Germany Quits Nuclear Power, Closes Its Final Three Plants (cnn.com) 241
"Germany's final three nuclear power plants close their doors on Saturday," reports CNN, "marking the end of the country's nuclear era that has spanned more than six decades...."
[D]espite last-minute calls to keep the plants online amid an energy crisis, the German government has been steadfast. "The position of the German government is clear: nuclear power is not green. Nor is it sustainable," Steffi Lemke, Germany's Federal Minister for the Environment and Consumer Protection and a Green Party member, told CNN."We are embarking on a new era of energy production," she said.
The closure of the three plants — Emsland, Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim — represents the culmination of a plan set in motion more than 20 years ago. But its roots are even older. In the 1970s, a strong anti-nuclear movement in Germany emerged. Disparate groups came together to protest new power plants, concerned about the risks posed by the technology and, for some, the link to nuclear weapons. The movement gave birth to the Green Party, which is now part of the governing coalition...
For critics of Germany's policy, however, it's irrational to turn off a low-carbon source of energy as the impacts of the climate crisis intensify. "We need to keep existing, safe nuclear reactors operating while simultaneously ramping up renewables as fast as possible," Leah Stokes, a professor of climate and energy policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told CNN. The big risk, she said, is that fossil fuels fill the energy gap left by nuclear. Reductions in Germany's nuclear energy since Fukushima have been primarily offset by increases in coal, according to research published last year.
Germany plans to replace the roughly 6% of electricity generated by the three nuclear plants with renewables, but also gas and coal.... Now Germany must work out what do with the deadly, high-level radioactive waste, which can remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.
CNN also notes how other countries approach nuclear power:
The closure of the three plants — Emsland, Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim — represents the culmination of a plan set in motion more than 20 years ago. But its roots are even older. In the 1970s, a strong anti-nuclear movement in Germany emerged. Disparate groups came together to protest new power plants, concerned about the risks posed by the technology and, for some, the link to nuclear weapons. The movement gave birth to the Green Party, which is now part of the governing coalition...
For critics of Germany's policy, however, it's irrational to turn off a low-carbon source of energy as the impacts of the climate crisis intensify. "We need to keep existing, safe nuclear reactors operating while simultaneously ramping up renewables as fast as possible," Leah Stokes, a professor of climate and energy policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told CNN. The big risk, she said, is that fossil fuels fill the energy gap left by nuclear. Reductions in Germany's nuclear energy since Fukushima have been primarily offset by increases in coal, according to research published last year.
Germany plans to replace the roughly 6% of electricity generated by the three nuclear plants with renewables, but also gas and coal.... Now Germany must work out what do with the deadly, high-level radioactive waste, which can remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.
CNN also notes how other countries approach nuclear power:
- Denmark passed a resolution in the 1980s not to construct nuclear power plants
- Finland began test production from a new nuclear plant last year
- Switzerland voted in 2017 to phase out nuclear power
- France, which gets about 70% of its power from nuclear, is planning six new reactors.
- Italy closed its last reactors in 1990
why? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The population freaked out and voted for more Green Party representatives after Fukushima. TBH if the Japanese can't make a nuclear plan safe, who can you trust?
On the other hand I do agree that this was shortsighted and Nuclear is necessary in order to get out of fossil fuel, at least until renewables are enough to sustain the growing needs in electricity, including the forced shift to EV in a few years.
Re: why? (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is, coal and gas energy are the silent killers. CO2 will do much more harm to humanity than the nuclear disasters.
I'm not saying nuclear isn't problematic or that it shouldn't be phased out. I'm saying that gas and goal are even more problematic, so moving back to them (which Germany does with this move) is an anti-solution to the problem.
Germany does not have enough green energy production yet, it does not have a good enough power grid to handle production and consumption fluctuations, and most importantly, it does not have grid scale energy storage.
We cannot build on what we hope to exist one day, we have to build on what already is there.
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The thing is, coal and gas energy are the silent killers. CO2 will do much more harm to humanity than the nuclear disasters.
Also direct pollution. Far more French people have have died due to German coal based air pollution being wafted into France than from French nuclear accidents.
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it does not have a good enough power grid to handle production and consumption fluctuations,
Just: LOL
Re: why? (Score:4, Informative)
Coal is being phased out too.
https://www.eurofound.europa.e... [europa.eu]
Basically the maximum price limits for coal are being reduced until 2027, and if plants are closed before then the energy company can get compensation from the government. That creates a financial incentive to close them and build new renewables.
New coal plants could not be started after 2020, so they can't close old ones and replace them now. The new ones have to meet the current EU emissions standards, which generally means capturing the pollution and sequestering it.
The final date for shutdown of all coal power in Germany is 2038, but it will likely happen sooner than that.
Before someone says that future governments will just change the dates, the reason why they are shutting these nuclear plants now is that the date was decided long ago by another government (under Merkel) and the current government is respecting it. Changing it would be very difficult anyway.
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Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste [scientificamerican.com]
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This guy is with YOU.
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No, in this case I'm pretty sure that it's that the bizarreness of your post speaks for itself. We know what's causing global warming for instance, welcome to the 21st century. The fact that plants use CO2 for photosynthesis is also completely irrelevant to excessive CO2 production by us being a major driver for global warming but for some absurd reason you seem to think it is.
Re: why? (Score:3, Insightful)
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I see, instead of providing some evidence and numbers you just call me an idiot.
Yes. Because after 100+ years of concern, data collection and publication, and modelling and observation of actual results you're still asking everyone else to do your homework for you. You are an idiot and are being treated as such.
Re: why? (Score:5, Informative)
Historically, climate scientists have been incredibly accurate.
The most commonly cited 17 models over the last 50 years, 14 were perfect.
and in the others if you only changed the predicted CO2 output to the actual CO2 output, they also match reality, they just underestimated how much CO2 output would raise, but their models of how the climate would change are otherwise accurate.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/... [nasa.gov]
https://skepticalscience.com/c... [skepticalscience.com]
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.... [wiley.com]
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It isn't terribly difficult to make people look stupid with simple questions about science or politics. Comedians do this all the time. Just find a college campus and ask about current Federal office holders or appointees of note.
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CO2 in the atmosphere is now up to 0.04% and the plants thrive
Except that when they grow faster, they absorb fewer nutrients, resulting in food that isn't as good for you [nationalgeographic.co.uk].
This naturally balance everything since plants then produce more oxygen since they can absorb more CO2 without opening their pores as much so they keep the water that would be lost due to evaporation by opening their pores more. So plants need less water now to thrive.
But increasing nitrogen depletion in the soil limits how long this boost will last [columbia.edu].
Plants are now growing in regions that use to be deserts.
Plants still require *some* water. If they're growing in regions that used to be deserts, that means there is water now where there wasn't before. It has little to do with plants using less water. The reduction in water usage would result in some *types* of plants growing where they didn't grow before, of course, an
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Except composting is net zero CO2 if done correctly. If not done correctly - meaning bio waste lands in a landfill - it converts to methane first which is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
Re: why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, nuclear power is a shitty option but right now, keeping the nuclear power stations that we already have running safely is a less shitty option than going back to any fossil fuels, let alone coal.
Also, as the IPCC figures are showing, governments really need to be more aggressive in building out renewable energy capacity & infrastructure. Since renewables are the fastest & cheapest source of energy we've ever had, it's also an economic no-brainer; invest heavily now to make substantial savings in the near future. We've all seen how high energy prices & price gouging from energy companies adversely affect our economies, jobs, food prices, transport, etc..
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The population freaked out and voted for more Green Party representatives after Fukushima. TBH if the Japanese can't make a nuclear plan safe, who can you trust?
This has been the policy since before Fukushima and the mainstream parties have supported it. It was Merkel's government that decided the current 2022 phaseout.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023... [foreignpolicy.com]
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Thanks for the link. Before Fukushima the phaseout was planned for 2036, enough time to give the hot potato to an other government who could push the bucket further to give time for new renewable energy tech to be developed. This is what they did in 2009: a change in government pushed to shutdown further away by 14y. Fukushima brought the shutdowns back to 2022, and the Ukraine invasion delayed that by a few months.
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That article makes a really good point. The nuclear supporters have been crying wolf for decades, saying that shutting down nuclear would be catastrophic. Every time a plant closes, every time anyone thinks about closing on. They have burned up all their credibility.
Fukushima was not just an example of what could potentially go wrong, it was proof that a country could turn off all its nuclear power at the same time and somehow keep the lights on. It turned out to be not nearly as critical as people were cla
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That article makes a really good point. The nuclear supporters have been crying wolf for decades, saying that shutting down nuclear would be catastrophic. Every time a plant closes, every time anyone thinks about closing on. They have burned up all their credibility.
To be fair, most of those previous shutdowns haven't involved taking huge amounts of power off of the grid at a time when their ability to get fossil fuels is compromised by a war of Russian aggression and the sanctions arising out of that war. Taking actions to deliberately increase Europe's dependence on fossil fuels right now can only be described as s**t-for-brains stupid, and that's the only realistic thing that can happen when you take that much power off of the grid.
Worse, because natural gas is in
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This was a direct decision of the Merkel government after Fukushima, not by the Green Party. There was a decision by previous left / Green government to exit nuclear power, which was undone by the conservatives, which then changed their mind again after Fukushima.
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The population freaked out and voted for more Green Party representatives after Fukushima. That is wrong.
The population voted for the exit 15 years BEFORE Fukushima.
But then came the new Chancellor Merkel and in her wisdom prolonged the runtime of the reactors - and SHE back peddled after Fukushima. No further vote of the citizens involved.
until renewables are enough to sustain the growing needs in electricity,
Germany produces already ~50% of its electricity with renewables.
No, it's actually fairly progressive (Score:2)
No, not really. It's one of the most expensive ways to generate electrical energy, plus our reactors are very old.
Additionally even ignoring the safety and sustainability issues and where the fuel comes from (hint Russia!), nuclear power plants are going to be less and less reliable as global warming proceeds.
Let's take France as an example:
In Summer many of the nuclear power plants in France already close down or severely limit their power simply because there is to little water to cool them.
https://www.ny [nytimes.com]
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I see at last somebody is actually conversant with the facts. Thanks for posting.
Re:No, it's actually fairly progressive (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent up: insightful.
The parent is full of shit and keeps repeating it in every story. You're not much better. It's particularly hilarious trying to claim "facts and logic" without actually showing any numbers.
Yes France had some unplanned downtime due to postponed maintenance and some potential issues that were identified and temporarily imported some energy. Just like every other country does from time to time.
In the meantime it's been fixed and France is back to exporting energy and emitting literally ONE TENTH of Germany's CO2. Like they have been for forty years. It's cute that Germany had one day like that.
https://i.imgur.com/du9p6LN.pn... [imgur.com]
Source here: https://app.electricitymaps.co... [electricitymaps.com]
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The problems in France are structural and long term, not temporary. COVID certainly didn't help, but those reactors are all old now and starting to deteriorate beyond the point where they can be kept operating. Once the reactor vessel is unsafe that's it, because it can't be repaired or replaced.
Currently they are limping along with regular inspections of the reactors so they can shut them down as soon as the cracks get too bad. The cracks are on the inside so they use ultrasound.
Beyond that EDF ran out of
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This is truly a backwards policy for Germany, which is quite unusual for them.
Not really. The backwards policy is not building new reactors. Closing old ones is good common sense. That said these last couple were quite "new" only being around 30-40 years old. They could have kept going a few more years. The rest of Germany's nuclear plants were a large accident waiting to happen.
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In a lot of countries nuclear power plants are being life extended to 60 years. Closing these power plants down was a gigantic waste of money.
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This is truly a backwards policy for Germany, which is quite unusual for them.
They may have good engineers but the green party is huge politically so don't expect any common sense from them.
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Re:why? (Score:4, Informative)
Cost. The plants are getting old and even more expensive to keep running. The money is needed for renewables.
It's really important that Germany does this because nuclear isn't suitable for developing nations. Even if we trust them enough to let them have it (see Iran), they don't have the infrastructure or regulatory environment for it.
They will just build coal and gas if renewables aren't cheaper and proven.
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They will just build coal and gas if renewables aren't cheaper and proven.
So they will just buy coal and gas.
At some point, people like you will understand that the solution is not either renewables or nuclear, but a mix of both, because they both complement each other pretty well as low-carbon energy sources. I am just afraid you will realize that once it is too late, for all of us.
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Would you be willing to pay for nuclear yourself? If hypothetically it was possible to for you to have nuclear power and me to just have renewables.
You can sort of do it in the UK, in that some suppliers only pay for renewable energy. I don't think there are any nuclear only ones though. Maybe someone should start one on the same basis as the renewable suppliers. Profits get rolled back into nuclear investment.
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Would you be willing to pay for nuclear yourself? If hypothetically it was possible to for you to have nuclear power and me to just have renewables.
Sure, why not? My grid is already half nuclear and it's fine. Germany made everyone pay extra tax to subsidize solar panels so that's a valid way to go apparently.
Also what are you going to do when there are no renewables available for you?
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I've been on a renewable only tariff for at least a decade now, I forget exactly when it started. Not had any blackouts so far, and back then there were far fewer windmills.
When it started it cost more than normal tariffs. They said they would notify me if they ever had to buy fossil fuels to cover periods of low production, but I never got such a notification. These days it's cheaper than the standard fossil fuel/nuclear tariffs.
Re:why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can you provide a link to your energy plan?
Usually, those plans just mean that they feed into the energy grid the same amount of green energy that they are selling to their customers. Or that they are buying green bonds to compensate. In the end, you are still getting nuclear/gas/coal energy, and this is what is being used to provide your baseload need.
Please note that they don't have to feed the grid at the same time they are selling you your electricity... So they can just consume and sell you at night energy coming from nuclear/gas/coal, and feed solar energy during the day, when the demand is low (there is a few days/weeks rolling window for that, to cover for the fact that renewables can be really intermitent).
But if that makes you feel good, why not.
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The German government is acting as a colonial government against the benefit of its people.
Search for the RAND report on deindustrializing Germany.
The same people who called Hunter's laptop a fake are calling it a fake too.
Yet each step is being enacted.
"Coincidentally".
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Not sure what is supposed to be backward in abandoning an inherently dangerous technology with unresolved sustainability issues. Dumping radioactive materials, so far, has created a large number of documented disasters (e.g., collapsing salt mines). And these are just the relatively short term consequences ignoring long term disasters of containers eroding and leaking.
Focusing on alternative energy solutions with long term sustainability is the very definition of forward thinking.
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Germany is currently struggling to figure out what to do with the waste they have. Most of it cannot be re-used even if theoretical Gen IV reactors were available.
The law governing it was passed in 2013, and required sites to be found by 2030. The current plan is for facilities where waste can be stored for 1 million years, with the waste accessible for the first 500 years for monitoring and remedial work.
No sites have been selected so far. Nobody wants it, suitable locations are few and far between. They d
Simply because it's economically obsolete (Score:2)
The extreme rise in renewables makes base load an obsolete concept.
A baseload capable and optimized generation is a negative thing in today's grid.
Germany is at 50% of renewable electricity generation, 5% nuke, now 0% nuclear.
Worldwide, nuke is at 10%, falling, while renewables is at 26,5%, rising quickly.
Renewable is rising every year, nuclear is dropping every year.
Nuclear electricity is dead and fading away, because it simply costs about 4x more than any other electricity source.
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Haha, not unusual at all. Repeat of Nordstream. They are doing this because they need the woke Greens in their coalition.
at least Mr burns is on site and lives in town but (Score:2)
at least Mr burns is on site and lives in town but that plant is very unsafe
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Not to privatize it and deregulated and hand it over to some rich asshole who is going to skip the maintenance and pocket the money for themselves while living hundreds or thousands of miles away from the disaster they inevitably cause.
Why is it that private enterprise, given the same level of governmental safety oversight as the nuclear industry, can be trusted to seal people in tubes and blast them through the sky, in vast numbers every day for over twenty years in the US with no hull-loss disasters, but in the opinion of you flat-earthers can't be trusted to run generating stations? If you people had been around in the early twentieth century, the first two plane crashes somewhere in the world would have meant no aviation development f
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I'm much, much more likely to suffer a pollution related lung problem due to coal (which Germany seems to be relying on again), so yes, I would rather have the nuclear plant.
Re:Airlines are only quasi private (Score:4, Informative)
Add up all the deaths from nuclear power vs coal power or even air travel if you want to keep going with that comparison. Even Chernobyl only accounts for about 90 deaths from direct radiation exposure, with some reports suggesting 4,000 deaths amongst the exposed populace.
Since 1970 there have been over 83,000 deaths in aviation accidents.
And that's a rounding error compared to deaths from the air pollution from coal. On top of all the usual pollution you'd expect, coal and gas power plants have released orders of magnitude more radiation into the atmosphere than all the nuclear disasters combined.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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Russian scientists estimated that Chernobyl killed several million. As the food produced in the region got distributed all over the USSR and mixed into non contaminated food. I think it was 2 million, not sure.
From the roughly 450,000 clean up personal, more than half are dead now. And about that is absolutely nothing to be disputed.
A. That's absolute nonsense. Please show some actual numbers research proving this.
B. No shit. Chernobyl was almost forty years ago. Someone who was in their thirties would be over seventy now and many wouldn't make men wouldn't make it regardless.
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Not to say that it wasn't a pretty bad disaster. But lets unite behind the science rather than hearsay.
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"Privatize profits, socialize expenses", this puts the cart before the horse. The massive benefit to society is dynamic business giving jobs and money and cheap food and cheap products. This vastly outweighs the socialized expenses as a net benefit, and its silly to compare the mere profits of the endeavor as some controlling principle.
If you shut it down, society wouldn't lose "profits to the rich". You'd lose stuffed shelves and cheap products. It's perfectly reasonable to decided to trade off some do
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Talking out of your head here. Nuclear is more regulated than aircraft. Show me an aircraft with 4 redundancies system (even the speed sensor only has 2 redundancies on modern aircrafts).
There have been more death related to aircrafts than nuclear since 1970 too...
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Your argument is really unclear. Are you comparing pilots with nuclear plants? Or pilots with nuclear plants operators? Or aircraft with nuclear plants? You really need to make up your mind.
I don't know where you get the idea that regulation for the aircraft industry (aircraft themselves, pilots training, ...) is stricter than the one for the nuclear industry... If that was the case, there would be far less aircrafts incidents, and far less deaths related to aircrafts.
When a serious issue with a type of aircraft is found they all get grounded until it can be sorted out.
And? When a minor issue with a nuclear
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Stress corrosion cracking is not a minor issue.
Pilots have to put in simulator time regularly. If they don't perform well in emergency conditions they can lose their licence. Nuclear operators are not subject to that kind of mandatory routine testing, at least not in the UK or France. Or Japan, for that matter.
The people handling the waste are even more lax.
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I much prefer the specter of big government and layers upon layers of government bureaucracy and CYA attitudes to raise up in said bureaucracy such as existed in the USSR at Chernobyl. That's a perfect example of the ineptitude of government run with no one taking ownership or caring. The things which actually happens when the point of running something is to provide a product/service that grows the business. I'm fine with government providing practical guard rails for private industry, but I never want
The problem with Chernobyl (Score:2)
Yes, you can have that lack of oversight from gov't for reasons other than profit motive & corruption. Incompetence is a thing. But everybody learned from Chernobyl and gov'ts, when in control of nuke plants, watch them like hawks now.
The problem is when regulatory capture means gov't *isn't* in control anymore. Corners get cut, disasters happen, cities are evacuated for years
Re: why? (Score:2)
No, it's not.
Coal formed millions of years ago when fungi had not yet evolved to process cellulose.
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Who do you think will have the best renewable tech in a decade or so?
China. Thanks to the big subsidies they receive from German taxpayers.
This is a horrific (Score:5, Interesting)
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In general, population was largely in favor of the nuclear exist over a long time. I am not sure a single poll in the middle of the energy crisis tells us much.
I agree that it does not make any sense to prematurely turn off existing nuclear plants and that more coal plants should be turned off instead. But still, Germany achieved their climate target, reduced coal use substantially in the last decade (2010: 263 TWh, 2022: 181 TWh), and has per-capita emissions far below the US while having a similar high s
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Yes some plants are still relying on the russian fuel assemblies but Ukrainian and Czech ones switched to Westinghouse already or are in process. In any case $1 billion is nothing compared to how much we paid for russian gas and oil.
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But this is very much despite Germany's decision. ...
Germany already has reduced its emissions of CO2 dramatically, fa over 50%
So? What exactly is your point?
Show me any other nation that has achieved that.
We are waiting ...
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Germany already has reduced its emissions of CO2 dramatically, fa over 50% ...
So? What exactly is your point?
Show me any other nation that has achieved that.
France did 90%.forty years ago:
https://i.imgur.com/du9p6LN.pn... [imgur.com]
No it is not. (Score:2)
Germany replaces both polluting Coal AND dangerous nuclear with renewables.
Every year.
Re: Given the state of wind and solar (Score:3)
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That's not a bandwagon fallacy. The argument is not that nuclear power is "good" because people voted for it, presumably people voted as they did because they viewed keeping nuclear power plants running longer was good.
Germany was given a difficult situation with natural gas supplies from Russia being cut off so soon before winter. I've had people claim that keeping the nuclear power plants running through the winter would not help because so many German homes used natural gas for heat, the added electric
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Don't forget electric heaters- installed, portable / plug in, heat pumps, etc. They can greatly offset fossil fuel use, and can be powered by nuclear (when people wisely choose to keep the nukes).
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Germany was given a difficult situation with natural gas supplies from Russia being cut off so soon before winter.
Bullshit. Utter bullshit. This is a situation taken by Germany, not given.
Even after Putin invaded Crimea, Germany's policy was still all in on the suspiciously cheap gas, a great way to build their economy. Whoops they accidentally funded an expansionist dictator's war machine. No one could have possibly predicted that Putin would not stop with Crimea. Poor Germany, all they wanted was cheap en
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You didn't read to the end of the summary about replacing that electricity with renewables?
The linked article also says the following:
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I wouldn't dismiss democratic principles so casually.
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o_O (Score:2)
Because relying on Russian gas is better?
loldumb (Score:3)
Reductions in Germany's nuclear energy since Fukushima have been primarily offset by increases in coal, according to research published last year.
I know it's not Winter anymore so the big Russian natural gas shutoff scare is in their rearview mirrors, but if they can afford to shed generating capacity in the name of being "more green", mothballing the coal plants would be the better move.
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They may think it is, but it's going to be right in front of them again next Winter if Russia is still mired in Ukraine, or desperate for income because they spent everything they had on a war they couldn't win.
Just like the nuke closures here in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
All that waste is still splitting its atoms and dumping heat into water...but no longer spinning a turbine.
Dumbasses. Same retards who drive their electric cars to the protest against new electric transmission lines. One prays to whatever deity one may believe in that there is strong overlap with the voluntary human extinction set among these morons.
Germans must be so happy! (Score:3)
Backwards (Score:2)
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You seem to be exceptionally uninformed about grid stability on France and in Germany. The actual state is: France - massive problems, Germany - working reliably.
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You seem to be exceptionally uninformed about grid stability on France and in Germany. The actual state is: France - massive problems, Germany - working reliably.
France is working just fine. Germany is burning a shitload of coal. Cool, good job.
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You seem to be exceptionally uninformed about grid stability on France and in Germany. The actual state is: France - massive problems, Germany - working reliably.
No, it's you who is uninformed. France is exporting clean energy now. Germany is "working reliably" by burning lots of coal.
This is EXTREMELY easy to actually check: https://app.electricitymaps.co... [electricitymaps.com]
Missed updates: (Score:5, Interesting)
US: Georgia Power's new AP-1000, Vogtle 3, went critical last month [georgiapower.com]. Vogtle 4 will go critical in 2024.
China has 22 new reactors under construction [world-nuclear.org].
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US: Georgia Power's new AP-1000, Vogtle 3, went critical last month [georgiapower.com]. Vogtle 4 will go critical in 2024.
For a moment there, I was thinking the other Georgia, and was wondering who in their right mind would build a nuclear reactor in a country that borders Russia. Whew. Had me worried for nothing.
And that was after I initially read it as "supercritical". I have to stop reading Slashdot late at night. :-D
so I guess climate change isn't that important? (Score:2)
Existing, well-functioning nuclear plants being pulled offline in favor of a "future plan" for renewables but which will absolutely include more fossil fuel consumption in the short, medium, and very likely long term as well?
Sure, makes perfect sense.
Three out, one in (Score:3)
In the EU, a new EPR reactor has started normal operation today. 1650 megawatts. One of the most powerful reactors of Europe. It will provide 15% of the electrical needs of Finland. Carbon free !
And the French are restarting their project of fast neutron reactor, ASTRID. If not sabotaged again by the French left it would provide energy using reserves available for millennia.
Funnily, the anti-nuclear sentiment is fading in Germany itself. There is a slight majority of Germans who think closing these three reactors was a mistake. Especially in the middle of an energy crisis.
Time will tell (Score:3)
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Fukushima happened after an earthquake and tsunami. How are you going to get that to happen in Germany?
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Could you be any less informed and stupid? That is not what is happening at all.
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When it comes to updating our power generation and transmission, both extremes are resisting it. The massive crowd of somewhat-reasonable people in the middle need to assert themselves and take control of the process. Unfortunately, that requires at least a few people on each political side to compromise a
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Bold claims, no sources, wishful thinking... Gweihir at its finest.
Re:All these torured efforts to paint this as bad. (Score:4, Insightful)
The nuclear tribe really has zero insight, it is utterly pathetic. Do you really think German engineers are all dumb? Do you think the German power grid was in any way unstable the last years (and these nukes contributed a whopping 6% only)? Do you think the Germans rely heavily on the European grid to keep the lights on? They do not. The French however do and desperately enough in the last years to drive up electricity prices all over Europe. Do you think the current use of coal (30%, the US has 20% and no excuse like a missing gas pipeline) is anything but a temporary thing?
German engineers may or may not be stupid. Do you doubt the politicians or public can be stupid? Because that's who makes these decisions. You haven't actually s shown any insights or facts. Just the usual unsupported bullshit.
If you think these things, then you are uninformed and stupid. Because there are no fact to support such a stance. None at all. Guess who will actually know how to do it reliably and large scale with renewables in a decade or so. And guess who will rely on aging, inflexible, horribly expensive and dangerous nuclear infrastructure at that time.
France has been running a low carbon grid for four decades. You're saying Germany MIGHT have it in another ten years? Is this supposed to be impressive? What a fucking joke.
That myth has been debunked. (Score:2)
That myth has been debunked.
Building nukes only profits to a few corrupt corporations, and costs 3 about 4x more for each kWh produced than any other electricity generation.
Germany did the right choice by heading to 100% renewables. Current score is over 50%.