Great but I want the same deal for the coal and gas companies that produce electricity, make them responsible for every ton of CO2 they emitted and make them responsible for removing it from the atmosphere.
There is a finite number of certificates - like bitcoin. Price adjusts as certificates are uses up. New certificates can be created by capturing carbon... similar to bitcoin mining.
Yes, but the supply of certificates has been set as to ensure a soft transition to this system. When the supply tightens, prices will go up. At least that's the theory.
In the current political climate where politicians all over the world compete on subsidizing electricity and fossil fuels to combat the recent price hikes for all poorly insulated home owners and car drivers, who knows what will happen.
Pitting nuclear against coal is fighting a straw man. The alternative is renewables. With a tiny fraction of the negative side-effects either nuclear or of fossil energy brings.
It's most certainly not, since for every kW of installed renewables another kW of gas capacity must be installed to compensate for intermittency.
That said, no reason why the original deal can't be extended to renewables, seems perfectly fair. It's to everyone's benefit that all methods of power generation be held accountable for all their costs.
Nuclear is reliable to a fault. It is rock solid. But it doesn't "go up" very fast - that is where you need gas support. Which is quite different from solar and wind, where you can't predict the ups and downs
Can renewables realistically cover (near) 100% of our day and night energy needs in the next 20 years? Gates book suggested no and if so thats why the comparison is apt.
If the question is what energy production method should be used it is certainly not. The Green Party in particular did probably more harm to the environment and damaged or geo-strategic position by making us dependent on foreign Gas and by extending the economic viability of open-pit mines. We were leaders in nuclear technology and research and could be energy independent by now.
That's entirely fair, but shouldn't other types of plants be expected to do the same things? My understanding is that they aren't currently (could be different in Germany).
One of the best things about nuclear is that it can really be put anywhere. It's hard to price in the benefit of energy independence/sovereignty but it's definitely should be a huge factor in it's favor.
1. The high cost of insurance is a political problem, it has nothing to do with the actual damage that can occur. So making the response political is actually fair.
2. Waste storage is a solved problem, even for the current idiotic way we're doing it. Currently, the vast majority of the "waste" is actually unused fuel. Why? Because the fuel is too cheap to make extracting all of it worthwhile.
1. You can only insure against losses to the insured. Most of the concerns regarding externalities. Insurance only will help if you have a legal regime that allows people injured by the externalities to be made while from the insured.
Imagine you have a situation like the one in Chernobyl: a couple dozen people die. A much larger number of people need to have regular checkups for life, but as a result of said checkups have a normal or slightly longer lifespan.
I’m not sure how health insurance works in Germany, but who pays for the lifetime of checkups? Is the power company liable? Will there be a suit?
The free market rates could fluctuate wildly, but wouldn’t have any relationship to whether nuclear is better than coal.
Also, there’s no guarantee that an a policy would even be offered for more than a year or so. Future insurers might just say, sorry, the admin costs are too much (admin costs could be insane).
2. If the plant goes bust because the government decides to “phase out nuclear” - it’s completely legitimate to ask the government to help with shutdown costs.
I hope that point 1. applies to hydro. They should be required to post a bond that covers fully everything downstream from them with possible catastrophic worst scale failure. And keep increasing it when more is constructed.
As far as I have been able to determine this is in fact how nuclear power is run in most of the world. Nuclear power is heavily subsidized by borrowing money from future generations.
We are currently entering that future, as for example France has noticed recently. According to recent news stories their operator is 40 bn in debt and needs to make 50bn more in investments to keep plants running, meaning it has charged at least 110 bn too little for the power it sold in decades past.
One of the major downsides of nuclear power is that whenever the nuclear operator runs out of money, taxpayers absolutely have to pay, there is no option not to. From a cynical financial perspective this effectively means nuclear power has limitless credit and can sell power for fantasy pricing, way less than it actually costs.
So to the GP's point, if nuclear had to pay the actual, future costs of the energy it provides today, and it was baked in to the price per kWh it sells on the open market, we'd be better informed about the correct course of action.
Absolutely true, we are probably in the middle of the handful of generations of humans that have spent all of earths oil reserves. Did we pay a fair price for it?
Not quite, the mandatory insurance is capped at 2.5G€. The taxpayer would have to cover the rest. Compared with the fukushima cleanup costs that's quite insufficient.
No, nuclear gets free state insurance and free waste disposal (as well as a bunch of other subsidies). This is why everyone laughs when country claim their nuclear programs are "peaceful power generation projects".
Please don't post ideological or nationalistic flamewar comments, or any flamewar comments, to HN. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Because the temperatures are so high and the continuing drought, the nuclear power plants have to decrease their power output.
The cooling water comes from the rivers and the plants have limits how hot the water is allowed to get downstream.
Everything would slowly cook in the rivers …
Even with temporal exceptions of this environmental rules France became a NET IMPORTER of power.
Yeah, and aren't like have the plants currently not working, either because it's to hot or they're in maintenance or it's too expensive to repair them? And EDF, the biggest company behind nuclear power generation has huge amounts of debt and needs (is?) to be nationalized?
From what I can gather, nuclear power was never cheap. It seems no country calculates the real cost - everything's subsidized to be even competitive. In Germany, after the power companies reaped the profits, they said they need to be subsidized to dismantle them, as the costs were to high.
The waste disposal seems to be also subsidized (be it that the state searches for locations and builds them?) or
Building those new and plants seems to be a gigantic money pit - look at the UK. Didn't they surpass the 30 billion mark and no end in sight? And that they can't be built fast?
And who talkes about the real environmental (even CO2) cost to even produce a fuel rod?
Everybody points to France as the poster boy for nuclear power. But it seems that it is a total disaster.
Unfortunatley in German, but can maybe translated:
In France the price of electricity is incredibly low so of course power was very subsidized.
However the investment in nuclear in France still payed of big time. Consider a alternative solution where you use coal power, the only realistic alternative at the time.
Coal is absolutely horrible for air quality and incredibly destructive to the environment.
Any rational person would say it a huge advantage for a country to have heavily invested in nuclear.
The real failure of France is not having continued the investment in nuclear, their failure is that they stopped investing and advancing technology in 1990s.
> And who talkes about the real environmental (even CO2) cost to even produce a fuel rod?
Every single end to end analysis shows that CO2 of nuclear is tiny.
There was a ~5 year gap where France stopped work on adding reactors. France would probably be building more EPRs now if the planned 5-year construction of Flamanville 3 hadn't stretched out to 15 years:
Well we are still building with 1960s technology because the industry has been so beaten down.
Are we just gone accept that nuclear is just inherently to expensive and that can never change. Are we just inherently unable to look at those project and ask, why did it happen that way. Why are we building inherently old technology and are doing it far worse then 20 years before.
When in the 1970s Jimmy Carter tried to push solar and wind, but the tech clearly wasn't ready. Did we just go 'well that's it then'. No people just pushed it, demanded it, forced politicians to have national labs finance it. When it became almost viable it was subsidized in million large and tiny ways all around the world. When there was negative news about solar and wind the Germans would just double down with their strategy.
And yet, a few nuclear reactors are to expensive to build, shut down the whole industry forever. Lets never try to improve or use reactor technology developed after 1960.
The issue is that nuclear scales well with size, but that increases iteration time & costs for a single iteration. It also leads to much less efficiency possible compared to e.g. solar cells. So once they didn't improve and were still expensive (and getting more expensive, like all big construction projects) the potential seems limited. Same as start ups getting huge evaluations while running deficits, but no-one giving the benefit of the doubt at that scale to a failing 30-year old business with promising basic ideas.
Every (big honkin') nuclear power plant is more-or-less a giant project onto itself. The hope of nuclear advocates is that with small reactors, their reduced cost & increased scale (in terms of units) will more than make up for their small size (and resulting loss of scaling in that dimension). I think that's unlikely, but some startups are trying so we'll see if it's a winning formula.
My argument is: Why bother? Renewables are cheap, storage technologies[1] have a lot of viable ways of going forward and are getting better very quickly. Even if through a lot of investment nuclear energy gets (economically, build-time-wise) viable in 20 years like renewables are now, I doubt it would change much or solve pressing issues.
[1]: Starting from common chemical batteries, over to hydrogen/power-to-gas, molten-sand and a variety of concepts exploiting potential height energy. The limited commercial adoption yet can be attributed to the fact that they're not necessary yet, so the added price is too high. Germany, with a very high share of renewables and planned to be growing, is only starting to dip it's toes with some very basic "stabilizer" like in Australia and nothing big-scale in the near future. If this was a pressing issue, you'd think governments would do more (Especially in germany, the cost structure strongly disincentives storage right now, needing to pay certain costs twice, while sinking and sourcing the energy).
No, this seems to be false. France is importing electricity for years from Germany - at least since 2015.
I'm not sure why you're saying that France only has an issue because of Germany? Where do you get that from? Even a french power grid operator is saying that they import more power from Germany, than they're exporting (https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electrici...).
But you're not even responding to my main concern - that nuclear power is so expensive, that it is never competitive. Only when subsidized. And that is for power plants that are already built - not new ones (which seem to be an even greater money pit). Why is the biggest nuclear power company unable to make money in France and needs to be rescued by the government?
I'd say if it makes sense and helps us in our current situation, just subsidize the heck out of it, even if it costs us as a country lots of money. But it absolutely doesn't seem environmentally friendly, not even regarding CO2. And it doesn't seem to be feasible to quickly build nuclear power.
But yes, Germany fucked up regarding its dependency on gas (from one source and then it's even from a country like Russia).
What makes you think, Germany doesn't have enough electricity? Actually quite the contrary, we produced an additonal 20 TWh to fill in for the gaps left by the French nuclear plants not delivering. (And a lot of other plants in Europe are not running on full power due to lack of cooling water)
Yes, and? Currently less than 35% of the German gas comes from Russia. Leaves way enough for electricity. The question is only, who gets cuts, if there isn't enough gas in the winter. The law says, industry first, heating second. The only debate is, how much cuts to private heating are a good trade off for supporting the industry. And as the Germany are very protective of the industry, there will probably a compromise of somewhat reduced heating (just wear a sweater instead of a t-shirt) and keeping all industry alive. Also of course, all companies are scrambling to secure their energy needs.
This is how you deal with looming crisises: you identify them, you act to prepare. And suddenly the worst is no longer a thread. German gas storage is already filled up to 75%.
I’m paying 60x more for power in Toten, Norway because Germany is importing so much electricity from us. It’s a huge annoyance. We never should have allowed connection outside of the peninsula to you moron Germans.
If anyone, you would be the moron. If Norvegian electricity is more expensive because of Germany, then because Norway is selling it at that higher price. If Norway wouldn't sell it, there would be no money flowing from Germany to Norway. Where the money goes? Well ask your fellow Norvegians and don't blame your countries customers.
P.S.: if anyone, France is guilty of the current high electricity price in Europe. They are failing behind producing enough electricity for local consumption and consequently drive the sport market price up.
Can you do anything but make stupid comments without content?
Yes, Germany is a net exporter, but Germany is part of the European grid. There is a joint market, where electricity is balanced across Europe every minute. The same country which is a net exporter can import in some parts of the day. France is a good example, because they mostly use rather slow nuclear power plants. But as they are part of the European grid, they rather vary between export and import than trying to adjust their power output to their current domestic usage. At minimum that makes electricity cheaper as the plants are run closer to the optimum power point.
Peak consumption occurs after sunset across Europe, when German photovoltaics generate zero electricity. So what do the Germans do to keep up with the demand? They spin up their extremely polluting coal plants, or buy electricity from their neighbours, forcing them to spin up their peaking plants.
>The same country which is a net exporter can import in some parts of the day.
Yeah, except the time when they want to import is precisely the time when everyone else is experiencing peak demand. Now tell me, what happens in a market when demand increases across the board? The price point moves higher along the demand curve, bravo!
Yeah the main problem is France basically did amazing with nuclear for like 30 years and then in the last 20 they basically flat-lined in total production.
And the dropped all their advanced nuclear and is still planning expensive PWR style reactors until 2050.
That we are still not using high temperature air cooled reactors is just an absolute shame.
France did a great thing for the world by investing into nuclear and saving lots of CO2 before it was cool. However unfortunately they didn't do as good a job with advancing the technology.
The major concern going forward, with solar representing an increasing proportion of generation, is energy shortfalls in winter. Overheating is not likely to be a serious problem in this case.
Take the already most costly way of generating electricity and make it both less efficient (due to the cold side being warmer) and entail higher initial investment costs.
>Cooling towers (evaporative chilling) use far less water than cooling directly with river water and returning hot water to the river.
Still uses a shitload. A coalition of states around me had the power generation companies install a reservoir so that in summer and drought they could keep the lower Delaware River navigable since so much was evaporated off in the cooling towers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill_Creek_Reservoir
a typical old 1 Gigawatt power station (ie. a big one) will produce about 2 gigawatts of waste heat. More modern tech could ~halve that. In an evaporative cooler, thats 800 liters of water evaporated every second.
The Amazon river has 209,000,000 liters per second, so it wouldn't be an issue there.
But in smaller streams, I could totally imagine there not being enough water even for evaporative cooling.
If you did any research on the subject, you would have known that they use cooling towers for some of their cooling needs, while others are using the natural waters as coolant.
For instance, one of the plants that got a temporary exemption on hot water discharge, the Bugey nuclear power plant:
“Some of the cooling comes from direct use of the Rhône water (units 2 and 3) while some is done by the use of cooling towers (units 4 and 5).” [1]
Had they used cooling towers for units 2 and 3, they wouldn’t be in trouble with discharging hot water into the Rhône.
I suggest next time you do some research before questioning others with offhand comments.
For information your initial comment is "Just use cooling towers..." (with 3 dots to show disdain) as if there isn't any cooling tower whereas everybody can see cooling towers nearly every nuclear power station (so much that when you ask people to draw a nuclear station, 95% of them draw a cooling tower).
So your "If you did any research on the subject" is quite over the top.
> I suggest next time you do some research before questioning others with offhand comments.
Apply this suggestion to your first comment or at least don't be more exigent with the quality of other comment that you are with your own comments.
Can't help but observe on how incapable are human societies to make long term critical rational decisions.
It never really made sense to say "we are going to phase out nuclear entirely" instead of "we'll focus on how to build safer, cheaper and more efficient nuclear".
The decision to go off nuclear was capricious and it seems that the speed with which sentiment is changing only proves this.
By literally any rational calculation, starting in 1970s any strategy other then 100% nuclear is insane.
Nuclear wins in every first principle analysis, it requires the least amount of mining, the least amount of land, and produces the least amount of damage to the atmosphere and to local air quality.
That it did not happen is a failure in planning. Eisenhower over-promised when he said energy to cheap to meter, but the technology certainty has and had amazing potential.
In the 1960s they developed so many amazing reactors in such a short time, and then starting in the 1970 basically all progress stopped. The NASA Kilopower was the first new reactor in the US for like 40+ years.
Nuclear unfortunately was invented in WW2 and has been dominate by the military both in terms of access and in terms of usage. The only reason we have PWRs for civilian production is because PWR make sense for submarines and was commercialized based on that investment.
Nuclear requires exactly the sort of long term rational decision making you decry the lack of. That's the nice thing about other energy sources, they don't require 1000 years of self discipline and self denial...
There is currently almost no financial incentive to build storage, because we haven't built enough generation capacity yet. Germany for example gets 40-50% of its electricity from renewables on average and only 1-2% are lost because we don't know what to do with it during times of overproduction. So any storage system would mostly be filled with fossil power right now.
You don't actually need a whole in the earth. With actual modern technology you only need to store it for 300 years and you can store it on a single football field in a desert or field without issue.
But we can't have nice apparently. We rather waste billions on some dumb geological storage rather then just use basic logic. Misinformation and politics are the only reason for these deep geological repositories.
Really? Because self denial and lack of self discipline is how western society got to a point where the majority of its raw material supply chain and processing capability for green energy hardware (like solar panels) is dependent on an autocratic and genocidal communist country.
We can see that both Germany and France use about the same percentage of gas in their energy mix. Making this discussion a reason to revive nuclear is quite dishonest.
Germany's dependency on gas is more related to heating in the winter. It's relevant for electricity, but more as an in between solution after the phase out of nuclear and coal. But without gas, almost all of the population is screwed in the winter. France uses electricity for heating also, but considering they imported more electricity this year than they exported, they will also likely be in a world of hurt in the winter.
For me, that's the strange thing about all of the narratives being pushed with the crisis, especially noticeable with nuclear -- any decision made 15-20 years ago would be somehow problematic right now, so wishing things were done differently leads to nowhere.
What I wish this would lead to is a massive push to ditch fossil fuels, and those who think renewables are the solution should do that, the same with nuclear. I can freeze and suffer for some time, as long as there's a plan to improve things.
What's clear is that things will change forever pretty soon.
France has less dependence on russian gas , it doesn't have germany's large industry that is also dependent on russian gas, their nuclear will be there in the future, they have 4 LNG terminals and they are quite sunnier. I believe france's nuclear is currently offline that's why the higher gas usage.
The gas use has been similar for the last 10 years. Now you're correct in absolute numbers Germany uses more gas, it has more citizens, more energy intensive industry etc. and yes they are less dependent on Russian gas (most of their gas seems to come from Norway [1], although the second biggest source is Russia). I actually agree making Germany dependent Russian gas was a terrible idea. Germany actually had a unique opportunity in the late 90s early 00s, they could have really pushed for a transition to a mostly renewable energy production, but instead strong lobbying won out. And the lobbyists were the fossil and nuclear sectors (i.e. the large energy corporations). One thing one can see again and again is that the nuclear lobby is never arguing against fossil energy, but only against renewables. The reasons are simply that they largely have common interests, highly centralised energy production, with strongly subsidised plant construction, which guarantee long term profits. Renewables are actually disruptive, because they allow for very distributed energy production putting into the hands of small investors and relatively small construction industry. They threaten the large profits of the old model.
It is a large assumption that "their nuclear will be there in the future" with so many plants being down for unplanned maintenance as cracks were detected in important parts. It is not clear when and if the full capacity of their current plants will be available again and currently France is still struggling with building the Flammaville reactor. Being late many years and way over budget, it doesn't look like France will be able to even maintain their current nuclear capacity going forward. And they are late in a good renewable strategy.
Considering that France has been increasing the amount of nuclear in their mix, I think it's worth discussing nuclear for Germany and renewable for France.
But they haven't, did you look at the graph (here is another one for electricity only https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:France_Electricity_prod...)? The portion of nuclear has remained constant since the late 90s. Also France at the moment has turned off between 40 and 100% (I read about 40%, but saw 100% on TV some weeks ago) of their nuclear power plants, due to heat and maintance. Guess who is picking up the shortfall at the moment, German renewables and coal.
> The portion of nuclear has remained constant since the late 90s.
That just reflects the failure of French state to continue to invest. The socialist and green party based on general anti-nuclear sentiment stopped much of the investment.
Are you joking? In the last 24 years there was only 4 years with a socialist president. The greens had seats only 3 times of the last 6 six national assemblies since 1986 and that was 7,3 and 4 so they are not a very influential party in France. And saying that the the socialists in France are antinuclear is also quite off. While Hollande was quite critical (also due to massive cost overruns and shady security practices reading the Wikipedia article on nuclear power in France is quite eyeopening) they have traditionally been decidedly pro nuclear.
No, there hasn't been much change because nuclear is so expensive. Projects have been going massively over budget (e.g. The EPR at Flammanville $15 billion instead of planned $4, planned to start operating in 2013 still not online.) [1].
> A 1998 "Inquiry commission on Superphenix and fast neutrons reactor sector" [3] reported that "decision to close Superphénix was included in Jospin's program ... in the agreement between Socialist Party and Green Party". Also the same report says "despite many difficulties, the technical results are meaningful". In the explanation of vote at the end of the report, commission members says "give up on Superphenix has been a big error" and "Superphenix has to die because is a symbol".
But I guess its fair that it was both sides of the political spectrum.
We don't use oil for electricity production at all in France for example, we do for individual heating though.
Most of the gas you see for France is for industrial heating: making cement, fusing glass, etc. Which was not accounted for in your graph for Germany.
If you look at Germany's gas use, you'll see that it is sky-high, about x4 France's; because of industrial heat, and also mainly because of their humongous organic chemistry gas plant complexes.
Here is Ludwigshafen's BASF site, 2 train yards, 6 sq km of pipes, Factorio-style spaghetti architecture:
In goes gas and oil, out goes plastics, precursors, pharmaceuticals, rubber, fertilizers, etc. The streets are named EthylStraße, AmmoniakStraße, SulfatStraße, .. you get the idea
Btw in Mannheim/Ludwigshafen, they announced 'warm halls' for the next winter. Halls where the poor can go so as not to freeze.
All this to say: with France's nuclear maintenance done this summer, we'll just have to pop some ohm heaters for those of us using gas heating.
Yes, but that is unrelated to the argument that is being made; that Germany's dependence on Russian gas is because they are quitting nuclear. France who went largely "all-in" on nuclear is using the same percentage of gas, they just get it from somewhere else. You can't make an argument pro or contra nuclear from this, this is the politics of where to get the gas from (and I agree getting it from Russia was a mistake). Note also, Germany gets about 32% of its gas from Russia (Norway is second with 20%), so it's not _that_ different to France (essentially the two main suppliers are reversed between the two countries).
> You can't make an argument pro or contra nuclear from this
Sure you can: Germany and France are not in the same place, so the economics of getting gas from source X are not the same, so when weighing gas vs nuclear they were not looking at the same options. For Germany, cheap gas meant Russian gas. If that had been ruled out on security grounds, other energy sources, including nuclear, would have been more competitive vs more expensive gas from Norway etc.
> Note also, Germany gets about 32% of its gas from Russia
Now, after Russia cut deliveries. It was 55% before the war [1], and would have gone even higher with Nord Stream 2 about to come online.
> Sure you can: Germany and France are not in the same place, so the economics of getting gas from source X are not the same, so when weighing gas vs nuclear they were not looking at the same options. For Germany, cheap gas meant Russian gas. If that had been ruled out on security grounds, other energy sources, including nuclear, would have been more competitive vs more expensive gas from Norway etc.
Nuclear was never an option to substitude for gas. Apart from the fact that Germany uses most of its gas for heating and industry, the applications for both in electricity generation are very different, gas is for peakers, nuclear is baseload. That can be seen by looking at the fact that France is using the same percentage of gas in their electricity generation as Germany.
> Germany uses most of its gas for heating and industry
That's a choice, again based on economics. There's no fundamental reason preventing electricity from replacing gas as an energy source for heating and industrial processes.
> gas is for peakers, nuclear is baseload.
Again, that's a choice based on economics. Spare nuclear (or oil or other) capacity can serve the same purpose.
> That can be seen by looking at the fact that France is using the same percentage of gas in their electricity generation as Germany
France unforunatly stopped investing in nuclear in the 1990s, from 1970-2000 their total nuclear power production went up, but then if flatlined. That is why they have problmes now.
They had next generation plants ready to be rolled out, but because of the politics at the time never produced them in large numbers.
Blaming it on politics is quite inventive. The EPR at Falammanville is 4 times over budget and 9 years overdue and still not online. The EPRs were Frances next generation reactors. The cost of electricity with that reactor is projected to be twice higher than older reactors. Let's not even talk about the fact that at the moment >50% of French reactors are down, because they encountered issues in maintance (interestingly it's sold to the French public as we are preparing them for the winter when gas will be tight).
In Europe, France is the country, which put most of their eggs in the nuclear basket. They have a massive problem with that setup these days, 28 of 56 of the plants are down. Many of the remaining have serious cooling problems because huge rivers like the Loire, have almost dried out. Despite plans to fill all gas storage for next winter, German gas plants still run on full throttle to support France with their current nuclear problems.
Can any Germans on HN explain why Germany finds it preferable to give up their energy independence in nuclear and instead buy it from their potential adversary in Russia?
What possible advantages are there to buying the resource that literally keeps the lights on from a country that you have conflicts with?
Well more of Europe's Uranium comes from Russia than Germanys gas. It is not like Germany has vast Uranium reserves.
When the Green/Social Democrat coalition under Schröder decided on stopping nuclear the idea was to largely exchange that for renewables (and the German wind and solar industry was leading in the world at the time). This would have been a much bigger step toward energy independence. The coal, nuclear and gas lobby (note that they typically are the same lobbyists) strongly pushed to reverse that decision and the Conservative, free Liberal coalition under Merkel initially reversed the decision, but at the same time was generally pushing for the cheapest energy solutions, which was largely gas. The strong regulations put into place for wind and solar at the time largely destroyed Germanys wind and solar industry, because domestic demand Collapsed.
It is important to remember that Germany has still very strong manufacturing industries who hold a lot of sway over the government. When Fukushima happened public sentiment went strongly towards quiting nuclear again. There was not really much opposition from industry either, because nuclear was more expensive than gas so we saw an even stronger push toward gas.
> It is not like Germany has vast Uranium reserves.
... actually we do, around 130.000 tonnes of it[1,2]. Of course not as vast as some other countries, but still substantial. We just don't mine and refine it anymore. I don't know if this should be an actual argument pro nuclear, but we have it.
The GDR / DDR even supplied the Soviet Union with Uranium via SDAG Wismut[2].
East Germany was the fourth largest producer of uranium ore. After the reunification we just closed those mines, just as we shut down East German nuclear plants.
If there was a compelling reason we could presumably start mining and refining those deposits again.
> Well more of Europe's Uranium comes from Russia than Germanys gas.
This is very misleading, comparing EU imports on one side and Germany on the other. The biggest uranium reserves are in Kazakhstan, Canada, and South Africa. At the moment, uranium used in Europe comes from Niger, Russia and Kazakhstan in about the same quantities (2500 tons each), followed by Canada (2300 tons) and Namibia (1600 tons).
Overall, Russian uranium is ~20% of EU imports. For gas it was ~40% (~20% for Germany), and for oil ~30%. Also, both oil and uranium are easily imported by boat, whereas gas was so cheap because of the pipelines. So, not really comparable overall.
It has been obvious for quite a while that structural dependency on Russian gas was a huge strategic mistake. Doing without will be much more painful than not doing it in the first place.
Not that I know of. I came across a more complete picture[1], with probably more accurate numbers than my recollection (Australia turns out to have much, much more uranium than I remembered, for example). They don’t really mention significant resources in Europe, but there might be a discrepancy between resources that can be mined, and just stuff that’s in the ground or something like that. Wikipedia mentions 119000 tonnes in Czechia, but I don’t know how reliable it is[2].
My official study was in the area of uranium enrichment. The situation in Soviet Union was always following - mostly Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan mined the raw uranium and did first enrichment pass (I grew up in one of that areas), and then final enrichment was done in Russia. I’m not involved into that anymore for more than 20 years, but I doubt that situation has changed significantly as it requires significant capital investment, plus know-how…
> Well more of Europe's Uranium comes from Russia than Germanys gas.
That's not comparable because the energy density of Uraniam is much higher, sufficient Uraniam can be imported from anywhere with any kind of transportation, so wherever the Uraniam comes from now, it can easily be imported from many other countries and doesn't make us dependent on anyone.
One charge of fuel for a nuclear reactor lasts for years, while natural gas gets burned more or less as fast as it is produced (there's some storage, but it's certainly not measured in years).
If a bad actor cuts off the supply of uranium for your reactor, you have several years to find a new source. If a bad actor cuts off your supply of natural gas, you'll have a crisis in days or weeks at most.
> It is important to remember that Germany has still very strong manufacturing industries who hold a lot of sway over the government.
Good for them to not get rid of their industrial base otherwise they will depend on China more than the USA (that was (still?) proud of becoming a service economy) does.
> Can any Germans on HN explain why Germany finds it preferable to give up their energy independence in nuclear and instead buy it from their potential adversary in Russia?
Because the only method shown to prevent war in Europe is co-dependence. EU is founded on integrating the belligerents of WW2 close enough that it would be unthinkable to happen again.
The same method, which at least has worked previously, was tried with Russia and now 30 years later, or more likely in 2014 with the invasion of Crimea we can conclude that Russia is different in some core way of thinking. Not too different though, looking at how the Baltic states have developed when given the choice and chance.
The alternative scenario, with a Russia still riding on the tail ends of soviet military might in steep decline not even given a chance in the early 2000s seems like a recipe for an even worse outcome than we have today.
Surely that can be better explained by the European countries being fatally weakened by WWII (there were plenty of European conflicts after WWI), which allowed the US and Soviet Union to become the two uncontested hegemons? They very much did not want their European buffer zones to reduce their effectiveness by squandering military resources on infighting, so they enforced that their militaries remain small and, more importantly, dedicated only to defense (while remaining available for the imperial adventure of the hegemons). Both the Soviet Union and especially the US (being the prototypical ocean empire) have found plenty of excuses to get involved with war with an eye to their own benefit. Meanwhile, the European militaries have rotted to the point where most barely have any weapons to send to Ukraine. (Eastern Europe, not being under the thumb of the US for as long and being closer to Russia, has retained a stronger military.)
But it was still higher than it ever had been in World history, and yet still did not prevent the Great War from breaking out. Why should we assume that this time economic interdependence is high enough to prevent a war?
Who knows how high it can go. Maybe in the early 22nd century someone will argue that economic interdependence before WW3 was nowhere near as they have it then...
> Because the only method shown to prevent war in Europe is co-dependence.
It’s a bit unilateral. As long as Russia can save enough money or have other buyers for its gas and oil it can just shut the supply in the middle of winter. Germans can of course refuse to export their products to Russia but people freezing in the middle of winter is a bit more dire than not being able to buy the latest Mercedes.
So, like other sibling comment pointed out, it turned more into dependency than co-dependency.
I could see, in the previous years, maybe the Germans wanted to move way from NATO and integrate with Russia but seeing Russian behavior since the Chechnya war https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1999%E2%80... I wonder if anyone warned the Germans not to get in bed with the Russians. That was 20 years ago.
Germany doesn’t allow separatism. Most other European nations don’t allow it too. Spain jailed Catalonia independence movement leaders for 9-13 years in 2017.
How is jailing people after trial (but not extraditing the Catalonian European delegates), equivalent to the utter destruction of civilian occupied Grozny?
Or are you suggesting that in 2008 Germany should have supported Georgia in South Ossetia?
> How is jailing people after trial (but not extraditing the Catalonian European delegates), equivalent to the utter destruction of civilian occupied Grozny?
The equivalence is in aversion to separatism. I think if the leaders of Ichkeria would agree to be jailed, the Russian government wouldn’t destroy the city. I am not sure what alternative you propose for a country that wants to ensure its internationally recognized claim to a territory.
There is a well-recognized contradiction between the principle of sovereignty and self-determination in the international law. What one should do is not clear if you agree with those principles less so if you don’t recognize them. So it is a quite complicated question. So those things almost always devolve to realpolitik.
> Not too different though, looking at how the Baltic states have developed when given the choice and chance.
The Baltic states were gobbled up by the Soviet Union during WWII, and accrued significant Russian minorities during the Cold War, but they are culturally and ethnically distinct from Russia, with their own languages and histories going back centuries (just check out the Grand Duchy of Lithuania).
Completely agree. Been to all three, very different culturally, both within and compared to Russia, but still with a noticeable Soviet heritage.
Especially Tallinn is becoming a hugely interesting city with the mix of centuries old history, some soviet heritage, new and tech.
They still make an interesting thought experiment since they actually were wholly integrated into the Soviet Union. The other examples near EU are Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova which have ended up on completely different paths.
In comparison to the former East Block nations which more were in the Soviet sphere which was a similar but different existence.
While that strategy in general makes sense, energy is much more critical for the buyer than the seller and that ultimately gives Russia leverage over Germany instead. You want codependency that harms both parties as equally as possible
I would argue that is only half-correct as an argument (not whether the German people believe it to be true or not).
The EU was of course promoted primarily to avoid the repetition of the World Wars, and it is indeed succeeding at it within its scope, and has also so far been a great influence outside of it as well.
However, it is a mistake to believe that economic interdependence is the reason for its success, or that interdependence is a disincentive for war. The period from the late 19th century was highly globalised, with much international free trade, and increasingly so up until the 1910s. However, that didn't stop war breaking out between wealthy military powers over nationalistic grudges, and neither would it in the 2020s.
I am not knowledgeable enough to fully understand how the EU has broken the cycle of war between European nations, but it has been something much more profound than economic interdependence. Germany was probably right in not wanting to keep close relations with Russia, especially before 2008/2014, but shot itself in the foot by naïvely assuming that co-dependence—or rather, German dependence—would in any way stop Putin's regime from aggressive expansionism.
> we can conclude that Russia is different in some core way of thinking. Not too different though, looking at how the Baltic states have developed when given the choice and chance.
Please do clarify. I am intimately familiar with one of those Baltic states, but fail to see what you mean.
In 1999 the Russian prime minister was flying to the US with a diplomatic visit. While he was flying to the US he was told that the NATO started bombing Yugoslavia. He reversed his flight in the middle of the Atlantic and came back to Russia.
The US imported gas from Saudi Arabia and other states that
They were in conflicts with the US a lot.
I mean 911 was pretty much all Saudi Arabian terrorists.
With other nations like Iraq, Iran as well though depending on
who ran it and who the president was.
I believe the US is producing enough oil domestically.
Yet I know the US was importing oil from Russia prior to the
Ukraine war.
States like the US or EU do it because it makes economic sense.
The scope of oil is far too narrow.
EU and the US rely on many commodoties to mkae the country, industry and
ecnomomy work. A loss in some of the more serious ones can have a devastationg imapct.
Thus, the question should be extended to:
Why do states and unions make themself dependent upon commodities they must
import. Should each state / unnion be self sufficent in all critical supplies?
That is of course impossible, or nearly so.
Each state/union will remain voulnralbe ans exposed if supply lines get cut off for any reaosn.
Because of geopolitics, the rest is just hypocrisy. Germany and France wanted to build the Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok with help from Russia. That new Europe would became a 3rd power (after US and China) It's a good match. They can get cheap resources from Russia, manufacturing can be move from China to Siberia where pollution is not a big problem. Russia would balance China, so no need for massive military spending. USA could be pushed out of Europe.
It would guarantee future for Russia. Right now 50% of Russian budged is from carbohydrates. Due to fracking and decarbonisation it won't be profitable to mine in Russia in 15 years[1]. Without that income, states like Chechnya, are gonna try to leave the federation.
It's good for China as well, since USA sanctions would not be that effective.
The Atlantic world doesn't want the 3rd power (hence USA and UK are helping a lot in Ukraine) as well as Central European countries (Poland, Ukraine, Baltic states etc.) The table that shows military aid by GDP is an eye opener.
[1] Gas and oil from Ukrainian shores (Crimea) could speed it up.
This is the Leviathan vs. Behemoth theory of geopolitics. It has explanatory value, though it’s distinctly colonial in its construction.
In this game, Europe is the swing vote. The Leviathan, a maritime power of Europe, the U.K., North America and Australia + Japan currently holds. Xi tried forging a Behemoth, a land power, in which Eurasia dominates Africa and the Americas. Behemoths, the thinking goes, will be army-driven and centralised; Leviathans, naval and decentralised.
The problem with the Behemoth is Eurasia is too culturally diverse to put under the sort of centralisation land powers (e.g. Rome, the Ottomans, Napoleon’s France + the USSR) require to stay stable. Maritime powers, historically trading powers (e.g. Carthage, the Dutch, the British and the United States), accommodate more diversity. Maritime alliances are inherently reliant on networks of local governments versus a central power dictating policy to the periphery. Put simply, the deck looks stacked against a Beijing-Moscow-Berlin alliance barring major right-wing shifts in Western Europe and social liberalisation in much of Asia.
> Germany and France wanted to build the Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok with help from Russia
The Arctic Sea is becoming navigable. Push for an independent Siberia, et cetera that exports via Arctic ports, not pipelines, and they get what they’re looking for without requiring a global reälignment. (Not advocating this. Just saying it’s a better play under that geopolitical model than trashing Ukraine.)
> the deck looks stacked against a Beijing-Moscow-Berlin
As of this movement, yes, but in the future USA won't be able to keep the hegemony. Right now there is a leverage on energy (oil and gas from middle east) and the cheapest from of transportation (maritime). USA can block both via Ormuz and Malacca. In 20-30 years China and Europe will be energy and resource independent. If land transportation* will be more cost effective than ships, USA hegemony is gone.
> 20-30 years China and Europe will be energy and resource independent. If land transportation will be more cost effective than ships, USA hegemony is gone
This geopolitical model predates modern energy dynamics; in any case, Siberian minerals will flow to Chinese and European factories for a long time to come. This model also doesn’t require American dominance. (Again, it dates from the age of British and Austro/Russo/French power.) A future Leviathan could operate with Europe and America on co-equal footing, versus the D.C. dominance we see today.
As for land transport becoming more efficient than ocean, that’s a pipe dream. We’re talking about orders of magnitude of cost difference between the cutting edge of where rail/loop could be in a decade and where an inefficient shipping industry is today. Rail is also less resilient in times of war, as we’re seeing with Russia, being more targetable (Ukraine) and deniable by intermediaries (Kalingrad).
The real tipping point in favour of the Leviathan, however, comes with air forces and missiles, force projection options which didn’t exist when the model was conceived. Xi’s strategic fuckup has been in failing to see that China, too, could command a Leviathan. In an alternate timeline, a patient and thoughtful China is signing trade deals and security compacts with the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia Korea and maybe even Taiwan and Japan. Instead, Beijing Bethemothed the islands which encircle China into an adversarial stance, a stance they can maintain thanks to the stopping power of water, and a position which prevents China from projecting blue ocean naval power.
> As for land transport becoming more efficient than ocean, that’s a pipe dream
I don't remember exact numbers from 2019, but it was something like:
Air: 1 metric tonne: $100, 24h
Rail: $40; 10 days
Ship: $8; 30 days
Let's say it's 2049 and we have 4 powers: new Europe, USA, China and India. China starts the full scale blockade of Taiwan to wait for the USA for the kinetic escalation. Only USA ships are blocked, so Japan, Korea, Europe do nothing. The situation last for years. The freight cost goes up massively due to risk, the fuel is 2x-3x more expensive - cheap oil is gone and the last big reserve is in Arctic. Magnetic rail China-Europe is finished and you stack up 3 containers which are delivered in 48h. Land transportation became better than ships.
> Rail is also less resilient in times of war
True, but the new Europe will be neutral is the USA-China conflict.
> Xi’s strategic fuckup has been in failing to see that China, too, could command a Leviathan
I don't think Xi made a mistake. I don't think we have a reliable data from China. China started shrinking due to Covid way sooner that the models predicted. The official number about 12 mln births, but that doesn't correlate well with mandatory tuberculosis vaccinations. The real number could be 9 mln. Xi perception might be he has 10 years not 30. What is more, I think China is like Japan in 1930. From China's perspective there is no option - we fight or we die.
The more optimistic scenario:
Xi is gone. USA makes Kissinger 2.0 - a deal that must be secret. USA does nothing and China takes over Taiwan without the invasion. North and South Korea is demilitarised. China still uses USD.
> USA ships are blocked, so Japan, Korea, Europe do nothing. The situation last for years. The freight cost goes up massively due to risk, the fuel is 2x-3x more expensive - cheap oil is gone and the last big reserve is in Arctic. Magnetic rail China-Europe is finished and you stack up 3 containers which are delivered in 48h. Land transportation became better than ships
How did a blockade around Taiwan turn into a global maritime halt? Magnetic rail and ships have similar energy inputs; if energy is going up for one it’s going up for the other. (Turning electricity into dense, portable stores isn’t trivial, but it’s comparable to long-distance electrical transport.) That rail link would also remain easier to strike than the world’s merchant fleet.
I don’t think American dominance is here to stay. But it’s highly unlikely a Europe-China nexus works, versus a rebalance America-Europe-Japan relationship. (There are no situations in which a belligerent China peacefully wins over Japan.)
> How did a blockade around Taiwan turn into a global maritime halt?
Not a halt but increase of costs. 2/3 of world trade is near Taiwan. The insurance premiums will skyrocket. USA aka World Police will be busy with China, which will lead to tensions in other places and piracy. Business will pick rail if it's a bit more expensive (say 20%) and you get products faster.
I haven't said that. They want to go back to status quo ante, hence "French President Emmanuel Macron has sparked a new wave of criticism and incomprehension over his calls to avoid humiliating Russia in Ukraine"
Also, that's the reason why Germany was relying on gas from Russia. They are not idiots. It was not a stupid single point of failure, but geopolitics.
> that's the reason why Germany was relying on gas from Russia. They are not idiots.
Geopolitics pits Germany and Moscow as geopolitical rivals, as they’ve been for centuries.
If the goal was building an alliance, letting one side unilaterally cripple your industrial base without similar unilateral counterstrike options is a strategic blunder. Berlin can’t do much, unilaterally, to Moscow. Even if we assume the Lisbon-to-Vladivostok theory, the gas reliance doesn’t make sense.
Storage issues might be solved before new nuclear plants go online at the current pace of progress.
Perhaps a few years of gas until the renewable infrastructure is set up will suffice? At least the issue does not seem to be as clear cut as most people claim they are.
The problem as I see it as that any '100% renewable' solution which could be ramped up relatively quickly would necessitate technology that doesn't exist yet. Of course there will be some progress in tech, but we have no way to predict exactly what it will be. It will also be extremely expensive simply due to the massive scale required, and there are numerous powerful & well funded groups who will throw down roadblocks along the way.
The reality is that we will continue to use fossil fuels for a long time. While nuclear energy is our best low-carbon option for baseline power, we probably aren't going to be able to build new generators quickly enough to displace natural gas usage for decades, and that's only if it's politically possible to do so. Which continues to appear to be a long shot.
In short, we're holding our collective breath for a 'hail Mary' breakthrough that somehow cuts through all the intractable quandaries and gives us a viable path forward. In the mean time, the increase in severe climate events will destabilize nations and make it even harder to reach the kinds of major agreements needed to go down such a path.
It's probably a good idea to either own land or have friends in an area near a large freshwater lake that isn't prone to flooding and has a history of handling both extreme heat and extreme cold. There's no way of knowing whether you'll end up embroiled in civil unrest or full blown war in such an area, but at least you can limit the number & types of risks you need to worry about.
All the necessary technology exists. PV and and wind to generate power, some batteries to buffer short fluctuations and hydrogen for term storage. It's all a matter of spending the money to build the infrastructure.
Batteries exist, and estimates of how many would be needed are around 50TWh. We have over 500GWh of annual battery production, and the doubling period for that capacity is under 18 months.
The majority of that battery production is going into EVs. We will need much more to do both EVs and grid scale storage.
This is where different types of batteries that are too impractical for vehicle use might come into play, but we still don't have a clear idea which of those battery technologies will be appropriate and/or agreed upon for grid use, let alone who is going to pay for the mind boggling amount of them we will need.
Sure, they'll go into cars first, that's where it's needed first. Grids can get to about 90% green without many batteries, its the last ten percent that need a ton of batteries. Given how far they are from 90%, that's most of a decade before they are needed in massive quantities.
As for cost, if the next decade drops costs 90% like the previous 4 decades have, then 50 TWh will cost $500 billion. Given that the electricity market is $3T annually, that's peanuts.
The search for storage has been ongoing since the sixties (in one form or another) and the current approach (started about ten years ago) is "planned" to lead to a decision 2031. Knowing how well such projects usually go in Germany and the massive pushback, especially from Bavaria in the last few weeks (not unfounded - one year before the exit-decision it was found out that our current storage was an absolute disaster), the storage site will probably be found when we don't need nuclear energy anymore (either because we found better solutions or it's too late anyway)
If you essentially stop any technology progress for 40 years in one technology, other technologies might catuch up.
But there is a MASSIVE amount of potential for nuclear to be cheaper and better.
People in 2000~ were more then happy to predict massive improvement in cost for renewables if money was invested but absolutely denied that the same could happen with nuclear.
Had the same amount been invested in nuclear, prices there could also have changed.
We don't have another twenty years to wait for nuclear costs to maybe come down and then another twenty years to build enough cheap nuclear to become carbon neutral. Renewables are cheap today and can be built much faster than nuclear.
Even if the first generation is not cost effective, neither was the first generation of wind and solar.
However we have 28 years until 2050 and for really deep carbonation having advanced nuclear would be really awesome. Not to mention other benefits like radio isotopes, medical isotopes, rational solution to the removal of the current waste, a backup option in case a volcano disrupts solar on a large scale and so on.
We are not doomed just because not every single $ of spending is going into more solar panels.
Because the Green Party (which was founded as direct result of the Chernobyl desaster) has been pushing their irrational agenda against nuclear power. They deliberately ignored any scientific arguments that were even slightly in favor of nuclear.
The Greens have brought some very necessary ecological improvements that would otherwise not have happened (probably), but their continuous crusade against anything nuclear, ignoring scientific findings and statistics, is just annoying at this point
The Greens predate Chernobyl by about a decade and came from the anti-nuke/war/nuclear environmentalists groups, but the dogmatic anti-war part was dropped by the end of the 90s (Kosovo). Since then the Greens have been somewhat "hawkish" (to borrow an US term) on illiberal states and such.
> the Green Party (which was founded as direct result of the Chernobyl disaster)
Chernobyl was 1986 and the West German green party existed before that:
> Alliance 90/The Greens ... is a green political party in Germany. It was formed in 1993 as the merger of The Greens (formed in West Germany in 1980) and Alliance 90 (formed in East Germany in 1990) [1]
because their anti-nuclear environmental groups were actually being funded by Russia behind the scenes.
And there are still fools who think that economic integration somehow prevents wars, which was shown to be false after WWI. These people said if Europe just paid a bunch of money for Russian energy they'd obviously never attack them. See what's happening with China and the US as more proof that handing over your economy doesn't placate anybody
> Nunes, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee: Russia is secretly funding the environmental movement, particularly in Germany, to help pressure the closure of nuclear power plants.
Dominique Reynié: "We found that Gazprom funded environmental NGOs that provided ministers to various governments, such as Belgium, which then advocated abandoning nuclear power".
> For instance, the Soviets used front organizations to influence the anti-nuclear movement, the initiative that most visibly put Western leadership on the defensive. West German Interior Ministry and FBI reports concluded that Soviet-linked organizations were successfully swaying local peace movement initiatives to conform to Moscow’s positions
Its not a conspiracy. Its for certain that there was a real anti nuclear movement but its also true that fossil industry and Russia spent money to fund these efforts.
So it happened but how effective it was is questionable.
> because their anti-nuclear environmental groups were actually being funded by Russia behind the scenes.
Every competing energy source lobby is probably trying to stack the chances against each other, but the activists were not by and large funded by Russia.
> These people said if Europe just paid a bunch of money for Russian energy they'd obviously never attack them.
You can't expect any party to hold still forever. If you provoke your partner long enough they might react at some point. In the long-term that is basically a guarantee.
Not German, but I suspect memories of Fukushima and Chernobyl could be weighing on the minds of some. Perhaps this is an irrational concern but people are not necessarily rational - particularly when randomly polled on topics they know little about.
What I don’t understand is how those two incidents are even relevant. Chernobyl happened because of a faulty design + mismanagement and Fukushima was located on a region prone to earthquakes/tsunami’s caused by earthquakes. The factors do not really apply to Germany. And even if it did, the deaths caused by those accidents were quite low. Meanwhile coal pollution is killing people by the thousands but this is somehow ok?
I think the sole reason the west moved away from Nuclear is because it sounds scary and because the oil countries had a strong interest in maintaining the non-nuclear status quo.
> What I don’t understand is how those two incidents are even relevant. Chernobyl happened because of a faulty design + mismanagement and Fukushima was located on a region prone to earthquakes/tsunami’s caused by earthquakes.
To use an old phrase, shit happens. When it happens where a Nuclear Power Plant is, the happening continues for a very, very long time. That kind of liability is not worth the risk and of course there are other power solutions than the fossil/fuel nuclear divide.
There are ways to design a nuclear plant that reduce the probability of shit happening by orders of magnitude. We should focus on building plants that can shut down using only passive systems with no human action.
The irrational fear-factor associated with anything nuclear is highlighted by how much attention Fukushima, the nuclear disaster, which gravely injured like a dozen people, gets relative to the earthquake and tsunami causing it, which killed 20k people and leveled a huge stretch of coast.
If you asked 100 random people on the street, I'll bet most would say the Fukushima nuclear disaster killed hundreds or thousands of people.
As a single data point, I just asked my wife (who, for background, is well educated and pays close attention to the news), and her guess was "hundreds".
Media, perhaps, but interest groups probably share more of the blame, because the FUD originates with them. E.g. Greenpeace claims one million deaths from Chernobyl, GSS claimed something to the effect of "more than 1.5 million with most of the damage still to come" a few years ago. I almost can't blame people in an environment like that when they think TMI or Fukushima killed hundreds or thousands and gave a lot of people cancer or whatever.
> Meanwhile coal pollution is killing people by the thousands but this is somehow ok?
Pitting nuclear against coal is fighting a straw man. The alternative is renewables. With a tiny fraction of the negative side-effects either nuclear or of fossil energy brings.
> Meanwhile coal pollution is killing people by the thousands but this is somehow ok?
There is a tram going on a track, killing 10 children each week. You can switch it yo another track where it has a small chance of killing a thousand and you will be blamed for that.
Perhaps irrational? It's certainly irrational. Nuclear is among the absolute safest methods of energy production. Looking at Wikipedia one person died and sixteen were injured at Fukushima. That risk should dictate energy policy? "Irrational" is being kind.
When you think “power plant disaster”, what power plant instantly comes to mind? It’s a powerful “brand” that is quite difficult to displace in people’s minds. That is the problem to solve.
I think of hydroelectric dams which can destroy whole towns. There is a single hydroelectric disaster that has killed many more people than all nuclear incidents put together.
Indeed so. I've been following nuclear in Germany ever since those railroad protests when they tried to transport nuclear waste from somewhere to somewhere else which I thought was crazy (the protests).
The part I felt had merit is that none of Europe's lofty solutions to safely storing/disposing of the waste output ever came to anything. I believe until this day that industry is still trying to work out how to dig 30km down to safely store the waste underground.
That said I haven't kept up to date on any progress or better solutions.
These geological repositories are such political bullshit theater. Its fucking sad.
The are actually more expensive then simply developing the reactors to burn up that fuel.
Its just crazy that we live in this world.
The US collected money from nuclear plants for 50 years for disposal, and had plenty of money to develop waste burning reactors. And yet that money is totally unused. While politicians dead-lock on this idiotic Yucca Mountain project.
After more than 50 years of nuclear power plants in use we can say that there is no nuclear waste problem. The ‘waste’ has been stored above ground for decades and nothing has happened. It’s clearly safe. We should just keep doing what we’re doing. No need to dig expensive holes.
While I believe this is the most safe option right now - some candidate dumping grounds have failed spectacularly (the Asse), this of course only works as long we are vigilant and also pay the upkeep for storage locations for many millenia. Both from environmental and safety concerns.
Though, this being HN, I'd like to point out that you are technically correct, the best kind of correct. There is no official declaration of war between the EU and Russia (even if one could figure out how to do that).
Of course in practice there is very much a proxy war going on on Ukrainian soil. It is being done fairly openly at that: Weapons shipments are mentioned on the news, and eg. the movements of EU-based AWACS and Drones (patrolling along borders and over black sea, peeking in and providing intelligence) are also not hidden.
>“Ninety-nine per cent of the text of the articles of association is about climate and environmental protection, but 99 per cent of the money comes directly from Nord Stream II AG, which belongs to Gazprom.”
>“It’s quite a curious foundation. It is a puppet construction,” said Sascha Müller-Kraenner, head of Environmental Action Germany, a green charity, which is challenging the legality of the organisation both in the German courts and with the European Commission.
and German politicians from pretty much every single party have been taking bribes from Russia for years. Their energy policy of simultaneously shutting down coal but not spinning up any nuclear made them reliant on Russian natural gas, which they've been warned about by the US for years and are now paying the price for
and a video from 2018 of Germany's UN delegation quite literally laughing at the suggestion they'd be reliant on Russia for energy if they proceeded with Nordstream 2. Some good schadenfreude here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwg
True that foundation exists, and is heavily criticized by other German environmental organizations in Germany as even this article points out. Also it was founded after the nuclear exit was decided. You are falling for the trap where you know a little bit about a subject but draw the wrong conclusions from it.
Germany buys natural gas (and Oil, Coal) from Russia. That's mostly used in heating and industry production. There are some gas power plants, often also producing heat.
Nuclear power plants are mostly only used for electricity production.
The "light" is less of a problem, the real problem is "heating". Homes often use natural gas for heating, warm water and cooking.
Germany never had energy independence in nuclear. Yes, Germany has/had plants, but nothing like enrichment etc. The reason is geopolitics: Germany started two world wars, and noone wanted to have a postwar Germany capable of building nukes.
That link between nuclear proliferation and nuclear energy production is sadly often missing from the discussion here. No country builds nuclear reactors only for the energy. It's always for the nukes. Nuclear energy has always been expensive and has been massively subsidized since inception.
Yes, Gronau is the notable exception. Though note the involvement of WW2 winners France and UK (the owner is still a UK company) and the capacity that was wildy below demand for Western German plants.
It also isn't like Germany didn't want nuclear proliferation. Public demand to be allowed to produce nukes already started with Konrad Adenauer in the 1950's, and parts of the conservatives still bring up the topic from time to time (e.g. Rupert Scholz in 2007).
The NPT allows countries to have civilian nuclear power but not nuclear weapons, and many do. My country, Switzerland being an example. Japan is a large country where this applies as well.
The connection between civilian nuclear power and nuclear weapons is almost non existent. Countries that want nuclear weapons, just get them directly, they don't develop civilian nuclear power first.
So please stop spreading this harmful misinformation.
Please compare the list of countries with plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country with the list of countries with nukes: https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-weapons/worldwide. Note that most of the exceptions in Eastern Europe and Asia were formerly part of the Soviet Union or Warshaw Pact. Japan is indeed a notable exception as the country also has enrichment capabilities etc. Though note that they, too, seem to phase out the usage, though. Switzerland is planning it's phase out too, AFAIK.
Of course many of the original countries have both. However you are ignoring many exception in both directions, there are a number of countries with nuclear weapons but not nuclear power, and the other way around also.
So 9 countries have nuclear weapons. Of those, 2 don't use civilian nuclear power, that's 22%.
You have 32 countries with civilian nuclear power, that means 25 with no nuclear weapons. These 25 are literally distributed over all 5 continents. That is 80%.
And notably non of the 9 with nuclear weapons have primarily used civilian nuclear power to bootstrap the bomb.
So the data you provided is literally proving my point.
> Though note that they, too, seem to phase out the usage, though. Switzerland is planning it's phase out too, AFAIK.
That really has nothing to do with what we are talking about. But it was one of the worst votes in Swiss history. The campaign was totally based on absolutely absurd argument and driven by pure demagoguery. And we are not actively shutting down, we have just decided not to build anything new.
Not German, but the Greens (ruling party) in Germany basically built their platform on being anti-nuclear. They'd rather burn wet coal than walk that back.
Just for completeness, the Greens are in a coalition with social democrats(SPD), liberals(FDP) (names are labels, not political directions). The chancellor is from social democrats(SPD).
I should also say that in contrast to the common misperception (which is largely due to nuclear lobbying) the percentage of gas in electricity production has actually not increased over the last 20 years: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/En...
What we are witnessing is largely strong push by the nuclear industry to take advantage of the current situation to change sentiments to again get decades worth of guaranteed profits, largely at the cost of renewables.
I am not sure anymore if we can agree on this, but current fission implementations are an added threat - and not a small one - to any climate change that occurs. In addition: To this day, we do not have a single final depot for nuclear waste.
Now, that is the anti-nuclear side of things, however CO2 is also a problem which we also don't want and this leads to the shutdown of the other potential sources of energy and we don't have a proper replacement for them either (wind and sun are not reliable sources).
In summary, we Germans want to swim, but don't want to get wet.
The way I remember this, after the Fukushima disaster there were some state level elections, the center-right parties that had until then supported nuclear lost one or two of these elections due to voter panic about Fukushima and then abandoned their support for nuclear. I really think that if the state level election calender had been different, germany would still use nuclear power today.
Not sure, Fukushima was pretty scary considering the high esteem Japanese engineering has in Germany. Not sure what the deciding factor was, but indeed their remaining run time was shortened, the 2001 decision was targetting for a shutdown between 2025 and 2027.
Germany didn't think rationally. Nuclear was strongly associated with cold war and nuclear bombs.
Berlin is incredibly anti-nuclear. When I lived there, even when there was little going on, you would see constant anti-nuclear propaganda. Lots of anti-nuclear footmats and stickers.
The tldr; is it started with a stated goal of <10% dependence, thinking that by creating the first pipeline they would open up trade and normalize relations. This is a good goal especially since Germany was split in half at the time.
Unfortunately through some combination of greed, complacency, and dumb nuclear strategy, dependency kept ratcheting up over the decades, slowly boiling the frog into the disaster soup we have today.
Both are very unlikely. It has been widely acknowledged that the energy dependency from Russia was a big mistake. And of course, Germany should be on the trajectory to get rid of all fossil fuel usage. So unless the war ends tomorrow (which unfortuantely it won't), there is really no way back.
We will also have to see whether this war ends in another nuclear disaster, I have serious concerns it could considering the Russian military actions around the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. This would of course kill nuclear entirely. The region in Bavaria, where I live, is still quite contaminated from Chernobyl, we really don't need more of that stuff.
Even if the most rational Russian in the world assassinates Putin and all his cronies tomorrow and every Russian soldier is out of Ukraine and Crimea by next Friday, the damage is already done.
No-one will trust Russia (the country, not the people) for a good half century unless they make some really sweeping changes to... well, everything.
I'm German. I'm an electrical engineer. I'm not an expert. If you would ask me if I'm qualified to give advice if we should continue with nuclear power, I'd say no. But if you ask 1000 people on the street, than my opinion is as good as any other.
So why do I think that it's a good idea to quit with nuklear power? It's quite easy: We German like it to be on the safe side. If I get ill I've got an assurance for that. If my car burns down, I've got an assurance for that. If a railway train hits my house (there are no railway tracks even close to my house) but guess what: I've got an assurance for that. If a nuclear power plant blows up and makes the whole country within 20 miles radius a radioactive no-go area I've got... wait - there's no assurance for that. Tepco in Japan was not able to compensate the people who had to move. Not even close.
But there's good news: There is no nuclear power plant active anywhere in the radius of 20 miles around my home any more.
Now let's talk a completely different unrelated topic: Russian gas. Why unrelated? Because nearly nobody in Germany uses electricity to heat their homes (yet). We have gas lines in most cellars of our houses. Those who don't use oil. There's even hardly electric air conditioning anywhere in the private housing sector. The people fear that the heating will fail in winter due to the gas shortage. They now buy electric heating and we expect outages of the electrical power supply if they happen to use them, not because of missing power plant capacity, but because the grid is not strong enough to allow replacement of gas heating for the next winter.
But there are gas powere plants which are used to generate electricity from Russian gas. So it's all related, right? Yes and no. Yes we have gas power plants. We built them to help in situations of high demand because the Nuclear power plants are too slow to adopt on changing loads. Then over the last 20 years when wind power took over a major share of the power supply luckily we had those gas power plants to step in when a storm forces all wind mills to disconnect at the same time. But no. Gas power plants are not the solution as I stated. Even if we had enough power plant capacity to heat the houses we would never be able to distribute it. And more nuclear power does not help there either.
So nuclear power is not the solution if Russian gas is your problem.
But why do we use Russian gas at all? Why did we get into a situation like that at all? Well, that's not by accident. We fought and lost two world wars. Most people consider it a good idea for the German not to start another one. In the 1970s and 80s when the military presence of foreign forces in Germany declined it seemed a good idea to make Germany dependent on the mercy of the victorious countries. It worked quite well for nearly half a century. It's a good strategy as long as the German is the bad boy in town. It fails of course if the other bullys are even worse.
We could have emancipated from gas long time ago. Unfortunately our politicians especially from the CSU actively blocked regenerative energy.
So now the Germans have finally come to their minds and now want nuclear power back? No. The ARD (biggest German TV station) asked similar questions:
Q: Do you think we should do Fracking in Germany?
A: Only 27% say yes.
Q: Do you think we should stick to nuclear power?
A: 61% yes
Q: Should we extend wind energy and introduce a maximum speed limit?
A: 81% yes.
Left wing in Europe often has lots of Soviet sympathisers among their ranks. Basically USA=Bad, Russia=Good still lives on somehow.
I don't know anything about the situation in Germany in particular though, but I wouldn't be surprised if they saw integration with Russia as a good thing rather than a bad thing.
I don't mind nuclear, as long as people are prepared to pay the price at the meter and dispose of the waste. But people aren't prepared to do either...
In the US for example, the US collected a waste fee for 50 years and had many, many billions on an account.
Easily enough money to develop the technology for burning up the fuel. Literally many times the money then required.
But rather then using rational technology solution politicians grid-locked themselves over an incredibly stupid Yucca Mountain project that makes no sense what so ever.
So yes, nuclear 'waste' needs to be managed, but there are well known technology solution. Sadly because people were anti-nuclear politicians rather sold the 'put it into a deep hole' story rather then developing the necessary technology.
And deep hole in the ground isn't horrific policy either. Wasteful yes, but not horrific. It is just that evil politicians don't want to make reasonable trade-offs...
Recent electricity prices in Europe have proven that intermittent renewables backed by gas are way more expensive than nuclear, if it wasn't obvious already.
Nuclear waste disposal is a red herring. It's literally a rounding error compared to the environmental footprint of other means of energy production.
Why would you think, pipes would be freezing?
Besides the fact that due to climate change really cold winters have been rare, the current szenario just is to reduce room temperature to like 19 degrees, not stop heating alltogether.
unfortunately, as energy strategy is a multi-decadal commitment, the decisions on what to do should not be left to mercurial changes in popular sentiment
They were making the wrong decision for decades, moving away from nuclear while continuing to increase dependence on Russian gas (against the advice of 4-5 different US administrations). I agree that strategies shouldn't be made on knee jerk changes in public sentiment, but in this case the public is just starting to understand the correct answer that was always there.
The move away from nuclear and the move towards gas are more-or-less unconnected. After the (currently in place) decision to shut of nuclear from 2011, the gas part of the electricity first dipped a bit, then went a bit above 2010 levels after 2019. But it's not like our dependency on gas for electricity was radically different before the decision to exit nuclear (at least the current one) and right now.
If you prioritized getting away from fossil fuels, instead of nuclear, the current situations might look differently but I don't think that would've been politically feasible. If nuclear were just left running and providing 22% of german electricity, I don't think we'd be in a much better situation right now.
The major issue isn't electricity, but other forms of energy usage like heating. But that wasn't ever something done with electricity (at least on a large scale) in germany, even in the nuclear heyday (as opposed to france).
In Germany we had one well thought out decision regarding nuclear power. That was over turned twice due to "sentiment", maybe a third time now. And everytime that hapened it turned out, well, not perfect.
So are you saying that Germany should continue its multi-decadal course towards being dependent on Russia for its energy needs?
As Winston Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried." Yes, its shortcomings are obvious. But it is still worth accepting.
Most is used for heating and industrial processes. Only 15% of Germany's electricity production uses gas, although the use is likely not evenly distributed (gas peakers).
Wrong we want them to build modern Nuclear Plants. We want them work together with Bill Gates in it. But the government wants to re-open the plants with the technology of the 70s, these idiots.
Anything except building the most straightforward infrastructure for their current distribution system. Regas stations so that they can get LNG from the sea.
I'm worried Russia will cause an "accident" at a nuclear power plant in Ukraine in order to make nuclear less popular with the EU public, and keep the EU dependant on oil.
I definitely wouldn't put it past them, considering all the war crimes they have committed so far.
Me too, especially as that would give Putin a reason to withdraw the troups from the contaminated Ukraine. Considering all the explosions which have been reported around the Saporischschja plant, I am really afraid.
They could just load up tons of nuclear waste in planes and sprinkle it over Ukraine to cause the same kind of damage, having a nuclear powerplant lying around in no way makes it easier to cause those disasters.
Terrorists doesn't target nuclear powerplants since bombing one doesn't do much, plenty of nuclear plants has been attacked to date and you didn't know since it doesn't cause any significant damage. Main damage from bombing a nuclear plant is that people die from the bombs and areas lose electricity.
The thing is, Russia is trying to blame a possible blow up on the Ukrainians. That is their motivation to set it off instead of sprinkling nuclear waste or using nuclear war heads. Never mind all the damage they created around Chernobyl, though mostly contaminating their own troups by camping and digging in the highly contaminated forests around the former power plant. They also destroyed a lot of scientific labs which were controlling the power plant.
By the way: Medvedjev made some pretty specific threads against German power plants.
> Terrorists doesn't target nuclear powerplants since bombing one doesn't do much
On the contrary. Even if there is no radiation leak it can cause a panic, which is exactly what terrorist want
More importantly, nuclear is the most CENTRALIZED power generation. Destroying transformers or power lines around a plant is easy and leaves millions without electricity.
Unlike distributed power generation, like solar and wind.
And still the current plan is for Germany to shut down its few remaining nuclear reactors by the end of the year, while the company/companies maintaining them are saying they can keep them running? Please stop the shutdown, ffs, are you insane?
Let's try to stop Germany from harming itself further via international pressure. Blame and shame. Call them idiots to their faces. Point fingers. They need to shocked.
The germans seem to need to need a healthy dose of sanity/science. Their politics have been hijacked by anti-nuclear anti-science activists for too long.
Their celebrated "Mittelstand" industry is no good if they can't provide basic functions such as electric power in a clean way, but then again I'm not really sure they care.
If you are referring to the latest discussion about a specific plant (Isar 2), the company running the plant (e.on) wants to shut it down. The discussion came up because the TÜV Süd (internationally mostly known for certifying that dam in Brazil one year before it killed 270 people because it was not safe and broke) certified that the plant is safe, but pretty much everyone involved claimed that the certificate is bogus (and the public image of the TÜV Süd is pretty bad anyway).
The three remaining plants are each run by a different company, which all declined to answer questions in detail.
A spokesperson for RWE said extending the operation of its Emsland plant in Lower Saxony would come with “high obstacles” related to technical matters and legal issues. Its Gundremmingen plant, which went offline in 2021, “has lost its operating authorization and is in the process of being safely dismantled.”
EnBW, which runs the Neckarwestheim plant in Baden-Württemberg, said it was “fully committed” to Germany’s phaseout decision.
E.ON has also ruled out an extension of its Isar 2 site in Bavaria. “There is no future for nuclear in Germany, period,” CEO Leon Birnbaum told the Financial Times this month. “It is too emotional. There will be no change in legislation and opinion.”
There are three remaining plants in Germany, all scheduled to shut down this year.
The Government doubled-down on it's decision claiming that the plants didn't have the resources to continue operations.
In a rare moment, the operators of the plants embarrassed the gov't by going public that they could indeed continue to run safely.
One thing to note is that the prime minister appointed the head German head of Greenpeace to the cabinet this year - who is ideologically against any form of nuclear power, regardless of safety.
She isn't responsible for energy, infrastructure or finance, which should be responsible departments regarding the power plants.
> On February 8, 2022, it was announced that she was to be appointed to the Federal Republic of Germany's Federal Foreign Office as a special representative for international climate policy.
If you cant build new plants, I dont think the solution is to run old plants forever until they fail. Shutting down old plants should have nothing to do with being pro/anti nuclear. Everything has a life span.
The plants are being shut down because of political concerns. From a technical POV they can keep running. Vattenfall was also forced to retire nuclear plants in Germany way ahead of schedule because of german politics a few years ago. That was stupid.
It was a political decision to set the shut down date to end of 22, but due to maintenance and fuel concerns, it might not be possible to just keep them running. Of course we can perform all necessary maintenance and order new fuel to have them back in a year or two, but it might be simpler just to push the alternatives. (If it is easily possible to keep them running, of course we should do, but that is not so clear to me)
First of all, please don't call people names and please stay to the truth. I will take a deep breath and try to answer some of your claims calmly.
Yes, one can debate whether it was a clever idea to decide in 2001 to get rid of nuclear power while there was no end date set for coal. However the plans allowed for 25 years of further run time, enough time for buildup of renewables.
And Germany was quite successfull, renewables make up over 50% of the electricity. However, they fell behind the expectations because the Merkel government curbed the roll out of renewables. You can see how solar collapsed after 2012 and wind after 2017: https://www.erneuerbare-energien.de/EE/Redaktion/DE/Bilder/G...
On top of that, after the Fukushima disaster, it was decided to cut the run times of the nuclear power plants short. Mixing those together wasn't a great thing. Without one or even both, the path to renewables would have been smother and much further ahead.
We are talking about only 3 power plants left, whatever we decide, it won't make a huge difference. But as things are, I would also be in favour of keeping them running, if we reasonably can. However that is not a given. Maintenance intervals were of course decide with the final shut down at the end of the year in mind, as was ordering of the nuclear fuel. I really don't know, whether this can be reasonably reversed without higher costs than the possible alternatives.
And it is important to mention, that there is no scarcity of electricity in Germany, nor is any expected in the winter. Only 14% of the imported Gas go to electricity production. Ironically German electricity production is espeically high at the moment, as Germany has to keep the European grid up as France is failing to produce enough electricity. About 50% of the French nuclear power plants are down at the moment, they are old and require maintenance. On top of that, the rest has to run at reduced power due to limited cooling in the summer and due to the draught.
Germany has for this reason produced an extra 20 TWh of electricity, partially coming from the precious gas reserves. Because the nuclear power plants are not delivering at the moment.
So please cut down your flaming of Germany while it keeps the European grid running.
Based on you previous comments in this submission:
I think this is a novel re-interpretation of reality, from the angle that the German Green party was somehow not responsible for the nuclear power shutdown in Germany, and the effects that had on the European power grid.
Haven't you read what I wrote? The 2001 decision was made to run the plants for 25 years. That was the decisions the Greens took part in. Every other decision was taken by governments without Greeen participation. You should carefully distinguish between those.
And what exactly are the effects on the European power grid you are talking about, especially any negative one? (Feel free to also list the beneficial ones)
> Let's try to stop Germany from harming itself further via international pressure. Blame and shame. Call them idiots to their faces. Point fingers. They need to shocked.
Trump literally did exactly this. Needless to say they doubled down. Classic example of an inability to separate the value of a message from the messenger.
The Greens are barking mad though, and not just about nuclear. Parliamentary democracy being what it is, they can sadly inflict that madness on the republic.
The Greens are the one party not responsible for the current mess Germany is is (which is much less than people here think it is). It was the previous government which decided to cut the run time of the power plants short (it didn't have Greens in the government). The previous government didn't start to cut ties with Russia after 2014. The previous government curbed the buildup of renewable energy.
.png){kind=link}
1. The energy company pays market rate insurance for their nuclear plants. Not "we take the profit, taxpayers pay for the disaster"
2. The energy company sets up a trust to pay for the safe storage of nuclear waste and cleaning up the plant should they go bust (again "we take ...")