> did not know that Fukushima had six nuclear reactors,
In common use "reactor" and "power plant" sometimes get equated. Whoop de doo. My apologies for being slightly sloppy.
> Nuclear power is a lot "magically thinking".
No. Hard science. Now the Energiewende. That is a LOT of magical thinking. We'll use intermittent sources and when they are not producing <a miracle occurs> and everything will be just fine!
It turned out that the proper name for the miracle was "Russian Gas". Some "Wende" and not a good idea.
> We are far away from getting 3 times as much electricity from nuclear.
Sadly, yes. 17 years. According to 22 countries.
> For a long time the German engineers lobbied for new nuclear technology.
Yeah, for good reasons. Eventually they gave up, because it is really difficult to counter base emotions stoked by raw propaganda with reason and facts. It's not even a competition.
> Others will say that about your opinions.
I am sure some will say just that. Except I can back up my "opinions" with facts, because they are factual. As can be seen from this exchange.
Anti-nukies know that nuclear reactors take forever to build. Because they only look at the most extreme examples, the outliers. The fact is that nuclear plants take around 7.5 years to build. With a little variation up and down, but consistent over the last 50 years.
That's the actual fact.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi...
(note: the article also does the common thing and not distinguish between nuclear power plant and nuclear reactor)
And of course France managed to transition their electricity generation to nuclear in 20 years. Germany has been at it 20 years as well, but we're at best half way done. With dubious results so far and the most difficult parts ahead of us.
Speaking of France, anti-nukies know that nuclear is uniquely expensive. Except "cheap" green Germany electricity is almost twice expensive as "expensive" French nuclear electricity. With the former being the 2nd most expensive in the EU and the latter below the EU average. Strange.
Anti-nukies know that nuclear is uniquely dangerous, unlike any other technology. When in fact it is either one of the safest or the overall safest energy technology out there, depending on which figures you look at.
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
You know what is uniquely unsafe? Hydro power. The largest energy production accident ever was that dam in China. 150000 people dead at minimum, 4.6 million homes destroyed, 11 million people displaced. Nobody knows about it. No anti-hydro activists in Germany demand we dismantle all our dams. No country got out of hydro. The problem with nuclear is psychological, not factual.
Anti-nukies know that nuclear waste is uniquely dangerous and an unsolved problem. In fact, nuclear waste is uniquely manageable and, in fact, managed. There is very little of it, temporary storage is fine, and permanent storage a solved problem, with two sites in existence and a third being built. The problems of nuclear waste are (1) political, with politicians being able to kick the can down the road because it is so technically non-problematic and (2) economic, because fresh Uranium ore is so cheap that recycling is not economical. Fuel cost is only around 10% of the cost of running a plant.
> just the old stuff like that nuclear fuel has not been used to its potential.
That is not an "argument". That is pure fact. We throw away 95% of the fuel.
> How many re-processing plants have been built in Western/Middle Europe in the last twenty years?
Why would you build reprocessing plants if your potential customer is getting out of nuclear energy? You are not making any sense. UK and France have reprocessing plants.
And of course it's even better to build reactors that can use all the fuel. But you would have to invest money into developing those reactors, which wasn't done the last 20 years because people are irrationally scared of nuclear technology and governments pander to fears.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_fluid_reactor
German engineers. Had to leave Germany and move to Canada to continue.
A great example of just how deep and institutional the irrational hatred for anything nuclear is in Germany:
"The reactor design won the public vote for the Galileo Knowledge Prize in the German GreenTec Awards of 2013, although the award committee presiding over the awards changed the rules to exclude nuclear designs before announcing the winner. Dual Fluid participants successfully sued to remedy this."
Something nuclear won. Gotta change the rules retroactively (and illegally), because that just can't be.
And yes, the public is actually ahead of the institutions on this one: almost two thirds now think the "Atomausstieg" is a mistake.
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlan...
> What happened to the Thorium reactors?
Dunno, this one?
https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Operating-permit-iss...
Was originally scheduled to be completed in 2024. They accelerated and finished in 2021, because it is impossible to build nuclear reactors in time, as we all know. Operating license was just granted.
In the West, interest in investing in nuclear was very low. After the disaster of the German Energiewende became more apparent, interest in nuclear energy has gone up markedly. So we're seeing a lot more activity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#Commercial...
The Chinese also recently turned on their pebble-bed reactor, it is now feeding electricity into the grid. We'll see if they can do a better job of it than Germany did. I am somewhat dubious about that one myself, but again, we'll see.
> That's another reason why a world with lots of countries with nuclear technology is not desirable.
I am talking about the ones who already have it.