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Comment by maxhille | Hacker News Reader

German here, but I'll be a bit lazy and refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany . I quickly skimmed over it and I think it touches the history well.

From my personal perspective, I can definitely relate being nuclear skeptic due to Chernobyl (I was 7 years old at the time) and basically constant demonstrations/problems with the end storage facility subject - for as long as I remember.

Also, at least in my memory around ~2000 it became clear that nuclear was not economically viable vs going green and that was also when the Atomausstieg was sealed by the new Schröder government which had the Greens in the coalition.

Merkel (conservative) wanted to prolong the run times but when Fukushima happened all those plans quickly turned over.

Happy to answer any questions about it.

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> and that was also when the Atomausstieg was sealed by the new Schröder government which had the Greens in the coalition

And after that, Schröder got his deserved chair on Nordstream AG and later Rosneft and Gazprom.

This is what rubs me most about the decision. Thanks to Germany the whole of Europe is now dependant on Russian gas, but at least a few politicians got promotions out of it right?

When my country joined the EU they were forced to decommission an old nuclear power plant. Before that we were a net exporter of electricity. There was talk about building a new plant to ensure energy security in the region and reduce dependence on Russia, but it never materialised.

If Germany - which most of the smaller countries look up to - did not make this decision our energy landscape would look very different today. Over the last winter we have seen energy prices go up 50% or more (electricity comes from Russian gas, and heating comes from Russian gas) and inflation in general is up over 10%. Maybe in rich Germany this is not such a big deal, but here where people do not earn so much it is.

Was this a nuke plant that resembled the one at Chernobyl?

> Also, at least in my memory around ~2000 it became clear that nuclear was not economically viable vs going green

That would be surprising. I would have said that renewables (without comparing massively subsidised and unproven renewables costs with unsubsidised and well understood practical nuclear costs) would only be relatively recently even in the same ballpark as nuclear. And even then, only when the sun's shining/wind's blowing.

"Nuclear power in Europe benefits mainly from massive tax breaks, subsidies and other financial assistance for construction, maintenance and disposal (in Germany a total of about 187 billion euros over the past forty years)"

Is that excluded from the total cost calculations of nuclear power?

Depends on who you ask. Power plant companies usually omit these costs.

Okay, but given you quoted that point above, what are you saying in relation to what I said?

> Also, at least in my memory around ~2000 it became clear that nuclear was not economically viable vs going green and that was also when the Atomausstieg was sealed by the new Schröder government which had the Greens in the coalition.

And yet, Germany has twice the emissions of France because it relies heavily on gas and coal. Very sad to see that global warming is considered more economically viable than nuclear energy.

That's because politicians like Altmaier sabotaged the expansion of wind and solar energy.

> nuclear was not economically viable vs going green

This is such a strange statement as nuclear is the greenest power source.

Regarding numbers like CO2 emission per MW that is definitely true.

However, the highly destructive, scary and dangerous trash that it does produce is like a comical epitome of the kind of visible pollution the first generation green movement was fighting. There is a reason that dystopian sci-fi trash heap illustrations always feature a leaking nuclear barrel.

Combined with the fact that Germany is just (fairly) densely populated everywhere, criticism of storage solutions are not about endangered desert lizard species, but about radiation spikes in elementary schools.

I'm both German and would like to re-establish nuclear here as a necessary evil, but I get the contra points. I hope this gives some perspective :)

The entirely of the nuclear waste produced by the United States since the beginning of its atomic program could fit in a couple of olympic sized swimming pools. And water does such a good job of stopping the radiation that is actually a pretty good way of storing it.

And that's without considering fuel reprocessing, which would not only drastically reduce the raw fuel need (and therefore increase the green value of nuclear power), but would reduce the final waste product to something that could fit in a broom closet.

The scale of the nuclear waste problem is seriously, seriously oversold.

> The entirely of the nuclear waste produced by the United States since the beginning of its atomic program could fit in a couple of olympic sized swimming pools.

Hanford alone has enough liquid nuclear waste to fill 80. Does that waste not count?

I meant from the civil power program, not weapons development.

> criticism of storage solutions are not about endangered desert lizard species, but about radiation spikes in elementary school

Note that storage solution for radioactive waste is necessary even without nuclear reactors, as there are plenty of radiocative waste from radiology/radiotherapy devices and also associated accidents, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident .

It doesn't produce any power until 10 years after you secure the money, usually costs much more than budgeted, and then has very high operating cost.

Each euro earmarked for a nuke plant is a euro not spent building out solar, wind, and storage that would yield much more power than the nuke, almost immediately, and have extremely low operating cost. So, not green, because it competes with actually green for capital.

That is largely because due to green lobbyists making sure that nuclear is subjected to greater regulatory oversight and financial barriers than other sources of energy.

I'm sorry that I'm not that familiar with the German regulatory situation, but here in the USA for example new nuclear plants are required to pre-fund their decommissioning costs upfront before they are ever turned on, and have insurance against accidents, etc. Which is probably a good thing and I'm not arguing against--except that literally no other source of energy is subject to the same requirements. And so when people say "nuclear is expensive!" they are comparing apples-to-oranges.

A coal or natural gas plant generates literal tonnes of environmental waste that they don't need to pay to clean up, and they aren't required to have insurance or bonds against the much more likely industrial accidents their workers and community members will suffer.

Same for solar, which would be a heck of a lot more expensive if solar installation companies had to insure millions of dollars against their workers falling off roofs, or pre-pay the costs of smelting solar panels that reach end of life so their parts don't end up in land fills.

Nuclear isn't expensive. The nuclear energy and regulatory environment is. As it was designed to be by people who don't want nuclear power.

No. Nuclear is inherently expensive.

It is expensive because any large unit of capital in a public works context is expensive. (A clear majority of this cost is in unavoidable structural corruption tax.) On top of that, operating a nuke is very expensive: this is where fuel cycle costs come in, including mining, refining, processing, and disposing, as well as others like fixing turbines and guarding access. On top of that, shutting one down is expensive. None of these costs are falling, while alternative cost are, so, relatively, they are all sharply increasing.

(Coal, oil, and gas are also expensive, mainly in environmental effects, and their costs are also increasing, relative to renewables. They do not count here, except in how they contribute to renewables construction cost, where they fall as their contribution to that cost does.)

Insurance for construction accidents, and disposal costs, are figured in: silicon panels and wind turbine blades are inert, so cheap to dispose of. CdTe panels and rare-earth magnets are valuable, already-refined chemicals, and are reclaimed.

Each cost alone makes nukes more expensive than alternatives. All added up, they make nukes ruinously expensive.

>That is largely because due to green lobbyists making sure that nuclear is subjected to greater regulatory oversight and financial barriers than other sources of energy.

Even if this was true (which I don't think it is) then what are you proposing? Relaxing the regulations?

So how did plans to import natural gas via NS1/NS2 fit into these plans?

My understanding was that Natural gas in Europe is used for house heat, and industrial processes that have never been electrified. I was not aware of using it (at a wide scale) for electricity generation. (definitely not an expert though)

Natural gas is a major source of electricity in many European countries (and in some countries, the biggest source). Natural gas is considered preferable to burning coal because it creates significantly less air pollution and CO2 emissions for each unit of electricity.

Here's a neat map where you can view the current electricity generation mix for countries in real-time:

https://app.electricitymap.org/map

How is the renewable energy sector ? useless ? stable ? growing ?

Massive, and growing rapidly. The second derivative is debatable (i.e. the growth may be slowing) and it may not be fast enough, but Germany heavily subsidized renewables both through subsidies and minimum prices for renewable energy generation very early (which is one of the reason for the absolutely perverse electricity prices, which ironically make gas heating more attractive).

Random quote I found: "In 2020 renewable energy sources produced more electricity than all fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil) together and now provide 45.3 percent of German electricity demand."

Electricity demand is just a part of energy demand though, so getting all heating to e.g. heat pumps will be a major effort.

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