this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 141 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

The article is badly researched.

This “red-green” coalition banned new reactors, announced a shutdown of existing ones by 2022

The red-green coalition did not announce the 2022 date. They (Greens/SPD) announced a soft phase-out between 2015-2020 in conjunction with building renewables. This planned shift from nuclear to renewables was reverted by Merkel (CDU = conservatives) in 2010. They (CDU) changed their mind one year later in 2011 and announced the 2022 date; but without the emphasis on replacing it with renewables. This back and forth was also quite the expensive mistake by the CDU on multiple levels, because energy corporations were now entitled financial compensation for their old reactors.

[–] Taiatari 54 points 11 months ago (17 children)

I'd like to add, my view. I'm from Lower Saxony and in an area nearby they tried for years to establish a temporary storage for the high nuclear waste. I never trusted the notion that the temporary storage will be save, properly maintained and kept from leaking into the local water supply.

Add to that, that we have had very old reactors who were constantly extended rather than properly renewed. Further emphasising that they won't care proper for the waste products.

Then Fukushima happened, the movement for anti nuclear gained massive momentum. I assumed of course that the lack in energy will be compensated by building renewables and subsidising homeowners to build their own solar on their roofs. Why wouldn't we, we were already talking about increasing renewables to safe the climate.

The announcement came that atom is being phased out. Big hooray for everyone who had to live next to the old plants or in areas where end-storage 'solutions' were.

Aaaaaaaand they increased the god damn coal which is way worse and really no one wanted but the lobby for coal and fossile fuels.

Now lots of ppl. on the internet always advocate for nuclear, but never address the fears of the ppl. properly.

The thing is, having a high nuclear toxic waste storage in your local area is shite just as shite it is to have the damn ash piles from coal.

If nuclear really wants to make a proper comeback, in my opinion the first thing they need to solve is the waste. We have too much of it already and have solar, wind and water (tidal preferably over damns because those fuckers can break if not maintained proper) who do not create any nasty waste and by products.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (16 children)

The real problem is that there are no renewable solutions for base load, nuclear is the best we've got. Renewables are good, but they're spotty, you can't produce renewable power on demand or scale it on demand, and storing it is also a problem. Because of that you still need something to fill in the gaps for renewables. Now your options there are coal, oil, gas, or nuclear. That's it, that's your options. Pick one.

If we can successfully get cold fusion working we'll finally have a base power generation option that doesn't have (many) downsides, but until then nuclear power is the least bad option.

So yes, if you tell them "no nuclear", you're going to get more coal and gas plants, coal because it's cheap, and gas because it's marginally cleaner than coal.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Nuclear is also very expensive and takes a long time to build. Meanwhile the cost of solar reduced by almost 90% in the last decade.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Just so you know, the ash particles in soot from coal power plants, regularly spewn into the atmosphere and stored in open-air dumps represents a far more real radioactive danger than nuclear waste does.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Careful. You are waking all the people telling you that it isn't much waste that those power plants produce and its so easy to store it long term.

The same people that likely would oppose a storage like that in their own neighbourhood. I feel often people from outside Germany forget how densely populated it is, it is very hard to find area not somehow close to anyone.

And I would also never trust the promise that this storage next to my home is very definitely going to be so so safe an great.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (9 children)

I will happily sell the land under my house to let you store sealed vessels of nuclear material. There permanently. I can do that with 100% confidence because I understand the science involved in the matters. If it's buried deep enough in a proper container, there is no risk.

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 11 months ago (1 children)

IMO a lot of this had to do with Schroeder's and Merkel's connections with Russia and running the country's manufacturing base on cheap gas and oil.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (51 children)

As I suspected. Conservatism is the reason we can't have nice things. Again.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Because there was a massive coal lobby and Merkel was complete garbage. Next.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 11 months ago (5 children)

When I was a kid, Chernobyl happened. We weren't that far away and although I was very little I still remember the fear and uncertainty in my parent's faces. The following years were marked by research about what we can no longer eat, where our food comes from, etc

I also remember the fights about where to store nuclear waste.

I don't want to burn coal. I am pretty upset about what happened to our clean energy plans. But I will also never trust nuclear again. And I think, so do many in my generation.

[–] [email protected] 84 points 11 months ago (2 children)

which is funny because fossil fuels are everywhere poisoning the air and environment in general, not different from the nuclear radiation bogeyman

[–] [email protected] 53 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Especially when coal rejects a lot more radioactive materials in the air than nuclear power

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

There are still large areas in southern Germany where you’re not allowed to eat wild mushrooms and every boar that is hunted must be tested for radiation. That is because of the fallout from Chernobyl 38 years ago and 1400 km away.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

For sure, but there are places in Germany and everywhere in Europe where you shouldn't be eating or drinking anything that comes out of the ground because of coal emissions, and places you can't do anything in because of the gigantic coal mines. And that's still currently happening and will keep happening for the foreseeable future.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Which is mostly due to fear(mongering) and not real residue.

And see another comment about coal emissions which are happening right now.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Please do note the official warnings of the BFS (Federal Office for Radiation Protection). Contamination of forests with Caesium-137 is a health risk in many southern Bavarian forests. It's half-life period is 30 years. The disaster was in 1986. That means it's still roughly half of it there and the layered forest grounds preserve radiation well.

If you're a mushroom forager on vacation in southern Bavaria - just don't do it. Or at least inform yourself which types of mushrooms you shouldn't eat in particular for radiation reasons.

General information and warnings (2022):
https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/notfallschutz/notfall/tschornobyl/umweltfolgen.html#doc6055566bodyText3

Specifically regarding mushrooms (2019):
https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/BfS/DE/broschueren/ion/info-wildpilze.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=7

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Actually coal plants which are in use, spew thousands of times of nuclear material into the air what any nuclear plant ever has.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago (8 children)

The best thing to do when you fall off a horse, is climb straight back up on it. Rejecting almost limitless power because of an accident almost 40 years ago is foolish to me. Luckily research didn't completely stop and modern plants are a lot safer with a lot of medical applications for the waste.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

But the horse still has a broken leg (End-Storage) and noone really knows how to fix that at the moment. Maybe give the horse some drugs to make the leg stronger (Transmutate the materials from long to moderately-long half-lifes), but we still need to support it in the end.

The move to coal was absolutely stupid, the CDU (which is currently gaining some traction.. again), dialed back on renewables which should have replaced some of the capacities lost to nucelar.. and then decided a new coal plant was a great idea too.
Probably some corruption.. sorry "Lobbying"-work behind that.. its not like the Experts (which were paid pretty well) told them that was a bad idea..

Maybe some more modern nucelar plants might work.. but its unprofitable (probably always was, considering the hidden costs on the tax payers already), so needs to be heavily state-funded, same with storage (plus getting all the stuff out of the butchered storage Asse, putting it somewhere else)
I am open to it, but dont see it happening. And storage.. no hopeful thoughts about that either, i dont think the current politic structures are well suited to oversee something like that from what we have seen from other storage-locations that are or were in use.

I'd also love some more plans for big energy storage aswell as new subsidies for the energy grid and renewables. The famous german bureaucracy is obviously also not helping any of this.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

All of the nuclear waste produced by all of the nuclear power plants ever produced could fit on the area of about the size of a football pitch. Storing nuclear waste, isn’t the massive problem. People say it is. It could be easily disposed of by digging a very deep hole and sticking it in it.

It’s not ideal, sure, but it’s not exactly a huge problem either.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Sorry but this sounds like: A car crashed when I was young because the driver was drunk. I will never trust a car again.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (9 children)

God dam people are fucking stupid nuclear is safer then coal wind and solar and better for the planet https://youtu.be/lhHHbgIy9jU here is my source and if you want his ask him

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (7 children)

The problem is the waste. Germany has radioactive waste and it couldn't find a suitable place to deposit it for over 30 years. I think it's still somewhere on rails or in temporary storages. It's horrible and they don't want to collect more of it.

Here is more about the problem that no one talks about: https://youtu.be/uU3kLBo_ruo

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Nuclear waste is a potential issue. Fossil fuel waste is a major issue right now.

The fact that the waste for nuclear is entirely contained is very good. It allows us to place it in permanent storage location like the one in Finland from your video, and perhaps even launch it off the planet in one or two centuries. There is no containing co2, only reducing.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Putting highly radioactive waste on a rocket is a bad, bad idea.

And guess what: solar and wind have neither CO2 nor nuclear waste as a product, and are cheaper to build and operate as well. Nuclear is comically expensive, and only gets by with massive state subsidies

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Yeah, it's safer than coal, on the same level as solar and wind. But it's fucking expensive to achieve that equality! You can build 5 times the solar or wind capacity for the same price!

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Surprisingly the title is not: Germany ditched coal and did went back to it.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The author is wrong. It is only a matter of time before Germany goes back to nuclear. Physics won't change regardless of short-term opinion.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (7 children)

You sure gobbled up that Putin propaganda pre-war. But now it’s 2023 and Germany still stands. How much time will have to pass until you people realize the extend of Germany‘s energy dependency was vastly overestimated? France with their nuclear grid is now importing more energy from Germany than the other way around. And if you think that‘s only temporarily you should take a closer look.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I’m not going to pretend I know what Germans are thinking but I thought the author made a strong case about why they’d dislike nuclear. Doesn’t matter how great it is when it’s unpopular.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I'm from Germany and I'm pretty sure we won't go back. I do think that the decision was populistic and blindly actionistic in the light of Fukushima (like almost all political decisions in the last decades) and we'll reap the rewards of that in the coming years.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Predictions that the nuclear exit would leave Germany forced to use more coal and facing rising prices and supply problems, meanwhile, have not transpired. In March 2023—the month before the phaseout—the distribution of German electricity generation was 53 percent renewable, 25 percent coal, 17 percent gas, and 5 percent nuclear. In March 2024, it was 60 percent renewable, 24 percent coal, and 16 percent gas.

Overall, the past year has seen record renewable power production nationwide, a 60-year low in coal use, sizeable emissions cuts, and decreasing energy prices.

This is my biggest take away from this article.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yeah but if Germany hadn't been so anti-nuclear, by 2023 it could have been (for example) 53% renewable, 5% coal, 17% gas and 25% nuclear. Comparing the dying tail end of nuclear to just after it finally died is not useful.

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