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| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The great thing is that coal is not the alternative in 2025. Renewables are forcing enormous amounts of coals and fossil gas off grids around the world as we speak. | | |
| ▲ | opo 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | >The great thing is that coal is not the alternative in 2025. Unfortunately, there is a country that shut down nuclear power plants while they still have operating coal plants. Over time, coal use is declining in Germany, but that isn't the story so far in 2025: >…The share of electricity produced with fossil fuels in Germany increased by ten percent between January and the end of June 2025, compared to the same period one year before, while power production from renewables declined by almost six percent, the country’s statistical office >… Coal-fired power production increased 9.3 percent, while electricity production from fossil gas increased by 11.6 percent. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/fossil-electricity-prod... Shutting nuclear power plants down when you are still burning coal is almost unbelievable... I don’t think future generations will look kindly on countries who shut down a clean form of power while they still are running the most dangerous and dirty form of power generation ever created. | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Personally I would of course prefer to phase out fossil fuels before nuclear power. But we are where we are in 2025 and there is no point crying over spilled milk. We can only look forward and make sure we spend our money wisely. We also need to decarbonize aviation, shipping, agriculture, industry, construction etc. The grid is not the end, it is only the beginning of our decarbonization journey. The fastest, cheapest and most efficient way of quickly displacing fossil based energy production today is building renewables and storage. | | |
| ▲ | opo 2 days ago | parent [-] | | >...But we are where we are in 2025 and there is no point crying over spilled milk. It would be one thing if Germany's bad mistakes in this area only affected Germany. Unfortunately people downwind of Germany die because it is still burning coal. Unfortunately climate change will affect everyone. >...We also need to decarbonize aviation, shipping, agriculture, industry, construction etc. The grid is not the end, Many of the changes needed to decarbonize those industries will rely on using electricity, so the grid is critical. >...The fastest, cheapest and most efficient way of quickly displacing fossil based energy production today is building renewables and storage. We will see if Germany is still burning coal and natural gas when countries like Finland are not. | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Is your suggestion that Germany instead of building renewables quickly displacing said coal instead invests their money in nuclear power? That would mean they get a fraction of the capacity (in TWh) online and the people downwind of Germany would have to live with the emissions as they stand today without any abatement until the mid 2040s. Does that sound reasonable? | | |
| ▲ | opo 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Unfortunately Germany dug itself into a big hole and the choices aren’t that great. (Yes, continue to build more solar and wind. Though that is what has been happening in 2025, and coal use has increased this year due to the variability of renewable sources.) To move away from coal in a more reasonable timeframe, other approaches could also be done. Like I mentioned in a previous comment, I am sure Germany will decarbonize before Poland, but that is kind of a low bar. Some ideas: - Restart the nuclear power plants that are feasible to restart. The last 3 plants were only shut down in 2023 - it isn't like all the plants were shut down in 2011. It may very well be that Germany doesn’t feel it has the expertise to run nuclear power plants in the long term, so once the power isn’t needed or can be replaced by clean energy (either produced in Germany or imported), feel free to shut down the nuclear plants. - Work with Denmark and France to import more of their power that is not coal based. - Reward conservation more. - Move the big industrial users of electricity out of Germany. Some of these alternatives are likely not palatable, but like I said, Germany dug itself into a hole. Any of these alternatives sounds better than essentially deciding instead to murder people by burning coal when you have other options. | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 2 days ago | parent [-] | | This comment shows that you don’t really grasp how the German grid works. The German grid is currently constrained north-south due to limited transmission capacity. Over production of renewables in the north and over consumption in the south. The reactors the pro-nuclear lobby in Germany identified as ”most easily restartable” are in the north. Therefore restarting them is a pure waste of money. It does not solve any problems Germany has with its grid. Then it comes down to the cost question. You can maintain a piece of infrastructure forever but at some point the costs does not justify the gain. Better spend the money on renewables and storage instead. An example of such stupidity is Diablo Canyon in California requiring a $12B subsidy on top of regular income for selling electricity to run 5 extra years from 2025 to 2030. You do know that France is on a downward trend of nuclear power as well? Reactors are entering end of life and the EPR2 program is in absolute shambles. Currently they can’t even agree on how to fund the absolutely insanely bonkers subsidies. Now targeting investment decision in H2 2026… And the French government just fell because they are underwater in debt and have a spending problem which they can’t agree on how to fix. A massive handout to the dead end nuclear industry sounds like the perfect solution! | | |
| ▲ | opo a day ago | parent [-] | | >Over production of renewables in the north and over consumption in the south. Well I guess it is impossible to upgrade the grid in any kind of reasonable timeframe in Germany. There are still other options that could be done to hasten the end of burning coal - I pointed out a few, there are likely others. >Then it comes down to the cost question. You can maintain a piece of infrastructure forever but at some point the costs does not justify the gain. Better spend the money on renewables and storage instead. Yes it is a question. Unfortunately you have given no evidence of the actual costs. >...You do know that France is on a downward trend of nuclear power as well? In 2014 France set a goal to reduce nuclear's share of electricity generation to 50% by 2025. This target was delayed in 2019 to 2035, before being abandoned in 2023. (I am sure France is also trying to increase renewables and storage.) >An example of such stupidity is Diablo Canyon in California requiring a $12B subsidy on top of regular income for selling electricity to run 5 extra years from 2025 to 2030. This comment shows you don't really grasp the issue of power in CA. The 12 billion dollar estimate included costs unrelated to Diablo Canyon according to PG&E. Their estimate is closer to 8B, of which the majority will be covered by selling the electricity. They have a 1.1 billion dollar grant to help with some of the rest, though unclear how much the state will have to subsidize things in the end. The issue is that Diablo Canyon provides about 1/4 of the clean power in CA and can provide it when renewables can't - like every other place, CA currently has a tiny amount of grid storage. Without Diablo Canyon, CA will likely have to buy power from coal plants in other states. So CA is willing to pay extra to avoid having to burn coal. That is different than Germany that decided it would rather burn coal than use nuclear. We will see when Germany actually stops during fossil fuels. Unfortunately, there certainly do seem to be some advocates of solar/wind who would prefer to go decades (or maybe much longer) burning coal and killing people and destroying the environment when their country had the option to use a clean energy source. | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 a day ago | parent [-] | | Upgrades are on the way but you were trying to frame it as a desperate issue to solve immediately, without realizing your solution didn’t solve anything. For evidence have a read: https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2024/06/pge-quietly-s... Just keep hiking the rates in a monopolized system. All good! You do know that California in recent years has cut fossil gas usage by 40% due to storage? Many evenings batteries are the largest producer in the Californian grid for hours on end. Happened yesterday for example. But batteries are of course insignificant. Just delivering the equivalent to 8 nuclear reactors pretty much removing the duck curve. I suggest you update your worldview to 2025. https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply |
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| ▲ | tempodox 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > coal is not the alternative in 2025. Except in uncle Donald’s kingdom with “America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry” (yes, seriously): https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/rein... | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Lets come back if that leads to an increase of coal usage instead of being posturing like most else they do. Coal has been uncompetitive since the advent of the CCGT plant and was stagnating long before the fracking boom. |
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| ▲ | DennisP 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, and in terms of overall deaths per terawatt-hour, nuclear is similar to renewables. |
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| ▲ | immibis 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The difference between nuclear and coal is that when nuclear has a horrible accident, it kills as many people right here and makes as much land uninhabitable right here as coal does in our enemy countries within its normal expected operation. | | |
| ▲ | Natsu 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Meltdowns aren't physically possible if we're building newer types of plants, so there can't be a new Chernobyl or even Fukushima if we're using modern types of passively cooled plants. | | |
| ▲ | Retric 3 days ago | parent [-] | | There’s generally significant costs and asterisks around such claims. You’re much better off paying attention to site placement than trying to design something to safety handle getting covered in several meters of volcanic ash Pompeii style. |
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| ▲ | tedk-42 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Except for Russia, where else have deaths + land issues happened? | | |
| ▲ | Retric 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Not a commercial reactor but US lost 3 people trying to hand operate a small reactor with minimal safety: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 “On Tuesday, January 3, 1961, SL-1 was being prepared for restart after a shutdown of 11 days over the holidays. Maintenance procedures required that rods be manually withdrawn a few inches to reconnect each one to its drive mechanism. At 9:01 pm MST, Rod 9 was suddenly withdrawn too far, causing SL-1 to go prompt critical instantly. In four milliseconds, the heat generated by the resulting enormous power excursion caused fuel inside the core to melt and to explosively vaporize.” The industry didn’t just randomly get so risk averse there where a lot of meltdowns and other issues over time. | | |
| ▲ | peterfirefly 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Do stupid things and stupid things will happen. There are plenty of similarly stupid accidents on stupidly run construction sites and chemical plants all the time. Also lots of accidents with trains, lots of accidents with temperamental chemicals. Take this stupid accident, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic#2007_Scaled_Co... > In July 2007, three Scaled Composites employees were killed and three critically injured at the Mojave spaceport while testing components of the rocket motor for SpaceShipTwo. An explosion occurred during a cold fire test, which involved nitrous oxide flowing through fuel injectors. The procedure had been expected to be safe. N2O is very good oxidizer + it's a molecule that can fall apart (and turn into N2 and O2) in a very exothermic way if you look at it wrong. Oops. Back to SL-1. Nobody was killed by radiation. They were killed by things hitting them hard from the explosion. > The effort to minimize the size of the core gave an abnormally-large reactivity worth to Rod 9, the center control rod. > One of the required maintenance procedures called for Rod 9 to be manually withdrawn about four inches (10 cm) in order to attach it to the automated control mechanism from which it had been disconnected. Post-accident calculations, as well as examination of scratches on Rod 9, estimate that it had actually been withdrawn about twenty inches (51 cm), causing the reactor to go prompt critical and triggering the steam explosion. and: > At SL-1, control rods would sometimes get stuck in the control rod channel. Numerous procedures were conducted to evaluate control rods to ensure they were operating properly. There were rod drop tests and scram tests of each rod, in addition to periodic rod exercising and rod withdrawals for normal operation. From February 1959 to November 18, 1960, there were 40 cases of a stuck control rod for scram and rod drop tests and about a 2.5% failure rate. From November 18 to December 23, 1960, there was a dramatic increase in stuck rods, with 23 in that time period and a 13.0% failure rate. Besides these test failures, there were an additional 21 rod-sticking incidents from February 1959 to December 1960; four of these had occurred in the last month of operation during routine rod withdrawal. Rod 9 had the best operational performance record even though it was operated more frequently than any of the other rods. That is insane. | | |
| ▲ | immibis 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Back to SL-1. Nobody was killed by radiation. They were killed by things hitting them hard from the explosion. What's the relevance of this? | |
| ▲ | Retric 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > That is insane. Hindsight plus other people doing the analysis always makes things seem more obvious. The people designing this system were not trying to kill the operators. They made tradeoffs that seemed reasonable at the time and then things failed badly because something unexpected happened. The only way to avoid that is to be extremely cautious which then feeds back to nuclear being expensive. Risk aversion gets expensive, but so does taking risks. That’s the nuclear dilemma. It seems reasonable to say just take more risks, but that’s how you get accidents that people look back on and think how could they be so dumb. |
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| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Our enemy countries are West Virginia and Pennsylvania? |
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