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Comment by epanchin | Hacker News Reader

I was recently arguing with a German who thought burning coal was completely fine as long as you were burning less than you used to. He didn’t see the reason for nuclear at all.

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What do they think about paying much higher electricity bills than in most other EU countries?

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

This wouldn't change with nuclear energy because the price is bound to the most energy source.

There is a reason the energy companies still keep coal power plants. Without the price and profit would go down.

Aside effects of the Ukraine war, it feels like the bill people actually pay has not risen too much in recent years. Germans famously do not have air conditioning in their homes and most switched all the lights to LEDs, leading to substantial bill reductions in many cases. Electricity for cars or for heating can be obtained at about 25% lower prices and modern houses are, in general, quite energy efficient. So I'd say that the high energy prices are hindering the construction of new factories/keeping the old ones (which can turn out to have bad effects soon), but everyday life is not too much bothered by them.

While that covers only the second half of 2023, the prices since then have come down significantly.

Germany was never cheap, it was and is still in the top 5. What you also need to consider in those charts, what is the average salary. While it is comparable to Italy, take a closer look to Hungary how expansive it is there.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1267500/eu-monthly-whole...

Yes, but I pay 34Cents for electricity in Germany, and my friend in Netherlands pays 24-26Cents. That's a huge deal.

> what is the average salary

Norway, Finland, Netherlands are still much cheaper and they are rich.

I can get from 25 cent/kWh (Elektrizität Berlin) to 39 cent/kWh (N-Ergie). It is what you choose.

> Norway, Finland, Netherlands are still much cheaper and they are rich.

Norway has the terrain for building hydroelectric power plants.

And Finland has nuclear energy, which covers 33% of its energy needs. And so could Germany.

That's almost certainly just a benefit of brexit, if we were still in the EU we'd be paying the highest, without any competition.

Meanwhile we had significant protests over the ever expanding surface mines feeding those coal plants.

Which company would you trust to build and operate an nuclear power plant without putting profit over security?

Any of them? Coal is far more dangerous to human health and life than nuclear.

Pick your quasi-legitimate source, but they all agree that coal is ~10X more deadly than nuclear.

> Coal-fired energy chains are estimated to cause 12 times more deaths per gigawatt-ampere-year than nuclear energy chains, and coal is estimated to cause 820% more deaths per terawatt-hour of electricity produced than nuclear

Who said the choice is between coal and nuclear?

I prefer solutions that don't emit poisonous substances into the atmosphere nor make areas dangerous for thousands of years in case of accidents.

> […] nor make areas dangerous for thousands of years in case of accidents.

After ~250 years spent nuclear fuel is only dangerous if you (a) eat it, or (b) grind it up and snort it like cocaine.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx0p6QLMpg4

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2t2tYQsK94

The long-lived stuff throws off mostly alpha particles (blocked by a sheet of paper) or beta particles (thin aluminium). The first few years (6-10) of spent fuel throws off the riskiest particles (gamma), and so the fuel sits in cooling pools for that period.

The co-founder of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank, Geraldine Thomas, has no problem with nuclear power: "Look at the science – smoking and obesity are more harmful than radiation":

* https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/26/obesity-...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldine_Thomas

> Who said the choice is between coal and nuclear?

If an existing nuclear plant was shuttered while a coal plant was still running, that was the choice.

It doesn't really matter as long as they can deliver what you ordered. Which you have to check regardless. So it's the skill of the buyer that decides the result.

We have seen how that worked out in aviation with Boeing.

Build: Siemens, AEG.

Operate: PreussenElektra, EnBW, Vattenfall, RWE, EWN.

Or was that a rhetorical question for a solution with a zero catastrophic failure rate (in Germany)?

Zero is impossible but Siemens, AEG, Vattenfall are examples of companies that value profit over security.

Siemens can't even built proper WEC, what's the nuclear equivalent of blade breakage on wind turbine?

Have there been catastrophic failures of fission reactors in Germany built by Siemens?

Are you familiar with functional safety classification and how this affects the development of systems? Would you draw conclusions from the failure rate of Siemens vacuum cleaners to the company's capability of building fission reactors?

I would just like to find out more, do you have any sources I can look up to learn more about the "risk" topic?

Don't those functional safety classifications exist for WECs?

Now add the long history of Siemens briberies and the trust in that company goes to zero.

> Which company would you trust to build and operate an nuclear power plant without putting profit over security?

Whomever runs the nuclear power plants in Ontario, Canada, where I live:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Canada#O...

* https://www.ieso.ca/Learn/Ontario-Electricity-Grid/Supply-Mi...

* https://ieso.ca/power-data § "Supply" tab

I live and work <50km from a nuclear power station.

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