The Private and External Costs of Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out
nber.org
nber.org
I know that a lot of work has been done into economic impacts of climate change / air quality, and I've been interested in knowing how people make, project and test these models for some time.
A more detailed rebuttal: https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/ehsekb/comment/f...
Instead as the research paper properly accounts for, if nuclear remained in use then Germany would have reduced coal much further. Instead germany is treading water, shutting one carbon free source as it brings online another carbon free source.
The net effect is no actual improvement, only a theoretical reduction in risk. Realized outcomes are the same.
Meanwhile japan which is restarting nuclear along with expanding renewables gets blocked at the climate change summits because they are not making meaningless promises. For as much as Japan is said to be a society of "saving face" they instead often focus on results over pr.
The world would be better off if Germany followed suit.
Japan's energy mix went from 81% fossil fuel in 2011 to 89% in 2016, with most of that coal and LNG [1].
Germany is at 40% of energy from renewables [2]. I'm not saying it's an easy problem for them to solve, but they are far from an example of renewable energy deployment.
1. https://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/en/category/brochures/pdf/japa...
2. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/renewable...
I agree that Germany, like most nations, has a major problem with road transport dependency on oil. Germany is currently playing catch-up with car electrification, but it is, with Japan, a leader in electrified rail transport.
In terms of home heating though, Germany, for its climate is far ahead of the US, with much higher home building standards for energy efficiency and comfort, and smaller homes in general. Japanese homes, as I'm told, are often very cold in the winter due to lack of central heating and very poor insulation, so they don't use much energy, but are also uncomfortable.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Japan#Mo...
and expanding on electricity from renewable energy for rail transport
There are also the first hydrogen powered trains going into service. In the future more Hydrogen will be produced with renewable energy (for example with surplus electricity from wind).
Is politically harder to replace coal in Germany, because it is a local form of energy - like fracked gas in the US or coal in the US. Germany does not have much oil, gas, hydro, ... resources compared to some other countries, Coal powered industry was what made the industrialization of Germany possible. In that sense the idea that coal kills people is seen in the context, where it actually ENABLED the industrialization and the big industrial areas (Ruhrgebiet, ...). In the same way nuclear before did not replace coal in Germany - instead the big four electricity giants monopolized both: nuclear and coal.
Prior to the Energiewende, there was practically no renewable energy in Germany. Electricity production was in the hands of a few (four) big companies, having divided the country in four areas. A big goal was to break up this system and introduce markets for energy, where almost everyone can participate.
Nuclear is a big state, top down, non-market industry. It works well with and creates those big authoritarian/centralized systems. It's also favorable in countries which either have nuclear weapons or want the option of nuclear weapons (like Japan, which has the technology, industry and could produce them within a few years, if they wanted -> Nuclear latency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_latency ).
That Japan is restarting nuclear, means that the country struggles to restart them in meaningful numbers in the same environment as before with the same old-design reactors...
Countries like France or Japan did very little for renewable energy - which is now fast growing and well suited for large regions of the world - Germany helped jump start it...
That's wrong. German coal use has been reduced by 20% in 2019. The CO2 output of the energy sector was reduced by 7%. Yes, it would have been more had nuclear stayed online, but your claim that Germany is treading water is wrong.
Source: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/drop-coal-use-pushes-ge...
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/understanding-t...
Even Krugman, hardly someone that can be accused of conservative bias, agrees that NBER is basically neutral.
That's actually a pretty reasonable price compared to the usual publisher rent seeking (NBER is a fully private organization, so no tax payer money spent here afaik).
May help with debate.
Sure thing... This disqualified itself really quickly.
Of course, the German people were concerned that a nuclear accident would potentially kill more. This is easy to understand emotionally, but not scientifically. Nuclear power plants have killed up to ~4000 total including latent cancers from Chernobyl. Fossil kills 4-8 million people every single year. When you divide by TWh produced, nuclear comes out crazy safe among our energy options. And it's low-carbon to boot (12 gCO2-eq/kWh).
The shock value of a few high profile accidents overpowers the dull constant killing of a few random people all the time. The total numbers play no part in this equation.
"I'm not flying the plane, therefore I have no choice on whether my death could have been prevented"
Coal vs Nuclear has to elicit the same response...
"I didn't make a choice on the coal that will kill my children, but I have a choice on the nuclear plant that could fail in 0.00000000000001% of chances"
Not saying coal is better, but fission is kind of real iffy too.
https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy
We also have figured out the solution to commercial nuclear waste disposal. In fact, we've known it for a long time (deep geologic repository), but there's a persistent myth that we don't know what to do with it. Here are photos of the under-construction deep geologic repository in Finland: http://www.posiva.fi/en/media/image_gallery?gfid_2061=94#gal...
From https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2017/07/20/are-airp...
For vehicles, “1.13 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled”
and
“Airline accidents per one million miles flown came in at a rate of 0.0035.”
So with an equal denominator, 0.35 vs 1.13. So if you're in the top 20% of safest drivers, which is not hard to reach considering all the idiots out there, you are safer driving.
I can't see that kind of Nuclear as a viable option for Japan.