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BloodIsTaken t1_j4b6wyn wrote

Reply to comment by wave_327 in Germany plans to destroy this village for a coal mine. Thousands are gathering to stop it by LaminatedDenim

  1. Nuclear power plants in Germany are not safe enough for continued use anymore without risking operating failures - and we all know what could happen in case if an accident.

  2. Germany wouldn’t have this problem if the CDU - the ruling party for the last 16 years - hadn’t made expanding and building more renewable energy sources so difficult.

  3. The majority of uranium used in NPPs in Germany came from Russia - which is not ideal when you want to be independent from other countries.

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DudeWithAnAxeToGrind t1_j4bwl0g wrote

  1. is BS. The plants were closed by political fiat. In particular to bring Green party into the ruling coalition in the late 1990's. Nothing to do with their safety. In fact, Germany's nuclear power plants are perfectly safe to operate. If they were not closed, Germany would not need to operate a single coal burning power plant today. Not a single one.
  2. is also BS. Germany was fast building renewable energy infrastructure. You may not be happy with the pace, but building large infrastructure takes time. They were also shutting down nuclear reactors, to appease Greens. Further increasing today's need for bringing back previously closed coal burning plants back online.
  3. There are other sources of uranium. Once fueled, nuclear power plant operates for about 3-6 years before its fuel rods need to be replaced. Putin could decide not to sell you more uranium, but effects of that would not be felt for many years. Unlike cutting off gas shipments, effects of which are felt very fast.
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BloodIsTaken t1_j4byb4m wrote

regarding 2) : The CDU stopped building wind parks, made their construction more difficult by creating unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles and instead funded coal mining.

The fact that you say Germany is fast in building renewables shows that you don’t know much. Germany might be faster than other countries - but that’s not a point for Germany, it’s a point against those other countries.

Regarding 3) : Yeah, there are other sources. But fact is, Germany got most from Russia, so it doesn’t matter - other suppliers would have to get their uranium to Germany. And that would create dependency on other countries and - since these countries would most likely be farther away - be more harmful to the environment. I absolutely hate it when people say that nuclear energy doesn’t create co2 emissions - that ignores the time and resources spent building an NPP, mining uranium and getting it to the power plant.

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DudeWithAnAxeToGrind t1_j4c1ucr wrote

In short, you don't know much about how nuclear power plants operate, and the infrastructure behind it? You were told "nuclear bad", and you run with it.

EDIT: Also, thanks for confirming the fast pace of building infrastructure centered on renewables in Germany. As I said, you folks want stuff now; no pace is fast enough for you, unless it is instant. Reality doesn't work that way.

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BloodIsTaken t1_j4cev9p wrote

You want me to go full NuClEaR bAd? I can do that.

1: Nuclear Power plants are huge targets for military and terrorist attacks. As seen in Ukraine, Russia occupied the largest power plant in Europe and is pretty much safe there - the ukrainian military can’t attack them there as doing so would risk destroying half of europe.

And Greenpeace has shown that you don’t need an army to do that. In a campaign they announced they were going to invade an NPP in France. The police was there to stop them but couldn’t do it - they essentially locked themselves out with Greenpeace activists inside the NPP. Terrorists or countries aiming to cripple (other) countries‘ energy supply could probably do so with ease.

2: Despite all of you nuclear fanboys claiming that the nuclear waste problem is already solved, this is still a lie - and it probably will be this way for a long time.

Unlike the myth perpetuated by you fanboys you can’t just stick it in the ground. Doing so would contaminate the environment - potentially killing countless animals, plants and people when groundwater gets contaminated.

And there is no long-term storage. It would would require a cave that is guaranteed to be completely sealed off from the rest of the world for at least a millennium, if not more. That means not a single crack through which water could get through, no chance of earthquakes or landslides. And we‘ve been looking for one for decades now.

3: Nuclear Power Plants take long to build.

> you folks want stuff now, no pace is fast enough for you, unless it is instant.

I want an energy source that doesn’t take ten years to be build with a constantly extending projected finish time. I know and understand that things take time - but if humanity has less than 7 years from now until the 1.5C mark is crossed after which climate change can never be stopped and will only snowball in speed an energy source that takes this long to build is useless.

4: Nuclear energy is expensive. Building a single power plant takes tens of billions of dollars/euro to build. Compare that to wind turbines, or solar, or photovoltaic, where the cost is in the thousands. Nuclear energy is just too expensive.

5: Nuclear Power Plants need water to cool. While that in itself might not be a problem, you have to look at an environmental problem: droughts. The entire world suffers more and more from droughts - and in France this has already created problems for NPPs. During winter they can’t operate their NPPs because they can’t be cooled - so they have to get their energy somewhere else.

In the future droughts will only become more frequent - and if you can’t use the NPPs you have wasted a decade, tens of billions of dollars and countless resources in a project doomed to fail.

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So please, tell me: Why should I support nuclear energy? It‘s completely out of place - too expensive, too risky, and takes far too long to build. In contrast to that you have wind and solar energy, which cost a millionth, can be built a hundred times as fast and with far fewer resources. The choice between these is obvious - only an idiot wouldn’t understand that

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[deleted] t1_j4evdcl wrote

[deleted]

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bearcat09 t1_j4fpgn4 wrote

You still need water to condense the steam used for the turbine back into water. A lot of this water/heat is expelled via cooling towers or discharged back into a cooling pond/lake.

If your plant is on a river you are usually required to have a cooling tower because there are discharge temperature requirements to keep from impacting local wildlife.

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