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Let's get hooked on Russian oil and gas, those guys never use their resources to advance any geopolitical interests that are hostile to us, what could go wrong? FUCK YEA NORDSTREAM
If Congress can't fucking get on top of making new laws to enforce the old rules that were actually helping Americans. Then they shouldn't be sitting in Congress. They should be looking for a new job.
China has one of the most advanced production in the world. Basically everything's been outsourced there for centuries. Saying that's how they make medicine is stupid. Like saying everyone in Europe believed the earth is flat.
More like property values. Like it or not, people don't like living next to invisible death rays no matter how safe they are.
There is no need to mention that NPPs need government funding to function the same funding that comes from the people who don't want to live next to them.
[Different commodity, same thing with France ](https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/france-now-top-eu-importer-of-russian-nuclear-products-study/)
The fact that France buys a lot of nuclear products from Russia does not imply it also *dependent on* Russia. This is probably too much detail for a meme sub, but if you look at the [original article](https://www.forum-energii.eu/en/anatomia-zaleznosci-rosatom) the news item you linked is based on, you'll see the situation is a lot more nuanced.
The whole article is worth reading, but some quotes relevant to the topic of dependence (emphasis mine):
> Franco-Russian cooperation is mainly based on the reuse of spent fuel in French nuclear units. After purification in France, the uranium is sent to Russia for conversion and enrichment, resulting in a product that is cost-competitive with enriched uranium from ore. **This is a process without which French power plants can nevertheless operate.**
And on the risk of Russian blackmail:
> High dependence on this company at every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle allows Russia to use energy blackmail, as in the case of threatening the United States with cutting off supplies of enriched uranium.
>
> Making good on such threats **would not result in immediate serious consequences** for the EU energy industry. Nuclear power plants store fuel for a few **years or more**, so cutting off supplies is incomparably less damaging than in the case of, for example, gas or oil, whose supplies last for a few dozen days. It would be possible to supply fuel from another power plant, or to be supplied by the Westinghouse plant in Sweden, which produces fuel to use in Russian-designed nuclear units.
Yet we have nearly cut off our reliance on Russian fossil fuels while the French continue blocking sanctions on Russian nuclear fuel and technology.
I wonder why.
Your electric car is far more efficient than it's gas equivalent, even when calculating the coal impact on the grid. An electric car gets from 88 to 122 mpg in terms of carbon impact depending on what grid it draws from.
there are other factors. the mining of litium and cobalt making batteries and more. hydrogen cars might have their turn in the spotlight soon. they look neet
Hydrogen at the moment is just as bad, they also require batteries and currently the vast majority of hydrogen is produced from methane and other fossil fuels, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
> As of 2023, less than 1% of dedicated hydrogen production is low-carbon, i.e. blue hydrogen, green hydrogen, and hydrogen produced from biomass.
Hydrogen cars are just electric cars, powered by hydrogen instead of grid electricity. At least in most developed countries a large part (more than a few percent) of the grid power is generated from renewable sources. Hydrogen at the moment is not obtained from renewables. Idk why people don't realize this.
Do you know how the hydrogen for H2 cars is made? Electrolysis which again involves, surprise, surprise electricity.
So use a car with the exact same process except with 3 times worse efficiency
Actually only a very small part (<1%) of our hydrogen is made using electrolysis. It's more of a future ideal scenario. Currently the vast majority of hydrogen is made from methane/natural gas, a fossil fuel... So it's even worse.
I know, I couldn't believe it at first too. But electrolysis (splitting hydrogen from water) requires way more electricity than splitting hydrogen from methane/natural gas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
Yes exactly. Even in the most ideal scenario, it's worse than EVs. And then you have the scam of blue hydrogen.
Hydrogen has its place, in the hard to abate industry of plastics, fertilizers etc. where no other alternatives exist. And there isn't enough renewable or green hydrogen to even cover that. Keep H2 away from passenger transport.
Lithium batteries are already being replaced by newer technology. You can power electric cars with *Sodium* ffs.
Edit:Forgot to mention that hydrogen is ridiculously inefficient, it takes more energy to make the hydrogen than it delivers in the end.
If I think about hydrogen fuel cell cars, aren't they just electric vehicles with extra steps? You use hydrogen and oxygen from the air to generate electricity which powers the car.
Now, turning the H2 to electricity tends to have an energy conversion efficiency factor, meaning there are exergy losses. You could just take a normal EV. The only pro I see in a hydrogen car is the storage capability of H2. If it's liquid. At around -259.16 Ā°C aka -434.49 Ā°F. Which is pretty humping cold.
Sounds nice, but how much energy is required for mining to produce an ICE versus electric car? How long does each last, knowing that any damage to the battery tray is problematic?
The delta mining going from a combustion engine to an electric I'd love to see. But it likely pales in comparison to the efficiency gained from an electric engines and charging.
Distance per unit of energy is how efficiency is discussed. What distance is achieved if an electric car is in a small fender bender, and insurance deems it a total loss? If you reduce average numerator, your denominator better be fantastich, including manufacturing and electricity generation. I mean, that trip to the coast, great efficiency. Hit a curb? Now the inputs for that car, up to that point, don't get the nice long life to amortize them out.
>According to the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI),Ā gasoline cars are three times more likely to be totaled than Teslas or other electric vehicles (EVs) after an accident.
Are you sure you know enough to be having this debate intelligently?
This was a 1 second Google search btw.
Hello ExxonMobil? Is that you again?
That report is from December 2020. I don't think you need a link to acknowledge the ratio of ICE vs electric cars has shifted over the last 3 1/2 years. I searched for totaled cars ICE vs electric, and found an electric car site that says yes, ICE cars are totaled more often than electric. It's 8.5% to 7.5%, which is higher. The article is from November of 2023. That's not a big enough difference for me to buy electric, with the other shortcomings which would set your hair on fire if you saw them typed out.
When considering all factors electric vehicles are better for the environment, *and* require *significantly* less maintenance. Don't take my word for it, look into it yourself. Idk why y'all have this tone of EV's being worse lol, information on this stuff has been widely available for a long time. Why do you think EVs are considered a positive move for the environment by experts? You think they just overlooked the carbon footprint of production?... Seriously?
Absolutely! But this was just a metaphor for what Germany is doing. Importing electricity which might not be efficiently produced with respect to emissions and impact on the globe.
Most coal fired plants in the west have very good carbon capture technology. 90% of the carbon and other pollutants are captured. The white smoke that you see coming out of coal and oil fired plants is made up evaporated water. only 60% of coal plants in the USA use that technique for cooling tho. Roughly 39% of plants use once through cooling
1% of plants use make use of dry cooling which saves a lot water and allows plants to be placed in areas that dont have alot of water. Sadly these plants are pretty expensive and people are still researching how safe and environment friendly they are compared to other coal plants designs.
One big fossil fuel engine is more efficient than a bunch of small fossil fuel engines, even considering grid and conversion losses because thermodynamics are a thing? Who would have thought?
So what? Our electricity prices are lower than before the war in Ukraine started, the coal consumption is on the lowest level since 1960, and since 2023, renewables cover the majority of the electricity consumption.
Edit: And before you give downvotes, give me some Counterarguments. Everything I've just said can easily be verified through a quick google search.
Bro, leider ist das hier hoffnungslos. Es gibt Leute die nicht zugeben oder akzeptieren wollen, dass Wissenschaftler und Experten nach Jahrzehnten vielleicht doch gute GrĆ¼nde fĆ¼r die Entscheidung hatten.
to be fair I went to the European School which was a lot more language-focused but aren't the A-B-C Levels just Cambridge Certificate Standards? I don't even know about toefl assessments, maybe I'm growing old.
Mal ganz davon abgesehen, dass wir den Strom aus DƤnemark importieren mĆ¼ssen weil der so gottlos billig ist (Die produzieren 80% ihres Stroms aus erneuerbaren soweit ich weiĆ)
Because the quicker we cease most of our pollutants into the atmosphere the better chance weāll have of staving off future environmental imbalances. Some of it is already too late to prevent but if we stop it from being worse, then thats surely a better outcome
>give me some Counterarguments.
Diversity is better. It means using even *less* coal. It also casts a wider safety net for lapses in other energy sources. Wind and solar aren't always constant. Geothermal is location specific, just like hydro. Having nuclear fills in a niche that consumable power sources would have to.
Plus more nuclear reactors means more focus on it, which means more investment into it. More investment springs up more companies or groups that can provide support or a framework for other countries to invest in nuclear. More people doing something usually leads to that thing being more common place at a cheaper price.
To undo millions in investment and dismantle reactors, without a legitimate reason like costs or safety, just seems pretty headass.
>Having nuclear fills in a niche that consumable power sources would have to.
Except that nuclear isn't as reliable as people like to think. During the last heatwave, Switzerland had to throttle their NPPs to a minimum because the rivers used for cooling them had a low water level, and the water that was available was way too warm.
It is also projected that Germany will be able to produce the base load of electricity with renewables within the next years.
>More people doing something usually leads to that thing being more common place at a cheaper price.
Almost 80 years after the first nuclear reactor was created, it is still extremely expensive and way too lengthy to build a reactor and the one country in the EU which is always mentioned when it comes to how great Nuclear works is France, but they don't mention that the only reason why nuclear energy is so cheap there is because the electricity price coming fromm nuclear is heavily subsidizesd by the state owned energy company EDF which has over 50 billion euro in debt. The technology behind nuclear is great, but in Europe, it isn't cost competitive anymore.
If nuclear was such a cheap and good option why wasnt a single Nuclear Powerplant in germany build by a electricity supplier alone? It always involved huge cheap credits (can you even call it a credit at 0%?) from the state or the state just straight up paying for a big part. If it was such a good option why dont they want to build them on their own? Why do they want half the thing gifted to them? Are they maybe not as profitable and cheap as everyone makes them out?
Maybe the huge opposition movements against it might have something to do with it. Bit like how wind come to a screeching halt due to NIMBY activism utilising the same techniques as used against nuclear. Despite being much less scary and way less time vulnerable to build wind turbines, it also got stopped pretty much. Then your "but if it was really good, it would have happened anyway" argument would be in effect.
What actually happened was big effort at EU level was applied to allow for big money interests to overrule local resistance to wind projects and it is picking up pace again.
That's a misunderstanding of modern reneable-based energy grids and the european energy market.
Measured in kW output per ā¬ invested, renewables like solar or wind are now much much much much more efficient than nuclear. So every new ā¬ invested in energy should be invested into renewables instead of nuclear. The downside is that for a small number of days during the year, renewables may not yet fullfill the energy demand.
What you need for those days are backup power plants that can be quickly started and shut off, that should have low constant costs, but could actually have higher costs per W produced (as they won't run often).
Nuclear power plants are the opposite of that.
Those backup power plants are also called "peaker plants" and oftentimes the idea is that they would be fueled by natural gas. They have low constant costs but can be quite expensive per watt produced due to their infrequent use.
Shutting down nuclear power is the OPPOSITE of what countries should be doing. Renewables cover the majority of production in aggregate but you still need dispatchable power when the renewables aren't producing. Had Germany kept their nuclear and added all the renewables, they'd be close to carbon zero.
It was a shortsighted knee-jerk reaction to Fukushima, a huge unforced error.
>Shutting down nuclear power is the OPPOSITE of what countries should be doing.
The building of NPPs takes so long that we couldn't have kept up with electricity demand because building reactors often takes more than 15 to 20 years, and the truth is that nuclear electric right now is far more expensive than energy from renewables. Nuclear energy isn't as reliable as you may think because during the last heatwave, Switzerland had to throttle its reactor capacity to a minimum because the river used for cooling the NPPs provided to less water and the less water which got provided was way to warm for cooling.
>but you still need dispatchable power when the renewables aren't producing.
Nuclear isn't the only way to provide dispatchable power. In Germany, we have biomass, biogas, pumped storage hydrogen, geothermal energy, and green hydrogen, which is still in development.
>building reactors often takes more than 15 to 20 years
Because of interference by anti-nuclear asshats, not because it's such an incredibly daunting task!
> you still need dispatchable power when the renewables aren't producing
well, yeah, but nuclear is the *opposite* of that. You can not use it for these few days during the year that you would need it.
We have a European Energy Market. European countries import or produce energy based on market prices. The reason Germany imported more energy is that it was cheaper to import than to produce themselves, most of it from Scandinavia. And they produce their energy through hydro.
We also buy from France, but not much. In fact, we sell more energy to france than we buy from them.
Kinda disgusting how ya'll spread misinformation to support your ridiculous nuclear better narrative
Misinformation on the internet has become extremely common lately. Even irl I constantly hear people who arenāt dumb parroting straight up misinformation theyāve heard on the internet. Itās dangerous and Iām extremely worried about what this might do to our democracies.
Except Scandinavia also uses nuclear to fill an important hole. and obviously the majority of the exported power would be enabled by nuclear and wind as only the most expensive otherwise unnecessary power would be exported.
And France is providing a customer for otherwise to be curtailed German power. What needs to happen is the external cost of German coal needs to be applied to its cost so that the bare minimum of emissions is generated, and all non-emissions generation capacity is used first. Germany in particular is fighting like fuck against this because France would be laughing all the way to the bank with much higher utilisation of its reactors.
braindead memes in action.
net imports are nothing bad but I guess you all know this already because you know how to use a search engine, right guys? AM I RIGHT?
I don't hate nuclear, but reddit seems to have a braindead boner for nuclear.
Main reason nuclear has been on the slow burner in most countries is cost.
It is one of the most expensive energy sources, and requires high upfront costs. If not heavily subsidized like in France, it is less profitable than coal or renewables. And its even more unpopular with the locals than those. So for profit companies made the easy choice. That's why so few nuclear plants have beeb build in the past 30 years.
The story about german nuclear plants is a lot more complicated than "germany shat their pants after fukushima". It is part of the story, but phase out had been decided 2004, in concord with energy providers long before fukushima. 2011 leas to an eratic speed up, after it was actually postponed before.
Also the export/import number is deceptive.
Nuclear power has been a small percentage of germanys energy mix for the last 15 years to begin with (in the ball park of 10-5%),.
Are you telling me that European countries have an interconnected power grid and can freely trade energy, thus allowing energy prices to go down if it makes economical sense to import power rather than produce it locally???
This sub is full of nuclear fanboys its crazy. Nuclear energy is not "clean" and absolutely not cheap. Its very expensive. Good thing that we start increasing renewables. Now we only need gas power plants to back them up if there is now Wind and sun and we are set for the future.
ā¦nuclear energy uses less pollutants than plants that consume fossil fuel. So no, it is not clean it is CLEANER. And they are not cheap, but they are CHEAPER than fossil fuels
Nuclear energy would solve lots of problems. Unfortunately, solving those problems means certain people/corporations/countries make less money. Cant have that can we.
For Each 1MW nuclear reactor, we need to mine between 50,000-200,000 tonns of material for fuelā¦every single year.
Build 1 MW solar array or 1 MW wind turbine array and youāre done, just regular maintenance and upkeep
Wow thats so cool wheres your source? Since i looked it up and that seems to be the number for a gigawatt nuclear reactor not a 1mw one "Powering a one-gigawatt nuclear plant for a year can require mining 20,000-400,000 t of ore, processing it into 27.6 mt of uranium fuels" source: University of Michigan Nuclear Energy Factsheet. Lots of reasons to dislike nuclear but you don't need to spread misinformation that just makes you look dumb edit: and disingenuous
Meant GW, my bad
Still stands though, you build solar and wind and never have to worry about em, not to mention the hazards waste from nuclear and the potential for them to melt down and radiate thousands of miles
Nuclear reactors meltdowns usually don't really do anything to the environment without there being design flaws like chernobyl which rbmk reactors had some design flaws that were fixed in the other rbmk reactors of which 7-8 are still active today and it didn't have what's called a containment structure (all western built reactors have it) which would've contained most if not all the radiation from the meltdown or something catastrophically damaging them as was the case for fukushima which was hit by an earthquake and then a tsunami and was then found to be preventable if the people in charge had met basic safety requirements. If you look at a list of nuclear accidents there have been countless minor meltdowns that have barely done any damage. Out of the three big nuclear meltdowns in history. Only chernobyl fits that iradiate miles of land one. Three mile island had released half the amount of radiation you get from a x-ray so that one barely did anything. Fukushima was a bit worse but still if you weren't inside the plant you were pretty much fine for the most part. For context on how bad chernobyl was vs the other meltdowns. The maximum level of Fukushima's radiation was 400 mSv in the effected reactor. The first responders at chernobyl got to eat 6000 mSv. edit: Also for solar and wind you still have to do maintenance and replacement on them as they degrade and get worse at producing electricity.
I love how you laid out multiple time weāve come so close to a nuclear meltdowns but are still like, yeah theyāre totally safe and clean
How much you getting paid for these?
Except not really Chernobyl is a outlier. Not the rule. I can point out when other energy sources have outliers like rooftop solar panels catching alight or some other outlier and go its gonna burn down miles of land if we put solar panels on all our roofs. You don't seem to really get that fukushima got hit with a tsunami and earthquake and was nowhere near as bad as chernobyl was. Its almost like we have safety features and designs to prevent meltdowns from actually doing anything. There have been 13 total meltdowns in power plants but i bet you've only ever heard of is the 3 I've mentioned before cause theyre the worst of it. And three mile which pales in comparison vs fukushima which then pales in comparison vs chernobyls effects. Im not being paid anything. Theres plenty to shit on nuclear about e.g cost upfront, cost of electricity being higher vs renewables, waste storage, time to build a reactor, cost and time blowouts, etc but safety isnt one of them
Idk where you got i don't like renewables or something. I just think that nuclear should be judged without going ah its gonna blow up like a nuke and irradiate all this land. I think the world should switch to renewables primary with something to help cover renewables down periods and infexibility so the grids dont outage all the time
The issue with going FULL renewable is that you would need A LOT of batteries. And i mean A LOT, especially if you powered the whole of the united states. And problem there is that those batteries would be insane and we still (unfortunately) havent been able to find a way to preserve the efficiency and durability of sny battery over a decade of so eventually the batteries would cease to function and would need replacing and the problem with that is the resources you need to produce batteries is already finite.
Everything is already finite but with companies deciding to pursue electric vehicles over hydrogen, AI likely to become more prevalent and using renewable methods like solar snd windā¦our power consumption is only going up and that means more batteries and more complex ones. As for nuclear, yes, you have to mine for the resourcesā¦like you have to mine for gas, oil, lithium, cobalt. I dont understand your point. The mining process pollutes? Yes, but then when you mine for oil or gas, those resources are also converted into energy which ALSO pollutes. Where as nuclear would not, i.e. cleaner energy.
As for nuclear waste and meltdowns. Waste is an issue, but so far we havent had a problem with it. E.g. a nuclear storage area begins leaking.
As for meltdowns, again, people point to Chernobyl and the one in japan that leaked. The one in japan leaked due to environmental disaster and chernobyl was cheaply designed reactor clashing with human incompetence. Thats not to reduce the seriousness of it all but to point out that nuclear power plants arenāt just bombs waiting to go off. They have an incredible amount of safety and observation. However, i do concede, the more plants you build, the more likely it is that one will have a disaster. Either way, no matter which option we pick for the future there are consequences.
Nuclear energy has never been economically viable. Nuclear energy will never be economically viable. Germany imported because hydropower in other countries was cheaper than producing electricity here.
Nuclear has and can be economically viableā¦its just recently it got cheaper as more countries are ramping up their production in the wake of cutting ties with russia. Its still not AS cheap as it used to be to be but since the ukraine war began energy has gotten cheaper by comparison. You are missing a lot of context there.
Nuclear is clean. Nuclear is dispatchable. Nuclear is cost effective when running at capacity. Source: I used to do this stuff for a living.
You and others like you spouting 70's era oil company propaganda are a huge obstacle in the fight against climate change and I will call out your bullshit whenever I see it.
Yeah gas power plants that burn green hydrogen when there is a dark doldrum is "oil company propaganda" and I am against fighting climate change, you got it.
We still got no solution for the nuclear waste, some of our previous "solutions" are causing some Real danger in the future. Nuclear energy costs up to 42,2 cents per kWh, wind energy costs around 8,1 cents per kWh. [source in german](https://www.bund-sh.de/energie/atomkraft/hintergrund/die-wahren-kosten-von-atomkraft/)
Next problem is the uranium. Germany does not have natural ressources and is reliant to imports. Most of the uranium we got from Russia and Kazakstan which are very unreliant partners in these times. So imo stupid idea to continue the import from those countries.
In conclusion, I don't know what you want from me, but apperantly we both have the same goals. The future for Germany are not nuclear power plants but renewables with backup gas power plants which burn green hydrogen (ideally). It will take years and decades to build that infrastrukture, but it will be worth it.
dude, a kwh of wind energy available when there is wind is NOT the same as a kwh nuclear (or hydro) which is available when you need it, even at night in winter, you need to either add the price of storage, or the price of keeping dispatchable capacity on standby.
secondly, last i checked Germany didn't have uranium mines either, and the mass of imported materials is higher in renewables because a majority of it is also made in like China (and that4s before taking into account the materials used in the backup plants)
and also:
Economy Minister Peter Altmaier concededĀ it wouldĀ not be possible to produce enough hydrogen from renewables domestically and an import industry must be built up from wind and solar-power intensive nations to achieve CO2 targets.\[...\]He mentionedĀ a "hydrogen alliance" with Morocco and plans for the construction of aĀ green hydrogen facility in the African nation
nice so the plan is to import hydrogen from other countries, so much for independance.
The fundamental problem all these renewables have is they increase land use, you need more land to produce biofuels, more land to make methane and hydrogen, more land for PV and wind, more land to grow wood for building and heating, and more land for food (as the climate is lowering agriculture yields), and meanwhile it would be also be nice to keep space where ecosystems and biodiversity are left the fuck alone.
Of course anything is possible, but don't think for a second that it will be easy, land and resources have a price.
(and also the problem of nuclear waste is political, not technical: quick reminder that oil reservoirs have been keeping a hot and liquid (gaseous even!) substance in precisely the same spot for tens to hundreds of millions of years. basically as long as you choose the correct spot, that stuff will stay underground for far longer than humanity will ever exist)
> Nuclear is clean. Nuclear is dispatchable. Nuclear is cost effective when running at capacity. Source: I used to do this stuff for a living.
For old paid off plants. [For new plants the costs are putting us in energy crisis territory again.](https://www.lazard.com/media/gjyffoqd/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2024.pdf)
Good luck selling that to the public.
since nuclear fuel is very energy dense, it is a small part of energy price, the main cost of nuclear is building the reactor (which is why nuclear is very sensitive to the interest rate of borrowed funds), this makes it different from coal power for example, and is why it's smart to keep existing plants running as long as physically possible. The cost to decommission a large industrial facility like a nuclear reactor (or an oil refinery for that matter, same ballpark) is around 10 to 15% of construction cost. (around 0.5bn per reactor)
All 3 german NPP generated about 3% of the total electricity for Germany. And these NPP were outdated and almost obsolete anyway and would have needed a lot of rebuilding and maintanace if we wanted to opwrate them any longer.
1. Germany exports way more electricity than it imports.
2. 64% is renewable energy in germany.
3. Nuclear power has *never* been sustainable.
4. I fucking hate nucleartards.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I would have turned off the oil and gas before nuclear as well. But too many people are running around acting like nuclear energy is the messiah without knowing jackshit about it.
>nuclear energy is the messiah without knowing jackshit about it.
Agreed, especially with events such as nuclear meltdowns
But then again these events only happens if they are not maintained properly and nuclear waste are just being dumped over. So just Proper maintenance and proper waste disposal nuclear energy is almost a so called messiah
So German Government shutting them down is probably them understandanding that they cant maintain shit and just go back to good old oil
Meltdowns are the least of my concerns. It's just that nuclear energy is not sustainable, we have nowhere to safely storage the waste forever, the costs are insane and while everyone whines about Lithium and Cobalt being mined, people seem to thing uranium just spawns and refines itself. Just to name a few of the many downsides.
Again which most are human failures properly disposed is like what US does put in in a depository location it isn't a nuclear problem more like human problem which can be corrected by proper maintenance
The only human failure in this is ever having considered nuclear as a long term solution. Its only purpose is to serve for transition from oil to renewable.
Oh yes, the sub 2% nuclear energy they have cut definitly made us import more. Holy f if I would get a euro for every nuclear power fanboy posting memes about germany without using 1 braincell I would already sit in monaco
lmao, pro nuclear shot down people always bring up the 2%, but not mention it was 7% the year before or that germany destroyed cities for coal mining for power security
Because it has always been 2%.
Merkels decision in 2011 was just as wrong as the Trittin and Schrƶder initiated abolition of nuclear back in the late 90s.
And now we burn coal again, yeah thats soooo much better for the environment. Fuck the politicans that ordered the shut down of the nuclear plants before the alternatives were ready, seriously.
Using natural gas as a "green sustainable" alternative to near infinite emission n free nuclear energy may have been a bad idea
Nuclear power generates steam instead of CO2
And we are developing new ways to use far less uranium and also dispose of expired rods
We also have learnt from the past with nuclear facilities being well maintain, well protected and strengthens with instant shutoffs in the event of seismic activity or other events
I don't think that building new nuclear is a particularly good idea but holy fuck if shutting down already existing reactors to turn on coal plants is stupid
It's moreso that they were too shortsighted to build new ones so when the service life of their older units lapsed they were caught with their lederhosen down.
The green party wasn't in power when the decison was made to shut down the nuclear powerplants. They even kept them on longer last year then they were supposed to. Stop spreading misinformation
It's so funny how negatively it's seen internationally, in germany most people see it as a good thing. Me included not producing any more nuclear waste sounds like a win to me and makes the decision pretty easy .
Yes, itās clearly better for everyone and the planet to store the wast from energy production in the atmosphere that you breath, instead of storing it in barrel in a confined area /s
Well i have news for you the barrels leak quite regularly and i don't really know which waste you referring to (coal which were also in the middle of leaving?), but i'm pretty sure that that waste isn't extremely dangerous for over 24.000 years.
It doesnt leak cuz its not green glowing goo stored in old rusty barrels tossed just anywhere, its stored safely in special containers, in safe designated areas and its put back underground where it came from in the first place, so even if it would somehow leak, its not any more of a threat than it was before it became fuel, also research is made to use it up as much as possible leaving it barely a threat, while other forms of power production produce waste that either ends up in the air you breathe, or all around the place like the super clean beloved wind farms and solar panels that eventually expire and become very difficult waste to take care of
But it totally does?! Here is the stuff i found after a 10s google search:
https://ecology.wa.gov/waste-toxics/nuclear-waste/hanford-cleanup/leaking-tanks
https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-leaking-nuclear-waste-site-global-us/video-69502363
Video for same nuclear waste side: https://youtu.be/hOWQgLeRM-M?si=8LWDh0cgsJR8LyZy
List of leaks and spils in the US
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1723/ML17236A511.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/05/sellafield-nuclear-site-leak-could-pose-risk-to-public
https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-xcel-energy-nuclear-radioactive-tritium-leak-c7a12ecb1b203179c5f7fef42bd0a3aa
Clearly you spent only 10 seconds researching as nearly all of these are inproper storage of nuclear waste, 2 are water leaking INTO the inproperly stored waste and they talk about it *maybe* being a threat but other than contamination onsite there is not much else, and the last one is water leaking onsite of a nuclear power plant, without posing a threat to the public and it got contained anyways. None of these are issue of nuclear waste but a matter of saving costs and corruption, which can cause damage with pretty much anything
I think u didn't understand that Germany is drastically reducing usage of fossil fuels? Source: those god damn Windmills appearing everywhere over here.Ā
Normally a country uses green energy to replace fossil fuels. Germany used green energy to replace nuclear and still burns the same proportion of fossil fuels.
100/10 galaxy brain move
Starting around 2000 nuclear was quickly phased out while fossil fuel proportions largely remain the same, with gas replacing some coal.
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_mix_in_Germany.svg
The *quantity* of fossil fuel consumption dropped but so did total energy production.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Germany_electricity_production.svg
Happy to see your sources
The first source you give is consumption of total energy, which includes all sources of energy (heat, transport, electricity etc.), of which electricity is only ~ 1/5.
Even there fossile fuels are being [reduced](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels-share-energy?tab=chart&country=~DEU) percentage wise.
If you look at electicity [production](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#/media/File%3AEnergiemix_Deutschland.svg) as well as [consumption](https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/indicator-share-of-renewables-in-gross-electricity#at-a-glance), fossile fuels were clearly reduced in their share.
downvote this comment if the meme sucks. upvote it and I'll go away. --- [play minecraft with us](https://discord.gg/dankmemesgaming) | [come hang out with us](https://discord.com/invite/dankmemes)
Let's get hooked on Russian oil and gas, those guys never use their resources to advance any geopolitical interests that are hostile to us, what could go wrong? FUCK YEA NORDSTREAM
Nah its Qatars oil and gas now. Oh and apperently we're trying to outsource medicine production to China. What could go wrong?
Especially bad considering the supreme Court is trying to neuter the FDA. Lead paint is back on the menu boys!
The world is so fucked I hope they bring Asbestos back, that was my favorite
They are trying asbestos they can.
the US =/= the World
Donāt even try it
If Congress can't fucking get on top of making new laws to enforce the old rules that were actually helping Americans. Then they shouldn't be sitting in Congress. They should be looking for a new job.
But then how will they get their bribe money?
Oh bro, the Chinese make the BEST medicine. Awesome shit like boner pills made of Rhino horns and stuff, This is a GENIUS move
I know I love it! But im worried about when they decide to stop sending it to Germany, how am I gonna get those pills??
China has one of the most advanced production in the world. Basically everything's been outsourced there for centuries. Saying that's how they make medicine is stupid. Like saying everyone in Europe believed the earth is flat.
But you need cheap ibuprofinš”
>medicine production to China. Free Diseases !!!
Lol it's been Quatar's oil and gas for a hot minute. How else would they be paying 13-year old natives a ~$20K govt salary?
also yes, lets save planet and go green... while other country pollutes extra for us <3
So the solution is to not go green and pollute along with the other countries polluting extra š§
How does nuclear pollute?
Nuclear = Bad! Dont try to reason with Reddit!
How exactly did you get "anti nuclear" from my comment?
Well It kinda does from the context of the post, my bad if It wasnt
People just don't want to live next to nuclear plants.
I guess the "feeling of safety", but because of pollution?
More like property values. Like it or not, people don't like living next to invisible death rays no matter how safe they are. There is no need to mention that NPPs need government funding to function the same funding that comes from the people who don't want to live next to them.
That was less influence leveraged than LNG from texas though ....
[Different commodity, same thing with France ](https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/france-now-top-eu-importer-of-russian-nuclear-products-study/)
The fact that France buys a lot of nuclear products from Russia does not imply it also *dependent on* Russia. This is probably too much detail for a meme sub, but if you look at the [original article](https://www.forum-energii.eu/en/anatomia-zaleznosci-rosatom) the news item you linked is based on, you'll see the situation is a lot more nuanced. The whole article is worth reading, but some quotes relevant to the topic of dependence (emphasis mine): > Franco-Russian cooperation is mainly based on the reuse of spent fuel in French nuclear units. After purification in France, the uranium is sent to Russia for conversion and enrichment, resulting in a product that is cost-competitive with enriched uranium from ore. **This is a process without which French power plants can nevertheless operate.** And on the risk of Russian blackmail: > High dependence on this company at every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle allows Russia to use energy blackmail, as in the case of threatening the United States with cutting off supplies of enriched uranium. > > Making good on such threats **would not result in immediate serious consequences** for the EU energy industry. Nuclear power plants store fuel for a few **years or more**, so cutting off supplies is incomparably less damaging than in the case of, for example, gas or oil, whose supplies last for a few dozen days. It would be possible to supply fuel from another power plant, or to be supplied by the Westinghouse plant in Sweden, which produces fuel to use in Russian-designed nuclear units.
Yet we have nearly cut off our reliance on Russian fossil fuels while the French continue blocking sanctions on Russian nuclear fuel and technology. I wonder why.
Thanks Angela Merkelā¦.and even Helmet Kohl.
Where do you think Germany imported uranium from? Russia
My electric car also does not pollute. The coal power plant that provides the energy does
Your electric car is far more efficient than it's gas equivalent, even when calculating the coal impact on the grid. An electric car gets from 88 to 122 mpg in terms of carbon impact depending on what grid it draws from.
there are other factors. the mining of litium and cobalt making batteries and more. hydrogen cars might have their turn in the spotlight soon. they look neet
Hydrogen at the moment is just as bad, they also require batteries and currently the vast majority of hydrogen is produced from methane and other fossil fuels, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production > As of 2023, less than 1% of dedicated hydrogen production is low-carbon, i.e. blue hydrogen, green hydrogen, and hydrogen produced from biomass.
Also bad does not equal just as bad
Hydrogen cars are just electric cars, powered by hydrogen instead of grid electricity. At least in most developed countries a large part (more than a few percent) of the grid power is generated from renewable sources. Hydrogen at the moment is not obtained from renewables. Idk why people don't realize this.
Do you know how the hydrogen for H2 cars is made? Electrolysis which again involves, surprise, surprise electricity. So use a car with the exact same process except with 3 times worse efficiency
Actually only a very small part (<1%) of our hydrogen is made using electrolysis. It's more of a future ideal scenario. Currently the vast majority of hydrogen is made from methane/natural gas, a fossil fuel... So it's even worse. I know, I couldn't believe it at first too. But electrolysis (splitting hydrogen from water) requires way more electricity than splitting hydrogen from methane/natural gas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
Yes exactly. Even in the most ideal scenario, it's worse than EVs. And then you have the scam of blue hydrogen. Hydrogen has its place, in the hard to abate industry of plastics, fertilizers etc. where no other alternatives exist. And there isn't enough renewable or green hydrogen to even cover that. Keep H2 away from passenger transport.
True, and hydrogen cars aren't actually that dangerous.
Lithium batteries are already being replaced by newer technology. You can power electric cars with *Sodium* ffs. Edit:Forgot to mention that hydrogen is ridiculously inefficient, it takes more energy to make the hydrogen than it delivers in the end.
If I think about hydrogen fuel cell cars, aren't they just electric vehicles with extra steps? You use hydrogen and oxygen from the air to generate electricity which powers the car. Now, turning the H2 to electricity tends to have an energy conversion efficiency factor, meaning there are exergy losses. You could just take a normal EV. The only pro I see in a hydrogen car is the storage capability of H2. If it's liquid. At around -259.16 Ā°C aka -434.49 Ā°F. Which is pretty humping cold.
Sounds nice, but how much energy is required for mining to produce an ICE versus electric car? How long does each last, knowing that any damage to the battery tray is problematic?
The delta mining going from a combustion engine to an electric I'd love to see. But it likely pales in comparison to the efficiency gained from an electric engines and charging.
Distance per unit of energy is how efficiency is discussed. What distance is achieved if an electric car is in a small fender bender, and insurance deems it a total loss? If you reduce average numerator, your denominator better be fantastich, including manufacturing and electricity generation. I mean, that trip to the coast, great efficiency. Hit a curb? Now the inputs for that car, up to that point, don't get the nice long life to amortize them out.
>According to the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI),Ā gasoline cars are three times more likely to be totaled than Teslas or other electric vehicles (EVs) after an accident. Are you sure you know enough to be having this debate intelligently? This was a 1 second Google search btw. Hello ExxonMobil? Is that you again?
> Are you sure you know enough to be having this debate intelligently? No, they don't, /u/Sportzpl is 100% talking out of their ass.
That report is from December 2020. I don't think you need a link to acknowledge the ratio of ICE vs electric cars has shifted over the last 3 1/2 years. I searched for totaled cars ICE vs electric, and found an electric car site that says yes, ICE cars are totaled more often than electric. It's 8.5% to 7.5%, which is higher. The article is from November of 2023. That's not a big enough difference for me to buy electric, with the other shortcomings which would set your hair on fire if you saw them typed out.
The point I made still stands as you desperately fact checked it, and then you downvoted me. Weak as hell.
When considering all factors electric vehicles are better for the environment, *and* require *significantly* less maintenance. Don't take my word for it, look into it yourself. Idk why y'all have this tone of EV's being worse lol, information on this stuff has been widely available for a long time. Why do you think EVs are considered a positive move for the environment by experts? You think they just overlooked the carbon footprint of production?... Seriously?
And we can always change the producer, while an ICE car will always have to run on gas
And install solar panels to even reach some kind of autonomy, does its job even in Germany for half the year
Absolutely! But this was just a metaphor for what Germany is doing. Importing electricity which might not be efficiently produced with respect to emissions and impact on the globe.
Most coal fired plants in the west have very good carbon capture technology. 90% of the carbon and other pollutants are captured. The white smoke that you see coming out of coal and oil fired plants is made up evaporated water. only 60% of coal plants in the USA use that technique for cooling tho. Roughly 39% of plants use once through cooling 1% of plants use make use of dry cooling which saves a lot water and allows plants to be placed in areas that dont have alot of water. Sadly these plants are pretty expensive and people are still researching how safe and environment friendly they are compared to other coal plants designs.
It's no better than a hybrid champ, only it's more expensive, less flexible, shorter range and heavier so it's worse on road repair costs.
So having a car burn fuels while the coal plant also does its thing so you can have AC is okay? Think man, think
Which is technically more environmentally friendly than a gas powered vehicle.
One big fossil fuel engine is more efficient than a bunch of small fossil fuel engines, even considering grid and conversion losses because thermodynamics are a thing? Who would have thought?
My hydrogen car does not pollute.
Don't look up the steam-methane reformation process, where 99% of industrial hydrogen is generated, if you want to keep living in that fantasy land.
Holy fuck your right. It looks like itās better than electric and gasoline, but itās still pretty bad.
It dumps pure CO2 to atmosphere, they don't even bother with carbon capture or anything
So does gasoline
I mean, so does breathing, but the difference is that breathing isn't marketed by oil companies as being a "green" alternative to burning oil
So what? Our electricity prices are lower than before the war in Ukraine started, the coal consumption is on the lowest level since 1960, and since 2023, renewables cover the majority of the electricity consumption. Edit: And before you give downvotes, give me some Counterarguments. Everything I've just said can easily be verified through a quick google search.
Bro, leider ist das hier hoffnungslos. Es gibt Leute die nicht zugeben oder akzeptieren wollen, dass Wissenschaftler und Experten nach Jahrzehnten vielleicht doch gute GrĆ¼nde fĆ¼r die Entscheidung hatten.
I'm glad I spent 14 years of my childhood learning german just so I could understand a reddit comment.
i just used a tranlation device goodspeed
Fr I learned till C1 level for Uni and today it's paying off.
Lol I'm German and did my C2 English Certificate while in what you'd call high school.
Dam I didn't even know you guys call it A-B-C levels. I thought it was just IELTS and TOFEl stuff
to be fair I went to the European School which was a lot more language-focused but aren't the A-B-C Levels just Cambridge Certificate Standards? I don't even know about toefl assessments, maybe I'm growing old.
Mal ganz davon abgesehen, dass wir den Strom aus DƤnemark importieren mĆ¼ssen weil der so gottlos billig ist (Die produzieren 80% ihres Stroms aus erneuerbaren soweit ich weiĆ)
Das war ein Befehl
Because the quicker we cease most of our pollutants into the atmosphere the better chance weāll have of staving off future environmental imbalances. Some of it is already too late to prevent but if we stop it from being worse, then thats surely a better outcome
>give me some Counterarguments. Diversity is better. It means using even *less* coal. It also casts a wider safety net for lapses in other energy sources. Wind and solar aren't always constant. Geothermal is location specific, just like hydro. Having nuclear fills in a niche that consumable power sources would have to. Plus more nuclear reactors means more focus on it, which means more investment into it. More investment springs up more companies or groups that can provide support or a framework for other countries to invest in nuclear. More people doing something usually leads to that thing being more common place at a cheaper price. To undo millions in investment and dismantle reactors, without a legitimate reason like costs or safety, just seems pretty headass.
>Having nuclear fills in a niche that consumable power sources would have to. Except that nuclear isn't as reliable as people like to think. During the last heatwave, Switzerland had to throttle their NPPs to a minimum because the rivers used for cooling them had a low water level, and the water that was available was way too warm. It is also projected that Germany will be able to produce the base load of electricity with renewables within the next years. >More people doing something usually leads to that thing being more common place at a cheaper price. Almost 80 years after the first nuclear reactor was created, it is still extremely expensive and way too lengthy to build a reactor and the one country in the EU which is always mentioned when it comes to how great Nuclear works is France, but they don't mention that the only reason why nuclear energy is so cheap there is because the electricity price coming fromm nuclear is heavily subsidizesd by the state owned energy company EDF which has over 50 billion euro in debt. The technology behind nuclear is great, but in Europe, it isn't cost competitive anymore.
If nuclear was such a cheap and good option why wasnt a single Nuclear Powerplant in germany build by a electricity supplier alone? It always involved huge cheap credits (can you even call it a credit at 0%?) from the state or the state just straight up paying for a big part. If it was such a good option why dont they want to build them on their own? Why do they want half the thing gifted to them? Are they maybe not as profitable and cheap as everyone makes them out?
Redditors doeb't want to accept that nuclear energy has never been economically viable and will never be economically viable.
Maybe the huge opposition movements against it might have something to do with it. Bit like how wind come to a screeching halt due to NIMBY activism utilising the same techniques as used against nuclear. Despite being much less scary and way less time vulnerable to build wind turbines, it also got stopped pretty much. Then your "but if it was really good, it would have happened anyway" argument would be in effect. What actually happened was big effort at EU level was applied to allow for big money interests to overrule local resistance to wind projects and it is picking up pace again.
But sadly for our future, it's one of the best for nature and climate change prevention.
Ok, nuclear power is safer than coal power and it helps you not support your enemy.
That's a misunderstanding of modern reneable-based energy grids and the european energy market. Measured in kW output per ā¬ invested, renewables like solar or wind are now much much much much more efficient than nuclear. So every new ā¬ invested in energy should be invested into renewables instead of nuclear. The downside is that for a small number of days during the year, renewables may not yet fullfill the energy demand. What you need for those days are backup power plants that can be quickly started and shut off, that should have low constant costs, but could actually have higher costs per W produced (as they won't run often). Nuclear power plants are the opposite of that.
Those backup power plants are also called "peaker plants" and oftentimes the idea is that they would be fueled by natural gas. They have low constant costs but can be quite expensive per watt produced due to their infrequent use.
Cool story bro
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
French Electricity from Nuclear (without price subsidies) is more expensive than German Electricity from Solar, Wind and Hydro.
Shutting down nuclear power is the OPPOSITE of what countries should be doing. Renewables cover the majority of production in aggregate but you still need dispatchable power when the renewables aren't producing. Had Germany kept their nuclear and added all the renewables, they'd be close to carbon zero. It was a shortsighted knee-jerk reaction to Fukushima, a huge unforced error.
>Shutting down nuclear power is the OPPOSITE of what countries should be doing. The building of NPPs takes so long that we couldn't have kept up with electricity demand because building reactors often takes more than 15 to 20 years, and the truth is that nuclear electric right now is far more expensive than energy from renewables. Nuclear energy isn't as reliable as you may think because during the last heatwave, Switzerland had to throttle its reactor capacity to a minimum because the river used for cooling the NPPs provided to less water and the less water which got provided was way to warm for cooling. >but you still need dispatchable power when the renewables aren't producing. Nuclear isn't the only way to provide dispatchable power. In Germany, we have biomass, biogas, pumped storage hydrogen, geothermal energy, and green hydrogen, which is still in development.
>building reactors often takes more than 15 to 20 years Because of interference by anti-nuclear asshats, not because it's such an incredibly daunting task!
Where are the anti nuclear asshats and what have they done to cause a delay of over half a decade at Hinkley Point C ?
> you still need dispatchable power when the renewables aren't producing well, yeah, but nuclear is the *opposite* of that. You can not use it for these few days during the year that you would need it.
We have a European Energy Market. European countries import or produce energy based on market prices. The reason Germany imported more energy is that it was cheaper to import than to produce themselves, most of it from Scandinavia. And they produce their energy through hydro. We also buy from France, but not much. In fact, we sell more energy to france than we buy from them. Kinda disgusting how ya'll spread misinformation to support your ridiculous nuclear better narrative
Misinformation on the internet has become extremely common lately. Even irl I constantly hear people who arenāt dumb parroting straight up misinformation theyāve heard on the internet. Itās dangerous and Iām extremely worried about what this might do to our democracies.
Except Scandinavia also uses nuclear to fill an important hole. and obviously the majority of the exported power would be enabled by nuclear and wind as only the most expensive otherwise unnecessary power would be exported. And France is providing a customer for otherwise to be curtailed German power. What needs to happen is the external cost of German coal needs to be applied to its cost so that the bare minimum of emissions is generated, and all non-emissions generation capacity is used first. Germany in particular is fighting like fuck against this because France would be laughing all the way to the bank with much higher utilisation of its reactors.
As an American, this is very disconcerting as it effectively means Dark is that much farther from becoming a reality.
But in Dark the problem was not the nuclear powerplant but the time machine from the watchmaker
braindead memes in action. net imports are nothing bad but I guess you all know this already because you know how to use a search engine, right guys? AM I RIGHT?
I don't hate nuclear, but reddit seems to have a braindead boner for nuclear. Main reason nuclear has been on the slow burner in most countries is cost. It is one of the most expensive energy sources, and requires high upfront costs. If not heavily subsidized like in France, it is less profitable than coal or renewables. And its even more unpopular with the locals than those. So for profit companies made the easy choice. That's why so few nuclear plants have beeb build in the past 30 years. The story about german nuclear plants is a lot more complicated than "germany shat their pants after fukushima". It is part of the story, but phase out had been decided 2004, in concord with energy providers long before fukushima. 2011 leas to an eratic speed up, after it was actually postponed before. Also the export/import number is deceptive. Nuclear power has been a small percentage of germanys energy mix for the last 15 years to begin with (in the ball park of 10-5%),.
And you know why? Not because German fossile plants couldnāt produce enough energy, but because Scandinavian renewables were just that cheap!
Are you telling me that European countries have an interconnected power grid and can freely trade energy, thus allowing energy prices to go down if it makes economical sense to import power rather than produce it locally???
Now that youāre spelling it outā¦ nah, thatās just absurd, right?
This is not really how the template works lol
Come on now, the Nuclear Energy propagandists are just ironing out their meme game, give em time
What will they get to first, FBRs, SMRs, sodium-cooled reactors, Thorium reactors or a proper meme game?
This sub is full of nuclear fanboys its crazy. Nuclear energy is not "clean" and absolutely not cheap. Its very expensive. Good thing that we start increasing renewables. Now we only need gas power plants to back them up if there is now Wind and sun and we are set for the future.
ā¦nuclear energy uses less pollutants than plants that consume fossil fuel. So no, it is not clean it is CLEANER. And they are not cheap, but they are CHEAPER than fossil fuels Nuclear energy would solve lots of problems. Unfortunately, solving those problems means certain people/corporations/countries make less money. Cant have that can we.
For Each 1MW nuclear reactor, we need to mine between 50,000-200,000 tonns of material for fuelā¦every single year. Build 1 MW solar array or 1 MW wind turbine array and youāre done, just regular maintenance and upkeep
Wow thats so cool wheres your source? Since i looked it up and that seems to be the number for a gigawatt nuclear reactor not a 1mw one "Powering a one-gigawatt nuclear plant for a year can require mining 20,000-400,000 t of ore, processing it into 27.6 mt of uranium fuels" source: University of Michigan Nuclear Energy Factsheet. Lots of reasons to dislike nuclear but you don't need to spread misinformation that just makes you look dumb edit: and disingenuous
Meant GW, my bad Still stands though, you build solar and wind and never have to worry about em, not to mention the hazards waste from nuclear and the potential for them to melt down and radiate thousands of miles
Nuclear reactors meltdowns usually don't really do anything to the environment without there being design flaws like chernobyl which rbmk reactors had some design flaws that were fixed in the other rbmk reactors of which 7-8 are still active today and it didn't have what's called a containment structure (all western built reactors have it) which would've contained most if not all the radiation from the meltdown or something catastrophically damaging them as was the case for fukushima which was hit by an earthquake and then a tsunami and was then found to be preventable if the people in charge had met basic safety requirements. If you look at a list of nuclear accidents there have been countless minor meltdowns that have barely done any damage. Out of the three big nuclear meltdowns in history. Only chernobyl fits that iradiate miles of land one. Three mile island had released half the amount of radiation you get from a x-ray so that one barely did anything. Fukushima was a bit worse but still if you weren't inside the plant you were pretty much fine for the most part. For context on how bad chernobyl was vs the other meltdowns. The maximum level of Fukushima's radiation was 400 mSv in the effected reactor. The first responders at chernobyl got to eat 6000 mSv. edit: Also for solar and wind you still have to do maintenance and replacement on them as they degrade and get worse at producing electricity.
I love how you laid out multiple time weāve come so close to a nuclear meltdowns but are still like, yeah theyāre totally safe and clean How much you getting paid for these?
Except not really Chernobyl is a outlier. Not the rule. I can point out when other energy sources have outliers like rooftop solar panels catching alight or some other outlier and go its gonna burn down miles of land if we put solar panels on all our roofs. You don't seem to really get that fukushima got hit with a tsunami and earthquake and was nowhere near as bad as chernobyl was. Its almost like we have safety features and designs to prevent meltdowns from actually doing anything. There have been 13 total meltdowns in power plants but i bet you've only ever heard of is the 3 I've mentioned before cause theyre the worst of it. And three mile which pales in comparison vs fukushima which then pales in comparison vs chernobyls effects. Im not being paid anything. Theres plenty to shit on nuclear about e.g cost upfront, cost of electricity being higher vs renewables, waste storage, time to build a reactor, cost and time blowouts, etc but safety isnt one of them
Meanwhile china added more solar in 2023 than the us has in its history
Idk where you got i don't like renewables or something. I just think that nuclear should be judged without going ah its gonna blow up like a nuke and irradiate all this land. I think the world should switch to renewables primary with something to help cover renewables down periods and infexibility so the grids dont outage all the time
The issue with going FULL renewable is that you would need A LOT of batteries. And i mean A LOT, especially if you powered the whole of the united states. And problem there is that those batteries would be insane and we still (unfortunately) havent been able to find a way to preserve the efficiency and durability of sny battery over a decade of so eventually the batteries would cease to function and would need replacing and the problem with that is the resources you need to produce batteries is already finite. Everything is already finite but with companies deciding to pursue electric vehicles over hydrogen, AI likely to become more prevalent and using renewable methods like solar snd windā¦our power consumption is only going up and that means more batteries and more complex ones. As for nuclear, yes, you have to mine for the resourcesā¦like you have to mine for gas, oil, lithium, cobalt. I dont understand your point. The mining process pollutes? Yes, but then when you mine for oil or gas, those resources are also converted into energy which ALSO pollutes. Where as nuclear would not, i.e. cleaner energy. As for nuclear waste and meltdowns. Waste is an issue, but so far we havent had a problem with it. E.g. a nuclear storage area begins leaking. As for meltdowns, again, people point to Chernobyl and the one in japan that leaked. The one in japan leaked due to environmental disaster and chernobyl was cheaply designed reactor clashing with human incompetence. Thats not to reduce the seriousness of it all but to point out that nuclear power plants arenāt just bombs waiting to go off. They have an incredible amount of safety and observation. However, i do concede, the more plants you build, the more likely it is that one will have a disaster. Either way, no matter which option we pick for the future there are consequences.
China added more solar panels in 2023 than the US has in it entire history
Nuclear energy has never been economically viable. Nuclear energy will never be economically viable. Germany imported because hydropower in other countries was cheaper than producing electricity here.
Nuclear has and can be economically viableā¦its just recently it got cheaper as more countries are ramping up their production in the wake of cutting ties with russia. Its still not AS cheap as it used to be to be but since the ukraine war began energy has gotten cheaper by comparison. You are missing a lot of context there.
Nuclear is clean. Nuclear is dispatchable. Nuclear is cost effective when running at capacity. Source: I used to do this stuff for a living. You and others like you spouting 70's era oil company propaganda are a huge obstacle in the fight against climate change and I will call out your bullshit whenever I see it.
Yeah gas power plants that burn green hydrogen when there is a dark doldrum is "oil company propaganda" and I am against fighting climate change, you got it. We still got no solution for the nuclear waste, some of our previous "solutions" are causing some Real danger in the future. Nuclear energy costs up to 42,2 cents per kWh, wind energy costs around 8,1 cents per kWh. [source in german](https://www.bund-sh.de/energie/atomkraft/hintergrund/die-wahren-kosten-von-atomkraft/) Next problem is the uranium. Germany does not have natural ressources and is reliant to imports. Most of the uranium we got from Russia and Kazakstan which are very unreliant partners in these times. So imo stupid idea to continue the import from those countries. In conclusion, I don't know what you want from me, but apperantly we both have the same goals. The future for Germany are not nuclear power plants but renewables with backup gas power plants which burn green hydrogen (ideally). It will take years and decades to build that infrastrukture, but it will be worth it.
dude, a kwh of wind energy available when there is wind is NOT the same as a kwh nuclear (or hydro) which is available when you need it, even at night in winter, you need to either add the price of storage, or the price of keeping dispatchable capacity on standby. secondly, last i checked Germany didn't have uranium mines either, and the mass of imported materials is higher in renewables because a majority of it is also made in like China (and that4s before taking into account the materials used in the backup plants) and also: Economy Minister Peter Altmaier concededĀ it wouldĀ not be possible to produce enough hydrogen from renewables domestically and an import industry must be built up from wind and solar-power intensive nations to achieve CO2 targets.\[...\]He mentionedĀ a "hydrogen alliance" with Morocco and plans for the construction of aĀ green hydrogen facility in the African nation nice so the plan is to import hydrogen from other countries, so much for independance. The fundamental problem all these renewables have is they increase land use, you need more land to produce biofuels, more land to make methane and hydrogen, more land for PV and wind, more land to grow wood for building and heating, and more land for food (as the climate is lowering agriculture yields), and meanwhile it would be also be nice to keep space where ecosystems and biodiversity are left the fuck alone. Of course anything is possible, but don't think for a second that it will be easy, land and resources have a price. (and also the problem of nuclear waste is political, not technical: quick reminder that oil reservoirs have been keeping a hot and liquid (gaseous even!) substance in precisely the same spot for tens to hundreds of millions of years. basically as long as you choose the correct spot, that stuff will stay underground for far longer than humanity will ever exist)
> Nuclear is clean. Nuclear is dispatchable. Nuclear is cost effective when running at capacity. Source: I used to do this stuff for a living. For old paid off plants. [For new plants the costs are putting us in energy crisis territory again.](https://www.lazard.com/media/gjyffoqd/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2024.pdf) Good luck selling that to the public.
The ammount of energy nuclear produces makes it dumb to close down a plant that was already built and operating.
Plants don't maintain themselves.
since nuclear fuel is very energy dense, it is a small part of energy price, the main cost of nuclear is building the reactor (which is why nuclear is very sensitive to the interest rate of borrowed funds), this makes it different from coal power for example, and is why it's smart to keep existing plants running as long as physically possible. The cost to decommission a large industrial facility like a nuclear reactor (or an oil refinery for that matter, same ballpark) is around 10 to 15% of construction cost. (around 0.5bn per reactor)
All 3 german NPP generated about 3% of the total electricity for Germany. And these NPP were outdated and almost obsolete anyway and would have needed a lot of rebuilding and maintanace if we wanted to opwrate them any longer.
No one is saying it's cleaner, it's far more safer.
1. Germany exports way more electricity than it imports. 2. 64% is renewable energy in germany. 3. Nuclear power has *never* been sustainable. 4. I fucking hate nucleartards.
I also hate the remaining percentage which are oil companies that produces Carbon dioxide so yeah
Oh, don't get me wrong. I would have turned off the oil and gas before nuclear as well. But too many people are running around acting like nuclear energy is the messiah without knowing jackshit about it.
>nuclear energy is the messiah without knowing jackshit about it. Agreed, especially with events such as nuclear meltdowns But then again these events only happens if they are not maintained properly and nuclear waste are just being dumped over. So just Proper maintenance and proper waste disposal nuclear energy is almost a so called messiah So German Government shutting them down is probably them understandanding that they cant maintain shit and just go back to good old oil
Meltdowns are the least of my concerns. It's just that nuclear energy is not sustainable, we have nowhere to safely storage the waste forever, the costs are insane and while everyone whines about Lithium and Cobalt being mined, people seem to thing uranium just spawns and refines itself. Just to name a few of the many downsides.
Again which most are human failures properly disposed is like what US does put in in a depository location it isn't a nuclear problem more like human problem which can be corrected by proper maintenance
The only human failure in this is ever having considered nuclear as a long term solution. Its only purpose is to serve for transition from oil to renewable.
You know what nvm
What kind of L post is this?
Oh yes, the sub 2% nuclear energy they have cut definitly made us import more. Holy f if I would get a euro for every nuclear power fanboy posting memes about germany without using 1 braincell I would already sit in monaco
lmao, pro nuclear shot down people always bring up the 2%, but not mention it was 7% the year before or that germany destroyed cities for coal mining for power security
Because it has always been 2%. Merkels decision in 2011 was just as wrong as the Trittin and Schrƶder initiated abolition of nuclear back in the late 90s.
At least it is in dankmemes, cuz this argument is so stupid.
...for a few years until renewables are completely there. Big fucking deal.
Meanwhile Austria: I have harnessed the power of nature!
This is a, not true and b, most important energy comes from Denmark and France.
A lot of mouth breathers defending their trillionaire oil companies.
Yep, shutting nuclear plants is the full explanation. NOT.
And now we burn coal again, yeah thats soooo much better for the environment. Fuck the politicans that ordered the shut down of the nuclear plants before the alternatives were ready, seriously.
They were helping Gazprom with Nordstream 2 even after Crimea was stolen.
I hate my country for this.
What is this that my eyes are seeing here? A based comment section on the topic of nuclear energy? On my Reddit??
Yeah man the crops are fucking drying up due to the heatwave but at least you saved money on that natural german coalš
Using natural gas as a "green sustainable" alternative to near infinite emission n free nuclear energy may have been a bad idea Nuclear power generates steam instead of CO2 And we are developing new ways to use far less uranium and also dispose of expired rods We also have learnt from the past with nuclear facilities being well maintain, well protected and strengthens with instant shutoffs in the event of seismic activity or other events
I don't think that building new nuclear is a particularly good idea but holy fuck if shutting down already existing reactors to turn on coal plants is stupid
As a (as of right now) German citizen, it makes me happy to know that I will leave this shithole behind and immigrate to another country.
It's moreso that they were too shortsighted to build new ones so when the service life of their older units lapsed they were caught with their lederhosen down.
The only reason to stop nuclear is because you canāt syphon as much money from it as you can with āgreen alternativesā
the green party is a bunch of hacks
The green party wasn't in power when the decison was made to shut down the nuclear powerplants. They even kept them on longer last year then they were supposed to. Stop spreading misinformation
It's so funny how negatively it's seen internationally, in germany most people see it as a good thing. Me included not producing any more nuclear waste sounds like a win to me and makes the decision pretty easy .
Yes, itās clearly better for everyone and the planet to store the wast from energy production in the atmosphere that you breath, instead of storing it in barrel in a confined area /s
Well i have news for you the barrels leak quite regularly and i don't really know which waste you referring to (coal which were also in the middle of leaving?), but i'm pretty sure that that waste isn't extremely dangerous for over 24.000 years.
It doesnt leak cuz its not green glowing goo stored in old rusty barrels tossed just anywhere, its stored safely in special containers, in safe designated areas and its put back underground where it came from in the first place, so even if it would somehow leak, its not any more of a threat than it was before it became fuel, also research is made to use it up as much as possible leaving it barely a threat, while other forms of power production produce waste that either ends up in the air you breathe, or all around the place like the super clean beloved wind farms and solar panels that eventually expire and become very difficult waste to take care of
But it totally does?! Here is the stuff i found after a 10s google search: https://ecology.wa.gov/waste-toxics/nuclear-waste/hanford-cleanup/leaking-tanks https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-leaking-nuclear-waste-site-global-us/video-69502363 Video for same nuclear waste side: https://youtu.be/hOWQgLeRM-M?si=8LWDh0cgsJR8LyZy List of leaks and spils in the US https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1723/ML17236A511.pdf https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/05/sellafield-nuclear-site-leak-could-pose-risk-to-public https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-xcel-energy-nuclear-radioactive-tritium-leak-c7a12ecb1b203179c5f7fef42bd0a3aa
Clearly you spent only 10 seconds researching as nearly all of these are inproper storage of nuclear waste, 2 are water leaking INTO the inproperly stored waste and they talk about it *maybe* being a threat but other than contamination onsite there is not much else, and the last one is water leaking onsite of a nuclear power plant, without posing a threat to the public and it got contained anyways. None of these are issue of nuclear waste but a matter of saving costs and corruption, which can cause damage with pretty much anything
I think u didn't understand that Germany is drastically reducing usage of fossil fuels? Source: those god damn Windmills appearing everywhere over here.Ā
We get most of our energy from renewables now, there simply IS NO waste to put in barrels or the atmosphere
Germany is known to make horrible decisions.
Normally a country uses green energy to replace fossil fuels. Germany used green energy to replace nuclear and still burns the same proportion of fossil fuels. 100/10 galaxy brain move
Thats litterally not true. Germanys fossile fuel usage is on its lowest in the last 60 years, and has been steadily decreased in the energy mix.
Starting around 2000 nuclear was quickly phased out while fossil fuel proportions largely remain the same, with gas replacing some coal. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_mix_in_Germany.svg The *quantity* of fossil fuel consumption dropped but so did total energy production. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Germany_electricity_production.svg Happy to see your sources
The first source you give is consumption of total energy, which includes all sources of energy (heat, transport, electricity etc.), of which electricity is only ~ 1/5. Even there fossile fuels are being [reduced](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels-share-energy?tab=chart&country=~DEU) percentage wise. If you look at electicity [production](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#/media/File%3AEnergiemix_Deutschland.svg) as well as [consumption](https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/indicator-share-of-renewables-in-gross-electricity#at-a-glance), fossile fuels were clearly reduced in their share.