Germany starts dismantling wind farm to make room for coal mine
brusselssignal.eu
brusselssignal.eu
And before someone says: "But what about storage, they won't give you power when you need it!" — this is a problem that can be solved with engineering, unlike the peoblem of the 10.000 year storage of decaying nuclear waste, which becomes a problem of epochal societal scale. When was the last time you had one society last for that long? How would you even calculate the cost of that? Proponents of nuclear power never price this into the energy production (somehow this is something the state has to pay for some reason? But who knows whether a state exists in 5000 years?) and always handwave away the practical problems involved with storing this in densely populated areas for a time span so long it would put us back to the dawn of humankind. Reprocessing exists, sure, but that is only a fraction of the waste.
(But we need to keep battling on the longer timescale as well of course, so nuclear is still good to build)
All these are from the 1970's, and now roughly 50 years later, our evolved technology and knowledge of nuclear technology and safety, should make it even faster and safer.
But funny enough it doesn't get faster. I have my suspicions why, but have not formulated my thoughts enough to blog about it.
Also why smart appliances matter too - you wouldn’t even notice if your car charges 25% slower, house is 1 degree colder/warmer and shower is few minutes shorter…
You can use coal as a stopgap while you ramp up nuclear and renewables. This is what China is doing for example
That’s like asking us now if we care there were human sacrifices 5000 years ago. Yeah, ok that’s awful but I don’t really care.
Similarly if all society collapses, I do not give a shit if somebody digs hundreds of meters into a cave clearly labeled “do not go here” in pictograms that can be understood by the most rudimentary thinkers, and dies of radiation poisoning.
We used to have GAMES where we watched people get ripped apart by lions, FOR SPORT. When did this BS “we must never potentially maybe damage some random human 5000 years into the future” stuff come from?
The "10.000 year storage of nuclear waste" problem can be solved by using a fast neutron/breeder reactor with which spent fuel can be reworked into new reactor fuel. This has two big advantages in that it makes it possible to use up to 90% of the fissile material as fuel as opposed to less than 10% in conventional reactors) as well as the fact that fast reactors can "burn" the long-lived actinides which are responsible for the long-time storage requirements for conventional spent nuclear fuel. The remaining spent fuel is not only much smaller in volume (~10% of the original spent fuel mass) but also much shorter storage times of around 300 years instead of thousands of years.
The life time of a wind generator isn't limited to 20 years - it is more practical reasons it isn't prolonged further. While with nuclear plants there is a lot of pressure to keep it working, even if the safety isn't quite up to modern standards.
Interestingly, while breeding reactors can be built, none is operating in the west. France had two of them and stopped using them. It certainly is a delicate technology. Would be interesting to do a more detailled analysis why no one is operating any more. Perhaps it is just the typical stance of ignoring the problem of nuclear waste as long as possible. As it has been done so far.
Renewable Energy Foundation: a new study, The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark [2] shows that the economic life of onshore wind turbines is between 10 and 15 years, not the 20 to 25 years projected by the wind industry itself and used for government projections
Russia, China and India are operating breeder reactors, India and China are in the process of starting more. The French SuperPhenix commercial prototype was shut down on political grounds. The completed FBR in Kalkar (Germany) was never fueled, again on political grounds. From what I can see the reason for the limited deployment of FNR/FBR types is mostly based on political and ideological grounds. The fact that these reactor types can be used to create Plutonium which can be used to create nuclear weapons plays a large role as does the irrational fear of anything 'nuclear' in 'green' circles. The latter is becoming less relevant now that many 'green' politicos have seen the problems their anti-nuclear stance create in their own 'battle' against CO₂. The German 'greens' have not changed their ways yet which has led to the expansion of lignite use and with that lignite mining as well as a further deindustrialisation of Germany for lack of affordable electrical power.
[1] https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPURL.cgi?Dockey=P100IL8K.TXT
[2] https://www.ref.org.uk/attachments/article/280/ref.hughes.19...
You pointing to the maintenance interval is just bad faith argumenting. On that ground, nuclear energy is even more irresponsible, as the power plants get daily maintenance and supervision.
And your claim about the expansion of the lignite usage is another lie. It is on a historical low. It could be lower still, if the previous government hadn't curbed the rollout of renewable energy while accellarating the shutdown of nuclear. Blame them, not the greens.
You're moving the goal posts. I merely state the facts as published by manufacturers and those from experience in the field (which show the manufacturer data to be highly optimistic).
> You pointing to the maintenance interval is just bad faith argumenting
It is not me pointing out the maintenance interval but the EPA. Is the EPA acting in bad faith?
> And your claim about the expansion of the lignite usage is another lie. It is on a historical low
Germany is re-opening lignite power plants. Tell us how this rhymes with your claim. Also, please, stop using hyperbolic language like 'argumenting in bad faith' and 'another lie', here we deal in facts not feelings. You are clearly ideologically aligned with those who closed the nuclear power plants but do not let ideology cloud your reasoning. Had 'Die Grune' not insisted on closing those nuclear power plants the lignite plants could have remained closed, the wind farm would not need to make place for a lignite mine and power prices in my part of the world (Sweden) would be markedly lower instead of being pushed up due to the fact that the interconnected grid causes prices to be affected by those on the other side of the border.
I think you're confusing wind and solar. So far this year, 2.8 GW of wind power and 13.3 GW of solar have been installed.
https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-strompreis-gas...
If we need radical changes fast, and nuclear can provide them(!!!) then the fact that there are some risks and that it might be a bit expensive shouldn't matter.
First of all: you say we need fast changes. That already rules out nuclear. Setting up a new reactor takes like 20 years. We don't have that time. And we wouldn't need one, each major industrial nation would need at least 100 of them, 10 billion each. There is just no way to achieve that. Not even mentioning the other downsides of nuclear.
However renewable buildup is much faster. Germany has build up more than the equivalent of one nuclear plant of solar alone in one year and the buildup speed can be easily accelerated with a fraction of the effort of trying to expand the nuclear capacity.
The current plan is to ramp down coal till 2030 which also puts an end to mining. Still, mining some more coal is profitable for the power companies and they are pushing to mine most of the coal which was approved for mining earlier on. But there is still considerable pressure to limit mining more.
https://www.rwe.com/en/the-group/countries-and-locations/koe...
They're almost certainly be sold and reinstalled somewhere else.
HN's obsession with trying to "GOTCHA!" non-nuclear green power is so tiresome.
When Russia started the war and cut off gas deliveries, of course the energy markets spiked, but prices are down again to pre-war levels. They are - beyond that spike - not strangling the economy. But it certainly wouldn't have hurt, if the previous government had not slowed down the ramping up of renewables.
As how much nuclear is clean is disputable, but there are multiple reasons to shut it down. That the energy prices went up has nothing to do with the nuclear shutdown but for other reasons which have been named.
Fact is, renewable energy is strongly up and that is going to continue. Because we care about the environment.
If you take cheap nuclear energy out of the equation then of course energy prices rise. You are taking off supply, that pushes cost up to meet demand.
You clearly dont care enough about the environment to question the strategy used in protecting it; if you want people to tolerate green energy it has to be cost effective.
That nuclear is cheap is a lie. It is that simple. And if more people understand that they are told lies about cheap nuclear, they will ask for green energy.
The prices of nuclear power are well known. Look to the UK what a new reactor costs.
I am not an activist but it angers me. What is this for weird framing? It is infuriating, regardless of wether one is an activist.