Germany quits nuclear power, closes its final three plants

[Roadvirus]

Well, it finally happened. Germany is out of the nuclear power game...and since it can't yet fill the gap with renewable energy, it went right back to gas and even coal. Coal! Predictably, the pro-fossil fuel, pro-pollution, pro-climate change Green Party activists are taking a victory lap. Because in Germany (and much of Europe), being "green" isn't about environmentalism as much as it's about luddism.

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^ This is an elected Green Party representative in France, a country which (unlike Germany) actually has a sensible energy policy and gets much of its energy from nuclear power. Ugh, why is the Green Party like this?

Germany decided to go the "Stupid" route, huh?

 

[jmotivator]

Thank goodness.

Nuclear energy is an outdated crappy dangerous energy source.

We Austrians are 90% opposed to nuclear energy after Chernobyl contaminated our soil with radioactive material.

Austrian woods and mushrooms are still heavily contaminated and you shouldn't eat too much.

But I collect them every summer, because I like bread dumplings with mushroom sauce so much.

Nuclear power isn't "outdated", specific reactor types are but the technology as a whole is not.

The Chernobyl disaster was a confluence of outdated technology and very poor management.

 

[poweRob]

In fairness...banning coal was the goal of MOST envrio whacko leftists...until they learned that the green energy alternative fuels programs were incapable of providing the energy needs to free the world from 'those other fossil fuels'...and then most of those same whack jobs suddenly moved to embrace nuclear.

You think coal power shouldn't be phased out?

 

[jmotivator]

Living in an area criss-crossed with fault lines, nuclear power plants scare me. Our last catastrophic earthquake was from a previously unknown fault.

The release of radioactive water from Fukushima crossed the Pacific and reached the West Coast years ago — it’s not a comforting thought.

Like Chernobyl, Fukushima was a confluence of bad planning and management. Putting a nuclear plant by the ocean in the country that coined the term "tsunami" was not the greatest idea.

But there are several newer nuclear generator technologies that have far less water requirements and whose reactions are so containment dependent that cracking the reactor chamber stops the reaction.

Moreover, various types of thorium salt reactors could actually run off nuclear waste products of older reactor types. The world could run for a very long time just on its surplus of nuclear waste materials.

 

[bomberfox]

From the outside in, support for nuclear is how I test for whether people are serious when they claim to believe in some form of climate-driven catastrophism. If they mean what they say, then they should be nuclear's biggest cheerleaders.

I know i am a fan of nuclear. Its great when you have proper safeguards in place. Im cautiously ecstatic about fusion energy though right now its not very promising.

 

[longview]

Like Chernobyl, Fukushima was a confluence of bad planning and management. Putting a nuclear plant by the ocean in the country that coined the term "tsunami" was not the greatest idea.

But there are several newer nuclear generator technologies that have far less water requirements and whose reactions are so containment dependent that cracking the reactor chamber stops the reaction.

Moreover, various types of thorium salt reactors could actually run off nuclear waste products of older reactor types. The world could run for a very long time just on its surplus of nuclear waste materials.

I have long contended that we should store the nuclear waste where we can get to it, our decedents might need it.

 

[bomberfox]

This is the dumbest, most convoluted political move I have seen in a long time... and it's totally going to screw over Germany. Reducing the energy economy will regress a society like nothing else. All in the name of environmentalism. Except now they'll have to use coal and gas to survive. Give your heads a shake. This is some top tier neoliberal, environmentalism claptrap.

This will also force Germany to rely on coal again…..

 

[bomberfox]

Nuclear energy has come a long way and if you regulate it properly, it can be clean and safe. Most nuclear power plant blunders have to do with rushed production or unregulated plants.

 

[Roadvirus]

Nuclear energy has come a long way and if you regulate it properly, it can be clean and safe.

for

Most nuclear power plant blunders have to do with rushed production or unregulated plants.

Or idiot Soviet technicians who disable the safeties before pushing a nuke plant to it's ill-advised limits.

 

[bomberfox]

for


Or idiot Soviet technicians who disable the safeties before pushing a nuke plant to it's ill-advised limits.

Yeah. A lot of nuclear power plants back in the day were also rushed geopolitical projects in the arms race. Britain’s first nuclear plant was part of their plans to reenter nuclear partnership with the US though part of why it was a disaster was the UK’s rush to create material for their bombs. To this day i dont know why US politicians were so eager to break off the partnership.

 

[venice_ca]

Like Chernobyl, Fukushima was a confluence of bad planning and management. Putting a nuclear plant by the ocean in the country that coined the term "tsunami" was not the greatest idea.

But there are several newer nuclear generator technologies that have far less water requirements and whose reactions are so containment dependent that cracking the reactor chamber stops the reaction.

Moreover, various types of thorium salt reactors could actually run off nuclear waste products of older reactor types. The world could run for a very long time just on its surplus of nuclear waste materials.

The trigger for the problems at Fukushima was the quake.

There’s no getting around earthquake faults in most of California.

Each subsequent quake reveals the flaws, lapses, and omissions in updated anti-seismic building standards.

 

[GOP Hippo]

The economy doesn't care how money is spent. All that matters is the velocity of money.

Imagine if climate change is all a hoax, and we've spend tons of money on sources of energy which don't pollute. And a bit on alternative feeds and breeds too.

We would have vast solar farms providing super-cheap electricity, and wind farms which are also pretty cheap. Your milk would taste different, and you'd be bitching about that. You wouldn't give us any credit for the cheap electricity, no you'd be bitching about cow farts and how milk tastes different nowadays.

And that's IF climate change isn't actually being caused by humans. Big ****ing if, old man.

So you think if the demands for power are met by solar, wind and........it's going to trickle down to cheap electricity?
Ha, ha ha, ha, ha ha ha ha.............................ha ha,.........................ha......!
You called me an old man. There's a trade off in life. You get smarter with age. Only a naïve fool would be thinking there will be cheap electricity.
How big of an idiot do you have to be to think after 4.5 billion years the earth could be destroyed because man used oil for 120 years? Don't trouble your young brain trying to answer that.

 

[cpwill]

Risk aversion of the plant's operators and owners. They wouldn't send staff into danger (even wearing isolation suits) to restore electricity and water. Their coast guard came by and sprayed some water, but it wasn't enough. They refused offers of help from a US destroyer which could have provided electricity. It was a human error disaster on so many levels.

Sort of. They sent people in when they could, but, the ground lines of communication were pretty much wiped out at that point; no one had really planned through "if we can't physically access the facility...". They did spray water in (which, at the time, I recall, I pointed out that ocean water came with a lot of sediment, that did build up, and create follow-on problems). I recall launching quite a lot of help from US Navy vessels, though.

Unfortunately yes. News of a "terrorist attack" would result in more causalities than an actual plant explosion. Car accidents, heart attacks, people yanked off life support.

But still, I think acclimatizing people to nuclear plants, with lots of them everywhere, would eventually reduce the public fears.

Maybe avoid putting plants in places named Diabolo Canyon would help too

How about Death Valley?

 

[TU Curmudgeon]

I'm all for reprocessing even if it's in my neighborhood.

Being on a sub tender (USS Fulton AS-11) for a few years, everyone was made aware (Nuke Safe) A few Nuke Machinist Mates and I used to handle all the secondary cooling water storage off the boats from the sub squadron tied up alongside us. We would get underway about every 6 months and dump it.

I have to commend the USN for its far seeing and environmentally responsible program for simply dumping radioactive waste into the ocean.

 

[TU Curmudgeon]

Living in an area criss-crossed with fault lines, nuclear power plants scare me. Our last catastrophic earthquake was from a previously unknown fault.

Then you should be a vociferous proponent of fracking. There isn't a faster known way of discovering those "previously unknown faults".

The release of radioactive water from Fukushima crossed the Pacific and reached the West Coast years ago — it’s not a comforting thought.

IF there were 1 Million US Gallons (1,000,000 USGal) of cooling water at the Fukushima plant (there was actually a lot less)
AND IF there 100 Quintilian US Gallons (100,000,000,000,000,000,000 USGal) of water in the Pacific Ocean (there are actually almost double that),
AND IF the cooling water from the Fukushima had a 100% chance of causing serious harm because of its radioactivity when it was released (the chance was actually less),
THEN what is the percentage chance of it causing serious harm by the time it has reached the California coast?

0.000000000001%

BE AFRAID!
BE VERY AFRAID!​

 

[TU Curmudgeon]

That and the geographic requirements for hydroelectric make it only situationally workable.

The same goes for geothermal where the earth's crust has to be fairly thin .. great in areas with active volcanism, not great everywhere else.

It requires trenches at least four feet deep. The most common layouts either use two pipes, one buried at six feet, and the other at four feet, or two pipes placed side-by-side at five feet in the ground in a two-foot wide trench.
[SOURCE - US Department of Energy]
There are two types of “fox holes”, or fighting positions. These are deliberate and hasty.

The hasty “fox hole” should be about 18 inches deep and long/wide enough for you to lay down in. This is pretty much just scraping enough dirt for you to get cover if shrapnel producing devices start landing.

A deliberate “fox hole” needs to be armpit deep. That may be anywhere from 3–5 feet depending on the soldier. It should be about 3 feet from front to back, enough space for the soldier to squat down with all of his equipment. And it should be roughly 6 feet wide, enough space for two soldiers to shift around engaging within their sectors of fire. It should also have grenade sumps on each end.
[SOURCE - The Infantry Training Manual for any army you want to pick]

In short, a fully developed "fox hole" is deep enough to begin supplying geothermal energy.

Somehow I don't quite accept that the average "fox hole" is getting down towards the bottom of the Earth's crust (between 3 to more than 43 miles [4.8 to 69 kilometers] thick).

 

[Felis Leo]

Yup. Solar might be a little safer, but you're not running a grid off of it.

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If Germany had the sun profile of California, they’d be in business. But they don’t.

 

[Northern Light]

Totally agree, except for blaming this on neoliberals. Most of us are pro-nuclear and pro-green energy!

Pro-green energy and pro-nuclear are incompatible, and it's the pro-green movement in Germany that ended nuclear power.

By neoliberal, I am not referring to liberals, just FYI.

 

[Gatsby]

Pro-green energy and pro-nuclear are incompatible, and it's the pro-green movement in Germany that ended nuclear power.

Pro-green energy and pro-nuclear are compatible because solar, wind, and nuclear power are all important components of preventing climate change and reducing air pollution. I agree that nuclear power isn't compatible with the capital-G Green movement though...those people are nuts.

By neoliberal, I am not referring to liberals, just FYI.

I know. Most neoliberals are fully on board with nuclear power. Opposing nuclear power is much more of an old-school leftist hippie thing.

 

[TU Curmudgeon]

Pro-green energy and pro-nuclear are compatible because solar, wind, and nuclear power are all important components of preventing climate change and reducing air pollution. I agree that nuclear power isn't compatible with the capital-G Green movement though...those people are nuts.

The distinction between "rationally environmentally conscious and long-term effects concerned" and "full-blown, wacko, tree-huger, dingbat" escapes a lot of "conservatives".

I have yet to find a "full-blown, wacko, tree-huger, dingbat" who wouldn't oppose ANY form of energy production because

• "_[fill in first source of energy]_ will harm the environment and we should use _[fill in second source of energy]_"

who wouldn't also oppose

• "_[fill in second source of energy]_ will harm the environment and we should use _[fill in third source of energy]_"

and who wouldn't oppose

• "_[fill in third source of energy]_ will harm the environment and we should use _[fill in fourth source of energy]_"

and (to keep the characters within the forum limits) who wouldn't op[pose

• "_[fill in fourth source of energy]_ will harm the environment and we should use _[fill in first source of energy]_".

AND who wouldn't proclaim those beliefs after driving to the protest in a gasoline/diesel powered motor vehicle (if they didn't fly to where the protest was being held in a petrochemical powered aircraft).

I know. Most neoliberals are fully on board with nuclear power. Opposing nuclear power is much more of an old-school leftist hippie thing.

Yep, left over from the days when nuclear reactors WERE as dangerous as people were saying they were and maintained by the people who haven't had a new thought since the 1960s.

 

[Port & Starboard]

I have to commend the USN for its far seeing and environmentally responsible program for simply dumping radioactive waste into the ocean.

It's secondary cooling water. Probably no more dangerous than the sun light you get every day.

 

[EMNofSeattle]

Well, it finally happened. Germany is out of the nuclear power game...and since it can't yet fill the gap with renewable energy, it went right back to gas and even coal. Coal! Predictably, the pro-fossil fuel, pro-pollution, pro-climate change Green Party activists are taking a victory lap. Because in Germany (and much of Europe), being "green" isn't about environmentalism as much as it's about luddism.

View attachment 67445104
^ This is an elected Green Party representative in France, a country which (unlike Germany) actually has a sensible energy policy and gets much of its energy from nuclear power. Ugh, why is the Green Party like this?

Well it may be a good thing. Coal results more employment, it’s cheaper, and it has fewer catastrophic risks than nuclear.

 

[Gatsby]

Well it may be a good thing. Coal results more employment,

Countries shouldn't be shutting off their power as a make-work program. I mean, you could keep everyone working by turning off the grid entirely and going back to subsistence farming, but that would be a bad thing.

it’s cheaper,

Not when the nuclear plants are already built and fully operational.

and it has fewer catastrophic risks than nuclear.

This is simply false.

 

[EMNofSeattle]

Countries shouldn't be shutting off their power as a make-work program. I mean, you could keep everyone working by turning off the grid entirely and going back to subsistence farming, but that would be a bad thing.

I am not proposing such a thing. Point out that coal is cheaper and provides more employment which is good for all of society and not Soros type globalists

Not when the nuclear plants are already built and fully operational.

There is no cost argument for nuclear power. It has everywhere been a heavily subsidized project used only to make nuclear weapons or in the case of France, is subsidized because WW2 left the French with a severe paranoia about relying on anyone. France of course has to maintain neo colonialism in Mali to get the uranium.

About the only place Nuclear energy works is in government projects like submarines, but even the US Navy gave up on Nuclear powered cruisers like the highly advanced South Carolina class and the USS Long Beach and replaced them with diesel powered cruisers. The first Navy nuclear powered ship is sitting in my hometown’s navy base with the reactors pulled and rusting into the water because it’s too radioactive to scrap. The expirement for nuclear powered merchant vessels was a failure, only one was in ever built any never made profit

This is simply false.

Yeah I’m not aware of any incident in the history of coal energy that has left an entire exclusion zone and abandoned towns like say Kyshtym. Chernobyl, or Fukashima

 

[EMNofSeattle]

Like Chernobyl, Fukushima was a confluence of bad planning and management. Putting a nuclear plant by the ocean in the country that coined the term "tsunami" was not the greatest idea.

But there are several newer nuclear generator technologies that have far less water requirements and whose reactions are so containment dependent that cracking the reactor chamber stops the reaction.

Moreover, various types of thorium salt reactors could actually run off nuclear waste products of older reactor types. The world could run for a very long time just on its surplus of nuclear waste materials.

Running a reactor off of recycled waste creates weapons grade plutonium. You’re taking waste that can simply be buried in a basin like the Wamsutter basin and turning into material which will require perpetual military guard and transport