Germany To End Nuclear Power By 2022 822
dcollins writes "Germany on Monday announced plans to become the first major industrialized power to shut down all its nuclear plants in the wake of the disaster in Japan, with a phase-out due to be wrapped up by 2022... Germany has 17 nuclear reactors on its territory, eight of which are currently off the electricity grid... Already Friday, the environment ministers from all 16 German regional states had called for the temporary order on the seven plants to be made permanent... Monday's decision is effectively a return to the timetable set by the previous Social Democrat-Green coalition government a decade ago. And it is a humbling U-turn for Merkel, who at the end of 2010 decided to extend the lifetime of Germany's 17 reactors by an average of 12 years, which would have kept them open until the mid-2030s."
By coincidence... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:By coincidence... (Score:5, Informative)
Currently france is not exporting relevant amounts of power to germany. In fact before the 7 reactors got shut down a few weeks ago, germany had an overcapacity of 40% and exported power to european countries.
Ofc due to grid load, maintanance of power plants or economic considerations there is also power imported all the time from everywhere in europe.
That is just how the grid works.
You know, a steel plant is unexpectingly shutting down. The power plant which is planned in to feed it has now a large surplus. Running it on 50% of its capacity is not economical. So you shut it down to standby and buy the power from France or Slovakia.
Also power export and import is in a large scale directly to end customers. It is not that "germany" is buying power in France. It is that the Steel Company XYZ in Duisburg is doing so. Or that the cooling houses of Food Company ABC in Munich is buying power from Norway.
angel'o'sphere
It's CO2, not gigawatts (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The plan is to replace all nuclear plants with renewables, not with fossil plants. However a few fossil plants that where planned to be decommissioned will likely get an extewnded runtime.
angel'o'sphere
Re:By coincidence... (Score:5, Informative)
I just want to add that even with 13 of its nuclear 17 reactors shut down last week-end because of repairs and other reasons, the agency responsible for the electricity network announced that Germany was not importing electricity from abroad. So the GP is full of shit.
Oh, and here's a source for your overcapacity claim, in case somebody asks: http://rwecom.online-report.eu/factbook/en/marketdata/electricity/grid/germanyimportandexportofelectricity.html [online-report.eu]
Re: (Score:3)
Only german links I think :D
Right now with the decommissioned 7 (or 8?) nuclear plants we have an overcapacity of 21%.
angel'o'sphere
Re: (Score:3)
More like 35% in 3007, but essentially correct. Data from RWE: http://rwecom.online-report.eu/factbook/en/marketdata/electricity/grid/germanyimportandexportofelectricity.html [online-report.eu]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
But seriously, it is very disappointing to see the Germans make a rash decision from a scared gut-feeling instead of sticking to science and intelligent logic... The last time they did this it didn't work out so well for the rest of Europe, or them in the end for that mat
Re: (Score:3)
This "dumb shit" as you call it is the result of a nation-wide hysteria about nuclear energy that started in the early 80s. It has mostly been fueled mainly by environmentalists and the green party and it stuck. As a result, no new reactors have been built in Germany for decades and in addition to that, everyone is now afraid of the old ones standing everywhere. And a neat case of almost universal selective perception makes people listen to those expert naysayers who draw up the most horrible scenarios inst
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But seriously, it is very disappointing to see the Germans make a rash decision from a scared gut-feeling instead of sticking to science and intelligent logic...
Yes, they should listen only to the serious and careful reports of the nuclear industry, like Japan did.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
It was no "rash decision". Since Tschernobyl, the German poeple were opposed to nuclear power, just the lobbyists had bigger wallets. And it is a logical decision. No power is more expensive to produce than nuclear power. It's just that a lot of the expenses are payed by the tax payer. If the nuclear power lobby had to pay that all themselves, the pr
Re:By coincidence... (Score:4, Insightful)
Also to imply that nuclear power plants will eventually need to blow up suggests you've bought into the whole propaganda of fear and have no idea of the current state of technology. It's like claiming you will never fly a plane because you've seen a documentary about the crash of the Gavilland Comet... Or you won't drive a car because you heard the decades old story of cars that explode after a minor accident. These kind of sentiments are not constructive, when all people act like that no new planes or cars would even have been developed and the technology would have gone down in history as a dangerous failure... Currently people are doing the same with nuclear, condemning the technology because of flaws in 60 year old designs and decades old power plants. People are capable of learning from failure, and we have... but fear is holding back newer safer alternatives.
Had the green movement not opposed nuclear so virulently there would have been new power plants that replaced the older ones a long time ago (and especially no new coal plants being built all the time). The way I see it the green movement is damaging nature with the best intentions.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:By coincidence... (Score:4, Funny)
The Netherlands will do the same, next to the German border...
With the dominant West-wind in western europe, nuclear fallout will most probably head in the direction of Germany.
So they're fucked anyway...
Hah, we'll simply build our windpower turbines on the other side of the border, and throw them in reverse when something happens.
Re:By coincidence... (Score:5, Funny)
But with all the nuclear plants down, what's gonna power the wind turbines?
Re: (Score:2)
For the smaller EU countries it would probably represent a net savings to import from France rather than refurbishing their small nuclear industry and having to deal with waste management and regulation ... the wish to have a nuclear industry often has more to do with nationalism than economics, it's a hold over from decades ago.
France has comparative advantage.
Re:By coincidence... (Score:4, Interesting)
Another fun side effect is due to the carbon cap and trade scheme operated in the EU. If Germany wants to ramp up fossil fuel plants to solve the problem, they'll need to purchase carbon credits from "greener" nations (France with their nukes for one, and a lot of the smaller nations that have been going full tilt at renewables for two). And this from a country which is already (to paraphrase a BBC analyst who was on the news earlier today) close to "crippled" by "dangerously" high taxation levels.
On the bright side, it's good news for those smaller EU countries that have been lagging behind Germany in terms of growth. It'll be a bit like a sort of international redistribution of wealth! Fun times.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Na, this is a smart economic move for the Germans. The market for renewables is going to be huge, and whoever gets in early to develop the technology will take the lion's share. German companies have a history of developing new technologies and then selling them all over the world, and often much of the manufacturing is done in Germany too. In that sense they are somewhat similar to Japan, who are in fact their main rivals for high speed rail and industrial processes.
Japan and Germany both drive their econo
Re: (Score:3)
Re:By coincidence... (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. Germany is a net-exporter of electric power in Europe. Shuting down those nuclear plants still doesn't make us a net-importer. It's just that we don't export as much as before.
Re: (Score:3)
They had to. The govt parties lost significant amounts of votes because of their stance on nuclear power after Fukushima renewed the anti-nuclear sentiments in Germany (we had those before then but I guess people didn't see them as a primary voting reason). The conservatives lost several state level elections badly since then with most of their votes going to the green party which went from 5-10% to 20+% of the vote.
The conservatives and liberals are extremely pro-business, they really wanted to see a longe
In the immortal words of Frost... (Score:2)
"Well what the hell are we supposed to use? Harsh language?"
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely! Here's a fine (and famous) example:
"Achtung! Alle touristen und non-technischen lookenpeepers! Das machine is nicht fur fingerpoken und mittengrabben. Is easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzen sparken. Das machine is diggen by experten only. Is nicht fur gerwerken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen das cottenpicken hands in das pockets. Relaxen und watchen das blinkenlights."
Serious question; (Score:5, Insightful)
Where does the power come from then!?
The government must now determine how it can make up the difference with renewable energy sources, natural gas and coal-fired plants.
I mean, really? That'll end up being 90% coal at the very least. I love sentiment driven politics, It's crappy, but waaay more interesting.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ironically coal plants emit much more radiation than nuclear plants. [scientificamerican.com]
Re:Serious question; (Score:5, Interesting)
Will you stop regurgitating that ancient crap, please?
This is a quote of a 1978 study, commissioned by the nuclear lobby and performed by a nuclear laboratory, and it only states that a certain unfiltered coal plant may have insignificantly more "radioactive" particles within about a mile downwind from the chimney during times of normal operation. Your generation doesn't remember this, but at the time it was projected that the requirements for filters on the chimneys will bankrupt the coal power generation like, totally, and that we'll be running on nuclear within very short time.
Since then many things happened, one of them being stringent air quality laws all over the developed world.
Wonder why nobody has repeated this study to validate its outcome?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Does not change the fact that coal is a dirty fossil fuel, while modern nuclear is clean and safe. Key word in that sentence was modern for all you fake environmentalists, so i do not want to hear about Chernobyl or ancient Japanese nuclear plants built on fault lines. We should be switching ALL of out generation to nuclear with the exceptions of hydroelectricity (which for now i will include tidal or wave based energy) and geothermal where it is available. That will power our world for as long as it take
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, just like was claimed for the Chernobyl plant, and that old Westinghouse pressure cookers the Japanese have. "Safe. No problem. Never ever. Power too cheap to meter". Only thing: they weren't that safe. The pebble bed reactors, btw, were also supposed to be guaranteed safe, but they weren't. Nuclear has one hell of a credibility problem. Those claims of "passive safety" are just that: claims. And made by p
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps because I am not a propellerhead with a bad case of aspergers. Somehow, there is this misconception that if you build to spec and something goes wrong, it is not your fault. (Hint: the "you", in this case, was involved in rigging the spec in the first place).
Re: (Score:3)
You may be right about coal and radioactivity in the current age. But the impact of coal is not just what is pumped out the smoke stack.
Have you seen an open-pit coal mine? Of course, it's "not in your backyard"...
Re:Serious question; (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody needs to repeat that study, because like you said, it's not relevant.
But you know what is relevant? Instead of all that stuff going up in smoke, it now gets stored in giant piles of waste. Usually on site, but sometimes at an offsite disposal facility. Such fun things as; arsenic, beryllium, boron, cadmium, chromium, chromium VI, cobalt, lead, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, selenium, strontium, thallium, and vanadium, along with dioxins and PAH compounds.
Perfectly safe, until this [nytimes.com] happens that is.
Re:Serious question; (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all plants collect fly ash in the manner provided in your link.
Of course they don't. I never claimed they did. But then again, not all nuclear power plants are located next to oceans and hit by tsunamis.
That didn't stop the crazy people from linking that ONE incident, to every single plant. Demanding their closure, or in this case, the exit of an entire country from this means of producing electricity.
There is no 100% safe way to do anything, much less generate electricity on a massive scale. Natural disasters will happen, but is no reason to go back to the dark ages of technology.
I wish people who were so adamant of these things could all live on an island with no electricity. As is seems they are unable to comprehend that there are benefits and trade-offs for the risk. Do I want clean drinking water(powered by electricity)? Do I want to keep my food safe from spoiling?
In all honesty, it's a symptom of a larger problem that seems to be a rather widespread thought process. I like to call it the 'Broken Utopia' model, where everything would be just perfect(literally perfect) if we didn't get involved with our 'sciency' ideas. In this line of thinking, the goal is an unattainable state of perfection, and anything less is cause to throw out the entire field. Be it nuclear energy in this case, or the motives of the 'anti-vaccine' crowd.
The fact that this parallels so closely with the creation stories of many major religions, is no accident. And is just further proof to me that religion does far, FAR more harm than it does good.
Re: (Score:3)
You should read that again. There is quite clearly an intervening step.
Did your subconscious just gloss over it as if it was not there?
Re:Serious question; (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of the radiation emitted by coal fired plants, the pollutants are (at a minimum) responsible for killing thousands of people a year.
Nuclear power is clearly desirable from many standpoints, and there are absolutely no insurmountable problems (most definitely including nuclear waste disposal/reuse).
Fukushima was a worst-case scenario involving both forty year old technology and very poor planning. If only the backup generators had been in a tsunami-proof vessel, like at other plants, there would have been no meltdown. Modern reactor designs would also avoid any meltdown scenario.
Re:Serious question; (Score:4, Insightful)
Care to put some substance to that claim? What are you going to do with nuclear waste? Reprocessing produces more waste than what goes in.
There is a plant in Germany, same model than that in Fukushima, that lost power (from the outside) one especially cold winter, and almost melted down. That was in the seventies (google for Grundremmingen). The block in question has been shut down since then. No worst case, it was just a little bit too cold.
Yes, but they didn't have them. You see, real safety, not mickey-mouse make believe duck-and-cover safety is much too expensive to the folks in the executive class that get to become rich with this type of projects. So they prefer to allow for the occasional meltdown.
The main problems with nuclear is not necessarily technical, but political and social. We'd need a very different type of management technology to make nuclear succeed.
Re: (Score:3)
While that fact is interesting and unexpected,
How on Earth is this unexpected? People have been pointing this out since the '70's!
Re:Serious question; (Score:5, Insightful)
While everything is going right, nuclear power is quite safe.
While everything is going right, coal power still kills 24,000 people in the USA alone every year [coal-is-dirty.com]. And that's not even mentioning things like the 48 tons of mercury released into the air and water every year [ens-newswire.com] by perfectly functioning coal plants in which nothing has gone wrong.
Even Greenpeace only puts the death toll from Chernobyl at 200,000 from 1990 to 2004, less than two thirds of what American Coal accomplished over the same time, and they didn't even have an accident to blame. That's just business as usual.
So, yeah, go Coal. Let's put an end to those dangerous nuclear plants [typepad.com] and return to safe, clean power [nextbigfuture.com].
Re: (Score:3)
It should, perhaps, be pointed out that Greenpeace's 200K deaths are not ACTUAL deaths, they are still EXPECTED deaths. One of these days, we might reach 200K deaths as a result of Chernobyl.
Or not.
Re: (Score:2)
ORLY?
In 2010 nearly 17% (more than 100 TWH) of Germany's electricity supply (603 TWH) was produced from renewable energy sources.
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/03/new-record-for-german-renewable-energy-in-2010??cmpid=WNL-Wednesday-March30-2011 [renewableenergyworld.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Serious question; (Score:4, Informative)
Germany's coal is mostly brown coal, so it'll pollute a whole lot more than the bituminous or anthracite coal other parts of the world use.
Re: (Score:2)
Coal isn't dolphin friendly. Most of the mercury in the sea comes from coal power.
so just how many (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Don't know about the last 1000 years, but the german Wikipedia lists 8 with a magnitude >= 4,5 since 2002.
Here's to hoping (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree to a point ... but where will we put those panels? Even Spain's weather is a bit too variable. Northern Africa is relatively close by and ideal ... but the political stability is a problem. I've said it before ... we should really have let Morocco into the EU from the start. It would have made a transition to solar power so much easier :/
Wrong headline (Score:2)
The headline should read:
Germany To End Nuclear Power By 2022 yet again
Politicians are good at two things: making large strategic decisions that do not require anything now but much in not-so-near future and apologizing stuff that their predecessors have made. This decision will be repealed; nothing to see here, move along.
Complete and Total Over-reaction (Score:5, Insightful)
The circumstances that contributed to the failings at Fukushima are not similar to the situation surrounding nuclear plants in Switzerland or Germany. This is nonsense.
They want to improve their use of renewables, awesome. They should keep the nuke plants while boosting efforts on wind, solar, and hydro. Ramping up reliance on fossil-fueled energy while waiting for those other technologies to get to where we need them to be is foolish.
Re:Complete and Total Over-reaction (Score:5, Informative)
Germany also has an issue with their nuclear waste. They've discovered that their clever "metal barrels in a salt mine" scheme wasn't as water-tight as they thought.
It's not just the reactor that's a threat, there's also the toxic garbage.
Re:Complete and Total Over-reaction (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only Germany. To this day there doesn't exist a final (="until it's nonhazardous") nuclear waste storage in the world. The nuclear waste piles are stored "temporarily" everywhere (often at/near the power plants) until they come up with a method to store the toxic waste away safely for the next thousands of years. No one in his right mind would leave such a toxic time bomb for his children and grandchildern and grand-grandchildren and ...
Merkel, listen! I'm NOT scared of nuclear energy! (Score:2)
--
signed: rastos, citizen of EU.
Brutal (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Please tell me of any current commercial nuclear reactor in the World that can be turned off immediately?
ALL of them heat some medium and power turbines this way. ALL of them need several months/years of cooling, thermal or nuclear, before they can be shut down or dismantled.
Re: (Score:2)
True, but there is a political side-effect of the people who design these reactors naming them based on the technology they use to generate power. It means a poorly conceived nuclear reactor at Fukishima tars every other nuclear reactor with the same brush - even if the design means that it doesn't suffer from the same problems.
What would make far more sense would be to rename a bunch of nuclear reactors "Super Happy Perfectly Safe Generators"
Let me see... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oil is likely to run out or become very expensive during the next few decades, if plug in hybrids and electric cars is the most likely replacement for gasoline ( and it seems to be the case at the moment ) then much more electricity will be needed.
Environmental concerns mandate a large reduction in the use of coal for electricity.
EU-member states have committed to such reductions through several treaties and
directives, and it is unlikely that they will simply be dropped.
Wind cannot contribute a majority of electricity generation out of load levelling concerns.
Solar is prohibitively expensive and only does well in Germany due to strong economic
incentives that would be very costly to scale. It also doesn't work during the night, and large
scale energy storage is prohibitively expensive.
Scaling bio-mass to supply a nation the size of Germany would have a dramatic environmental
impact associated with its cultivation, growth and combustion. It is presently very expensive for
applications other than heating, and the more advanced bio-fuels (cellulosic ethanol ) that actually
seem feasible are still experimental. Brazil kinda makes etanol from sugar cane work, but it is
dubious if the practice would be sustainable outside of tropical climates.
So basically unless they overturn this decision it seems likely that Germany will end up importing
electricity or making themselves reliant on Russian natural gas. This is what happens when you make
policy based on populism and wishful thinking rather than reality.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly, ethanol only works in Brazil because they have such large amounts of sugar domestically. So fuels like butanol (or other forms of ethanol production like you mentioned) which are getting closer to being viable either need to actually make it to market in 5 years like they keep telling us or large scale energy storage needs to suddenly become much much cheaper.
Butanol would probably be better than ethanol at least in the short term since it is virtually a drop in replacement for gasoline but what i
Re: (Score:2)
Until people stop believing in electrical genies that can hold vast amounts of power in a thimble, they can't think about the problem rationally because they believe electric is the portable power solution. Electricity is great, but even if you replaced the entire interior of your car with the best battery technology, it wouldn't be but a few percent of the energy stored in your gas tank.
Yes, it is getting better, and there is hope that one day it will be "good enough" for the task at hand; however, a 200%
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
They don't need to have the same driving range as a petrol vehicle if the recharge time can be improved. This is especially true when we start running out of oil. The latest battery tech that is on the market can recharge in 15 minutes or so. Yes, it is longer than to fill a gas tank, but in a decade or two the price of petrol will justify it. So basically you will find that people will be quite fine with a range of 150km or so ( more has already been demonstrated ) when it saves them money. Governments wil
Re: (Score:2)
What most people ignore (but that a LOT more people should be focusing on) is energy efficiency. We should be making it MUCH easier for consumers to compare running costs of everything from air conditioners to plasma TVs to George Foreman grills so they can make an informed decision based on how much electricity those devices need.
If people could see how much the running costs were on the Sony TV vs the LG TV vs the Samsung TV, they are likely to factor that into their purchasing decisions.
Even more so for
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As a German I think it's the perfect time to ditch the nuclear power and finally invest some of the billions of moneys that the electric cooperations taking and come up with a sustainable and green energy source. Without any pressure from the government we will use oil, gas, coal and nuclear until all of this resources will get so expensive and until we get a some major catastrophes, because the cooperations don't care one bit about the future.
Everyone has known that the nuclear power plants have a limited
Re: (Score:3)
As a German I think it's the perfect time to ditch the nuclear power and finally invest some of the billions of moneys that the electric cooperations taking and come up with a sustainable and green energy source.
So let me get this right. Your country has spent considerable money already over decades and you have yet to come up with a sustainable and green energy source? Why do you want to give them more money?
Without any pressure from the government we will use oil, gas, coal and nuclear until all of this resources will get so expensive and until we get a some major catastrophes, because the cooperations don't care one bit about the future.
Note the key line, "resources will get so expensive." The corporations and people will naturally switch over when fossil fuel-based generation are more expensive than renewable sources. So why use government to "pressure" what's going to happen anyway? High prices will provide all the pressure you want here an
Re: (Score:3)
So let me get this right. Your country has spent considerable money already over decades and you have yet to come up with a sustainable and green energy source? Why do you want to give them more money?
You don't know what you're talking about. We've already had a consensus to phase out nuclear energy in 2000 and that agreement contained concrete goals for renewable energy capacity that we're currently exceeding. Why do you think it is that Germany produces 16% of its electricity needs through renewables when the world's average is just a measly 1%? Because we've committed early to a nuclear-free world and made a plan to reach that goal.
Re: (Score:3)
OK, so, as a German of course, do you have any reason - other than pure wishful thinking - to suppose that the fundamental problems with renewable energy even CAN be solved by throwing more money at it and chanting incantations to the wizards of technology and to the great benevolent all-caring government?
The following are plain, unalterable FACTS. Wind is capricious and requires vast area to harness it. Solar completely dies for 50% of every single day, has repeated extreme reductions for periods lasting
Not exactly well thought out... (Score:5, Interesting)
So their plan is to shutdown domestic nuclear power production without, from what I see, a corresponding increase in production from coal, gas, or "green" power sources. This means they'll be importing from places like France who are increasing their power production. While this is less of a concern now that they're all part of the warm and fuzzy EU brotherhood but Germany is handing the French (and any other country that will be doing the same, such as say the Netherlands) leverage in future negotiations.
The only way I see this really working in the long term is if the EU becomes more of a Federalist system with the EU taking on the role of the Federal Government and the Member Nations taking on the role of the component states. Ultimately I think that may be a decent idea, obviously with more independence for the Member Nations than the states enjoy in the USA but with potential benefits. Keep in mind at this point it is purely idol speculation with no real knowledge on the issues this would generate or hurdles that would have to be jumped.
Concern (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
If it's down to coal or nuclear... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I had to choose between burning coal and fission reactors, I'd keep the nuclear.
Yeah, I know people are scared because of what have happened in Japan, but I STILL rather have 100 nuclear plant in my backyard with a 0.0001% chance of killing or making me sick than one coal plant that are 100% sure to be bad (1) for my health.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_station [wikipedia.org]: The combustion of coal contributes the most to acid rain and air pollution, and has been connected with global warming.
Re: (Score:3)
You don't have to choose between coal and nuclear. Since they are both bad, you should choose renewable (solar and wind).
Which are great, so long as you don't actually need reliable power. I'm sure that Germany can maintain a huge manufacturing economy when the power goes out at random times.
Smart move. (Score:2, Insightful)
I actually kind of like nuke power. it's pretty safe. its cheap. its easy to put just about anywhere.
However... The worst case failure mode for a nuclear power plant is much much MUCH worse than anything else save perhaps hydro. And even then if the hydro dam fails and wipes out everything downstream... well you can go back in and rebuild now. not in 10,100,1000,10000 years when the place isnt 'hot' anymore.
Arguments could be made for coal that it contaminates a much wider area over the entire time
It is not about Fukushima. It is the waste. (Score:4, Insightful)
While the reasoning of Merkel's government seems to be based on fear and emotions of the general public the background behind this is the nuclear waste.
Fukushima is just an example that a complex technology like nuclear power can fail, even with a lot of safeguards in place and in a high-tech country like Japan. It is now obvious that Tepco did not do their homework correctly and that it is just a bad idea in general to build a power plant where a tsunami can hit the shore but this is only the catalyst for the debate in Germany. The main problem is and will be in the future the massive amounts of nuclear waste, with high and medium radiation levels. The situation in Germany for waste disposal is abysmal. In the 1960s due to political issues only two underground mines were seriously examined if they can keep the waste safe for eternity until the radiation levels are low enough to be harmless. These two mines are Asse and Gorleben.
It is now very clear that during the last decades a lot of negative security reports for both mines were downplayed or never published. Asse is currently more or less flooded from groundwater penetrating the salt and while Gorleben seems safe today serious cracks have been discovered. So there is no place in Germany were we could safely store nuclear waste at all. The consensus was for a while to search for better places and it was obvious that any politician will fight tooth and nail against a mine in his district.
At the same time Germany tries to increase the amount of renewable energy and is quite successful. Merkel's current move is certainly not completely ruled by reason but it fits into the bigger picture and the last thing she wants is large demonstrations and her being seen as a cold technocrat which almost brought her a defeat in the last election.
While I personally like nuclear power much more than polluting the air with coal power plants, were the emissions also contain a lot of radioactivity and of course CO2 it feels irresponsible to use a technology as long as the waste problem is completely unsolved, at least in Germany.
Major chance for proving viability of renewables (Score:2)
The question is now, what combination of sources will replace the nuclear piece of the energy pie.
Currently nuclear stands at 22% and renewables at 17% in Germany. I reccomend the literature here [eurosolar.de] for anyone who doubts renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, small hydro, biomass) are up to the task of displacing fossil and nuclear. Especially check out Hermann Scheer's "Energy Autonomy".
As a bonus, this will be a ch
Base load and wind energy (Score:4, Interesting)
While personally I would prefer a nuclear over a fossil fuel plant, I read that nuclear reactors are too slow to react to the highly variable energy production by wind turbines and photo-voltaic installations which make up an increasingly large percentage of the energy production in Germany.
If this is true, keeping the existing reactors running for an extended period would not be beneficial towards the goal of migrating to renewable energy sources.
The only source I can find for this at the moment is http://www.taz.de/1/zukunft/umwelt/artikel/1/so-bleiben-sie-atomkraftgegner/ [www.taz.de] (in german) - I would love to hear someone with a better understanding of the subject matter than me address this (and maybe to the other claims in the article).
Good! (Score:3)
Excellent news. News . Watch the pro nuke shills go ballistic with their ususal lies now. (:
Re:Retards (Score:4, Insightful)
As a rational personal driven by science rather than sentiment and sensationalism, I am of two minds.
On one, there's no reason to necessarily fear well operated nuclear power plants. Unfortunately, we hear countless stories of power plants that are not being maintained and funded properly and with poor operational and maintenance attention. Hardly the place where you want to skimp.
On the other hand, with your plane analogy . . . when a plane goes seriously bad, it kills some people on board. Maybe kills a couple people on the ground. Maybe spills some fuel all over the ground in a biggish area. I'm not sure when the last plane crashed (that wasn't carrying nuclear material) which resulted in tens of miles around it's crash site being unlivable for multiple lifetimes, possibly contaminating vast food and water supplies, and reaching potentially dangerous levels hundreds or thousands of miles away, with the air currents.
It's very hard, even with statistics, to mentally overcome the sheer potential damage of a nuclear plant gone really wrong. It's like saying "hey, the mutually assured destruction policy between America and Russia actually kept us safe for so many decades, because we both had tens of thousands of warheads pointed at each other that could wipe away all life on earth in an hour, but that sheer fact meant nobody would ever do it". Only . . . the reality is that on more than one occasion, we came seriously fucking close to letting nukes loose on the other guy due to human error. Flocks of geese being mistaken for a flight of warheads over the ocean. Test missiles being mistaken for a strike (because of human error; not notifying people higher up that it was occurring and that it should not be taken as an attack).
All it takes is one fuck up and we're a species that is as capable of mind-shattering fuck-ups as we are raw ingenuity.
So, while I tend to want to say "hurrah! clean, safe, cheap, awesome nuclear power!", there's another part of me that says "let's not".
Re: (Score:2)
Hearing of countless stories isn't the same thing as countless of nuclear power plants actually having issues with poor operational and maintenance attention. I mean, here is a plant in Japan, and it has ran like a top, and the containment in case of disaster did it's job. What part of lacklustre maintenance and attention played a part in creating the disaster, worsening its effects on the plant, or promoting the release of radation?
We have had one plant truly mess up, one almost mess up, and one hit by a
Re: (Score:2)
I don't like nuclear power either.... but I base my opinion on some real science instead of your chiropractic quackery.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Um, no. In fact, there is not enough data to make that correlation.
It is kind of like claiming that truck drivers are worse driver because truck drivers are involved in more wrecks per capita and the wrecks are worse. But, the truth is that truck drivers are some of the safest drivers. They are in more wrecks per capita because they travel many times more miles per year than the average driver. It is not that the reactors are older. It is that the data covers a long period of time. Compare nuclear
Re: (Score:3)
Uh, no. Mark 1 reactors are fundamentally flawed, in that they can easily build up hydrogen and explode if the cooling system is compromised (leaving out the detail here). Even Mark 2 designs are built strong enough to withstand a failed cooling system.
Even if you were correct, that age is the most important factor, then why is that the fault of nuclear power in general, and not the governments for a fire-and-forget attitude?
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, but I think the "1 in 2000 years" statistic includes Mark 1 reactors, which should have been phased out years ago.
And I don't mean to sound pedantic, but "1 in 2000 years" does not mean "1 every 14 years" (and actually, "1 in 2000 years" was an improper way for the industry to state this to begin with). In this case, the industry was trying to refer to the core integrity, which is designed to last a very long time; its expected lifetime is several hundred years. Additionally, "end of life" does not ref
Re:First in a long line I hope! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yes. Excellent news. Because nuclear power is the cleanest, most dependable, most regulated, and lowest impacting power source on the planet right now, lets shut it down for no realistic reason. "Spinal sublexations which cause ill health?" Ah, you're a chiropractor. Sooooo, your position is that mythical twisting of the vertebrae (Oh yes, sorry, chiropractors have co-opted the term 'subluxation' to mean whatever they think might be wrong, rather than an actual anatomical definition. Convenient) ... which you say causes ill health, is due to radioactivity, that no one has ever sensed? That's quite a reach my friend.
The short version is nuclear power is the safest power we have. (Xref: http://climatesight.org/2011/03/15/nuclear-power-in-context/ [climatesight.org] ) That chart shows direct-impact deaths, and does not show the number of mine workers who die yearly mining coal, or the oil rig operators who die, or the VAST environmental impact directly from burning fossil fuels. In 40 years of nuclear power, there have been THREE nuclear plant failures. TMI, Chernobyl, and fukujima. TMI resulted in negligible radiation release. Chernobyl resulted in 64 confirmed deaths (though there is ENORMOUS variation in forecasts for 'potential deaths'), and Fukujima has, we've noted so far, had ONE death. One.
I can already hear the raising of the "But, it's Radiation! Radiation is BAD!" - yes, of course it is, but it must be taken in context. The levels talked about around these plants varies wildly, and your random "because we have nuke plants, people are getting more colds because of mythical undefineable spinal shift" is a textbook "Correlation proves Causation [wikipedia.org] - a logical fallacy.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No debate with your points. But here are some other insights...
Did you know to this day 20% of Belarus's farmland is unusable?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus [wikipedia.org]
The problem is that nuclear has serious longterm issues like this. Sure there are less immediate deaths, but the longer term deaths related to nuclear are much higher. This is the fault of humanity that can't look beyond the next Apple announcement.
So tell me how do you plan on making all of the land usable again? Oh wait I forgot you are not near
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Much higher than what? Deaths from burning dirty brown coal? I doubt it.
Re:First in a long line I hope! (Score:5, Informative)
Did you know to this day 20% of Belarus's farmland is unusable?
No, and you didn't know either because it isn't true. The original BBC story [bbc.co.uk] states that 20% of Belarus was contaminated by Chernobyl fallout. Much of that land (probably everything aside from a bit that lies within the Chernobyl exclusion zone [wikimedia.org]) is being used.
So tell me how do you plan on making all of the land usable again?
You can always reuse such land for industrial purposes. Or plant a crop that aggressively absorbs cesium or other problem isotopes.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The funny thing is, that they will need a replacement for the loss of nuclear power. Since there are also laws that energy must be "green" for a certain percentage, coal plants will be off limits. Which will lead to .. Germany importing energy from France. Which is generated by ... dumtiedum .. nuclear reactors!
Hypocrisy at its finest.
Re: (Score:3)
Shares of E.ON and RWE are getting hammered, Renewable Energy Corp, Vestas Wind, etc are up sharply today.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
> Because nuclear power is the cleanest, most dependable, most regulated,
> and lowest impacting power source on the planet right now
That would be hydro, not nuclear. Much cheaper too. People who believe nuclear is the way to go generally live in areas that are tapped out on the hydro side and the local power companies stop talking about it.
A good example is right here in Toronto. They're still trying to build another set of four reactors east of the city, but there's 9 reactors worth in norther Quebec
Re:First in a long line I hope! (Score:5, Informative)
Hydro-electric dam failures have killed hundreds of thousands of people over the years. Indeed, a small (non-power-generating) dam in Fukushima prefecture broke during the recent big earthquake in Japan, killing at least four people at the dam itself and washing away a couple of villages downstream with some inhabitants reported as missing presumed drowned. That's a lot more people than were killed by the tsunami and earthquake at the two Fukushima plants and (obviously) a lot more than have died from radioactivity releases caused by the reactor failures.
Hydro power is a proven killer with a long history of mass deaths due to structural failures and operating problems. It's not in the same class as coal and oil due to the amount of pollution and CO2 it produces for the amount of energy it outputs but in terms of ill-effects it's way ahead of nuclear in any scale you care to compare it with.
Re:First in a long line I hope! (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, he can stay where he is and experience the effects of burning coal and gas directly.
As someone recently said "Nuclear power damages the environment and causes health issues when there is an accident. Coal and gas damages the environment and causes health issues as a consequence of normal operation."
Re:First in a long line I hope! (Score:4, Informative)
I guess the accident that killed people at the fuel processing facility and exposed residents nearby to radiation in 1999 doesn't count.
And although no one died, the accident, and the cover-up of the severity of it, at the Japanese sodium breeder reactor apparently isn't worth mentioning.
That was no Mark I design.
The fuel pond issues certainly aren't unique to Mark I designs. Unit 4 in Japan, which had fuel only in the fuel pond, exploded, apparently from hydrogen that came from unit 3. Neither unit 3 nor unit 4 were Mark I designs. There aren't supposed to be any common-cause failures, yet clearly that explosion pathway and the backup power had causes in common.
One of the reactors shut down in central Japan over earthquake fears was found to have salt water in the closed-loop part of the cooling system. That wasn't even known before the plant was shut down for another reason. Coupling between the ocean water and internal cooling water loops was supposed to be impossible.
In one sense the older systems may have an advantage. They didn't originally use frail and vulnerable computer systems. What modern computer systems can be trusted to work for 40 years plus?
Nuclear != Radioactivity (Score:2)
Firstly, nobody "invented" radioactivity. The Big Bang was a nuclear explosion. We are (a very small) part of the fallout.
You could say that someone invented nuclear power. This is not the same thing as radioactivity. Some might say it uses radioactivity but for better explanations you should read a textbook or even Wikipedia.
Spinal subluxations have been around a lot longer than human generated radioactivity. The fact that they have increased does not mean that they are caused by radioactive leaks/f
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Given that effectively all of our energy (aside from a comparatively small amount of geothermal) is produced in a very, very large nuclear reactor, to which we have been exposed on a daily basis since life began, I guess you've just explained all disease! Good thing too-we had it long before we were "out of the trees", or "in the trees"-even single-celled organisms die.
What they don't die of is "subluxations", because there's no such thing. Honestly, I hope you're a troll. The alternative is far worse-that
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, because that has worked ever so well with 3-Mile Island and Chernobyl.... As it fades from the news, it will become more of a distant memory, and will no longer have the weight it has now when arguing the dangers of nuclear energy. Ultimately, it'll come down to one thing: cost. As long as nuclear energy is the cheapest out there, it will continue to be widely used. As soon as safer and cheaper technologies are easily available, a gradual transition will begin. It is not going to be an overnight change
Re: (Score:2)
This is close to the worst way to make a government in the modern era.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm starting to loose my faith in humanity...
You've already lost your voting rights.