German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against new nuclear power
Growth in german wind capacity is slowing. Soo… then the plan is to keep on with lignite and gas? Am I missing something? Installed Wind Capacty - Germany German Wind Capacity [https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/08ff4e67-7e8c-414e-80e1-08d3fb9bffb4.png]
This is the best summary I could come up with:
FRANKFURT, Sept 1 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he is against a new nuclear power debate in the country, in an interview released late on Friday with German radio station Deutschlandfunk.
“The issue of nuclear power is a dead horse in Germany,” said Scholz, leader of Germany’s social democrats (SPD).
Scholz’s coalition partner, the free democrats (FDP), recently demanded Germany should keep an nuclear option.
For new nuclear power plants to be built, significant time and investment would be required, Scholz said, estimating at least 15 billion euros ($16.16 billion) would have to be spent per power plant over the next 15 years.
On the widely debated topic of an industrial electricity price cap in Germany, the chancellor expressed doubt how this could be funded, naming options including taxpayer money and debt.
($1 = 0.9282 euros)
The original article contains 138 words, the summary contains 138 words. Saved 0%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Don’t import Reddit’s extremely ignorant takes on nuclear power here, please. Nuclear power is a huge waste of money.
If you’re about to angrily downvote me (or you already did), or write an angry reply, please read the rest of my comment before you do. This is not my individual opinion, this is the scientific consensus on the issue.
When it comes to generating electricity, nuclear is hugely more expensive than renewables. Every 1000Wh of nuclear power could be 2000-3000 Wh solar or wind.
If you’re about to lecture about “it’s not possible to have all power from renewable sources”, save your keystrokes - the majority of studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and industry – is feasible and economically viable. Again, this isn’t my opinion, you can look it up and find a dozen sources to back up what I am writing here.
This is all with current, modern day technology, not with some far-off dream of thorium fusion breeding or whatever other potential future tech someone will probably comment about without reading this paragraph.
Nuclear power has promise as a future technology. It is 100% worth researching for future breakthroughs. But at present it is a massive waste of money, resources, effort and political capital.
Nuclear energy should be funded only to conduct new research into potential future improvements and to construct experimental power stations. Any money that would be spent on nuclear power should be spent on renewables instead.
…which is hugely worse for nuclear? What is your point?
Nuclear power plants require eye watering amounts of concrete.
They require continuous (and ever-increasing) extraction of fissile matter such as uranium ore (a limited resource, by the way - if we used nuclear power instead of fossil fuels we would run out pretty quickly, too, all things considered).
Nuclear power also consumes (and irradiates) vast quantities of water.
They are huge nightmares for biodiversity as they are massive projects usually flattening large swathes of land.
They produce waste which is not only irradiated and hazardous but also a major security risk, so it has to be safeguarded… and/or sealed into a hole in the ground where it will remain a risk for years to come.
The building projects themselves are astronomical in scale and require huge quantities of materials to be shipped by fleets and fleets of trucks followed by a lot of industrial work. Then in a couple of decades the site has to be decommissioned which is even more work.
Estimates for the lifetime emissions (extraction, commission, operation, etc.) CO2EQ of nuclear power are commonly thought to be between 60-100g per kWh. Solar power is somewhere in the region of 20-40g per kWh, and wind is somewhere around 10-20g per kWh.
So again, no, nuclear energy is not what we want. Support ONLY renewables. Nuclear power is wasteful.
Because the fossil fuel industry and their lobbyists are absolutely, ridiculously, hideously wealthy, and it benefits them for it to be that way?
France lost their place as largest energy producer in the EU in 2022, because France has been having issues with their nuclear power stations.
“France usually exports more power than it imports, but structural problems with its nuclear fleet, which show no signs of improving, saw exports from the country halve compared to the previous year, while Sweden exported 16 terawatt hours”
Sweden has over 60% of their energy generation from renewables, by the way.
Take a look at this graph:
See that blue line that starts out at the top, then it drops off a cliff? That’s coal. Look at it dropping.
The yellow line that’s just below it, that’s been slowly decreasing until it sharply started dropping? That’s nuclear.
Look at my boy wind power, that little gray line, going into orbit, flying like the wind.
Solar PV is that purple line that’s trending upwards.
Oil is also slowly decreasing.
So no, you’re wrong. Stop digging your heels in and admit when you are wrong.
Lol, what am I wrong about? Nuclear is a a carbon free techonolgy that we have that can prodce the energy we need? Germany dumped nuclear to go full renewable and it flopped? France exports a ton energy to Europe? What did I say that was wrong?
I think your brain is full of ideas that came from somewhere else.
Watch this, I can make you ragequit this entire argument with this one comment with like a 90% confidence rate:
Prove either of these two statements as false:
The total cost per kWh of nuclear electricity is more expensive than common renewable sources of electricity.
The total amount of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions for nuclear is greater than the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of common renewable sources of electricity.
Either that or you can loftily declare yourself above this argument, state that I am somehow moving the goalposts, say that “there’s no point, I’ll never change your mind” or just somehow express some amount of increduiity at my absolutely abhorrent behaviour by asking you such a straightforward question? You may also choose “that’s not the question I want to talk about, we should answer MY questions instead!”
But go ahead and prove me wrong, I’ll be waiting!
Nice. Topic change.
For real though, you’ve got a lot of energy on this. That’s great. Use it to go after fossil fuels, they’re the ones damaging the climate. Costs are indeed a concern with expanding nuclear but money’s not a problem. Emissions are. If we need more we’ll just print more like we always do.
Ah yeah, that’s the stuff, right there. It’s like fucking heroin right into my veins. I ask you directly to contradict the entire underlying basis for my entire original argument and you declare that it’s a “topic change”. I don’t know why you love defending the nuclear industry so much, but man, the entertainment value alone, it’s great stuff.
Use it to go after fossil fuels, they’re the ones damaging the climate
How about you take that little hit to your ego, admit that you were wrong, and start being right? We’ve all been there man, I used to be a big supporter of nuclear energy too, you can join me in recovery and we can fight against investments in both fossil fuels AND nuclear AT THE SAME TIME. It’s almost unbelievable I know but we’re actually capable of more advanced thought than “the mineral fuel enemy of my fossil fuel enemy is my friend”. Every million dollars spent on nuclear would have been better spent as half a million on renewables and then burying the other half a million in a hole in the ground. Obviously spending the whole million on renewables would be good as well but I know that it’s just not the same generating power without having some big hole in the ground being dug as part of that process so I’m willing to come to a compromise.
I won’t fight against anything that helps the climate, even if it’s expensive. It’s unfortunate that anyone would. Do you really think when our grandchildren inherit the land, they’ll be proud that their ancestors saved money when caring for the atmosphere?
This isn’t about being right or wrong, or arguing about stupid things with a loon from the internet. It’s about the atmosphere, don’t forget that.
Again, compared to nuclear, renewables are:
Name a single good fucking thing nuclear does better than renewables.
“I can’t argue with your logic so I’ll just call you crazy instead” is a classic yeah
BTW, full disclosure, the context button is broken on Lemmy for me, so I can’t tell 100% what chain of comments I’m replying to and I’m running a few classes at the same time, so apologies if I got something mixed up. Don’t let that distract you from the facts that nuclear power is a total waste of money, energy and time, though.
The total cost per kWh of nuclear electricity is more expensive than common renewable sources of electricity.
Subsidize nuclear as much as renewables and the price equalizes.
The total amount of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions for nuclear is greater than the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of common renewable sources of electricity.
This is incorrect, objectively.
which is hugely worse for nuclear? What is your point?
Objectively not. Precious metal mining is more than a thousand times worse for the environment than Uranium or Thorium mining.
Nuclear power plants require eye watering amounts of concrete.
Sure, in the 1950s. Modern nuclear reactors can be built in existing Coal plants. Most reactor types don’t require any additional shielding besides what is already present.
They require continuous (and ever-increasing) extraction of fissile matter such as uranium ore (a limited resource, by the way - if we used nuclear power instead of fossil fuels we would run out pretty quickly, too, all things considered).
We have mined enough Uranium to power the entire world for the next 10,000 years; there is currently enough Uranium in just known mines for the next 1,000,000 years of current global power usage. And that’s just Uranium. Thorium is a viable technology with the first reactors already online for commercial use.
Nuclear power also consumes (and irradiates) vast quantities of water.
No, it doesn’t. This is just outright a lie, one I have no idea where you got. The internal loop never leaves the building, the external loop is never irradiated.
They are huge nightmares for biodiversity as they are massive projects usually flattening large swathes of land.
They have a smaller impact than solar or wind farms, by a factor of 100.
They produce waste which is not only irradiated and hazardous but also a major security risk, so it has to be safeguarded… and/or sealed into a hole in the ground where it will remain a risk for years to come.
They produce less toxic waste than Coal power plants, and all of the world’s projected nuclear waste for the next 100,000 years fits into existing facilities.
The building projects themselves are astronomical in scale and require huge quantities of materials to be shipped by fleets and fleets of trucks followed by a lot of industrial work. Then in a couple of decades the site has to be decommissioned which is even more work.
This is the exact same for renewables, worse, arguably, since wind farms have to be off shore to be efficient and cargo ships are more than a thousand times worse for the environment than any form of overland transport.
This is the exact same for renewables, worse, arguably, since wind farms have to be off shore to be efficient
From the charts I've seen lately, offshore is much more expensive than onshore per kwhr for wind by a large margin. If that's the case, is offshore even valuable anymore?
Yes, given there is no ‘empty land,’ you are always destroying something if you create a windfarm on land. On the other end of this, offshore windfarms unironically create local ecosystems. If your goal is not just decarbonization, but decarbonization in order to better the health of the planet, which it should be, then offshore would be the best option.
See: Germany tearing down land wind farms in order to mine more coal. Those turbines aren’t going to be repurposed, they’re going to scrap yards.
…Nuclear power is a huge waste of money…
…this is the scientific consensus on the issue.
A battery of tests were performed on the economics of mitigating the impending climate disater. These tests indicated that nuclear is a huge waste of money (p<0.05) (Blake, 2023)
Hahaha :)
2022 Electricity ATB Technologies and Data Overview, annual technology baseline:
Wow look isn’t it crazy how nuclear is the most expensive one?
Mycle Schneider, author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report: “Nuclear power plants are about four times as expensive as wind or solar, and take five times as long to build. When you factor it all in, you’re looking at 15-to-20 years of lead time for a new nuclear plant.”
Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power, published in nature energy: "We find that larger-scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to associate with significantly lower carbon emissions while renewables do. "
You can have this copy/paste from like 5 minutes of googling. You can also run your own study yourself by just googling “average kwh price nuclear” and “average kwh price wind” and see how it looks. You can also google “average co2 eq emissions total lifetime nuclear” and likewise for wind/solar PV. This is extremely simple stuff, guys. I am basically saying, “lentils are cheaper than steak” and you’re asking for citations.
2022 Electricity ATB Technologies and Data Overview, annual technology baseline:
Wow look isn’t it crazy how nuclear is the most expensive one?
Mycle Schneider, author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report: “Nuclear power plants are about four times as expensive as wind or solar, and take five times as long to build. When you factor it all in, you’re looking at 15-to-20 years of lead time for a new nuclear plant.”
Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power, published in nature energy: "We find that larger-scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to associate with significantly lower carbon emissions while renewables do. "
This chart is from the "Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems," I wonder whether they might be a wee bit biased. It also puts the "consequential cost to health, environment and climate" of nuclear as higher than coal, which is bananas, and their data on lifecycle carbon emissions from nuclear comes from a noted anti-nuclear group (and the article even admits as much).
"When you factor it all in, you’re looking at 15-to-20 years of lead time for a new nuclear plant." Cool, let's start building a whole bunch of them right now and then worst-case in 20 years we'll have too much electricity.
"In the next 10 years, nuclear power won't be able to make a significant contribution" I appreciate your optimism but we are deeeeeefinitely not going to come anywhere close to phasing out fossil fuels in power generation in 10 years; we're not even going to be done with fossil fuels on days that are particularly sunny in the solar cell areas and particularly windy in the wind power areas.
Well now you're back to arguing about new construction instead of keeping existing plants running.
Also, we can build both. Surely you appreciate that there are other factors slowing the speed of the energy transition besides the availability of capital, and that while nuclear has its own roadblocks, many of them are different from + don't overlap or compete with those standing in the way of renewables.
And thats about it.
It is not a yes and, because urgency favors renewables even more. If it wouldn’t be for bureaucratic and political hurdles, from planning to operation is about 2 years for onshore wind and solar sites. For things like retrofitting a small solar plant on a residential or industrial building it can be as short as three months and for balcony solar power as a small hobby project it is as little as a day of planning + the delivery time + a day of installation.
Nuclear plants on the other side take minimum a decade, more likely two decades and that is despite strong political and bureaucratic support that is needed to get it going at all. Otherwise with citizens protest it would stay in court indefenitely.
This famously isn’t true for nuclear power. It just keeps getting more expensive.
The French nuclear case illustrates the perils of the assumption of robust learning effects resulting in lowered costs over time in the scale-up of large-scale, complex new energy supply technologies. The uncertainties in anticipated learning effects of new technologies might be much larger that often assumed, including also cases of “negative learning” in which specific costs increase rather than decrease with accumulated experience.
www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0301421510003526
And this research was done before Fukushima, which increased costs even further.
It takes a lot of money, planning, and technical know-how to build a nuclear power plant, especially a safe one. It isn’t like a new nuclear company can just pop into existence, and start offering reactors for sale.
Traditional nuclear reactors are, therefore, a technology that requires a lot of centralization to implement. Only nation-states and huge corporations can assemble the resources to construct them.
Compare that to wind or hydro-electric power. You can build a generator with some wire and magnets yourself, so you could call them more decentralized.
This might be changing with modular reactors, I don’t know.
For centralisation - large areas of the grid are dependent on a few locations, so if there is an issue with one or two areas, the entire network can fail. Say for example if there is an earthquake which disables two nuclear power plants, that could cause massive issues with the grid.
If you have many small power sources distributed across a larger area, it significantly mitigates the issue - the loss of even dozens or hundreds of wind turbines would be able to be handled much more responsively.
Nuclear is uniquely disadvantaged at having very bad responsiveness to demand. Renewables are extremely good at that, coincidentally.
For security, I’m sure you can imagine many scenarios, but nuclear waste is a potential target for creating dirty bombs for example.
First off appreciate the good faith response. It’s more than I’ve come to expect when I ask (probably) dumb questions requesting further explanation.
Coming from an American perspective, I’ve only recently realized just how badly centralization affects the grid. It’s definitely a strong case for rooftop solar.
But focusing on nuclear, I do think we’ve missed the window where building top-to-bottom nuclear generating facilities would be advantageous, but in the effort to bridge from our heavily fossil fuel based electrical grid to a completely renewable, I think that SMRs are a reasonable solution. I especially like the notion of converting old infrastructure (i.e. old abandoned coal plants) into SMR power plants.
You seem to be knowledgeable and have opinions. What’re you’re thoughts on SMRs to help bridge the growing energy need?
Unfortunately simply using renewables alone is t enough to decentralize them. Lately Texas has been having near energy shortages and part of the problem is a few unexpected central outages at fossil fuel plants, but another is the vast majority of wind turbines are built in one sunset of the state, so if wind is low there it can (and has) cause massive decreased in available energy, far larger than a couple traditional large scale nuclear plants when other parts of the state are under fire warnings because of high wind and dry conditions. Of course this isn't an issue with the technology itself, but rather a problem with implementation. The issue isn't with what was built, but the lack of building more across the state (or joining one of the two larger grids to further decentralize power production over a broader area)
Anyways, another issue with security is centralized power production make a good target for disruption. And if you have the side effect of causing a meltdown...
Ironically, I seen the claim that the original reason was because the US grid was outdated and Texas wanted to do better. Probably back when people who called themselves "conservatives" actually cared at little bit about conserving the environment (at least in some self-interested ways). Of course it didn't work out that way.
No clue why the rest of the US is divided into two grids.
Nuclear is uniquely disadvantaged at having very bad responsiveness to demand. Renewables are extremely good at that, coincidentally.
Can you explain to me how you adjust renewable to the demand ? How can you increase the amount of sun or wind in the evening when there is a peak of demand?
For the nuclear you can go from 100% to 20% or the opposite in less 30 minutes. It can also follow the load and have a variation of 5% in 30s.
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