lutasch
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I also don’t eat my dog!
Sep 11, 2024 4:12 PM
lutasch
12503
694
9
I also don’t eat my dog!
hellospacemonkey
To be clear: As of June 2024, Germany had 32 Gigawatts (GW) of operating coal capacity. In 2024, Germany is expected to close over 10 GW of coal-fired power stations. That's 30% just this year, so the number of coal plants could be one in 2038. Misleading because it makes it seem like it will take a long time for coal to be out of the picture.
TheGlow
"Ahh so what you are saying is we need to follow through on going with Trump, live through the Nazi equivalent, lose WW3, maybe WW4, then when during recovery 70 years later we can start moving away from Coal?"
CallMeMcGyver
No dog eating? What about the Dachshundswiener? Which I totally didn’t just make up so I’d have something to add to these comments… 100% pure dachshund in a wiener format, which is rather redundant, but tasty… okay I made it up, but I feel the ability to poke satirical fun at anything trump says has been so damaged by the non-satirical nature of his satirical sounding, comically ignorant statements, that I can’t even out-insane his insanity through satire anymore.
Sagromus
The truth is, that we have one of the highest energy prices in Europe in Germany. There is a lot of discussion in Germany if the energy politics of the German government was a good idea.
Hal1918
Perhaps Angela giving 30k companies a tax free card might have shifted the dial for consumers ? /s https://www.cleanenergywire.org/industrial-power-prices-and-energiewende
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Mithi
Explain your stupid rambling.
RoutemasterFlash
Coal off the grid by 2038? Oh, don't worry, I'm sure we'll have this whole 'global climate crisis' dealt with by then.
stronomer
Given this I am proud of my Government. No punches pulled!
Freestila
But we eat horses (well sometimes.. Shit quite expensive and you get it only at specialized butchers. So not really common, but happens).
BloodyLance
It hurts so hard when people argue FOR nuke power when it was always an extreme hazard that not a single insurance company ever covered and not even the States that operate them since the worst cases have shown the costs to be infinite.
BTW where do you all think the fuel for nuke plants comes from and where the waste goes.
GenesisMachines
In 2023 more people died from renewable power (mostly from a dam collapse) than from the worst prediction of how many have ever died from nuclear energy.
On top of that it doesn't produce greenhouse gasses and isn't shut down by supply chain disruption, like plagues or war with Russia.
What's not to love?
reichtwinglunatic
Shutting down nuclear plants is not the flex they think it is...
stronomer
Oh it is. Very.
Horsenippleking
Only to the uneducated
RexMundane
Question for the "Nuclear is Completely Safe Now" crowd here: To my mind, it's less about "whether" it can be done safely, it's about how we're fundamentally asking the same investor-class C-suite profit-above-lives-driven cretins, who currently run the Coal and Oil industries, turning monopolistic record profits into lobbying for more lax safety regulations, to do nuclear safely, even when there's no financial incentive to do so. So, y'know... how's that work?
PowerPedant
The official foreign office dumping on Trump is rather amusing.
sfrinlan
To be fair, they're just offering a fact-check, not even dumping on him.
PowerPedant
Sure. But for diplomats of a friendly country, that's really snarky.
Mithi
Friendly country, but not friendly to turds.
whitebbwolf
yes, but: We should totally get in front of modern save fission technology that is not hampered by the need to create weapons grade waste
thoushaltnotpass
"Coal will be off the grid by 2038" wtf it should be gone yesterday
Mithi
Should have, but reality got in the way of it.
CarlBassett
The UK has already closed almost all its coal power stations. They only produce a fraction of one percent of our electricity, with wind often producing more than half our electricity and solar adding a lot as well.
GenesisMachines
The UK can shut down coal as it gets 30% of its electricity from nuclear. 15% domestically produced, 15% via a grid interlink from France.
Germany could have done the same.
CarlBassett
A couple of years ago France was buying electricity from the UK as half their nuclear reactors were offline. But yeah, shutting their nuclear plants was stupid. Boris Johnson warned Germany years ago, before Ukraine, that Germany was making itself far too reliant on Russia for energy and it could end badly. And we're only somewhat better, having kicked the can down the road for years on new reactors, and then signing a deal with China only to decide that maybe China might be as bad as Russia.
GenesisMachines
They were scheduled to be offline during the time of year that's usually has the lowest demand for electricity. Unfortunately, due to climate nonsense this turned out to be period of high demand for air-conditioning.
CarlBassett
A lot of them were offline because of problems and urgent maintenance due to those problems, not just routine maintenance. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/why-nuclear-powered-france-faces-power-outage-risks-2022-12-09/
taez555
Burn!!!
bojeefus
JustSomeDudeInMichigan
I was stationed in bamberg, man they had a rough patch but Germany is awesome now
languex
Trump lives in a fantasy world of his own making. He's a legend in his own mind.
TofuGolem
Trump is not respected by the rest of the world. Trump made America a laughingstock.
jamesx
It this an official government account? o.o;
stronomer
Yes
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thebadhorse
Way to downvote me for pointing out something you lacked the understanding to take into consideration!
5NoteHalf
Maybe a country 28 times bigger could make better use of our resources and be on top of this shit.
torp
While we, as European, heard about grid issues in Texas, something with a governor, cancun, I'm not sure.
GenesisMachines
Texas isn't on the USA grid. They also removed all regulations, such as requiring winter protection of equipment. So when the temp dropped below freezing ice formed in the gas pipes and they couldn't import power from other states to cover the shortfall.
torp
That's when governor went to cancun ?
GenesisMachines
Yes. Ted Cruz runs away to Cancun when there are emergencies.
goodtimehadbyall
Bragging about shutting down nuclear plants (and even coal) because you are using natural gas for power isn't the brag they think it is. Natural gas is actually even worse than coal in terms in terms of how much it is harming the environment, even just their air (most in production and leaks).
kingbudo101
Germany started shutting down their Nuclear plants years ago and relied more on Russian gas then thanks to sanctions from the Ukraine war they had to reopen coal plants to meet power needs. If they didnt shut down nuclear plants they could have been coal free a lot sooner. Dumb decision on Germany's part https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-approves-bringing-coal-fired-power-plants-back-online-this-winter-2023-10-04/
whitebbwolf
I agree
FiftyShadesOfCauliflower
The fossil fuel industry knows how to play all sides with different types of propaganda. They used the environmentally conscious, green energy-friendly population segment to pressure conservative populists into assassinating their nuclear competition.
TackerTacker
The NPP debate in Germany was purely politics and nothing else.
HelikaformerNubisKnight9
Not a dumb decision as long there's no solution to nuclear waste: Germany's population is very dense and there aren't much places you can safely stire nuclear waste. The actual storage location is already water leaking in. It's a ticking time bomb. AND with climate change there's not enough cool water in the rivers for nuclear Power plants. We had to help France in the last years during summer with German solar energy cause France had to shut down most of their Nuclear Power Plants.
HelikaformerNubisKnight9
And in case you didn't know there's a part of Germany that has some (not only inactive) volcanoes, one of them is long due - sort of like the Mega-Caldera beneath Yellow Stone... (Laacher See, active).
ItsMoreComplicatedThanThis
Our npps were outdated garbage years ago. The companies running them said themselves there's no point in keeping them on. And we're still driving the waste around on trains because no one can get serious about a long term storage site.
Oh, and most of the uranium used came from - you'll never guess - Russia.
Is nuclear better than fossil? Sure, by a long shot. But it's not like we one day woke up and decided to quit nuclear for the lulz.
dislurkerdude
Nuclear plants are held to higher standards you have to shut them down over a lot less
VashTehStampede
IDK why you're being downvoted, you're mostly correct.
Nuclear power is held to high standards.
Nuclear plants do not get shut down "over a lot less". First, less than what?
Also, what's your source for the average shutdowns of current technology nuclear power plants?
Finally, kindly identify some examples of nuclear plants being shut down and why those wouldn't also have shut down a similar power plant of another type.
Looking forward to you substantiating your claims.
kingbudo101
They were not shut down for any reason aside from the government wanting to phase out nuclear energy from their nation grid
sothisishowashitpostfeelslike
Yeah someone lobbied really hard against nuclear power. Wonder who.
stronomer
Germany made the conscious choice to phase out nuclear. And that is good. The amount of extra coal plants that had to be build was small, nuclear never contributed more than ~15% to Germany's electricity. And with a parallel push for more renewables we managed to both phase out nuclear _and_ are on the way to phase out coal. Nothing dumb about it. And really really cheap. Electricity from nuclear is currently much more expensive than from solar and wind, even in "northern" Germany.
Eldroidio
"Elecricity from nuclear is more expenseive than solar and wind"
No it isnt, i beg you to go read the studies on this. While its a big lump of money upfront it is cheaper overall in producing per KwH. Not to mention the lifespan of most wind farms are less than 10 years before needing to replace them. Overall its currently more expensive in long run.
stronomer
Nope, lifecycle costs are substantially higher than for any renewable source: https://decarbonization.visualcapitalist.com/the-cheapest-sources-of-electricity-in-the-us/
Eldroidio
This is aimed specifically at the costs of current generation of power. Due to political situations surrounding nuclear in america it takes 5-6 times longer to build nuclear plants thus increasing costs and meaning no new plants get built, as they are considered financial risk. If you look at countries that do not have this same issue. France, china, UAE. The costs VASTLY different.
stronomer
It's actually not. France just put its most expensive plant online. All across Europe solar and wind are much cheaper than nuclear. The UAE plant produces electricity 2-4x higher cost than solar: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-united-arab-emirates-nuclear-power-gambit
Eldroidio
https://youtu.be/RPjBj1TEmRQ?si=7xFJsqqx_I7TpBGy
This is good video with an interview with a nuclear economist that goes into this.
spitfires2000
I've seen what's in their Bratwurst...
stercusmoriturussum
You know what they say about men with big meat grinders...
spitfires2000
No. What? ;-)
ARoseByAnotherUsernameWouldSmellAsSweet
Wer anderen eine Bratwurst brät, hat meist ein Bratwurst Bratgerät
spitfires2000
Is this the German pot and kettle thing?
ARoseByAnotherUsernameWouldSmellAsSweet
This is a very dry-humour, very dumb rhyme based on a quite popular saying. It is a mix of an inside joke (albeit without anything funny having happened at any point) and a rebellion against moral-of-the-stories (though it has become that itself). If told at a gathering of germans, many will nod sagely while avoiding your gaze or raise their eyebrows while pursing their lips like a parent who can‘t argue with their kid, because what it said was, though stupid, technically not wrong. Nobody finds
ARoseByAnotherUsernameWouldSmellAsSweet
it funny, yet it will universally be recognized as a joke, and while nobody likes it, everybody will still agree that it‘s a good one. Every translation I attempted loses the humour inherently infused into the words, but I firmly believe every german (who speaks english) would still find it funny. Take it as it is, as it‘s own thing not really worth understanding. Just chuckle next time you see it, as you have witnessed german humour in it‘s most basic, most pure form.
spitfires2000
As far as I found it's a more rhyme version of „Wer anderen eine Grube gräbt, fällt meistens selbst hinein.“ This means, for the none-German speakers: "
He who digs a pit for others falls in himself". Although the German version has 'meistens' in it, which translates to 'mostly', so they, the Germans, still give you a chance when you dig a pit for another. The one question that's still not answered: what pit was I digging for another? And, of course, did I fall in?
ThatGuyWhoIsSkepticalOfEverything
Controversial take, but the Fukushima incident actually proves how safe nuclear power is. It’s a real shame Germany is so scared of something that has the potential to change the world.
FallingStar7669
Especially since Germany is known for the sort of engineering that would make it a world leader in nuclear power.
RacecarIsRacecarBackwards
Is this the 1950s? Why is Imgur so in love with nuclear power?
GenesisMachines
We don't want to die due to climate collapse or because our air-con and heating are only affordable if the weather is sunny and windy.
Nostradamuswaswrong
Because it's safe, clean, and efficient.
PerkyPervertedPet
Not controversial take: nuclear energy is also more expensive than renewable energy.
mormacil
Less pollution long term though with modern reactors. Solar panels only last so long before they go to a landfill.
PerkyPervertedPet
Solar panels last 30 years. In 30 Years every power plant will have replaced every technical part in it at least once. And why shouldn't "modern" reactors create less pollution than renewable energy? What kind are you taking about? Breeder reactors, Molten-salt reactors, or Thorium-based nuclear power? Be more specific please.
Eldroidio
No it isnt. Go read the studies on it
PerkyPervertedPet
I did. Did you? Look in the World Energy Outlook 2023 from the IEA, page 301: B.4 Electricity generation technology costs. LCOE and VALCOE show that solar is about twice as cheap as nuclear and will be even cheaper in the future. https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ed1e4c42-5726-4269-b801-97b3d32e117c/WorldEnergyOutlook2023.pdf#page=301
ThatGuyWhoIsSkepticalOfEverything
True, but it’s more “reliable” than renewables.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for renewables, but it just doesn’t have the uptime needed for being a reliable baseload generation. Batteries can mitigate a lot of these issues, but they’re expensive, the cycle time needed to make renewables reliable isn’t supported by the warranties offered by the manufacturers, and most battery manufacturers have worse carbon footprints than gas power units. Nuclear really does need to be at the forefront of power.
PerkyPervertedPet
Compensating the fluctuation with gas-powered plants might not be carbon free, but if they are that flexible to go from 0 too 100% in 15 minutes, you still save a lot carbon by being able to use all of the renewable energy there is (50%). Nuclear energy on the other hand could never be that fast and would actually force renewable energy to restrict themself in peak supply situations. Many different methods to store energy more efficient can be tried and improved in the meantime.
PerkyPervertedPet
Not claiming that this is the best scenario, but it isn't that bad either.
ThatGuyWhoIsSkepticalOfEverything
You’re talking about big plants, with 1000s of MWs that need days to be turned off completely, and weeks to turn back on.
Gas is fine, and does have a drastically low carbon emission than coal, but newer SMRs have those advantages too. And there are functional SMRs now.
I’m a big believer in hydrogen too (opinion), so you’re correct that there’re other techs than batteries, but we haven’t solved the issues with hydrogen storage yet (and probably never will, since it is the smallest atom).
PerkyPervertedPet
Ammonia as a carbon-free energy carrier and as storage might be promising for H2 and sodium batteries might have a good chance for storing electricity too. Gas-steam power plants might need 1 to 4 hours to turned on completely. Gas turbine power station need less than 15 minutes. I have no idea where you got the info that they would need whole days. That info might be outdated.
stronomer
It proves how safe nuclear is? WTF? Uninhabitable regions in an industrial country? Who brainwashed you?
mormacil
It was not build to old safety standards and still only a single death. It proves that modern standards are sufficient to even weather the worst natural disasters.
stronomer
Sure, only a single death. And of course nothing happened to the region, people are happily living there as before? It was very close to Tokyo having to be evacuated. Which would have been the end of the Japanese economy. Seriosly delusional, these takes.
mormacil
Yeah not a single death during the event, just one after. That's a verifiable fact. Tokyo didn't need to be evacuated even with these poor build conditions. Yes it's a resounding success safety wise. If procedures would be followed nothing would've happened.
GenesisMachines
The number of deaths is zero. The one plant worker who died of cancer was ruled to have died from a non-work related type of cancer.
mormacil
Didn't feel like arguing that point here, detracts from the safety discussion.
GenesisMachines
What do you mean by safety, if not how many people are killed and maimed?
ThatGuyWhoIsSkepticalOfEverything
Nobody. Just learnt the realities of the market by working in it for over 7 years. Fukushima accident proved that failsafes work in some several decade old power plant. We have better technologies now, including passive protection that literally makes it impossible to have an actual meltdown. Your standard coal plant emits worse radiation (Radon) than a nuclear plant. There are nuclear test plants (thorium based) that can be operated by high-schoolers.
stronomer
Yeah, that's the level of discussion. Sure. Where are all these super easy high-schooler operated Thorium plants with the 70+ year old concept, contributing so much to the world's energy needs? Oh, right, they aren't there.
ThatGuyWhoIsSkepticalOfEverything
What? You did read that I wrote nuclear “test” plants being operated by high schoolers, right? You can literally visit those. Go to UC Berkeley, and request a tour.
stronomer
It's vapour-ware. There won't be any plants producing energy any time soon. While I can go into a shop and buy and set up a solar installation tomorrow. By myself.
ThatGuyWhoIsSkepticalOfEverything
Okay, not literally impossible, just highly improbable. You can always have a plane crash that somehow cuts off the graphite rods from being dropped by hitting a nuclear power plant at an exact point in their silo, while simultaneously stopping all other failesafe mechanisms with the ensuing fire and destruction.
RoutemasterFlash
What's the point of dreaming up these vanishingly unlikely worst-case scenarios when catastrophic climate change due to fossil fuel use is already happening?
ThatGuyWhoIsSkepticalOfEverything
There isn’t. Hence, I support nuclear power wholeheartedly. Especially with SMRs right around the corner (if you’re in the US near the decommissioned Palisade plant, you get your power from these futuristic power plants within a few months).
quietwalker
Nuclear power is good. Current nuclear plants are clean, safe, reliable, and relatively cheap.
Folks got scared off from it and it's a shame because it'd fix a lot of problems, and the biggest downside is that they take decades to spin up, so if you want nuclear power now, you had to start 20 years ago.
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pompoikpoik
Is that a bigger or smaller problem than having climate change and ending up putting an entire planet in quarantine ?
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pompoikpoik
that's an hypothetical risk, right ?
you have to balance it agains a proven fact (if you belive science) that co2 generates climate change.
Please understand that there is no "clean" source of energy....
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Taxicat
The science is fine…I just have a very difficult time trusting the people involved, especially the management and bureaucracy, not to find some way to fuck it up. The more you try to idiot-proof something, the harder the universe works to build a better idiot, and at least other renewables don’t have the same potential to render an entire region uninhabitable for thousands of years.
Hal1918
Or call Rolls Royce (sub motor supply division) https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx#/
GenesisMachines
Pick one.
DemSumBigAssRidges
Have they ever said why they’re shutting down nuclear?
DeadWhiteMale
They're not cheap. They're cheap to run, but very expensive to build.
trasneoir
Expert design and engineering for a one-off project is super expensive. Mass-produced machines are cheap.
I'm convinced that a modern design which is small enough to prefabricate on a production line could be an order of magnitude cheaper per kwp than the "megaprojects" that constitute our existing nuclear stock.
RacecarIsRacecarBackwards
And to dismantle. And to store the waste for literally 1000s of years.
Morpheaus
The waste doesn't need to be stored for thousands of years. Waste also has a tiny foot print. The size of a Wal-Mart for all that we have now.
JohnSmith987654632106549876561354
I think the biggest problem with nuclear power plants is when idiots build them in places with high earthquake risks...
pompoikpoik
When you're doing something, there is always someone looking passively at what you've done and calling you an idiot
someguy7734206
Another big downside of nuclear power is that terrorists can cause catastrophic damage simply by blowing up the reactor. There is a danger of this happening in Ukraine, with worldwide consequences.
Of course, hydro power is another thing where Russian terrorists can cause a catastrophe with just a few well-placed bombs, which they have already done once.
TheOneThatGotBanned
Wonder why most plants are located near borders. Also most are not profitable, if you removed the public funding they would never get build
GenesisMachines
There are a lot along the French border, those are the used to export power to the neighbouring country.
RacecarIsRacecarBackwards
Has anybody found a way to store nuclear waste safely for 1000s of years? Because if not, nuclear power is by no means clean, safe and definitely not cheap.
pompoikpoik
No energy source is "clean"....
UmAcshually
It's as bad anymore with the advent of much smaller nuclear reactor. My home city just started planning one, they expect to do analysis and plans until 2026 and have the plants operational in early 2030s. You might say "Well, nearly a decade is still long" but it's not like large scale wind or solar power would take just a year or something either (planning, permits, environmental impact analysis., land acquisition, construction, etc. take time). Nuclear is still probably slower but not by much.
pompoikpoik
Also wind and solar project should also include storage to be comparable to nuclear (or gas plants). Without storage you cannot control when you have available energy
UmAcshually
The company my city (Helsinki) is dealing with and the kind of nuclear power plants I'm talking about https://www.steadyenergy.com/
gesel
They're also pre-emplaced nuclear munitions. They can be used by a retreating army to salt the earth. Some new designs are intrinsically safe in the sense that it would be nearly impossible to trigger a runaway reaction without reconfiguring the core to enable that is small comfort if the plant falls under the control of a group willing to and capable of doing so. Or simply drilling under the core and packing it with HE to make a mega dirty bomb.
DerpMeister
"Nuclear power is good. Current nuclear plants are clean, safe, reliable, and relatively cheap." - There's a 100% chance some asshats said the exakt same thing about Chernobyl and Fukushima when those plants were build.
GenesisMachines
Nobody was killed or injured at Fukushima, so I don't know what your definition of safe is.
Chernobyl killed 60 and gave cancer to 4,000 to 16,000, which makes the worst exploding soviet nuclear plant safer than an equivalent coal plant.
SuperPickle17
other than soviet propagandist bureaucrats, noone ever said Chernobyl was safe. Fukushima, wouldn't have failed if proper maintenance was done (e.g. lax regulations) and even when it did fail, it was *mostly* contained.
pompoikpoik
"Oil, gas and coal is good. Current thermal engines are clean, safe, reliable and relatively cheap." Said some asshats who cared more about their bank accounts than scientific results talking about climate change
viila
Those plants were designed IN THE NINETEEN SIXTIES. 60 fucking years ago!
RoutemasterFlash
There are hundreds of nuclear power plants in operation all over the world. They're not going boom all the time, are they? France has relied on nuclear power for decades and wasn't a radioactive wasteland the last time I visited.
Mithi
Right. In hot summers they occasionally have to shut reactors down due to a lack of cooling water.
RoutemasterFlash
So, they activated a safety mechanism, which worked properly, and there wasn't an accident, right?
Mithi
Yes. Thing is, what happens when the next drought is longer or worse or both? There is a point were they simply have to shut the reactor off completely.
GenesisMachines
That never happened. One plant throttled down production to protect fish during a freak heatwave, no plant was shut down due to lack of water. The largest nuclear plant in the USA is in a desert with no access to water.
pompoikpoik
This has not happened yet. (Even though it is a risk). But honestly, when we will be missing fresh water, i assume electricity availability will be aecondary
Mithi
Mea culpa I remembered wrong, no shut down. But they had to throttle some plants in '22 and '23
apneax3n0n
Current nuclear Is stupid. Is Just a different Way of boiling water to use them as stream in dinamo . Deal wirh It.
Dazzla
They’re all safer than ever until they’re not and they’ve turbofucked half a continent for the next 20,000 years.
pompoikpoik
Which continent exactly ? I see internet traffic on all continents....
crazyfishlady
I remember someone posting recently about how much nuclear power has improved over the years. I wish I had favorited the post, because there was a lot of detail about how much safer it is to deal with the waste products than it used to be and how many fail safes are built in. It basically addressed all of the questions and concerns I had about nuclear power.
Sergejblackout
Keep being concerned. There is no concept whatsoever for the storage of nuclear waste. Let alone that it needs to stay somewhere safe for at least 40 generations. Superficial knowledge is dangerous
ArandomDane
Absolutely there are no safely concerns with a EPR-2 with all the bells and whistles, or most GEN-4 if they do as promised.
The cost of all the bells and whistles on the other hand is an issue, but the thing that kills it almost everywhere in the world is compatibility with VRE. The maintenance and building cost is the same, whether VRE is producing enough for nuclear to be on standby.
BloodyLance
You are all idiots.
Nuke power is by far the most expensive one today and will just get more expensive the fewer Uranium will get.
Dazzla
People said that before Fukushima. And before Chernobyl. And before Three Mile Island. What it means is that these are the ways we know it can fail. These are the things we can now anticipate.
The history of nuclear power is written in blood and it’s still being written.
Morpheaus
Fuck off with the alarmist drama.
TheFirstIconoclast
3 incidents in about 70 years, two of which had relatively marginal health effects and overall consequences. That's actually a pretty good record overall, and nuclear energy has one of the best mortality/unit energy rates along with solar and wind.
shitheadtookmyname
There were zero casualties at 3MI.
potshot
Those events are sensational, but overall nuclear power has an aggregate lower death toll per unit of energy produced than any other power source except solar. It is risky if safety is ignored, but so are so many things in this world that it's hardly a basis to oppose it. Nuclear power is not some poorly understood mystical branch of science anymore.
crazyfishlady
It's not going away, so even with current improvements, the best thing to do is keep pushing to make it safer and hold companies accountable if they are cutting corners. And yes, push for green technologies to improve as well so we aren't dependent on only one power source.
GentryFriedRichFillets
Yeah, I grew up in the 80's, so Chernobyl was a formative story. I was pretty against expansive nuclear programs until more recently. Isaac Arthur went over more modern techs and math on his youtube channel. Man knows his stuff, so had to cop to my childhood bias.
crazyfishlady
Same. While I know they can, should, and will keep figuring out how to make things safer, it's great to see how far it's come.
stronomer
People tend to forget Fukushima. That was 13 years ago.
HandoB4Javert
[Three Mile Island has entered the chat] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_Nuclear_Generating_Station
stronomer
If you ask nuc fanbois that wasn't really so much of a big deal. Except it was. And the Hanford site is also not pretty, although that started out as military so total contamination isn't a bug but a feature, probably.
GentryFriedRichFillets
True, but it was completed in 1970's. There were design flaws about its cooling systems in the 1990's, but nothing was done about them. It was the cooling systems that failed. They were also warned that their sea wall wasn't tall enough.
They did nothing about either critiques. It is less a failure of nuclear power plants and more a warning of the importance of regulation and oversight.
Check "Warnings and..." in the wiki.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant
stronomer
Really not. All modern reactors rely on energy for cooling. If that power isn't there, they will overheat. That's also the case for most if not all US reactors. And they are all safe until a situation crops up in which they are not.
schlummi
Nuclear power companies tend to cut corners. Any for profit company tries to improve profits by cutting inefficient spending. If a risk is low and no accident happens, then it seems rational to cut spending on safety. Or in other words: you can find similar warnings as those for fukushima for many other nuclear plants. We will only know in hindsight if those warnings are justified or not.
TackerTacker
NPP are not good. They are not clean. They are relatively safe. They are relatively reliable unless they get cooled by a river that gets too hot b/c of climate change. They are definitely not cheap at all. They are definitely not carbon neutral. They take very long to build, unless you go with those mini NPP which create even more waste, and you would need many many more which would decrease safety. NPP also keep relying on fuel which we would run out of in no time if we switched to NP en masse
Morpheaus
We wouldn't run out of nuclear material in "no time." If you know nothing about the topic, it would be better to shut the fuck up rather than spread misinformation. https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-longterm-sustainable.html
kaIIe
Finn here: it can also be extremely expensive. Olkiluoto 3 project was delayed by 15 years and ended up costing more than €8.5 billion.
Yellowboy66
Same here in the UK. Turns out one of the big problems was getting very high quality specialised steel.. Cheap Chinese steel put the real specialists out of business ages ago, so now it's all shit.
viila
Wind farms cost €1 to €3 million per megawatt, and they have utilization percentage of approximately 33%, so to build equivalent amount of capacity as Olkiluoto 3 in wind power would cost 4.8 to 14 billion euros. This does not take into account the extra peaking power capacity required to handle the large swings in power output. Wind turbines have 20 year lifespan, Olkiluoto 3 has minimum design lifespan 60 years. So you'd have to build the wind farm at least 3 times during Olkiluoto's lifetime.
viila
Only advantage wind has is that you don't have to build it all at once. But it is no cheaper than nuclear, especially in the long run.
pompoikpoik
It can be cheaper than nuclear in some countries, depending on the financing scheme, and the grid system
Rystefn
And the wind/terrain situation, which people love to overlook for some reason.
pompoikpoik
Complete calculation is called LCOE (levelized cost of energy), this can be much more complex than what you explain. For instance, just the cost of capital can be a competitive advantage for some energy sources (=> all depend if you have public or private investment)
triffidhunter
Kyle Hill did a video recently about how LCOE doesn't consider utilization percentage, and when that's added back in, nuclear is an extremely strong contender especially for base load which wind/sun can't provide
pompoikpoik
what do you mean by "utilization percentage" ? utilization based on "offer" (eg. how often do you miss wind when you would need it) or based on demand (eg. how often do you miss demand when wind is available)
pompoikpoik
utlization percentage of nuclear plant is also a tricky question.
Hypothetically speaking, a 100% nuclear country would have LCOE = x
If you add renewable energy in, then the nuclear utilization would automatically decrease, and the wear of the nuclear plant would be quicker (both things having negative impact on its LCOE)
RoutemasterFlash
It's expensive to build the plants, true, but Germany shut down plants that had decades of useful life left in them, which was madness.
ArandomDane
France have started to shut down plant atm, for the less publicized reason The rest of Germany didn't really push back to the Greens anti nuclear rhetoric. It sucks (economically) in a VRE heavy system infrastructure.
Germany was investing massively in their solar industry since the 90s. So the Atomic Energy Act of 2002 was planing there closer to make room... but then Fukushima happened and a few got pushed up... but them Russia happens and a few got pushed back.
RoutemasterFlash
Have the French been shutting down plants permanently? I hadn't heard that. They had a few that went offline a few years ago due to maintenance schedules being missed (worker shortages during the pandemic) and low river levels during a big drought, but the last I'd heard was that they were coming back online.
RoutemasterFlash
It says here that nuclear currently accounts for 2/3 of their electricity generation and they're back to exporting lots of energy, so reports of the death of French nuclear energy seem a bit premature. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/france-track-smash-clean-electricity-export-record-2024-2024-04-10/
ArandomDane
That was the 2022 thing. I am talking about the chance from maintenance in perpetuity. To planned shutdown Just like Germany's Atomic Energy act of 2002. Where the first shut down in 2009. The plan is to have 6 French plants shutdown by 2030 and 26 in total by 2035.
All these plants could be kept running just as the ones in Germany could. However, it is cheaper to move to VRE, compared to the ever increasing maintenance costs as the plants gets older. So current plan is to move down (1/2)
MarkusFrodo
Some risks are just not worth taking. In risk assessment there are usually two factors, probability and potential severity. The potential severity of a nuclear accident is a 10, which makes the whole endeavour a 10 by default. Even if the probability is a 1.
This is automatically disqualifying.
potshot
Why though? Modern plants have a very low risk of severity. Nuclear power is well understood. What do you understand the worst case to be?
RoutemasterFlash
What is that "10" meant to mean? You're pulling these numbers out of your arse.
RoutemasterFlash
Fossil fuel use is by far the main driver of climate change, and it's not a "risk" or a "worst-case scenario"; it's beeb happening for well over a century and is getting worse all the time. How can you compare something bad that might happen (but probably won't) to something far worse that's already happening?
Rystefn
This is hilariously wrong. Coal power operating as designed do more damage than nuclear accidents.
RoutemasterFlash
Exactly - coal plants do far more damage than all nuclear accidents that have ever happened put together as part of their normal operation.
LitigiousWhelk
No, the biggest downside are the people dying in third world countries mining the uranium.
ExTechOp
It depends, here in Finland we have the only uranium mine in Europe. And Onkalo, the only operational spent fuel long-term repository on the planet.
https://www.terrafame.com/newsroom/media-releases/terrafame">.html">https://www.terrafame.com/newsroom/media-releases/terrafame-has-started-uranium-recovery.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
pompoikpoik
What about the ones dying because of oil ? Or the ones mining material for wind turbines ? Are some death bodies more valuable than other ?
RoutemasterFlash
That's going to be a tint number of people compared to the thousands who die every month from respiratory diseases caused by burning coal - and that's without even considering the effect on the climate. Let's not fall foul of the nirvana fallacy.
RoutemasterFlash
*tiny, obviously
LitigiousWhelk
Absolutely. It just annoys me when people uphold nuclear energy as having no drawbacks. It does. Is it still the best source of energy? Arguably, in some ways. But pretending it's the solution to everything does us no good.
GenesisMachines
At last someone willing to speak the truth. That the two largest producer of uranium, Australia and Canada, are third world countries where mining engineers die in the streets.
RayneOfSalt
The sheer number of reactors we'd need in Australia, as well the need to build the entire training and supply infrastructures beforehand, make the very idea completely financially impossible. Also, nuclear power is still 10 times the wholesale price of renewable energy and almost no one can afford what it would be at retail.
pompoikpoik
It is not 10 times more expensive if properly planned. Europe is a good example : different countries with different choices. Electricity is not more expensive for countries who chose nuclear
RayneOfSalt
Like everything nuclear advocates say, that's simply not true dude. You nuclear addicts are doing nothing beneficial for anyone except the fossil fuel industry and coal miners, because all you're doing is holding back the installation of renewables. Your time is over and you've gotta get out of the way of actual progress.
pompoikpoik
please provide a link to the information i'm holding back, i would be interested.
Meanwhile, here is a link shared in another comment by someone opposing to nuclear : https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Electricity_prices_for_household_consumers,_second_half_2023_V_2.png
stronomer
No, nuclear power is not good. It inherently has a bomb material proliferation problem, it it extremely expensive compared to renewables, it makes for catastrophes if something breaks badly, and there is not a single storage online anywhere in the world for radioactive waste that has to be stored for 100,000 years. Solar and wind are there, you just have to grab the power.
Villosopher
Reduce the half-life of the remaining waste from 100,000 to ~100. The real issue is cost, mostly. Ignorance and fearmongering over nuclear power has caused the regulations over the mining, enriching, harnessing, and disposal to become so tight in the USA that most companies aren’t able to get it off the ground due to delays and costs before going under. Add in the relentless camaigning lobbying of big oil tycoons who rightly see nuclear energy as a threat to their comfy livelihood.
Villosopher
Nuclear power is good, don’t listen to these fearmongerers. For one, this proliferation problem isn’t a thing. Security in a nuclear powerplant is maximal , often authorizing deadly force to protect assets on site. Two, every major event came down to quality control issues, which regulations in every country using nuclear power have already addressed. Nuclear waste is a problem still being figured out, but the most promising option is recycling the waste to get more energy out of it, and 1/
pompoikpoik
Sure... Do you have an efficient storage for all the CO2 coming out gas and coal plants ? Some people are pushing the idea it may have an climate impact
Villosopher
It’s not that it’s not cost-efficient or that it’s dangerous. Every big issue is known and is actively being worked on. It’s just suppressed by the fearful in power.
stronomer
But the nuclear fanbois are out in droves and they know everything so much better and there are no problems ever.
MahadmaGaudi
Not to mention the risk of getting damaged during war
pompoikpoik
Not to mention war is unhealthy.... ( ~4million dead in Vietnam, none related to nuclear )
MahadmaGaudi
Can remember when we were not allowed to play football on grass because of Tschernobyl….. because unhealthy, you know. Now Russia is bombing Ukraine….just saying
pompoikpoik
WHO estimates 4000 deaths due to Tschernobyl
current death toll in Ukraine is >30.000
just saying
mormacil
Nope this is outdated, modern reactors don't produce bomb material anymore, they can run off waste. They're not more useful for bombs than say a fertilizer producer. And no they can't explode anymore either. This isn't the 1970's. Also both solar and wind have a huge pollution problem as they last significantly shorter than nuclear power plants and require unrecyclable materials on a large scale. They're good but not better.
SuperPickle17
Reactors of old were literally designed as weapons breeders. They didn't have to be, but it was the driving force to get funding. By the 80's, nuke weapons were no longer seen as viable and after Chernobyl, public opinion shifted and nuke power wasn't cool anymore.
somerandomusernamething
If we didn't have so much lobbying from fossil fuel companies, we'd be on solar and wind with nuclear as an active backup for lower production time for renewables. Anywhere from 5% to 50% nuclear would be a good state for us. Alas, propaganda works and Regan existed.
RoutemasterFlash
A nuclear baseload and renewables for the rest is probably the ideal solution, I agree. Until fusion becomes viable, if it ever does.
minipancho94
Thorium reactors my dude. Can't be used for making nuclear weapons, hence why the nuclear commissioner who wanted to mandate them got axed by Nixon (also because GE didn't want to have to replace their new reactors).
Mithi
Could you give me a list of running commercial thorium reactors?
minipancho94
honestly i'd be hard pressed to find a list of running commercial reactors in general. nuclear isnt particularly lucrative financially speaking. they're more of a strategic asset than anything. plenty of lab and test reactors have been made IIRC though.
stronomer
Oh no, not them again. The 70 year old concept that is _just_ around the corner and will change everything soon. Sorry, no.
minipancho94
its not just around the corner. multiple lab reactors have been made IIRC. part of the issue is that theres not really any thorium mining industry to supply them, and nuclear plants in general arent particularly lucrative from a capitalistic standpoint, so no financial incentive to start.
stronomer
Exactly. So why should one do these even if feasible? Solar and wind are much cheaper. Specifically in relation to a new technology that isn't proven and where there's no experience. I simply don't see the point.
Cheesynipnop
Nuclear power is on the more expensive side of energy production last time I checked. Can I get a citable source?
ThomasHarris111
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
PinkyTheUnicorn2
Nuclear is the most expensive on almost any metric.
GenesisMachines
France's nuclear powered electricity is the lowest peek cost and day ahead trading cost of anywhere in Europe. It's also the cleanest electricity grid based on CO2/kWh, which is the metric we should be worried about.
pompoikpoik
France electricity is among the cheapest in Europe, and it is based on nuclear energy
PinkyTheUnicorn2
Not really: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Electricity_prices_for_household_consumers,_second_half_2023_V_2.png
pompoikpoik
??
in your graph, all countries comparable to france have more expensive electricity than france. And some countries should be carefully compared because of their geography and hydro-capacity (norway, sweden, finland, ....
eponra
That's sadly not true. France stateowned nuclear is like 70billion in debt because of subsidies, last time i checked, and has risen the price for consumers like 100% last year. And will have to rise it more. Like half of their plants are in need of a major overhaul.
pompoikpoik
last time you checked, where did you check ?
most of EDF debt is due to electricity price regulations, not to "nuclear"