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Comment by sajithdilshan | Hacker News Reader

> So we just have to build the first expensive 20 to get the experience and then we reap the rewards after 40 years when we need the knowledge again?

I think the knowledge doesn't has to start from zero. Germany can ask for foreign aid from China.

> If nuclear would be cheap in the western world I'd be all for it but we just can't do large projects in our ccurrent system.

I agree, given the fact that it took 15 years to build the BER airport and Stuttgart 21 is still on-going, i can totally imaging building a single new nuclear power plant in Germany would take 50 years minimum.

> Solar + wind + battery is much less of an headache.

I agree, it's a less headache, but at the same time you cannot support energy intensive industries like chemical, manufacturing etc. You would have to build battery farms which is not sustainable. That's why Germany is slowly on a path for de-industrialization

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Gas/Hydrogen are Germany's answer to you last point.

You can store energy created by renewables this way easily and use it when needed. Right now we can't produce enough hydrogen though, so gas can be used in the meantime, but in the future the entire infrastructure, such as power plants, pipelines or port terminals can be switched to hydrogen: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/EN/Areas/Energy/HydrogenCor... You could even produce the hydrogen needed cheaply in countries with better conditions for solar and then ship it the same way we currently do with gas. Hydrogen power plants also have the advantage to quickly change output volumes, which is needed when most energy is produced by solar/wind.

Ideally German's investment into nuclear fusion pays off though as it would change the whole game. https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-fusion-germany-bets-billions-o...

So they would use the excessive power generated by wind+solar into producing H2 from water and then transport it? Theoretically it can work, but as you mentioned, can they produce enough hydrogen to match the demand via wind+solar?

Nuclear fusion would absolutely be a game changer. But they it could take 5, 10 or even 50 more years to achieve that and by that time I don't know if German economy would be able to keep on pumping billions into research.

> So they would use the excessive power generated by wind+solar into producing H2 from water and then transport it? Theoretically it can work, but as you mentioned, can they produce enough hydrogen to match the demand via wind+solar?

I think it can work, especially as you can easily import it using existing gas infrastructure and pipelines as a lot of that infrastructure is build to be converted in the future or currently upgraded for it.

> Nuclear fusion would absolutely be a game changer. But they it could take 5, 10 or even 50 more years to achieve that and by that time I don't know if German economy would be able to keep on pumping billions into research.

Building a nuclear reactor would probably might as well take just as long and we need quicker changes — especially when it comes down shutting down our coal power plants.

I believe that the money a nuclear reactor would cost to build is better invested in renewables (together with gas/hydrogen) and nuclear fusion. Is this strategy the right move? Only time will tell, but I'm optimistic.

Hydrogen is a bad idea because it is dangerous (highly explosive) and also leaky, due to the size of the atom

To transport hydrogen, you need complex infrastructure (real cold trunk or whatever) and you still leak, so the overall efficiency is bad

https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/EN/Areas/Energy/HydrogenCor...

Germany is planing a hydrogen pipeline network.

The Flammable Range (also called Explosive Range), the concentration range of a gas or vapor that will burn (or explode) if an ignition source is introduced, for hydrogen is much larger then for methane.

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/explosive-concentration-l...

Becuse of hydrogen embrittlement you have to be carefull with material selection for pipes, storage tanks holding hydrogen. This not a big problem, but it means old pipes used for natural gas can not be used for hydrogen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement

Germans public should be informed that:

1. Deuterium - Tritium fueled fussion power plants will produce low-level radioactive waste, in form of neutron activated structural matterials. Tritium is radioactive gas with tendency to leak. Antinuclear activists are already concerned with tritium leaks in current nuclear plants. Future nuclear fussion plants will handle much larger tritium inventories then current fission plants.

2. There exist designs for nuclear fusion–fission hybrid plants. You can use hybrid plant to make nuclear bomb material - plutonium.

"One of the most detailed of these studies was published in 1980 by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). They noted that the hybrid would produce most of its energy indirectly, both through the fission events in the reactor, and much more by providing 239Pu to fuel other fission reactors. In this overall picture, the hybrid is filling a role that is essentially identical to the breeder reactor. Both require chemical processing to remove the bred 239Pu, both presented the same proliferation and safety risks as a result, and both produced about the same amount of fuel. Since the bred fuel is the primary source of energy in the overall cycle, the two systems were almost identical in the end."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion%E2%80%93fission...

Help from an industrial country would be required

Sad to read that Germany, that was once an industrial power, is now an empty shell :(

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