it.
Is there an answer for the short term? Last I checked, there are days where the sun doesnt shine and the wind doesnt blow; its going to take a long time to build enough batteries.
There is no "pure logic" in energy and climate policy, there's tradeoffs and value jugements. You can build coal or use fossil fuels like natural gas if you are willing to do climate harm, but it's obviously not the only solution.
Thats why grid connections matter. When there isn’t sun and wind in germany there’s some sun in spain, some wind in denmark, some nukes in france, some hydro in norway and as last resort - some coal in poland.
Also why smart appliances matter too - you wouldn’t even notice if your car charges 25% slower, house is 1 degree colder/warmer and shower is few minutes shorter…
i always find it odd how risk averse the anti-nuclear camp is. I mean if climate change is as bad as they say, it's worth the risk! Without going into the argument itself.
If we need radical changes fast, and nuclear can provide them(!!!) then the fact that there are some risks and that it might be a bit expensive shouldn't matter.
If nuclear was the one option to fight climate change, then by all means we should do it. But the thing is: it isn't and it isn't even a good one.
First of all: you say we need fast changes. That already rules out nuclear. Setting up a new reactor takes like 20 years. We don't have that time. And we wouldn't need one, each major industrial nation would need at least 100 of them, 10 billion each. There is just no way to achieve that. Not even mentioning the other downsides of nuclear.
However renewable buildup is much faster. Germany has build up more than the equivalent of one nuclear plant of solar alone in one year and the buildup speed can be easily accelerated with a fraction of the effort of trying to expand the nuclear capacity.
Most Germans are horrified by this. But this has neither to do with the phase-out of nuclear reactors nor by the state of the energy supply in Germany in 2023. When Russia cut off the gas supply to Germany, there were of course a few concerns, but fortunately, Germany quickly managed to replace the Russian gas via the international markets. On top of that, since the change of the government in late 21, the ramp up of renewables has greatly accellerated again. As a consequence, despite taking the last 4 nuclear plants off the grid, coal usage in Germany is down considerably.
The current plan is to ramp down coal till 2030 which also puts an end to mining. Still, mining some more coal is profitable for the power companies and they are pushing to mine most of the coal which was approved for mining earlier on. But there is still considerable pressure to limit mining more.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 122 ms ] threadNuclear energy is more expensive than any other mean of energy production. That is, when subsidies and disposal of nuclear waste (for a long, long time) are part of the equation instead of privatizing earnings and collectivizing costs. Moreover, nuclear energy produces waste for generations and generations to deal with. In all those decades of nuclear energy production we haven‘t been able to find a good solution for a secure disposal of nuclear waste. Because nobody wants it nearby. Similar to the ExxonMobil CEO quickly becoming a NIMBY regarding fracking when it was supposed to take place near where he lived.
The shift to renewables was slowed down because of cheap gas from Russia and „alternatives“ such as nuclear energy production. Both massive mistakes.
What we had needed was massive investments and partnerships within the EU and with nearby countries such as Norway and Switzerland e.g. for pumped hydro storage, green hydrogen and massive European energy networks (e.g. for solar energy from southern Europe).
That will be our tasks for the next years and statistics show that we have massive investments into solar energy and heat pumps to tackle future challenges.
There only scenario in which shutting down a nuclear plant within the next, say, 50 years makes sense is if it has physically deteriorated to the point of it's stability being unknown.
Once there is a surplus of entirely green energy, you can consider removing nuclear idle capacity, but even then you'd have to ask "why?".
Yes, nuclear produces (manageable) waste. But coal throws its waste into the air, actively killing people of lung cancer and harming cognitive ability, while slowly boiling the planet. And that's before we look at mining.
Solar and wind would be nicer, but there's no discussion to be had about removing nuclear while coal and oil power is still out there killing us and the planet.
Heck, if you're looking at lives saved, nuclear wins - the total direct and indirect deaths per power unit of nuclear is lower than wind, as the large number of windmills needed to be constructed bump the worksite accident numbers.
Also, they delayed shutdown of some nuclear plants due to the energy crisis.
But guess where the fuel for their nuclear power plants was coming from? Hint: starts with an R.
In the US we're replacing nuclear reactors with wind and solar at 2x the rate we're losing nuclear generation capacity. Germany has also seen incredible solar growth: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/germany-goes-all...
They're still planning to eliminate coal from the grid, and not only that, they're dropping the plan to do so from 2038 to 2030: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/geared-germany-en...
East Germany nuclear power plants were shut down due to security risks.
Chernobyl was a fucked up crazy event here too.
Even now you need to test meat from animals when they are shot I a certain area due to unhealthy levels.
And while France build 56 plants we never build that many in the first place.
And countries still struggle to build them. Olkiluoto 3 was planned to be done after 4 years, it took them overall 18 years!
And yes we are a democracy and a lot of people in Germany don't like to live next to a nuclear power plant.
France has the double of density btw.
Stop writing simple comments for complex issues
https://www.rwe.com/en/the-group/countries-and-locations/koe...
They're almost certainly be sold and reinstalled somewhere else.
HN's obsession with trying to "GOTCHA!" non-nuclear green power is so tiresome.
When Russia started the war and cut off gas deliveries, of course the energy markets spiked, but prices are down again to pre-war levels. They are - beyond that spike - not strangling the economy. But it certainly wouldn't have hurt, if the previous government had not slowed down the ramping up of renewables.
As how much nuclear is clean is disputable, but there are multiple reasons to shut it down. That the energy prices went up has nothing to do with the nuclear shutdown but for other reasons which have been named.
Fact is, renewable energy is strongly up and that is going to continue. Because we care about the environment.
If you take cheap nuclear energy out of the equation then of course energy prices rise. You are taking off supply, that pushes cost up to meet demand.
You clearly dont care enough about the environment to question the strategy used in protecting it; if you want people to tolerate green energy it has to be cost effective.
That nuclear is cheap is a lie. It is that simple. And if more people understand that they are told lies about cheap nuclear, they will ask for green energy.
The prices of nuclear power are well known. Look to the UK what a new reactor costs.
> Germany no longer depends on Russian imports for its energy supply, the country's finance minister has told the BBC. Christian Lindner said Germany had completely diversified its energy infrastructure since Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year.
The need for coal is temporary. They're dropping their estimate for when they'll be coal-free from 2038 to 2030 because of the record pace of solar installation. They've been adding around 1GW a month of solar. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/08/21/germany-records-1-2-g...
Protests against nuclear power were almost always local NIMB kind of things, not bound to an ideology. Case in point: The party in Germany that now wants nuclear energy back is the party that rules out a permanent disposal site in their home state.
The Greens were a tiny fringe movement that had no influence on public opinion at all. It was Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima that turned the public against nuclear energy.
Russia has a much tighter grip on nuclear energy than on gas. Germany stopped using Russian gas within a year, countries are still figuring out where to get their enriched uranium from. Not to mention that many uranium suppliers are closer to the Russian sphere of influence than to the Western one, e.g. see the Nigerien coup d'état.
Coal is the only fossil fuel source Germany has. Therefore, the two big parties in Germany that won every federal election in German post-war history have been friends of coal. Germany's coal addiction, just like China's, has never had anything to do with the Greens.
The Greens are the most anti-Russian party in Germany, so far that Russia turned hippies into war hawks. Before the war, they were the only party opposing Nord Stream 2 and they were the only party that wanted to stop the import of Russian fossil fuels altogether, which was not a popular position to have. Conservatives painted them as hypocrites for wanting "dirty" LNG.
And before someone says: "But what about storage, they won't give you power when you need it!" — this is a problem that can be solved with engineering, unlike the peoblem of the 10.000 year storage of decaying nuclear waste, which becomes a problem of epochal societal scale. When was the last time you had one society last for that long? How would you even calculate the cost of that? Proponents of nuclear power never price this into the energy production (somehow this is something the state has to pay for some reason? But who knows whether a state exists in 5000 years?) and always handwave away the practical problems involved with storing this in densely populated areas for a time span so long it would put us back to the dawn of humankind. Reprocessing exists, sure, but that is only a fraction of the waste.
I think you're confusing wind and solar. So far this year, 2.8 GW of wind power and 13.3 GW of solar have been installed.
https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-strompreis-gas...
That’s like asking us now if we care there were human sacrifices 5000 years ago. Yeah, ok that’s awful but I don’t really care.
Similarly if all society collapses, I do not give a shit if somebody digs hundreds of meters into a cave clearly labeled “do not go here” in pictograms that can be understood by the most rudimentary thinkers, and dies of radiation poisoning.
We used to have GAMES where we watched people get ripped apart by lions, FOR SPORT. When did this BS “we must never potentially maybe damage some random human 5000 years into the future” stuff come from?
The "10.000 year storage of nuclear waste" problem can be solved by using a fast neutron/breeder reactor with which spent fuel can be reworked into new reactor fuel. This has two big advantages in that it makes it possible to use up to 90% of the fissile material as fuel as opposed to less than 10% in conventional reactors) as well as the fact that fast reactors can "burn" the long-lived actinides which are responsible for the long-time storage requirements for conventional spent nuclear fuel. The remaining spent fuel is not only much smaller in volume (~10% of the original spent fuel mass) but also much shorter storage times of around 300 years instead of thousands of years.
The life time of a wind generator isn't limited to 20 years - it is more practical reasons it isn't prolonged further. While with nuclear plants there is a lot of pressure to keep it working, even if the safety isn't quite up to modern standards.
Interestingly, while breeding reactors can be built, none is operating in the west. France had two of them and stopped using them. It certainly is a delicate technology. Would be interesting to do a more detailled analysis why no one is operating any more. Perhaps it is just the typical stance of ignoring the problem of nuclear waste as long as possible. As it has been done so far.
Renewable Energy Foundation: a new study, The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark [2] shows that the economic life of onshore wind turbines is between 10 and 15 years, not the 20 to 25 years projected by the wind industry itself and used for government projections
Russia, China and India are operating breeder reactors, India and China are in the process of starting more. The French SuperPhenix commercial prototype was shut down on political grounds. The completed FBR in Kalkar (Germany) was never fueled, again on political grounds. From what I can see the reason for the limited deployment of FNR/FBR types is mostly based on political and ideological grounds. The fact that these reactor types can be used to create Plutonium which can be used to create nuclear weapons plays a large role as does the irrational fear of anything 'nuclear' in 'green' circles. The latter is becoming less relevant now that many 'green' politicos have seen the problems their anti-nuclear stance create in their own 'battle' against CO₂. The German 'greens' have not changed their ways yet which has led to the expansion of lignite use and with that lignite mining as well as a further deindustrialisation of Germany for lack of affordable electrical power.
[1] https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPURL.cgi?Dockey=P100IL8K.TXT
[2] https://www.ref.org.uk/attachments/article/280/ref.hughes.19...
You pointing to the maintenance interval is just bad faith argumenting. On that ground, nuclear energy is even more irresponsible, as the power plants get daily maintenance and supervision.
And your claim about the expansion of the lignite usage is another lie. It is on a historical low. It could be lower still, if the previous government hadn't curbed the rollout of renewable energy while accellarating the shutdown of nuclear. Blame them, not the greens.
You're moving the goal posts. I merely state the facts as published by manufacturers and those from experience in the field (which show the manufacturer data to be highly optimistic).
> You pointing to the maintenance interval is just bad faith argumenting
It is not me pointing out the maintenance interval but the EPA. Is the EPA acting in bad faith?
> And your claim about the expansion of the lignite usage is another lie. It is on a historical low
Germany is re-opening lignite power plants. Tell us how this rhymes with your claim. Also, please, stop using hyperbolic language like 'argumenting in bad faith' and 'another lie', here we deal in facts not feelings. You are clearly ideologically aligned with those who closed the nuclear power plants but do not let ideology cloud your reasoning. Had 'Die Grune' not insisted on closing those nuclear power plants the lignite plants could have remained closed, the wind farm would not need to make place for a lignite mine and power prices in my part of the world (Sweden) would be markedly lower instead of being pushed up due to the fact that the interconnected grid causes prices to be affected by those on the other side of the border.
(But we need to keep battling on the longer timescale as well of course, so nuclear is still good to build)
All these are from the 1970's, and now roughly 50 years later, our evolved technology and knowledge of nuclear technology and safety, should make it even faster and safer.
But funny enough it doesn't get faster. I have my suspicions why, but have not formulated my thoughts enough to blog about it.
You can use coal as a stopgap while you ramp up nuclear and renewables. This is what China is doing for example
Also why smart appliances matter too - you wouldn’t even notice if your car charges 25% slower, house is 1 degree colder/warmer and shower is few minutes shorter…
If we need radical changes fast, and nuclear can provide them(!!!) then the fact that there are some risks and that it might be a bit expensive shouldn't matter.
First of all: you say we need fast changes. That already rules out nuclear. Setting up a new reactor takes like 20 years. We don't have that time. And we wouldn't need one, each major industrial nation would need at least 100 of them, 10 billion each. There is just no way to achieve that. Not even mentioning the other downsides of nuclear.
However renewable buildup is much faster. Germany has build up more than the equivalent of one nuclear plant of solar alone in one year and the buildup speed can be easily accelerated with a fraction of the effort of trying to expand the nuclear capacity.
The current plan is to ramp down coal till 2030 which also puts an end to mining. Still, mining some more coal is profitable for the power companies and they are pushing to mine most of the coal which was approved for mining earlier on. But there is still considerable pressure to limit mining more.
I am not an activist but it angers me. What is this for weird framing? It is infuriating, regardless of wether one is an activist.