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Comment by omgwtfbyobbq | Hacker News Reader

There have been concerns about the risks of flooding to nuclear plants in Germany.

https://energytransition.org/2013/06/german-nuclear-plants-f...

Restarting nuclear isn't a bad idea, but it needs to be approached systematically and cautiously such that the risks from natural disasters and economic impacts are minimized, while also weighing the risks of continuing to support Russia.

Unfortunately, many plants across the world have not had accurate risk assessments done, both for natural disasters and economic risks.

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Flawed logic. Closing the nuclear plants has very large, real, tangible and undeniable costs. One cannot discuss the cost of opening them while ignoring the costs of closing them.

>while also weighing the risks of continuing to support Russia.

There are many options. Specifically, Germany can...

1) Continue with BAU, which is Germany paying the costs of closing the reactors and relying on Russian gas.

2) Restart them as quickly as possible. This would minimize the costs of relying on Russia for gas, but would increase the risks of reactor problems from natural disasters.

3) Harden them for natural disasters while restarting them as quickly as possible, which costs more.

4) Use the money spent to harden them on other sources of generation/storage/load shifting/etc, which I suspect costs more.

5) Some of the above based on the specifics in each case.

In addition, Germany would still be reliant on Russian gas for other industrial uses even if nuclear/renewables/coal/storage/etc were able to completely replace gas in the grid.

> Restarting nuclear isn't a bad idea, but it needs to be approached systematically and cautiously such that the risks from natural disasters and economic impacts are minimized, while also weighing the risks of continuing to support Russia.

smells like $$$ and more delays. nuclear is already by far the safest method of power production, and emits far fewer radionuclides than coal, and those numbers are the old generation more dangerous pressurized water reactors.

water's lapping at our feet

That’s not completely accurate.

Nuclear is less safe than grid solar, it slightly beats rooftop solar because standing on roofs is dangerous and most solar installs are new.

Hydroelectric vs nuclear is tricky because large dams save lives and by reducing flooding etc, and installing hydroelectric when building a dam is much safer than building the dam in the first place. Which makes calculating the deaths from hydroelectric power tricky. Low head dams on the other hand are dangerous, but are largely abandoned technology.

> Nuclear is less safe than grid solar, it slightly beats rooftop solar because standing on roofs is dangerous and most solar installs are new.

Yeah and making the solar panel, how green is that?

I would like to add that they should bring in bouncy castles around homes when installing solar panels, the kids can play on them and primarily will definitely save the installer from falling. You could also package them together, like "Daddy daddy let's install solar panels" and kids could play in different places in the neighborhood that installed them one after another.

And then you get a better image for the kids, plus you get to lower down the "people falling off roofs" statistic and make solar panel look even better.

> Yeah and making the solar panel, how green is that?

Depending from where you buy them, quiet green. Produced with 100% renewables, made in Germany with polysilicon made in Europe.

Why do you seem some emotional as if your identity is at stake here?

> made in Germany

Not trying to defend the parent comment going off about bouncy castle, but I have a hard time believing that statement is true. This is the share of photovoltaic pannel production per region.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/668749/regional-distribu...

I am not saying that every panel is. I am just saying there are companies which do exactly what i claimed exists. In particular i was referring to Meyer-Burgers. This company was a developer of photovoltaic production machines which they sold around the world but they recently shifted to building and owning their own high automation "giga"factories and have plans to build them in various western countries producing premium, long lasting cells with top efficiency. Those panels are sold today too. By the end of 2022 they claim to >2.0 GW (with plans to extend it to 2.8ish GW) of solar panel manufacturing capacity which gives them 1.X% market share world wide. Since they are a publicly traded company we will learn whether they made it or not.

They also their own line of solar roof tiles in the pipeline.

Oh right, nobody ever thought to include the cost and effects of producing the solar panels!!

I'm joking of course.

But how green is building a nuclear power plant? I imagine there's a lot of heavy machinery involved and lots of concrete involved.

Those things are always factored in. Also the mining for the fuel has to be included, which is also quite expansive. The costs for decommissioning a plant seem to get underestimated a lot though.

There are sometimes calculations where nuclear comes out on top of renewables. But these calculations are hugely more complicated for the nuclear side, and require nothing going wrong, or at least not much more than in the past, which is a dangerous assumption in my opinion. And with nuclear you lock yourself in.

A country needs to build up a large nuclear industry to make it profitable (or pay extra for imports), and to decommission plants or stop building them ahead of schedule increases the costs.

This kind of reductive ad nauseum accounting is why nothing ever gets done in the west anymore.

the source I was looking at contradicts that, but w/e. a further consideration is that for solar/wind you have to consider energy storage associated mortality as well but I think that's besides the point. they're all on the order of 0.1 deaths/TwH. the public perception is that nuclear energy is dramatically more dangerous than other methods of energy generation. data says, it isn't.

there are a lot of reasons why dramatic expansion (of the kind needed to take the edge off climate change) of hydro power isn't feasible. for one most of the suitable sites are already used. and the environmental impact is substantial

Yes the numbers are low, but here’s a source for comparison: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

The chart often used by pro nuclear sources comes from 2012, compares things to rooftop solar, etc. But more recent data is down as wind and solar deaths are extremely front loaded during construction.

PS: As to batteries etc. The fact nuclear power plants have hundreds of people drive to them every day is going to have associated traffic accidents over the lifetime of a power plant. Where you draw lines as associated deaths or not is somewhat subjective.

Also, climate change is decommissioning hydro plants, at least in the western US.

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