229
Why Germany ditched nuclear before coal—and why it won’t go back
(arstechnica.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
229 points (92.9% liked)
World News
39034 readers
1711 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
The article is badly researched.
The red-green coalition did not announce the 2022 date. They (Greens/SPD) announced a soft phase-out between 2015-2020 in conjunction with building renewables. This planned shift from nuclear to renewables was reverted by Merkel (CDU = conservatives) in 2010. They (CDU) changed their mind one year later in 2011 and announced the 2022 date; but without the emphasis on replacing it with renewables. This back and forth was also quite the expensive mistake by the CDU on multiple levels, because energy corporations were now entitled financial compensation for their old reactors.
I'd like to add, my view. I'm from Lower Saxony and in an area nearby they tried for years to establish a temporary storage for the high nuclear waste. I never trusted the notion that the temporary storage will be save, properly maintained and kept from leaking into the local water supply.
Add to that, that we have had very old reactors who were constantly extended rather than properly renewed. Further emphasising that they won't care proper for the waste products.
Then Fukushima happened, the movement for anti nuclear gained massive momentum. I assumed of course that the lack in energy will be compensated by building renewables and subsidising homeowners to build their own solar on their roofs. Why wouldn't we, we were already talking about increasing renewables to safe the climate.
The announcement came that atom is being phased out. Big hooray for everyone who had to live next to the old plants or in areas where end-storage 'solutions' were.
Aaaaaaaand they increased the god damn coal which is way worse and really no one wanted but the lobby for coal and fossile fuels.
Now lots of ppl. on the internet always advocate for nuclear, but never address the fears of the ppl. properly.
The thing is, having a high nuclear toxic waste storage in your local area is shite just as shite it is to have the damn ash piles from coal.
If nuclear really wants to make a proper comeback, in my opinion the first thing they need to solve is the waste. We have too much of it already and have solar, wind and water (tidal preferably over damns because those fuckers can break if not maintained proper) who do not create any nasty waste and by products.
I'm not especially anti-nuclear power overall, but temporary storage sounds like a terrible idea. Transporting nuclear waste twice means twice the possibility of something catastrophic happening.
You wildly overestimate the danger nuclear waste represents.
First, transportation is done in small amounts at a time, completely encased in concrete and steel, and is of no risk of exploding: the only danger would be spillovers, which would call for expensive cleaning operations.
Next, storage. The whole waste produced by 60 years of nuclear waste in France amounts to only a few swimming pools of dangerous material. If this material was actually fully useless, we could ditch it in geological layers underground where it would become soon unreachable and dispersed, posing no discernable danger for the upcoming few billion years.
Furthermore, the only reason we don't ditch this nuclear waste right now is that this material can still be useful for plenty of uses that are not yet economically viable, but could be in the long term, such as energy generation with low-yield reactors.
I don't know, it sounds like it's dangerous to me if it can explode sometimes...
https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-mexico-nuclear-dump-20160819-snap-story.html
Note that they present the issue only as a financial problem rather than an actual threat to the environment or people.
Since your articles behind a paywall, I cannot read it. However, I can guarantee you as what you're describing was in a barrel. It was low level waste. So likely a mixture of propellants or other chemicals that had been exposed to a reactor environment and then disposed of in a sealed barrel. High-Level nuclear waste is solid metallic-like substances that are encased in glass, steel and concrete. There's nothing to explode.
Not paywalled for me, but here you go-
The information you provided was not sufficient so I googled
The suspect drums contain nitrates and cellulose, which are thought to have reacted to cause the explosion in February
It was low level waste mostly americanum dissolved into the mixture of nitrates and cellulose. The barrel did not explode as much as the lid popped off.
WIPP is for low level transuranic waste from DOE projects, just FYI. Not super toxic stuff. They ship it in these super tough containers that they test by dropping on a spike and putting in a furnace. Wild to watch.
Waste from nuclear weapons is not the same as waste from commercial nuclear power plants.