Germany shutting down nuclear reactors

[HeavyLancer]

In short...I want a nuclear station built near my house asap!!

Only if you want the rest of the Middle East to whinge and moan 24/7 about it. Remember when Israel bombed that Syrian reactor? And the Iraqi one? You're not really friends of the atom

[Gota]

hehe i think your a bit misinformed...

[PicassoCT]

dimonah 2 - bulldozers are rollin allready! Gota fullfill his wishes!

[dansan]

Very nice visualisation:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... y_Xkcd.png

Thanx. That really makes some news importance relative... At least for Fukushima... Chernobyl still looks dangerous.

[Licho]

Prices of electricity in Czechia are set to rise by 30% now with higher EU demand - with bad impacts for industries.
Particularry unwelcome as solar boom of last year raised prices by 20% already (due to generous feed-in tariffs for PV).

Does it change in Germany too?

[exciter]

Prices of electricity in Czechia are set to rise by 30% now with higher EU demand - with bad impacts for industries.
Particularry unwelcome as solar boom of last year raised prices by 20% already (due to generous feed-in tariffs for PV).

Does it change in Germany too?

The prict for electricity is increasing the last few years. So I think its more a inflation problem than a problem with a lack of electricity.


If you want to generate your power through nuclear powerplant you have to first clarify the problem with the nuclear waste. There isnt any disposal zone for this shit in the world... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste


So I think this is a brilliant step to overcome all the rubisch which these powerplants are going to produce. And there is still a residual risk.

Investing in ecological electricity will also be good for germany's industry because of all the new jobs etc.

Germany is still one of the leading countries in wind energy.

10,9% Nuclear power: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... E_2010.png


I think its a great step in the future and you will be jealous oneday :p

Greets

[Licho]

Its not an inflation if other prices are same. There is almost no inflation in Czech rep - usually 1-2%.

Its just energy prices rising not all goods.

[jK]

Prices of electricity in Czechia are set to rise by 30% now with higher EU demand - with bad impacts for industries.
Particularry unwelcome as solar boom of last year raised prices by 20% already (due to generous feed-in tariffs for PV).

Does it change in Germany too?

They say PV makes now 14% of the electricity costs, so they increased the prices again.
Cause of this the government drastically reduced subsidies for PV, still they didn't increased the subsidies for wind ... (Merkel thought to have nuclear power till 2030-2050, and still hopes so imo)

Its not an inflation if other prices are same. There is almost no inflation in Czech rep - usually 1-2%.

Its just energy prices rising not all goods.

That's happens everywhere in the EU afaik. It's independent of nuclear or renewable energies. Electricity coorps. are greedy and none stops them.
Switching to renewable energies should improve this as it is a chance to add more competition.

[dansan]

Wind mills are cheap. Get together with some people, buy a wind mill and find a company that puts it on some crop field, never ever pay for electricity again.

[Wombat]

small derail

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2 ... ar-cleanup

[HeavyLancer]

Wind mills are cheap. Get together with some people, buy a wind mill and find a company that puts it on some crop field, never ever pay for electricity again.

Except when the wind dies down, or you need reliable fixed-frequency, fixed voltage AC and the variability screws it up.
And windmills aren't cheap:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 421000602X
That paper looks at low-emissions energy sources, including modelling with taxes or prices on CO2 emissions. Guess which technology wins?

[Wombat]

another thing is that small dirt reduces their efficiency a lot (dirt on 'wings' ofc)

[Licho]

Indeed dirt cheap! Just get used v-90 http://www.kitmondo.com/viewlisting.asp ... VESTAS_V90

For a mere 1 300 000Ôé¼

[dansan]

You must be some seriuos power gamers if you use 1.8 MW
I think something like this is more appropriate:
http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie ... 6977905930
http://cgi.ebay.de/5-KW-WINDRAD-220v-WI ... 5d2e3861fe

[Cheesecan]

Wind power has been around for 1000 years.
http://www.tuxford-windmill.co.uk/image ... _Glory.jpg

[HeavyLancer]

You must be some seriuos power gamers if you use 1.8 MW

I'm talking about powering entire countries, not a single house. A small proportion of the community changing their houses to renewable power from solar PV and wind turbines does not affect the massive CO2 emissions caused by burning coal and gas to power trains, factories, apartments, offices and everything else that modern society uses electricity for. It's a massive job.

[dizekat]

Cost of nuclear power in the US: http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_envi ... m?ID=13449

Yea.

Speaking of insurance - the insurance policies should give you some idea as of the results of diligent evaluation of nuclear power plant safety conducted by a party that does not have any pro or anti nuclear bias: corporation that is deciding to buy or not to buy a nuclear power plant.
All other evaluations, by the 'nukes are cool' crowd, by the public so called 'nuclear experts', by the greenpeace, are just spewing bullshit in the pursuit of an agenda.

The financial FACT is that nobody with enough money to buy a nuclear power plant was crazy enough to operate it if he can be held responsible for full cost of the plant failure. Consequently, special liability laws were made not to hold the plant owner responsible and thus get the plants build even if they are not cost effective with amortization for the accidents.

In essence, special laws were made to ensure irresponsible operation of nuclear power plant. The consequences of irresponsible operation, as we found out, are very severe - the owner who can't be held responsible for full cost of the failure did, indeed, put generators and other electrical hardware into floodable basement, did entirely neglect tsunami risks, did hold back on the seawater cooling until it was way too late (due to the concerns for ruining the reactor with salt water), and so on and so forth, all sorts of irresponsible actions that stem from absence of responsibility beyond loss of the plant itself.

The nuclear power plant is not like your car. You are responsible for your car accidents - you are responsible for your driving - you can be imprisoned, you have to fully pay for insurance, and so on.
Whereas Fukushima disaster cost is largely on the shoulders of neighbouring area and the entire Japan; the TEPCO is going to be only held partially responsible; TEPCO never had to pay the insurance for this sort of issue, and will never pay the full cost; the owners who have benefited from saving the money on the tsunami protection can never go to jail and won't ever bear the full cost of lack of tsunami protection.

[dansan]

another thing is that small dirt reduces their efficiency a lot (dirt on 'wings' ofc)

sounds crazy - reference please.

You must be some seriuos power gamers if you use 1.8 MW

I'm talking about powering entire countries, not a single house. A small proportion of the community changing their houses to renewable power from solar PV and wind turbines does not affect the massive CO2 emissions caused by burning coal and gas to power trains, factories, apartments, offices and everything else that modern society uses electricity for. It's a massive job.

As I wrote above every building "for humans" (apartments, offices) can sustain itself (electricity + warmth) easily through wind and solar - also in a city (with the exception of skyscrapers or similar high-density structures).

Ofc. trains, factories and other high power users need power from power plants.
That's what huge offshore windparks are good for. The current plan is to use gas plants (not coal!) to compensate low-production-high-usage-situations until enough buffers (like pump storage) have been built to store the expected overproduction of electricity from renewable energy sources.

It's not like Germany wants to replace all its power plants - just the nuclear ones!
After Fukushima they have shutdown 7 of 17 power plants without any problem - just like that. The only thing that changed - less overproduction (used for export mainly to France).

Look at these figures:

Code: Select all

                   2000	   2005    2010
Brown coal         25,7 %  24,8 %  23,7 %
Nuclear            29,4 %  26,3 %  22,6 %
Stone/black coal   24,8 %  21,6 %  18,7 %
Natural gas         8,5 %  11,4 %  13,6 %
Mineral oil         1,0 %   1,9 %   1,2 %
Renewable energy    6,6 %  10,2 %  16,5 %
Other               3,9 %   3,8 %   3,7 %

In just 10 years (without Fukushima) Renewable energy has almost tripled its production and Nuclear is down by almost 1/3. So now that the "exit" is decided - and there are again 10 years of time until the next power plant is switched off - what's the problem?

[Licho]

Problem is you need baseline powerplants anyway so there will have to be extra coal/gas plants.

You cannot possibly cover all the variability with pumped storage, you would need whole sea for that :)

For tiny Ireland you would need 2.7TWh capacity stored and for that you need artifical lake 1000km^2 10m deep at height 100m above turbines.

[HeavyLancer]

It's not like Germany wants to replace all its power plants - just the nuclear ones!

So why not shut down the coal plants instead? Coal power has been proven to chuck up tonnes of CO2, SO2, cause acid rain, puts mercury in the atmosphere, thorium and uranium... It's a disaster. If Germany decided to shut down their brown coal plants they would make measurable differences to their CO2 emissions and respiratory health. After all, if they shut them down they simply wouldn't be overproducing power, as you said. Once again, why nuclear, and not coal, which is worse?

In just 10 years (without Fukushima) Renewable energy has almost tripled its production and Nuclear is down by almost 1/3. So now that the "exit" is decided - and there are again 10 years of time until the next power plant is switched off - what's the problem?

Nuclear power has been treated like a pariah and receives hardly any investment in Germany, where as renewable energy is being heavily invested in from a small baseline. That's the explanation.