German poll: Majority for return to nuclear energy
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As you can see in Ukraine, there is still absolutely potential for non nuclear weapon based war in Europe.
Arguably that makes nuclear plants safer, because attacking nations won't want to bomb them and risk escalating to a nuclear war. They have no problem bombing power stations and oil refineries, though.
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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.
This, and people ignore the carbon emissions part. Nuclear is one of the least carbon emitting sources of energy which is vital to addressing climate change
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restrictions on them that aren’t on other power sources
Yeah i wonder why that could be lmao. Nothing ever went wrong with fission power plants right?
Please, speak with or read info from lawyers who are nuclear engineers who went into regulations. Look at what they do and how pointless some of this paperwork and back and forth is. Listen to their stories about some of the legal shenanigans that have gone on at sites.
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If you wanna look into it, the term you need to search for is "life cycle assessment".
This is a kind of report usually by some kind of government agency that creates a very detailed list of materials and energy required to manufacture, transport, install, operate and maintain an installation.
This is then compared against existing electricity production systems that will be replaced by the new one to calculate how long it takes to make up the initial cost both monetarily and emissions wise.
The resulting time frame will drastically vary depending on the supply chain, location, grid capacity, storage capacity and such. The following is a plot from the linked study which combines results from many different studies. They typical lifetime of one of these turbines is 20 years, so you are looking at a ~20x payback factor if it replaces fossil generation (coal/gas/etc).
https://earth.org/nuclear-energy-carbon-emissions-lowest-among-electricity-sources-un-reports/
I'm not arguing against solar and wind. I'm arguing for nuclear in some places, due to: 1) space 2) consistency 3) low carbon emissions, and pointing out that the high cost isn't due to the technology but to regulations and legal practices that have artificially inflated the costs.
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That's because nuclear is arbitrarily forced to be expensive due to regulations and legal stuff. If that wasn't included in the price itself, it would be significantly cheaper. However, nuclear took such a big hit politically that it increased costs as less plants were built. It's not so much that renewables are per se cheaper, but rather than nuclear gets artifically inflated. Further, I'm not opposed to renewables, I just think nuclear is needed in addition to renewables since it is better for carbon emissions and we have a carbon issue. It also saves on space where renewables can cause greater environmental impact in terms of taking up space or wildlife fatalities.
Again, weird you don't mention wave or geothermal at all as renewables that have access to near constant power generation.
Sure, nuclear could be much cheaper! But it would also be much less safe, because all the regulations and "legal stuff" are what forces the people running the plant to run it in a safe way. The same goes for renewables, but if renewables fail, they don't contaminate the surrounding area for decades or centuries, so there are far fewer of these regulations. If you disagree, I challenge you to provide examples of unnecessary regulations that make nuclear so much more expensive. Show us the numbers.
It also saves on space where renewables can cause greater environmental impact in terms of taking up space or wildlife fatalities.
There are many great ways to deploy renewables so they support the environment. Have you looked at the environmental impact of the mining required for nuclear plants? The impact they have on the rivers they use for cooling, and so on?
Again, weird you don’t mention wave or geothermal at all as renewables that have access to near constant power generation.
It's pretty weird that "renewables" somehow doesn't include those for you.
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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.
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Been saying this for years.
The problem is the power grid essentially being divided by north and south, it's a mess. They needed to fix that before taking nuclear off-grid.
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I was against shutting down already written off power plants early while coal power plants were still running. I was in favor of shutting down coal first, yes.
And the funny thing is that coal power plants are actually more radioactive to the environment than nuclear power. Sure, accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima change the statistics by quite a lot, but for the absolute majority of nuclear plants they are way less radioactive to the environment than any given coal plant around.
Also there's not that many severe nuclear disasters in the history. Coal and other organic fuel plants cause far more casualties globally than nuclear ever did. But maybe it's easier to accept slow death of a lot of people due to cancer and whatever caused by organic fuel power plant emissions than single large spike when nuclear power (very, very rarely) goes wrong.
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The model assumes a linear relationship between dose and health effects, even for very low doses where biological effects are more difficult to observe. The LNT model implies that all exposure to ionizing radiation is harmful, regardless of how low the dose is, and that the effect is cumulative over lifetime.
Emphasis mine. Sure that's a valid model, but not backed up by concrete empirical evidence.
Emphasis is misleading. If you think that an "assumption" is called an assumption because there's no evidence, you don't know how words are used in science. Also, it's supposed to be the other way round... If radiation damages cells (which I guess you don't seriously doubt) there needs to be evidence for a threshold, not for there not being one. Also:
Many expert scientific panels have been convened on the risks of ionizing radiation. Most explicitly support the LNT model and none have concluded that evidence exists for a threshold, with the exception of the French Academy of Sciences in a 2005 report.
The "controversy" chapter on that page is worth a read, but the point there is still pretty clear: most scientists do not see any indication for the existence of a threshold.
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No. Take a good look at France and their nuclear strategy. Both maintaining old reactors and building new ones is extremely costly. Building times are to be measured in decades. Nuclear power is not economically viable nor is it a solution to the climate catastrophe.
Returning to nuclear power in Germany is nothing but a pointless waste of tax money.
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Well its going to get more expensive relative as well as oil prices fall globally due to recession. But then we will hit another energy shortage and it will become cheaper, which is why France started building nuclear in the 1970s to begin with.
How exactly does nuclear decouple you from global dependencies if there are less than 20 countries with more than 100k tonnes of uranium reserves, with only one of them being in the EU?
it will become cheaper
Lol, sure. Says who?
France started building nuclear in the 1970s to begin with
Good example... The country that has to heavily subsidise power so people can still afford it.
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yes even coal is "cheaper" than nuclear once you disregard polution
once you disregard polution
Including radioactive waste, which coal produces significantly more of than fission power.
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As far as I know (I'm not an expert), negative void coefficient only affects the fission reaction, i.e. the controlled splitting of uranium atoms. The uranium atoms split into smaller unstable atoms, which decays over time causing heat. If the decay heat isn't removed, the core will melt.
Pebble Bed Reactors seem to be generation IV reactors, and I don't think there are any generation IV reactors in commercial use as of today. Again, my knowledge is limited, but I believe most reactors in commercial use are some kind of water cooled, water moderated reactors. For example, European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) is one of the latest designs commissioned in commercial use, and that design includes 4 emergency coolant systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTR-PM
China has the pbr in production as modular reactors.
When the reactor temperature rises, the atoms in the fuel move rapidly, causing Doppler broadening. The fuel then experiences a wider range of neutron speeds. Uranium-238, which forms the bulk of the uranium, is much more likely to absorb fast or epithermal neutrons at higher temperatures. This reduces the number of neutrons available to cause fission, and reduces power. Doppler broadening therefore creates a negative feedback: as fuel temperature increases, reactor power decreases. All reactors have reactivity feedback mechanisms. The pebble-bed reactor is designed so that this effect is relatively strong, inherent to the design, and does not depend on moving parts. This negative feedback creates passive control of the reaction process.
Thus PBRs passively reduce to a safe power-level in an accident scenario. This is the design's main passive safety feature
The west is irrationally afraid, but China understands nuclear is inherently safer than fossil fuels after having lost thousands to pollution.
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And the funny thing is that coal power plants are actually more radioactive to the environment than nuclear power. Sure, accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima change the statistics by quite a lot, but for the absolute majority of nuclear plants they are way less radioactive to the environment than any given coal plant around.
Also there's not that many severe nuclear disasters in the history. Coal and other organic fuel plants cause far more casualties globally than nuclear ever did. But maybe it's easier to accept slow death of a lot of people due to cancer and whatever caused by organic fuel power plant emissions than single large spike when nuclear power (very, very rarely) goes wrong.
Well, if that's so rare and can essentially be ignored, I'm sure you'll easily find insurance for nuclear plants that will cover the cost of a potential disaster. I mean, after all, it evens out over all the nuke plants, right? The market handles it, right?
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https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/10/planetary-boundaries-breached-nature-climate-stories/
We can't emit more carbon. Like really, we cannot. We have to sequester it. Gas plants still emit CO2. Nuclear is fine and works well, and doesn't emit CO2.
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Cost. You do not need much storage for a 95% renewable grid. For the last 5% nuclear baseload is still way too expensive.
I suspect that we will utilize a gas peaker plants for the last 5% for a long time; i couldn't think of a much better option.
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FFS, people are stupid.
There was a huge hysteria about nuclear when Fukushima happened. A clear majority was for immediate action. Merkel's coalition government would have ended if she hadn't done a 180 on nuclear and decided to shut down nuclear as soon as possible, which was 2023. I was against shutting it down back then but I thought you can't go against the whole population, so I get why they did it. People didn't change their mind until 2022. Nobody talked about reversing that decision in all these years when there was actually time to reverse the decision.
Now, that the last reactor is shut down, the same people that were up in arms in 2011 are now up in arms that we don't have nuclear. Building new plants will cost billions and take decades and nuclear doesn't work well with renewables because of its inflexibility. It makes no sense at all. It was a long-term decision we can't just back away from. What's done is done.
in retrospect, i understand France's long-held stance around 2000 that it wants to rely mostly on nuclear. it wasn't clear, back then, how long fossil fuels would be available (it was predicted they would last another 40 years) so they thought "oh well, uranium will be available for a longer time. renewable energy wasn't an (economic) possibility at that time. now that we have cheap solar energy, i suspect the last nuclear power plant worldwide will be shut down sometime around 2040.
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It's not an either-or.
We need as many sources of energy as possible to increase the available supply and reduce the cost.
usually i would agree to the "increase supply to lower the cost" story, but in the case of energy it's a bit different, because the Energy market uses the merit order principle, which means that whenever the nuclear reactors run, electricity is just as expensive as if nuclear reactors were the only source of electricity, and if they don't run, only then prices drop.
so, you're only getting cheaper prices by not needing nuclear energy. but, for nuclear plants, building them is a huge part of the cost, and they're typically heavily subsidized by taxes, which means an (unnecessary if not used) burden on the taxpayers.
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Because it makes zero sense.
Translation: They can't make an egregious amount of profit off of everyone else's hard work.
The problem is that it's not as profitable as renewables. If you push this, it will be at the cost of those.
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No. Take a good look at France and their nuclear strategy. Both maintaining old reactors and building new ones is extremely costly. Building times are to be measured in decades. Nuclear power is not economically viable nor is it a solution to the climate catastrophe.
Returning to nuclear power in Germany is nothing but a pointless waste of tax money.
Building times are to be measured in decades.
Should probably have invested more into developing their knowledge and experience then. Just have a look at China.
Littering vast spaces of land for wind and sun power generation is hardly a better long term solution.
