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Germany To End Nuclear Power By 2022
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."
Great news! The human species has suffered with health problems since we left the trees. However since the invention of radioactivity, there has been a direct link between the amount of radiation used in the world and spinal subluxations which cause ill health.
Hopefully Germany is just the first in a long long of countries dumping radioactivity!
Take care,
Bob.
Chiropractic Saves Lives!
France has stated that it will open several new nuclear reactors before 2022, and will increase the amount of power that it exports to Germany.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"Well what the hell are we supposed to use? Harsh language?"
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.
Tsunamis and earthquakes has Germany had in lets say the last 1000 years :-)
when we said germany was going to end nuclear power, a lot of nuclear power morons were going 'wank wank wank, yelp yelp yelp' and talking tough and condescending, saying it was impossible, germany was just reviewing, this that, just like in this fashion.
where are those idiots now ?
now speaking of which, i guess the same idiots were doing the same blabbering about swiss setting out to end nuclear power.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/05/22/1351235/Swiss-To-End-Use-of-Nuclear-Power
Read radical news here
They will actually be able to replace those 23% of the energy production in the meantime without increasing the energy costs too much... difficulty: the price for 2011 will already be about 50% higher than 2010 according to my energy supplier (announced a few weeks ago, before this decision).
give Germany some nuclear power, in the form of an ICBM delivered directly to their most populous city... and then we go fuck those charred Nazi asses.
The more countries follow their lead the cheaper it will be for us to double our nuclear capacity.
Airplanes kill more people a year than nuclear energy killed in total. However, airplanes are "safe" and nuclear energy is "terribly dangerous".
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.
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.
Apparently, people make the right choice only after all other options were exhausted.
--
signed: rastos, citizen of EU.
Overreaction due to a disaster by a reactor that should have never been built in the first place. It should be common sense to never build a device that cannot be tuned off (or 3 months to turn off). There are other nuclear reactor designs that can be turn off quickly. Banning the entire industry without a proper review is stupid.
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.
How exactly do they intend to meet their power req after ?
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.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Natural gas and coal-fired power plants are not responsible alternatives to nuclear energy. Nuclear power does not belch out carbon monoxide and green house gases. By eschewing nuclear energy and blanketing as unsafe without looking into the technical problems and improving them, we may be headed down a entirely different wrong path. It seems like politicians the world around are excellent at making "large strategic decisions" without a clear, viable alternative. What about nuclear fusion? Where are we in that development?
Whether they end generating new nuclear power or not, the radioactive waste already generated will remain.
I propose an alternative to democracy: weighted democracy.
It would play out like this: Ministers, senators, presidents et al. gets the boot. The government is replaced by people who carry out the will of the people. The government is not allowed to propose changes, only the citizenry is. Changes to stuff are ALL voted upon by the people.
And last but not least: People will have to pass a fucking popquiz about the subject they're voting on before their vote counts!
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: The combustion of coal contributes the most to acid rain and air pollution, and has been connected with global warming.
Meanwhile coalmining and coal is killing tens of thousands every year.
i visited a nuclear power plant in northern germany last year. and i am glad, that this is been shut down. that 70ies tech does not shine anymore. and i talked to the control room employee what extra education he has. well there is a one year course and here is the funny part, nobody fails in this course.
Without these kind of far-sighted policies, Europe would eventually be thrust back into war. I mean, look at how Germany already dominates the EU's financial decisions. After a few more decades, German power would be so great that a coalition of other nations would have to form an alliance to restore the balance of power. Terrible wars would result.
Germany is doing us all a favor by learning from the positive example of the Hongxi Emperor. By burning the fleet of their power generating capability, Germany's future will be more like China: waning influence followed by foreign colonization. Kudos to them for taking the peaceful way out!
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/fallout. Correlation is not causation. They may be related but there are a lot more people around that there was in the time of the Curies and a lot of the things that people died of back then are far less prevalent.
Cancer is a bigger problem and some most definitely is related to radioactivity. We definitely need to deal with that. Closing down all nuclear activity will not do this. It will help the uninformed feel good. It will not make the world a better place. It will make life harder - unless you think that we can make up the deficit from renewables? I suggest you read up on that myth too,
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
EDF stock or german coal mines stock ? Stock price probably adjusted by now, so maybe I should buy stocks from companies proving tratment for asthma in Germany ?
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's running.
But people don't work like that. They see that one day this land was fine. And the next day after a nuke disaster. It's now super fucked for a great many years.
Where coal is a gradual fuck of the entire area. Not quite as noticable. And you CAN put alot of work into cleaning coal stack output. We just never really have. Yet.
Anywhere the epic fuckups of humans and the epic fuckups of nature can wipe out an entire chunk of land for decades... Is most likely something we shouldnt allow to happen. And that means not using nuke power till we're much much more capable of preventing worst case failures. And we're a long time from that just due to plain human greed and shortsightedness.
Good for germany.
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.
This is a groundbreaking turn from the country already leading the world in renewable energy.
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 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 chance to dispel illusions regarding the technical viability of thorium, fast breeder reactors, fusion and other nuclear chymeras.
https://dalgamotor.wordpress.com/ - Elektronik beyinlere ozgurluk asisi (Turkish)
Maybe so, but when they close down their nuclear plants, Germany will have trouble meeting its CO2 emissions targets. The problem is not so much about generation capacity (anyone can build coal-fired stations), but doing so within agreed targets
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Now I don't have to go to demonstrations anymore, this is what I was hoping for. And for all you pro-nuclear haters out there, eat lederhosen!
If a nuclear reactor is underground (let's say, 100 m below surface), then in case of radiation leak, a simple covering of the reactor with dirt will solve the problem.
Is this realistic?
The greenies now go laughing to the next polls, and 5 years later someone else will go laughing to the polls when personal electricity bills get too expensive and nuclear is sold as "cheaper".
Modern democratic politics is pathetic. Politicians are not interested in change, improvements or ideals - they do whatever wins them polls and votes and gives them airtime - so they can retire out of politics, famous and into a lucrative private sector career.
One of the challenges with modern democracy is that government mandates usually last only 4 or 5 years at most. Any commitments made beyond the current term are essentially meaningless. If peak oil predictions turn out to be true, it might be very difficult for Germany to avoid nuclear power in the 2020s, unless the entire population dramatically reduces power consumption.
What the last year or so of arguments about discontinuing nuclear power plants, carbon dioxide "pollution", outlawing of agricultural chemicals, the continued drive to less and less power consumption, more and more use of natural materials, the slowing of technical progress (except as relates to lotus land type entertainment products) combined with the debt crisis is many western states just says to me that western civilization has already past its peak and we're just riding the downhill slope into obscurity.
You'll notice that the other competing states aren't calling for ends to power generation, ends to population replacement. China, India or the burgeoning Islamic religion that wants to create a new world state aren't going to be as liberal and caring to make themselves go extinct to save the planet. They'll keep generating power by whatever means possible whether it's building a new coal fired power plant a week or building newer technology nuclear reactors and they'll make sure their population controls don't drop below replacement rates. China has been easing up on their one child per family rules for a while now.
If you want a place in the future you might as well do as I've seen many do now. Get your higher education and jobs in China or India. They'll be leading humanity into the future not the West.
As for me, I'm just old enough to see this on it's way but will be cozily dead before the end really comes. (unless the US falters and doesn't raise it debt ceiling in time. Now that might be something to see. The cascade of state failures would be impressive.)
Magic fairy dust? Oil will be out of the question by then. Too expensive. Natural gas will work - for a while, until everyone starts doing it and the remaining gas fields, which deplete *much* more quickly than oil fields start running out. Coal? That too, will work, for a while, but the situation there is analogous to peak oil. It's not that there isn't a lot of it; it's that what's left is expensive to get, with a much lower energy return than the cheap, close-to-the-surface, low sulfur coal we used to be able to get.
2022 seems like a goodish date. IBGYBG as the saying goes and the public, shivering in their homes during the first cold winter, will start voting sensibly again.
Oh, and before you start in with an innumerate response about how we'll replace it all with wind, solar and faith, I suggest you review some numbers at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil so you sound like less of an idiot.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Germans have long been known for their general intellect and logical reasoning. Here they are, reacting out of fear instead of surveying the situation and determining where safety can be improved. I'm dumbfounded.
Nuclear power is just about the best there is. Zero emissions and fairly low maintenance. The only problems that seem to exist are those that could have been prevented with monitoring and maintenance.
As energy-related disasters go, we have seen far more tragic things come from oil spills and coal mines than we have seen from nuclear plants and yet people aren't falling all over themselves demanding the shutdown of every coal and oil burning power plant. And the crap that comes from burning those do far more harm to humanity and wildlife -- noticed the problems with mercury in the fish? Fish used to be a healthy food and now it can give you cancer.
Nuclear power is "scary." I get that. Guns are scary. Fear and reaction, fear and reaction. Stop running around like herds of animals and pause to think for a moment. Even Chernobyl hasn't caused a huge global impact on the planet and that one was pretty bad. People didn't start shutting down power plants then... why? Oh that's right, because it was the Russians who built that and we all know Russians don't built for safety or reliability so we can dismiss this case. But Japan? The Japanese are perfect and never put profits before safety so the problem must be the technology! Ban it!
There is a big picture. People would do themselves a world of good to look at it once in a while.
Dr. Bob. Dude, you're a nutbag. Take some time out and look at your world from an objective cause-and-effect perspective. My father's a freak like you -- thought he could cure muscular dystrophy with prayer and the anointing of oils. Now I have two dead half-brothers who suffered 'til the very last... oh if only we knew what chiropractic care could have done to heal their misery. Get with real life.
It's interesting to see so many comments here which express a huge amount of narrow thinking (non-competitive sissy couch syndrome).
The move is really ambitious, and the road to the end of nuclear fuel usage will be hard, but we (germans) want to take the chance, and end this status quo of dependence from nuclear energy and fossil fuels. The nuclear and coal plants won't be replaced by a single source of energy, they will be replaced by a combination, and yes russian natural gas is one step because the plants will are more efficient. But some people here say russian natural gas is bad, and well it's even as bad as to use gasoline made from crude oil coming from arabia, or owing China huge amounts of money.
Actually we have a selection of technologies today at our hands and with such a vision and drive many german engineers will devellop these technologies further, it's not like that we are starting just now .. we will just speed it up a bit.
- saving energy
- better insulation
- Wind Power
- Solar Power
- Water
- Bio mass
- Fuel Cells
- Energy Storage ( synthesis gas, pressure containment, electrolysis, pump storage)
Perhaps we (germans) will fail, but then we can proudly say that we tried !
And if we are going to succeed paint the picture for yourself - I still say I smell fear !
Some idiot said once: "We choose to go to the moon, not because it's easy but because it's hard. ..."
Since nuclear energy is the only viable alternative to energy sources that are high in green house gas emissions, I can only conclude from this news that the German government has decided that either global warming is not caused by man-made greenhouse gases, or that global warming isn't all that bad.
The unwillingness of global warming alarmists to embrace nuclear energy seems to me, as someone who is not a full-time atmospheric scientist and who doesn't have 10 years to get a graduate degree in the field, to be strong evidence against the threat of man-made global warming.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Germany is scared of getting hit by a tsunami or something?
"Nuclear power is just about the best" Until it goes wrong. Which it always will because people cut corners, get complacent, don't plan for statistically inevitable events or are just plain stupid. And when it does the costs are astronomical - have you any idea of how much land in an area with a radius of twenty kilometres is worth in Germany?. If nuclear power plants had to ensure themselves fully, none would ever be built. Renewables are our future. They are clever enough to want to get a jump start on the rest of the world. Good luck to them. It is just a shame that my native Australia, with all it's natural advantages in that regard, is still wedded to coal.
So are the Germans expecting to be hit by earthquakes and tsunamis then? After all the Japanese plants were fine before the disaster.
I guess the rest of the world has come to the conclusion that since the US and China aren't going to do anything to reduce CO2 emissions, YTF should they
Du sprecken das kraut superduperlich !
Nuclear power is already relatively insignificant in Germany:
just 20 out of 160 thousand megawatts
Tuck them into underground concrete tubes and they are impregnable to nearly any disaster that wouldn't already kill everyone.
http://www.thorium.tv/en/thorium_reactor/thorium_reactor_1.php
Just drop the reactor they show in the drawing down into a 3.25 meter wide tube and cap it off with a 3 meter thick top cap of reinforced concrete.
As long as I can pump up my fake ego by burning up the next generations energy.... whatever.
Why the hell are some many uninformed comments marked insightful or informative?
1) Germany has capacities to produce a hell lot more electricity than it actually needs.
2) Estimates say Germany could easily switch off all nuclear power plants by 2017, and it would not need to import (nuclear) power.
3) Solar and wind power are sky-rocketing in Germany.
4) The short term gap will not be filled with coal, but with gas. Sure, that's not exactly great, but it will do until renewables can take that share as well.
The actual issue at the moment and in 2022 is not the amount of power, but WHERE it is produced.
The network isn't too well-prepared for decentralized energy production, and Germany is just starting to do something about that.
Using nuclear power might be desirable with a small greedy look-ahead, but I suspect there will be many events in the future where Germany can easily take a "Told you." stance.
....and while large earthquakes are not frequent in Germany, they are bound to happen eventually, and the plants are not prepared.
There are 17 available nuclear power plants in Germany. While some were down for maintenance in 2010, the remaining ones produced 22.6% of Germany's electricity.
Also in 2010, "green power" (electricity from regenerative sources) was at 16.5% in Germany.
8 nuclear power plants have been shut down in the wake of the Fukushima disaster and will remain so. With 5 down for maintenance, this leaves Germany with currently only 4 running nuclear power plants. I didn't notice any recent shortage of electricity. And obviously green power has outpaced nuclear power already.
And regarding the alleged expensiveness of green power, here's a Bloomberg article which claims it's keeping the power price down: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-21/solar-doubling-gas-glut-drive-down-german-power-prices-energy-markets.html
There are plans to have Germany completely on green power by 2050. Should be possible.
Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said the plan would uphold four priorities: Germany's standing as a top global economy, an affordable and sufficient energy supply, climate protection and independence from energy imports.
Think you could pick a more partisan source next time? I like to get my information from the most biased websites I can find, and that one doesn't quite make the cut. Maybe if they had a big hammer and sickle on the front page, and talked about the overthrowing of the proletariat through free energy for all ....
Anyway, Germany already has some of the highest energy prices in Europe, and that's even with the government already subsidizing "renewable" energy. Unfortunately, they've recently decided to cut some of those subsidies, so the average price of electricity is expected to shoot up nicely over the next year. I can't WAIT to see the prices when they reach the kind of "renewable energy" levels you're talking about. I admit I'll be experiencing more than a little schadenfreude while watching Germans chose between keeping the lights on or keeping the fridge running.
A Federal Environment Agency (UBA) report revealed that a rapid phase-out of nuclear energy would have only a modest impact on Germany’s economy.
Daily Frankfurter Rundschau reported on Friday that an assessment by the agency found that if all nuclear power plants were shut down by 2017, electricity prices would increase by just 0.6 to 0.8 cents per kilowatt hour and there would be “no significant loss” in economic growth.
A shut-down would “have substantial benefits and outweigh the modest increases in electricity prices,” the report said.
The report also said the withdrawal could be achieved without the risk of electricity blackouts because “sufficient surplus reserve capacity” exists.
It added that new power plants would need to be built to support the withdrawal but that Germany could rely on the rapid development of renewable energy sources as well as ultra-efficient natural gas-fired power plants.
http://www.thelocal.de/national/20110527-35293.html
Generating 17% from renewables is "leading the world"?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Germany has made a decision which will look like a very wise move 50 years
from now.
And all your whining will not change the course of Germany.
So quit your bitching, you sorry bunch of knowitall fuck sticks.
so whats the alteritive? Nukes have there downside but there A LOT better then Fossil fuel. I am all for solar or wind or tide power but it has to be practical.
With Social Democrat schemes in Germany, grid powers you! .....?
Less-geeky computer repair alternative for Lansing, MI
The ironic thing about Germany, is that other European nations with less regulations (and some with equal or more) will be building more nuclear power plants.
For example, take Ukraine. Currently, about 50% of all electricity in Ukraine is nuclear power. Ukraine is the site of Chernobyl. Yet, Ukraine is planning on renewing and expanding their nuclear fleet in the next decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Ukraine
The largest nuclear power plant in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, is located in Ukraine. In 2006, the government planned to build 11 new reactors by the year 2030, in effect, almost doubling the current amount of nuclear power capacity.[3] Ukraine's power sector is the twelfth-largest in the world in terms of installed capacity, with 54 gigawatts (GW).[2] Renewable energy still plays a very modest role in electrical output; in 2005 energy production was met by the following sources: nuclear (47 percent), thermal (45 percent), hydroelectric and other (8 percent).[3]
So why is Ukraine going to build more nuclear plants? Energy security. Once the gas pipeline from Russia is built under the Baltic sea, Ukraine will get cut off unless they pay same rates as rest of Europe.
So, Germany may just kill its nuclear plants. But lots of the neighbors will not be killing theirs. Keep in mind, that Germany also had plans to kill their nuclear plants after Chernobyl, then they flip flopped and now they flip flopped again.
Does this mean Germans trust Ukrainians or French more than they do themselves to run these plants safely??
Why is this tagged with "idiocracy"? Getting rid of a megadeath technology is idiotic? Wait until you'll have your own nuclear power accident with millions of dead people, you asked for it!
The pro-nucular bias of the Slashdot audience is always amazing - technocratic and enomically ignorant.
Germany's government effectively reinstalled the former agreement which hasalready been set up with the German nuclear industry years ago, today. There is nothing new here so stop standing and looking. Germany is researching ways of substituting the meager 22% (before the most recent de-plugs of the older plants) of its Atomkraftanteil. There is a chance that other economies will ask for what Germany has to offer someday - not just on the field of renewables but also how to get rid of defunct plants and other still unsolved problems of nuclear power generation.
What the country is doing now has a grounding, or do you really think the Germans with their fetish realationship to their industry production would do such a thing head-over-heels?
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Strommix-D-2010.svg&filetimestamp=20110323124037
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/ (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).
The excess cancer deaths from Chernobyl alone are expected to be between 30,000 and 60,000 http://www.chernobylreport.org/?p=summary
Looks like nuclear power is doing its durndest to catch up with coal, which has been around longer and so has quite a head start.
pussies
This means that Germany will concentrate on Libya and not on technology to solve energy problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1356_Basel_earthquake
I think I'm investing in Finnish nuclear plants. I bet they are useful in the future europe.
tlax says: "Lol".
Does Germany have some secret plan to replace all their their nuclear power plants with a huge pile of Bloom fuel cells stashed all around the country taking a load off the main power grid? I would love to see mass production of these fuel cells so that everyone or at least every apartment complex would have one and reduce the load on the power grid and reduce the miles of power lines needed to provide power. The amount of power lost due to power lines over a large distance isn't insignificant. Not to mention in the US so many power lines are not buried, so weather and other disasters cause problems with the power lines.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1557348/bloombox-bloom-box-fuel-cell-60-minutes-kleiner-perkins-kr-sridhar-green-energy-google
They are not pie-in-the-sky. E-bay, Google and a few other silicon valley companies are already using them to help reduce their load on the power grid. Not to mention I would assume reduce electrical costs as well.
Idiots, thorium nuclear is bay far the best solution. Solar and wind simply cannot convert the amount of energy we need for the future.
The German government is obviously a bunch of complete idiots. I feel sorry for the German people.
This is a groundbreaking turn from the country already leading the world in renewable energy.
not a groundbreaking turn at all - the current government is merely backing out of its own plans to steer away from a process that had been running since 2000.
(it's not worth filling in the blank as I expect it to change the next time there's an election or when the higher power bills start arriving - whichever is the sooner.)
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
We have to remember that Germany is able to have interminent source of electricity through renewables due to the fact that it has many interconnects with neighbouring countries like france etc and is able to import electricity when required and export electricity when wind is at it's max... So in a sense it is made possible by the fact that France has nuclear power at base load and has capacity to export electrcity..
Yeah. Right. Total non-sense. German overreaction and wimpyness.
The last time I heard that it was as german funds, banks and privateers were hesitant to invest in the US housing market.
Listen:
This is the nation that had a significant influence in the invention of nuclear power. THEY INVENTED THE F*CKING STUFF! Nuclear plants all over the planet are run with german hightech. And yet, in this nation of Über-technologist, the effing government party, the CDU, well know to lube up and bend over for the industrial complex in general (and the gridpower giants in particular) whenever the occasion arises
has concluded that
a) The risk is to high.
b) The long-term costs hugely outweigh the benefits of nuclear power.
c) Nobody, and I mean *NOBODY* can take on responsibility for their deadly toxic garbage for a time period of 50 000 years.
d) There are no eternally safe storages for nulear waste.
e) The existing safe storages for nuclear waste are leaking as we speak and the Atomaufsichtsbehörden have a huge f*cking problem on their hands. Which taxpayers will have to pay up for.
d) It's easier than we thought to cover all power needs with renewable sources, *excluding* the burning of coal and/or oil.
They've shut down Kalkar, before it even was finished.
There wasn't even a particularly huge protest wave about that one, compared to AKW Brokdorf. And yet they shut it down *after* it had already become the most expensive building in the history of mankind. (More expensive than the Pyramids in Egypt measured in GDP equivalent!)
They shut down the reprocessing plant WAA Wackersdorf. Not the protesters, which were quite vocal I might add. Some beancounter in the fricking ultra conservative techno-romantic Bavarian state-government figured the numbers just didn't add up and canceled the damn thing with the stroke of a pencil. .... And on and on and on ...
Believe me, I too wish it were different. Harnessing the power of the sun and universe here on earth to do great powerful things, Foo Foo Wah Wah. And all that 70ies technocratic romanticism. I'm all for it, really. Heck, my Grandpa worked with Grumman on the lunar lander, as did my dad. I'd love to have a working technocracy, I'm a nerd-kid of the 70ies, for crisakes!
BUT:
The current state of net-positive nuclear power is to risky, to expensive to build, to expensive to maintain, the waste can't be stored safely for the required amount of time, etc. pp.
And nuclear power thus IS NOT FEASIBLE!.
Those are the facts. End of story.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Nuclear waste of long half life is very weak radioactively (U235 is much more likely to kill you by good old fashionned heavy emtal poisonning). On the covnerse very short half live means evry radioactive. The reason is simply, if you have 1 mole with an activity of 10000 years , using the reverse exponential law, you get only a few beckerel, whereas with a half life of a few minutes you will get enormous quantity of beckerel. Naturally it also then depends if your radioactivity is beta, gamma or alpha. Unless ingested alpha is relatively easily stopped and in comparison much less dangerous than gamma or beta.
The bottom line is that a 10000 year radioactive waste is much much less dangerous than the 100 year half life one. So the problem is not, and has NEVER been the waste which will be there in 20000 years. The problem is the short lived one , and the eventual secondary decays. And frankly, all things considered, we have much greater problem with toxic waste, than with radioactive waste.
But there's a smaaaaaal issue.
The nominal power output is about 4 times the average output. Yep, inland wind farms typically work at 25% of their nominal power. Offshore wind powerplants can reliably produce about 50% of their nominal power.
That's a dirty little secret of wind power.
Most of these so called 'studies' assume that:
1) There won't be growth in electric power consumption.
2) There'll be significant improvements to the whole grid.
3) There'll be significant improvements to the generating technology.
4) Capital is unlimited.
5) Optimal circumstances for their particular brand of renewable power are universal.
I haven't yet seen _any_ report which doesn't make at least two of these assumptions.
Realistically, it's either fossil fuels or nuclear power for the next 50 years or so.
Why nuclear power will never supply the world's energy needs May 11, 2011 by Lisa Zyga http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html/ As Abbott notes in his study, global power consumption today is about 15 terawatts (TW). Currently, the global nuclear power supply capacity is only 375 gigawatts (GW). In order to examine the large-scale limits of nuclear power, Abbott estimates that to supply 15 TW with nuclear only, we would need about 15,000 nuclear reactors. In his analysis, Abbott explores the consequences of building, operating, and decommissioning 15,000 reactors on the Earth, looking at factors such as the amount of land required, radioactive waste, accident rate, risk of proliferation into weapons, uranium abundance and extraction, and the exotic metals used to build the reactors themselves. âoeA nuclear power station is resource-hungry and, apart from the fuel, uses many rare metals in its construction,â Abbott told PhysOrg.com. âoeThe dream of a utopia where the world is powered off fission or fusion reactors is simply unattainable. Even a supply of as little as 1 TW stretches resources considerably.â His findings, some of which are based on the results of previous studies, are summarized below. Land and location: One nuclear reactor plant requires about 20.5 km2 (7.9 mi2) of land to accommodate the nuclear power station itself, its exclusion zone, its enrichment plant, ore processing, and supporting infrastructure. Secondly, nuclear reactors need to be located near a massive body of coolant water, but away from dense population zones and natural disaster zones. Simply finding 15,000 locations on Earth that fulfill these requirements is extremely challenging. Lifetime: Every nuclear power station needs to be decommissioned after 40-60 years of operation due to neutron embrittlement - cracks that develop on the metal surfaces due to radiation. If nuclear stations need to be replaced every 50 years on average, then with 15,000 nuclear power stations, one station would need to be built and another decommissioned somewhere in the world every day. Currently, it takes 6-12 years to build a nuclear station, and up to 20 years to decommission one, making this rate of replacement unrealistic. Nuclear waste: Although nuclear technology has been around for 60 years, there is still no universally agreed mode of disposal. Itâ(TM)s uncertain whether burying the spent fuel and the spent reactor vessels (which are also highly radioactive) may cause radioactive leakage into groundwater or the environment via geological movement. Accident rate: To date, there have been 11 nuclear accidents at the level of a full or partial core-melt. These accidents are not the minor accidents that can be avoided with improved safety technology; they are rare events that are not even possible to model in a system as complex as a nuclear station, and arise from unforeseen pathways and unpredictable circumstances (such as the Fukushima accident). Considering that these 11 accidents occurred during a cumulated total of 14,000 reactor-years of nuclear operations, scaling up to 15,000 reactors would mean we would have a major accident somewhere in the world every month. Proliferation: The more nuclear power stations, the greater the likelihood that materials and expertise for making nuclear weapons may proliferate. Although reactors have proliferation resistance measures, maintaining accountability for 15,000 reactor sites worldwide would be nearly impossible. Uranium abundance: At the current rate of uranium consumption with conventional reactors, the world supply of viable uranium, which is the most common nuclear fuel, will last for 80 years. Scaling consumption up to 15 TW, the viable uranium supply will last for less than 5 years. (Viable uranium is the uranium that exists in a high enough ore concentration so that extracting the ore is economically justified.) Uranium extraction from seawater: Uranium is mos
15TW = 15,000 Nuclear Reactors. (Approx. one accident a month.)
Partisan? Ofcourse, it's a politicised issue! Do you cry "partisan!" if i link to Dawkins in a creationism vs. evolution debate? No? Obviously what matters is if the arguments are valid not that some people are "partisan" to the arguments.
Hammer and sickle and the proletariat? please grow up beyond the mind of a cold war victim. ("overthrowing of the proletariat" made me laugh though, next time try "the proletariat overthrowing capitalism" or similar to avoid embarassment)
If you had spent half the time writing this drivel to actually research this issue, you would know that fossil and nuclear have been subsidized through the roof for half a decade now, right from R&D to purchasing guarantees to insurance. Subsidized renewables? On an absolute scale sure (and we should have more of that), on a scale relative to non-renewable energy, renewable subsidies are a joke.
https://dalgamotor.wordpress.com/ - Elektronik beyinlere ozgurluk asisi (Turkish)
Partisan? Ofcourse, it's a politicised issue! Do you cry "partisan!" if i link to Dawkins in a creationism vs. evolution debate? No? Obviously what matters is if the arguments are valid not that some people are "partisan" to the arguments.
It's nice of you to assume that my answer would be "no", but you happen to be wrong. Debates are pointless. Trotting out the newest poster boy for either side isn't particularly convincing. I want to see hard data from a non-partisan source, not talking points repeated ad-nauseum.
Hammer and sickle and the proletariat? please grow up beyond the mind of a cold war victim. ("overthrowing of the proletariat" made me laugh though, next time try "the proletariat overthrowing capitalism" or similar to avoid embarassment)
It's true, I'm not up on my double-speak. Never needed it much. Thanks for the lesson!
If you had spent half the time writing this drivel to actually research this issue, you would know that fossil and nuclear have been subsidized through the roof for half a decade now, right from R&D to purchasing guarantees to insurance. Subsidized renewables? On an absolute scale sure (and we should have more of that), on a scale relative to non-renewable energy, renewable subsidies are a joke.
Now that's funny, right there :)
I would have thought Germany, with it's technological leanings and expertise, would have been more resistant to knee-jerk reactions about nuclear power. But I guess politicians are the same no matter where you are - a bunch of pussies.
Nuclear is a great power source. Sometimes stuff blows up but it is almost always because of human error.
The media is so sensationalist that it managed to make people seriously believe that nuclear plants were very dangerous, to the point of forcing Germany, the main power behind the EU, to throw its economy and society down the gutter, depend more on other countries, and pollute more?
Nice.
Please keep in mind that Germany's CO2 emission per capita is half of US and Germany has committed to CO2 reduction targets. The way forward will be not more coal but saving of energy.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
simple fact is that modern civilization in it's present form is unsustainable. am i saying modern civilization will collapse? no. worst-case scenario, life becomes very wretched and expensive as the Earth becomes less able to sustain modern civilization. how bad will it get and how soon? i don't know, but i'm glad i won't be alive 100 years from now.
what can be done to make modern civilization sustainable?
1. Population control
2. lots of directions to go here...
a.
- move power generation and manufacturing to the moon or other lifeless bodies in space.
- find cheap methods of transporting energy and goods from those extra-terrestrial locations.
- find cheap methods of reusing waste on Earth or transporting it off Earth
b.
- practical fusion
- find cheap methods of reusing waste on Earth
c.
- improve and rely solely on solar, wind, hydro, and other forms of clean, natural energy generation here on Earth
- improve energy efficiency of all devices
- find cheap methods of reusing waste on Earth
Please note that while there are many options for #2, Population Control is a required part of the solution. The more successful #2 is, the less population control you need.
If this goes off, Germany won't have much trouble shutting down their nuclear plants.
Solar has the potential to power the entire world, even with current efficiencies. Direct conversion of solar to eletricity is good for small devices only, if you want to generate MWs with low cost and environmental impact you want to boil water and use the good ol turbines.
What we need is good transmission lines (those guys want to do it with DC lines, but a hot superconductor would be ideal), political stability, and people willing to work in desertic areas.
As for the night time, there are ways of storing the thermal energy generated during the day.
Renewables are more expensive and pesky than oil, and it is not the magic bullet of fusion power, but yes, we can stop burning oil and coal and live just fine.
Excellent news. News . Watch the pro nuke shills go ballistic with their ususal lies now. (:
And also back in reality (instead of nuclear reactors run on magic beans land) nobody has yet seen any of those "radioactive particles" coming out of the stack despite the technology to do so being available since the 19th century (spectroscopy). They haven't put up since the wild claims of 1978 so it's time to shut up.
Coal kills a lot of real people in real ways without making shit like this up. This radioactive coal bullshit was part of a stupid 1970s PR campaign to attempt to make the general public worry less about nuclear waste from civilian nuclear power plants. It should be buried and forgotten like all other old lies in advertising. There's almost a weekly death toll of coal miners in accidents let alone the other problems with coal - it's a pity idiots like the GP poster don't focus on real things like that instead of a failed PR fantasy.
It's worse than that - it wasn't a study but a newsletter article by a guy better known for his books about cars and moonshining. Near the end of the article it goes on about how OMG terrorists! can make an OMG nuclear bomb! from the ash heaps at power stations. Getting an idea of the bullshit level yet? Meanwhile using the data from his references you can show that it would take more than 220,000 tons of the most radioactive coal he could find to equal enough material to give you the famous banana dose! Work it out for yourself from his numbers and googling banana dose in equivalent units if you like. The article citing the bullshit in the newsletter article was very much a low point for Scientific American.
Coal kills real people in real ways without this PR driven fantasy of "coal is nuclear too".
E=MC2 if you understand it even to a small degree you understand windmills and solar panels are in large part foolishness.... we can run the entire city of San Francisco on just 6 oz. of matter and do so for 5 full years..... Nuclear... renewable energy is what airheads dream of. It will never replace Nuclear or come even close... it's folly. Nuclear is by far superior to anything we have, including gas, oil, coal..... don't build on faults or any other unstable platforms and Nuclear is extremely safe and the waste is easily housed and managed.... it's politics and ignorance ( suppose I'm being redundant) that has the uneducated frightened of Nuclear.
International Atomic Energy Agency
Another good example of Mass Hysteria by the idiotic crowd. People are afraid of nuclear power because of what happened in Japan. Well, there was a 9.1 earthquake in Japan (which didn't even damage the powerplants) followed by a massive tsunami. What Germany got do do with it? Italy is going to a referendum and it's said that close to 90% will vote against nuclear power. People are stupid, but here on /. we already knew that.
I did not see any numbers about the amount of radioactive substances in that footnote, just "among which". Care to provide a link to actual numbers that support the claim in the GP's link?
I did some very basic calculations a while ago.
If all nuclear plants in Germany would all be replaced by coal plants, the average annual carbon footprint per german citizen would raise 1.5 tons from 9.5 tons to 11 tons of CO2. The average carbon footprint of a US citizen is about 20 tons.
This is the math (data from http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromerzeugung):
g CO2/kWh nuclear energy: 66
g CO2/kWh coal: 900
kWh/year produced by nuclear plants: 135 *10^9
#germans: 80 * 10^6
(135 * 10^9 kWh *(900 g CO2/kWh -66 g CO2/kWh))/(80*10^6 germans) = 1407375 g CO2/german
This would set back the german CO2 emmision to the status in 1998 http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=en_atm_co2e_pc&idim=country%3ADEU&dl=de&hl=de&q=co2+pro+kopf .
Germany wasn't going to be spending a lot of money maintaining those nuclear plants and building new ones unless there was going to be a similtaneous Greek, Spanish, Irish and Icelandic economic miracle.
Civilian nuclear power is finished unless viable reactors of a small size (for safety) and small cost are produced which will reduce the huge upfront capital expediture pain that has been preventing construction just about everywhere. There are some options but they need a bit of R&D.
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.
This my friend is where you show a complete lack of understanding behind the principles of process safety. Safety is NOT expensive. Please repeat that after me, Safety is NOT expensive. Safety comes in good design.
So Fukushima nuclear plant melted down because the cooling water systems failed after getting hit by a tsunami. How about simply not building them in an area where they can be struck by tsunamis or hit by earthquakes. Your German reactor had issues with the cold? Why not locate buildings indoors and heat the room through waste heat of the reactor.
You see fundamentally designs have changed a lot to go for inherent process safety. There exist reactors that can't possibly melt down, reactors that can dissipate to a safe state on a complete loss of power to all parts simultaneously, reactors that can run on the waste of other reactors without requiring re-processing. These designs have 40 years of process safety experience in them and cost not a cent more than the reactors of 40 years ago.
Retrofitting safety into an outdated reactor limping on its last legs is expensive these should be shut down. But the fundamental problem with nuclear is people like YOU, people who think because the dinosaurs are unsafe and economical that we should not invest in future technologies. Did you also cry from the hills that cars didn't have seatbelts, airbags, or ABS and that the only logical solution is to shut down the entire card industry? If not, why? After all more people die in car accidents in a single year than the nuclear industry has ever killed even if you take into account the bombs.
Nuclear power is releasing uninimaginable quantities of waste, which contains all the elements you named, and much more, in a radioactive isotope version. This is also stored in unsafe places, and has to be stored for millions of years. Who will care of that in 20 years, when nuclear power will disappear ? Nobody. And it will contaminate large territories, it already started at places like Mayak, Tchernoby, Fukushima, TMI, Windscale, La Hague, etc.
Good for France, they will buy even more of our nuclear energy !
You're so fucking stupid it makes me laugh. You have no clue and you don't even have anything backing your bullcrap up. Why don't you go away you clueless trolling douchebag?
sad new for you, California now gets 60% of its energy from natural gas, up from 40% in just 3 short years. Fossil fuels are one viable alternative to nuclear, California chose that. Enjoy your fossil fuel future.
No tsunamis that I know about, but there have been quite a few earthquakes which I have personally experienced. None on the scale that are common in Japan, for sure, but there were some. And nobody can really be sure that there won't be even more severe quakes or even volcano eruptions in Germany in the near future. There are quite a few sleeping but far from inactive volcanoes.
Merkel's spokesman says whatever it takes to get votes. By the time the shit hits the fan, Merkel is out of office and doesn't have to worry about it anymore. Remember, this is the same woman who said that it didn't matter that here defense minister lied and had copied almost his entire Ph.D. thesis from other sources.
Germany's CO2 emissions and energy consumption are currently no better than many other European countries on a per capita basis, despite its claims of being so environmentally conscious and successful at managing its energy usage.
Getting rid of nuclear power means one thing for Germany: a large increase in gas imports from Russia. Now, what could possibly go wrong with Russia being able to shut down the German economy at the touch of a button? Heck, Russia doesn't even need an army anymore to pressure Germany (not that Germany would fight back), they just need to hint at "slight technical problems with the pipeline".