Still can't believe Germany turned its back on nuclear to burn coal instead.
The problem is (a) that there is an entrenched and politically important coal industry, and just shutting all of it down is political suicide, because quite a few voters are involved into that; (b) the industry itself also doesn't like to see its investments into existing power plants thrown out the window; it was difficult enough to get this through for nuclear plants; and (c) alternative energies aren't there yet, despite massive investments.
And no, the simple-minded "let's just use nuclear for everything, it's the saviour of all our problems" approach won't work either, as has been discussed often enough.
The point that shutting down existing, clean, and safe nuclear plants is devastating for the climate is absolutely true.
mind summarizing why?
https://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2016/10/germany...
Some sources say that this won't cover even a quarter of the costs, because Germany does not have any permanent storage facility.
2) don't build reactors in areas threatened by tsunamis and earthquakes. Germany is safe from both, so using Chernobyl and Fukushima to justify shutting down reactors in Germany, or even worse, stop construction of new ones, is borderline insane.
The real issue with fukushima was simple — in case of a tsunami, the emergency generators would be flooded and fail, and the connection to the grid might fail.
Pretty much all German reactors are in the flood plains of major rivers, and many of them had issues with the emergency generators being damaged by floods already. Or had issues with the grid connection failing. Luckily not both at once.
Considering these are all ancient reactors from the 60s and 70s — not even two-circuit pressurized water reactors, but single-circuit boiling water reactors — this is actually quite risky.
Add the multiple-billion-euro effort to build a storage solution, which has so far failed, and led to nuclear waste in a salt mine leaking into the ground water and causing issues, and you can start to understand why nuclear in Germany might be problematic.
- new reactors would still produce nuclear waste we don't have a storage solution for
- no one can afford new reactors. Properly safe new reactors cost so much that they are not economically feasible.
And this is the bit I just don't understand. The solution is almost obvious:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal
Dig a shaft 5km deep, put your waste at the bottom, fill it up. Nothing from that depth it coming out through any natural process for eons. I wonder why it's not actually done...
"[...] pair of proposed test boreholes in the United States were cancelled due to public opposition"
Oh. Of course.
Truth is that nuclear energy is the safest form of energy.
> there were no deaths caused by acute radiation syndrome [...] studies by the World Health Organisation and Tokyo University have shown that no discernible increase in the rate of cancer deaths is expected
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
Also, the world has changed since 1986. As an example (it seems that almost nobody knows this), the number of people living in extreme poverty has quartered since then, despite the population growth from 5 billion to nearly 8 billion people. Russia changed less, as far as I can tell this is due to the fall of the USSR. Still, an accident from thirty years ago in a poor country is almost incomparable to today. There was no common Internet back then, knowledge had to come through books (or possibly TV) and learning something that helps you do your job was not as easy as it is today. Still, even with Chernobyl:
> The Chernobyl disaster, considered the worst nuclear disaster in history [...] there is rough agreement that a total of either 31 or 54 people died from blast trauma or acute radiation syndrome [...] deaths due to the disaster's long-term health effects, with long-term death estimates ranging from 4,000 (per the 2005 and 2006 conclusions of a joint consortium of the United Nations and the governments of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia), to more than 93,000 (per the conflicting conclusions of various scientific, health, environmental, and survivors' organizations).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...
That's pretty awful, but nothing like burning fossil fuels:
> the greatest energy fatalities that result from energy generation by humanity, is the creation of air pollution. The most lethal of which, particulate matter, which is primarily generated from the burning of fossil fuels and biomass is (counting outdoor air pollution effects only) estimated to cause 2.1 million deaths annually
That page also lists 10 000 deaths per petaWatt-hour in the USA in 2012 and 100 000 deaths globally (the same table lists much, much fewer casualties for solar, wind, and nuclear per PWh). If the worst disaster ever has casualties ranging from 4k to 93k, then what are we talking about? Shut coal down now!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
And Chernobyl was the worst accident ever, it is not common. If nuclear power was so likely to blow up with these results, not a nation on earth would risk this, yet France (I think we all agree this is not some poor third world country desperate for energy and unable to build solar or wind) is littered with reactors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France), 58 in total. The number of accidents listed is 12, starting in 1969, ranging from "75kg of slightly radioactive material was leaked, fishing and drinking the river water was banned for two weeks" to "one person killed in a blast from a metal melting accident that the nuclear plant uses" (i.e. not a nuclear accident).
> As of February 27, 2017, the Fukushima prefecture government has tallied 2,129 “disaster-related deaths” in the prefecture
https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-cher...
> In the case of Fukushima, although 40-50 people experienced physical injury or radiation burns at the nuclear facility, the number of direct deaths from the incident are quoted to be zero. However, mortality from radiation exposure was not the only threat to human health: it's estimated that around 1,600 people died as a result of evacuation procedures and stress-induced factors. This figure ranges between 1,000-1,600 deaths from evacuation (the evacuation of populations affected by the earthquake and tsunami at the time can make sole attribution to the nuclear disaster challenging). Stress-induced deaths affected mostly older people; more than 90 percent of mortality occurred in individuals over the age of 66.
This value exceeds the number that have died in Fukushima prefecture directly from the earthquake and tsunami.[21] "Disaster-related deaths" are deaths attributed to disasters and are not caused by direct physical trauma, but does not distinguish between people displaced by the nuclear disaster compared to the earthquake / tsunami. As of year 2016, among those deaths, 1368 have been listed as "related to the nuclear power plant" according to media analysis.[22] Reports have pointed out that many of these deaths may have been caused by the evacuation period being too long, and that residents could have been allowed to return to their homes earlier in order to reduce the total related death toll.[23]
[23] is http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-... and is referencing this section, most likely:
By October 2012, over 1000 disaster-related deaths that were not due to radiation-induced damage or to the earthquake or to the tsunami had been identified by the Reconstruction Agency < http://www.reconstruction.go.jp/english/>, based on data for areas evacuated for no other reason than the nuclear accident. About 90% of deaths were for persons above 66 years of age. Of these, about 70% occurred within the first three months of the evacuations. (A similar number of deaths occurred among evacuees from tsunami- and earthquake-affected prefectures. These figures are additional to the 19,000 that died in the actual tsunami.)
The premature deaths reported in 2012 were mainly related to the following: (1) somatic effects and spiritual fatigue brought on by having to reside in shelters; (2) Transfer trauma – the mental or physical burden of the forced move from their homes for fragile individuals; and (3) delays in obtaining needed medical support because of the enormous destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami. However, the radiation levels in most of the evacuated areas were not greater than the natural radiation levels in high background areas elsewhere in the world where no adverse health effect is evident, so maintaining the evacuation beyond a precautionary few days was evidently the main disaster in relation to human fatalities.
Though I agree that I would not feel safe with a nuclear plant near my home so I understand why it causes fear in people.