So let's just keep reliably killing people with coal around the year like we do now...?
The fact is that nuclear power kills the least amount of people per unit of energy produced, with all accidents taken into account. If that's "unsafe" then you cannot consider any electricity production method safe.
Solar in particular (and wind to a lesser extent) requires digging up then melting down literal mountains worth of ore to get the rare-earth elements to create them. Creating the space-age materials used for solar and wind installations is hyper-toxic for the environment and creates its own waste-storage problem.
You talk about deaths, but companies seem to be very tight-lipped about wind fatalities. Bucket truck electricians have a serious injury and fatality rate per-capita an order of magnitude higher than normal electricians. Tower workers have rates an order of magnitude higher than that.
Wind towers aren't like normal towers. They are smooth, aerodynamic surfaces. They are much taller than an average cell tower which adds complications. They have hundred-foot blades with all the lack of strength usually associated with airplanes travelling at up to 180mph. Unlike normal towers, you are definitely working on live systems (dead systems are even more dangerous as they are be at the whim of the winds). There's a huge, high-voltage motor in there exerting tons of torque (plus other motors for things like wing rotation). These extra hazards are standard. They don't account for the bonus hazards like fires, mid-air disintegrations, or even a bird (or something more exotic) getting struck and flying your direction. Even ground crews are at much higher risks.
I know several people who have worked at coal or nuclear plants. They wouldn't get anywhere near a wind plant because it's just too dangerous.
Coal miners die around the year, so no one cares business as usual.
Coal power plant ashes are also radioactive and take a lot more space to store. But no one cares about it...
Also - even if the nuclear power plant is 100% safe, it still produces nuclear waste that nobody wants to keep anywhere near their city and will be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years, that's longer than humanity has been around - it's just the same trap as burning fossil fuels. Why would we want to make the same mistake again?
Because coal is what Germany really relies on in practice, making it one the worst industrialised nations when it comes to CO2 emissions per kWh. Check for yourself, right this minute : http://electricitymap.org/
> it's just the same trap as burning fossil fuels. Why would we want to make the same mistake again?
Because it's not the same mistake at all. Nuclear waste is stored in highly stable geological layers, and the volumes are orders of magnitude lower.
As I wrote here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21996751), a year's worth of nuclear energy for running France's whole fleet of trains produces just 200kg of nuclear waste. Since the beginning of the nuclear programme, the cumulated volume is 3650m3, or an olympic swimming pool's worth of it.
Don't get me wrong, renewables are a worthy long term goal, but we might never get there in the first place if we don't tackle the climate change and emissions emergency first.
The phase-out looks to be gaining traction in recent years. Deals are being made to retrain coal miners and fund economic redevelopment of heavily coal dependent regions. All players including the power companies, network operators, miners unions, green NGOs, central and regional governments have been in discussion about how to manage the phase-out. A schedule for when plants will be turned off is being written into law.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/spelling-out-coal...
Coal powered electricity generation is dropping and renewable generation is increasing. See chart:
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
From:
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
Where Germany has a bad record on emissions reductions is in other sectors such as transport and heat. Germany has had a centre-right political party running the show for 15 years, progress has been slow. The next election will likely be a CDU-Green coalition which will likely increase ambitions on emissions reductions.
No matter how you spin this, you NEED to pick one of either nuclear, gas or coal in your mix to complement renewables.
Of these 3, only one of them is low carbon. Of the other two, one makes your energy grid depend on Putin's whims, while the other causes tremendous fine particles pollution causing thousands of premature deaths today, in addition to carbon emissions.
> Coal powered electricity generation is dropping and renewable generation is increasing.
But won't ever replace a base load source of electricity. Even after a 300 billion investment and spectacular share increase of renewables from 6 to 46%, Germany's emissions per kWh are 5-10 times worst than the best.
> The next election will likely be a CDU-Green coalition which will likely increase ambitions on emissions reductions.
Increased ambition is great but the facts above are unescapable. Are Die Grüne willing to drop ideology and face them ? That seems highly improbable.
Batteries can help to some extent for shifting day to day peaks.
Seasonal storage is more tricky. Germany has about 3 months worth of natgas stored in underground caverns. One approach would be to use this to store syntheticly produced gases from electrolysis.
Note so far everyone here is talking about electricity which only makes up a third of Germany's emissions.
Synthetic gases (non-fossil) will be required for high temperature heat, and chemical feedstocks for industry. For example some steel smelters in Germany are transitioning from coal to hydrogen.
Nuclear is a poor fit to an electrical grid which is mostly renewable for both economic and technical reasons. However it may be a good fit for running synthetic gas plants which can use both the heat and electricity and require 24/7 energy.
That is just factually wrong. "Despite advanced schemes in Finland, not a single country worldwide has an operational underground repository." [1]
That was 2014 and plans have stalled or have been abandoned altogether due to local opposition and technical problems. The reality is that in nearly all cases storage is onsite or in other above ground locations.
France still has a plan to build and operate an underground storage facility in Bure [2], but costs have exploded due to not just very rose colored estimates at the start, but also due to running into problems such as water seepage and not being able to handle certain failure scenarios such as a transport catching fire.
You find this unacceptable.
On the other hand, we have renewables with no solution in sight (let alone implemented) for the intermittence problem (awaiting an hypothetical scientific breakthrough in batteries). In practice, you rely on coal for the day-to-day base load. Coal, for only a year's worth of running a country's trains generates "700.000 tons of solid ash (usually stored in the open air), plus 1.000 tons of soot and fine particles, including tons / dozens of tons of arsenic, lead, thallium, mercury, even uranium and thorium".
You call this the reasonable option.
And in another comment, you even feel entitled to lecture the Belgians and French about their nuclear plants near the border that might hypothetically fail one day, when 7 of the 10 worst polluters in Europe are Germany's lignite plants (https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-lignite-plants-e...), with coal killing 23.300 people in Europe every year (https://endcoal.org/health/) right now, with certainty
Q: In principle, using AECB's regulatory limits, how many ''civilians'' can be overdosed by 100 grams of plutonium?
0.1 micrograms can overdose one civilian
0.1 grams can overdose one million civilians
1 gram can overdose ten million civilians
100 grams can overdose one billion civilians
600 grams can overdose six billion civilians
Q: If there is a serious accident involving 120 grams of plutonium (in the form of MOX), how many civilian overdoses could, in principle, result?
if NONE of the plutonium is safely contained there is a potential for one billion two hundred million civilian overdoses
if 90 percent of it is safely contained there is a potential for one hundred and twenty million civilian overdoses
if 99.9 percent of it is safely contained there is a potential for one hundred and twenty thousand civilian overdoses
if 99.999 percent of it is safely contained there is a potential for one thousand two hundred civilian overdoses
It's obviously not a swimming pool of plutonium ! Plutonium is less than 1% of the waste in the first place, and it's removed and recycled.
In any case, nuclear waste is vitrified into glass with an estimated 10.000 years lifespan.
Fukushima casualties : 1 confirmed from radiation, 2202 from evacuation, over 15000 from the tsunami itself.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... :
"These numbers are very low compared to the estimated 20,000 casualties caused by the tsunami itself, and it has been estimated that if Japan had never adopted nuclear power, accidents and pollution from coal or gas plants would have caused more lost years of life"
Again, coal causes 35.000 deaths per year across Europe. Every, year. Right now. Coal or gas are currently mandatory in the renewables + nuclear-free mix that Germany has chosen as the future.
Why aren't you out protesting already ?
I live in a country where power-plants were built by typical contract builders using sub-spec concrete that is cracking, where all nuclear waste is stored above ground near densly populated areas, where young activists (luckily without malafide intentions) find to their surprise they could just walk into supposedly military protected nuclear plants, where first 55.000 barrels nuclear waste were just dumped of the coast, where the rest of the stuff is in corroding barrels filled not with 10Ky Glass but with tar and concrete, where this deterioration was kept secret for years, and once it came to light resealing it in inox barrels is considered too expensive, where nuclear plants that have failures several times a year because of malpractice during construction and aging installations are kept open with permits issued by administrations and politicians in charge that pass though the revolving doors of the plant's exploiter right into plushy 'consulting' seats, ...
I wish my country was the exception. A rogue state in the very heart of Western Europe. Sadly, it is not. Humans will be humans, with all their vices and fallacies. Humans as a species just can not handle the responsibilities of this type of systems (significant and high short exploitation benefits resulting in extreme long term very costly mitigation commitments, low probability failure modes but with extreme potential impacts).
You imply that there is no alternative. That it is either nuclear or browncoal. This is not true. Germany is the largest net exporter of electric energy in the European grid. Net export amounted to 45.6 TWh in 2018. In that year 72.1 TWh was produced from nuclear power, so almost two thirds of nuclear power was exported). The advances in and deployment of Solar and Wind power have lead to a significant reduction in the use of coal especially starting the second half of 2019. There is no impact on nuclear because nuclear plants unlike coal and gas can not be easily shut down and restarted at will.
Energy is just too cheap by far, so we just continue to waste it like there is no tomorrow. Any gains we make in efficiency, we just take as a bonus and immediatly compensate for by consuming more (cfr. Jevons paradox). Sadly, a neoliberal market economy can never discover the solution of moderation or abstinence, as it is purely driven by privatized marginal profit. It is systemically outside of its potential.
If only we had alternatives to generate power
This is such a horrible stat, especially when taken in this context; I'm not for coal, I think its filthy and and obsolete form of energy, but do you realize the affects of Chernobyl, 3 mile island, Fukushima et al will be felt for millions of years AFTER you are gone?
With so many other forms of renewable energy, you'd think it were possible to create another model.
No, because that's simply not true. At least not in terms of radiation. Perhaps politically, or in the general feeling of fear among people who do not understand nuclear energy, the effects might be long-lasting but the no-go area around Chernobyl is very small, Fukushima is basically liveable today and I don't think 3 mile island affected any area to such extent that radiation levels would be above the safety limits.
Fukushima is habitable? Are you seriously insane? This is Abe's solution to get people to move back:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/10/japan-fukushim...
Chernobyl devastated large swaths of Ag land in Germany when it happened that still haven't entirely recovered...
Listen, maybe these things didn't have a direct impact on YOU so you honestly believe this, but I've seen it and lived with the affects of Nuclear Energy accident first hand, and they are costly environmentally and devastating psychologically. Its what turned me into a staunch environmental activist, but the toll of it is something I have to bear alone, and PTSD is only one of the things I have to live with, and I was an adult when it happened.
I cannot even bring myself to look at what has happened in the near 9 years since Fukushima's children were exposed in masse anymore for fear of inducing panic attacks. I can't even go to my friend's wedding this Spring in Japan because of the fear and panic I feel inside. They were already having a very significant spike in thyroid disruptions in 2012, heart problems soon followed, and the cover up began for pregnancies from that time--just as they were during Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I'd say that the biggest proponent(s) of Nuclear should have to live next to the plants themselves, which incidentally are being phased out in California due to our collective efforts, and see what those 'safe levels' really mean. But go ahead, get a remote job and live next to some of the most grossest offenders in the US for a decade and then we can re-evaluate your position:
https://www.times.org/nuclear-power-back/2018/3/8/the-most-d...
Until then, you're just mis-informed entirely about the reality of Nuclear Energy Production and its consequences, and have at best a very glib understanding of it. Hell, to this day I cannot find a proper study done on them monitoring the radiation effluence from San Onofre and its surrounding areas from before then event and leading up to the massive leak. Let alone the epidemiological impacts of it, my old landlord just died in December from heart-failure and he was a lobster fisherman from the San Onofre region.
I think this is a much bigger dilemma than you think, and you should rethink your Life in general. The alternatives (renewables) that exist may not be perfect, but they are worthy candidates to at least be able to comprise of most of our energy needs.
But, if I'm honest, this is probably the same selfish mentality that can rationalize having a Humanitarian crisis ongoing while simultaneously being able to vie for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. How the Human mind can rationalize such a tragic fate, is beyond me.