German poll: Majority for return to nuclear energy
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Summary
A new Innofact poll shows 55% of Germans support returning to nuclear power, a divisive issue influencing coalition talks between the CDU/CSU and SPD.
While 36% oppose the shift, support is strongest among men and in southern and eastern Germany.
About 22% favor restarting recently closed reactors; 32% support building new ones.
Despite nuclear support, 57% still back investment in renewables. The CDU/CSU is exploring feasibility, but the SPD and Greens remain firmly against reversing the nuclear phase-out, citing stability and past policy shifts.
We have an almost indefinite source of energy below our feet and almost nobody talks about. Screw nuclear, go geothermal
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I say we bury the waste in your garden then
waste is a much smaller problem than co2 emmissions. Waste can be put in water which completely shields it.
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It's not expensive because they are actually particularly hard to make though. They're expensive because we made them expensive. There's so many requirements and restrictions on them that aren't on other power sources. Some of that's good, but a lot is designed by dirty energy to keep them in business. They drive up the cost of nuclear and then get to say they're cheaper.
Another big factor is that every plant is effectively a completely custom design. Because of how few nuclear plants are constructed, every new one tends to incorporate technological advancements to enhance safety or efficiency. The design also has to be adapted to the local climate and land layout. This makes every single plant effectively one of a kind.
It also tends to be built by different contractors, involving different vendors and electric utilities every time. Other countries have done better here (e.g. China and France) mostly due to comprehensive government planning: plopping down lots of reactors of the same design, done by the same engineers. Although these countries are not fully escaping cost increases either.
You are completely correct that regulation is also a big factor. Quality assurance and documentation requirements are enormously onerous. This article does a pretty decent job explaining the difficulties.
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Just because you say so doesn't make it true
Well, good news, because I'm not the one saying it. That's coming from our Transmission Operator. Everything is detailed in their 992 page report:
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waste is a much smaller problem than co2 emmissions. Waste can be put in water which completely shields it.
Then it should pose no problem to put it in your garden for a million years when it decayed enough to be less dangerous when we build you a pool? You have to make sure to maintain the pool until it's completely safe though.
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We have an almost indefinite source of energy below our feet and almost nobody talks about. Screw nuclear, go geothermal
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If you are burying the waste, you'd be using a mine that is below the impermeable bedrock layer. There would be no leeching at all.
And using the most expensive project on the planet as your reference is disingenuous as best. Most other projects cost less than a third of that.
Additionally, almost no one is ever suggesting that nuclear is a 100% replacement. Most people suggest nuclear baseload with renewables+battery for peaks.
Would, should, could:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine
Why didn't they bury it in impermeable bedrock then in this case. It will cost the taxpayer 3.7 billion to evacuate the rusty and leaky containers there. Which will probably start in 2033 and last decades. If they don't get it right the waste will probably leak into groundwater. That was already stated in a report from 1979 but declared as unscientific by managers of the facilitiy. The building time for Olkiluotos Onkalo was 20 years. You can search for other "End Storages" of nuclear waste around the world. Not many of them are even operating now. You can also look up facilities in Arizona making the same mistake as Germany in storing the waste in salt mines. You can also lookup the devastating effects of Uranium mining for the environment (e.g. in Navajo land).
Here's your baseload argument debunked:
Yesterday 58% of the energy in Germany came from renewables. It briefly had a day in January when renewables surpassed 100% of its energy demand. Energy is sold between the member states of the EU. Germany regularily imports about 2-5% of its energy per year. Not because the can't generate the baseload via coal or gas but because it's cheaper to buy. Only 0.5% of that imported energy comes from nuclear. The rest is also from renewables.
A bit offtopic but related: Mr. Habeck the previous much scolded economy minister had a big part in the rise of renewables and his further plans would have been to build out hydrogen production via renewables to act as a future CO2 neutral baseload capacity. Now Germany is in the hands of old white man again who want to burn the world. Just yesterday a headline was that the conservatives want to restrict the influence of the buero against monopolies in pursuing suspected cases of price agreements between fossil fuel cooperations.
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Fukushima isn't the big argument against nuclear.
IT'S TOO EXPENSIVE
The "expensive" argument is bollocks.
It's not too expensive for China, South Korea, Japan, the USA, France, the UAE, Iran, India, Russia.
The countries without nuclear will deindustrialize and the countries with nuclear will outcompete them.
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Then it should pose no problem to put it in your garden for a million years when it decayed enough to be less dangerous when we build you a pool? You have to make sure to maintain the pool until it's completely safe though.
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I have been working in decomissioning npps in germany for over a decade now which is why I feel so strongly about the knee-jerk conservative BS. no, there are not -a million ways- to make waste from nuclear power plants safe. even material released from regulations (concrete from decomissioned buildings for example or soil from the ground) has some residual radioactive particles and just like alcohol in pregnancies: there is no safe amount of exposure to radiation, just a lower risk of provoking potentially fatal genetic mutation that european regulators deem acceptable. but that in and of itself is not really problematic. It is just that we cannot assume ideal conditions for running these plants. while relatively safe during a well monitored and maintained period in the power producing state of a npp that changes radically if things go south. Just look at what happened to the zhaporizhia powerplant in ukraine they actively attacked a nuclear site! And all the meticulous precautions go out the window if a bunch of rogues decide to be stupid - just because. and tbf whatever mess the release of large amounts of radioactive particles does to our environment, economy and society i would rather not find out. as others have laid out here, there are safer and better suiting alternatives that are not coal.
This is just straight up fear mongering. Say what you will about the economics, but the idea that there's no safe amount of radiation is ridiculous (we don't know, but presumably it's okay in some amounts since you're getting radiation doses every day even not living near anything nuclear).
The idea that NPPs are some unsafe technology just waiting to explode is dramatic and untrue.
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It's really sad to see that evidently more than half of the german population have an opinion on something which they have little to no understanding of. It's frustrating what misinformation can achieve.
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There's no good reason to be against nuclear power. It's green, it's safe, it's incredibly efficient, the fuel is virtually infinite, and the waste can be processed in a million different ways to make it not dangerous.
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It's incredibly expensive when all costs over the entire construction period, operating period, dismantling period and storage period for nuclear waste are taken into account.
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I'm not the kind to hate on nuclear power itself, but let's not assume it's perfect either. There are good reasons against nuclear power, its just not the usual reasons raised by people.
The cost and time effort needed for building one plant is one drawback.
The fact that you can't say "let's turn off the nuclear reactor now that we have enough renewables and later today we start it again when the sunlight is over". It's a terrible energy source to supply for extra demand needed without perfect planning.
Nowadays, nuclear is not so worth it in general, not because of fearmongering about the dangers (an old plant badly upkept is a danger, independent of what energy source you use, but specially for nuclear plants). Ideally a combination of different renewables would be best, with some energy storage to be used as backup, plus proper sharing of the resources between different places. There's always sun somewhere, there's always wind somewhere, ...
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant
A Uranium-Mining Boom Is Sweeping Through Texas (contaminating the water table) https://www.wired.com/story/a-uranium-mining-boom-is-sweeping-through-texas-nuclear-energy/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-nuclear-fuel-recycling/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-nuclear-fuel-recycling/
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Fukushima isn't the big argument against nuclear.
IT'S TOO EXPENSIVE
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Wait what I am 100% pro renewables...
If nuclear somehow were the only option, I would support it. But it's the worst option.
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Ah yes, that's why we should invest money into an expensive form of energy instead of a cheap one, that will help us displace fossil fuels!
Hate to break it to you, bud, but energy is already priced according to how expensive it is to provide.
It's not about "this energy source vs. that energy source." It's about increasing the supply of available energy.
Read a book on energy and you'll quickly realize that as we produce more energy, we consume more. Right now, our energy needs are not being met even with fossil fuels + nuclear + renewables.
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if we were to either replace all power on earth with nuclear, or replace all power on earth with wind, more people would die from- idk, falling out of wind turbines- then from deaths due to nuclear.Fukushima had a fucking earthquake and a tsunami theiwn at it, AND the company which made it cut corners. It was still, much, much less bad than it could have been and the reactor still partially withstood a lot of damage.
In the United States at least (and i assume the rest of the world) nuclear energy is so overegulated that many reactors can have meltdowns without spelling disaster for the nearby area. Nuclear caskets (used to transport and store wastes) can withstand fucking missle strikes.
Im not going to pretend that there arent genuine issues with nuclear, such as cost and construction time(*partially caused by the overegulation), but genuine nuclear disaster has only ever resulted from the worst of human decisions combined with the worst of circumstances.
Do i trust humans not to make shitty mistakes? No, not with all this overegulation, but still, even counting Fukushima and Chernobyl, more people die from wind (and especially fossil fuels) then nuclear per terawatt of electricity production.Thank you for bringing some light to these people living in the dark.
I swear, some people see an influencer say "nuclear is actually really bad!" and then just take it and run.
Really puts into perspective how smart the average person in these days. They're just trying to look good in front of their peers.
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Which outlines why you don't do majority-vote politics. There is zero interest by private entities to restart nuclear in Germany. Why? Because it makes zero sense.
No one wants to front the money, no one wants to buy overpriced nuclear power, no one wants the waste, no one wants a responsibility for decades and I bet you, if you asked the people on the poll whether they want to live near a plant or waste facility, almost everyone is going to say no.
The sole reason for (modern) nuclear power is high reliability at very low emissions and much energy per space. You know what can also do this? A battery.
If you want to install state-of-the-art molten salt SMRs as high-reliability baseline supply for network infrastructure and hospitals, go for it. But don't try to sell me a super expensive water boiler as miracle technology.
