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This reminds me of a comment by quotemstr a few days ago about the housing supply 'debate,' where the absurdity of pretending that supply and demand somehow doesn't apply to the west coast reality distortion field is called out. The math behind energy is very simple and any honest person that chose to deal in realities understood that by EOLing their nuclear supply Germany had only more fossil fuel or severe economic decline as possible futures; renewables can not make up the difference then, now or in the foreseeable future, no matter how hard we wish it could.

Yes, I know: Chernobyl. That's a cop out. Germany need not be governed by hysteria. The difference between Russian/Soviet incompetence and the results we see from France, Ontario and other well governed and highly successful nuclear systems is vast and decisive and could have provided Germany's 'leaders' with the ammo they needed to do something other than indulge anti-nook hysteria.

But that's not what happened... so burn coal instead.

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We've seen severe problems and gross negligence in American, French and Dutch reactors, as well. Oh, and in German ones, of course. And let's not forget about Japan who must certainly be counted among the "well governed and highly successful" ones. The examples are legion.

I do understand that less nuclear means more coal and that this is a difficult decision.

But nuclear fans claiming that the problem with nuclear reactors is just "stupid Russians" disqualify themselves immediately.

> We've seen severe problems and gross negligence in American, French and Dutch reactors, as well. Oh, and in German ones, of course.

Have we? The problems aren't just in Russia, but they're drastically less bad than Chernobyl.

Three Mile Island was essentially a worst case for internal meltdowns, and didn't involve any actual radiation release. Fukushima was vastly worse, but the problems revealed were remedied at similarly-designed reactors worldwide. (And most of those weren't nearly so exposed to severe storms.)

I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to with French and Dutch reactors, I'll have to look into that.

But overall, most of the things profiled as "severe problems and gross negligence" appear to have caused zero fatalities and zero radiation release. I know organizations like Rolling Stone have been running accounts of how the NRC is terrible and American nuclear plants are in crisis, but the problems raised don't actually amount to radiation risks.

I've never seen a convincing claim that the examples of actual release or meltdown risk, as opposed to mere sloppy management, are 'legion'.

> more coal and that this is a difficult decision

10,000 fatalities from coal per year in the USA alone. I agree that there's a tradeoff here, but I honestly have no idea why it's 'difficult'. Even the Chernobyl disaster is going to kill fewer people than coal kills when everything goes according to plan.

> But overall, most of the things profiled as "severe problems and gross negligence" appear to have caused zero fatalities and zero radiation release.

I'm not sure this is enough. "We almost head a nuclear meltdown in a densely populated area but zero fatalities so far!" is not inspiring confidence that there will be no fatalities in the future.

> 10,000 fatalities from coal per year in the USA alone.

Where did you get that number?

I agree that this is a tail risk situation, I don't mean to imply "no issues so far" is enough to make it safe.

Three Mile Island isn't evidence of safety just because no one died, what matters to me is that there was no realistic route beyond "shielded meltdown". A lot of the fears raised by opponents of nuclear appear to be outright impossible. (Sadly realistic fears, mostly around hot waste disposal, don't seem to get as much coverage.)

The coal number is deaths from health effects of coal burning. Estimates vary widely, but 7,500 is a minimum and 10k is conservative. It's worse per capita and per watt in other countries, too - US plants are cleanish and US coal is low-particulate. Moving China onto nuclear power would be a vastly bigger gain (even per watt) than the US.

Accidental deaths are nontrivial for power sources, but don't dominate pollution effects. Coal is mostly pollution-derived because it's so dirty, oil is a mix because rigs are dangerous, wing & solar are wholly accident-based simply because there's no lethal pollution there. Nuclear causes approximately zero deaths of any kind, but again, tail risk.

US source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-other-reason-...

Global deaths/TwH source: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener...

Thanks for the links!

In addition to the yet unsolved waste disposal problem you mentioned, there is the problem of mining the nuclear fuel. This can be quite dangerous to the miners, especially in countries with lax security standards. I would expect the most deaths due to nuclear power happen there.

It's not "stupid russians" but a completely different type of reactor that was used in chernobyl. Western reactors in use today are not of that type and do not have the same failure modes. Why does the "I'm afraid of the word nucular" -crowd not know this?

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter7.html

The reactor at Chernobyl had a failure mode that is the exact definition of "don't do that" in nuclear design textbooks.

The category of reactor that Chernobyl belonged to is grossly outclassed in terms of safety and 'meltdown' by multiple "modern" designs (produced primarily in the 50s through 70s). Even some operational since the 70s.

Chernobyl, that accident, is much more a story of piss poor crisis management set to the backdrop of poor government systems and the weaknesses of authoritarian regimes than a nuclear scare story. If citizens think their government might murder them they are less likely to take spontaneously delivered iodine pills, for example.

Chernobyl the humanitarian disaster... kinda wasn't. Most of the cancers were a highly treatable kind and didn't show up in anywhere near the predicted scale (says the WHO). Our nuclear models are _very_ conservative. The actual problems faced by them now? A poor healthcare system and high rates of substance abuse.

And for the mathematically inclined: combining Chernobyl, Fukishima, 3 Mile Island, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and imagining that disaster every year, we still hit death rates that compare favorably with the respiratory illness and cancer deaths caused by coal.

If only nuclear power were scale-able and low-carbon, we might have something worth investing in...

> I do understand that less nuclear means more coal and that this is a difficult decision.

Germany has vast financial resources at its disposal. They could go on a natural gas plant building binge and link deals to the US on imports for long durations that the US would be thrilled to do. That would help narrow the trade deficit Germany has with the US ($65 billion annually; natural gas trade could solidly knock out half of that), so killing two birds with one stone. With help from the US abundance of natural gas supply, Germany could replace half its coal power in the next ~15 years using natural gas and significantly reduce its CO2 output just from that (and a big chunk of the other half could probably be knocked out by gradual renewable growth from where they're already at).

Interesting, I wasn't thinking about US gas.

When talking about gas we're always looking at Russia, and the current geopolitical situation makes this very unattractive.

Can those amounts of gas realistically be shipped to Europe?

I'd say it's more a matter of those amounts of gas will be shipped to Europe. Right now it doesn't appear anything can stop it (unless Russia wants to dramatically drop the average price of natural gas in Europe to stop it).

The US is about to become the world's energy kingpin, surpassing Saudi Arabia and Russia in both oil and gas; that vast supply will be pushed outward:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-14/iea-sees-...

The average price of natural gas in Europe tends to be around $6, typically twice that of the US market. Once you add in the total cost of LNG (processing, transport, etc.), you get to a cost closer to $7.x to $8.x right now (that will come down with volume in the next few years, as the US is building several big new LNG terminals on the Atlantic and the Marcellus shale gas supply in the mid Atlantic is growing rapidly).

That's also before we get to technological innovation, which the US energy industry has always been renowned for, and has done wonders for the US shale industry the last decade (dramatically lowering costs, enabling the industry to survive the oil plunge and rapidly rebound, etc., entirely thwarting OPEC expectations of crushing the industry).

>Can those amounts of gas realistically be shipped to Europe?

Wait, isn't that why we're funding Al-Nusra and all manners of terrorists in Syria and overthrowing the Ukrainian government? To stop it from happening.

There were two pivotal events during EuroMaidan protests.

1. Beating of the students on 30th of November. Before that the protests were small and getting smaller.

2. Use of lethal force against protesters which lead to a lot of supporters abandoning Yanukovych making it possible to vote against him in parliament with 328/450 votes.

If both of those are acts of "overthrowing government" then US could control it on such a level, that overthrowing is just plain unnecessary.

I mean if we don't look at the global context and zoom deep into the micro day by day chronological narrative level, I'm sure we can say all overthrows are inevitable.

We can say that the Shah delivering a royal decree to dismiss Mossadegh makes the Iranian coup logically inevitable rather than looking at the CIA astroturfing for BP hegemony.

We can say that Torrijos's death is logical because he stepped in a plane at the wrong time rather than looking at the US reverting Jimmy Carter's deal to restore the Panama Canal control back to Panama

The last time this was suggested on the news (CNN, etc), I did some quick math.

To ship gas to Europe, the US will need to spend about 50B-100B+ (minimum) building LNG facilities on both port sides, and then build something like 10,000 LNG Carriers (oceanic ships) to meet demand. Which would cost another 100B+ (maybe even 1T).

After all the infrastructure is set up, the prices will be at least 2-3 what they pay now (as they have to do things to and with the LNG that Russia does not in the process of delivery).

Its not feasible, unless you want the US taxpayers to pick up the bill and then subsidize it.

These were back of the envelope calculations. It could be a factor of 10 off in either direction.

How were those numbers estimated? To go with adventured's proposal that Germany replace half of its coal power with LNG, Germany generated 284 TWh from coal in 2013. Producing 142 TWh from gas would require about 25 million tons per annum of gas (assuming 490 g CO2/kWh from gas generation in CCGT, per IPCC 2014, and working backward from CO2 to CH4 -- 178 kg of methane per MWh).

The US is already expected to add 66 MTPA of LNG export capacity by 2019:

http://analysis.petchem-update.com/supply-chain-logistics/us...

Were you perhaps estimating the numbers to replace all of Europe's thermal coal consumption?

I thought so. A pipe sounds much cheaper than boats.

> Its not feasible, unless you want the US taxpayers to pick up the bill and then subsidize it.

Oh, if that's possible, sure, thank you very much! ;-)

Why couldn't you build a submarine pipeline, instead of the ship terminals and ships?

Langeled (1166 km) and Nord Stream (1222 km) transport gas under the sea, and a US-to-Germany pipeline would only be about 5 times that distance. I estimate Boston-to-Hamburg could be done for $60 billion, and it could make stops in Newfoundland, Ireland, and Britain.

Oh, if that's possible, sure, thank you very much! ;-)

That worked for German defence policy, so there's precedent...

How do you get the gas to Europe? LNG tankers? Too expensive. If they want gas, they'd have to buy it from Russia, and they don't want to buy from Russia.

Yeah the US would hate this. We already have a huge dependence on gas. All comes from Russia.

Why would "the US" hate this? American gas exporters and producers would be happy to have steady long-term buyers. Environmentalists dislike fracking, but I think they'd be neutral to mildly supportive for gas projects that are clearly aimed at reducing coal use. A lot of Americans would be happy about cutting the US trade deficit.

I'll admit that domestic gas consumers wouldn't like this plan any more than they like other plans to increase foreign gas demand, raising domestic prices, but it's not clear that the faction benefitting from low domestic gas prices is more influential than the collective of the groups mentioned above.

We've also seen the only arguments against nuclear power be based on old reactor designs and NIMBY handwaving.

I think there is a good argument, though few people actually bring it, that nuclear reactors and radioactive material disposal can be safe and reliable, but no nuclear reactor or disposal site we are institutionally capable of building will be safe enough to trust. Ie. the problem is civilizational, not technological, inadequacy.

The argument can be further simplified: Nuclear power hasn't got a track record of being economical or safe. The costs of contaminating areas like Fukushima and Chernobyl are astronomical an uninsurable. Spent fuel is piling up. End of life costs are known to be very high, but are also unbounded and unfunded. Maybe alt-fuel reactors are the answer. Maybe the industry can be optimized based on current technology. But there is no demonstration that this is true.

According to this Scientific American article, radiation from coal has a track record of being more harmful than radiation from nuclear: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

They, however, certainly downplay the tail risk of nuclear.

From the same article:

> McBride and his co-authors estimated that individuals living near coal-fired installations are exposed to a maximum of 1.9 millirems of fly ash radiation yearly. To put these numbers in perspective, the average person encounters 360 millirems of annual "background radiation" from natural and man-made sources, including substances in Earth's crust, cosmic rays, residue from nuclear tests and smoke detectors.

Coal, oil, and even gas are dirty and dangerous. But they are investable and insurable, with less (but definitely not zero) government support.

I'm all for pricing-in the externalities. And if that makes nuclear a relatively better investment, hurrah! If new technologies turn nuclear into something supportable in normal capital markets, hurrah! But there is no proof-of-concept yet.

You mean like just last month when greenpeace activists got to shoot fireworks next to used fuel pool:

- https://phys.org/news/2017-10-greenpeace-fireworks-french-nu...

Or the still not practically solved used fuel problem. Or that Germany already now often does not run nuclear power plants (that are for now still allowed to run) because they are too expensive.

Even if the "new reactor types cannot possibly do harm" was true, that's exactly what you told us the last few decades. Every reactor was safe. It was physically impossible that all those safety systems could be overridden, defective, whatever. Impossible.

And every time we saw that it's not true.

After several decades of this we don't trust you anymore. As no sane person would.

You might even be objectively right. But your safety arguments werde wrong the first two hundred times. Why listen to your explanation of your two hundred and first attempt? Let's try something else where experience doesn't virtually guarantee us that we'll be burnt.

And coal mining and production is safe?

Nuclear has the fewest deaths per kWh, period. It's really simple. Now, the cost of bringing new ones online is prohibitive, but shutting down existing ones was really dumb.

I thought one of the major pro-nuclear power points was that old reactor designs were flawed and new designs address the issues. Isn't that point consistent with shutting down existing reactors?

No. Considering Chernobyl on its own, treating all radiation exposure cases which are above the statically insignificant cancer rate threshold as deaths, and coal is still more dangerous per kWh. [Source](http://www.the9billion.com/2011/03/24/death-rate-from-nuclea...).

After the accident, Chernobyl continued to provide power to Ukraine, up until it's last reactor was shutdown in 2000.

Deaths is just one measurement. Certainly making a sizable geo area uninhabitable is another. What about cancer is things go sideways? These are both legit insurance risks.

I'm not trying to take an anti nuke stand, just pointing out deaths isn't the whole of the risk.

It should be made clear that Hydroelectric has made an order of magnitude more land uninhabitable for human habitation than has nuclear.

Coal has made _three_ orders of magnitude more land uninhabitable for human habitation than has nuclear.

And whereas fish may thrive behind a dam, nothing humans can eat will grow in a coal strip mine, ash flow, or other coal-related topography change. Whereas in nuclear exclusion zones, wildlife flourishes.

Yes and no.

But first, I agree there are always trade offs. We have alao been horribly slow in finding better energy.

As for hydro + coal and uninhabitable land. I think it depends on what you define as inhabitable in the first place. Much of it is done in obscure (?) areas that few care about. Of course, this contributes to out of sight out of mind. None the less, this should be considered.

On the other hand, nukes are closer to population, as well as near water. And, as mentioned, for these more people are more aware of them. You can also thank Hollywood for the fear(s).

I think you really need to think about who the you is that you're addressing here.

It's very easy to dismiss any information you disagree with if you over-generalize like that.

For example: "You told us the earth was headed for a new ice age. Why should we believe you now when you say it's getting too warm?"

I agree, but I think it's pretty obvious he was addressing everyone who said: "Nuclear power is safe, those who say otherwise are not realistic".

That's my point, they're conflating everyone now saying "nuclear power is safe", with some people 60 years ago who said "nuclear power is safe". I didn't mean that who they were addressing was unclear.

You're right, I'm also sure you don't drive a car because of how unsafe they were 50 years ago as well, nor do you fly planes, because why trust them now when they lied before?

> And every time we saw that it's not true.

Every time? That seems a bit excessive does it not?

Thank you. There are also studies about childhood loicemia near nuclear power plants. Of course, these studies could be wrong or lied, but I' rather assume that the ones with a financial interest in nuclear power are downplaying its riscs on a massice scale.

> Chernobyl

Fukushima? Three Mile Island (partial only, though)? That's a (partial) melt-down every 24 years, if we start counting the nuclear age with 1945 and count till today.

If we use the numbers for civilian power plants, we need to start with the commision date of U.S.S.R. power plant "Obninsk", wich was connected to the public grid in 1954. If ending the count today, that would be 21 years. Or, if we take the last melt-down as the reset value for our clock, we will find it at 19 years, for every (partial) meltdown. With more than 500 new nuclear power plants either planned or in production, well....

Let's see, whether Molten Salt Reactors are going to show as an overall positive development...They would make things, as far as I am informed, at least a little bit safer, till we have real fusion power.

You've exhaustively listed every nuclear accident recorded and said, "That's a melt-down every 24 years" as if that were something terrible. The numbers do not support you. Nuclear has less deaths per kilowatt hour produced than coal by orders of magnitude, and even kills less people than hydroelectric, solar, or wind power.

Even if we did consider deaths from catastrophic events somehow "worse" than the occasional, not-so-newsworthy death, look at the Banqiao dam breakage. That's rarely brought up as an argument against hydroelectric power.

Nuclear is hated due to superstition and fear-mongering. Please don't add to it; it's our only thoroughly demonstrated alternative to large-scale fossil fuel consumption.

Except for renewables.

Not true. Hydro is a great example. The majority of hydro deaths are caused by dam failures. The most deadly dam failure in the world was the Banqiao Dam. It's failure caused 85,000 direct deaths and an estimated 150,000 deaths due to famine caused by destruction of cropland. Even in the US, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure lists 498 deaths in the US alone since 1945 while generating significantly less power than nuclear has in that time. And that doesn't include the tens of people who die in boating accidents related to dams every single year.

Then China had to rebuild the dam in the same location a few years later because, without the flood control that Banqiao Dam was built to provide, there was regular and catastrophic downstream flooding. Anyone who blames those deaths on hydroelectric power is being less than honest. The alternative wasn't those people not dying; the alternative was them dying from dam failure anyway, but without the dam providing power in the meantime. The dam failure seems to have been a direct result of trying to use it to control downstream flooding.

Not all damns are hydro power plants, many are just for water, the kind of steady water supply that nuclear and coal energy need.

No, surprising though it may seem, renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro have all caused more deaths proportional to the energy they have produced than nuclear.

OP wasn't referring to deaths, only that its a demonstrable alternative [1]. Some deaths might be warranted over a fuel that has no waste disposal method.

[1] Nuclear is hated due to superstition and fear-mongering. Please don't add to it; it's our only thoroughly demonstrated alternative to large-scale fossil fuel consumption.

Mentioning Fukushima while talking about Germany demonstrates his point that it's hysteria. Fukushima happened on an island that has regular monsoons, is prone to tsunamis and prone to earthquakes.

Germany is fucking boring. The rains here are moderate. One half of its coast line is a barely connected inland see that has almost no flood/ebb. The other half is protected by the UK from strong water movements. And earthquakes here, if they ever happen, are absolutely tiny.

You'd need to multiply your prediction there by maybe 100 to balance out just how much safer germany is as a country compared to japan.

I agree with rcoveson. I see your stats and say "world-wide we ONLY have an accident every 19 years? Wow that's amazing, we can produce all of our energy without carbon and only deal with one accident in the world every 19 years! Hell yeah, we solved this energy problem!" (Yes I'll agree the rate would go up as we add plants but still, that is an incredibly encouraging stat, not a depressing one)

That's known as the Gambler's fallacy. Basically, "Assuming that whatever happened before will happen again (e.g. I got away with murder last time so it'll be fine for me to murder someone again now)". Just because there have been failures doesn't mean there will continue to be failures. Consider the industry evaluates each of these issues and knows how to prevent against them in the interim. Not to mention ongoing science to improve the efficiency and stability of these systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...

> renewables can not make up the difference then, now or in the foreseeable future

Note that renewable electricity supply has actually grown faster than nuclear has declined.

https://energytransition.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/img3...

That's great, and needs to continue, but it hasn't happened organically.

There have been significant investments in economic, political, and social support of renewables which have enabled that growth. Also, the rising price of oil has made it more competitive.

Renewable energy has been promoted. Nuclear energy detractors have only advocated against it, rather than fighting the more difficult "shut down the nuclear plants and also spend money on more renewables" fight, they went with just "shut down the nuclear plants". Coal was the unintended result.

Yes the fight against coal is a challenging political battle in Germany. The social and political aspects are probably the most challenging.

There is discussion happening at high levels in government, for example the State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, Rainer Baake, used to be the head of Agora Energiewende who put out this coal phase out strategy.

https://energytransition.org/2016/01/proposal-for-a-german-c...

Export is not the metric you are looking for. Germany exports lots of solar and wind engery during storms or on hot summer days because it cannot use it. The prices for this energy are low, even negative.

This chart shows net generation. i.e. GWh/yr

Note that Germany earns more $ per MWh exported to France than vice versa. This is because on average France tends to have surpluses at night and in summer when electricity isn't in high demand. France imports electricity at high prices during cold snaps in winter when German wind tends to be blowing.

> renewables can not make up the difference then, now or in the foreseeable future, no matter how hard we wish it could.

Why not?

> Yes, I know: Chernobyl.

It's not only that, there are lots of problems with contemporary nuclear plants as well.

You know there is a reason why countries place there reactors on borders of other countries. ? :) ( Just an interesting fact, not starting a debate of pro vs contra)

I would call that an interesting half truth or outright lie. Nuclear reactors need a lot of water to run the turbines and to cool themselves. A lot of international borders are on major rivers, or other large bodies of water...

Especially the French nuclear power plants at the border of Germany...

France also have a lot of nuclear plant in the Rhone valley in the middle of the country

And Belgium

>renewables can not make up the difference then, now or in the foreseeable future, no matter how hard we wish it could

Can you maybe provide some back of the napkin math on why not, or a link to someplace that has done this?

The smallest nuclear plant in the US generates 582 MW of power with a capacity factor of 92.1%. That capacity factor means that in a year you'll get 582MW * 9258 hours per year * 92.1% = 4.9Trillion kwh/year of power. That's how much we need to replace if we chose to shut down the SMALLEST nuclear plant in the US (the largest is almost 4,000 MW).

The largest wind turbine being designed anywhere in the world right now would be 500 meters tall (taller than the empire state building) with 200 meter blades and at peak output would generate 50MW. Capacity factors for on-shore plants in the US average about 33%. So 50MW * 9258 hours per year * 33% = 0.152T KWh/year. The largest turbine currently built in the world gets 8MW not 50MW so 0.024T kwh/year.

I.e. we would need ~200 of the biggest wind turbines ever built to equal the amount of energy we get out of the smallest nuclear reactor currently running. And that is just to break even. Comparing the median nuclear plant to the median wind turbine makes the numbers even worse.

Hydro has the problem in the US that there aren't any good sites left. Solar costs even more per KW or per KWh than wind does (~1.5x is what I've seen at grid scale in the US) especially when you include the storage needed to maintain consistent supply throughout a day (~3x wind)

Your argument is a decade out of date. The german move away from nuclear power was immediately motivated by the Fukushima catastrophe. So at the very least, you should include reasons why Japan's safeguards were always substandard, and how everyone knew that, and how something like that cannot possibly happen in an actually advanced society like Germany, France, or Ontario.

> The german move away from nuclear power was immediately motivated by the Fukushima catastrophe.

Not true. It was made into law in 2000. The current governing party put it on hold and reinstated it after Fukushima. Currently they are in the process of softening it up again, ie. today was announced that only 10 reactors need to be retired.

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