"It is difficult to choose between A, B and C, therefor I have to choose D." never made any sense as an argument. Microsoft only wins because it is pre-installed and therefor the default choice for most. Those who know something about Linux and want to avoid the hassle can just pick some conservative default which works for them and then stay with it. For me Debian with XFCE has been working fine for years in many settings and without any hassle at all.
You are right that such effects could make sense in a different context. When I say the argument does not make sense to me I mean that there is no inherent reason why it should apply here. It is just an arbitrary story which could be true in theory when knowing nothing about the specific situation, but there is no compelling reason to believe it is true in this context. And in fact it is not what scientist believe to be true.
Your 'thermostat theory' does not make sense to me and I have never read about this in the scientific literature. Obviously, if it would be healthier to produce "protective-molecules" evolution would cause production to increase even without additional radiation until the overall optimum (considering all trade-offs) is reached. Why additional radiation should then be helpful is beyond my understanding.
This is not the scientific consensus. The scientific consensus is that ionizing radiation is harmful at any level and this has been demonstrated even for very low doses. For example, in this study which demonstrated the risk of leukemia and brain tumors from CT scans in childhood (published in the Lancet, no less): https://www.thelancet.com/jour...
Of course, as others have pointed out. the chemical risks from uranium are much higher than the radiological risks which are very low, but this does not change the fact that risk of ionizing is non-zero even for very low doses. Maybe Ann Coulter is not exactly the best source of information.
It is absolutely what the data says. But you are right that the risk is very small, I just disagreed to the "no harm" nonsense which is clearly against scientific consensus. But cost is a different topic: Nuclear is more expensive than renewables. This why it is dead no matter what we discuss here.
"Is a lot of radiation in a short time worse than a small amount of radiation over a long period? We don't know but there does seem to be a base level of background radiation below which there is no harm."
The current scientific consensus is that there is no safe level below which there is no harm. There is a minority which claim otherwise but this but this is not the opinion of most scientists. Our best understanding of how ionizing radiation affects the body suggests that there is no safe level and large scale studies (.e.g from CT exposure) so far all agree with this even to relatively low levels.
You pay this in addition to other costs for nuclear which are already so high that nobody really invests in nuclear anymore. Also the deaths per TWh you refer to from a random source on the internet is not plausible as it obviously ignores excess deaths from radiation which is hard to estimate but also can't be ignored completely.
But I don't see how you come to the conclusion "Germany needs a massive expansion of its subsidized reserve capacity and they are unwilling to commit to doing so for now." From the practical point, we have more than enough plants and for a reserve it is not horrible if they are still coal or lignite as they would not usually be used. And wasn't the criticism of the EU quite the opposite: that the capacity reserve isn't really necessary and essentially an instrument Germany uses to subsidy it's industry in a non-compliant way.
2 days of imports in December doesn't imply that Germany needed to import power, just that it was cheaper than generating it. Yes, as coal is removed the current excess capacity will also be reduced. But I am not really sure why you are so concerned, Germans always make sure everything is 100% safe and overengineered. There were many studies and simulations than you can safely run the grid with a lot of renewables if take the right actions (e.g. build north-south power lines). In contrast to what all the nuclear proponents on slashdot believe, France is in fact the country which is in trouble with their inflexible and aging nuclear fleet. France currently is not fully self-sustained as it regularly has to import power for prolonged periods of time (e.g. if demand is very high due to electric heating or if there a several nuclear plants down for some reason such as a heat wave).
But that is not important - get this: Germans pay other countries for taking over excess electricity that wind and solar produce. They pay others to take it. No wonder they pay the highest prices for electricity on the local market. I guess this should be no surprise - the bolsheviki that rule here have miserable success record in anything even remotely touching economy.
And this is also easily debunked. According to the data [1] renewables tend to produce power when demand is high and also price is high. Negative prices are rare.
According to several news article the situation on the 14th was caused by a technical fault ([1]). There was also easly enough wind power so that conventional plans were running on a low level and Germany continuously exported power during that day (source: https://www.energy-charts.de./ So your implied claim that there was not enough power generated by renewables during that time is obviously wrong. In fact, it seems that except for a couple of hours in the evening of the 24th power exports exceeded imports on all days in January. Heise blames France and remembers that there are regularly problems when demand in winter due to electrical heating is high [2]. In know, this does not fit the story of bad renewables and good reliable nuclear power.
This is a myth. Germany exports a lot of power during all times of the year and never relies power from France. For example in 2018: Power exports: 81 TWh, Imports: 31 TWh. (source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...)
The grid in Germany is extremely stable (compared to the rest of the world including US). There are a lot of simulations, planning, etc. to keep it this way and the conclusion of such studies(including by Fraunhofer) was that you can add a lot of renewables (up to 60% and maybe more) before you have to think about storage. Energy prices might make exports a little bit more expensive, but as Germany is extremely competitive and usually criticized for exporting too much (e.g. by Trump) this is hardly a problem. Also: the alternative, adding nuclear power would be much more expensive.
I just quote from the article you cite and let the readers judge themselves whether what you say is even remotely capturing the reality of what is happening in Germany:
"Germany's 2019 hard coal imports seen rising after mining ends"
"Germany is expected to import 45 million tonnes of hard coal this year, up roughly 1.4 percent from 2018 despite mounting competition from renewable energy, as the closure of domestic mines reduces domestic supply, importers said on Friday. The total would comprise an estimated 30 million tonnes for power generation and 15 million tonnes of coking coal and coke, products used in steelmaking, data from lobby group VDKI showed. Germany's last two hard-coal mines, in the west of the country, closed at the end of December under a deal to stop unprofitable mining in favour of imports. The pair had contributed an annual 2.6 million tonnes of power station feedstock."
"Despite the forecast rise, there could be import losses in 2019 as a result of a long-term national plan, due within the next fortnight, on phasing out coal, VDKI said. The projected increase would also be from a weaker base.Volumes in 2018 declined by 13 percent year-on-year to 44.5 million tonnes as renewable energy gets priority on grids, elbowing out thermal plants' output. Steam coal imports for power stations alone fell 17 percent to 30 million tonnes. Green power made up 40 percent of total generation in 2018, resulting from Germany's politically driven process to replace fossil fuels. VDKI estimated the addition of green power plants lost it 3 million tonnes of imports last year, while relatively high solar production in a hot year also played a part."
He is merely a boring troll. Just look at all the insults and easily debunked statements he makes. The sad thing is some of them are modded up by nuclear proponents, although this is bad strategy because it only makes their side look stupid.
It is a myth that Germany relies on nuclear power from French. In 2018, Germany net-exported 50 TWh of electricity. In fact, is quite the opposite as France regularly has to import electricity when nuclear plants are offline for various reasons.
Actual numbers on coal use for electricity production in Germany in TWh from 2008-2018 lignite: 150.6 145.6 145.9 150.1 160.7 160.9 155.8 154.5 149.5 148.4 146.0 coal: 124.6 107.9 117.0 112.4 116.4 127.3 118.6 117.7 112.2 93.6 83.0 I know it is an annoying inconvenience to look at actual data before having an opinion, for those who want to learn, the source is here:https://www.ag-energiebilanzen.de/ (PDF below "STROMMIX")
Slashdot Mirror
"It is difficult to choose between A, B and C, therefor I have to choose D." never made any sense as an argument. Microsoft only wins because it is pre-installed and therefor the default choice for most. Those who know something about Linux and want to avoid the hassle can just pick some conservative default which works for them and then stay with it. For me Debian with XFCE has been working fine for years in many settings and without any hassle at all.
And yet, there are high levels of Cs-137 in wild boar from eating mushrooms in some regions of Germany:
http://www.spiegel.de/internat...
You know, theory is nice and all a that, but the underpinning of science is still to always look at the data.
Yes, excellent.
Most of Germans research universities already cancelled their contracts and also Max-Planck and Fraunhofer societies:
https://www.projekt-deal.de/
It is nice to see that the UC system follows suit.
You are right that such effects could make sense in a different context. When I say the argument does not make sense to me I mean that there is no inherent reason why it should apply here. It is just an arbitrary story which could be true in theory when knowing nothing about the specific situation, but there is no compelling reason to believe it is true in this context. And in fact it is not what scientist believe to be true.
Also background radiation is - of course - believed to *increase* cancer risk: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
Your 'thermostat theory' does not make sense to me and I have never read about this in the scientific literature. Obviously, if it would be healthier to produce "protective-molecules" evolution would cause production to increase even without additional radiation until the overall optimum (considering all trade-offs) is reached. Why additional radiation should then be helpful is beyond my understanding.
This is not the scientific consensus. The scientific consensus is that ionizing radiation is harmful at any level and this has been demonstrated even for very low doses. For example, in this study which demonstrated the risk of leukemia and brain tumors from CT scans in childhood (published in the Lancet, no less): https://www.thelancet.com/jour...
Of course, as others have pointed out. the chemical risks from uranium are much higher than the radiological risks which are very low, but this does not change the fact that risk of ionizing is non-zero even for very low doses. Maybe Ann Coulter is not exactly the best source of information.
It is absolutely what the data says. But you are right that the risk is very small, I just disagreed to the "no harm" nonsense which is clearly against scientific consensus. But cost is a different topic: Nuclear is more expensive than renewables. This why it is dead no matter what we discuss here.
"Is a lot of radiation in a short time worse than a small amount of radiation over a long period? We don't know but there does seem to be a base level of background radiation below which there is no harm."
The current scientific consensus is that there is no safe level below which there is no harm. There is a minority which claim otherwise but this but this is not the opinion of most scientists. Our best understanding of how ionizing radiation affects the body suggests that there is no safe level and large scale studies (.e.g from CT exposure) so far all agree with this even to relatively low levels.
You pay this in addition to other costs for nuclear which are already so high that nobody really invests in nuclear anymore. Also the deaths per TWh you refer to from a random source on the internet is not plausible as it obviously ignores excess deaths from radiation which is hard to estimate but also can't be ignored completely.
But I don't see how you come to the conclusion "Germany needs a massive expansion of its subsidized reserve capacity and they are unwilling to commit to doing so for now." From the practical point, we have more than enough plants and for a reserve it is not horrible if they are still coal or lignite as they would not usually be used. And wasn't the criticism of the EU quite the opposite: that the capacity reserve isn't really necessary and essentially an instrument Germany uses to subsidy it's industry in a non-compliant way.
2 days of imports in December doesn't imply that Germany needed to import power, just that it was cheaper than generating it. Yes, as coal is removed the current excess capacity will also be reduced. But I am not really sure why you are so concerned, Germans always make sure everything is 100% safe and overengineered. There were many studies and simulations than you can safely run the grid with a lot of renewables if take the right actions (e.g. build north-south power lines). In contrast to what all the nuclear proponents on slashdot believe, France is in fact the country which is in trouble with their inflexible and aging nuclear fleet. France currently is not fully self-sustained as it regularly has to import power for prolonged periods of time (e.g. if demand is very high due to electric heating or if there a several nuclear plants down for some reason such as a heat wave).
And France was importing power from Germany almost all the time in January: https://www.energy-charts.de/p...
France's embarrassing large surplus causes them to import power from Germany almost continuously in the last weeks:
https://www.energy-charts.de/p...
But that is not important - get this: Germans pay other countries for taking over excess electricity that wind and solar produce. They pay others to take it. No wonder they pay the highest prices for electricity on the local market. I guess this should be no surprise - the bolsheviki that rule here have miserable success record in anything even remotely touching economy.
And this is also easily debunked. According to the data [1] renewables tend to produce power when demand is high and also price is high. Negative prices are rare.
[1] https://www.energy-charts.de/p...
According to several news article the situation on the 14th was caused by a technical fault ([1]). There was also easly enough wind power so that conventional plans were running on a low level and Germany continuously exported power during that day (source: https://www.energy-charts.de./ So your implied claim that there was not enough power generated by renewables during that time is obviously wrong. In fact, it seems that except for a couple of hours in the evening of the 24th power exports exceeded imports on all days in January. Heise blames France and remembers that there are regularly problems when demand in winter due to electrical heating is high [2]. In know, this does not fit the story of bad renewables and good reliable nuclear power.
[1] http://www.manager-magazin.de/...
[2] https://www.heise.de/tp/featur...
This is a myth. Germany exports a lot of power during all times of the year and never relies power from France. For example in 2018: Power exports: 81 TWh, Imports: 31 TWh. (source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...)
You are right.
You are right, sorry. It seems the decision to close the last mine was made in 2015.
The grid in Germany is extremely stable (compared to the rest of the world including US). There are a lot of simulations, planning, etc. to keep it this way and the conclusion of such studies(including by Fraunhofer) was that you can add a lot of renewables (up to 60% and maybe more) before you have to think about storage. Energy prices might make exports a little bit more expensive, but as Germany is extremely competitive and usually criticized for exporting too much (e.g. by Trump) this is hardly a problem. Also: the alternative, adding nuclear power would be much more expensive.
I just quote from the article you cite and let the readers judge themselves whether what you say is even remotely capturing the reality of what is happening in Germany:
"Germany's 2019 hard coal imports seen rising after mining ends"
"Germany is expected to import 45 million tonnes of hard coal this year, up roughly 1.4 percent from 2018 despite mounting competition from renewable energy, as the closure of domestic mines reduces domestic supply, importers said on Friday. The total would comprise an estimated 30 million tonnes for power generation and 15 million tonnes of coking coal and coke, products used in steelmaking, data from lobby group VDKI showed. Germany's last two hard-coal mines, in the west of the country, closed at the end of December under a deal to stop unprofitable mining in favour of imports. The pair had contributed an annual 2.6 million tonnes of power station feedstock."
"Despite the forecast rise, there could be import losses in 2019 as a result of a long-term national plan, due within the next fortnight, on phasing out coal, VDKI said. The projected increase would also be from a weaker base.Volumes in 2018 declined by 13 percent year-on-year to 44.5 million tonnes as renewable energy gets priority on grids, elbowing out thermal plants' output. Steam coal imports for power stations alone fell 17 percent to 30 million tonnes. Green power made up 40 percent of total generation in 2018, resulting from Germany's politically driven process to replace fossil fuels. VDKI estimated the addition of green power plants lost it 3 million tonnes of imports last year, while relatively high solar production in a hot year also played a part."
He is merely a boring troll. Just look at all the insults and easily debunked statements he makes. The sad thing is some of them are modded up by nuclear proponents, although this is bad strategy because it only makes their side look stupid.
Insults is all you have when confronted with actual numbers?
It may not be a huge reduction, but a reduction of 46 TWh is in no way a little change.
It is a myth that Germany relies on nuclear power from French. In 2018, Germany net-exported 50 TWh of electricity. In fact, is quite the opposite as France regularly has to import electricity when nuclear plants are offline for various reasons.
Actual numbers on coal use for electricity production in Germany in TWh from 2008-2018
lignite: 150.6 145.6 145.9 150.1 160.7 160.9 155.8 154.5 149.5 148.4 146.0
coal: 124.6 107.9 117.0 112.4 116.4 127.3 118.6 117.7 112.2 93.6 83.0
I know it is an annoying inconvenience to look at actual data before having an opinion, for those who want to learn, the source is here:https://www.ag-energiebilanzen.de/ (PDF below "STROMMIX")