Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022
reuters.com
reuters.com
It took twenty years until a reactor was closed, and five more years until one whole plant was closed.
During this time, Sweden's energy consumption has of course gone up, and although there's been some increase in wind and water power, the net result is that each time we close a nuclear reactor, we have to import a lot more electricty from Danish or German coal-powered plants.
So the net result for the environment is negative, but the environmentalist movement thinks it's a huge win.
I'm willing to wager that this German proposal will have the exact same end result. The only way to successfully switch to renewable energy is by making renewable energy cheaper than coal or nuclear.
The goal is to be at 100% with renewable energy in 2050. The closing down of the nuclear power plants is only one milestone on that way. The fossil-based plants will be reduced over time, too. As a bridge technology gas power plants are seen which make it possible to use heat and electricity. Those have an extremely high degree of efficiency. The gas supply is there. New pipelines are being built currently.
Closing down the nuclear power plants is one goal. They are extremely expensive and they need huge amounts of money which we need to invest in renewable energy technology. Also the nuclear industry favors the big corporations who prevent market mechanisms and try to undermine any new energy source. They are also not flexible enough to be used in a future energy mix.
Given that the goal is to go fully to renewable energy in the next 40 years, the nuclear power plants have to go first. The acceptance for them in the German society is also at an all time low.
The cost of the running power plant is deferred also to a future which then needs to deal with the waste from burned fuel.
Germany has no solution how to deal with the fuel.
The cost for that adds up every day.
How many people die every year because of coal plants working perfectly normally ? 30 000 in the US alone.
See http://squid314.livejournal.com/292620.html
Nuclear waste is a bigger problem indeed, but using Fukushima as an argument against nuclear is both dishonest and stupid.
Second: don't you ignore the risk of how many people _could_ die, in the case of a big disaster? That would have global conequences for quite some days (ironic).
Even if nobody would die under normal conditions (nuclear and coal), the consequenences of a (more or less probable) big catastrophe (height of fall) are the main counter argument against nuclear power.
Except the point of what I was saying and of the link I gave is precisely that under "normal conditions", people die due to coal, whereas it is not the case with nuclear plant.
The reason is that all a nuclear plant releases in the air is water.
> « the consequenences of a (more or less probable) big catastrophe (height of fall) are the main counter argument against nuclear power. »
You must take into account the odds of a probable disaster, such as an earthquake in Japan, but not the consequences of any disaster. It's just unreasonable to assume an improbable disaster will happen. You end up renouncing any technology by thinking that way.
Obviously, Nuclear power plant must be built with security as the main concern. Obviously, a nuclear reactor can be very dangerous. But refusing to use nuclear plants, which are much more efficient than classic ones and a good long-term investment, is idiotic.
We're far more likely to die in a car accident than because of radio-activity, or any other disaster that's on television. Yet, noone is suggesting that a country should be "car free".
Until a better, safer replacement is found, we'll use cars, and nuclear plants.
I'd wager the change of mind will happen rather quickly after the first terrorist crashes a plane into an US nuclear facility.
According to wikipedia the empty weight of a Phantom F4 is 30,328 lb.
The empty weight of a Boeing 737 is up to 80,000 lb (almost 3x as much). The empty weight of an A380 is 610,000 lb (20 times as much).
http://www.bz-berlin.de/aktuell/deutschland/kein-deutsches-a...
>« not a single site would survive a large passenger aircraft crashing into it. »
Now, what does that even mean ? If surviving means "keep on working", obviously not.
If it means destruction of the protection layers of concrete around the reactor, it's more dangerous, but just because the reactor is open, it doesn't mean the radioactive material is going to fly away.
How is the radiation supposed to be contained when your reactor just turned into a burning pile of rubble?
And you say radioactive material will not disseminate?
Besides, reactors are a small target that's mostly underground. That should limit the damage.
In any case, may I remind you we're discussing a very hypothetical scenario ?
Excuse me? As far as I know the damage to the containment was very limited in Fukushima. And they were very worried about maintaining the cooling in the damaged buildings.
In a plane crash scenario we might be talking about no containment and no cooling at all. Instead we might be left with a pile of radioactive rubble and a kerosine fire.
After all you could be right that the scale would not be comparable...
In any case, may I remind you we're discussing a very hypothetical scenario?
Well, 9/11 did happen, and reactor walls are not built to resist a plane crash. So what exactly is hypothetical about the scenario?
Right. Except water from the ocean was going in and out through the few tiny holes, and maybe that was the main problem.
See, uranium doesn't fly away when the reactor is open, but of course, if irradiated water goes right back in the ocean, there's dissemination on a bigger scale than Chernobyl.
« 9/11 did happen »
A huge scale terrorist attack like this is statistically less likely than an earthquake in Japan.
Where are you getting that from? Afaik they flooded the buildings with seawater on purpose, as a means of cooling. They did that because it appeared to be the lesser of two evils.
See, uranium doesn't fly away when the reactor is open
It does seem to fly pretty well when you add fire. At least that's what the 2600 squaremile no-go zone in chernobyl would suggest.
statistically less likely than an earthquake
That may be true, yet it's bound to happen eventually, right?
How would you rate the socio-economic impact of a single such event in contrast to, say, 9/11?
If you're telling me poor design and incompetence are bad and especially dangerous in security-sensitive contexts, I agree. So ?
Flooding the reactors was indeed the lesser of two evils.
« That may be true, yet it's bound to happen eventually, right? »
No. It may happen.
Can we agree that any given reactor will likely have no core containment either, after a passenger jet crashed into it?
it was a big explosion
Likewise can we agree that there will be a big explosion when a plane crashes into a reactor?
the director was incompetent
And that is unheard of in other reactors?
on a European scale, it's not much
So, which of these areas would you like to evacuate permanently?
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/power-reactors-map-sm....
No. It may happen.
I wonder where you're taking your optimism from. Yes, terrorism may disappear. But it doesn't seem too likely, does it?
No. A broken core containment still provides some protection.
I take my optimism from the fact that I'm not too impressed by things that have little chance from happening, which prevents me from being scared of meteor rains, terrorist attacks, or whatever disaster you can think of.
To put things in perspective, again :
There are much less nuclear power plants than there are dangerous pesticide or fertiliser factories. It is also more likely that a pesticide or fertiliser factory will be poorly maintained.
And yet, people who want to shut down nuclear plants are much more numerous and listened to than people who want to shut down chemical plants.
The only reason people are afraid of nuclear power is that it is associated with those bombs so powerful nobody ever dared to use them in a war since 1945.
There is no rational reason to shut down nuclear plants, and get rid of an energy source that's more efficient and cleaner than any other we know of.
Have you seen what a plane crash does to a structure?
As far as I know most reactor walls are not hardened to withstand a plane-crash. That means you wouldn't end up with a "broken core containment". You'd end up with a pile of rubble.
not too impressed by things that have little chance from happening
That's a valid opinion. But I think it's an equally valid opinion that terrorist attacks are not as rare as meteor rains. And that terrorists will specifically target these facilities.
The only reason people are afraid of nuclear power is that it is associated with those bombs
Personally my concerns are not related to the bombs.
I merely think the economic equation that makes nuclear plants appear cost-effective will collapse over the first such event.
Your average nuclear plant is said to be profitable to the tune of $500mio USD/yr. The total cost of the chernobyl disaster is estimated at around $235 billion dollars, and counting.
That means all US nuclear plants combined (circa 100) have to run for 10 years in order to break even with a single disaster. And that's under the assumption that a meltdown in the middle of the USA wouldn't be quite a bit more expensive than a disaster in the middle of Ukrainian nowhere.
Thus my conclusion is that the facilities will be shutdown rather quickly when and if such an event occurs.
Not sure where you are getting this idea, but it's not true. The reactors are usually above ground, and they aren't small at all.
Nothing happened.
The fact is that terrorists want to target nuclear plants.
What's unlikely is that any of them should succeed. Terrorism isn't that easy.
But gladly terrorism isn't that easy, right?
How many terrorist attacks of that scale have been successfully conducted ?
Over the last twenty years, only one.
During the same period, there has been a dozen of large-scale earthquakes.
And as I said, you're fare more likely to die from a car accident than from any big disaster you see on television.
- It was hit by an earthquake with a magnitude 1 point higher than it was built for, and it was perfectly OK.
- Only the following tsunami damaged it, and only because it interrupted the power supply of the cooling pumps.
Let us not forget that the power plant was 20 or so years old. New plants would no doubt be much safer.
There were no substantial aftershocks that damaged the plant, nor were there any secondary tsunamis.
I can hardly imagine a bigger catastrophe than Fukushima
That's a failure of imagination. Imagine if a comparatively minor secondary tsunami had hit after the containment vessel had been breached. That could spread highly radioactive materials just abotu anywhere - and, worse - could have made it too dangerous to get close enough to the plant for the for the fire engines (!) to spray water to cool the reactors.
6 reactors were affected. Four of them are wrecked. There are full pools of spent and active fuel exposed to sunshine.
Tepco had twenty years to build higher walls against a Tsunami. There were already enough complaints about the weak security before it got hit.
That there are earth quake in the sea causing Tsunamis is nothing new for Japan.
They failed.
You might be surprised to hear that there are also Tsunamis in North Europe.
Dismantling a nuclear power plant doesn’t get more expensive just because they are running longer. When it comes to waste, finding a site and building the infrastructure is expensive, the cost of dealing with additional waste from letting the plants run longer has to be negligible.
Whether or not we have a solution to deal with the fuel is pretty much irrelevant. We have to find a solution anyway, there is no way around it. We might as well keep the plants running longer.
The spent fuels are full and provide a new danger. See Fukushima on the effects of full spent fuel pools in times of an nuclear accident. Reactor five had also recently a loss of cooling for it.
Currently much of the used fuel is stored on site. This has never been planned, costs additional money, and provides new dangers.
Plus, for a storage solution it definitely makes a huge difference if we have to store the nuclear waste of ten reactors running ten years or of twenty reactors running 50 years. The cost is not the same.
Also: High fixed costs, low variable costs. It’s as simple as that.
The current experimental Asse II site already cost us BILLIONS of Euros. Plus it is fucked up and needs to been evacuated for a few additional billions.
Each plant produces a huge amount of waste each year it runs, all of various impact levels, but all of which has a cost to store or process. So yes, there may only be a small amount of extra direct fuel waste, but there is a lot more than that to consider.
All I'm saying is this: You likely can't take the average cost of safely storing one kilo of waste given current levels of waste and calculate the additional cost that results from letting the reactors run a few more years. This is econ 101. I like to use newspapers to explain the concept: The cost of making 10,000 newspapers in nearly the same as the cost of making 20,000 newspapers. This is because nearly all the money that has to be spent is fixed (wages for journalists and staff, buildings and machines, …). The variable costs are very low in comparison (letting the presses run a little longer, additional paper, ink, …).
Every additional day those nuclear power plants run decreases their cost/kWh.
If you can't get lead out of it, at least get something that only has a half-life of a few billion years. Then its about as dangerous as lead.
The Germans are actually ahead in this area because of current governmental price guarantees for selling self produced electricity back to the grid. This is stimulating accelerated cost savings development in the German solar industry.
Hawaii: already competitive (2009), California: 2011 (assuming 3kW plants)
Reuters [2] writes that "very sunny countries could reach that breakeven in five years[2012] or so, and even cloudy Britain by 2020."
The breakeven is called Grid Parity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
[1] http://www.wm.baden-wuerttemberg.de/fm7/1106/Endbericht%20Br... (German, 2009, this is the report cited by taz.de)
[2] http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/10/19/environment-solar-... (2007)
For the US, pretty much every newspaper in Germany is leftist.
A bank is usually very reputable in calculating economics.
Also, the mentioned bank is a state bank. Usually not the moste creditable ones. Especially not on issues that include subsidies.
So it's including geothermal, air heat pumps, zero energy use for residential heating (high insulation and heat recuperation in ventilation systems), etc.
I wouldn't be sure about that. Imho another way is to let the government offer incentives or just plain ban certain types of energy production. I live in Switzerland and our gov just did the same thing - Deciding not to let anyone build another nuclear plant in CH again. So we have Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and a lot of other countries reacting to Fukujima. But I think it will take quite some time until people realize nuclear power is potentially highly dangerous and that it might be a good idea to spend the extra money to produce renewable energy.
It has seemed to be a pretty "natural direction" for humanity so far, at least, and technical progress continues to give humanity so much while costing us so little.
To me it seems no more bizarre a view that technical progress is a good direction for humanity to take as believing that education should become better over time, our life expectancy should continue to go up over time, or that, one day, it'd be kinda nice to travel to the stars. All those things need technical progress.
I can't help noticing that the natural tendency of the human species is to expand and adapt - that is what we are. I also notice that the various movements that advocate more basic living patterns have never really caught on.
So you are going to have two options:
1) Refuse to do anything about power, let it get more and more expensive until enough people die that you have a solvable problem
2) work on making it cheaper
I am sure the greens would say also:
3) everyone chooses to live a more basic quieter life against our natural instincts. Oh and all those nice rich and powerful people will also be joining in and not just taking advantage
and I will say
good luck with that (oh and if you try to achieve 3 without peoples buy in but rather through legislation you effectively are back to option 1)
it's 1 or 2 - and 1 is going to be f@#king awful so let's get working on cheap power
Serious? That's a huge claim. yet, so many people do live this "quieter" life. I am striving to live that life. There is quite a growing community (at least in British Columbia) of people concerned with things like food security and climate change.
Ever since I was young, I was disgusted by the City. Yes, this is not a popular view, but I am in no way choosing to live "a more basic quieter life against our natural instincts." The city was never meant for me.
Though, I'm not really sure what movements you are referring to? Do they include those that suggest consuming less? Or are there some movements somewhere suggesting you start living by candle light?
Sorry, if this comment is off-topic from the article, but it seems wildly bold for you to claim that a way of life is against natural instincts. I strive to live a life combining the joy, satisfaction and security of producing my own food, and living with the land as well as benefiting and perhaps contributing to advancements (particularly with water and power management).
Look around at the planet. Humans are everywhere it is possible to be. Something drove us to do that. And given it is quite unlikely that there was a meeting 100,000 years a go in Africa where we as a species decided - "let's give overrunning the whole planet a go" I think that "instinct" for want of a better word is what drives that. Living in a sustainable way does not come naturally to humans - I'm betting you are well educated and have reasoned long and hard about it.
Yes there are people like you who chose to be sustainable. But unless you get everyone to do it then we are screwed. Because it's an all or nothing plan. And you may love making your own food but by the same token I am really glad someone else is doing it for me. I find it boring and a waste of my time - I want to just be able to get food when i need it without thinking about it. My interests lie elsewhere.
Likewise the global trend is too the city. Every bit of research points to massive urbanisation http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/aug/18/percenta...
We has a species do have the ability to overcome our animal urges but if you don't solve the power problems you are doing to need everyone to do it and the failure mode of that is massive suffering. There are various sustainable living and back to nature and even so called luddite movements and have been for quite a while but I still don't see them being a significant force.
There is nothing wrong with what you are doing at all but do you think you can convince everyone you know outside of your community to join in?
Perhaps it's better to look at "destroying our planet" (or whatever) as a byproduct? Like you said, we didn't decide this in Africa, it's just a result of our drive to advance our way of life. But, now preserving our environment and adopting more sustainable practices is the next frontier in advancing our way of life.
Also, isn't the basic animal instinct to survive? Scientists claim with the 2C threshold (I think this covers it slightly, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8023072.stm) that we are at a time where without change, we may not survive (in large numbers at least, and in some years)? Maybe the instinct doesn't act on a tribal or global scale, but only personal. Like when a tiger is coming after you.
And, of course, I don't expect everyone to grow their own food. But, there are people who love farming, and if we help these young people get into it, they can provide on a smaller scale, within each community.
I suppose my point is, sure humans have the instinct to advance their way of life, but that does not necessarily go against producing ones own food, or living a quieter and simpler life.
I don't believe that sustainable ways of life will prevail before any fall. Look at the fishing in the North sea - despite the stocks being pretty much destroyed the fishermen who have taken the fish continue to argue their case to take the very last few because they don't want to change their way of life. This is sadly all too common.
There are people who can see all this working on tech - I think the best bet (ie the one were more of us survive) is if there are some decent breakthroughs. Knowing what I do about projects in progress and the work being done I think there is a good chance this will work out. The reason is that this isn't just a stopping us dying scenario this is making lots of money for lots of people scenario.
If we have to sort ourselves out after a fall - well you may be right. But only for a while. It is almost certain that sooner or later some person or other will look at the next valley or over a sea and think: "hmm what would happen if I went over there. I guess I'll need X Y Z" where X Y Z is some bit of basic tech that doesn't exist yet. and the human race will be off again.
We're tenacious buggers us humans. I don't think it's time to give up and sit quietly by the fire just yet....
(oh and also the very diversity - look at what you are into and what say, I am into - an entrepreneur, a technologist and an optimist - and our different views. That very difference means that we have a "portfolio" strategy as a species. Our eggs are in millions of baskets. There may be a catastrophe and you with your abilities to cope on your own resources will just carry on trucking. Something else my happen and some other group may thrive. It will be a damn hard job killing the lot of us - even for something as resourceful as the human race itself)
I am looking at human nature and saying that you are not going to change it and therefore you are going to need to work around it.
"We need a circular flow of recycable materials" is a technical solution too. And perhaps is the right answer.
Then only thing I am saying is that this lovely green view of us all living in harmony with the planet is complete rubbish. Because it does not take into account human nature. Yes I agree that some people can live like that - some very well indeed. But you can not make all do so.
You also have a very fixed idea of what cheap energy involves: "because they exploit materials that can be exhausted". I had in mind things like photovoltaics, wind - I live surrounded in all directions by wind farms and there is an immense amount of investment going on, modern nuclear tech - have you seen Bill Gates talk on this?
This is not a dogmatic view. If you came to me and could show that you could genuinely do it in a different way without relying on mass education and changing the way people normally behave then cool - I'll be on board.
Your idea that my views are a religion is a dogma in itself
What is worse is that this is why we are likely to be more screwed than we should be this problem: for a lot of solutions they some how need to stop all of the other solutions because they don't match ideals. I am not advocating a single solution - I want as many people as possible trying. I am not even saying don't try to get everyone living in a sustainable way - I recycle, when I finally get round to buying a house I have every intention of having a crack at doing my own power generation. All I am saying is that any plan that involves changing the behaviour of every single human being on this planet is not going to work under any circumstances - and when the failure mode of that being your only plan is so serious then people need to be pointing this out.
The challenge will be to have enough power at all.
But I agree it's going to be a struggle and one that may go badly wrong for a while.
But the key thing here is that we have to get the knee jerk politics out of it. It doesn't matter if there is global warming or not because if we stay dependant on fossil fuels there are just going to be endless conflicts over the them, if the greens can persuade everyone in the whole world to live a life of abstinence that's cool - but we need to bet that they can't - because their failure mode is that we all die horribly.
The time of cheap oil seems to be over.
For the rest: You know that you don't know what will happen. So why do you make blanket statements like that?
For example: Some analysts claim that solar energy will solve all energy problems in ten years. Maybe some of the small fusion projects will work? Thorium? And so on.
Edit: Yeah, since Germany has panicked like a herd of cattle, the time limit is so short that there is very little to do. But the way the electricity prices will go, solar will become attractive earlier.
Germany plans to roll out the whole set of renewables (wind, hydro, solar, biomass, geothermal, ...) over the next FOURTY years to get from 16% (actually currently it may already be at 20%) near to 100%.
Thorium is providing a contribution to generating electricity in an amount worth mentioning when? In fifty years? Thirty? How many Thorium reactors will be online within the next ten years? One? Two? Three? That's nothing that would be contributing to the energy needs we have in 2020.
(Be careful when choosing, poor countries have lots of environmental destruction which they can't afford to clean -- it might be bad for your health.)
:-)
Edit: It is not a false dichotomy; I compared to the only known low-energy societies. My point is that there is no low energy using society, where anyone would want to live (except the local junta). (And the expensive alternative to nuclear is coal, which is arguably worse with its climate effects.)
(UPDATE: Although you can also have expensive energy that is unpleasant!)
>>Why do you keep trying to make a false dichotomy?
I am not, you didn't read read what I argue against. :-)
I started by answering a comment by "Andi" above. He/She argued against growth and technical development. Which is just stupid, since pollution and energy use gets less with better economy/technology. (E.g., not so many decades ago there were no cleaning facilities on coal plants and no waste management for cities.)
A few hundred years ago, they realised they would soon get low on trees suitable for critical parts of war ships. So they planted a lot of them. An early triumph of ecological resource awareness.
Those trees are ready about now, but won't be used for their original intent... :-)
Re nuclear waste -- it can always be made into a slurry pumped down into old oil wells. There is absolutely no connection to ground water, so it won't come back. (It is probably a bad idea, since there might be uses for it in a few decades.)
Quote I argue against: "who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take."
>>You are mistaking that as an argument against all future technical development.
It is really hard to read any other way than as a Luddite. In addition, I note that you made a claim -- but didn't present any other way of reading that sentence...
>>I disagree that pollution and energy use gets less with better economies and technology as a rule, even if there has been some progress as you mention
Go check some statistics for pollution for e.g. Northern Europe over the last 50-60 years. (Much less Mercury contaminants, waste water treatment, no low Ph rain, etc, etc.)
Less energy is used to create new units of GNP increase. Energy is used better. Some of that GNP is used to find alternative energy implementations.
Andi said that ignoring the cost for future generations was the issue. He wasn't arguing against all technical progress. It's not just that one sentence I referred to, it's his entire comment. Perhaps the quotes confused you, they were there to give context.
Pumping nuclear waste down old oil wells is not enough, what if someone nasty decides to make plutonium? Storage will need to be guarded, keeping a list of what has been stored provides an incentive for terrorists but offers the possibility of future reuse.
Noted, go check some statistics for pollution during China's booming economy over the last twenty years, much worse in many regards. I refer you back to pdf I already linked for energy consumption.
There is no rule that states pollution and energy usage reduce with better economies and technology.
AGAIN, "In addition, I note that you made a claim -- but didn't present any other way of reading that sentence".
You just made another claim. If you want to show a thesis, then quote the relevant part and show it. Here is what he wrote:
>>You are stuck in a view that energy needs to be cheap and that energy must be available despite the costs of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations. This is the classical view of people who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take.
From the rest of his comments, where he seems to think that natural resources will disappear if they are used, he has no clue about anything. (Hint: People are mining scrap heaps, etc.) He was against cities -- where each individual use less land and resources than people living in the countryside (or maybe he just want to kill everyone in cities -- where are they going to go, otherwise?)
>>Pumping nuclear waste down old oil wells is not enough, what if someone nasty decides to make plutonium?
First, you changed the subject. I assume you yield on Andi's "point" about cost to future generations.
Second, nothing are going to stop e.g. Iran, Pakistan and North Korea from building nuclear power plants and getting bombs. That cat is out of the bag. So that is irrelevant.
>>There is no rule that states pollution and energy usage reduce with better economies
Afaik, western societies pollute less and less over the last 50-60 years. I gave examples. (The energy use is increasing, but less and less for each additional unit of GNP.)
>>go check some statistics for pollution during China's booming economy over the last twenty years
When the economy reaches a certain level, countries start to invest in clean technology, etc. China has already started. The dirtiest phase is industrialisation -- it is still better than what was before.
To bring some focus to this discussion: you have said that I have made two separate claims. I made one single claim. The claim I continue to make is that: Andi said that ignoring the cost for future generations was the issue. He wasn't arguing against all technical progress. The second time I mentioned this, was as clarification to the claim.
Here is what he wrote:
>>You are stuck in a view that energy needs to be cheap and that energy must be available despite the costs of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations. This is the classical view of people who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take.
This does not argue against all technical progress, it argues against ignoring the cost to future generations. As I see it, that is the claim I am making, and that quote is the evidence to back up my claim. This is not a second or third claim, this is the claim I have been making all along.
If you could please, tell me what separate claims you think I am making.
I don't think you can make a rule out of the claim that western societies' pollution has decreased over the last 50-60 years. You've given an example, I've given counter examples, i.e. it is not a rule. We can get into an example war, where I can give more and more examples of pollution increase, and you can give more and more examples of pollution decrease, and there's no point in it. There is no rule that states pollution and energy usage reduce with better economies and technology.
Just because China has started to invest in clean technology (clean in some circumstances means nuclear, I assume you don't mean that), doesn't mean it's going to use it, and it doesn't mean it's pollution and energy usage will reduce. I've invested in pink socks, am I going to wear them?
I will read Andi's other comments now for better or worse. To reiterate: there is no forced binary choice to be made between living as luddites, and ignoring the cost of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations. Is that clear?
(I know what Andi wrote, I quoted it in the comment above...)
He talks about future generations -- and against technological progress being important; he is arguing against cities and some back-to-nature garbage. A confused Luddite.
He is of course welcome to go back to being too poor for education and having 30% child mortality. But he'll have to kill off most of the population that can't survive in his world, Khmer style.
Which was what I rested my case on before. You could have asked for links to his comments, instead of ignoring them in your answer.
(I meant that you repeated your claim again, without any support. Like here. Not made a new one. Sorry for any confusion.)
>>It should not be made easier for people to develop nuclear weapons grade plutonium.
So the West should close down a large part of the energy production -- because radioactive materials might, in ten years time, end up with dictators. The really unpleasant dictators already have nuclear reactors (and bombs, in at least two of the three cases mentioned). (I know that Pakistan isn't formally a dictatorship right now.)
That is just not coherent.
(The point about oil wells was more of a proof of principle which I've seen geologists argue -- it is not popular locally, because political parties has married another solution. We can get rid of radioactive materials, if we absolutely have to. It is not a good idea, yet.)
>>Just because China has started to invest in clean technology ... doesn't mean it's going to use it
Sigh... And China might also stop growing food?
China has to implement clean tech -- since the economy will grow multiple times the coming decades and there are already bad environmental problems.
It is just too expensive not to do it. (Popular unrest, public health and destruction of farming land.)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12595872
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_water_crisis
And why isn't nuclear clean? Check how many people coal kills in China/year...
And so on, I'll probably not check if this is answered.
You seem to have some narrative built up of how the world will progress. e.g. pollution and energy use, what China is going to do, what would happen if they don't, what happens if nuclear power is abandoned, how China's economy will develop over the next few decades. And if you don't mind me saying so, you cannot see into the future, you are far too sure of yourself. Coal can be a lot cleaner than it is in China. However that country's disregard for its miners and workers, betrays a certain level of contempt for human life. Do you think that China will operate nuclear reactors as clean and as well as the rest of the world? Nuclear is not clean, clean is a classical propaganda term for nuclear, like pro choice and pro life camps in an American abortion debate. There is no rule that states pollution and energy usage reduce with better economies and technology, not for China, any of the countries you mentioned, not for anywhere.
I will de-construct Andi's comment that is so contentious for you: Here is what he wrote:
>>You are stuck in a view that energy needs to be cheap and that energy must be available despite the costs of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations.
The crucial words here are 'stuck in a view' and 'despite the costs of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations.' It the phrase 'stuck in a view' links this sentence to the following one:
>>This is the classical view of people who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take.
Here he states that people 'stuck in this view' this 'classical view' see 'technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take' and this is the crucial link back to the first sentence, because people are stuck in this view 'despite the costs of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations.' 'technical progress' here is dependent on the nuclear reactors of the first sentence.
This does not argue against all technical progress, it argues against ignoring the cost to future generations.
to be more specific: This does not argue against all technical progress, it argues against ignoring the cost of nuclear reactors for future generations.
It's really telling that you berate me for ignoring Andi's comments while I go to look at them, when at the same time saying my claims have no support(in what way - you never said what part is unsupported?) and then informing me that you are probably going to leave the conversation altogether, and ignore my reply to you completely.
To reiterate: there is no forced binary choice to be made between living as luddites, and ignoring the cost of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations. Do you disagree with this statement?
Creative way of reading Andi's comment. Congratulations. I can see how someone could formulate a position like that, given that he/she is used to argue with people with certain opinions.
The problem, as I noted twice above, is that the other comments shows that Andi is a crazy Luddite which argues against cities. No facts, no references -- lots of claims. (There is a lower environmental impact with half the population in cities than if you spread them out all over the countryside. At leasts without doing a Green Khmer reorg...)
Here is a link:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2601330
Now I have repeated that point three(?) times. You have acknowledged it without touching it twice. I've given a link. Enough.
And yes, it is theoretically possible that the Chinese commit a country-wide economic suicide by not starting to clean up e.g. pollution from coal. But stupidity is not the common sin of the Chinese leaders... (Strip mining and destroying inner Mongolia is another matter.)
Or are you claiming it is economically efficient to not clean up and accept health problems for a large part of the work force? Sure, the Chinese leadership is competent and would be cynical enough... That would be interesting -- do you have references?
Andi did not argue against all technical progress, he argues against ignoring the cost of nuclear reactors for future generations.
One more time: there is no forced binary choice to be made between living as luddites, and ignoring the cost of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations. Do you agree with this statement or not?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine I can get a lot more references, more recent but that just about sums it up!
Here is another weird Andi comment, which relates to his original claim -- and show you to be wrong.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2601341
>>This kind of technical view is religious but is usually not called religion.
So you are wrong -- Andi really meant what he said.
So much for your claim of proof.
(I accept that, given enough strange people to argue with, a reasonable person -- a non-Luddite/-econazi -- might have written what "Andi" wrote. Even if it seems unlikely. But "Andi" is not reasonable...)
>> Andi's other comments don't show anything of the sort, and are irrelevant
See above -- Andi is just plain weird, your guess is very unlikely. Also, you made that claim without touching that I've commented on his weird comments three times, even gave a link.
My troll detector isn't sensitive enough.
>> ignoring the cost of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations
And for nuclear power -- you haven't show that there is a net cost to future generations (not just creation of useful materials for their accelerator reactors).
Note also that the present humanity do research and infrastructure now, which will make future generations' lives better. (Which certainly is a religious view, according to Andi.)
(Also, there are lots of radioactive materials in nature. See my proof-of-principle solution.)
This poorly constructed sentence shows me to be wrong does it? It somehow refutes my claim? How exactly? Have you ever heard the phrase quasi-religious? Perhaps you should have some sympathy for someone with Andi's dearth of vocabulary. It adds nothing to his earlier comment and takes nothing away from it either.
You are making Andi out to be the unabomber, he does seem like a reasonable person - you are completely overreacting to all of his comments for some utterly bizarre reason. His comments are irrelevant to what we are talking about. Your whole basis of argument now is that Andi is some sort of certifiable nutcase. Time and again I've said his comments are not relevant, nor do they show anything of the sort, what has you so agitated about the one in the link you provided?
Even if you were somehow magically correct in delivering a devastating psychoanalysis of Andi, over the internet based on some comments, you can't argue with this: there is no forced binary choice to be made between living as luddites, and ignoring the cost of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations. But you continue to. Do you disagree with this statement? It's what I'm calling you out on, and you seem to have a massive problem with it.
What proof of principle solution? Your oil well suggestion is no solution to anything. Are you referring to something else perhaps?
I'm sure they have pulled and will continue to pull lots of useful materials out of the areas and people near e.g. Fukushima and Chernobyl that our past, current and future research will make useful for future generations: cancerous thyroid glands, contaminated milk, water and aquatic life with 2Sv of radiation in it, irradiated metal and farmland.
To demonstrate that there is a net cost of nuclear power to future generations: accept that nuclear plants are supported by tax breaks, and the cost of shutting down nuclear plants is so great that it cannot be undertaken by their owners and caretakers. This must be undertaken by the state taxpayer. After they have been shut down, the waste cannot be processed by current technology and must be stored and protected by the taxpayer. When the plants are no longer generating profit - the vain hope for the enterprise to benefit future generations is that someone invents some way of processing their waste. This is the same vain hope those had when they built these reactors in the the 50s/60s/70s. Sure, they produced power for a few decades - the waste however will cost taxpayer money for millennia.
I will repeat myself again, perhaps you may notice this time: there is no forced binary choice to be made between living as luddites, and ignoring the cost of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
I argued against what "Andi" wrote, which was hard to read differently than being Luddite.
You gave a strained explanation of what "Andi" wrote.
Then you claim it isn't relevant that Andi wrote other strange things that supports "Andi" being stupid &&/|| Luddite.
Sigh...
You also ignored my points about R&D investments with cheap energy building future ... never mind, I've been trolled enough.
You then moved on to trying to make Andi out to be some sort of miscreant to justify your argument. Andi didn't write other strange things. What Andi wrote in the first place wasn't strange either, Andi has not shown himself to be a stupid luddite.
In future if you are going to quote what I write or anyone else writes you would do well to include in full the part of the sentence you are responding to:
>>Time and again I've said [Andi's] comments are not relevant, nor do they show anything of the sort, what has you so agitated about the one in the link you provided?
I've said that the other things that Andi wrote were not relevant, and that they aren't strange. You can't say that I accepted he wrote other strange things, again we are back to you trying to put words into other peoples mouths.
You made no points about R&D, I asked you twice about your proof of principle solution and can find no comments by you referring to them, you are being extremely cheeky accusing me of ignoring things.
At the risk of repeating myself, I'm getting deja vu here: there is no forced binary choice to be made between living as luddites, and ignoring the cost of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2601354
And here is the first: "This is the classical view of people who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take."
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2599193
So he obviously meant exactly what he wrote. Not about nuclear technical progress.
The other comments shows that "Andi" really has those opinions was "irrelevant", yes? :-)
For the rest: Copying links here made me tired of repeating arguments. Bye.
Again I will help you with your obvious difficulties in reading comprehension, although I cannot help you with your stubbornness.
In the link you pasted Andi makes a short comment about education being more important than technical progress (especially technical progress at all costs). This is not anti research, and this is not Luddite. It's pro education! It's very important to read those last three words 'at all costs'.
If you have a look here at a comment in the same thread:
>> Of course it is OK and important - especially for the poorer countries - to make power cheaper. But NEVER at all costs.
See the phrase 'at all costs' he used in the later comment you refer to? Nowhere does he make an argument against all progress, he's arguing against ignoring the the cost ('at all costs') of nuclear reactors for future generations. He even argues for making power cheaper for people in poorer countries. Hardly the behaviour of a Luddite, don't you think?!
So these comments are irrelevant to our discussion, and they do not show Andi to have Luddite opinions.
Here's the question that you have gone to enormous lengths to ignore - one more time, and strangely, I amn't tired asking you again:
There is no forced binary choice to be made between living as luddites, and ignoring the cost of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
I made fun of a guy that wrote anti-technological arguments about expecting technical solutions to problems as being a "religion".
The guy wrote the same thing in multiple other comments.
You call me on that -- and write WALLS of text, insisting that the first comment was only about nuclear tech and that the other comments (note, pluralis) are irrelevant for other unlikely reasons.
If you didn't put time into writing well, I'd be certain you're a troll.
So congratulations, you got another comment out of me. I must assume that is your motivation into writing possible explanations for what "Andi" really means, when he wrote the same thing multiple times.
Andi really didn't write what you say he did, and he certainly didn't write "anti-technological arguments about expecting technical solutions to problems as being a "religion"." in one comment or multiple other comments. It's really pointless to try and put words into people's mouths like that.
I'll take your admission about how you 'made fun of a guy' as you agreeing that is no forced binary choice to be made between living as luddites, and ignoring the cost of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations.
They won't go online again. The Bundesregierung has just annouced that both Brunsbüttel and Krümmel will not go online again.
The Chinese might be on to something with putting the engineers in charge. Sometimes the public really doesn't know what the fuck they're doing, and should be completely ignored.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-suspends-waterfront-n...
and suspended all other development: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/16/china.nuclea...
Don't believe everything the nuclear power fans tell you. Sometimes the engineers really do know what they are doing.
What is more likely is that more power will be imported from France, which massively use nuclear energy (>75% of the national electricity production), and doesn't intend (so far) to move to something else.
How about: "and should be educated" (from ground up).
German coal plants have better cleaning after DDR, so the extra German coal plants won't generate lots of environmental problems with acidic rain over Sweden...
However, it's a shame they see no future in nuclear. Seems like they are betting against something we've just scratched the surface of (my money is on Thorium)..for the wrong reasons. The damage from the oil and coal that they burn is far worse.
On windy sunny days you'll have too much electricity and on windless nights you won't have enough.
There's a EU project underway to scale up powerlines so that electricity can be moved across the EU as needed. The thinking is that it's always windy somewhere, and though you can't store electricity you can move it without too much loss. So if the wind is blowing in Portugal they can export theis excess power to a windless Denmark and vice versa.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpspeicherkraftwerk#.C3.96ste...
Also smart grids (trinding price due to current demand and consumption and intelligent consumer hardware automatically controlled by this price) are emerging.
Also the weather forecast and therefore solar and wind energy producing forecast for the next 24 hours is very accurate nowadays. Far-sighted and intelligent planning of the energy-mix in the smart grid is therefore possible.
Sounds terrible. Can you imagine half the lights in your house automatically turning off due to price increases? If it's enforced on people then it's basically rolling brownouts. If it's optional people will leave the lights on, pay more and grumble, but you'll still to generate the electricity (unless you do rolling brownouts).
The volatile wholesale price is there at the moment, what is missing is a volatile consumer price and an XML / JSON whatever webservice with the current price information and some WIFI chips and logic in my hardware. Not a big deal actually.
There is a lot of research going on in new storage systems.
In solar thermal power plants, there is already storage.
It is not that Germany switches over night to renewable. The shutdown process of the nuclear power plants will take ten years. The plan for the 100% deployment of renewable energy has a target of 2050.
Without a goal, nothing will happen. Germany sets a goal and the framework to reach it.
Of course, they'd be glad if Germans elect a Government that will force it's citizens to buy the luxury of clean norwegian energy.
Funky. The German regulation authorities then seem to have given permission to a project that nobody plans, nobody has heard of, does not exist? Please inform them of your findings.
Hamburg Abendblatt, November 2010:
>NETZAGENTUR GENEHMIGT STROMLEITUNG
>Deutschland und Norwegen vernetzen sich
>Das 600 Kilometer lange Unterseekabel soll Netztschwankungen der beiden Länder ausgeichen. Nur die EU-Kommisssion könnte widersprechen.
> Das 600 Kilometer lange Unterseekabel soll Netzschwankungen aus der norwegischen Wasser- und deutschen Windkraft ausgleichen.
>BONN/HANNOVER. Deutschland und Norwegen vernetzen sich: Die Bundesnetzagentur hat den Weg für eine direkte Stromverbindung zwischen Deutschland und Norwegen durch die Nordsee frei gemacht. Das Konsortium NorGer erhielt am Donnerstag eine Ausnahmegenehmigung der Bonner Behörde. Sie befreit das Projekt damit von bestimmten Vorschriften zur Regulierung des Energiemarkts. Agenturchef Matthias Kurth nannte die Entscheidung ein „positives Signal für die Integration erneuerbarer Energien“.
>Eine Funktion des 600 Kilometer langen Unterseekabels wird es sein, Netzschwankungen aus der norwegischen Wasser- und deutschen Windkraft auszugleichen. Niedersachsens Umweltminister Hans-Heinrich Sander (FDP) lobte den Beschluss: „Ich bin davon überzeugt, dass die Verbindungsleitung eine sinnvolle Ergänzung zum landseitigen Netzausbau darstellt.“ Das Kabel soll ab 2015 von Flekkefjord an der norwegischen Südküste über den Meeresgrund bis an die ostfriesische Küste führen. Für den deutschen Abschnitt wurde bereits im Mai ein Raumordnungsverfahren gestartet. Der innereuropäische Stromhandel wird nach Einschätzung Kurths von der deutsch-norwegischen Direktverbindung profitieren. Die Gleichstrom-Leitung leiste „einen wichtigen Beitrag für die Marktintegration“. Eine Voraussetzung für die Befreiung von den üblichen Bestimmungen zum Netzanschluss und -zugang sei gewesen, dass sich das Projekt insgesamt positiv auf den Stromwettbewerb auswirkt. Das Bundeskartellamt sprach sich ebenfalls für eine Genehmigung aus. Zwar könne die EU-Kommission als oberste europäische Wettbewerbsbehörde bis Ende Februar noch Einwände erheben, sagte Kurth. „Ich gehe aber davon aus, dass dieses grenzüberschreitende Projekt auch von ihr unterstützt wird.“ Norwegen ist kein EU- Mitglied, gehört jedoch zur Europäischen Freihandelszone EFTA. Das Konsortium NorGer umfasst die norwegischen Unternehmen Agder Energi AS, Lyse Produksjon AS und Statnett SF sowie die Schweizer Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft Laufenburg AG.
Seems like they used some dirty tricks themselves even though it wasn't needed (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorGer#Gesetzliche_Rahmenbeding...). After all, what else are we to do if we cut off the nuclear plants? We have to import energy.
The problem is that a country requires many Fukushimas (in Germany's case, 17). If renewables cannot fill the gap left by shutting down nuclear, you'll have to import your electricity from other countries generating it by the very method you phased out, or by even worse methods like coal. Being the leader in renewables doesn't change this fact.
> Seems like they are betting against something...
Political decisions are rarely that longsighted. One can hope, though.
And it isn't just because of solar...they have aggressive energy goals in place already (some before 2022) which makes me think that Germany has an energy plan the likes of which I never saw while in Canada..and certainly not now that I'm in Asia.
Off these 17 German reactors currently 13 are off the grid.
Germany has had an overcapacity and was a net exporter of electricity.
It is also no longer that electricity is bound to countries here in Germany. We have a Europe wide market and electricity is imported based on needs and price. If electricity is cheaper somewhere, we may import that. When our wind parks flood the grid, we have to lower the price and export that.
A significant number were pulled off the grid in the wake of Fukushima. So while it's true they had an overcapacity, it's not the case anymore. [1] How quickly can renewables close that gap? And does renewables provide for cheap electricity? If you're importing based on price, it's not coming from wind or solar. So where exactly is the environmental benefit, other than to make it someone else's problem (i.e. getting France to hide away more spent fuel rods)?
Being an exporter with renewables is definitely a matter of 'when'. It's foolish to pretend the years between now and then don't exist, they have consequences too.
[1] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Germany-net-energy-importer-ap...
You are also aware that the phase out time is TEN years?
In the last ten years we have added ten percent renewable energy as a new source and jump started a new industry with several hundred thousand jobs.
I'm pretty sure that in ten years we can build new capacity to replace the remaining nuclear reactors.
Actually there are several reports from German Universities and research institutions which all agree that this is possible.
What you cite from Yahoo is old news. The Nuclear Industry was happily publishing this. But the case is that
a) some of the nuclear power plants will be brought back, so there is no power shortage. The phase out will be done in about ten years.
b) Germany always imports nuclear power, since there is a free energy market. Germany also exports all kinds of electricity (nuclear, coal, wind, ...).
c) the providers of Nuclear power fear their loss of market power. They are large monopolists which try to prevent competition. There are many smaller providers waiting with their investments, keen to replace them where and when possible.
The only solid argument against nuclear goes along the lines, ``nuclear power is too expensive because of the costs of disposal of wastes''.
Thing is, in normal operation the cost is amortized year by year. Normal life of a nuclear plant is a few decades; say 30 years. Could be longer, but the technological progress is so fast it just makes sensible to replace hardware before it's completely worn down.
But it becomes a hefty one-time fee if the plants are closed mid-life. The overall costs barely go down. The difference in amount of waste is small -- because large portion of nuclear wastes stems from decommissioning of the plant itself. The spent fuel itself is not that much. [1]
And the headlines in press go, ``See? It's too expensive''.
----
[1] been touring recently a nuclear powerplant in Greifswald, Germany, that undergoes decommissioning right now. Most of the waste is NOT the fuel, but infrastructure of the plant (granted, it was built with old technology).
The waste from the infrastructure might be large in volume, but most of it is not that dangerous - compared to the fuel and the chemicals that are used in (re)processing the fuel.
The main argument against nuclear goes that it creates a dangerous set of problems that must be handled over many human lifetimes. People simply cannot do that.
In fact, it's a little ridiculous to safely assume your successors perhaps 100 years hence will have the means to shut down a plant and safely store all the waste. What if things have gone all Mad Max? What if the financial condition of the nation happens to be worse than Greece, but theres this massively capital intensive need to decommission several plants that are now quite dangerous? Heck, what if there's a financial crisis only ten years after the thing is built and all the people who keep it running safely aren't getting paid?
Nuclear is definitely taking a dump on the grandkids, so to speak.
In all other cases, it is reasonable for other countries and NGOs to pool in to avoid a nuclear disaster - much like they've done with dangerous facilities in other poor countries, e.g. toxic waste dump cleaning, etc.
A relevant TED talk by Bill Gates (Bill Gates on energy: Innovating to zero): http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html
In short, the most viable option currently, in his opinion, is the thorium reactors. Current uranium reactors can be converted to work with thorium.
"The main point of using thorium, in addition to the proliferation issues with uranium, is that there is 10 fold amount of it available compared to Uranium. If you take into account also the fact that we only use uranium-235 in our nuclear reactors, and this consitutes only 0.7% of the total amount of uranium, the increase is 100 fold.
Thorium reactors also operate by burning uranium. This is created from thorium by bombarding it with neutrons. This forms uranium 232, which is highly radioactive and is hence hard to deal. This is why U232 can't be used for nuclear weapons, it's hard to handle."
The goal is to develop renewable energy to 100% over the next 40 years.
As Bill Gates explains the current renewable technology is not viable. This is because of various reasons, such as low ratio of energy invested vs energy returned, instability (eg. what you do when the wind is not blowing?), requirements for a possible site, et cetera.. I fully agree that it should be the long term goal to switch over to renewable energy, but with current technology it is out of reach. Therefore we a need a stepping stone that the nuclear energy can provide us with.
It is too early to go all in.
All the questions you mention have been discussed for a full decade here. Numerous research institutes have been working on that for a decade. Several plans have been proposed and discussed. As a first step Germany has jump started its renewable energy industry a decade ago. We moved from 6 to 16% during that decade and now have several hundred thousand employees in that industry, numerous small and medium companies, numerous research institutes, ... we are already exporting a lot of that technology. It is expected that in a few years this industry will be larger than our automotive industry.
Our government actually does something for the tax payer money:
Read it here:
http://www.erneuerbare-energien.de/inhalt/47124/3860/
Renewables' contribution to energy supply in Germany continued to rise in 2010
17 percent share of electricity supply 370,000 employees in the sector
The share of renewable energies in Germany's electricity supply rose further in 2010. At 17 percent, the share was about half a percentage point higher than the previous year. These are the preliminary results calculated by the Working Group on Renewable Energy Statistics (AGEE-Stat) for the Federal Environment Ministry. This growth was achieved in spite of the sector being hampered by adverse weather conditions. As there was very little wind in 2010, the wind power yield of 36.5 billion kilowatt hours (KWh) was the lowest since 2006. Even so, wind energy remained the key pillar of renewables, with around a 6 percent share of the total electricity supply. Clear increases were recorded for electricity generation from biogas and the photovoltaic sector. Solar power almost doubled its contribution, covering around 2 percent of total electricity demand.
Current scenarios show that in just ten years, renewables can cover 40 percent of Germany's electricity supply. An increase of 12 terawatt hours (TWh) per year is considered realistic. (1 terawatt hour = 1 billion kWh).
The renewables' share in total final energy consumption for heat rose from 9.1 percent in 2009 to just under 10 percent in 2010. The renewables' share in fuel consumption rose slightly to an estimated 5.8 percent (2009: 5.5 percent).
Overall, in 2010 renewables covered around 11 percent of Germany's total final energy consumption for electricity, heat and fuels. This is significantly higher than the previous year (2009: 10.4 percent) and is remarkable because energy consumption was considerably higher than in 2009, due to both the economic recovery and the cold weather.
Renewables also increased their contribution to climate protection. In 2010, around 120 million tonnes of greenhouse gases were avoided through the use of renewable energies (2009: 111 million tonnes). Around 58 million tonnes of these savings can be attributed to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) alone.
The figures prove that renewable energies were able to keep pace with the economic recovery and continue their trend of a steadily growing share in our energy supply.
Alongside this, renewable energies also gained importance as an economic factor. Initial estimates for the BMU show that, at around 26 billion euros, investments in renewable energy installations were around one quarter higher than in 2009 (20.7 billion euros).
This development is reflected in the employment figures linked to the expansion of renewables. Last year, employment in renewables rose again and latest estimates show there are now around 370,000 jobs in the sector. This is an increase of around 8 percent compared to the previous year (around 339,500 jobs), and well over twice the number of jobs in 2004 (160,500).
Thorium reactors won't provide any sizeable contribution until 2050. Plus then we go the nuclear route, but again differently. Germany tried already:
* boiling water reactor * pressurized water reactor * Thorium pebble bed reactor * Fast Breeder
and more
enough is enough
Nobody wants a Thorium reactor in Germany. We had one already. It failed.
In 5 years, energy prices will be high, Fukushima will be forgotten, new reactor designs may be available (pushed by Chinese who will have to depend on nuclear?) Let's see what happens then.
The government decision to increase the life time of the nuclear power plant was highly unpopular. In the German society the majority of people were ten years ago already in favor for the shutdown. You can bet that the next government will not have the FDP and CDU in power and that the move to renewable energy has broad support even then.
We shouldn't ignore the fact that 70% of France's energy consumption is backed by nuclear plants, and this makes France one of the cleanest country in terms of energy consumption in the world.
I just don't understand why people are so hesitant to invest in nuclear energy, which is extremely cheap, infinitely available, non-polluting and moderately safe (burning coals may emit radioactive materials directly to the air).
Nuclear energy won't kill thousands of people underground (like coal), nor will it kill tens of thousands of bird (like wind mills). It also doesn't trap heat (like what solar panel does to retain all the heat), or emit greenhouse gases.
It seems that nuclear energy is an ideal energy source for the future. We should spend more time and money to find out better ways (like fusion) to build nuclear plants instead of worrying about the rare accidents (in terms of death per watt, I don't think nuclear energy is going to lose out).
Or, far more likely, we'll still be burning coal.
Hey, it's no skin off my nose, I'm an Australian. If the Germans wanna quit importing our uranium and start importing our coal instead then that's cool, I just think the German greens are gonna wind up looking pretty stupid when they suddenly need to build fifty new coal power plants by 2011.
How do you come up with the number 50 by 2011???
Thanks to fukushima the green party is like a political Steve Jobs on steroids right now: they can promote whatever dumb legislation and nobody questions it. nobody talks about the coal plants that we gonna need to supplement this. it's astonishingly dumb of my people.
but as we germans have almost no economical education classes in our schools, we're easily fooled. as long as it sounds nice (i.e. humane, ecological, responsible, sustainable blah blah) anyone who calls for soundness is comitting political suicide.
Last poll on this issue: 22% of Germans are in huge fear of foreign nuclear plants, 29% are in great fear of it, 29% fear it, 20% don't care.
http://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/tsunami-in-japan/umfrage-m...
Historically, they have a reason to believe so.
"This won't have consequences, it didn't have any in Sweden either."
=> After the nuclear phase-out was enacted in 2000, two power plants were shut down as planned (Stade 2003, Obrigheim 2005).
=> After the Fukushima incident, eight additional plants were shut down and will never return to the grid again.
"This just leads to increasing energy imports."
=> Germany exported 9 billion kWh in 1Q2010, can hands-down afford shutting down nuclear power plants. Source: http://www.klimaretter.info/energie/hintergrund/6271-deutsch...
That's theory; compare it to practice:
Germany already imports electricity from France[1] -- during peak hours. The capacity your source cites is the optimistic variant. The industry simply can't run on the somewhat fickle solar and wind energy, so energy has to be imported. Of course there are ways around that -- energy storage of various kind, or vastly excess capacity, but those raise costs substantially. And that's the core of the problem: the green power companies shift the costs elsewhere, out of public sight. The sleight of hand works, because the numbers -- the optimistic capacity -- are right.
----
[1] sorry, no link here. They explained it during lecture in Greifswald's powerplant.
There are two things going on:
* there is an energy market. Energy is traded for different prices at different times. Sometimes energy from France is cheap (well, it is government subsidized anyway) - sometimes not. For example the Nuclear Power Plants of France are idling a lot on the weekend, when the demand is low.
* there are times when the nuclear power plants have not enough capacity to power France. In winter the demand is possibly very high, like last winter, when it was cold and France was heating a lot with electricity (which we do not that much in Germany). In summer the nuclear power plants have to reduce their capacity, because the rivers are dry and there is not enough cooling water for them.
I doubt that that's a good move...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_accidents_by_coun...
"The nuclear industry says that new technology and oversight have made nuclear plants much safer, but 57 accidents have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Two thirds of these mishaps occurred in the US. The French Atomic Energy Agency (CEA) has concluded that technical innovation cannot eliminate the risk of human errors in nuclear plant operation. An interdisciplinary team from MIT have estimated that given the expected growth of nuclear power from 2005 – 2055, at least four serious nuclear power accidents would be expected in that period"
http://www.spp.nus.edu.sg/docs/policy-briefs/201101_RSU_Poli...
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster don't changed the statistics.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.22037/full
"Models predict that by 2065 about 16,000 (95% UI 3,400–72,000) cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 (95% UI 11,000–59,000) cases of other cancers may be expected due to radiation from the accident, whereas several hundred million cancer cases are expected from other causes. Although these estimates are subject to considerable uncertainty, they provide an indication of the order of magnitude of the possible impact of the Chernobyl accident. It is unlikely that the cancer burden from the largest radiological accident to date could be detected by monitoring national cancer statistics. Indeed, results of analyses of time trends in cancer incidence and mortality in Europe do not, at present, indicate any increase in cancer rates—other than of thyroid cancer in the most contaminated regions—that can be clearly attributed to radiation from the Chernobyl accident."
A nuclear reactor is a high security area which is not open to the public.
Maybe it is better than coal. But Germany plans to replace them with renewable energy.
As for physics, how about the physics of an oil spill?
In the long run however, renewable energy sources are absolutely the way to go. It might actually pay off nicely to invest a lot of resources in renewable energy early on and come out ahead of the pack once coal, uranium, gas and oil become more expensive.
Whether or not Germany will actually be able to carry this off and reap the benefits of it will remain to be seen, though.
As for the risks associated with the nuclear power, its clearly a necessary risk. India consumes 1/25th of the American per capita consumption. Even assuming we consume less than US that's a lot of new electricity that has to be added to the grid. Something renewable energy can't provide. I would rather have us build reactors than coal plants. Of course all bets are off, if we ever tame fusion.
http://www.physorg.com/news205141972.html http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/19093.asp
And as a human race working with atoms like that is probably inevitable anyway, but we just need to make sure we choose the right paths. Perhaps the Uranium one wasn't the very best path. Hopefully we can even make fusion reactors in a few decades.
AFAIK, nuclear fuel cannot be produced, it can only be distilled. So, we're only using whatever radioactive materials exist on Earth anyhow. Were they mined from deep underground? Let's bury the waste deep underground, and there should be no problem.
I see three long-term solutions. 1) Use nuclear energy in a safe and responsible way. 2) wait until solar panels are developed enough and use them. However, both these solutions still have a big problem: batteries suck (they are heavy, inefficient, expensive and toxic, short-lived). Final solution: 3) grow genetically modified algae and use them to produce bio-diesel. The only problem would be the concentration of CO2 and other exhaust gasses in urban areas.
I find it much better if a city has their windmills, compared to huge mega corporations and monopolies of the nuclear industry backed by corrupt politicians.
And apparently Germany will continue to import power derived from nuclear plants.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/29/inhabitats-week-in-green-...
Speaking of solar power, Japan unveiled plans to construct 10 new solar power plants in the wake of the Fukushima Nuclear Crisis, while Switzerland announced that it will completely phase out the use of nuclear power.
The french can't even meet their own demand in summer and winter. They are importing electricity from Germany.
Too bad for them that Germany follows a totally different strategy. But Czech companies will be happy working in the German supply chain for clean tech, too. Manufactured goods one can actually export.