"Nuclear energy, to start with, is ultimately not safe, and the Germans have always been particularly uneasy with it. After the nuclear accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in 2011, Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the “Atomausstieg,” the exit from nuclear energy once and for all. Why? Because, as Ms. Merkel put it back then: “The residual risk of nuclear energy can be accepted only if one is convinced that — as far as it is humanly possible to judge — it won’t come to pass.” After Fukushima, Ms. Merkel, a trained physicist, was no longer able to believe that a nuclear disaster would not occur. That there was a catastrophe even in a high-tech country like Japan made her change her mind."
This article dismisses nuclear power as "not safe" with nothing more than the decision of Merkel to justify it. Yes, Merkel has a background in physics, but she made that decision as a politician. It's an unfortunate truth that science is rarely the first consideration in political decisions.
Merkel's decision ignored the truly extraordinary circumstances of the Fukushima disaster, which was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that, each individually, exceeded the design parameters of the reactor, which was 40 years old at the time of the disaster. Updated studies indicated the reactor was vulnerable to tsunami, but were ignored. Repeatedly.
The reactors of 40-50 years ago can indeed be unsafe if operated poorly (e.g. Chernobyl) or if necessary threat mitigation is totally ignored. Newer designs are safer, and older designs can be made safer if people don't bury their heads in the sand about necessary updates.
Ultimately, nuclear reactors are designed and operated by humans, and mistakes do happen. However, the fact is that the Fukushima disaster has killed fewer people in total than coal power kills every year under normal operating conditions.
But this is exactly the point. Catastrophes like Fukushima are practically always a combination of individual deficiencies in design, process, and operator errors. Designs can be improved, processes adapted, and people trained better, but that will not prevent accidents from happening. This is mostly because human imagination is limited and humans are fallible, and what‘s not covered by the previous two is lack of knowledge & understanding.
Said in other words, if you wait long enough, a catastrophe is inevitable. And history, both old and recent, has told us that the time you‘ll have to wait is much shorter that you‘d think.
I work in aerospace operations and every freakin‘ day things go different than planned and anomalies happen. In „my“ „industry“, we try to prepare for off-nominal situations and that buffers the effects, but you can only do so much and you end up in contingencies very often. You can also easily see when a new player enters the stage as they very quickly (should) learn that you‘ll have to react and adapt your plans very often and tone down any promises …
Long story short, whatever means you put up to prevent catastrophic events, they will never be enough. Then the question of cost arises, which is undoubtedly extremely high for nuclear events, especially in such a densely populated and small country like Germany, and you’ll quickly realise that you probably do not want to take that risk even if probability is very low.
And finally, we have yet to find a working way to handle our nuclear waste for the next 10k-100k years. (I am aware of the options but obviously we are not there yet and it‘s unclear if we ever reach the state of „acceptable solution“ instead of pushing the issue to generations to come.)
The lesson of Fukushima and Chernobyl is that an unexpected failure with nuclear power can become a massively damaging, insanely expensive, generational cleanup effort.
Sure, you can say newer designs are safer, but you can't say that the underlying technology behind nuclear power is inherently safe. Even a well-run, accident-free nuclear plant uses dangerously radioactive material and generates dangerously radioactive waste that must be dealt with. But if anything goes wrong with any of the processes surrounding all of that, the consequences can be dire. Why lean on dangerous, expensive, and risky tech when we have better solutions?
Removing the radioactive material from Fukushima is going to take forty years. Parts of the area around Chernobyl will be unsafe for the next 20,000. It doesn't matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.
The US Navy currently has 83 (known) active watercraft that are nuclear powered. Across all the reactors the Navy use and have used, they have amassed over 5300 “reactor years” without reactor incident.
With adequate processes and training, Nuclear is incredibly safe and green.
You make the common mistake of assuming one can scientifically prove a given nuclear plant is safe like one can prove that the square root of 2 is irrational or that carbon emissions cause warming. That is not the case and it boggles my mind how many people think it is.
If you know so sure what causes these accidents, then you can predict what plant(s) will have them next. Can you? Can anyone? Saying after the fact: it can easily be explained why that happened... that isn't science.
>After the nuclear accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in 2011, Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the “Atomausstieg,” the exit from nuclear energy once and for all.Why? Because, as Ms. Merkel put it back then: “The residual risk of nuclear energy can be accepted only if one is convinced that — as far as it is humanly possible to judge — it won’t come to pass.” After Fukushima, Ms. Merkel, a trained physicist, was no longer able to believe that a nuclear disaster would not occur. That there was a catastrophe even in a high-tech country like Japan made her change her mind."
With this reasoning, any form of transportation should be "exited" (austeigt) too, because there were airplane, car... crashes in the past. And it is also highly unlikely that it wouldn't happen again.
one addition to the story:
Exit from nuclear power in germany was already decreed by law several years before, by the then government of social democrats and greens.
This decision was reverted by the first (I believe) Merkel government, only to be reverted again few years later due to Fukushima.
Merkel is known for being quite pragmatic and following the path of least political resistance in most cases.
While the exit of the exit was very popular at that moment, I do believe that in this case she was sincere when telling that seeing the Fukushima disaster changed her mind. I guess it was humbling even for world leaders to see how helpless everybody up to the PM were in Japan in the face of what was happening.
>Merkel's decision ignored the truly extraordinary circumstances of the Fukushima disaster, which was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that, each individually, exceeded the design parameters of the reactor, which was 40 years old at the time of the disaster. Updated studies indicated the reactor was vulnerable to tsunami, but were ignored.
And that wasn't the only case, there were evidence it was the maintenance wasn't done properly. But no one was willing to admit it. Better to let the public think Nuclear is not safe rather than admitting to our own mistakes.
I kept thinking, had that reactor withstand that tsunami, would the world have turn around and built newer, better Nuclear Reactor.
I think nuclear power is a quick win, for the amount of CO2 discharged and the 'amount' of materials gained. The lasting legacy will always be the cost of maintenance, both in knowledge (in 100 years from now will people be able to operate the reactors and remember where all of the crud was left) and environmental impact. Certainly in the north sea area of europe, there is a drive for wind power, which I fully back. Nuclear power plants don't run themselves, which is why it's a highly skilled area, kill the skill, welcome to long periods of radiated land masses which are not obvious (unless you have a geiger counter)
I followed the Fukushima disaster very closely when it was happening. And I remember that during the crucial hours, when emissions of radioactive material was highest, the wind was luckily going to the east, out onto the pacific ocean, with thousands of miles of buffer.
Given that, it seems to me that Fukushima could have gone much, much worse.
I have a pragmatic proposal: lets use nuclear power if it's competitive including insurance and including the long term cost of handling its waste. If it's not or if nobody can insure it, we should probably not.
I'm pro-nuclear, but I find these articles about Germany's anti-nuclear stance extremely frustrating.
Blaming the current situation on Fukushima is historically inaccurate. Imo, there are 2 major reasons for the current stance:
1. Chernobyl: After the disaster in 1986 the anti-nuclear movement gained massive traction. The radioactive cloud spread all the way to West Germany and warnings had to be issued (mushrooms, venison, crops, ...). It was a real turning point, since everyone was made aware of the concerns. [1]
2. "Endlager"-discussion: The search for a permanent nuclear waste deposit was/is a political shitshow. The trial run at Asse (in the 70s) failed: We are currently getting all canisters out of there, after they found contaminated sludge and flooded areas. [2] Further, the decision to select Gorleben as one possible locations was mostly political. The whole process is politically loaded, expensive and devoid of any scientific reasoning. [3]
The anti-nuclear decision has been made years before Fukushima for imo valid concerns. The "latest" reactor in Germany went online in 1989, and the decision to phase-out was made in 2002. So the reactors being phased out now are all 30+ years old.
Nowadays, I don't think any energy provider in Germany would be willing to invest in NEW fission plants. By the time they will be online, renewables might be way cheaper per kWh.
> 1. Chernobyl: After the disaster in 1986 the anti-nuclear movement gained massive traction. The radioactive cloud spread all the way to West Germany and warnings had to be issued (mushrooms, venison, crops, ...). It was a real turning point, since everyone was made aware of the concerns.
That is true. And also, still today, when in our forests a boar gets killed by a hunter it has to be brought to the administration to meter the radioactivity (due to Cesium 137). A lot of boar gets discarded instead of being eaten because it exceeds the threshold (600 Bq/kg). I don't know what they are doing with it though.
I grew up in the town with the only uranium enrichment facility in Germany (operated by URENCO). That is where they feed gaseous UF6 (Uranium hexafluoride) into gas centrifuges to split it into a gas higher in U-238 and a gas higher in U-235 concentration. The process is repeated for the enriched U-235 containing gas. I got to tour this facility and visit the centrifuges with my high school class at age 16. (I joke that since then I glow in the dark)
Not far away (20km) is the temporary nuclear waste storage Ahaus (pretty similar to Gorleben).
About 60km away is Lingen where the company Advanced Nuclear Fuels converts the UF6 enriched in U-235 to Uraniumdioxide UO2 for direct use as nuclear fuel.
The nuclear power plant in Lingen uses this type of fuel among other power plants.
At this point URENCO is still operating in Gronau, however it appears that Advanced Nuclear Fuels now primarily exports nuclear fuel to other countries.
None of the raw uranium ore used in this process comes from Germany. There is plenty of controversy around the sourcing of uranium by URENCO and others.
I absolutely hate this narrative of the demise of nuclear energy largely being politically motivated because nuclear energy is not just falling in Germany, it's diminishing virtually across the entire world (with very few exceptions).
It's true that Germany has a historical anti-nuclear and green sentiment but other countries are no different. Nuclear energy may be clean, but it is also exceedingly expensive and unable to compete in price in most countries including the US.[1] Even China, the large last country to buckle the trend as of late seems to have reduced the role of its nuclear energy policy and seems to be missing targets [2].
Expensive compared to what? Are you comparing the full costs of coal plants to nuclear, or are you just externalizing the costs as most comparisons do? The costs of coal need to include all the effects of coal emissions into the atmosphere, which may very well be incalculable.
Solar and wind of course are great, but has anyone figured out how to make those supply 100% of a nation's power needs, 24/7? I don't believe so: we don't have the storage technology yet.
> this narrative of the demise of nuclear energy largely being politically motivated
It's politically motivated to the extent that people are scared of nuclear and any political move to support it or finance research could be career suicide. Without any attempt to research improvements we are stuck using old technology and anyone advocating against nuclear power has good reason to keep doing so. It's a bit of a vicious cycle where the only way to break it is to hope for some unexpected breakthrough.
Looking at the list of nuclear reactors in Germany Wikipedia has, while there are quite a few they don't seem to be very "good". There are disparate classes with little commonality and nothing in operation that has been built after ~1990.
A far cry for the massive french nuclear power program, which managed to achieve large cost benefits by deciding on a single reactor type and then deploying at a large scale, with only incremental updates in later generations.
In this light their decision to shutdown seems a little less insane, still could be bad to loose all the related knowledge and industry as a result, which might make deployment of new reactors in the future hard.
I think France made one of the few smart moves with nuclear in the day, but today even France is closely studying tradeoffs between reinvesting in the next gen of nuclear fission plans vs renewable. In publicised studies renewable is looking like the better option.
German subsidies in the 2000-2010 decade almost single-handedly financed the improvements in solar cells that sees them competitive with even coal today.
And because the environmental goals had higher rank than economic and selfish ones, they did not enact trade barriers, or lobby for them on an EU Level, even when it became clear it would be Chinese manufacturers reaping the profits of mass production.
A Brussels committee [in 2017] agreed to set minimum import duties for Chinese solar modules and cells that could price them up to 30% above market levels with “huge negative effects” for the industry, according to trade groups.
Sadly, the anti-nuclear movement in Germany is very strong. Germany also has a declining Coal industry. So after Fukushima shrewd politicians moved to shutter nuclear plants and return to coal. The worst part? German coal is some of the worst in terms of sulfur and pollutants.
The article misses to mention that Germany is actually quite active in fusion reactor research (eg. Wendelstein 7x the world's largest stellerator was just opened a few years ago). Its yet to be seen if fusion power will ever reach production level. But stating that Germany cut itself off of nuclear energy research is not exactly right.
Nuclear Fusion should be treated completely differently though.
It shares nuclear in the name and the similarities pretty much end there (the 'waste' from neutron activation of plasma facing components is negligible).
Fusion seems to be doing well these days with good progress on ITER, nice results from MAST and the approval of STEP. I remember Chen liked the idea of the Stellarator as it removed the need for the plasma current so perhaps we can expect good results from W7x as well.
The last thing I want is for fusion to have political issues due to being linked with fission power just because of the name.
That's pretty irrelevant. Fission and fusion are two totally separate processes. Fission is a process used in nuclear power plants to provide many gigawatts of power to electric grids. Fusion is something that's only used for science experiments and cannot generate useful power. Maybe it can in the future, and maybe in the future we'll also have holodecks and warp drive, but that isn't useful today.
Matthew J Moynihan's response to a Quora question [1] points out there are general fusion physics and engineering problems regardless of the reactor design that remain open questions starved for data points. If anything going by his response, it isn't the type of reactor that matters now as much as getting more research data. We don't have a spare trillion to throw into fusion research, but we certainly do have enough tens of trillions to prop up all the central banks in the world [2].
In common parlance nuclear tends to mean nuclear fission, not nuclear fusion.
Though the "technically correct" aspect is that they're both nuclear reactions. I'd say its important to say that they're not cutting themselves off of nuclear fusion research.
Every time this topic comes up, I find it useful to share this fascinating real time map of electricity production and its carbon intensity around the world :
I think it helps frame the debate and put things in perspective. Needless to say that Germany's mediocre figures here are not worthy of the country's reputation for pragmatism and engineering excellence.
That reputation has suffered anyway quite significantly in the recent past: BER (Berlin's hilariously failed "new" airport) VW et al. cheating on emissions tests...
Rainer Moormann's [0] recent statement concerning current nuclear costs Germany is facing in a single case:
"
Here an info about #NuclearWaste. A particularly bad kind are the 900,000 HTR-balls from Hamm and Jülich. It is being considered to export them to the USA against the resistance of the ecosystem. Would cost about 1 billion €, including transportation. From the globes, 4.4 TWh, i.e. 0.15% of the German
nuclear power was produced. If disposal would be generally so expensive, we would have 700 billion €, but even with LWR=factor 5 cheaper (more realistic) we would end up with 6 times what is available (24 billion €)
Addendum: In the USA the graphite of the spheres is to be gasified and the CO2 is to be released into the atmosphere together with the radioactive C14. It's a military facility, they're allowed to do that. In the EU this would be excluded in the civilian sector. But it makes disposal cheaper.
Here detailed information on the Jülich spherical castors
radientelex.com/Stx_18_748-749...
There are a total of 453 Castors with balls. The castors are however smaller than LWR castors (25 t instead of 120 t)
One more addendum: The acquisition costs of the 455 castors alone were almost as high as the value of the electricity generated with the balls.
And one more thing: The transport is to be carried out by an armed special ship, some dozens of trips would be necessary
" [1]
Germany invested 300 billions euros in windmills and solar, and achieved 0% emission reduction, thanks to its abandonment of nuclear power. Worse, they now realise that windmills last only about 20 years, while nuclear plants last at the very least 40 to 60 years. With similar amounts invested in nuclear they would be coal free by now.
Why do we still talk about "safety" when discussing nuclear even though this has been handled over 30 years ago. Or in other words I haven't seen any arguments presented in this paper "debunked".
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/
In short a few points:
- nuclear power is the safest form of energy production by far
- storing the waste is an easy problem (store on site and reuse later with better technologies), or just make glass cubes of it and dump in the ocean (yes really)!
- the high price of building nuclear power plants is in many ways the result of "nucular paranoia"
- non-military reactors (ie. all "western reactors") can't have the same failure modes as chernobyl had
Germans do not have to decide between Nuclear Energy or Climate Catastrophe. They have to decide between the potential risks of radioactive pollution or the impairment of landscape by wind turbines and power lines. There is not much tragedy in this decision.
In France and Belgium, which are West of Germany, there are plenty of nuclear reactors. This is in a region with prevailing west winds.
If Germany would want to minimize the risk of radioactive pollution, it would have to build plenty nuclear reactors at its eastern border and sell that energy to France below market value.
Then, as long as France doesn't cut Germany off, the French nuclear reactors would be shut down and the risk of nuclear pollution for Germany would be reduced.
Germany has by far the dirtiest energy produciton in Western Europe. On average, every German citizen produces almost twice as much CO2 than the average French or Brit:
Here is a by the minute diagram of the german energy consumption. Germany would be fine with all the nuclear power plants switched off. They invest heavily in renewable energy which shows off.
#1: coal, 34%
#2: wind, 18%
#3: gas, 13%
#4: nuclear, 12%
(Solar is zero of course, it's night right now : inconveniently, this tends to happen rather regularly)
for a whopping average of 400gCO2/kW, compared to France 68, Sweden's 42, or Iceland's 28.
to add some geopolitics - shutting down nuclear&coal and relying on renewables Germany would need more and more of natural gas plants - the cleanest option and most convenient one due to high speed of bringing up/down among the "dirty" ones - with more and more of the natural gas coming from Russia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream#Controversies_of_N...). While Germans seem to be ok with it (Stockholm syndrome?:), other countries, like US and various Germany neighbors, are naturally either don't like it or actively against it, and as result i think a lot of anti- German anti-nuclear PR and renewables scaremongering is coming from here.
people are using the words 'nuclear power' like the word 'disease'. There multiple different kinds of nuc power. I disagree with our use of fast breeders and other reactions that also keep our supply of weapons grade fissile material 'fresh'. However there are other much safer reactions that are much safer and aimed more at energy generation like molten salt reactors - thorium, fluoride?
Just like there are diseases with which we can cope(chickenpox) and others which are horrible(smallpox), we should not use the words 'nuclear power' in planning or discussion among educated people. 'Nuclear power' is only useful in third grade science class.
Well, let's see: wind parks are a tough sell to the public, will new nuclear plants be an easier sell? I doubt it. So they seem to be on the right path.
And yeah, proportion of renewables in total net energy consumption has been 46% in 2019 already.
Try pointing this out in Germany. Most people have no idea what kind of electricity they are actually buying, apart from choosing a greenwashed energy provider and paying through the nose.
[+] [-] beloch|6 years ago|reply
This article dismisses nuclear power as "not safe" with nothing more than the decision of Merkel to justify it. Yes, Merkel has a background in physics, but she made that decision as a politician. It's an unfortunate truth that science is rarely the first consideration in political decisions.
Merkel's decision ignored the truly extraordinary circumstances of the Fukushima disaster, which was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that, each individually, exceeded the design parameters of the reactor, which was 40 years old at the time of the disaster. Updated studies indicated the reactor was vulnerable to tsunami, but were ignored. Repeatedly.
The reactors of 40-50 years ago can indeed be unsafe if operated poorly (e.g. Chernobyl) or if necessary threat mitigation is totally ignored. Newer designs are safer, and older designs can be made safer if people don't bury their heads in the sand about necessary updates.
Ultimately, nuclear reactors are designed and operated by humans, and mistakes do happen. However, the fact is that the Fukushima disaster has killed fewer people in total than coal power kills every year under normal operating conditions.
Is Germany paranoid about nuclear power? Yes.
[+] [-] fbender|6 years ago|reply
Said in other words, if you wait long enough, a catastrophe is inevitable. And history, both old and recent, has told us that the time you‘ll have to wait is much shorter that you‘d think.
I work in aerospace operations and every freakin‘ day things go different than planned and anomalies happen. In „my“ „industry“, we try to prepare for off-nominal situations and that buffers the effects, but you can only do so much and you end up in contingencies very often. You can also easily see when a new player enters the stage as they very quickly (should) learn that you‘ll have to react and adapt your plans very often and tone down any promises …
Long story short, whatever means you put up to prevent catastrophic events, they will never be enough. Then the question of cost arises, which is undoubtedly extremely high for nuclear events, especially in such a densely populated and small country like Germany, and you’ll quickly realise that you probably do not want to take that risk even if probability is very low.
And finally, we have yet to find a working way to handle our nuclear waste for the next 10k-100k years. (I am aware of the options but obviously we are not there yet and it‘s unclear if we ever reach the state of „acceptable solution“ instead of pushing the issue to generations to come.)
[+] [-] fhars|6 years ago|reply
And this is why nuclear power is fundamentally unsafe: the operators have conclusively proven that they just cannot be trusted. Repeatedly.
[+] [-] skywhopper|6 years ago|reply
Sure, you can say newer designs are safer, but you can't say that the underlying technology behind nuclear power is inherently safe. Even a well-run, accident-free nuclear plant uses dangerously radioactive material and generates dangerously radioactive waste that must be dealt with. But if anything goes wrong with any of the processes surrounding all of that, the consequences can be dire. Why lean on dangerous, expensive, and risky tech when we have better solutions?
[+] [-] jiub|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masterofpuppets|6 years ago|reply
In the the west there haven’t been any deaths from commercial nuclear power radiological accidents.
[+] [-] RobLach|6 years ago|reply
The US Navy currently has 83 (known) active watercraft that are nuclear powered. Across all the reactors the Navy use and have used, they have amassed over 5300 “reactor years” without reactor incident.
With adequate processes and training, Nuclear is incredibly safe and green.
[+] [-] stkdump|6 years ago|reply
If you know so sure what causes these accidents, then you can predict what plant(s) will have them next. Can you? Can anyone? Saying after the fact: it can easily be explained why that happened... that isn't science.
[+] [-] finchisko|6 years ago|reply
With this reasoning, any form of transportation should be "exited" (austeigt) too, because there were airplane, car... crashes in the past. And it is also highly unlikely that it wouldn't happen again.
[+] [-] d10r|6 years ago|reply
Merkel is known for being quite pragmatic and following the path of least political resistance in most cases. While the exit of the exit was very popular at that moment, I do believe that in this case she was sincere when telling that seeing the Fukushima disaster changed her mind. I guess it was humbling even for world leaders to see how helpless everybody up to the PM were in Japan in the face of what was happening.
[+] [-] ksec|6 years ago|reply
And that wasn't the only case, there were evidence it was the maintenance wasn't done properly. But no one was willing to admit it. Better to let the public think Nuclear is not safe rather than admitting to our own mistakes.
I kept thinking, had that reactor withstand that tsunami, would the world have turn around and built newer, better Nuclear Reactor.
[+] [-] MidgetGourde|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d10r|6 years ago|reply
I have a pragmatic proposal: lets use nuclear power if it's competitive including insurance and including the long term cost of handling its waste. If it's not or if nobody can insure it, we should probably not.
[+] [-] Dagonfly|6 years ago|reply
Blaming the current situation on Fukushima is historically inaccurate. Imo, there are 2 major reasons for the current stance:
1. Chernobyl: After the disaster in 1986 the anti-nuclear movement gained massive traction. The radioactive cloud spread all the way to West Germany and warnings had to be issued (mushrooms, venison, crops, ...). It was a real turning point, since everyone was made aware of the concerns. [1]
2. "Endlager"-discussion: The search for a permanent nuclear waste deposit was/is a political shitshow. The trial run at Asse (in the 70s) failed: We are currently getting all canisters out of there, after they found contaminated sludge and flooded areas. [2] Further, the decision to select Gorleben as one possible locations was mostly political. The whole process is politically loaded, expensive and devoid of any scientific reasoning. [3]
The anti-nuclear decision has been made years before Fukushima for imo valid concerns. The "latest" reactor in Germany went online in 1989, and the decision to phase-out was made in 2002. So the reactors being phased out now are all 30+ years old. Nowadays, I don't think any energy provider in Germany would be willing to invest in NEW fission plants. By the time they will be online, renewables might be way cheaper per kWh.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germa... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine [3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endlager_(Kerntechnik)
[+] [-] ofrzeta|6 years ago|reply
That is true. And also, still today, when in our forests a boar gets killed by a hunter it has to be brought to the administration to meter the radioactivity (due to Cesium 137). A lot of boar gets discarded instead of being eaten because it exceeds the threshold (600 Bq/kg). I don't know what they are doing with it though.
[+] [-] verst|6 years ago|reply
Not far away (20km) is the temporary nuclear waste storage Ahaus (pretty similar to Gorleben).
About 60km away is Lingen where the company Advanced Nuclear Fuels converts the UF6 enriched in U-235 to Uraniumdioxide UO2 for direct use as nuclear fuel. The nuclear power plant in Lingen uses this type of fuel among other power plants.
At this point URENCO is still operating in Gronau, however it appears that Advanced Nuclear Fuels now primarily exports nuclear fuel to other countries.
None of the raw uranium ore used in this process comes from Germany. There is plenty of controversy around the sourcing of uranium by URENCO and others.
Sources: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urananreicherungsanlage_Gronau https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportbeh%C3%A4lterlager_Ah... https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brennelementfertigungsanlage_L...
[+] [-] Barrin92|6 years ago|reply
It's true that Germany has a historical anti-nuclear and green sentiment but other countries are no different. Nuclear energy may be clean, but it is also exceedingly expensive and unable to compete in price in most countries including the US.[1] Even China, the large last country to buckle the trend as of late seems to have reduced the role of its nuclear energy policy and seems to be missing targets [2].
[1] https://e360.yale.edu/features/industry-meltdown-is-era-of-n... [2] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-...
[+] [-] magduf|6 years ago|reply
Solar and wind of course are great, but has anyone figured out how to make those supply 100% of a nation's power needs, 24/7? I don't believe so: we don't have the storage technology yet.
[+] [-] melling|6 years ago|reply
Using the existing nuclear that you have for an additional decade or longer is much better than switching to coal.
A lot can happen in a decade.
[+] [-] close04|6 years ago|reply
It's politically motivated to the extent that people are scared of nuclear and any political move to support it or finance research could be career suicide. Without any attempt to research improvements we are stuck using old technology and anyone advocating against nuclear power has good reason to keep doing so. It's a bit of a vicious cycle where the only way to break it is to hope for some unexpected breakthrough.
[+] [-] m4rtink|6 years ago|reply
A far cry for the massive french nuclear power program, which managed to achieve large cost benefits by deciding on a single reactor type and then deploying at a large scale, with only incremental updates in later generations.
In this light their decision to shutdown seems a little less insane, still could be bad to loose all the related knowledge and industry as a result, which might make deployment of new reactors in the future hard.
[+] [-] dv_dt|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IfOnlyYouKnew|6 years ago|reply
And because the environmental goals had higher rank than economic and selfish ones, they did not enact trade barriers, or lobby for them on an EU Level, even when it became clear it would be Chinese manufacturers reaping the profits of mass production.
[+] [-] yorwba|6 years ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/08/solar-in...
EDIT: they scrapped the tariffs in 2018: http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=1904
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] BitwiseFool|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plupopit|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexgmcm|6 years ago|reply
It shares nuclear in the name and the similarities pretty much end there (the 'waste' from neutron activation of plasma facing components is negligible).
Fusion seems to be doing well these days with good progress on ITER, nice results from MAST and the approval of STEP. I remember Chen liked the idea of the Stellarator as it removed the need for the plasma current so perhaps we can expect good results from W7x as well.
The last thing I want is for fusion to have political issues due to being linked with fission power just because of the name.
[+] [-] magduf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yourapostasy|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-merits-and-drawbacks-of-t...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrich/2016/09/12/the-18-tri...
[+] [-] mitchty|6 years ago|reply
Though the "technically correct" aspect is that they're both nuclear reactions. I'd say its important to say that they're not cutting themselves off of nuclear fusion research.
[+] [-] melling|6 years ago|reply
In the meantime, the decades long train wreck of climate change could easily have been slowed if we’d had simply moved off of coal earlier.
[+] [-] renaudg|6 years ago|reply
https://www.electricitymap.org/
I think it helps frame the debate and put things in perspective. Needless to say that Germany's mediocre figures here are not worthy of the country's reputation for pragmatism and engineering excellence.
[+] [-] solstice|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donjoe|6 years ago|reply
" Here an info about #NuclearWaste. A particularly bad kind are the 900,000 HTR-balls from Hamm and Jülich. It is being considered to export them to the USA against the resistance of the ecosystem. Would cost about 1 billion €, including transportation. From the globes, 4.4 TWh, i.e. 0.15% of the German nuclear power was produced. If disposal would be generally so expensive, we would have 700 billion €, but even with LWR=factor 5 cheaper (more realistic) we would end up with 6 times what is available (24 billion €) Addendum: In the USA the graphite of the spheres is to be gasified and the CO2 is to be released into the atmosphere together with the radioactive C14. It's a military facility, they're allowed to do that. In the EU this would be excluded in the civilian sector. But it makes disposal cheaper. Here detailed information on the Jülich spherical castors radientelex.com/Stx_18_748-749... There are a total of 453 Castors with balls. The castors are however smaller than LWR castors (25 t instead of 120 t) One more addendum: The acquisition costs of the 455 castors alone were almost as high as the value of the electricity generated with the balls. And one more thing: The transport is to be carried out by an armed special ship, some dozens of trips would be necessary " [1]
(sorry, dirty twitter unroll & deepl translation)
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainer_Moormann [1] https://twitter.com/MoormannRainer/status/120112832873803776...
Edit: Typo
[+] [-] kmmlng|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wazoox|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kisstheblade|6 years ago|reply
In short a few points:
- nuclear power is the safest form of energy production by far
- storing the waste is an easy problem (store on site and reuse later with better technologies), or just make glass cubes of it and dump in the ocean (yes really)!
- the high price of building nuclear power plants is in many ways the result of "nucular paranoia"
- non-military reactors (ie. all "western reactors") can't have the same failure modes as chernobyl had
[+] [-] AlphaGeekZulu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toohotatopic|6 years ago|reply
If Germany would want to minimize the risk of radioactive pollution, it would have to build plenty nuclear reactors at its eastern border and sell that energy to France below market value.
Then, as long as France doesn't cut Germany off, the French nuclear reactors would be shut down and the risk of nuclear pollution for Germany would be reduced.
[+] [-] C14L|6 years ago|reply
Germany has by far the dirtiest energy produciton in Western Europe. On average, every German citizen produces almost twice as much CO2 than the average French or Brit:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita
And talking about risks: Brown coal ist BY FAR the most dangerous form of energy:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
[+] [-] fxj|6 years ago|reply
https://energy-charts.de/power_de.htm?source=all-sources&yea...
[+] [-] renaudg|6 years ago|reply
https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem...
#1: coal, 34% #2: wind, 18% #3: gas, 13% #4: nuclear, 12% (Solar is zero of course, it's night right now : inconveniently, this tends to happen rather regularly)
for a whopping average of 400gCO2/kW, compared to France 68, Sweden's 42, or Iceland's 28.
"It shows" indeed, but nothing to be proud of.
[+] [-] trhway|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmchale|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bawana|6 years ago|reply
Just like there are diseases with which we can cope(chickenpox) and others which are horrible(smallpox), we should not use the words 'nuclear power' in planning or discussion among educated people. 'Nuclear power' is only useful in third grade science class.
[+] [-] anovikov|6 years ago|reply
And yeah, proportion of renewables in total net energy consumption has been 46% in 2019 already.
[+] [-] llampx|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] biolurker1|6 years ago|reply