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Siemens To Exit Nuclear Power Business
jones_supa wrote in with a link about the future of nuclear power in Germany. The story reads: "German industrial giant Siemens is turning the page on nuclear energy, the group's CEO Peter Löscher told the weekly Der Spiegel in an interview published on Sunday. The group's decision to withdraw from the nuclear industry reflects 'the very clear stance taken by Germany's society and political leadership.' Along with abandoning nuclear power, Germany wants to boost the share of the country's power needs generated by renewable energies to 35% by 2020 from 17% at present."
This kind of thought is too bad for the Earth, because baring fossil fuels, there is really no other source that can provide the need of our modern society. The actual unblemished truth is that the popular âoerenewableâ sources can not supply but a minority proportion of the worldâ(TM)s needs for energy. The truth is: Itâ(TM)s either coal / oil, or nuclear energy.
And the sad thing is that today, as in right now, the nuclear technologies have never been safer, so much safer than any of the currently operational nuke plants, and much more relevant to this discussion, much more safe and indeed cleaner than any, ANY, of the alternatives.
Simply the truth, folks.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Importing power from France is like importing it from one US State to another. The distances are short, Germany can be nuke-free, and can purchase electricity without building expensive infrastructure it doesn't need.
Germany may as well pay France as dump billions into constructing and maintaining reactors.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Thats OK, The Germans can rely on their good friends in Russia for a cheap reliable supply of natural gas to fire their power stations for the next century or so while they work on alternatives. What could go wrong?
If instead of trying to increase renewable capacity desperately - I'm doubtful about the execution of a very large ramp-up in renewable energy generation capacity in itself - the German government would try to decrease fossil fuel use, they'd save at least 25k lives per year as compared to shutting down nuclear plants and letting fossil fuel based ones operate.
Based on deaths per TWh(which includes Chernobyl for nuclear), it takes about 160 lives to generate one TWh by coal and 0.04 lives per TWh by nuclear fission. Germany in 2008 generated 291TWh of electricity from coal, that's about 47'000 lives lost in one year.
Keeping all the nuclear capacity and spending the ramp-up in renewables to shut down coal plants would save tens of thousands of lives. Shutting down nuclear plants forces Germany to open about 20 new fossil fuel based plants, because even with a substantial increase in renewable capacity they cannot meet demand.
This is nothing short of mass murder through ignorance.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
If they were making money hand over fist, they would not be exiting nuclear power. Because they decided to exit nuclear power, they take the opportunity to make it look like they're concerned about society.
This is not much different than companies saying "we're going green" and getting rid of postal-mail bills. They're "going green" because it saves them money. If it it was more expensive to send email than paper, you can be certain they would still be sending paper.
Advice: on VPS providers
Such posts will get 5 Insightful just because they support the nuclear industry. It has been a peculiar experience to see just how slanted the community is, especially since I was directly impacted by the Fukushima accident.
Unfortunate, though. Slashdot is usually a great place to find opinions from those with first hand experience. However, when it comes to nuclear power, it might as well be a site for the nuclear lobby. Those with first hand experience are either too intimidated to post or accused of being liars when they do.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I'll add my voice to the chorus of people supporting nuclear power as the only currently viable solution to meet the growing energy needs of the future. It's just madness at this stage to suggest that any other technology can be:
A) As environmentally friendly.
B) As cheap.
C) As reliable.
D) As adaptable (goes anywhere in the world).
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
Or be accused of mass MURDER!
Nuclear Slashdot propaganda at its finest . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Fukushima was a very unfortunate incident that was allowed to occur. People around the world are left thinking "well if the Japanese can't do nuclear safely, then nobody can".
Fact is, those plants were shoddily maintained, of old design, and sited very poorly.
In fact the location in which they were put, and both the design and location of the backup system beggars belief.
TEPCO have done the world a great disservice.
Alright, I take your post as a legitimate testament for plants working within business as usual conditions. However, you have only established that nuclear is the cleaner energy when things go as planned.
Unfortunately, things do not always go according to plan and your experience seems somewhat lacking in that department. How about I compromise and say that you are free to build all the nuclear plants you like, as long as the technology is deemed safe enough that you can actually get private insurance companies (without government intervention) to cover for potential accidents?
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Siemens always left me with a bad taste in my mouth
I'll support no nukes thanks. Not for any hippie bullshit reasons.. But just because the worst case failure modes for nuclear is so bad. And humans and nature have a long established history of fucking things up.
Yeah coal is bad. Only because we refuse to clean the output or put any modern technology into mineing it. Another fine example of humans fucking something up. There's no reason coal mineing could not be 100% automated. And theres no reason coal output can't be 0 emissions output 100% clean. Except for costs.
And if you're going to spend money... Why not spend it on wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, and work tward fusion too. You get more out of it than nuclear and then cleaning up a disaster maybe. And the hippies like it too.
Until humans are smarter and less prone to fucking things up. And we can build things to withstand nature... Nuclear power is a bad option. We've just been damm lucky this far.
Please, if we are going to have a witch hunt on fission .. let's at least put some money into nuclear fusion research. Yes Nuclear Fusion research has been progressing slow .. and yes some approaches to fusion have turned out to be much harder that previously anticipate (IEC, laser based fusion) however we shouldn't give up. There was a time when people who tried to build airplanes were ridiculed .. hell even one of the wright brothers sent a letter saying "airplanes will someday fly, but not for a thousand years" .. that was in 1901. Three years later, they built a working airplane.
They didn't give up and they followed the science. Until the idea of nuclear fusion has been falsified by a consensus of scientists, basic research into it should be funded.
Now you may ask why government should fund it and not private investors. It's because the huge development time involved doesn't make it feasible for private investors. For example, if they build a large tokamak or laser facility .. the design specifications would have to be based on parameters known today. So to ensure others cannot copy their invention (in case someone leaks the innovative ideas), they would have to patent it. But then the patent clock of 20 years will start today .. and by the time the plant is built they will only have 5 years to recoup their investment cost. Meanwhile others who didn't have to do all the hard research will be able to make great profits. Extending patent terms will not resolve this issue because then you have the issue of other people not doing work in the field and also you may be giving extended patent terms to technologies that are esential to fusion but may stifle advancements in other fields if their patents were valid for long periods --for example if the fusion plant required advanced magnets ... magnets are used in electric car motors as well. The other problems is that it provides a strategic advantage over enemy or potential enemy nations for the US to have leadership in all aspects of the technology. For example, the USA had to invest in rocket technology because the Soviet government was dumping huge amounts of capital into it --> and leadership in the space race was essential for victory in the Cold War. One other reason is that it's in the public interest that a corporation not have control of the fundamental technology.
So there are plenty of reasons why the USA should invest in fundamental technology. However the USA should not invest in the commercialization aspect of the technology (unless it's in the form of a loan for a capital intensive project like building the first few fusion plants).
If you covered 2% of the uninhabited portions of the Sahara with solar PV,
How much would that cost?
You need how many panels? Let's take this one, for example. $400 for 185W, 1.25 m2 surface. Those 2% of the Sahara will be covered by a total of 158 billion panels, costing a total of 63 trillion dollars..
That's the cost for the panels alone. Now you must install them, they are spread over a wide area of desert. You need to build access roads, you need to maintain them. You need to build special fences to avoid sandstorms. How will you keep those panels clean? Wash them? Where do you get the water in the desert to wash the panels? Who will do the maintenance on 158 billion panels?
And now, installation. Will they track the sun? I guess not, because then you would have the added cost of installation and maintenance of 158 billion tracking systems. How will you get power at night? You need batteries, plenty of them. How much will those batteries cost?
Let's face it, solar isn't scalable. Without some future technology that's still several decades away solar is not the answer that will replace nuclear power.